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Implementing ‘scalable, repeatable and predictable’ business models
While legal tech and innovation can bring wide-reaching value to firms, this pair said that practitioners should avoid “rushing into solutions” before properly looking at what value different tech providers will bring.
Lauren Croft
Gab Santos is the head of sales, and Adam Bullion is the head of marketing at PracticeEvolve. Speaking on a recent episode of LawTech Talks, produced in partnership with PracticeEvolve, the pair discussed the importance of balancing innovation and stability following the increased uptake of legal tech in the profession – and the different value tech can bring to firms.
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While some firms occasionally “pile” on tech without taking a step back and properly mapping out a plan, Bullion said that before implementing any tech at all, firms need to evaluate what value they are looking to glean from any investments into new tools.
“The black-and-white question is how much value is this going to apply to my business? How is it going to help my business succeed operationally? And I think we talk too much about PMS and DMS and CMS in isolation in a lot of ways,” he said.
“Whereas actually what a law firm needs to start thinking about is, does this solve some of my business operational efficiencies? Does it achieve efficiencies in my business operations?”
In terms of what firms should be valuing in their tech providers, Santos said that “law firms should be valuing the concepts of a business” more so than those of a law firm.
“I think lawyers should be embracing a business operating concept to run the law firms, rather than ‘I’m running a law firm’, you actually are running a commercial institution that needs to continue to make money and be profitable so you can continue to service your clients. From my experience, a lot of IT department managers, they come from a legal background, and I think very few of them are actually thinking this is a business I need to run, how can I run this as a production line without compromising the service and the unique service that you’re providing to unique clients and the unique expertise that lawyers will have,” he said.
“How can I run this as a production line where I can make decisions that are scalable, that are repeatable and they are predictable? And I think that there is a lack here. Let’s talk about a business operating system rather than a practice management system because it’s so much more important that you actually know how to run the business.”
The actual partnership with the software provider is something that should also be valued by firms, added Bullion.
“The software providers are the experts in the software as well, and I think, yeah, we can all add AI to our software and throw something out there. And from what I can see at the moment, a lot of the AI is much the same in the legal world that’s being implemented, and we’re taking a little bit of a step back. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we’ve been using AI for years, to be honest with you, it’s just not necessarily a front-end user AI. But I think, for us, it’s about taking a step back and really thinking about how AI can be used in the future that law firms will then value,” he said.
“But I think for that valued partnership, which I think is really important for us with law firms, I mean, we say no to probably as many deals as we say yes to because we’re not going to be absolutely perfect for every single law firm out there. And that’s OK to say no to those, and I think that’s how we earn that valued partnership with the law firms that we do work with.”
This is especially true in the realm of AI, where Santos said firms are “rushing into solutions” without thinking about the value this tech will add.
“There’s no right or wrong answers because every law firm will be in different stages of the adoption of technology. What I see, in my opinion, what AI can do is just facilitate a lot of insights, information production of documents from really heavy code-based prompts, to the natural language prompting, which is just basically, let me see this data, let me analyse this document, let me analyse this code date from three different angles. Without having to spend a week doing this, and how exponentially you now can offer your services, you have a much greater reach,” he said.
“So, I usually say that a lawyer using AI tools, or anyone really using AI tools correctly, can timestamp your output. And I think that’s massive. And again, if you think about [your] firm as a business rather than just the provision of the law. If I can times five the output, all of a sudden, you’ve got business models that are actually scalable, repeatable and predictable.”
The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Gab Santos and Adam Bullion, click below:
