Since the launch of the metaverse, many lawyers have opined on what this new world will mean for the legal industry.
A law firm has already opened in the metaverse, proving that what we thought was a faraway future, is actually already here. On the legal tech side, naturally even more questions arise. Current technologies are designed to facilitate real-world working. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools for example are designed to assist lawyers in digitalising paper contracts and records in addition to simply transforming PDF files to Word. However, while such legal tech solutions are incredibly useful for real-world working, they have little to no application in the metaverse.
The big question as the legal industry shifts into the metaverse, is how will legal tech be able to support metaverse working? Legal tech trends and technologies arise to keep up with the difficulties lawyers face, however the very concept of the metaverse challenges the typical working style of a lawyer. Jameson Legal Tech expects to see a rise of completely new technologies in the near future as law practice in the metaverse begins to take more shape. At the moment, what the metaverse means for the legal industry remains a relatively large question mark. However, we do expect to see completely new varieties and categories of legal technologies for metaverse-working as problems and pain-points begin to clarify.
Speaking to Jacob Beckerman, CEO of CoParse, he believes that we are already one foot in the door when it comes to virtual reality. He says “We already exist mostly in the metaverse, and further developments will increase the percentage of the virtual over the physical. One of the interesting consequences of working in VR may be a return to physically-based methods of working, for example where words are written on paper and where paper has mass; where you meet clients face-to-face instead of in a glowing window on a screen. I don’t think this will fundamentally change the categories of legaltech, but — if it comes about — it will create some winners and losers based on the speed of adaptation of various players, just as the switch to PC-from-mainframe and mobile-from-PC did.”
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