Global Legal Tech Report to Gauge Law Firm, Investment Trends

A leading U.S.-based legal tech trade group has joined with other groups from around the world to create a global survey of legal tech development, adoption, and investment trends.

The International Legal Technology Association is joining legal tech organizations based in Europe, Asia, and Australia to devise the Global Legal Tech Report, which ILTA calls a “first of its kind” work of research.

The report will provide data and trend information for law firm and corporate law leaders, as well as the growing universe of legal tech vendors and investors.

The giant accountancy KPMG is one of the report’s research sponsors. Like the three other Big Four firms, it has grown its global legal services business in recent years across the globe.

The first full Global Legal Tech Report is due to be released in October.

A main benefit of the report—and a key reason ILTA signed on with the project—is that it will “gauge the state of legal tech around the world,” said Beth Anne Stuebe, ILTA’s director of publications and press.

Big Law leaders will be able to see how competing firms in different regions use different types of legal tech, and why they’ve made the decisions they have, Stuebe said. The report also will study the range of types of investment groups, including venture capital companies and others, that are increasingly funding vendors, she said.

In 2019, investors committed more cash to legal tech companies than they ever had before, $1.23 billion.

“The delivery of legal services—and, therefore, the development of legal technology—is truly a global undertaking,” ILTA CEO Joy Heath Rush said in a statement. “Innovation is happening at all points of the compass. We hope ILTA member entities and business partners across the world will participate in the research for our mutual benefit.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sam Skolnik in Washington at sskolnik@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jessie Kokrda Kamens at jkamens@bloomberglaw.com; Rebekah Mintzer at rmintzer@bloomberglaw.com