Business Models in Legal Tech Companies

Erick Costa Damasceno

Keywords

Legal tech; business models; taxonomy; artificial intelligence; blockchain; digital transformation; law firms.    

Abstract

This present work corresponds to, with slight adaptations, the dissertation under the original title “How business models and technologies are being integrated in Legal Tech companies?” from the Master’s in Innovation and Technological Entrepreneurship from University of Porto, defended in the Faculty of Engineering at July 23, 2019, under the examination of the following jury members: Dr. Adélio Miguel Magalhães Mendes (jury president), Dr. Jorge Morais Carvalho (arguer), and Dr. Maria Raquel Guimarães (advisor).

Table of contents

Legal Tech is still in its infancy as a technology and as a business. Up to now, little is known about those businesses, what they actually do and who are they actually serving. Most of the material about legal technology in the literature focus on the aspects of technological advances, technological applications and challenges to the practice of law. However, researchers haven’t given much attention to the business elements related to this innovation and how those technologies are been commercialized.
This work focus on mapping the Legal Tech companies spread around the world while providing a synthesis of their technologies, products, services and business models. Data collected from websites of those companies was used to explain how those elements interact. Moreover, a taxonomy was created in order to group similar solutions and allow easier visualization and comprehension of Legal Tech businesses.
The results of this work show effective references about the most common business models in this new industry, its connection to new technologies, and also provide new evidences about the number of companies operating in this market. Entrepreneurs, innovation managers, business researchers, lawyers, Legal Tech owners and investors might find the contents of this material very useful to undertand and explore Legal Tech.