法律工作正以法律人难以预计的方式演进，其对于科技工具的需求不断增长，大数据、人工智能、区块链、云存储等领域法律科技服务提供商因此也经历了快速发展。我们和其中几家聊了聊近期中国法律科技领域新趋势、他们的产品更新迭代、资本的支持力度，以及对下一阶段的展望。
2021年被部分法律媒体称为“法律科技最好的一年”。律新社在一篇报道中援引美国金融科技公司PitchBook数据道：当年全球法律科技领域的投资已经达到近10亿美元。目光转向中国，其发展同样引人瞩目，律新社指出，2021年中国共有16家法律科技公司获得融资，基本上每个月都有相关新闻发布。
在这条新“赛道”上，中国法律科技公司数量实现增长，关注领域进一步细分，数量庞大的法律科技产品不断深入具体应用场景，探索为法律人提供真正好用的技术工具。
“好用的产品”
“法律领域有较高的专业门槛，科技产品必须与专业知识结合，而非基于单纯的软件功能。”法天使（北京）科技有限公司创始人常金光如此指出法律科技产品的特殊性，“此外，律师代理诉讼案件、就复杂非诉事项出具意见、起草审查合同……工作场景区分很大，法律科技工具如何寻找需求的最大公约数是个挑战。”
在常金光看来，好的法律科技产品必须与内容建设结合，让技术实现在大量数据和内容规则的基础上跑起来，而合同起草审查则被法天使看作法律工作的普遍需求，即“最大公约数”。
2015年，法天使创办，当时常金光和同伴观察到，中国律师和法务在起草审查合同过程中相对缺乏统一标准和工具，只能依赖个人知识展开工作，效率较低又容易出错。他们希望从“方法”和“工具”两方面帮法律人建立起合同起草审查的标准，一方面搭建中国合同库，建设、推广合同起草审查的标准；另一方面将基于合同库的数千类合同模板嵌入工作场景，实现在微软Word、金山WPS、微信小程序等各个端口的直接使用。
2018年，科学家出身的闵可锐、律师出身的王益为和同伴一起创立了秘塔科技。“2017年前后法律科技处于很低谷的时期，几乎没有像样的公司出现，也没有形成技术上的突破。”秘塔科技COO王益为说，“法律界对技术的理解可谓一片混沌，而这给了秘塔机会，去定义何为‘有用、有效’的法律科技工具，我们认为真正能够提升法律行业效率的应该是人工智能技术。”
“从法律工作角度看，一方面律师的许多工作高度关注于文书处理，这和人工智能的自然语言处理技术形成契合；另一方面，律师从事法律检索、合同分析时有相对明确的逻辑，有逻辑的问题就可以被机器去建模、学习，变成产品。”
闵可锐，秘塔科技
秘塔科技CEO闵可锐是人工智能领域科学家，他告诉ALB，彼时法律科技的“低谷”正碰撞到了人工智能的“高潮”。“从法律工作角度看，一方面律师的许多工作高度关注于文书处理，这和人工智能的自然语言处理技术形成契合；另一方面，律师从事法律检索、合同分析时有相对明确的逻辑，有逻辑的问题就可以被机器去建模、学习，变成产品。在2018年那个时间点，新一波人工智能浪潮正开始在专业场景中发挥作用，推动法律行业的技术使用进入‘下一个阶段’。”
于是，秘塔科技在随后三年里推出了三款产品：秘塔翻译、秘塔写作猫、MetaGo，都是通过“人工智能加大数据”的自行研发，为法律人提供深入使用场景的好用工具。
2019年，已经在商标行业工作了12年的张锐创办了北京摩知轮科技有限公司。他在工作中发现，“商标界，包括企业和代理机构，长期存在一些痛点问题，比如检索效率低下、专业度较低、服务和管理成本大、管理纯手工且无监控导致法律风险较大等”。在他看来，智能大数据工具恰能应对这些痛点。
2019年7月摩知轮Beta版正式上线，彼时中国经济加速由量到质的转变，鼓励创新、提高知识产权保护成为国策，深化人工智能、大数据等技术在知识产权审查、检索和管理中的智能应用成为题中之义，这都助推了摩知轮的发展。摩知轮希望一方面融合大数据加人工智能工具，另一方面融合企业和代理机构的合作，提升大家的工作体验和效率。
摩知轮旗下的两款产品，“摩知轮”和“摩知云”，恰好应对了这两个想法。张锐介绍道，摩知轮是一个商标大数据检索分析平台，集合了商标申请、公告、评审、诉讼、海关等上亿数据，提供直观又好用的信息检索和分析服务，例如其中的“以图查图”模块，上传图形就可瞬间查询出相同或近似商标；档案对比模块，利用 OCR技术（光学字符识别技术）加专业算法，可将文档内容自动解析并生成分析报告；此外还有自动监控和预警提示功能，协助用户实现智能监管。
摩知云则是一款融合了大数据的智能商标管理系统，目的是便捷企业和代理机构间的协作。双方只需在摩知云智慧中台上传文件，系统就能实现自动进入对应案件、自动产生待办事项和期限等功能，此外企业和代理机构的全系列动作只在摩知云一个中台完成即可。摩知云还融合了实时商标大数据、案件流程更新等功能，解决了人工监管遗漏的法律风险。
不断进阶
在中国，无论律师或企业法务，都面临着日新月异的商业和监管环境，法律科技工具若想真正实现“好用”，就需要不断根据用户使用场景迭代升级，这一点受访机构都深有体会。
2021年，法天使在产品和推动合同标准建设方面都有着大举动。常金光告诉ALB，2021年12月法天使推出了“合同生成器”，和之前将合同模板库嵌入Word插件的做法不同，这是一款法天使独立开发的编辑器，一方面，用户可以通过在合同模板上填写填空项、点选条款组，快速起草各类常见合同；另一方面，新工具包含了各类合同审查点，且区分风险级别，“可以大大克服个体知识和经验的局限”。
而在合同标准建设方面，法天使在2021年发起制定了《合同起草审查指南团体标准》，并免费向法律人发放，同时在此基础上推出合同标准考试，每年两次，首届考试已于去年9月在五个城市举办，有数百名考生参与。这都继续“增加了法律人对合同起草审查的共识，提升了社会合同水平”，常金光说。
对于秘塔科技来说，产品的不断迭代则不仅发生在2021年，实际上，秘塔产品的人工智能属性决定了其一定会经历不断优化。闵可锐告诉ALB：“这是数据产品比较常见的路径。以秘塔翻译为例，从功能看，它并没有发生本质变化，但随着新数据、客户反馈、研发进程的不断积累，平均两个月产品就要迭代一次。例如最初我们使用句子级模型完成法律翻译，去年的新版本已经开始采纳段落翻译模型，更好地解决了句子间流畅性、上下文术语一致性、数字翻译质量等问题。”
谈到过去两年不断更新的法律法规是否会对秘塔的产品产生影响，闵可锐坦言这取决于产品服务的场景是深还是浅。例如秘塔写作猫，主要从语文角度对文字进行语法检查、错别字纠正、校对等，受法规变化影响就比较小；但对秘塔最新的合同全流程管理工具MetaGo来说，“它深入到合同场景和语言文字打交道，不仅要判断一句话语法是否正确，而且要检查它和现行法律法规是否有冲突；如果有，违反了哪些规定？这就受到法律法规变化很大影响”。
“举个简单的例子，如果有用户写道：本合同根据《中华人民共和国合同法》制定，MetaGo就会提示《合同法》已经失效，应替换为《民法典合同编》。这需要不断做知识优化，再集成到现有模型里。”闵可锐说。
直击痛点
过去两年，“数智化”浪潮不断从国家传递到机构，随后抵达个人层面，为了服务更聪明的商业模式，法律人也必须抛弃原有的“人力密集型”工作模式，借助技术工具提高效率，这点对于企业内部的法务团队来说尤为重要。
“企业法务部工作数字化的核心和起点，应该是合同管理的数字智能化，即把人工智能作用于合同管理。”秘塔科技的王益为说。秘塔走访观察了许多法务部，发现合同管理的数智化水平都不高，“很多还在用Excel台账表格、手工输入等方式。以租赁合同为例，某大型购物中心同时有效的租约可能是上万个，哪个要到期、哪个该催款……都要由人将合同信息摘到 Excel台账里，再由法务部通知业务部门行动”。
王益为接着说：“合同智能管理可以拆解为三方面：合同自动生成、合同关键信息抽取、合同人工智能审查，其中关键信息抽取是基础。”目前很多产品的关键信息抽取只依靠关键词匹配实现，比如摘录出甲乙方、仲裁地等，“但当合同双方约定分为4期付款，且后两期如何支付取决于某些前提条件，关键词抽取就无法识别这种带有规则的语句，而这正是MetaGo致力于解决的问题”。
闵可锐补充道，实际上企业和企业内部法务部门已经形成共识，数字化程度未来将是企业效率差异的重大变量，“但难点在于，如何由一个产品来承载这种转型需求？从存在技术可行性，到产生一个受欢迎的产品，中间往往存在巨大鸿沟。”
闵可锐举了个例子，秘塔有款免费工具“秘塔OCR”，“文字识别工具已经有了大概十年，但现有工具远远无法带来良好的合同处理体验。比如我们用手机给合同拍照，后续希望完成信息抽取、识别和审核，这需要OCR深度识别哪些部分是合同正文，哪些是标题、批注、页眉页脚等，把无用信息过滤掉，再读取以单栏或双栏排版的正文内容……这都需要一款新产品来填补空白。”
“据我们了解，很多互联网大厂在做类似研发时，将此视为成本最高的部分。秘塔很幸运地维持了自己的高水平知识团队，同时我们和北京大学法律人工智能实验室保持合作，摸索出一套科学算法家、法学家、律师和法务一起工作的模式。”
王益为，秘塔科技
或许正因需要填补的“好用”空白太多，过去几年不少大型互联网企业研发推出了自己的智能法律产品，例如腾讯电子签、阿里巴巴“法到成功”平台、字节跳动的“飞书合同”等。王益为坦言，秘塔和相关企业在此方面也有交流，其中反而暴露出法律科技产品研发中的另一个痛点：如何协调法律人和算法科学家一起工作。
“据我们了解，很多互联网大厂在做类似研发时，将此视为成本最高的部分。某企业曾做过一个合同人工智能审查项目，最终没有推进，因为花费数几千万才做出审某一类合同的机器人。”王益为说，“秘塔很幸运地维持了自己的高水平知识团队，同时我们和北京大学法律人工智能实验室保持合作，摸索出一套科学算法家、法学家、律师和法务一起工作的模式，这也是我们对自己产品有信心的支点之一。”
“最好的一年”
面对过去一年全球法律科技领域投资倍增、中国相关机构也频频获得融资，法律科技服务提供商又是否认可2021是他们“最好的一年”，甚至“好下去”的开端？
“法律科技赛道在曲折中前进，从2012年起算，中国有数百家法律科技公司出现并陆续关闭，迄今存活、发展的是少数，投资机构对法律科技赛道的态度也有波动，就法天使来说，已经完成了3轮融资，还需要继续做很多工作”。
常金光，法天使
法天使的常金光笑称他“并不确定……法律科技赛道在曲折中前进，从2012年起算，中国有数百家法律科技公司出现并陆续关闭，迄今存活、发展的是少数，投资机构对法律科技赛道的态度也有波动，当前阶段仍然存活发展的项目一定程度上经历了市场的考验，但未来的路还很长。就法天使来说，已经完成了3轮融资，还需要继续做很多工作”。
谈到近年法律科技公司获得资本青睐，他指出，“法律科技属于企业服务领域，该领域在过去几年被投资机构普遍关注。但对比美国市场，中国还有巨大的增长空间，而法律科技赛道尚未出现真正成功的项目，机会还在。法律科技的机会在于宏观的经济发展和监管环境，促使各市场主体更加合法合规经营，对法律服务需求持续增加，而传统法律服务供给效率不高，在线化程度很低”。
作为创业者，法律科技受到关注的同时，是否也会和资本产生张力？对此常金光坦言，投资希望更快的回报，而法律科技赛道需要更多耐心，“我们观察，投资企业服务领域的机构往往对此有较深刻的认识……就法天使而言，我们认为一个项目从开始到取得一定成绩，可能需要十年时间”。
“大数据+行业、法律+科技，这都是被资本看好的赛道。”摩知轮的张锐说。他指出，未来市场的关注度将更聚焦于细分领域的专业科技产品。“法律也分很多专业，不同领域对应不同的服务、管理、审查和司法人员等，针对不同人群的‘细分垂直’，或者细分垂直的组合和联通，才是未来法律科技的专业化发展方向。”
而正是较早看到了这一方向，让摩知轮收获了众多头部客户，张锐告诉ALB，目前摩知轮的合作伙伴中既有知识产权行业内的顶级国内外代理机构及律师事务所，也有百度、阿里巴巴、腾讯、快手、华为、小米、滴滴等诸多国内外500强及知名企业。
“大数据+行业、法律+科技，这都是被资本看好的赛道。法律也分很多专业，不同领域对应不同的服务、管理、审查和司法人员等，针对不同人群的‘细分垂直’，或者细分垂直的组合和联通，才是未来法律科技的专业化发展方向。”
张锐，摩知轮
“说2021年是法律科技最好的一年，可能更多是从全球法律科技市场来看。在国内市场，资本对法律科技的投入还远没到成为单独赛道的程度。”秘塔科技的闵可锐也如此说。他指出了一个现象：投资人普遍关心法律科技公司的定位，比如说服务对象，如果局限于律师群体，市场规模就非常受限，用句玩笑话说，甚至比中国的卡车司机群体还小很多。“我们看到真正拿到融资、市场规模比较大的，还是能够跳脱出单纯服务律师的法律科技领域，比如电子签名、合同产品，服务对象都可以延展到企业。比较受资本青睐的公司要能提供足够大的想象力。”
展望未来
虽然与资本间可能还需要更多磨合，不过秘塔科技的王益为认为，近期市场上开始出现真正由科学家领航的法律科技企业，“由科技驱动法律行业的技术革命，这在逻辑上是顺的。从这个角度看，我们确实在经历‘最好的一年’”。
展望未来，秘塔科技有信心在未来五年内，促成机器在合同管理审核中扮演不可或缺的辅助角色，这也会催发法律行业的革新，“这几年大家逐渐认清了机器和人之间的边界，未来这当然可能导致律师人数的减少，甚至整个法学教育路径的变化，法学生在学校里就要学习和人工智能共同完成任务。此外，律所的组织形式也会改变：现在就出现了这样的趋势，行业里有越来越多精品所，他们都很拥抱科技，同时搭配最精英的法律人才，让律师回归法律工作本质。”
在法天使的常金光看来，未来“合同可能依旧是法律科技最有希望的领域……法天使将持续聚焦合同起草审查，在专业内容层面，2022年是法天使-中国合同库建成之年，这意味着绝大多数合同类型都可以通过法天使快速起草，工具将更好用；在商业模式层面，最初法天使的主要用户是律师个体，过去一年法务用户和律所整体采购所占比例在快速增长，法天使将把合同库以SDK方式与更多企业合同系统、律所管理系统整合，让律师、法务的合同工作更高效”。
在摩知轮，谈及未来，张锐用“坚持专业初心”描绘了机构的发展前路。“我们会继续推行专业和可视化的产品模式……摩知轮存在的价值，就是用专业的态度，做好大数据本身，并用大数据和人工智能专业算法，为市场主体提供更专业、更高效的SAAS大数据工具和服务”。
HEIGHTENED SOPHISTICATION
With legal work evolving in ways that lawyers had never anticipated, the demand for LegalTech is on the rise in China, with providers in fields such as big data, AI, blockchain and cloud storage growing in prominence. ALB chats with LegalTech service providers about recent trends in China's LegalTech scene, their product updates, and future outlook.
The year 2021 was dubbed "the best year for LegalTech" by number of Chinese media organisations. For example, local media Legal Vision, citing data from U.S. fintech company PitchBook, says that global investment in LegalTech reached nearly $1 billion.
In China, 16 LegalTech companies received funding in 2021, with funding announcements coming almost every month. But it’s not just the funding; Chinese LegalTech companies have grown in number, sharpened focus, and broadened the number of products as well as application scenarios, in an effort to explore truly useful technological tools for legal professionals.
USEFUL PRODUCTS
Chang Jinguang, chief operating officer & co-founder of Fatianshi, says that given the high level of professionalism of the legal industry, technology products need to be sophisticated, integrating with lawyers’ professional needs instead of being based solely on software functions. "In addition, lawyers’ work scenarios vary greatly. How to find the common denominator in terms of the needs for LegalTech tools is a challenge,” he says.
In Chang's view, good LegalTech products must be combined with content development, so that technology can function on the basis of a large amount of data and content rules. Contract drafting and review is regarded by Fatianshi as the service most generally sought by lawyers.
Back in 2015 when Fatianshi was founded, Chang and his colleagues observed that Chinese lawyers and in-house counsel could only rely on their personal knowledge in drafting and reviewing contracts, which can inefficient and prone to errors. They hope to build a Chinese contract library to develop and promote the standards for contract drafting and review. They also want to embed thousands of contract templates that are based on the contract library in work scenarios to achieve direct use on various platforms such as Microsoft Word, Kingsoft WPS and WeChat small programs.
In 2018, Min Kerui, a scientist by training, and Wang Yiwei, a lawyer by training, founded Metasota with colleagues. "LegalTech was in a trough around 2017, with almost no decent company and no technological breakthrough," says Wang, COO of Metasota.
Min Kerui, Metasota
Min, CEO of Metasota, is an AI scientist. He tells ALB that the "trough" of LegalTech happened to meet the "boom" of AI technology. "From the perspective of legal work, on the one hand, a lot of lawyers' work focuses on document processing, which is in line with the natural language processing technology of AI; on the other hand, lawyers have relatively clear logic when doing legal research and analyzing contracts. Problems with logic can be modeled, learned and turned into products by machines.”
Metasota launched three products in the next three years: Meta MT (a legal translation tool), Meta Writing Assistant and MetaGo, all of which are useful tools self-developed through "AI + big data,” catering to the real working scenarios of legal practitioners.
In 2019, Zhang Rui founded Mozlen after 12 years in the trademark industry. During his career, Zhang found that "the trademark industry, including enterprises and agencies, has long had some pain points, such as low search efficiency, low professionalism, high service and management costs, high legal risks due to manual management and lack of monitoring.” In his view, smart big data tools are just the right solutions.
Mozlen's beta version was officially launched in July 2019, at a time when encouraging innovation and improving IP protection has become a national strategy, and deepening the smart application of AI, big data and other technologies in IP examination, search and management was the key theme. This has boosted the development of Mozlen. Mozlen hopes to integrate both big data and AI tools, as well as the cooperation between enterprises and agencies.
Two of its products, Mozlen and Mozlen Cloud, are responses to these two ideas. According to Zhang, Mozlen is a trademark big data search and analysis platform, which, with a repository of hundreds of millions of data, provides intuitive and easy-to-use information retrieval and analysis services. For example, the module of "image search using images" allows users to find the same or similar trademarks instantly by uploading an image.
Mozlen Cloud, on the other hand, is a smart trademark management system that integrates big data, with the aim of facilitating collaboration between enterprises and agencies. The cooperation between both parties can be completed on Mozlen Cloud as the sole middle platform. With integration of functions such as real-time trademark big data and case process update, Mozlen Cloud also solves the legal risks of manual supervision and omission.
CONTINUOUS UPGRADES
In China, both lawyers and in-house counsel are faced with ever-changing business and regulatory environments. For LegalTech tools to be truly "useful,” continuous upgrading according to usage scenarios is a must, a sentiment shared by all the interviewed LegalTech companies.
Fatianshi made big moves in terms of products and the development of contract standards in 2021. Chang shares with ALB that in December 2021, Fatianshi introduced "Contract Generator,” an independently developed editor different from the past practice of embedding the contract template library into Microsoft Word as a plug-in. On the one hand, users can use the editor to fill in blanks on contract templates to quickly draft various common types of contracts; on the other hand, the new tool includes key review points for different types of contracts, "which can greatly overcome the limitations of individual knowledge and experience.”
In terms of contract standards development, Fatianshi initiated the formulation of the Group Standards for Contract Drafting and Review Guidelines in 2021, and launched a contract standards examination with hundreds of candidates participated in the first examination.
For Metasota, continuous iteration of products did not happen just in 2021. In fact, the AI attributes of Metasota's products dictate that the products will certainly undergo continuous optimization.
Min tells ALB: "Take Meta MT, the legal translation tool, as an example. With the continuous accumulation of new data, client feedback and the R&D process, a new product iteration comes out every two months on average. For example, initially we used the sentence-level model to complete legal translation. Last year's new version has begun to adopt the paragraph translation model, which better addresses issues such as inter-sentence readability and contextual terminology consistency.”
As to whether constant changes of laws and regulations in the past two years have an impact on Metasota's products, Min says it depends on whether the scenarios served by the products are deep or shallow.
For example, MetaGo, Metasota's latest contract whole-process management tool, “goes deep into the contract scenario to deal with language, not only to judge whether the grammar of a sentence is correct, but also to check whether it conflicts with existing laws and regulations, and if so, what are those conflicts. This function will be greatly affected by changes in laws and regulations. As a simple example, if a user writes: This contract is formulated in accordance with the Contract Law, MetaGo will prompt that the Contract Law has been invalidated and should be replaced by the Contract Chapter of the Civil Code."
TACKLING PAIN POINTS
In the past two years, the wave of digital and smart transformation has been continuously passed from the State to institutions, and then to individuals. To serve smarter business models, legal professionals must also abandon the original "manpower-intensive" work model and use technology to improve efficiency, which is especially important for corporate in-house teams.
"The core and starting point of the digitalization of the work of in-house teams should be the digital and smart transformation of contract management." says Wang of Metasota. After visiting many in-house teams, Metasota has found that the level of digital and smart application in contract management is not high, and "many are still using Excel forms, manual input, etc..”
"The foundation for smart contract management is the extraction of key information." continues Wang. At present, the extraction of key information for many products relies solely on keyword matching, such as extracting phrases such as Party A and Party B, place of arbitration, etc. "However, if, for example, parties to a contract agree that payment shall be made by four instalments and that the last two instalments are subject to certain preconditions, keyword extraction cannot identify such sentences with rules.”
Min adds that the degree of digitization will be a major variable in the efficiency difference of enterprises in the future, but "the difficulty lies in how to make one product carry this transformation demand.”
Min gives an example, a free Metasota tool called "Meta OCR.” "Text recognition tools have been around for about ten years, but existing tools are far from bringing a good contract processing experience. For example, we use mobile phones to take pictures of a contract and hope information can be extracted. This requires OCR to clearly identify which parts are the body of the contract and which parts are headings, comments, headers and footers, etc., and filter out useless information.”
Wang Yiwei, Metasota
Perhaps because there are too many gaps of "usefulness" that need to be filled, many large Internet companies have developed and launched their own smart legal products in the past few years, such as Tencent’s e-sign, Alibaba’s “Fa Dao Cheng Gong” platform and ByteDance’s “Fei Shu.” Wang says frankly that Metasota has also exchanged ideas with relevant companies, which has exposed another pain point in the R&D of LegalTech products: how to make legal professionals and algorithm scientists work together.
"As far as we know, many big Internet companies, when they do similar R&D, regard this as the biggest cost component." Wang says, "Metasota is fortunate to have its own high-level knowledge team. At the same time, we continue to partner Peking University's Legal Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and have worked out a model for scientific algorithmists, jurists, lawyers and in-house counsel to work together.”
ALWAYS EVOLVING
Investment in the global LegalTech field doubled in the past year, and relevant Chinese firms also secured multiple rounds of financing. Do LegalTech companies consider 2021 their "best year,” or even the beginning of "even better times"?
Chang Jinguang, Fatianshi
Chang of Fatianshi says he "is not sure... LegalTech has been moving forward with twists and turns. Since 2012, hundreds of LegalTech companies have emerged and then closed down in China, and investor attitude towards LegalTech has also fluctuated. There is still a long way to go. Fatianshi has completed three rounds of financing, and there is still a lot of work to do.”
Will the spotlight on LegalTech create tension between entrepreneurs and investors? Chang admits that investors hope for faster returns while LegalTech requires more patience. "At Fatianshi, we believe that it may take ten years for a project to achieve certain results from its beginning."
"Big data + industry, law + technology, these are sectors favored by investors." says Zhang of Mozlen. He points out that in the future, the market will pay more attention to professional technology products in segmented fields. It is precisely the early sensing of this direction that has gained Mozlen many big clients. At present, Mozlen's clients include top domestic and foreign agencies and law firms in the IP industry, as well as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Kuaishou, Huawei, Xiaomi, Didi and many other well-known domestic and foreign companies.
"To say that 2021 was the best year for LegalTech may be more from the perspective of the global LegalTech market. In the domestic market, investment in LegalTech is far from making it a separate field." Metasota's Min concurs. He explains that Investors are generally concerned about the positioning of LegalTech companies, such as service targets. If a company's products are limited to lawyers, its market share will be very limited, and will, to put it jokingly, be even much smaller than the group of truck drivers in China.
Zhang Rui, Mozlen
"We see that those who have secured financing are still those that are able to get out of LegalTech that only serves lawyers, such as those providing electronic signing and contract products whose service recipients can be extended to enterprises. Companies that are more favored by capital must be able to provide enough imagination," says Min.
LOOKING AHEAD
Although more coordination is needed with investors, Wang of Metasota believes that as LegalTech companies that are truly scientist-led have begun to appear on the market recently, "it is logical for technology to drive technological revolution of the legal industry. From that standpoint, we are having the 'best year'.”
Looking ahead, Metasota is confident that machines will play an indispensable auxiliary role in contract management and review in the next five years, which will also promote the innovation of the legal industry and "let lawyers return to the essence of legal work.”
According to Chang of Fatianshi, "contracts may still be the most promising area of LegalTech in the future... Fatianshi will continue to focus on contract drafting and review. In the future, Fatianshi's tools will be even more useful. In terms of business model, Fatianshi's initial main users were individual lawyers. In the past year, however, the proportion of in-house counsel users and law firm users has increased rapidly. We will integrate the contract library with more enterprise contract systems and law firm management systems in the form of SDK.”
Talking about the future, Mozlen's Zhang believes in development by "adhering to the original intention of professionalism.” "We will continue to implement a professional and visual product model... The value of Mozlen is to rely on professionalism to do a good job in big data and AI professional algorithms to provide market players with more professional and efficient SAAS big data tools and services," he says.