An early take on 2022

When it comes to legal tech, it’s tough going for futurists, especially given the slow emergence of the global economy from the pandemic. Nevertheless, Sarvarth Misra has five digital trends on his radar for next year. 1) Remote work will continue and grow. He cites a survey that indicates that in-house legal and compliance professionals believe the value of their work far outweighs the number of hours they spend in the office. 2) Client experience will continue to be the main focus, with tech trends, like contract management, document automation, and client portals assisting. 3) Intelligent reporting tools using AI and predictive analytics will help automate high-volume, low-complexity tasks. 4) Cyber-attackers will continue to evolve and so will cybersecurity. Organizations will need to demonstrate that they have robust policies in place to mitigate internal threats, and strong defenses against external ones. 5) Legal departments will accelerate their efforts to acquire or develop low-code and no-code apps. A 2021 Gartner report showed that more than 40 percent of non-IT employees now customize or build their own applications.