Legal Services and Digital Transformation

Moving to an era of Digital Transformation

Organizations need to adopt simpler and smarter ways to deal with workloads, applications, and a huge amount of data every day. Because of the increase in reliability of cloud applications, legal professionals will experience better benefits and greater flexibility in where and how they work. By moving completely or partially to the cloud, law firms can gain faster access to technology resources, solutions and services while cutting down costly expenditures, with greater flexibility to respond to changing business needs.

Shift from Tools to Cloud Based Solutions

Because of Legal Technology solutions on Cloud, Digital Transformation is no longer a buzz word but a practical necessary reality. Cloud solutions can range from baseline technologies, helping law firm manage their client matter information to implementing no code solution for managing workflow. Practice Management Solution and Document Management Solution could be a great starter on the Digital Transformation journey. Choosing to operate in the cloud is one of the most exciting digital transformation trends in law as it leads to a healthier, less stressful lifestyle in the entire legal industry, and offers a good work/life balance for legal professionals overall. Working in cloud helps to provide digital experience for the practice and more self-service offerings for end clients, which comes with the delivery of web security.
Small firms with little tech resources may find it is easier and even more cost-effective to let cloud providers take care of maintaining and upgrading services. Cloud based solutions work well for all sized firms as well. Mid-size firms are looking to virtualize the entire office infrastructure on cloud

Attaining Digital Maturity

To be effective and to attain digital maturity, law firms must bear in mind the below things.

Self-Assessments

Mandatory exercise by the law firm, on what functions or practices of the organization which must be digitalized or be operated in the cloud or must undergo technological changes is needed in the first place. The clarity about what must remain as legacy, and things that must change can be derived through self-assessment and the whole firm needs to participate in this process to discuss the boundaries within which changes can be applied and with the acceptable flexibility.

Educating about Digital Transformation

Law firm employees must be trained to help them realize the importance of emerging digital tools and to use them to meet clients’ emerging digital needs. They must appreciate at the prospect of a significant part of the practice of law becoming automated and change their mindsets to lead the way in adoption of digital transformation. A basic knowledge of topics like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, cloud computing helps.

Employing Workable Strategies

There may be multiple digital projects running in the same firm. It is vital to consolidate and properly organize the firm’s digital initiatives and to have a general understanding about them. Overlapping objectives must be mapped and success factors be defined and measured at the end of every phase of the implementation. It is important to show confidence that digital transformation exercise works. Having a comprehensive digital transformation strategy in place, mapped against specific needs can help manage multiple projects in the firm.

Digital Transformation Road Map

Strategy and vision statements must be converted to technology solutions which must bring immediate tangible results. The following low-hanging apps can be considered for immediate positive feedback from users and clients

1. Office 365 for Law firms can bring instant team collaboration with Microsoft Teams. OneDrive for Business will allow users to securely share contents online and offline
2. Legal Accounting Solution can make a firm audit and tax compliant
3. Document Automation brings efficiency in drafting documents
4. Workflow solutions implements SOP based on practice area
5. Time tracking will validate that no billable time is missed
6. Client Portal offers self-service for end clients on case status and billing detail

Following the Optimistic Way

Having a sense of optimism while moving towards the vision of digitalized space is one of the most important tasks to be championed by law firm partners. Having a positive outlook and systematically engaging with clients about their future legal needs can help legal team to collaborate more effectively and drive the firm forward.