Universidad Pontificia Comillas and Garrigues create the Garrigues-ICADE ‘LegalTech’ Observatory

Specifically, this interdisciplinary working group will deal with the impact of technology on the provision of legal services. This interconnection will be dealt with from two angles: both the need to understand technology as a phenomenon and process that is becoming increasingly prevalent in the world and market they advise, as well as from the standpoint of the implementation of the technology in their daily activities. 

The Observatory, which is comprised of a group of professors and researchers with a proven track record, will identify experiences and offer sound information on existing initiatives, as well as detect the most important areas for improvement in its sector with the future in mind. The result of this task could provide highly valuable objective information for the promotion, development and consolidation of the legal tech phenomenon in new scenarios in the future. 

Fernando Vives, Garrigues’ executive chairman stresses the fact that “the Garrigues-ICADE Legal Tech Observatory seeks to promote research, innovation, collaboration and training with an international outlook so that the convergence between technology and all the fields of law can become a reality that contributes to the development of society”.

In the words of Íñigo Navarro, dean of the Faculty of Law (Comillas ICADE), “the Observatory seeks to create its own projects in collaboration with other sponsors and to be an international benchmark of thinking, analysis and foresight in connection with legal tech”.

It will also encourage the launch of innovative ventures such as startups that offer legal tech products and services, directly encouraging the creation of entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on training in order to improve the educational programs of universities, law associations, the General Council of the Judiciary, notaries, registries, etc., in short, of all the agents that participate in the area of law. It will ultimately try to raise awareness within the legal community of the advantages of legal tech. 

To achieve this, it will use part of its resources to investigate relevant matters. It will organize seminars, conferences, papers and talks and a wide variety of events with a view to disseminating and, where appropriate, debating specific issues that are considered of interest. Informative publications will be prepared, the interest of students in the relationship between law and technology will be encouraged and other activities will be carried out with a view to meeting the Observatory’s objectives. 

The Rector of Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Julio L. Martínez, SJ, and Fernando Vives attended the signature of the agreement at the University.