In the first few episodes of this 8-part career guide series, we`ve covered journeys to legaltech, legal operations, and innovation roles, the activities commonly undertaken in those roles, and now we`re going to cover in more detail what types of roles they get paid for, who they work with, and what they might advance. eDiscovery practitioners will have or should have an understanding of current protocols and best practices for ESI, Technology-Assisted Examination (ART) and production, including the GEDD described above. Product managers work in technology companies (and other product-focused companies), but also in-house in law firms and large in-house legal teams, where they have a product-centric element in their offerings. Salaries can vary widely, from £30,000 to £70,000+. A median salary at a large law firm is typically £40,000. Higher salaries typically occur when the person is a document automation specialist in a traditional knowledge management team and is a current or former knowledge management lawyer – these individuals may have a salary in the range of £100,000+. It is always a private practice role or a provider role. In-house teams typically don`t have eDiscovery specialists, but purchase these services on an ad hoc basis (during litigation or a forensic analysis of a business issue) from their legal service provider or an eDiscovery consulting firm. KM lawyers work in law firms or, less frequently, with legaltech providers. Knowledge management lawyers tend not to work in-house, as in-house teams rarely support a full-time knowledge management role, but rely on their external law firms to provide knowledge management resources or require in-house lawyers to take responsibility for their own knowledge management. Sales representatives work for suppliers. Law firms employ business development executives who help lawyers sell the virtues of their legal activities and, in some cases, may make the sale themselves on behalf of those lawyers.
That said, business development roles in law firms tend to be more focused on marketing than sales, i.e. creating presentations and presentations that others – usually lawyers – can control. A type of lawyer who focuses on creating, capturing and preserving legal knowledge and who usually, but not always, does not practice. Developers tend to specialize in one or more programming languages, but they are often expected to learn new languages, such as when their role or organization is working with a particular technology or needs to switch to another technology. Consultants work with a range of client personalities, ranging from private law firms/corporate lawyers, but often also business people who rely on the services of a legal function. KM lawyers work with practicing lawyers, law firm managers, and often the innovation or legal operations teams. KM lawyers can also work with business development teams in law firms, as KM is often a selling point for law firm clients who typically don`t have their own KM function and therefore want to rely on their favorite law firms for this skill. Sales professionals can earn base salaries ranging from £30,000 to six figures. The most successful companies of the most successful companies can win total packages of a 7-figure amount if commissions, bonuses and other incentives such as stocks and equity are taken into account. The larger the organization, the better the compensation.
Don`t expect high salaries in a 2-person legaltech startup! Individuals need to understand the law and understand what lawyers do (which in no way requires them to be lawyers!), but more importantly, how the law fits into the larger business. This role involves understanding and organizing the business processes, activities and professionals that enable legal departments to serve their clients more effectively by applying business and technical practices to the delivery of legal services. KM lawyers can be a stepping stone to legal operations and innovation roles in law firms – hence our mention of this role – as teams often overlap in functions and, in some cases, legal operations or innovation function within a law firm can be an offshoot of the traditional KM function. For a real-time salary goal, tell us more about your role in the four categories below. Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). As mentioned earlier, legal operations roles related to technology or financial services companies may require a much higher level of reading and writing skills in terms of data analysis and related tools, including Excel, Python, SQL, Tableau, PowerBi, etc. Where these roles fail is when they are filled by people who are bored with the law and are not particularly interested in legal technology, operations or innovation, who are not eager to adjust their own mindset and are instead attracted to the role because it is well paid, maintains his status as a lawyer and has little stress in terms of better work-life balance. Unsurprisingly, this particular setup is usually not successful for everyone involved. Sign up for a more detailed overview of salary recommendations.
There have been various attempts to classify projects and companies in the legal technology sector, an important database of these services is the CodeX project at Stanford Law School. There is a difference between the tools that help lawyers do their job and those that help consumers interpret and interact with the law. [7]: 83 Current former lawyers or technologists and business analysts interested in solving legal business problems. Rules-based expert systems have been used for knowledge representation and legal knowledge interrogation, an example is TurboTax. [5]: 1317 These approaches are studied in legal informatics.
