Legal Technology: Assessment of the Legal Tech Industry’s Potential

Abstract

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the sector of legal services has resulted in the emergence of a new category of services known as legal technology (legal tech). This article aims at defining the current state of research concerning the matter, confirming its interdisciplinary nature and examining the level of its popularity. The strategy assumed for the article has influenced the order and sequence of the topics covered starting from an introduction to legal technology together with analysis of the context of the definition of the term (legal tech) (“Introduction” section), through a detailed discussion of the methodology of systematic literature review, its results and an appraisal of the popularity of the notions (“Materials and Methods” and “Bibliometric Analysis” sections), the application of the thematic analysis method (“Thematic Analysis of the Reference Repository” section), Google Trends analysis (“Analysis of the Popularity of the Terms ‘Legal Technology’ or ‘Legal Tech’ (Google Trends)” section), and finally the conclusions (“Conclusions” section). The research methodology covers a systematic literature review, quantitative bibliometric analysis, the thematic analysis method, and — complementarily — popularity analysis performed using the Google Trends analytical tool. The article confirms the multidisciplinary nature of legal technology as a subject matter, indicating the thematic categories corresponding with the notion under investigation. It contains a description of the geographical segmentation and difference in that regard at a global level. The author has verified the presence of publications on legal technology and shown that the future of the legal services sector lies in an interdisciplinary juxtaposition of the classic legal sciences with entirely new areas, i.e. IT, artificial intelligence, and data analysis.

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