Full release: Unlock the power of your firm's technology

How can a law firm distinguish itself from its competitors through its existing technology? While it is very easy to be differentiated by the technology you don’t have, the reverse is not as easy to answer.

Some firms can gain a fleeting bit of reputation as ‘the first’ to use a particular technology, especially if it is unusual at the time. String together enough firsts and you can get a quasi-reputation as a cutting-edge firm. But, these types of advances tend to be quickly forgotten.

Can you remember the first firm that embraced Banyan VINES? Which was the first to move from Novell NetWare to MS Windows Server or from Sybase to SQL Server? Which bought the first set of BlackBerrys? If you do remember the firm, what value to the client did being ‘the first’ represent?

For many firms, technology is still viewed as a necessary evil. Others see it as plumbing: out of sight and needed, but not very strategic or important. Others view it as a matter of keeping up with the Joneses (and wish the Joneses would do something less). So, how can you unlock the true power of your firm’s existing technology to achieve ‘bankai’, or its full potential?

Culture and behaviours

The term bankai originates from Japanese anime series Bleach by Tite Kubo. The story follows teenager Ichigo Kurosaki, who has a sentient sword with three stages of power. The first is sealed, in which the sword is quite ordinary and has no special powers. The second is ‘shikai’, but it is only a partial release of the true power of the sword. The final and most powerful stage is bankai, in which there is the full release of the sword’s abilities.

For law firms to go bankai, they have to change a lot of previously-held behaviours that are artificially limiting them. First and foremost, you need to accept that things are not the same as they used to be, that the old way of doing things isn’t the way to go and that efficiency is the name of the new game.

The bespoke practice of every aspect of law has to stop. The principals of methodology, workflow and project management must be applied. You have to believe that technology is not just plumbing, infrastructure or a necessary evil, but can be a strategic asset.

Firms with caustic lawyer attitudes towards non-lawyers need to evolve past this culture and treat other professionals as subject-matter experts. Attitudes toward training really need to be improved; the fact that lawyers are bright does not alleviate their need for skills-based and technical training.

Law firms in the UK tend to use people-oriented processes. It has been said by some that UK law firms lag behind those in the US when it comes to technology adoption. Law firms in the US seem to rely heavily on technology, almost to the exclusion of people. But, technology is not magic: you can’t install a piece of software or hardware and expect your problems to disappear. To quote a friend, technology is a tool, not the answer.

Few law firms invest in cutting-edge technology; fewer still have invested in a research and development department. Those that have invested in cutting-edge technology find it difficult to stay there, in part because technology is being done for technology’s sake.

Legal IT needs to move away from the treadmill of upgrades and the flash of the ‘latest and greatest’. Firms need IT departments that can analyse the business, research the options and introduce the proper technologies in a thoughtful and considered fashion. These departments then need to be able to invest in better tools, take risks and even, in some instances, fail.

Learning and development

In the series Bleach, the sword was nothing without Ichigo; as he trained, he became more powerful and unlocked its increasingly greater power. For law firm technology to go bankai, the people in charge of it and the people using it must train and grow. Partners must recognise the skills that technologists, librarians,
KM and other administrative people
bring to the table and accord them
with the respect that they’ve earned in their professions.

On the technology management side, vertical growth is limited in a law firm. Larger law firms offer some upward movement, but otherwise growth must be lateral. Firms need to invest in staff education and advancement, continually offering opportunities for growth. Chief information officers need to make special efforts with their reports to mentor, groom and unlock their potential.

Many law firms could be classified as ‘training hostile’ environments; few provide what employees would classify as ‘too much’ training. Basic training for new tools is grudgingly provided and mandatory for non-lawyers. But, lawyers often insist on even further reduced training and for it to be optional.

For better or worse, the legal industry is a ‘Microsoft shop’. MS Word, Outlook, Exchange and SharePoint are the tools of the trade. Throw in a document management system, enterprise search and some case management software and you have a plethora of tools over which users rarely gain complete mastery.

The codes of conduct provided by the Solicitors Regulation Authority of England and Wales (SRA) and American Bar Association (ABA) impose certain behaviours upon lawyers. Recent changes to the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct make it incumbent upon US lawyers to better understand the technology they use on behalf of their clients; they can no longer defer that understanding to others. The SRA may well impose similar requirements.

Training and education are the only ways to become compliant. In this ‘new normal’ or ‘total reset’, long-established roles for lawyers and non-lawyer professionals are evolving.
This too will require greater training
and education.

Role of IT departments

In the past, IT departments often acted as kingdoms unto themselves. Like central command and control, IT decided which tools were distributed to whom. But, partner pressure to adopt bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies shattered many technology groups as control seemingly passed from IT to end users. IT has since had to regroup and completely rethink system security in the post-BYOD world, while at the same time reaching out to other groups within the firm to consult and partner, as opposed to simply dictate.

Technology is the great enabler to business, but law firm IT departments don’t have the expertise to execute it in all areas. The tighter and better the collaborative relationships between IT and other departments are, the better things will be. IT cannot just stop with supplying basic tools. Having a word processor doesn’t do much to enhance the practice of law; IT needs to work with every practice group to maximise the value of the tools provided.

The IT department must also interface with the firm’s risk management partner to make sure that it understands the rules and regulations and that lawyers understand how new technologies fit under, bend, twist or otherwise break those obligations.

Processes and workflows

Many law firms still believe that purchasing new technology will result in greater efficiencies. Rarely does a software upgrade come with inherent new efficiencies. You must look to your business processes, your workflows, and see if they can be improved when coupled with the new technologies.

The processes behind technology are not always clear in law firms. In many instances, people don’t know why they are doing things in a certain way, only that it was the way they were instructed to do it. But, ‘because we’ve always done it that way’ is not a reason to do anything. If you dig deep into an odd or inefficient process, it can sometimes be traced back to an old version of software that didn’t have certain functionality; it was a workaround. As a result, some firms are running the latest software tools with a set of decade-old processes.

Good processes and workflows can improve efficiency and morale by taking some of the drudgery out of work. Investments in good business processes can sometimes outlast and provide superior returns than those in the underlying technology.

At the end of the day, the hardware and software are largely unimportant. Past a certain point, the technological parts of the business are fungible commodities. Bankai doesn’t come from the power of hardware or software: it comes from the power of the processes surrounding it and the power of the people using it.

Technology is changing at an ever-increasing pace, but the tool is less important than the craftsman and the
time put into honing the methodology.
That is how you will make your technology go bankai.

Jeffrey Brandt is a legal technology and KM consultant with over 25 years’ experience in legal automation