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Now is the time for boutiques to rethink tech use
COVID-19 offers an opportunity for boutiques to experiment with legal technology platforms in order to flourish moving forward.
Jerome Doraisamy
The global coronavirus pandemic has “imposed a lot of hasty adjustment”, McLay principal Fiona McLay mused, but it has also brought about the chance for boutique law firms to try new things in an environment where everyone is patient and accepting of a few teething troubles.
“If you do suffer a slowdown, using the time to adapt your business to be less reliant on manual inefficient practices will make you better placed to grow your business when we emerge from lockdown. You don’t want the only thing you’ve learned out of this situation to be how to mute yourself during a video call.
“Some very clever people (often ex-lawyers) have come up with great legal tech solutions and they want to help you try it out. There are some great offers to trial software for free or at [a] significant discount.”
The pandemic has exposed misconceptions, Ms McLay told Lawyers Weekly, about what a law firm is supposed to look like.
“A physical office full of paper files suddenly became a hindrance. Firms that had invested in their people being able to work remotely and paperless faced less significantly less disruption,” she said.
“The pandemic also exposed the limitations of the traditional view that lawyers should nurture a personal network but not publicly share their expertise. Lawyers who have invested in digital lead generation, using social media and online tools to communicate with a niche target market, were able to continue business development throughout the lockdown.
“A really positive lesson has been how adaptable people are. Most of the legal profession are working reasonably effectively in a way we never could have imagined, while coping with homeschooling and a health crisis. It shows we are capable of adapting to more than we think.”
Moving forward, Ms McLay outlined, boutique lawyers look to use legal tech more effectively by way of looking for opportunities to use one’s expertise assisted by legal tech to better solve a problem, testing whether the solution works and that people will pay for it before one invests too much in it, as well as targeting more clients who have such issues.
Legal tech is “not a magic wand”, Ms McLay warned.
“Buying software won’t solve poor customer service or inefficient knowledge management. If you haven’t got your customer communications and precedents in good shape, then you will quickly get frustrated if you try to implement legal tech solutions involving document automation and workflows,” she outlined.
“There are great opportunities to use legal tech to improve the value you provide to your client, remembering that it is the client who decides what is valuable. Implementing legal tech that makes the back end of a law firm run smoothly will not transform your business. It might do wonders for your peace of mind and give you back some weekend but it will not translate into sustainable growth.”
Moreover, for those for whom financial constraints may be a factor, there are a number of opportunities to implement “noticeable change without spending a cent”, Ms McLay insisted.
“Start by looking for opportunities to improve internal processes. Talking to your clients and to your team will identify common pain points. Look for ways to simplify manual processes and standardise repetitive tasks. Developing checklists and templates can improve ability to delegate work, speed up delivery and avoid errors,” she said.
“Once you have addressed the internal process, look at using the automation and workflow functions in your existing software. There are free instruction videos that show you how to use MS Forms and Flow in Office 365 to populate Word templates and MS Excel to generate visual reports. It is also worth having another look at underutilised capacity in your practice management system.
“Effective marketing can be done using the video on your mobile phone and graphic design tools like Canva. There are lots of online courses offering tips to get started using social media. It’s a great time to find a reverse mentor – get a digital native to show you better ways to work online. You can offer to use your experience to help review their CV or discuss their career goals.”
This all said, it has been “great to see”, Ms McLay noted, the removal of regulatory hurdles for tasks such as electronic signings so that businesses can operate more effectively.
“Online court is another example where some of the perceived objections to virtual hearings have been shown to be manageable. It would be great if this experience gets us to the tipping point of widespread acceptance and take-up of electronic signatures and video evidence,” she concluded.
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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