Technology Rewired: Legal

How has the legal team changed across five eras?

1. Era 1 · On-prem

   Before 2005

   0.1

   Legal work ran on paper files, law libraries, and dictation. Associates and paralegals did research and document review by hand, a partner signed off, and the firm billed by the hour. In-house teams were a general counsel and a few lawyers who sent most hard questions to outside firms.

   Knowledge lived in people's heads and in a precedent folder that only the senior secretary understood.

2. Era 2 · SaaS and cloud

   2005 to 2020

   0.6

   Online research databases, e-discovery platforms, and contract management software moved the work to screens and cut some review time. Legal ops emerged as a role in corporate legal teams, owning vendors, budgets, and the contract repository.

   The pyramid held: partners at the top, associates and contract reviewers at the base. Law firms also became attractive targets, which is why cybersecurity risks for law firms belong in any legal tech conversation.

3. Era 3 · AI-assisted

   2020 to 2024

   1.3

   Clause extraction, predictive coding in discovery, and generative drafting arrived. Lawyers checked every output, and early cases of fabricated citations made courts cautious and firms write policies.

   The tools were useful on the first draft and unsafe as the last word.

4. Era 4 · Agentic

   2024 onward

   1.7

   Agents now run first-pass contract review against a playbook, redline standard agreements, and summarize research for a lawyer to verify. The junior review work that trained associates is the work being automated, which leaves firms asking how to build the next generation of senior lawyers. I wrote about the profession's shift in how AI is transforming the legal profession.

   Legal teams also own the downside. Big tech fines against revenue shows what a privacy mistake can cost, which is why a lawyer stays in the loop.

5. Era 5 · Next 5 years

   2026 to 2031

   2.6

   My bet: routine contracts and first-pass review run through agents under lawyer-written playbooks, and the billable-hour model keeps eroding. Professional rules keep a licensed human accountable for advice, so legal teams get smaller at the base and more senior overall.

Which legal software is being rewired?

No deep dives yet. The first ones are in the queue below.

Coming next

• Contract review
• Legal research
• E-discovery
• IP management
• Matter management

Also wired into this category: SOC 2 and Compliance Automation, Invoicing and Accounts Payable.