The Legal AI Year in Review 2018 Predictions

It's been an incredible year for the'New Wave' of legal technology and Artificial Lawyer has hopefully been able to bring you some of the key moments in this evolutionary journey that is unfolding week by week all around the world. Now, as we head toward 2018, many of the leading players and commentators in the legal AI, legal bot and data analysis world have been asked to give their views on what has taken place and what will happen next. Plus, next year there will be predictions from the world of smart contracts and legal blockchain, (Hi, Clause, Integra Ledger and IBM's Cognitive Legal team, to name a few!) Artificial Lawyer asked an array of experts to name what was the biggest development for legal AI and the New Wave of legal technology this year, and what they expected to see happen in 2018. They were invited to respond with text or images to illustrate their views, and if they were up for it, a haiku or longer poem. Naturally, we couldn't fit everyone in – the legal tech world is just so massive now – but hopefully you'll find this collective wisdom both inspiring and thought-provoking – and fun – I know Artificial Lawyer did. Biggest development of 2017: 'I think the most significant thing was how mainstream legal AI became – mass adoption by firms and NewLaw, and more focus on integrations, grown up security requirements, APIs and the like.' Biggest development of 2018: 'I think we're going to see more news about wider ML applicability, not just NLP/ML for litigation document review, contract review in diligence and in-house contract review (the primary use cases to date).