As technology weaves its way into our workday at an alarming rate, understanding the impact has become critical. Entire industries, including Law, are being reshaped and reimagined by changing consumer expectations and the quick expansion of technology.
We asked leaders from the Idaho and Utah law communities their predictions for Legal Tech trends in 2020. The responses are extremely thoughtful. Thank you all for sharing and for your candor. We all benefit from staying on top of technology trends and understanding how they affect our own businesses.
Law Firm Security & Work From Anywhere
Security: A focus on security will become greater. The number of law firms being targeted for ransomware attacks is growing due to the sensitive information they may have, and it is tied to large dollar amounts. Depending on what type of law is practiced, they can hold the same critical info that requires the medical industry to follow HIPAA or SOC2 compliance.
Agility: We are seeing more law firms break away from being tied to an office chair. The ability to have their tools on the go is becoming easier with services like O365 and still be able to collaborate with their teams while being remote. Where legal firms used to be like the medical industry when it came to using antiquated software, I expect to see a large swing the other way in the next year or two.
— Ryan Zingg, Partner & Director of IT, Limetree Labs
Balance between security restrictions and the ever-shrinking billable hour
Clients, government regulations, and the entire hacking universe are requiring additional focus to ensure data is secure. At the same time, Clients are reducing their billable hour allowances. Law firm staff is getting squeezed in the middle. They have more security restrictions to deal with internally and less billable time available to adapt to those changes. Balancing security measures against the ability to get the task done will continue to be a focus for small to mid-sized law firms.
Angela Hough, Boardmember, ALA Idaho, IT Department, Parsons Behle & Latimer
Clients Are More Tech Savvy
In today’s world clients are evolving to be more tech-savvy. Things like text and virtual appointments are more expected and less novelty. Baby boomer attorneys are reticent to embrace these changes because they are holding on to what has worked in the past for them—in-person meetings, mailing documents, and e-mail. Clients want to forego the in-person meeting for email or phone calls. Something quick and easy to digest. Today’s client is on the move, likely not even at an office. Their world is in their hand—the cell phone! They can do everything from anywhere.
Today’s client believes that everything is searchable on Google and the need for law firms is low. It’s important to recognize these shifts from the Baby Boomer generation to Millennials and how information is received. Also, making it quick and easy to access is the greatest challenge for aging law firms. The trends keep moving toward less and less client interaction and more and more virtual interaction via technology.
Kevin Gilbert, Office Manager, Angstman Johnson
Legal Automation To Focus on Core Services
Legal automation has already come a long way in a short period of time. Working with trial attorneys and litigators, I don’t see as much of it first hand, but I read and hear all the time that it’s making waves in transactional law. That is not to say I think that the litigation and trial arenas are beyond automation, quite the opposite, but I think we’ll see litigators and trial attorneys adopting automation technology that isn’t necessarily designed with law in mind.
Litigators are still in the business of law, and as such have many similar needs as other businesses. This is especially true of small and medium-sized litigation practices/teams. Often times there is minimal support staff, and only a handful of attorneys churning out top-notch work product. To make this all possible—everyone has to do more. That is the friction point and also the magical kernel of opportunity for those selling or managing automation software at least. If litigation attorneys automate support staff workflows, it frees everyone up to focus more on core services—like crafting quality legal work product. Platforms like Zapier, or even ProcessMaker boast an incredible array of workflow and service automations that should have any law office, firm, or boutique seriously considering how to integrate them yesterday.
Tony Emerson, Internal IT & Marketing, Andersen Schwartzman Woodard Dempsey
Client Requirements Will Improve IT Security
Law firms will be forced to improve IT Security to meet client requirements. As the organizations that law firms support focus on improving their IT security to limit their exposure, they are imposing increasingly stricter security requirements on those firms. Businesses know that their security is only as good as their weakest vendor. With so much sensitive information in their hands, law firms will be held to a much higher standard by their clients.
Chadd Mazac, Co-founder & Director of IT, Limetree Labs
The following legal tech trend predictions were provided by a seasoned veteran of the Idaho LawTech community. Due to the candor of their responses, the individual has asked that I not share their identity.
Lost Focus
Firms are too focused on cost savings without realizing that budgets cannot be hacked away. Even more so as most software is going to a subscription model and becomes an expense rather than a capital spend.
Lost Focus and Best Investment
Training is frowned upon unless you take initiative and do it on your own time and dime. I’ve consistently budgeted training for every employee and arranged specific feature sets with onsite and they’ve been canceled at the last minute (a week before starting) as unnecessary. Allowing people to be more efficient is an excellent use of money and resources but the firm has declined to make that investment over the last decade.
IT has been tasked with creating short videos (3 minutes was suggested) on important features people should be using. Not surprising—when we asked for feedback on areas of interest—no one responded, but we’re doing them anyway per management directive.
Client Experience
I believe the shift from billing everything (phone call time, fax, prints) to a set rate for certain transactions has made a huge difference in perspective that the client isn’t being overcharged. We used to have cost recovery for copies/prints/scans, phone/conference calls by 1/10 of the hour, delivery and faxes. Using a flat for “real estate documentation” for example has greatly decreased the calls to accounting on why an item is on an invoice.
Automation
It would be wonderful except our firm is proud of the fact that attorneys can practice law how they want. Policy and procedures are extremely difficult to put in place. Very difficult to standardize when everyone has a different process.
Legal Tech Trends
Work on any device anywhere. Great in theory, not so much in reality when legal is so heavily document/text-based and it’s really REALLY hard to do any productive work on a smartphone. Tablets/iPad/ultrabooks are a little better but users don’t understand that those devices require software and licenses to access the proprietary application, and then another to be able to edit instead of just view. And if you aren’t on wifi that cellular data use racks up fast.
Along with the above, that piggyback security. Attorney’s do not want the “hassle” of 2FA or another method of authentication, they want it to work as seamlessly on their iPad in a coffee shop as it does on their LAN connected desktop in the office. Security is the one item I’ve taken a hard line that we must increase to protect ourselves. Sure, DR and backups are great for audit compliance but the more than can be done to prevent a breach/infiltration/etc is preferable to damage control after something bad happens.
Legal Tech Trends: Agree or disagree?
So, do you agree or disagree with these legal tech trends predictions? Do they resonate with your law firm and experience? We’d love to hear your own predictions for Law Tech in 2020 and the future. Please share!
If you need assistance with your own technology roadmap, we would be happy to partner with you to create a plan for your law firm. Call us at 208-901-3350 or send an email to hello@limetreelabs.com.
