A Law Firm’s Guide To Future Readiness

The latest Future Ready Lawyer Survey confirmed that technology is playing an active role in performance and profitability.

The 2020 Future Ready Lawyer: Performance Drivers indicated that the legal industry is experiencing a transformation, and even though most legal professionals are aware of it, few feel prepared for the future. Even before the pandemic, organizations were looking at new ways to structure themselves in the face of increasing market pressures such as dealing with increased information complexity, managing the growing demands that are put upon legal professionals, and controlling costs. In light of new challenges brought on by the crisis, we’re likely to see more scrutiny around legal professionals’ performance in the near future.

For law firms, the pandemic has thrown into relief some of the challenges that many were already experiencing in the midst of the industry’s transformation. The survey identified the following findings:

  • The top changes law firms expect to make in the next three years include: Greater use of technology to improve productivity (83%); greater specialization of legal services offered (80%); and increased emphasis on innovation (75%).
  • When it comes to client focus, many firms reported they struggle in their ability to keep up with changes. Just 26% are very prepared to use technology to improve client services; 26% are very prepared to offer greater specialization; and 25% are very prepared to keep pace with clients’ changing needs.
  • 60% of law firm respondents plan to increase their technology budget over the next three years, but only 29% are very prepared in understanding technology solutions available, and just 27% are very prepared to use technology to be more productive.

These results indicate some significant gaps with regard to how law firms perceive technology vs. how — and whether — they understand how it can be adopted. In order to survive and grow through the crisis and beyond, it’s necessary for law firms to bridge those gaps and identify ways to leverage technology in order to capitalize on their strengths.

I recently sat down with Mark W. Brennan, lead innovation partner at Hogan Lovells, and Kathryn DeBord, CIO at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, to discuss how their organizations have managed their work through the crisis, and how law firms can best prepare for the future.

Supporting Your Law Firm During A Crisis

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This year’s survey confirmed that technology is playing an active role in performance and profitability. Those familiar with the 2019 Future Ready Lawyer Survey may recall that technology leaders — those organizations that had already begun leveraging technology — outperformed, across the board, those organizations that were not doing so. As the pandemic took hold, law firms that already had tech solutions in place to enable remote work experienced an easier transition.

“We had many of our business continuity tools already in place, including video conferencing software, our document management systems, AI, and technology related to pricing and legal project management,” Brennan said of his team. “Clients certainly appreciated how quickly we were able to transition to the remote environment with these tools already set up.”

Having experience in tech adoption can also help a firm to jump-start the process of adopting new, necessary solutions more quickly. “We were quickly able to transition our firm to work from home globally to make sure our clients received seamless service, and we set up resources and systems of communication for our people and clients,” DeBord said. “Of note, we set up a flagship hub with tools to help client assess the potential impacts ahead across all industries and sectors and to help with crisis leadership preparedness.”

Managing Client-Firm Relationships

Conducted prior to the pandemic, the survey made clear that while legal departments are moving more work in-house, the vast majority are still relying on outside law firms for a significant portion of the work that must be done, and there are opportunities for law firms to strengthen their partnership with their legal department clients across all aspects of service delivery. As businesses across the country continue to weather the impacts of the pandemic, corporate legal departments will continue to look for ways to cut costs and evaluate the ROI of their work with outside law firms. During this period, there are ways that law firms can continually demonstrate their value — namely through communication with their clients.

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“Communication throughout this pandemic is absolutely critical — and so is the strength of your culture,” Brennan said. “We are keeping a steady flow of information to our clients and our people to explain how our response is evolving. These efforts include keeping our clients informed on the latest developments affecting their business, as well as keeping our people informed about our firm and ways to stay safe.”

Brennan also noted that the pandemic could be an opportunity to identify other pathways to providing value to your clients, based on your firm’s strengths. “The current crisis has required us to think creatively to help clients solve their biggest problems, on a timescale that we have never really worked to before. Our sector focus and deep regulatory understanding has given us a unique ability to navigate issues for our clients, and we are able to bring insights from one sector to another.”

The Path To Innovation

Survey respondents named the top reasons new technology is resisted in their organizations, including organizational issues (43%); followed by lack of technology knowledge, understanding or skills (31%); and financial issues (26%). For those who see opportunities to introduce new solutions or systems into their firms, Brennan and DeBord had some advice.

“The first step is to make sure you really know what expertise already exists in the firm around identifying tech, adopting tech, and more broadly identifying and adopting new ways of working,” DeBord said. “This expertise can sit in operational groups or within practice groups. Once you have a handle on who is out there, who has successfully adopted new tech or implemented new ways of working, and who is interested in driving that effort on a firm-wide or more coordinated basis, the next step would be to identify an opportunity for a ‘quick win.’ Once you have that quick win, and can show material benefits from such an exercise, it is a lot easier to get support for more and broader tech adoption.”

“A commitment to embracing technology needs to be part of the leadership ethos and the fundamental culture of the firm,” Brennan said. “This is more than just a single evangelist. You want legal technology to become part of the strategy and culture, rather than just a band-aid.

“It’s also important to begin the process of adopting new legal tech by prioritizing the firm’s real needs instead of jumping on the latest bandwagon out of a fear of falling behind. Once you’ve identified the critical pain points, lawyers and subject matter experts in the business need to work closely together to identify the right solution — which, again, may not necessarily be the trendiest technology of the moment.”

In next month’s article, we’ll explore the survey’s findings on corporate legal departments and dive into their views on what law firms may not know about their clients, their shifting expectations, and what they’re looking for in the future.


Ken Crutchfield is Vice President and General Manager of Legal Markets at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a leading provider of information, business intelligence, regulatory and legal workflow solutions. Ken has more than three decades of experience as a leader in information and software solutions across industries. He can be reached at ken.crutchfield@wolterskluwer.com.

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