Hi and welcome to the February 2023 Orange Rag newsletter, where we bring you all the top stories, wins, deals and moves from the world of legal tech over the past month.
I feel as though I have been heralding the arrival our new report series forever and guess what, the first report, providing a really deep analytical dive into the world of CRM, is out now! It’s free to read so make sure you sign up for a copy here. You can find out more detail in our Top Stories section below. My thanks to the CRM vendors who have committed a huge amount of time and resource to this report, I hope that it helps to provide many of the answers you’re looking for and saves an awful lot of time if you’re in the market for a new CRM system.
There is no doubt that it has been a challenging month, with the economic instability hitting transactional practices and a number of law firms announcing that they are laying off business services roles. Law firm profitability fell for a fifth consecutive quarter in Q4 2022, according to the latest data from Thomson Reuters. However, it’s important to focus on the positives too, and the report notes that there is evidence the legal industry could see a turnaround this year.
The topic on everyone’s lips this month was GPT-3 or ChapGPT, or GPT-4, and Allen & Overy set the cat among the pigeons by entering into partnership with OpenAI-backed vendor Harvey. The partnership raises more questions than answers at this stage, but I wrote a first pass comment this month, so take a look at that here if you haven’t already. Please let me know your thoughts on caroline@legaltechnology.com – it really is a watershed moment for the industry.
Myself and the Legal IT Insider team will all be in New York for Legal Week in March, so please contact us if you have announcements or want to demo your software, we can’t wait to see you.
Caroline Hill