Navigating the ever-expanding legal technology landscape requires a strategic approach to adopting new tools and platforms. In this article, we share some of the key nuggets of know-how shared by Colette Burden, a Senior Knowledge Lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard, Julie Farley, a Professional Support Lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills, and Phil Westwood, the Head of CoLab for Gowling WLG.
1. Switch to a B2C mindset
Successful long-term LegalTech adoption relies on gaining buy-in and commitment from your lawyers to change their ways of working. Naturally, legal teams are more likely to adopt new technology if they can see how it helps them to achieve their goals and objectives.
“It’s important to recognise that lawyers have a choice, so instead of trying to mandate or incentivise the use of technology, it's really about trying to work as if you're selling to them – as if they're a consumer,” Phil explains. “With the ‘carrot’ approach you might get an initial uptick, but it’s very hard to sustain that. If someone personally wants to do something, that's far more compelling than being manipulated one way or the other to do it.”
Phil explains how adopting a B2C mindset has helped to build this engagement. Starting with understanding the goals lawyers want to achieve, and then planning backwards to find LegalTech solutions that will deliver the desired performance.
“We look at tech adoption from more of a solution perspective,” he explains. “We take a more holistic look at what our lawyers actually want to achieve. Rather than saying here's a vanilla product, just go and use that, we start by asking, if there were no constraints what would their dream experience be? We map this out in six to eight storyboard frames and then work out within our team the options for delivering as close to this experience as we can.”
2. Focussing on the issue to be solved when adopting technology
A common thread throughout the session on legal technology adoption was the importance of cutting through the market hype to select solutions that are the best fit for the specific needs of the lawyers in question.
Colette works with the Innovation and Legal Technology team at Addleshaw Goddard to ensure their lawyers in the Scottish real estate practice are using the right tool for the job. Her advice to ensure a successful adoption is to confirm the software you're onboarding will solve the identified issue/inefficiency.
"For us, technology has to work with our specific use cases.” Colette says. “So, when evaluating solutions, we ask: ‘Will this work specifically for Scottish transactions? This is because English and Scottish real estate transactions are not identical and require different approaches.’ The solutions that truly benefit us are those that genuinely understand our needs.”
3. Build a core group of advocates and empower them with a voice
On the front line of a law firm, a new legal technology deployment won’t automatically be perceived as a solution – on the contrary, it can be seen by lawyers as a problem as it requires learning new work practices and developing new habits. If the value isn’t obvious, lawyers aren’t predisposed to put in this extra effort. This is why effective and continued communications around the value of new technology is critical.
“You can’t just send one email and expect that's going to hit the spot,” says Julie. “You have to keep trying lots of different formats and sharing success stories. If people see that other members of their team have successfully used something and it's helped on a real-life transaction, they're more likely to think, ‘maybe I should think about using that’. And when you have these positive stories, it’s about making sure these are broadcast."
Building a core group of advocates and empowering them to experiment and share their experiences peer-to-peer is a powerful way to build momentum around a system deployment and encourage user acceptance.
“You need advocates – I think that's actually one of the only things that work,” Colette adds. “If somebody uses a piece of tech and then goes, ‘it works, it did this for me and these were the outcomes’, it's seen as a personal recommendation. Early on, you might not have figures or statistics, so these stories and word-of-mouth are really useful for tech take-up.”
4. Invite in fresh perspectives
The importance of involving younger lawyers and trainees in your firm’s innovation processes was also stressed by the panel. Not only because they are likely to be more receptive to using technology (and therefore more likely advocates) but also because they bring a fresh perspective on legal processes.
“We always encourage our trainees to challenge the status quo when they're told how to do something,” says Julie. “We ask them not to think of it as ‘I've got to do it in that way,’ but to feel empowered, to say there's a better way. This is the same for new joiners as well – they come from different backgrounds, different firms and look at things in a different way, whereas people who've been with you for a long time can get stuck in the ‘we've always done it this way’ mindset.”
The pace of change in legal technology is something that law firms are increasingly aware of. More and more firms are inviting the new generation of lawyers to have an input into how their firm uses legal technology to ensure their innovation approach remains future-focussed.
“We have a trainee seat for that reason within the CoLab team at Gowling WLG,” Phil shares. “Not only are they not tainted by years and years of working in the profession, but also it's because these are the partners of the future and we want to instil some of these key skills in the formative stage of their career so that when they go on to great things, they’ve got this under their belt.”
5. Oversight of your LegalTech ecosystem
Law firms today are grappling with an overwhelming number of solutions, with pressure rising (both internally and externally) to continually add to a firm’s LegalTech ecosystem.
“People often want the latest shiny new toy without realising that we've got something that does it already,” says Julie “It’s about having an informed discussion on whether we already have solutions within our tech stack that could fulfil at least some of the functions, rather than going out and buying more tech. It's a question of trying to rationalise what we've got.”
While there are many positives of the wide array of technology on offer, continually adding more tools can also be confusing for users and a hindrance to technology usage.
“You suddenly realise that there is a huge amount of tech in the firm but who has oversight over all of it?” says Julie. “Who knows what it all does? If an associate in corporate looks at the list of all the tech tools we've got across the firm, they're just going to be completely overwhelmed because a lot of the tools just aren't relevant to their work. What we've tried to do is create a very simple map with the key stages of a typical corporate transaction on and what the relevant tools would be at each stage of the transaction, so it's much more tailored for our corporate team.”
Conclusion: When it comes to LegalTech adoption, there is no end
In summary, what we can take from this session at the Clarilis Customer Forum is that the legal technology adoption process is rarely linear, and it also has no defined endpoint – the process never really finishes. Law firms need to be prepared for technological goalposts to shift, to rationalise their tech stacks as they continue to add new tools to their portfolio, and to engage new approaches to restore momentum when interest is wavering.
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