Budget season is upon us — and for many law firms, it’s the time of year when any new tech solutions that are being considered for onboarding in the new year will get a thumbs up or thumbs down. As legal technology continues to impact how law firms do business, understanding what technologies are on the market — and what new solutions are on the horizon — has become increasingly vital for legal professionals.
Based on findings from the 2019 Future Ready Lawyer survey published earlier this year, organizations that are already investing in technology are significantly more likely to report higher firm profitability than those organizations that are not adopting technology as quickly. And as Technology Leading firms continue to double down on tech investment — as 65 percent of them indicated in the survey that they intend to do — those firms will become increasingly competitive, widening the gap even further between themselves and lagging organizations.
While these statistics can help to make a business case for legal tech investment, finding the right solution for an organization requires a different kind of conversation — one that is more specific to an organization’s needs. For law firms, there are a number of new types of technology solutions that we expect to see on the rise.
I recently sat down with Jean O’Grady, senior director of information, research & knowledge at DLA Piper US, LLP and author of the acclaimed legal tech website Dewey B. Strategic, to get her take on future technologies that we’re likely to see in the law firm space. Her take: look for increased technology adoption in a few new areas.
“The use of corporate review products like Luminance and Kira has certainly spread,” said Jean. “Analytics products are another area that we’ve seen emerge recently as well. Analytics solutions give lawyers the potential to get insights on trends which may be valuable for litigation strategy. This area has a lot of interest, but I think these solutions pose a challenge for lawyers to understand how to read and interpret the data. The technology is there, but it may be another five years before we have a generation of lawyers who were exposed to these types of solutions in law school and have a strong analytics background to interpret the data and leverage the technology fully.”
Jean also sees the potential for future uses of this technology that integrate different types of analytics to serve new purposes. “In the analytics space, I think there has been a lot of interest around how lawyers can get insights into commonly used clauses — but the next phase could be technology that integrates data around deals with litigation. For example, there could be solutions that examine what deal clauses tend to result in litigation, and those kinds of insights could be very useful to law firms. The next generation of solutions could go further than just identifying trends in data and move into examining long-term outcomes and consequences.”
“Along those lines, I think we’ll also begin to see more pressure in the market to transform analytics solutions into predictive solutions. Instead of just predicting that a judge will rule a certain way, a solution could go further to take various factors into account and say that there’s a 90 percent chance that this will result in a certain outcome. There’s a desire for technology that takes historic case law and regulatory rulings, analyzes it in the context of specific circumstances, and helps lawyers with scenario planning.”
While there is already an abundance of technology out in the market to address specific pain points that law firms experience, there are still clear gaps in how organizations using those solutions. “Billing and alternative fee arrangements still present a challenge to many law firms. Even though solutions for these issues already exist, solving those pain points can’t be done purely with technology — some of them have to do with behavior,” said Jean. “I believe there is still a huge challenge for law firms to find ways to make it easier for lawyers to easily code their time to get accurate entries into timekeeping systems. Data entry is one of the most boring tasks on earth, but having clean, accurate data sets can be highly valuable. Those insights are helpful not only in terms of communicating with a client, but also in terms of creating records for the firm itself to assess how much certain kinds of deals, litigations, or motions can cost.”
Even for law firms that are ahead of the curve when it comes to technology adoption, the challenge that every organization will have to contend with is how best to prepare for the future. “I think there are a lot of questions around what the law firm model will look like in 20 years,” Jean said. “Organizations will have to figure out what steps they will need to take to change and stay competitive as the market continues to evolve.”
As we’ve seen from the Future Ready Lawyer survey, organizations that are investing in technology today believe that they are well equipped to manage change. As trends continue to shift, it’s not easy to say what the law firm will look like even a few years from now — but it has become clear that the use of technologies to achieve better outcomes and offer higher value is not only increasing, but also delivering measurable impact and profitability for firms that know how to use them well. Armed with this information, legal professionals will be better positioned to prepare for the future.
Dean E. Sonderegger is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a leading provider of information, business intelligence, regulatory and legal workflow solutions. Dean has more than two decades of experience at the cutting edge of technology across industries. He can be reached at Dean.Sonderegger@wolterskluwer.com.