More than half of legal professionals in the Middle East feel that their firm’s adoption of legal technology is ‘fair’, ‘poor’, or ‘very poor’, and just 12 per cent think their firms’ efforts to adopt legal tech are ‘very good’. That’s according to a new survey undertaken by Legal Week Intelligence and Thomson Reuters, based on interviews earlier this year with 74 general counsel, senior in-house lawyers, private practice partners, associates and compliance personnel in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
Click here to download our report, Back to the future: Legal Technology Trends in the Middle-East.
Although law firms and legal departments in the Middle East are beginning to recognise the importance of technology to streamline processes and boost workflow efficiencies, they still have work to do to adopt new legal tech and play catch-up with global law firms. The influence of international firms with a presence in the Middle East, who have adopted their firm-wide solutions – such as matter management, knowledge management and document automation – to their local offices is slowly beginning to change the mentality of local law firms.
Despite these difficulties, our research shows that legal professionals in the region recognise that automating routine processes can free up time to spend on more important tasks. Almost 60 per cent of respondents to the survey said that introducing software or other tools would help to improve the day-to-day running of their departments.
Click here to download the full report: Back to the future: Legal Technology Trends in the Middle-East.
