Boosting opportunity: AI can level the playing field to attract more women into legal tech and support female lawyers by Access Legal
‘AI can help ‘level the playing field’ for women to enter into legal technology, but there’s still more we can do to ensure fair access to skills and opportunities’ – according to legal tech experts who have played a big role in developing AI-powered case management software.
The legal tech professionals at Access Legal, leading provider of software and services to the UK legal market, have spoken about the impact AI has had on their careers as women in legal tech and provided a glimpse into the impact of the technology on the industry.
Product manager, Danielle Park, worked as a qualified lawyer for six years before moving into legal tech, initially as a QA engineer and now in product development. She has been working as part of a team at Access Legal developing powerful AI capability in case management.
“AI is going to reshape the future of legal technology, and the skills needed to use and develop this technology will need to be taught starting at the age people usually attend college or university,” says Danielle.
“Experience of using data and writing code can help young women and girls enhance their technical proficiency which will be highly valuable in their future roles and makes entering a career in legal tech more accessible, but there has to be intervention to ensure this is happening in education to create opportunity for them.”
Amberley Harrison, head of sales at Access Legal, thinks more should be done to break gender stereotypes: “From a young age, girls are often directed towards domestic roles. These early influences shape career aspirations. We need to challenge these stereotypes and provide young girls with the tools, resources and role models to inspire their interest and potential in the field of tech.”
Currently, only around 26 per cent of workers in technology are female – a stat which is similar for legal technology. Therefore, beyond nurturing early talent, AI can also help candidates further down the line in securing tech roles.
“Concerns about bias, a lack of female leadership and gender inequality can put female applicants off. But AI itself is helping to drive fairer recruitment processes,” adds Amberley. “Data-driven evaluations reduce bias, ensuring fairer recognition to support women in their career progression.”
AI is already making data and tech skills more accessible for people from all backgrounds across industries including in legal technology. No-code and low-code platforms allow people who haven’t gone through extensive data and AI training to help build and design tech products, analyse data and automate key processes.
“Many people believe you need to be tech-savvy to work in technology, but that’s not true,” says Kate Scott, support operations and delivery manager. “These roles are often more about identifying challenges and finding innovative solutions, beyond just knowing how to code.”
More opportunities are arising for young people to enter the legal tech industry too with the proliferation of different types of AI being used meaning more roles in legal tech are needed. This includes GenAI (Generative AI) which is being harnessed by firms to increase the speed of research, collaboration and document analysis and is being embedded into existing legal technology like case management by legal tech providers.
Cutting down administrative work supports all employees, but female workers may benefit the most. Aimee Seaton, customer success director explains: “In my career, I’ve seen that women are often volunteered for note-taking, sending follow-ups, or scheduling meetings – none of which are billable tasks. Automation of these tasks allows women to focus on impactful, valuable work.”
Natural language processing, another form of AI, is being used by law firms as a much faster way to analyse huge datasets across their business to support strategy, compliance and both talent and client retention and acquisition. AI is also being developed to power communication-based tools between lawyers and their clients too.
Danielle continues: “We often see women who come into the legal tech industry, like myself, come from a legal background which is of course fantastic and AI will help remove barriers for those without a high level of tech proficiency to encourage them to enter, but it’s clear we need to do more to make a career in legal tech, and technology in general, more accessible for young women and girls.
“All AI-driven jobs will require a basic level of data or AI literacy so it’s important for young people to acquire these skills from higher education onwards and I hope this will open up many more opportunities for women to enter into the legal tech industry in the years to come.”
Each of the women have been instrumental in fostering long-term relationships with Access Legal customers and ensuring specialist software is developed with these law firms and their needs and requirements in mind.
Hear more from Access Legal’s experts on AI in the legal industry and how law firms can implement AI to supercharge their future.
