You can enable subtitles (captions) in the video player
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome to the Natural History Museum in London for the 2017 Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Awards. We may be surrounded by fossils and dinosaurs. But tonight, it's all about innovation, disruption, and new ideas.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The big innovations of the past year have been nothing short of a cultural revolution in the profession. We're seeing lawyers experiment with artificial intelligence. We're seeing them think about how neuroscience can help them in their learning and development programmes. We're seeing a real change in the psyche and mindset of lawyers.
I think If we look back a decade ago, we had the global financial crisis. And that really was the spur to a lot of innovation.
People have been talking for a long time about innovation and changing the way they deliver legal services. But it feels like it's really happening now.
Technology is going to permeate the legal sector like never before. We can't ignore it. It isn't going to go away. That's why all the innovation will occur.
We're still seeing the traditional law firms. And we're also seeing the legal tech firms. And what we are seeing in some of the oldest and most traditional firms is they're building up a technological capability as well. It's very uneven. Some law firms are far ahead of others. But I think we definitely are seeing that change.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
--a turning point that we're looking at. And what we're going to see is massive use of the technology, massive more adoption of technology. And I think we're going to see a lot more new players in the market. There are going to be firms [? that are ?] going to be shrinking. The in-house legal space is increasing. In-house lawyers and corporate legal departments become very, very much more powerful. And there's a whole balance of power that is changing.