Through the looking glass: planning a technology-driven firm

Technology is often
seen as a cure all to problems or, in times
of market uncertainties, a
way for firms to compete or overtake their peers in the industry. Unfortunately, if
you are applying technology to get you out of a fix, it is
usually too late.

Firms that bring technology
to the strategic-planning table tend to do that little bit better than those that leave it to the last minute, or try to run everything on a shoestring.

Technology is now playing a much more important role in law firms, especially the new entrants to the industry. A
fair amount of the legal work undertaken in this country
is easy to process manage (think wills and conveyancing). Anything that falls in that category is ripe for a layer
of technology to speed it up and make it more efficient
and accessible, thus lowering the price to the end user.

Loosened boundaries

Now that the Legal
Services Act has loosened the boundaries, new firms, both virtual and office-based, have used their understanding of process management and technology to nibble away
at the market.

This is not a passing fancy. Applying technology to less-complicated processes
is logical, but it has taken non-traditional firms to blaze
a trail and show how it is done. Many firms will feel that they are protected from this sort of competition if they deal
in complex or high-value transactions, but the reality is that the re-engineering of legal processes using technology has only just begun.

There are many areas of law that technology can automate or semi-automate. Of course,
I am not suggesting that we
can take the lawyer out of
the process itself. Legal work
still needs qualifying by a professional competent person, but the graft of the draft can be replaced with automation to a greater or lesser extent, leaving the lawyer to check the output before it goes out of the door.

This reality is starting to dawn on many firms. The most forward-thinking are gearing themselves up for the inevitable changes in the market for their services, and the technology drivers behind them. However, technology itself is not the panacea for all problems here.

There are two nettles
that firms have to grasp for technology to make an impact. First, firms have to develop an appetite for change, and be prepared to put technology much higher on the agenda. The potential consequences
for those that don’t could be fairly devastating.

Second, process mapping and process engineering techniques need to be adopted and used to produce the blueprints for technology. The art of process engineering has only really been used around the fringes of legal services, and only then for the simpler processes. But there are huge swathes of legal work that can be process mapped and engineered, and if that can happen, technology can be used to automate them.

Data revolution

One thing that the big data revolution has taught us is
that there is already lots of
data in organisations, but
it is not necessarily being
used for anything other than rudimentary processing.
Much of this data can be used
to drive engineered legal processes, if the firm is prepared to put the effort into analysing its processes and changes
its habits.

That’s the issue. Firms need to take a peek into the future and work out how they are going to fit into a changed landscape and what part technology is going to play for them. 

SJ

Damian Blackburn is director of legal IT consultancy firm SLFtech