Spain’s Burgeoning Legal Tech Sector May Make Waves Internationally

Paul Handal noted that while there are small startups emerging in Spain, the legal tech market in the country is still largely dominated by foreign companies from the U.K. and the U.S., such as Thomson Reuters’ HighQ, ContractPodAI, and Icertis. One significant challenge hindering the rapid expansion of Spain’s legal tech solutions is the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) and its impact on AI. Handal mentioned that Spain is investigating OpenAI’s data privacy practices, and tools like ChatGPT are avoided by many in the private sector due to privacy concerns.

Moreover, there is a general reluctance to adopt AI in the Spanish legal market, which prevents the country from utilizing its data to train AI solutions effectively. There is a desire to see more data analysis and utilization of data in the Spanish legal tech industry. Despite these challenges, there is an increasing demand for Spanish legal tech, prompting providers to adapt their tools for other Spanish-speaking countries. Additionally, Madrid has a sufficient number of attorneys to test these new legal tech solutions.