This year's Global Litigation 50 report focuses on a subject that has never been more topical – the inexorable rise of technology across all stages of the litigation process. Providing clients with a service that is as fast as possible, of the highest quality, rigorous and yet still cost-effective is of paramount importance to the world's top law firms. This is why the commercial market for these services is booming – and why over the past decade, and particularly the past three to five years, leading litigation practices have been driving forward a plethora of tech-enabled initiatives to enhance the delivery of their legal services to clients. This year's edition of The Lawyer Global Litigation 50 contains dozens of examples of cost-effective innovations from the leading litigation practices. Frankly, firms have no alternative. Clients are demanding this approach and rivals that aren't law firms are increasingly providing it.

This is an exciting year at MIPIM. The high liquidity in the real estate investment market can be felt everywhere. One can almost see the goose bumps when people are whispering in the corners, in the restaurants or on the boats saying, "I know someone who might intend to sell by way of a forward commitment in next year or so." My Monday night warm-up was a barbecue hosted by a German logistics fund manager in the mountains at Theoule sur Mer with a wonderful night view on Cannes; it was nice to see what was waiting for us over the next few days. The event felt almost like family, with the MD at the grill and the fund manager serving the wine.

Artificial Intelligence provider RAVN Systems has appointed former Ashurst CIO David Lumsden as its new CEO. Lumsden, who is also formerly CEO of technology provider Tikit Group and who joined RAVN last year as chief strategy officer (CSO), replaces Peter Wallqvist, one of the founders of RAVN. Lumsden has more than 30 years' experience in the legal IT and professional services market. He was CEO of Tikit Group between 2000 and 2013 and spent seven years as CIO at Ashurst. "RAVN has a strong reputation in the markets we're currently operating in," said Lumsden.

Travers Smith has become the latest firm to adopt AI technology in a bid to boost efficiency.

Clifford Chance has become the latest UK law firm to adopt the use of artificial intelligence (AI) after partnering with software provider Kira Systems. The magic circle firm has teamed up with Kira Systems to improve the "speed, efficiency and quality" of its processes. In practice Kira works by searching and analysing text within contracts. The firm believes its use will reduce the time spent carrying out due diligence work and increase the number of documents that can be reviewed. It was chosen by Clifford Chance because the software can be easily modified by the firm's lawyers and is able to adapt to specific client requests.

It's well known that we in the tech sector love our acronyms. We also like re-badging stuff.What was once ASP (application service provision) morphed into SaaS (software as a service) and then became part of the cloud computing eco-system. And so it is at the moment with AI (artificial intelligence). There have been a number of pronouncements recently, particularly from private practice firms, about their adoption of AI. But is the truth more weighted towards the "artificial" than the "intelligence"? That well-known convenient one-stop-shop of truth, Wikipedia, defines AI as "a machine acting as a rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximise its chance for success at an arbitrary goal".

Why do you think technologies such as AI and predictive coding are apparently gaining momentum in term of their uptake in the UK legal market? First and foremost, the legal market isn't an isolated bubble. There is so much happening right now in the world at large about AI and cognitive computing that the legal market simply can't be immune. Our behaviours in the workplace are driven (and increasingly so) by our experiences in the rest of our lives, so when there's a constant stream of mainstream news about AI, it's inevitable that it must impact the legal market. Add into the mix a number of other legal market factors – the increasing price sensitivity of clients, the explosion in data, the long-standing feeling that there must be a better way to do repetitive knowledge tasks than simply adding more junior lawyers – and you've got the perfect conditions for these technologies to take hold.