What law firms can and should demand from their suppliers

Sarah Murphy at Clio discusses the importance of legal technology being focused on what legal clients can and should be demanding of their suppliers

When it comes to technology, the legal industry is undergoing a massive and historic shift. In the past few years, more and more firms have seen the necessity to turn to legal tech to support and improve their businesses, especially since the covid-19 pandemic.

While many lawyers know and understand the benefits of introducing technology, there persists a confusion around choosing the right tech that will best fit the needs of the business and their legal clients. It can also be hugely appealing to clients to know that they’re working with a firm that embraces legal tech and therefore working with them is as straightforward as possible. 

When implementing legal tech the top consideration for firms needs to be ensuring they can deliver better, quicker and more cost effective legal services to their clients. Like anything, making the wrong choices can be costly – in terms of efficiency, client satisfaction and potential security risks.

However, with the right choice, law firms can increase fee-earning time, complete admin tasks efficiently and run operations smoother than ever before. All music to the ears of legal clients wanting to work with them too!

It can be easy to get excited about a sleek interface platform, however if it takes ten clicks to complete a common task, like adding a contact or sending a client invoice, there will be little to no positive impact on the business and can turn clients away. Recent research by Clio, revealed that 40% of consumers would not use a law firm that lacks a simple online payment method, while 50% said that when working with a law firm, they were not given the option to pay via a debit card which was outlined as a key grievance.

This is why it is so important to implement the right technology, at the right time, that will actually improve a working relationship. Clio’s research highlighted how law firms that are ‘behind the times’ with technology increasingly run the risk of not being selected for legal work, as consumers don’t want to be inconvenienced when it comes to admin tasks like completing forms and payments.

Traditionally, many law firms have worked with on-premise, server-based software solutions for practice management needs, but we’ve now seen the introduction of more cloud-based solutions. There are a number of benefits of this over traditional software options, including: the ability to securely access firm information from anywhere – no need to be physically in the office; automatic software upgrades, eliminating the time, cost and pain of manual upgrades; and the eliminated cost of hardware maintenance and upgrades, since cloud-based software is hosted on secure, remote servers.

As well as these advantages, embracing cloud-based technology can also make communication with legal clients easier – as lawyers have access to the information they need much more easily. 

We know that keeping client and firm information confidential is paramount for all law firms, and cloud computing vendors have invested aggressively in security infrastructure. When regulation changes or is updated, working with cloud-based technology means it is easier for firms to adapt systems and processes to make sure they are compliant – while protecting privacy of client information.

With this in mind, when choosing a law firm, I would recommend asking how data will be secured and what processes are in place for case management. This will help you to understand the lawyers’ ways of working and ensure you don’t come into any confusion or delays. It is a law firm’s responsibility to keep client data safe, and therefore it is the individual’s right to know where and how this is being stored.

When it comes to security and setting up processes for your business, law firms should communicate practices to all their clients, especially as different clients may be vulnerable in different ways depending on what they do. A client should always know: who from a firm may contact them; what method of communication will be used; what steps clients are expected to take to help preserve confidentiality and how to report anything that deviates from agreed process. 

As we’ve seen in recent years, the way that we work is constantly changing and the legal industry is no exception. Therefore, when assessing legal software or embracing new technology into a firm, it is important to understand not only how easy it is to adapt the technology to your own needs, but also how this can benefit the running of your law firm in the long term.

Perhaps most importantly, this should support the way that all lawyers can communicate and work for their clients to deliver the best service, at all times.  

Sarah Murphy is General Manager and Head of EMEA at Clio

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com