Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor and the Melbourne Law School have released their annual report into the Australian legal market. Identifying the trends that’ve impacted the industry over the last 12 months (and the ones set to influence it in 2019 and beyond), it makes for interesting reading.
Despite a five year period of flat or declining growth, the data in the report indicates a strong upswing in the Australian legal market in the year to 30 June 2018. With a recorded growth of 7.8%, this is in direct contrast to markets like the US, which has gone backwards with a contraction of 0.2%.
Making a strong contribution to this growth is the Australian legal technology market. A leader in the Asia-Pacific region, it has expanded significantly since its inception in 1992. Since then, we’ve seen legal technology focused groups and events spring up across the country, education shift its focus to technology and innovation, and the founding of 38 new legal software providers between 2015 and 2017.
Driving this growth are in-house and corporate teams.
Faced with shrinking budgets and increased workloads, they’re embracing legal tech like never before. To help them make the most of the options on offer, The Association of Australian Corporate Counsel is launching a Legal Tech Corner. The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) has also launched an Australian chapter, giving legal operations and technology professionals a valuable platform to share best practices, network and explore new products and offerings on the market.
Given the sector’s relative youth, its ability to impact the legal services market is particularly profound. As lawyers actively seek out solutions designed to help them exploit their ever growing repository of data and explore more efficient ways of working, the legal tech market will play an increasingly active role in shaping the future of the profession.
For a legal technology company founded when the concept of legal tech was relatively unexplored and, in some cases, unpopular, this is particularly exciting news. As we help to lead the transformation of the industry, we look forward to the changes and challenges in store. Bring on the revolution!
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