'Law firms need data and cloud experts'

Legal Tech? "It is a very important niche because it has a direct impact on a primary need of every democracy: to make legal services faster, more effective and less costly for the benefit of insiders (magistrates, lawyers and notaries), citizens and public administrations," explained lawyer Donato Silvano Lorusso, Ambassador for Italy European Legal Tech Association in his speech at the AI Transition Sole 24 Ore Summit, interviewed by RAI journalist Barbara Carfagna.

A very important niche but still too small, at least in Italy, where there are no more than 90-92 start-ups active in the sector for a turnover of around 40 million euro. Crumbs compared to the 15 billion dollars worth of the entire global Legal Tech, which is set to rise to 40 billion within a decade.

'It is true, our numbers are small, a clear sign that we suffer from the low investment in technology and digitisation of our companies,' Lorusso admits. On the other hand, we are lagging behind in the EU: Germany, France, Spain and the UK also invest much more in this sector. Not to mention the US. Open AI, for example, recently released an application that deals with document analysis. In other cases, there are AI solutions that can predictively anticipate the outcome of judgments. "Where Artificial Intelligence still struggles, however, is in 'pareristics' and contractualisation," Lorusso continues. "Let's say that today AI is like a bright kid in his third year of law school who manages to provide the professor or lawyer with a semi-finished product, nothing more." Although technology is running at a furious pace and we need to keep up.

"In spite of everything I remain optimistic, provided that we change gear," the lawyer continues. "Within law firms there will have to be more and more data or cloud experts; the professionalism of new lawyers must go hand in hand with technological innovation because there will always be a need for lawyers."

After Lorusso, Stéphane Béreux, CTO of Jimini AI told the case history of his start-up specialising in legal queries, launched in 2023 thanks to a EUR 3 million funding. "The legal market is facing many challenges," reasoned Béreux. "In the US, there are increasingly large and competitive firms that are putting European ones under pressure thanks to the massive use of generative AI that multiplies their productivity." Suffice it to say that 50 per cent of the time spent by lawyers is consumed in routine tasks such as drafting documents and drafts, document research, writing and reviewing contracts. "Jimini's AI," concludes Béreux, "makes it possible to speed up all these stages of legal work by adding secure data storage."