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Law firms on the run, but struggling to get mobile
AUSTRALIAN law firms generally know they must rapidly adopt new technologies to keep up with an increasingly hi-tech, fast-paced, reduced fee operating environment - but most are struggling to master mobility and it's costing them.
Research by business and legal information provider LexisNexis in conjunction with the Lawtech Summit & Awards has found that mobile technologies are revolutionising the way law firms do business and most are not keeping up.
A dramatic impact on the Australian legal sector has come from so-called ‘cloud' services and the new capabilities to have certain types of administrative legal work completed internationally at lower cost to clients. It has also created new risks for the sector.
The Firm of the Future study of Australian legal CIOs, knowledge and information technology managers released last week by LexisNexis and Lawtech Summit & Awards revealed 67 percent of respondents rated ‘incorporating mobile devices enterprise-wide' as their biggest challenge, followed by ‘developing more efficient IT solutions for work management' (63 percent), the ‘willingness of the partners to invest in IT upgrades and developments' (57 percent) and the ‘growing use of collaboration tools' (56 percent). Most firms were able to nominate more than one challenge.
The study found key drivers for change were ‘new technologies' (92 percent), ‘increasing use of mobile technologies' (89 percent), a keen ‘focus on time savings' (81 percent) and ‘providing value for money' (70 percent).
"By 2023, legal operations will be technology driven," LexisNexis Pacific CEO TJ Viljoen said.
"Complex workflow, document production, knowledge management and practice management systems will do most of the work with legal staff only working on matters requiring specific technical legal knowledge. More structured tasks will be completed either by automated cloud-based systems or outsourced to low cost offshore providers."
Mr Viljoen said, in addition, a new generation of lawyers will be technology savvy, enabling them to work from home or in smaller non-CBD based offices. They would work more collaboratively with clients either at their offices, through video conferencing and cloud services, or indeed in the local café.
"The question I ask every day is ‘how I can help make my lawyers' job easier, more efficient and client centric?'" said Anthony Bleasdale, general manager for knowledge management at Maurice Blackburn.
"Invariably this comes back to mobility; unfettered access to information and searching capabilities irrespective of whether a lawyer is at home, in the office, with a client or in a coffee shop. The holy grail will be giving our people technologies and systems that they don't have to learn and don't have to be trained in."
According to Mr Viljoen, "There is a clear path in where CIOs are investing their budgets and resources over the next 10 years.
"The key priority is improving operational cost efficiency through improved monitoring and processes and developing better collaboration tools.
"Utilising the latest technological advancements and cloud computing practices will enable fast-moving firms to get a competitive advantage. Those that hesitate or want to maintain the status quo will not thrive in this increasingly fast, mobile, collaborative and competitive marketplace," Mr Viljoen said.
"The firm of the future will be a very different to the firms we are familiar with today. The changes will be unprecedented.
"Lawyers will be freed up from the more mundane tasks enabling to focus on providing technically outstanding, commercially oriented advice that will add real value to their clients' business," Mr Viljoen said.
A series of video interviews on the research appear on YouTube/LexisNexisAustralia.
http://www.lawtechsummit.com.au/
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