Changes in the legal world are symptomatic of the disruptions taking place across other industries worldwide. Growing client demands, increasing competition, and rising expectations amongst fee-earners for a healthy work-life balance are just some of the factors driving change. But, it’s technology innovations that have the most profound impact on firms.
For savvy legal CIOs, innovation success depends on their ability to interpret the firm’s challenges and offer impactful ideas that will help weave technology into the fabric of the firm to address current and future client demands. Firms need to be in a position to efficiently and effectively keep pace with the evolving business landscape.
Innovation isn’t defined by an enormous, ‘big bang’ change; instead, it builds up through a series of modest, continuous enhancements, which over time appears as substantial progression.
Some 99% of innovation involves doing the same thing but in a slightly different or better way.
81% of UK law firms consider technology a strategic enabler. Still, the investment is relatively low, with just 27% of firms spending only 5% or above of revenues on new technology, according to recent research.1
But, there is an unequivocal acceptance that change is needed. A staggering 42% of law firms believe that the burden of maintaining legacy IT infrastructure and services hinders business growth and 36% of firms feel that existing systems are neither agile nor scalable enough to support future expansion.2
Investments are needed to rectify this situation, even by firms intent on keeping spend low to increase profit margins.
If the current technology is dampening productivity, firms might have a few hard truths to face as clients consider their options and look elsewhere for more competitive service level agreements.
UK law firms are at the crossroads of innovation. They can either pursue the path of mediocrity and continued reliance on legacy IT tools or follow the route of cloud collaboration tools that offer higher-value client services, enhance productivity and differentiation in today’s fastchanging legal climate.
Sources 1 HSBC Legal Tech Analysis 2019 2 Legal Practice Management – Legal IT Landscapes Report 2018
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