Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) built in the blockchain are quietly revolutionizing ideas around digital assets despite their questionable status under current law. The smart contracts that control many NFTs are disrupting the way deals are done. At the same time, disputes regarding NFTs and smart contracts are inevitable and parties will need means for dealing with these highly technical issues. The chapter tackles this challenge and proposes that parties turn to online dispute resolution (ODR) to resolve NFT and smart contract disputes efficiently and fairly. Furthermore, the chapter acknowledges the benefits and challenges of current means for addressing blockchain issues and proposes ideas for how designers could address those challenges and incorporate ODR to provide efficient and fair resolutions.

The legal services market is commonly thought of as divided into two “hemispheres”—PeopleLaw, which serves individuals and small businesses, and BigLaw, which serves corporated clients. The last few decades have seen an increasing concentration of resources within the legal profession toward the latter, to the alleged detriment of the former. At the same time, the costs of accessing legal representation exceed the financial resources of many ordinary citizens and small businesses, compromising their access to the legal system. We ask: Will the adoption of new digital technologies lead to a levelling of the playing field between the PeopleLaw and BigLaw sectors? We consider this in three related dimensions. First, for users of legal services: Will technology deliver reductions in cost sufficient to enable affordable access to the legal system for consumer clients whose legal needs are currently unmet? Second, for legal services firms: Will the deployment of technology to capture economies of scale mean that firms delivering legal services across the two segments become more similar? And third, for the structure of the legal services market: Will the pursuit of economies of scale trigger consolidation that leads both segments toward a more concentrated market structure?

Natural language processing techniques promise to automate an activity that lies at the core of many tasks performed by lawyers, namely the extraction and processing of information from unstructured text. The relevant methods are thought to be a key ingredient for both current and future legal tech applications. This chapter provides a non-technical overview of the current state of NLP techniques, focusing on their promise and potential pitfalls in the context of legal tech applications. It argues that, while NLP-powered legal tech can be expected to outperform humans in specific categories of tasks that play to the strengths of current ML techniques, there are severe obstacles to deploying these tools in other contexts, most importantly in tasks that require the equivalent of legal reasoning.

What effect will potent new legal tech tools have on the civil litigation landscape, and what can or should we do about it? Recent trends in plaintiff win rates and damages awards suggest the American civil justice system is growing more slanted toward the “haves” at the expense of the “have-nots.” Some say that AI-fired legal tech tools will reverse this trend and democratize the system. We disagree. Potent new legal tech tools are surely coming. Many are already here. But these tools are, and will likely continue to be, unevenly distributed because of the privileged access to data and technical know-how of emerging consortia of corporations, law firms, and tech companies. As a result, legal tech will, at least over the near- to medium-term, further skew the litigation playing field, shaping not just the resolution of claims but also the evolution of substantive law. As the American civil justice system enters the digital age, the haves will be propelled yet further ahead.

In the context of the legal industry, examples of AI applications inlcude automation in case flow management, contract review, and legal research. This chapter reviews three stages of technological appplication in the legal profession. The legal industry must look toward how lawyers can manage AI and reframe AI technologies as tools that emphasize the value of the human legal decision maker.

Legal tech (LT) products and services automate certain tasks that lawyers usually perform. The use of these tools in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets create many opportunities for consumers and the justice system in general, but also raises concerns in terms of access to justice, choice and information, quality, fairness, redress, and representation (Sections 11.1.1–11.1.4). This chapter deals with the question of whether the current legal framework in the EU (Section 11.2) is fit to meet the challenge LT poses in consumer markets, focusing especially on (national) legal services regulation (Section 11.3), EU consumer law (Section 11.4), and EU data protection law (Section 11.5). It concludes that applying the current legal norms to LT creates the risk of both under-regulation and over-regulation and discusses possible regulatory options that should be taken into account at the national and EU level to strike the right balance between innovation and protection (Section 11.6).

It is difficult to come up with any events after World War II that have led our entire global society to recognise that before The Times They Are A‐Changin’1 as clearly as today’s global crisis has done. The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath have revealed that almost everything we once considered stable and sustainable is actually built on quite shaky ground. But the crisis has also brought out the best in our coexistence, seeing that societies in many countries have shown that they are capable of finding creative solutions to overcome the current challenges. Digital technologies have played a crucial role in the world’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. Just think of modern methods of telecommunication such as video conferencing, which have made an immense contribution to maintaining the economy and work processes, or the various corona tracking apps, which try to help stopping the spread of the virus. It can be assumed that the harmful consequences of the pandemic would have grown even greater if those digital solutions had not been available. Just as almost every area of life is affected by the pandemic, so are the law itself and legal practice.

Herbert Simon noted that it is the duty of people who study a new technology to offer their interpretations regarding its likely effects on society.1

Digitalization and the development of automated systems, as well as the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), have radically changed the legal landscape and will continue to impact law at an accelerated pace. These developments have led to the creation of a new industry, legal tech (LT), which aims at creating technological applications specifically tailored for law and the legal market. LT includes a broad range of applications: some of the most prominent and recurrent examples include automation in the drafting of contracts, “mining” case-law, or the creation of smart dispute resolution systems not requiring human intervention. As a result, operations that were previously unthinkable, or that would demand an enormous amount of human resources, can now be readily done through numerous legal services available to lawyers, other professionals, and consumers.1 The rise of LT has brought about various responses, from those who advocate the innovating potential of LT2 to legal traditionalists that consider the replacement of human resources by technology to be highly disruptive.3 In addition, there are those who advocate for a level-headed distinction between “hype” and reality.4 Nonetheless, it would be shortsighted not to see that the advancement of LT is going to have a profound impact on the legal sector, in a degree similar to that which industrialization had on manufacturing.

The potential of digital solutions and legal tech (LT) for increasing access to justice is real. Although many LT developments focus on innovation of law practices, in several countries we see LT as champion of access to justice. These typically are new types of players in the market that provide legal services directly to the public. Even though practice-based evidence shows their positive impact, legal services regulations struggle to catch up and facilitate these developments. They, as a matter of fact, may actually hamper access to justice improvements. In that respect, it is illustrative that private investors acknowledge the potential of LT, but only dared to invest 2.8 per cent of their $1 billion total investments in 2018 in customer-facing services.1

Legal tech (LT) companies operating in litigation predominantly address B2C relationships, which is odd against the overall LT backdrop where B2B solutions prevail.1 A ‘no win no fee’ policy, whereby consumers are only charged for success, is popular among LT companies that manage claims.2 Even though their contingency fees tend to be significant,3 they attract consumers who would otherwise have abandoned a claim as a result of rational apathy due to its small value. The automated management of claims has impacted consumer access to justice as the activity of LT companies has led to an increase in redress for small value claims.4