Guide To Choosing and Adopting Legal Tech for Law Firms

Picking legal tech solutions for a small- or medium-sized law firm is tricky. Suddenly, there are dozens of technologies, hundreds of vendors, and growing innovation pressure from clients and competitors, and all is for legal tech for law firms.

How does one navigate through these legal tech jungles? Are there any tech pitfalls you should be aware of? How do you use technology for legal firms and ensure your new software improves performance? If you have asked yourself these or similar questions, this guide is set to help with legal tech for law firms. Let’s walk you through the legal tech adoption process step by step.

Things To Consider Before Starting Your Legal Tech Journey

Before you even start searching for a legal technology law firm, some crucial work must be done. Before rolling up your sleeves, you first need to realize that legal tech for law firms will only solve some of your problems. Tech can improve your firm’s performance, accessible attorneys from routine tasks, make operations more transparent, and significantly cut expenses. 

But technology is never a panacea. There’s no all-in-one, one-fits-all technology for legal firms. To understand what kind of tech you need, you must understand exactly what problems you must solve.

• Understand your firm’s pain points: Before choosing the necessary software, identify the problems your firm needs to solve in its daily workflow. Through unbiased auditing of tasks and results, you can understand the real issues your attorneys face.
• Ask your team: The main purpose of any tech software is to ease the workflow. Hence, consult your team about their stress-inducing and inefficient tasks, note their pain points, and include them in the discussion about adopting new law firm technology.
• Rely on data: Take a data-driven approach to making sense of human experiences and identifying issues. Hire a data analyst or consultant. If not, collect and analyze data about your firm’s expenses, profitable tasks, and time spent on different tasks. Doing so will help outline the performance indicators of new law office technology adoption and evaluate its impact.
• Review the software you are already using: Assess your existing software to determine whether it has the capabilities to solve your issues. Many widely used solutions, like Microsoft Office or Google Suite, might have hidden features that can address your problem.
• State the legal tech’s end goal: Articulate what you intend to achieve with your new legal tech solution. A clear set of goals will help your partners align their expectations and increase their confidence. After the trial period or proof of concept, you can evaluate the new software’s effectiveness against the pre-set goals.

Implementing legal technology requires understanding your firm’s issues, soliciting team input, using data, leveraging existing tools, and setting clear goals. Done right, it will enhance your firm’s performance and efficiency, making the adoption journey worthwhile.

Where To Search for Legal Tech Vendors

You have identified your firm’s tech issues and clarified your expectations. Now, where do you go to search for legal technology in the law office? Simply googling “legal tech” is messy, so it’s better to focus on search platforms that publish only verified software products for businesses.

Here are the platforms that will cover you:

• G2 is a peer-to-peer review platform for business software products. It is easy to navigate and accumulates quality reviews from real-life software users. To browse deeper, go straight to the Legal software section.
• LegalTechHub is a platform for legal tech resources, including vendors. You can search for a perfect match by case region, language, and other categories.
• Capterra is a well-established online marketplace that connects software vendors with buyers. 
• Crozdesk is a relatively young business software search platform, championing an extensive library of user guides to various legal tech for law firms.

Can’t make sense of all the legal tech options? Ask for help

You’re not alone if you feel lost in the legal tech jungle.

The best way to avoid the stress is to hire a qualified person or company to make the choice for you. However, if you’re confident you’re doing it solo, go ahead and research what your peers from other firms have been doing — some of them might have already been through a similar journey. Keep in mind, though, that each firm is different, and you can’t be sure that the same legal technology law firms would work for everyone.

You will eventually end up with a shortlist of the most suitable vendors. This takes us to the next step of the legal tech adoption journey: demos.

D-Day: What To Ask on a Legal Tech Demo

Most legal tech vendors offer demos before selling their products. Demos are calls with vendor representatives during which they show potential clients what their product can do and answer buyers’ questions.

For law firms, the general advice is to have as many demos as possible. Some experts say that general counsel should set aside 30 minutes each week just for demos of promising legal tech solutions. However, the success of demos lies not in the quantity but in the quality of these calls.

Of course, you should ask for a product overview and discuss the features while on a demo. But there are more nuanced questions you should also be asking the vendors:

• How does the tech solve your problem? Products can be widely used and have many cool features, but you need to focus on one thing: making sure this software can solve the problem you stated at the beginning.
• Does the product give a trial period or a proof of concept option? Commitment without trial is risky. Many vendors are flexible about trial periods or limited proof of concept sessions and are happy to suggest multiple options if you ask.
• Are there any potential integration issues with the software you’re already using? Prepare a list of software tools you’re already using and ask the vendor about the pitfalls.
• Has the product had any data security issues? How does the vendor ensure that its product is secure for processing sensitive data? If the vendor has some kind of security brochure, it’s a good sign.
• What issues do the vendor’s clients have when adopting their products? This might be an uncomfortable question for the vendor, but it’s a great way to see how open and helpful the company is. After all, you’re searching for a business partnership here.

Head of Growth at Josef and a corporate lawyer Sharan Kaur listed her top three questions that law firms should be asking legal technology vendors but aren’t:

Armed with these questions, you will have a much higher chance of picking the right law firms technology after a series of demos.

How To Approach Change Management

Success! You have picked your new legal tech solution, made all the trial period arrangements, and had the software installed on your firm’s PCs. Unfortunately, this is far from the end of your legal tech journey. Enter change management.

At this stage, you must activate your best managerial traits to lead the change in your law firm. Don’t expect your employees to learn to use, benefit from, and love their new software independently. Be there at every step of the way and be ready to extensively use your vendor’s support services whenever you have a question. Having a dedicated manager or even a team to answer users’ queries and hold training sessions might be a wise option, too.

How To Evaluate the Trial’s Success

Think of trial periods and proof of concept sessions, whatever their outcome, to understand your law firm’s needs better. As your solution’s trial period is running out, look back at the initial problems you identified before searching for new legal tech for law firms. Has the new tech been able to solve them? What do the people and data tell you? If not, why do you think this is the case? Is it the product’s limitations, your lack of change management efforts, or the vendor’s poor communication? Or maybe the problem was stated incorrectly in the first place?

That’s why trials are so important — they lower the cost of making the wrong choice. Be eager to take notes and learn lessons from them.

Conclusion

Taking a meticulous and strategic approach makes you more likely to find a solution that aligns with your firm’s specific needs and processes. Remember, technology is a tool that should support your firm’s goals, not dictate them. With the right tech in place, your firm can focus on delivering outstanding legal services, improving job satisfaction, and, ultimately, driving success.