Start your cloud collaboration program with a small cross-functional team. It can help identify and resolve any issues before a firm-wide replacement of your current technology. Careful planning is required as new workflows are introduced that change workplace behaviours. Secure executive sponsors and have the leadership team on board – they will help ensure business commitment to sustain momentum and achieve practice-wide adoption of the new tools.
Choose fee-earners who already model collaborative behaviors and gauge their interest in championing cloud collaboration. Keep in mind that partners and senior fee-earners have significant influence when it comes to employing changes to the existing IT landscape. They can be valuable project enablers and offer a rounded view of the implications of cloud collaboration tools and the changes it brings.
Change is not an event; it’s a process. Communicate regularly and clearly from the beginning right through to implementation. The beginning of the project, communications would focus on the motives for cloud collaboration tools and describing the project timeline and milestones. After deployment, conversations would move to trouble-shooting, reiterating desired collaboration outcomes and sharing successes.
Honesty and candour help foster a sense of common purpose by giving participants a deeper understanding of the issue and how various cloud collaboration tools intersect; it also aids learning as both lawyers and non-legal staff get exposure to different ways of collaborative approaches - not simply their end results.
Demonstrate cloud collaboration best practices in high-visibility meetings. More often than not, you want lawyers to emulate collaborative behaviour. Also provide regular training, assistance and advice on how to use new collaboration tools to achieve the best collaborative outcomes between fee-earners, external specialists and clients.
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