The actual ROI of adopting technology in your law firm

Legal tech is becoming increasingly popular among big players in the legal sector and among the influencers and leaders of this sector. We can agree that there are many advancements in it and that it is bringing the sector to adapt to modern changes. However, in this article, we will walk you through the return of investment in different types of those legal techs and how beneficial they can be for your practice both in the short and long term.

Numerous problems face legal departments all over the world. These problems affect the overall performance of legal professionals as well as the financial situation in their workplace. However, legal experts who embrace technology can successfully tackle these challenges and make all the difference in the world. As a result, they position themselves at a better place in the market compared to their counterparts.

When it comes to measuring value and quality service offered by law firms and in-house legal teams in the corporate sector, 32% of all the clients who work with legal professionals who embrace technology say that they are satisfied with the services offered by them. Unfortunately, 83% of the people working in law firms and other legal fields, including attorneys, believe that technology is here to replace human resources. Contrary to popular belief that technology will render most legal professionals jobless, the opposite is, in fact, true. Technology not only creates more jobs in the legal field through the employment of professionals such as automation experts, but it also makes the work of lawyers and other legal professionals easier.

For corporate legal departments and law firms to reduce costs of operation, they must embrace and make use of new technological systems as they emerge. Doing so is the only sure way of expanding the economic value of their businesses.

To have a better understanding of how technology will positively affect lawyers and other legal professionals in their operations and delivery of legal services, we will take a look at innovations in legal technology.

Document Automation 

Document automation has proven its success in the legal sector majorly over the past years. Many law firms have started to adopt this technology as it is helping them manage the repetitive document and the process behind drafting those documents. Countless case studies have recorded huge returns on investments, not only monetary but time-wise as well.

Other relevant industries and sectors have also shared a piece of this cake and used document automation to their benefit, like the real estate industry which also tends to rely on repetitive document creation and maintaining. This gave document automation a bigger span and helped enhance and advance the functionalities of it. 

Although many legal departments rely on paper documentation and other manual processes for service delivery, which can be costly due to the inevitable human error factor, automation is proving to be a real game-changer that can be relied on in increasing the overall workflow at an organization. For instance, by automating contract management, legal experts can easily manage contract renewals, contract obligations, and draft contracts faster and more efficiently. Among many other possibile workflows that document automation provides.

Nowadays, document automation is something that can be done by anyone, anywhere and can be mastered in less than a day. 

Artificial Intelligence

As more legal departments embrace automation, the next wave of transformation in the legal field will be the use of artificial intelligence. Most people might mistake this concept for a robot uprising where machines replace humans in legal departments. Well, that’s not the case. Although there is still a lot of work to be done to perfect the use of artificial intelligence in legal departments, the use of artificial intelligence will apply to machine learning where machines can perform tasks to solve legal problems.

Check out “Introducing: Artificial intelligence for legal professionals”

Analytics

The evolution and application of analytics in the legal department is one of the biggest gifts to legal professions by modern technology. Analytics not only helps legal departments in managing legal expenditures, but it has also increased transparency, assisting corporations to manage their use of external providers better.

Through analytics, companies can now identify potential opportunities and take advantage of the information they gather to transform their internal operations. The use of analytics has also assisted legal departments in predicting areas of exposure and risks before serious issues occur.

With the daily advancement of sensing technologies in different industrial areas, legal experts are eager to make use of predictive technology that can tell them with certainty when and where their firms are exposed to serious product litigation and why. Although this technology is still in its early stages of development, it has the potential to change the entire legal landscape and reshape how work is done in various legal departments. Such technology will save corporates and industries billions of dollars by helping them avoid fines from potential lawsuits.

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Service Delivery

More and more legal departments are making use of shared services as the slow removal of global boundaries takes place in the legal field. Years ago, legal departments depended on their firm’s counterparts across functions and countries. Today, legal departments are embracing centralized models that leverage their global structures rather than making use of a decentralized delivery model.

Although certain legal matters require in-country knowledge, the delivery of legal services can easily be done across the world where firms are permitted by regulations, law, and license to do so. In the future, we might see companies opting to have central locations for their legal departments that can serve anyone anywhere across the world as long as regulations and or licenses permit them.

Sourcing is yet another area that will most likely look different in the coming days courtesy of emerging legal technologies. To lower the cost of operations, legal departments are already outsourcing their work by utilizing outside counsel law firms, especially in more specialized legal matters. Legal departments may also lower their cost of operations by making use of cheaper offshore providers for essential services required for the smooth running of their firms, such as systems and software updates and maintenance.

Additionally, with crowdsourcing taking root in legal departments, the use of crowdsourced technologies benefits law firms and other legal corporations by enabling them to take advantage of the crowd’s legal knowledge both externally and internally.

Check out: On-premises bites the dust

How does technology affect the operations?

With most companies having an increased reliance on legal operations, technology will, without a doubt, come in handy in legal services delivery. Legal operations professionals will be in more demand as businesses seek to hire professionals who are well-versed in management in their legal departments.

As of now, legal operations professionals (both lawyers and non-lawyers) continue to flock in corporate legal departments as their demand skyrockets. Although legal operations professionals’ career is new, their role will continue to evolve as their demand rises.

To meet the demands of businesses, these professionals will further segment and specialize to be more effective in handling certain duties crucial to the running of an organization. As time goes by, the legal operations professional community will grow, and these professionals will prove their worth when they use technology to share leading effective practices with other firms to help them improve their internal operations.

Without a shred of doubt, technology will definitely improve the legal sector. Although there will be some challenges, including internal resistance from lawyers and other legal professionals, the top legal minds that will embrace the use of technology in the legal sector will benefit in terms of improving their businesses and increasing their revenues.