Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
The next generation of legal technology is looking to move beyond standalone AI tools towards deeply integrated platforms that transform how the legal profession operates as a whole.
At the recent ConnectLive conference at Crown Sydney, iManage global search and AI product lead Alex Smith spoke with Lawyers Weekly and recognised that as AI adoption continues to innovate, firms must reconsider not only workflows and document management but also security, governance, and information management.
Concurrently, knowledge management is undergoing a significant resurgence, as trusted data, established best practices, and tailored expertise become vital to driving precise, dependable, and impactful AI output.
This comes after a recent episode of LawTech Talks, in which Smith discussed, alongside iManage’s legal industry expert, Madeleine Porter, how AI is transforming legal knowledge management by helping firms organise and leverage institutional knowledge, while increasing the need for data security, controlled access, and auditable AI workflows.
AI-embedded legal workflows
With AI becoming an inevitable part of legal technology, the focus is shifting towards integrating capabilities directly into lawyers’ everyday workflows.
“What we realised was that we needed to have the AI next to, in essence, very closely tied into the work that lawyers do and within the document management system,” Smith said.
“We’ve really embedded the AI within that experience. So we now have the ability, where you can see and compare other documents, you couldn’t read line things, you can action things almost immediately, you can start to move the document a piece of work from one experience into another.”
Smith highlighted that this evolution is paving the way for more sophisticated, agentic legal workflows.
“We’re setting ourselves up for the beginnings of this kind of workflow or agentic-led work,” Smith said.
“We’re very much looking at the next generation of the iManage platform to be very matter-centric.
“What you’re going to see is a matter-centric view and security lens around actionable workflows, actionable agents, which are going to have different outputs and potentially different collaborative forms between teams.”
Security, governance, and the future of law
As AI adoption accelerates, security and governance are becoming important considerations for law firms that operate across different jurisdictions.
“The security piece is evolving very fast; we have security policy around the things that we do and different firms, different regions, different countries take different approaches,” Smith said.
Smith highlighted that firms must also establish clear boundaries regarding where and how AI can be utilised across client matters.
“There is a lot around still blocking AI, so about where can AI be used, for what clients, for what matters, for what parties.
“Even pieces of work within one climate that may be OK with AI in certain types of work, not being allowed in others,” he said.
Inevitably, the industry is now moving beyond AI experimentation and rather towards addressing the logistical and practical requirements of adoption.
“The experimental phase is coming to an end. How do you secure this? How do you do all this stuff? How do you look at audit trails?” Smith said.
With this shift, Smith also recognised that knowledge management is experiencing renewed importance as firms have identified the necessity for reliable information to underpin AI outputs.
“A lot of that relies on knowledge; we’re seeing a renaissance and repitching of knowledge and how knowledge teams work,” he said.
