I was reading an article entitled - “Every company is a fintech company now” by Christian Catalini, and I couldn’t help but think about the significance of the title and its applicability to the legal industry. It has also been said that every company could be considered to be a tech company in today’s world: Source. And might I say that this is inevitably extending to us individually as lawyers, as the current and future Industrial Revolution(s) continue to make inescapable demands on every lawyer in relation to tech.
Tech in business
Tech in business relates to “all demands that have any reliance or touchpoint on computing power of any sort”, and it falls into these three (3) broad categories:
basic business operating tech - e.g. domain names, emails, storage, collaborative tools, financial and administrative systems etc.;
industry-specific tech - e.g. account management systems in the banking sector, patient care systems in the health sector, legal research platforms in the legal sector etc.;
emerging tech driven by tech businesses - e.g. AI-based automation, machine learning, crypto and crypto payments etc) (Source).
The above categories also equally apply to private legal practices in general. But how exactly is tech being interwoven into the professional lives of lawyers?
In private legal practice
Cloud computing and apps make tech accessible to smaller practices. As a private legal practitioner, you will encounter cloud-based services or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) considerations and licences, subscriptions and agreements related thereto.
I would not say that every lawyer needs to be a fintech lawyer, but essentially, if you are running your own legal practice, you’re actually engaged in fintech considerations when you have to consider payments, e.g. if you’re sending or receiving payments via Payoneer, PayPal, or Trinidad & Tobago-based Paywise, for example.
If you’re more involved in the fintech and crypto industry, through your legal work, you may be asked whether you accept payments in cryptocurrency, or your practice may already be set up to accept the same. This takes the payments conversation to another level and as a consequence, the tech considerations, in relation to cybersecurity measures, may have to look different to your day-to-day cybersecurity arrangements. They may have to be more enhanced than the usual level that may generally be operationalised in your legal practice.
In a previous article, I mentioned about lawyers being reflective and responsible by improving our knowledge about AI and other evolving technologies. If we’re using AI in our daily work for routine or rote tasks, are we thinking about – If we have an internal AI policy? Does this policy contemplate local and international privacy law and standards, local Bar guidelines, Practice Directions and attorney-client privilege? Is the AI solution being used storing or using the data you input for training purposes? What are our data verification and fact-checking measures to safeguard against the incidents of hallucination and deepfake information?
In-house legal encounters with tech
As an in-house counsel, in most companies in the corporate sector, on any given day, tech contracts, including but not limited to Master Service Agreements, Terms of Use, Data Privacy Agreements, AI policies, and Software as a Service (SaaS) licence and subscription agreements, may come across our desk. If you are in-house legal counsel for a small company, or in a lean legal department, it will call for you to be, or become knowledgeable, of these contracts and in the areas of law that touch and concern the tech ecosystem.
In our individual specializations
Various specialized corporate and commercial legal practice areas are no longer cocooned from emerging technologies deliberations. The tentacles of tech will actually reach into our practice or legal specializations if they are not already there. For example, virtual assets, tokenised assets and digital ledger technology (DLT) are no longer strangers to estate, investment, finance, international finance, arbitration, energy, construction, copyright, tax and insolvency law matters to name a few. So, if these are our current or future areas of practice, the relevant tech implications must be continuously confronted. And in the future, we may also have to take heed of and interrogate areas like quantum computing, Bio-tech etc in our individual practice areas.
Going forward
Every lawyer is not called to be a tech lawyer, but at the very least, every lawyer needs to be fairly conversant in tech law (and its related areas). The 4th Industrial Revolution and the coming 5th Industrial Revolution call for it. The present and future demand it; as much as our profession calls us to grapple with it to faithfully and dutifully discharge our oaths in this rapidly-evolving world. The question is—are we willing to be responsive, adaptive and agile enough?
Bellina Barrow is the Principal Attorney/Founder of Tenoreque Legal, a virtual legal practice based in Trinidad & Tobago since 2021. A former legal tutor and a dedicated mentor, Bellina is committed to fostering and contributing to thought leadership in law, fintech, tech, digital assets and sports by deconstructing and demystifying these areas via practical and digestible storytelling and writing. Outside of her technical and academic writing, Bellina is also a co-author of the books Soul of An Athlete (2023) and Women in Law: Discovering the True Meaning of Success (2022).
