Last year, a survey of small-medium sized law firms revealed that forty nine percent of firms were planning to update their website in the near future, whilst twenty five percent were also considering moving to the cloud.
We wanted to find out how small-medium firms are getting on with implementing technology, so we spoke to some firms about the challenges they have faced and what their plans are for the future of their legal technology.
Kyla Sandwith, Founder & CEO, De Novo Inc. Kyla is a legal operations and management consultant in Canada with a Masters in Law Firm Management.
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Often the biggest challenge for small to mid size firms with respect to IT is that there is no clear firm strategy. Without a strategy it is difficult to identify the purpose and expected results of any IT product today and into the future. As a result IT solutions are used as a band-aid solution to immediate problems without a view to the big picture, purpose, and scalability
Often the main blocker in achieving a client focused and vision-driven culture and, therefore, an intelligent use of technology is that leadership is often not equipped to respond to a buyer’s market for legal services. Most law firm leaders are equipped to function in a seller’s market where vision, strategy, and client focus were not required to bring business in the door.
Client focus and a vision driven culture are top down strategic exercises, without those in place it’s almost impossible to identify what a firm’s technological needs might be let alone generate enough buy in to execute and integrate those solutions. Often the ‘best’ result that can be achieved in these situations is a series of band-aid fixes for immediate and urgent problem rather than alignment with an overarching strategic plan.
In terms of tackling these challenges, I would recommend starting with identifying the biggest risk or biggest client problem (that potentially has a technological fix) and quantify it. Putting the problem or risk in these terms makes the problem more tangible and leaders more willing to approve technology spend.
The next challenge is to get the right solution at the right price. This takes a disciplined, multidisciplinary gap analysis to accurately identify software specifications.
A multidisciplinary team also lays the foundation for buy-in, a common barrier to successful IT projects. Developing or hiring for the skills needed to efficiently and effectively manage a multidisciplinary team project is crucial to ensure efficient use of firm resources and fit-for-purpose solutions.
Marie Dancer, Managing Partner at Richard Nelson LLP and Medic Assistance Scheme.
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There is no doubt that IT has had a significant impact on the way in which firms provide legal services. Today's clients expect a slick service offered at a competitive price. With the internet being the dominant way in which a significant number of clients find their lawyer, the need to provide both a top level of customer service at a competitive price is paramount for success.
Most firms have moved onto some form of electronic time recording to ensure that they can efficiently bill files and that their management team are able to produce reports to monitor the efficiency of the firm. In small to medium size firms, the critical components of a file, no longer just being what is contained in a paper file, can be disjointed and saved in multiple places and formats.
At our firm we recently invested in software which enables all our information on a client’s file to be stored in the one place. This has had multiple savings both in time and money and so we are confident that we will see a return on our investment.
We've faced a few challenges since implementing the new software, which are likely familiar to many small-medium law firms looking to invest in IT:
- Cash flow – the software and the relevant training comes at a cost. Many small-medium sized firms are not in a position to make an investment of this nature
- Training – the firm we used provided excellent training at every level. However this was not without its challenge in terms of getting lawyers to prioritise attending an IT training session instead of working on client files
- Leadership buy in - it is essential that all of the Partners and senior members are bought into the concept that the investment os going to be financially worthwhile and frankly worth the headache involved in getting used to a new system and new way of working.
- Buy in at every level – it only takes a vocal member of a team to articulate that they ‘don’t like change’ to reduce morale and deter those that may otherwise be enthused by a new more effective system. We tried to identify such individuals to ensure that they were given as much support as needed.
In spite of these challenges, the new system is bringing a number of advantages that will enable us to deliver a more efficient service and therefore be more competitive.
To plan for the future, we want to look at ways in which clients can keep themselves updated about the progress of their own case by making our system interactive. However, there are a number of issues which will immediately prevent this, not least of which ensuring that allowing such access is managed in a way which is secure and minimises the risk of cyber crime and loss of any data.
RJ Martino President of iProv and attorney.
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As a small-medium-sized law firm, our biggest expense is our payroll. The key to scaling our business and staying competitive is all about finding and implementing tools that make our team more efficient. We look for tools that automate human tasks or make human tasks easier to complete.
We constantly test new tools to make these decisions. This means actively seeking out other firms that are trying out new automation tools. The best news is that there are so many new tools that are helping with this process and we're getting better and better every day.
The biggest blocker is our ability to properly test the latest tools that are available. The time that it takes to test all of the available tools is an expensive endeavor and usually adds to our workload (rather than making us more efficient). But, the upfront cost of testing tools is later recouped if the tool proves effective.
We mitigate these costs by leveraging other partnering firms. We openly discuss our success and failures with our tools and ask our partners to share their results, as well. Simply by going to a conference and asking other firms, "What software are you using that is changing your business?" can introduce you to a suite of tools that we may never had known about otherwise.
Paul Saputo, Defense Counsel, Saputo Law Firm PLLC.
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As a small-medium sized firm, probably the biggest technology challenge we have is how to efficiently evaluate all of the options out there. There are so many different providers and solutions for seemingly every problem imaginable (and many we hadn't thought of until we heard about the solution) that it's impossible to evaluate them all with a limited amount of resources.
With that said, the one function that is mission critical to our work is reliability. We are constantly looking to increase reliability in our IT infrastructure.
As a firm, we try to consistently maintain a list of priorities for IT acquisitions so that we can stay focused on what we really need. We also have become acutely aware of customer service as we see that as indicative of the quality of the product and technology experience down the road. At the same time, we still try to keep an open mind about new technology and solutions but we limit the amount of time we spend investigating these options.
James Gast, founder of SpliceNet a Cincinnati-based legal technology consulting firm.
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As a 20 year veteran legal technology consultant for many law firms we have seen a spectrum of roadblocks in helping small-medium sized law firms use technology to help grow their businesses.
Many firms think of technology as a tool to only perform their day to day functions like email, document creation or time tracking and invoicing. What many fail to see is how technology can give them a competitive advantage by way of improving customer service, increasing sales and providing important metrics to help firm owners make intelligent business decisions.
It starts by wanting to run a practice like a business that strives to improve but unfortunately firm owners are just too busy these days to have the ability to stop, take a step away from “working in the firm” rather than “on the firm”. It’s a vicious cycle.
The starting point is without question being “vision focused” and law firm leadership making a commitment to become as such. Once the commitment is made everything else will follow suit. Of course there will be other challenges like budget, change management, adoption and resource limitations but none of those struggles can come until we eliminate the first “road block” of law firm leaders realizing the importance of the “business aspects” of a law firm and its need to grow.
Successful firms have already made it past this point and each struggle they face is dependent upon the “season” in which their firms are in. Currently many firms are being forced to take a step back are reassess their focus and place more emphasis on cybersecurity. Sadly cybersecurity is without question an incredible hindrance to their progress. It’s much easier to move forward when we can “run free” of policies, procedures and technologies that require more steps to do the same things.
The real challenge today is not what technology to implement or even how to employ it. The real struggle is how to balance customer service, staff usability and cost while employing smart cybersecurity.
It’s difficult to make law firm leaders change their focus, in fact nearly impossible. In many firms, it takes a customer need, vendor requirement, competitive forces or fear for firm health to bring about change. However in firms that see technology as a competitive advantage or how it can improve firm efficiency, changes come more rapidly. In these firm we help form technology and efficiency committees to solidify the firm’s strategic directions and priorities.
