Every year, with hundreds of new technology developments, it’s difficult to determine which ones to pay attention to and which ones to ignore.

Bits and Bytes by Monica Goyal

Based on what I’ve observed in the last few months of 2011, here are five trends I think lawyers should pay attention to in 2012:

1.    Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom are said to be entering the British market in 2012. Furthermore, a few notable legal web services have come up in the last year, all positioning themselves to take advantage of the new legal regulatory framework in  Britain, including Everyman Legal and Net Lawman.

This undoubtedly represents the start of a wave of new legal technology companies and services that may come to this side of the ocean once they’ve proven themselves in the British market. All of this because of recent changes to the Legal Services Act there. Will the United States follow suit?

2.    Cloud-based software services: Microsoft Word, a staple software for almost everyone, will now be cloud-based with Office 365. This has been a long time coming and it represents a huge shift for those still refusing to get on the cloud. If you haven’t already, you should be asking the question what you need to do to prepare yourself for cloud computing.

3.    Business Analytics: Analytics and accountability go hand in hand for most businesses. Today, there are many tools to allow businesses to measure and then adapt their behaviours in order to improve their bottom line. Take social media, for example.

Customers and clients use social media and you could possibly engage with them there, but how does a company capitalize on this and what kind of return are they realizing on this investment? In 2012, people will be talking less about getting their businesses on social media and more about how to measure the return on investment through analytics.

There are many tools already available that will measure your influence online or your click-through rates on your tweets.

4.    Mobile payments: In 2012, with the emergence of near field communication, you’ll now be able to use your smartphone to make small purchases at stores, restaurants, and even in taxis. It’s totally cool but is it too convenient?

5.    Behavioural advertising: Currently, there are countless technology startups with an advertising revenue business model. To make it work, they go beyond general demographic information and instead use a person’s private online browsing preferences to sell them something.

Behavioural advertising has come under the scrutiny of the privacy commissioner. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in the coming year as a number of invasive but more interesting innovations go mainstream.

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Monica Goyal is founder of My Legal Briefcase. She’s available on Twitter at twitter.com/monica_mlb. This is her first Bits & Bytes column online for Law Times.