Artificial intelligence, Big Law & cyber security. Roger Smith shares his takeaways from the British Legal Technology Forum
The British Legal Technology Forum 2018 filled the historic Billingsgate Market on London’s Thames to the gunnels last month. Around 1,200 delegates crowded in around a main stage, three subsidiary ones and exhibition space to get an update on latest developments. And Professor Richard Susskind, the guru of law’s future, curated a fitting line-up to meet their expectations. Long gone are the sceptics who argued that the legal profession would escape from the technological revolution pretty well unscathed: they have joined the cottage weavers and other deniers of history. But, the question of how it will impact is still open.
Perhaps the most telling element in the day was that hardly any speaker spoke of technological disruption of the market. There was none of the sense of angst that you can find, for example, at similar American conferences that the barbarians—in the form of unregulated providers of legal advice—might be lurking at the gates. Symbolic of the London approach was the keynote
