Lawyers shouldn’t be afraid of technology. For years there’s been a fear that legal professionals are going to be replaced by technology. Exactly the opposite is true. The way we practice law is changing. Software is providing relief with a lot of the time-consuming paperwork. But that doesn’t mean that lawyers are anywhere near being replaceable.
New regulations like GDPR and CCPA have increased the need for legal assistance on the corporate side, while over 80% of individuals in the U.S. can’t access the counsel they need. Firms who succeed in adapting to the post pandemic world and adopt new technology-enabled ways of doing business are going to be at a major competitive advantage.
We sat down with Maya Markovich to talk about how law firms can automate and productize their practice.
For most businesses 2020 was a shock to the system. But the legal industry was particularly unprepared for the move to a fully digital work environment. It forced a lot of us to seriously rethink how law is practiced. Weaknesses in intake processes, the artificial nature of the billable hour model, and poor project management practices became front and center problems over night.
Since then, numerous firms, lawyers, and tech companies have stepped up to take on the issue of how we can modernize the practice of law.
The pandemic wasn’t alone in pushing us toward a tech-enabled future. As economic inequality has worsened over the last few decades, so has demand for efficient affordable legal services that can only be delivered through software. Sadly, the legal industry’s slow adoption of technology has, if anything, widened the justice gap.
The same software that firms needed for their survival during the pandemic can also be the key to post-pandemic growth. Legal tech has come a long way in making it possible for firms to streamline their operations to a point where they can serve a lot more clients. Firms are getting more efficient and are minimizing their overhead by doing things like improving intake procedures, simplifying billing processes, and implementing digital time capture software. Effectively updating your tech stack can make your firm more resilient to black swan events like the pandemic, but it also opens possibilities for firms who are paying attention to how law will be practiced in the near future.
There’s a tendency among lawyers to think of our work as entirely bespoke. If we’re honest, there’s a ton of ‘turn the crank’ work which can and should be automated. When lawyers can automate their simple tasks, it frees time to serve more clients, focus their unique skills where they’re most valuable, and even unbundle some of their work from the non-scalable billable hour model.
Things like simple tech enabled intake processes and document drafting automation can save you time, make your firm more attractive to prospective clients who are shopping around, allow you to serve more clients from different backgrounds and open the door to saleable revenue through productization.
There are other benefits to deploying new technologies. Software can change the way employees are working in your firm, change the way you interact with clients, help to eliminate bias and make your firm more profitable. But the benefits of legal technology don’t come out of thin air and magical thinking.
In the U.S., roles like project management and business development have historically been viewed as overhead. That leads firms into trying to beg, borrow, and steal bandwidth from other already extended support teams. Technology enablement should never increase the workload for you, your junior partners, or paralegals. You need people whose entire job is focused on running those projects with a business mindset. The good news is this creates a compelling new entry point into the industry for talented new legal professionals.
It shouldn’t have taken a global pandemic for the legal industry to understand the importance of staying with the technological times. The digital age is here. It’s important that firms not only modernize their tech stack, but also their workforce.
Firms who embrace new business models, new technologies, and new types of team members will be able to serve more clients and see more growth than ever before.
With her unique background spanning VC, law, behavioral science, and change design, Maya Markovich delivers technology, process, and business growth services worldwide. For over five years she worked with Nextlaw Labs/Nextlaw Ventures at Dentons, the world’s largest firm, as chief growth officer. Maya is currently justice tech executive in residence at Village Capital and executive director at the Justice Technology Association, nonprofit trade association supporting technology solutions to help people navigate legal matters to foster hope, independence, and self-empowerment and
contribute to a fairer legal system. She also advises multiple high-growth startups, investor and venture funds, and consults on legal innovation.
In 2020 Maya was named one of five “Influential Women of Legal Tech” by ILTA, a “Woman Leading Legal Tech” by The Technolawgist in 2019, and an ABA Legal Technology Resource Center “Woman of Legal Tech 2018” for her work in designing, promoting, and driving the future of the legal industry around the globe.
Daniels-Head Insurance Agency (DHIA) seeks thoughts and insights from a variety of individuals and organizations in the industry. The guest content on this blog represents the individual opinion of the author and not that of DHIA. Nor is it the opinion of DHIA’s underwriters and business partners. Neither DHIA nor DHIA’s business partners are recommending, endorsing, or sponsoring any companies, or third parties mentioned in this blog.
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