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For years, the understanding of legal technology in India has been limited to contract review, document automation, legal research, e-discovery and case management. More recently, the Indian government’s ‘Digital India’ programme, and implementation of ‘e-courts’ and digital legal services are rapidly driving the adoption of broader categories of legal technology, and these initiatives are improving access to justice, particularly for marginalised communities. Although lawyers were initially hesitant to embrace these technologies, government adoption, private sector investment, and the insurance industry’s incentivisation of proactive compliance and accountability have reinforced the role legal technology plays in the Indian legal ecosystem.
In parallel, India’s Data Protection and Digital Privacy Act (DPDPA) is transforming the way businesses handle data privacy and engage with legal technology. Importantly, non-compliance with the DPDPA can lead to penalties ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 250 crore (or two per cent of global annual turnover, whichever is higher).
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Data privacy advisory and compliance automation
The DPDPA imposes obligations regarding the handling of personal data across the data lifecycle, from collection to storage and security, the purposes of processing, data subject rights and data breach notification. Compliance will require long-term strategy and improvements in systems and processes. Implementing these controls can seem overwhelming but legal technologies provide numerous solutions to enable compliance and minimise compliance costs, many of which have been tried and tested in jurisdictions that are further along in their privacy regulation journey.
Consent management
The DPDPA includes an obligation to obtain consent to collect personal data from data subjects, and this consent must be demonstrated and recorded. As such, organisations must have records of consent, which can be complex in large organisations, that may collect personal data through several different channels and over many years. Legal technology solutions can be particularly useful here by supporting the implementation of a strong consent management system. This kind of system enables organisations to manage and document the consent lifecycle, from initial opt-ins to ongoing updates, reinforcing processes that ensure individuals’ rights are respected throughout the data lifecycle. It also enables processes that allow individuals to withdraw their consent at any time, another important feature in privacy compliance. Proper consent management also provides businesses with an audit trail, which is crucial in demonstrating compliance during inspections or audits and reinforcing transparency.
Data subject rights
The DPDPA requires that organisations handle personal data in such a manner that allows individuals to exercise their right of transparency and control over their personal data, perform privacy assessments and keep up with regulatory updates.
Demonstrable compliance requires that a documented and repeatable process be established to enable consistent and effective responses to data subject rights requests. This is where legal technology solutions can come into play. Tools are available to help automate data subject access requests to ensure compliance, save time and reduce errors. The most crucial aspect of DSAR compliance is the timely and accurate response to data subjects’ requests for their personal data, which can be immensely challenging for businesses managing vast amounts of data. A tailored platform supported by robust processes can streamline the collection, categorisation and delivery of data under DSARs and help companies stay compliant and readily respond to inquiries.
Data breach
Breaches are a significant concern under the DPDPA. Technology can assist in investigations of breached data, helping to identify affected individuals and the personal data compromised. This is especially important when large volumes of individuals and data are compromised by a breach, or when the breach may involve operations in other countries (and be subject to other laws). Led by experts, legal technology can also support the automation of breach notifications to large numbers of affected individuals and help ensure that necessary actions are taken.
Information governance and privacy frameworks
Managing data across an organisation can be even more complicated when dealing with large volumes of information spread across numerous departments. Advanced legal technology platforms reduce the burden by supporting data mapping and tracking where data is held and how it flows within the organisation to create a living data inventory. Maintaining a data map is crucial to enabling the application of governance frameworks and ensuring all data handling aligns with the DPDPA rules. Once the data has been inventoried, it can be properly classified and retention schedules can be applied, supporting security controls and helping to prevent over-retention of personal data to minimise risk and storage costs.
Vendor privacy risk management
As businesses manage increasingly vast amounts of personal data, the scope of privacy risks — such as potential breaches and third-party vendor vulnerabilities — continues to grow. For instance, food-delivery companies, which rely heavily on third-party service providers for functions like payment processing, delivery and cloud storage.
As per DPDPA’s third-party data handling rules, companies should make sure that their vendors follow strict data privacy standards. There are available technology platforms that help to automate vendor compliance checks, reducing manual monitoring and supporting compliance teams in ensuring that businesses meet DPDPA requirements for third-party risk management.
Further, artificial intelligence tools can be implemented to help spot vulnerabilities and assess vendor compliance with DPDPA regulations, enabling businesses to address gaps proactively. Enhancing automation and leveraging fit-for-purpose AI-based tools can help companies expand their risk coverage by improving compliance data analytics, threshold metrics and more to boost the overall effectiveness of compliance management.
Data remediation and secure data disposal
Under the DPDPA, businesses are required to dispose of unnecessary personal data securely. Automated tools help apply legal retention periods, identify unneeded personal data and safely delete data. In addition to reducing risk, minimising the volume of data that must be stored and secured can also bring significant cost savings.
Privacy-by-design and enhanced security technologies
The DPDPA requires privacy protections to be built into systems from the start, which enables data protection through technology design. Legal technology solutions can support the implementation of structured and repeatable privacy impact assessments to proactively identify risks. Further, these solutions may include advanced privacy-enhancing technologies to enable encryption, data anonymisation and secure storage, further helping businesses meet DPDPA requirements and protect user privacy.
Regulatory reporting and ongoing compliance
For an organisation, monitoring compliance and reporting to the government can be tedious and resource-extensive.
Real-time compliance updates and report generation by automated tools ensure that it is submitted timely and accurately with continuous compliance towards emerging regulations.
Additional guidelines in development
Further changes to privacy and other data regulations are inevitable. In India, the government is developing regulations around digital competition law and emerging technologies such as AI, blockchain and digital assets. India is also working on an AI-focused regulatory framework, based on principles such as transparency, accountability, fairness and safety. This framework is expected to emphasise harm mitigation and regulations based on real, specific risks. Based on early indicators, it will likely advocate a balanced approach, combining voluntary commitments from developers and risk-based sectoral regulations, enabling innovation while addressing potential harms and promoting public trust.
AI and privacy are closely linked, and many laws globally are expected to treat them as such. AI systems often require or utilise vast amounts of personal data. This further underscores the importance of organisations investing in robust privacy governance frameworks and technology stacks now, to better enable compliant use of data to support AI systems in the future.
Legal technology solutions are evolving rapidly to help businesses comply with the DPDPA standards while also aligning with global privacy standards. From automating compliance tasks to enhancing data protection, legal technology is a key solution for businesses in India that may be impacted by privacy regulations. As data protection regulations become more complex, technology will continue to be essential for minimising risks and ensuring operational efficiency.
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