As an associate general counsel, Cedergren said there are a few key considerations she looks at when building an optimal legal tech stack.

“It’s about knowing the business and what the business needs. For me, if we are serving the business well, the business can do well. So any tech that we bring on board in the legal team needs to complement how the business operates. And I think getting the stack right is what we need to better service the business. But it means involving other key players as well, people who we need to work with so that it is interoperable, it is easy to use, the clients want to use it, our legal team wants to use it. So they’re all key considerations,” she said.

“It starts with getting buy-in from the team. We need to identify the need. Why do we need this? What are we trying to fix or improve or supplement? So, bringing people on the journey is really critical. Having the right people pitch the solutions. You need to know what questions you’re asking so you can properly interrogate what the products are. There’s no point not knowing that because once you get the tech, you probably won’t be any better off if you don’t know those things before you start.”

As such, agility is one of the key challenges for teams in building a tech stack, Csillag said.

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“A lot of the conversations that we’re having with customers at the moment who maybe have implemented a point solution a couple of years ago and that’s taken them so far, but they’re now in a world where the regulatory load is just so burdensome on our in house teams, our law firm friends and so forth. And so that together with the changing nature of the work that in-house counsel are doing, they’re taking on risk, compliance, privacy, cyber fraud, all sorts of things,” she said.

“And so, in that time they’re looking for something now that opens up to the whole enterprise, and part of our role is helping them sort of bring that back and showing how the value of implementing an integrated tech stack can actually serve the broader goals of the organisation, but also really show how the legal team is adding value.

“In terms of investing in legal tech, it’s a significant investment of money. However, it’s also a significant investment in time, in change management, in taking the whole organisation on that journey and convincing your stakeholders that this is something that you really need. So when we’re talking to customers, we’re very respectful of the fact that our conversation is quite often the start of a catalyst of what’s happening in that company and just really having an eye on what is the value that this tech brings and what is the problem that they’re going to solve.”

Once firms and legal departments have invested in a legal tech stack, it’s also important to continually evaluate whether or not the technology is properly meeting business needs.

Having some key considerations from the outset, Cane said, can help with engagement, as well as providing a business case moving forward.

“The first thing is, obviously, it is critical that you get your implementation right. Understanding the investment of time you’re going to have to make and who’s going to have to help to support you to get there is critical. I think that’s the first hurdle you can fall at. The next one is usage. So, if people are not engaging with and using the platform, that’s a failure as well. And I think one thing, too, and I found this with some of the early projects that we did, find the naysayers, find the detractors, bring them on, ask them to help you understand where the limitations are in what you’ve delivered.

“A lot of people, they don’t want to change what they do, they like the way that they do something. So it’s like, OK, well, why don’t you like this? What can we do to make it better? With technology, it’s always a case of you’re going to have to iterate. It’s never a journey that stands still for, but also because you want to make sure that it’s aligned to the way your business is evolving. So I don’t think it’s like an in or an out necessarily. It’s all about how you’ve brought it on and then how you use it and who you engage with to get that adoption,” Cane said.

Moreover, showing how technology is “supporting the goals of the business” is key when pitching a tech stack to C-suite executives, agreed Csillag, who added that a tech stack also needs to be “future fit”.

“When we think about implementation, that’s something very important for us. And this year, we’ve actually onboarded, for the first time, an implementation success partner for our technology solutions. So, there is somebody working with in-house teams to make sure that implementation is seamless for them across that whole time. So the legal team isn’t doing it alone because they quite often don’t have an IT team or the IT team doesn’t have time, capacity, maybe there’s a cost attached to that,” she said.

“Then the final thing, I would say, is thinking about the future fit part of that business case. So in a world of, I’ll say it first today, GenAI, you have to make sure that the tech is moving with your team, moving with your business and moving with the times of the industry, and so making sure that you’re backing the right person who can make that happen for you.”

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