making legal it more strategic
TRANSCRIPT
How to Make Legal IT More
Strategic
December 2014
Agenda
• Why Is Legal Lagging When It Comes to Technology?• Blue Hill Research’s 6 Ways to Spur Technological
Change at Law Firms
• How Do You Implement These At Your Firm?• 5 Ideas to Spur Brainstorming
Tech is Lagging in the Legal Space
• David Houlihan of Blue Hill Research offered an insightful analysis of barriers to technological change in the legal space
• He called out 6 specific challenges to innovation faced by IT and legal teams at firms
• But how do you go from these challenges to actionable solutions?
Brainstorming Solutions
• There is no solution that will work for all firms: the best plans are based on the unique characteristics of the firm in question
• However, example tactics can help brainstorm what might work for your firm
• So here are 5 possible ways to address these challenges at your firm
How to Spur Technological Change: #1 and #2
#1: Create insight into opportunities where technology can support the growth of law firm profit margins
#2 Identify clear relationships (or the lack thereof) between spend and tangible impact on the top and
bottom line
Sample Tactic: Track the Competition
What?
• Rather than waiting on internal data on innovation to approve innovation, gather hard numbers from peers who have already made the plunge
• Analyze what competitor firms are doing: look for case studies of how legal technologies have improved their profitability
Sample Tactic: Track the Competition
How?
• Your firm may already do competitive or industry analyses; alternatively, a business or PR person would likely have some experience with this
• Vendors can be rich sources of this kind of information, as can press releases or industry articles
How to Spur Technological Change: #3
#3: Provide legal stakeholders with clear business cases for how technology will improve
their lives and help them meet professional objectives
Sample Tactic: Encourage Tech Learning
What?
• Your firm can incentivize associates to select CLE courses in technology-related topics
Sample Tactic: Encourage Tech Learning
How?
• Use time already earmarked for education to focus on legal technology advances
• Larger firms can even organize their own CLEs on the topic, led by industry experts and their own IT team
How to Spur Technological Change: #4
#4: Provide legal stakeholders with a “time buffer” that permits and encourages investigation
of legal technology
Sample Tactic: Ask Vendors to Make Up Time
What?
• Legal technology vendors want to show how their software saves firms time and money, but time spent listening to these pitches is generally non-billable
• Make vendor presentations conditional: ask vendors to save the amount of time that they use. If they give a one-hour demo to five lawyers, request that they save five hours of time for the firm
Sample Tactic: Ask Vendors to Make Up Time
How?
• Vendors would use their specialty to provide value
• For example, they could analyze billable data to find savings or find undiscovered case documents using predictive coding
• Bonus: this also gives associates experience with the software using a realistic use case
How to Spur Technological Change: #5
#5: Provide IT stakeholders with opportunities to understand legal workflows, inefficiencies, and
relationships to law firm profit
Sample Tactic: Implement Shadowing
What?
• IT team members could shadow associates during a typical day in the office to increase their understanding of the legal team’s needs
• Watching something be done manually that they know could be automated may give the IT team ideas for technologies that would benefit the legal team
Sample Tactic: Implement Shadowing
How?
• Based on these sessions, each IT team member would list legal team pain points – and associates would vote on which is the most time-consuming
• The IT professional who identified the most-voted issue could be incentivized (e.g. bonus or extra vacation), while the whole team would now have a priority list of tasks to automate
How to Spur Technological Change: #6
#6: Create incentives and mechanism that encourage IT stakeholders to “fight battles” to
promote technology investment
Sample Tactic: Make It Part of the Schedule
What?/How?
• Schedule a regularly-occurring meeting between a few IT and legal leaders to discuss legal technology
• The pressure of having a set-aside hour with their legal team peers may motivate IT to present opportunities for improving profitability using technology
Take Steps Like This At Your Firm
• These specific ideas may not work for your firm, but they may spur discussion about tactics that would
• A more strategic use of technology at law firms is a win not just for profitability and differentiation, but for retention and recruitment as well