If anyone can handle legal tasks, where do lawyers fit in?

In-house lawyers are now being told to do more with less and to use AI to do so. But where does this leave the lawyers?! We looked into it in February. 

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it’s packed a punch in the legal tech world, leaving us wondering: if legal tasks can sit with anyone, what should lawyers do? Let’s get into it. 

What should lawyers do?

We kicked off the month with a community roundtable lunch over some sushi in London, tackling the question, how can in-house lawyers in lean teams empower their businesses while staying focused on strategic priorities?  

Victoria Ferguson from CTWO shared her insights with the group, emphasizing the importance of community (join ours), the highs and lows of implementing a self-serve model in the business, and going slow at first, so you can go faster - much faster - later. 

This got our CEO Richard thinking about what he’d do if he was starting as a new GC in 2025. It’s been an eventful few years for lawyers - how have the day-one priorities changed?

Here’s a quick overview:

1. Think from first principles about the legal tasks in your company
2. Look for opportunities to put legal tools safely in the hands of non-lawyers…
3. … but model a healthy skepticism about accuracy and compliance
4. Actively experiment with models and tools
5. Don’t go it alone

You can dive into the details on this one via this blog post. 

Is it to do less? 

"Do more with less." The phrase is getting old but the mandate is as urgent as ever. Headcount requests are being denied and budgets slashed. Yet, the work just keeps piling up. 

We decided to take a look at this development from two key angles in the legal profession across two webinars. 

1. Legal operations
2. The limitations of AI 

Granted, both topics relate to the elephant in the contracting room … the impact of AI on legal tasks and teams. 

From a legal ops perspective, it’s not so much about doing more with less but doing the most with what you have, as our guest Stephanie Corey highlighted: "AI is a game-changing technology that will revolutionize how legal teams operate." 

Stephanie's advice? Start small with AI and go from there. You don’t have to build a whole custom AI bot to answer all your legal queries but you can use AI to provide a base draft which you can then edit and improve. 

What about what AI cannot do?

Later in the month, we brought together a panel of experts:

• Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer
• Richard Mabey, CEO, Juro
• Tanisha Minev, Senior Legal Counsel, Yoco
• Alex Hamilton, CEO, Radiant Law

They delved into the evolving role of AI in the legal sector, exploring its potential applications, ethical considerations, and the importance of human oversight. As well as revealing some interesting data on where people are at with AI today. 

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If you want to catch the next in this series of webinars, we’ll be discussing Agents vs Copilots: which AI works best for in-house legal?

If 2024 saw copilots take over the world, then 2025 is the year of agentic AI - sign up now.

What’s in the news?

The world of legal tech has not stopped moving this month and that’s led to some extremely interesting commentary in the wider market. Our CEO, Richard Mabey, spoke to Lucie Cruz, Tech Editor at The Lawyer all about UK legal techs moving into the US. 

Here’s a snippet of what he had to say about our decision to move to the US earlier this year:

Buyers’ behavior is also different in the US; people are more willing to spend money to save money

You can read the full article, featuring a commentary from Wilson Sonsini, here.

We also found this report from Vals.AI extremely insightful. It tested well-known legal tech AI tools against specific tasks, using lawyer performance as a baseline. It’s an insightful read for those who want to get hands-on with their understanding of the legal AI market in 2025. 

Customer spotlight: CSU Global‍

We sat down with the team at Colorado State University Global (CSU Global), the first independent, fully accredited 100% online state university in the United States, serving over 15,000 students annually.

As CSU Global has expanded, managing and tracking third-party contracts became increasingly challenging. The university's existing contract storage methods were fragmented and inefficient, leading to time-consuming searches and a lack of visibility into key contract data.

CSU Global’s Director of Regulatory Compliance and Risk, Lydia Kloiber, explains:

We felt that the institution was at risk of missing out on opportunities to negotiate more favorable terms and reassess whether the contract was worth renewing…We needed more effective tools in place to support the institution in this regard

To address these challenges, CSU Global implemented Juro in 2021. The platform streamlined their contract workflows, enabling the team to store and track contracts more effectively - resulting in a 75% reduction in time spent searching for contracts. 

The successful integration of Juro has empowered CSU Global to manage its contracts with greater confidence and they were set up for success from day one. As Lydia says: “The onboarding process was nothing short of stellar.” 

We can’t wait to see how much the team can achieve with Juro! 

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What’s coming up next month?

That's not all. We have a lot heading your way in March in London, the US, and online.

We’re getting technical with AI this month. If 2024 saw copilots take over the world, then 2025 is the year of agentic AI.

But how are people supposed to know the difference between the two? Are there tasks better suited to each solution, and how should lawyers evaluate their potential impact? Let’s talk about it on the 20th March at 2 pm.

We’ll share the current state of AI awareness in in-house legal, based on our in-depth survey of hundreds of lawyers, so you won’t want to miss it. Sign up here. 

For those in London who fancy an in-person chat on this topic, we’re also hosting a roundtable at Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat in Bishopsgate. We’d love to have you there - register your interest.

That’s all for this month, we’ll see you here in March to catch up on all things Juro.