White Papers | Evolution of technology leads to firm's 'silent' partners: clients
Business communication has undergone a maturation process in law firms, as it has in all businesses.
Information once sent via the postal service or a courier, is faxed or e-mailed. Time frames for performance have been severely compressed to the point where anything short of immediate is unacceptable.
Law firms, like other businesses, must seek out technological opportunities to enable them to better service their clients.
In the legal industry, early technology primarily was limited to administrative functions along with some crude data base applications.
As networks and practice-specific applications became more prominent, however, the base of influence shifted to the professional staff. Attorneys wanted to be able to do everything their peers were doing and more.
The current environment, in many cases, is heavily guided by the demands of firms' clients.
From task-based billing to the sharing of the work product, clients are forcing law firms to change the way they do business.
Those in a reactive mode may uphold the theory that law firm technology should change only when client requirements necessitate it.
The danger in this is, a firm may not be able to react fast enough to meet the demands and continue to secure the business.
The player that will stand out is the one that can lead with technological options that promote better, faster and potentially less expensive communication.
Through the effective use of technology, a law firm is no longer limited to a specific geographical sphere of influence. But the firm faces the question of how much it is willing to invest -- both in time and money -- to gain an edge. What return can a firm expect for its technology investment -- an ongoing process which may have limited returns in the short run?
In the past, many clients would tolerate more redundancy in the work product and were willing to pay for substantially more of a firm's hard and soft costs. For example, a client involved in litigation with multiple jurisdictions may have been willing to pay for the same discovery process by multiple law firms.
In many cases today, however, a firm is required to produce bills in accordance with its client's task codes and then submit this information via a secure "translating" site.
Caps have been placed on many expenses, and repositories for case-related data have been built to reduce data-gathering redundancy.
Firms in specialized markets will probably be the last affected by this trend. Conversely, practice areas such as general civil litigation or real estate are feeling the impact of the change, which is reflected in the wave of mergers by mid-size law firms.
The economies of scale are difficult in this strata, given the current state of the economy, the "one- stop shopping" mentality of the consumer and the rising cost of implementing and maintaining the required technological infrastructure.
To survive today's business environment, law firms must invest their technology dollars wisely. They must accept that automated communication limited to e-mail and having a Web site is not sufficient.
Many law firms have Web sites primarily because their competitors have sites, too.
The sites are little more than informational brochures whose chief visitors are destination-oriented. These firms have invested minimal amounts of time and money and generally have received minimal results in return.
Ultimately, firms need to implement technologies to position them as the owners of the data repositories (create and control the asset while others add, edit and access it), and the conduit for multi-party communication (collaborative Web sites).
In order to effectively make this happen, firm-wide initiatives must be implemented to create processes that ultimately will make life better for the client.
In all likelihood, new processes will change the way the firm works and create a cultural shift in the environment.
Advanced communications systems, document management systems, litigation support databases, case management systems, firm-wide dockets and contact management systems will need to be implemented.
In and of themselves, these systems lack potency.
When integrated to minimize the multiple points of entry, however, they can be effective tools, promoting collaborative efforts both within the firm and among clients.
Technology must be positioned as an asset "in process," with measurable returns on its investment.
DENA RAFTE (drafte@rafte.com) is president of Rafte & Co., a legal consulting and network integration firm.
