{"id":23539,"date":"2018-04-16T11:28:14","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T11:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.legalgeek.co\/?p=23539"},"modified":"2018-04-16T11:28:14","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T11:28:14","slug":"tromans-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalgeek.co\/tromans-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Tromans: Semantics in Legal Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RICHARDRichard Tromans<\/strong> is the founder of Tromans Consulting<\/a>, which advises on legal innovation. He is also the founder of Artificial Lawyer<\/a>, a news website covering AI and automation in the legal field.\u00a0In this guest blog post for Legal Geek, he analyses the semantics involved in legal technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

Language is always evolving. Grammar changes slowly, but because humans keep inventing new things and our culture keeps moving forward, new vocabulary pops into existence on an almost weekly basis.<\/p>\n

Some of it stays with us, such as the word \u2018technology\u2019, which was first coined in the 17th<\/sup> century as a fairly niche term back then, but is now ubiquitous, because\u2026well, there are a lot of new things created everyday now.<\/p>\n

In other cases we have competing terms and some go out of fashion. For example, who uses the term \u2018artificer\u2019 any longer, which means an inventor or engineer? While other terms, such as \u2018geek\u2019, which comes from the late 19th<\/sup> Century and meant \u2018fool\u2019 now takes on a whole new meaning in the present day and means an obsessive expert.<\/p>\n

A case in point that illustrates this fluidity is the debate about the world of legal technology and the language that has evolved to describe it. Which leads us to the central issue: how do we label this movement, this change in the technology of the legal sector?<\/p>\n

Legal Geek has picked four possible terms to be the best way of describing our \u2018thing\u2019: “LawTech”, “LegalTech”, “Legal IT” and “TechLaw”.\u00a0 Here\u2019s my contribution to the debate:<\/p>\n

LegalTech<\/h2>\n

For me this is the right term to describe the activities of this sector. Why? If we look at other sectors, we talk about \u2018RegTech\u2019, \u2018InsurTech\u2019, \u2018PropTech\u2019 and \u2018FinTech\u2019.<\/p>\n

In each case the first part of the term modifies the word \u2018tech\u2019. Here, \u2018regulation\u2019, \u2018insurance\u2019, \u2018property\u2019 and \u2018finance\u2019 refer to the type of work done, i.e. the sector, or industry.<\/p>\n

In which case, we should use the term \u2018legal\u2019 here, as we talk about the \u2018legal industry\u2019, \u2018legal market\u2019, \u2018legal sector\u2019 also.<\/p>\n

I.e. we are talking about technology that is made use of by a sector of the economy. Hence, LegalTech.<\/p>\n

LawTech<\/h2>\n

This has always seemed like the wrong term to describe the sector. Law refers to the practise of law, i.e. the subject \u2018The Law\u2019, which we study at college, or which we talk about in social terms, i.e. \u2018That is what you must do, it\u2019s the law.\u2019 Most people don\u2019t say the \u2018law industry\u2019, or \u2018the law sector\u2019.<\/p>\n

LawTech would only make sense if it referred to technology that was specific to a sub-group of legal tasks that related directly to \u2018The Law\u2019 itself, e.g. tech that focused on drafting laws, or perhaps helped students to understand legal issues.<\/p>\n

But, \u2018law\u2019 is the wrong term to describe an industry sector, at least if we keep up the same linguistic style of other sectors. For example, we don\u2019t call fintech, \u2018moneytech\u2019 or \u2018transactiontech\u2019, we describe it by the industry as a whole. Hence, LawTech doesn\u2019t work as an umbrella term.<\/p>\n

LegalIT<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is a tricky one, as its main challenge is really over whether to replace the word \u2018technology\u2019 with the acronym for \u2018information technology\u2019. It gets the \u2018legal\u2019 part right.<\/p>\n

But, these days using the term IT tends to date you as having a focus on computing from the 1990s. In short, it\u2019s accurate, but old, at least in today\u2019s fast-moving world.<\/p>\n

Because of its close link to the first wave of legal technology I\u2019d prefer not to use it, as it seems dated now and doesn\u2019t capture what I call \u2018the New Wave of legal technology\u2019. Because it uses the term \u2018legal\u2019 it\u2019s still better than LawTech. But, basically, it\u2019s old fashioned, so let\u2019s drop that one.<\/p>\n

TechLaw<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is an easy one to dismiss. In this phrase, tech modifies the word law, in which case it clearly is about the practice area of technology law, e.g. lawyers who advise on data, or technology patents. This is not about the area of legal technology.<\/p>\n

One could be a TechLaw specialist and have no interest in legal technology \u2013 and that often happens. So, we can remove this one.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Although language is always evolving, words have to mean something specific otherwise communication breaks down. For me, LegalTech is the best way to describe what we are all involved in now. It also helps with areas such as \u2018legal AI\u2019, i.e. AI tech that is adapted to the legal world, and we can use \u2018legal blockchain\u2019, in the same way.<\/p>\n

Personally, it also sounds better. Try saying \u2018law AI\u2019, for example, rather than \u2018legal AI\u2019, the latter just has a better ring to it.<\/p>\n

But, that\u2019s just my view. If the world decided that the word \u2018blue\u2019 actually meant the colour red, then we\u2019d all have to go with that, as the father of semiology, Roland Barthes, would have pointed out. However, while we still have a choice, I\u2019d have to go with LegalTech.<\/p>\n

Legal Geek Conference<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n