This year’s Artificial Lawyer predictions are different: fewer people, longer insights. Part One’s predictions include: Sacha Kirk of Lawcadia, Ed Walters of vLex, and Richard Mabey of Juro.
Over the coming days several more thoughtful views will be shared on the question of what to expect in 2025. Enjoy.
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Ed Walters, Chief Strategy Officer, vLex
I expect to see a lot more agentic AI systems in law: services that break complex tasks into component parts or checklists, complete them with a mix of software, lawyers, and allied legal professionals, then reassemble them into complex first drafts of legal work.
Plus:
– Lawyers who started using AI in 2024 and early 2025 will begin to separate from the pack. They will become known as experts, will be seen as indispensable by clients, and will command higher fees for their tacit expertise.
– Foundation models will all improve greatly, but they will be something of a commodity, with more processing at a lower cost. Large volumes of specialized, structured legal data will become a major differentiator.
– Law firms will be in a footrace to adopt GenAI tools (and to show their value) before their corporate clients do. Firms that don’t adopt legal AI won’t have a shocking breakup call with corporate clients, but their phone will ring less in 2025 as corporate clients take more tasks in house with the help of legal AI.
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Sacha Kirk, Co-Founder, Lawcadia
The Future of Legal Tech: Secure, Collaborative, and Human-Centred
The legal industry in 2025 will witness a balanced interplay between technology and human expertise. While AI and automation will drive efficiency and innovation, the human element will remain at the core of delivering impactful legal solutions. Security, integration, and user experience will emerge as foundational pillars, necessary for the sustainable growth of legal technology.
Responsible Selection and Adoption of AI Tools
In 2025, the legal industry will place a heightened focus on the responsible selection, deployment, and adoption of AI tools. Legal professionals, often sceptical about vendors’ assurances regarding compliance and data security, will demand robust measures to protect sensitive information. The days of vague promises and overhyped capabilities are fading, replaced by a call for AI solutions that prioritise security-first designs.
By maintaining sensitive data in walled-off environments and ensuring it never persists within AI models or is used for training purposes, organisations can confidently embrace AI-powered tools. This shift will unlock efficiencies while protecting valuable legal data, enabling legal teams to leverage the full potential of AI without compromising trust or security.
The Rise of Matter Management
In 2025, matter management platforms are set to take centre stage as legal departments shift toward tools specifically designed to address their unique operational challenges. While Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) systems have long been a staple in legal tech, they often cater more effectively to procurement and commercial teams, leaving legal departments in a supporting role. These platforms can be expensive, feature-heavy, and less suited to the core needs of legal professionals.
Matter management systems, by contrast, are purpose-built for legal teams, providing streamlined and agile solutions that align with their operational and reporting goals. These platforms enable legal departments to manage matters from initiation to resolution with ease, offering features such as task tracking, document management, and collaboration tools – all within a centralised and user-friendly environment.
Integrated Legal Ecosystems
The silos that have historically divided in-house legal teams, external counsel, and other stakeholders will evolve, thanks to the rise of integrated legal ecosystems. End-to-end platforms will provide seamless collaboration, real-time updates, and shared knowledge, enabling all parties to work more effectively toward common goals. Legal departments will turn to these unified solutions to streamline legal requests, offer self-service options, and improve service delivery.
Collaboration between law firms and in-house teams will deepen, further elevating law firms as strategic business partners and a core part of the legal function. This integrated approach will redefine how legal departments operate, fostering alignment and efficiency.
Human-Centred Legal Design
Even as technology transforms the legal profession, the human element will remain a critical focus. Investments in human-centred design will ensure that new tools are intuitive, accessible, and user-friendly, addressing resistance to adoption and enabling smoother integration into daily workflows.
Automation will handle repetitive, mundane tasks, freeing legal professionals to concentrate on more meaningful and impactful work, such as strategy, innovation, and client relationships. This emphasis on human-centred design will bridge the gap between technological advancement and the people who use these tools, ensuring that technology serves as an enabler rather than a barrier.
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Richard Mabey, CEO, Juro
2025 will be the year of agentic AI. It will be the year that end users of legal services finally get legal work resolved for them autonomously.
In the context of in-house, lawyers will enable teams in businesses to self-serve on increasingly complex ‘legal’ tasks. Whether that’s contract review, answering questions on policies or filling out forms…lawyers will set context, guardrails and controls but business teams will actually execute the work.
This will free up lawyers for high-complexity, high-risk work and give businesses a better experience of legal turnaround. But it will also lead to smaller legal teams with higher talent concentration and higher leverage. Those high-leverage teams will be well rewarded both intellectually and financially.
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Thanks to all of the above. More predictions will be published in Artificial Lawyer. Look out for Part Two!