On Tuesday, ZentLaw Labs launched LawDesk360, a workflow management platform for legal departments and law firms. It joins ZentLaw Labs' roster of legal tech software that includes a chatbot created to assist enterprises and startups through their specific legal needs.

ZentLaw and ZentLaw Labs founder Monica Zent said, “The next wave of legal tech in my opinion revolves around workflow efficiency.” And recent announcements indicate she might be right.

LawDesk360 arrives after Thomson Reuters announced in February that it would release a workflow tool to offer transparency over a legal matter's phases, required tasks and expected profitability. Likewise, with Bill4Time shifting from solely offering time and billing services to overall practice management and enterprise legal management software Onit securing a $200 million investment, greater value is being placed on legal services that assist in multiple facets of a workflow.

Following that trend, Zent described LawDesk360 as a platform tailored to promote communication and information-sharing efficiency through a legal matter's workflow cycle. Zent said LawDesk360 seeks to improve the efficiency of finding information and communication regarding a legal matter “to harness and share that knowledge across that department and make it useful.”

The SaaS platform is ready to use out of the box and is outfitted with features to find communication and information concerning a matter quickly. For specific legal matters, one can create a team of fellow LawDesk360 users to access and make real-time edits of legal documents. Users can also communicate through the platform's built-in videoconference integration with non-LawDesk360 users. However, only team members can download conversations and exchanges made through the platform.

The cloud-based platform's components also include artificial intelligence-powered search capabilities that allows users to find text- and concept-matching results, meaning it can find conceptual answers to a user's search words.

Zent said such an AI search engine saves users time with finding answers and increased usage progressively improves the accuracy of the search engine. “It's especially important when you have a scenario and you don't quite know what to search for,” she said.

What's more, LawDesk360 partnered with various legal publishers for its library feature to offer an assortment of publications and industry insights. Zent confirmed the product would be updated and enhanced to better help users find needed information quickly.

“To just send that inquiry, to search, find and access that information [through our platform] is incredibly powerful and time-saving,” she noted.