In recent years, the field of Legal Tech has risen in prevalence, as the Natural Language Processing (NLP) and legal disciplines have combined forces to digitalize legal processes. Amidst the steady flow of research solutions stemming from the NLP domain, the study of use cases has fallen behind, leading to a number of innovative technical methods without a place in practice. In this work, we aim to build a structured overview of Legal Tech use cases, grounded in NLP literature, but also supplemented by voices from legal practice in Germany. Based upon a Systematic Literature Review, we identify seven categories of NLP technologies for the legal domain, which are then studied in juxtaposition to 22 legal use cases. In the investigation of these use cases, we identify 15 ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA), shedding light on the potential concerns of digitally transforming the legal domain.

Artificial intelligence (AI), the simulation of human intelligence in machines, is changing the face of the legal industry. Law firms globally are apprehensive about what lies ahead for the industry but changes are already in motion and there is no escape, says Dr Anton Ravindran. Anton is the CEO of SmartLaw, a start-up based in Singapore that utilises AI to assist lawyers in their work. Its online services help lawyers scan through thousands of pages of documents and answer their law-related questions in seconds. It also helps them predict sentencing outcomes, and extract legal precedents and verdicts almost instantly for criminal offence, contested divorce and medical negligence.

It's no secret that the legal field is a competitive environment. Junior lawyers are undeterred by (and perhaps even attracted to) the cutthroat nature of the business, and one-upping the competitor is necessary to get a job in the legal field. Firms turn to the latest and greatest tech development to compete with each other and "keep up with the [legal] Joneses." In 2019 alone, investments in B2B legal tech soared past $1 billion. Still, some legal professionals fear that cutting-edge technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), will eliminate the role of junior lawyers in the future. It's clear to many, however, that law firms must incorporate new legal tech developments in order to attract top talent, remain a top competitor, and mold their junior lawyers to be better than the next.

It is a complex process, one that involves data mining, machine learning, and predictive modeling.

Are the robot lawyers here yet? My mental picture of C3PO projecting a hologram of a case file has not yet come true, and I must confess that I'm a bit disappointed. OK, I know that's not what artificial intelligence is all about. In the past decade, we have seen AI's legal applications grow from primarily technology-assisted review in e-discovery to encompass everything from legal research to document automation to transactional law. Even if there aren't robot lawyers, AI has begun to fundamentally change how lawyers across the country practice.

In the future, is it conceivable that a firm would be charged with legal malpractice if they didn't use artificial intelligence (AI)? Today, artificial intelligence offers a solution to solve or at least make the access-to-justice issue better and completely transform our traditional legal system. Here's what you need to know about how AI, big data, and online courts will change the legal system. When I sat down in conversation with Richard Susskind, OBE, the world's most-cited author on the future of legal services, to discuss the future of law and lawyers, it became apparent just how much change the legal system will face over the next decade thanks to innovation brought about by artificial intelligence and big data. In Richard's book The Future of Law, published in 1996, he predicted that in the future, lawyers and clients would communicate via email.

The rise of artificial intelligence is one of the most disruptive developments of this age. Already of rising importance, AI is considered a make-or-break technology for companies across the board, with 75% of C-level executives believing that employing AI will decide if their business will prosper or fail. The legal sector is an industry that is rich in documents but poor in data -- a stark contrast to many other business sectors, where data is at the heart of everything. This means that most AI solutions thus far are not adapted to a law practice's kind of work, which mostly consists of sifting through thousands of documents relevant to a specific case, with specialized teams hired particularly for this purpose. No surprise then, that law firms have been slow to embrace new tech such as AI. However, recent innovations in AI have been tailored exclusively to the needs of the legal sector, which has caused a renewed interest in using artificial intelligence for the benefit of the legal profession.

Law is a constantly evolving industry, and few things have brought about as much change as the rise of legal tech. From my days at Harvard Law School, to BigLaw, to my current role leading a legal tech company, I've seen first-hand how technology, and AI in particular, have played a critical role in bringing a risk-averse industry into the next wave of the digital era. When I arrived at Harvard Law School in 2005, artificial intelligence was little more than a theoretical concept in the legal industry. Practical applications of AI, machine learning, and natural language processing were still things of the future. It would be years before IBM's Watson would beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!

One of the largest annual legal tech conferences in the U.S. drew more attendees this year than ever, according to organizers, underscoring the dramatic growth of the legal tech industry and its increasing importance to the practice of law. The International Legal Technology Association's annual event this week at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., ILTACON, was on track to hit a total of 1,850 participants, up from 1,715 at last year's conference, which was held outside Washington. ILTACON is considered one of the premier legal technology gatherings of the year. The total in Orlando included 800 first-time attendees and exhibit booths from about 200 legal tech vendors. But the statistic that appeared seemed to energize top ILTA officials speaking to the press most, including ILTA CEO Joy Heath Rush, was that the conference has a growing international draw.

Smart technologies are maturing and set to disrupt the traditional conservative legal market. Banks in particular can leverage these to dramatically reduce their costs and boost efficiency, according to a new report. Technology is expected to fundamentally change the legal industry, a space that is still attached to manual and paper-based processes. According to McKinsey, 22% of a lawyer's job and 35% of a law clerk's job can be automated. "If I was the parent of a law student, I would be concerned a bit," Todd Solomon, a partner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, based in Chicago, told the MIT Technology Review.