LegalTechTalk 2025 recap: From tech bloat to strategic ecosystems
The dust has now settled on LegalTechTalk 2025, and our team has been distilling the vital conversations from a conference that captured a legal landscape in rapid evolution.
The event showcased a fundamental shift in how law firms operate, driven by new technology and client expectations. As ShareDo (part of Clio), we saw our mission reflected in these discussions: to help firms move beyond the noise and build truly effective, future-proof strategies that deliver tangible value.
The overriding message was one of tension. On one hand, there is a clear appetite for innovation; on the other, a deep-seated frustration with the very market meant to provide it. This article explores the key themes from the event and offers a critical perspective on the path forward.
The diagnosis: moving past overwhelm to understand "legal tech bloat"
A dominant and recurring theme this year was the sheer overwhelm firms experience when confronting the legal tech market. But the conversations went deeper than simply identifying a crowded marketplace.
The feedback pointed to a specific phenomenon we are calling “legal tech bloat”: a market saturated with platforms expanding through “capability creep,” where software solutions are doing “a little bit more of everything”.
This isn’t innovation; it’s a reactive cycle of feature-matching. The result is a landscape with “considerable crossover between software” , leaving firms struggling to navigate their options or even know where to begin. This feature bloat creates more than just confusion; it leads to significant “tech waste”, where firms invest in sprawling systems but only use a fraction of the functionality. It complicates an already difficult procurement process and makes it almost impossible to build a coherent, cost-effective technology stack.
It is this challenge that makes recent strategic moves in the industry, such as the acquisition of legal research platform vLex by our parent company, Clio, so significant. This is not about adding another set of features to a monolith. It’s a deliberate strategy to counter the bloat by creating a deeply integrated ecosystem, one where the ‘business of law’ and the ‘practice of law’ are unified. This marks a philosophical shift away from a single, all-in-one platform towards a central, intelligent hub that connects best-in-class services. It answers the call from legal leaders like James Grice of Lawfront, who prioritise “tools that will play nice with our chosen tech”. The goal is to move beyond mere connectivity and achieve seamless integration where data flows automatically from one function to the next, creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The human element: transformation starts with people, not platforms
Perhaps the most forceful message from the event was that technology is only a small part of the transformation story. As Simon Ridpath of Charles Russell Speechlys warned, firms often “go wrong when there is too much focus on the tech,” reminding the audience that “it’s not going to magically solve the problem. People are priority”.
The most cited barrier to change, time and again, was user adoption. To overcome this, vendors and internal leaders must understand and respect the “inherent rhythm of day-to-day legal work” and, as Rachel Broquard of Eversheds Sutherland noted, take the time to “understand why people are really attached to their certain ways of working”.
This requires a fundamental “mindset shift” across the entire firm. “Innovation isn’t a department, it’s a journey firms need to be on,” stated John Craske of CMS , a journey that needs “structured change management” to succeed.
The key to this is genuine empathy, not as a soft skill, but as a strategic imperative. It means “actively listening to and understanding the end-user’s challenges, rather than simply dictating solutions”. It also means recognising the crucial role of internal innovation teams. As Kay Kim of Paul Hastings clarified, “Innovation teams aren’t here to stop you, we’re here to help you navigate”. The most successful technology implementations will be those where vendors partner with these internal champions from day one.
The pragmatic path forward: data, security, and pilots
Given the challenges of bloat and adoption, how should firms strategise? The discussions at LegalTechTalk pointed towards a clear, pragmatic framework built on three pillars.
- Start with your data, not with the tech. This powerful, counter-intuitive insight was a consistent theme. Too many firms rush to a technology solution before they have their data house in order. As James Thomas of KPMG UK noted, “data is critical to adoption, deployment & utilisation”. Before any platform can deliver value, firms must invest in creating a clean, complete, and AI-ready data foundation, with some forward-thinking firms already building dedicated data lakes to this end.
- Treat security as the highest priority. With cyber risk topping firms’ risk registers, any new technology must meet the strictest standards. During a panel on procurement, Kay Kim called “SOC 2 Type 2” a “magic phrase”, which is a testament to the level of assurance that IT and compliance teams demand. This focus on security is a direct response to the “significant compliance concerns” that currently surround the implementation of new technologies, especially AI.
- Use pilots to prove value and build trust. AI, in particular, is a source of significant overwhelm for firms. The way to build confidence is through practical, real-world pilots that allow end-users to see, test, and validate the tools in a controlled environment. This hands-on approach is the only way to demonstrate genuine value and ensure a tool will be used once implemented. It also addresses the critical need for explainability in AI: the ability to show, as one panellist put it, “How did you get that result?”. Within this context, the insight from Neil Araujo of iManage resonates deeply: “Being correct is far more important than being efficient”.
Conclusion: a new era of partnership
LegalTechTalk 2025 painted a clear picture of an industry at a crossroads. The path forward is not about finding one mythical platform that solves every problem. That approach leads to the bloat, waste, and complexity that firms are so keen to escape.
The future lies in a more considered, strategic approach. It is people-led, data-first, and security-obsessed. It favours building strategic ecosystems of deeply integrated, best-in-class tools over adopting monolithic, average-at-everything platforms. This requires a new level of partnership between law firms and their technology providers—a shift from merely supplying solutions to providing genuine, consultative guidance. It is our commitment at ShareDo to be that consultative partner, helping you cut through the noise, untangle your tech web, and build a powerful, efficient, and secure ecosystem that empowers your firm for the future.
