“Although automation is having an impact on legal services, LawTech is lagging behind other sectors, such as FinTech and RegTech.” This was one of my key takeaways from a recent AI for professional services event that helped contextualise the progress that the legal sector has made in adopting new technology.
Bruce Macmillan, Founder Director of The Centre for Legal Leadership, answers questions on the personal development of in-house lawyers.
I am a five-year qualified lawyer who has worked in private practice my entire career and I’m now contemplating moving in-house. Do you have any advice before I commit myself to an in-house role?
Corporate governance remains near the top of the agenda for businesses following the FRC’s publication of its consultation on proposed revisions to the UK Corporate Governance Code. Companies will also be interested in the publication of the new UK Anti-corruption Strategy and upcoming changes to the UK Immigration Rules.
Competition law risk is one of the key compliance risks that a business faces and it can be challenging to educate those working within the business about this often technical area of law. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recognise this and have a number of publicly available tools to assist that are worth your consideration.
I wrote last month about the market practice research Practical Law is conducting into cross-border intellectual property (IP), which includes asking legal practitioners to participate in this survey.
Very many thanks to all who have participated so far. We have received a range of inputs from private practice and in-house lawyers across the globe, including the Americas, Australia, China, Indonesia and the UK, providing an insight into international IP practices and, in particular, the challenges faced by practitioners in this specialised area of law.
Business units in all organisations with a calendar year end are likely looking at the business plans and their allocated budgets for 2018 and wondering how they are going to deliver more with less next year. In-house legal teams are no different and this is a good moment for legal leaders to take stock of what the business will need and how to deliver it. Many organisations time the appraisal process to fall at this time of year too, meaning that leaders are well placed to consider both their internal headcount and skills profile, as well as what services need to be outsourced. Continue reading
At the moment, legal AI is at the “frothy” part of the hype cycle. It’s a bit like the scene What did the Romans ever do for us? in the film the Life of Brian, but in reverse. The scene’s premise is that the Romans did little, but of course they did a lot. Legal AI promises a lot but at the moment has delivered little. This isn’t surprising as we’re just at the start of the machine learning era. Somewhat frustratingly, while a decade from now it will be obvious in hindsight that the world beater was going to be “X”, right now we don’t know what that “X” will be.
The GDPR broadens and deepens the rules between data controllers and data processors for processing of personal data and for the first time, directly enforceable obligations are imposed on processors as well as controllers.
The GDPR also requires that controllers and processors enter into written contracts (“C2P Clauses”). Practical Law recently published its data processing clauses (GDPR version), designed by the writer and colleagues, to assist with this requirement. This blog post seeks to provide background to the many considerations behind the development of these clauses which will help the user understand their crucial compliance role. Continue reading
Two key Brexit-related Bills were introduced into Parliament in November: the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill 2017-19 and the Trade Bill 2017-2019. David Davis also announced that a Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill (which will implement into UK law the major policies in any withdrawal agreement agreed between the UK and the EU) will be brought forward once the UK has reached an agreement with the EU.
Just over a week ago we crossed into the final half-year before GDPR implementation day, 25 May 2018. At Practical Law, we’re continuing to update existing resources and publish new ones to support in-house teams grappling with the GDPR compliance challenge. In recent weeks, with support from our contributors, we have published a number of resources intended to help with those efforts: Continue reading