Is your law firm technologically mature? What does this mean? You may think you have a strong understanding of technology, but it might not be deployed properly within your law firm.
Entity management software is just one option you have to help improve the daily operations of your business. Whether you are the firm manager, a managing partner, or the founding partner, you need to explore the technological maturity of your law firm by asking the 5 questions outlined in today’s blog.
Data is the only way to measure the technological maturity of your law firm. You might have an idea of the maturity level of the firm technologically, but you won’t have a solid understanding without data.
An entity management software system is a great way to measure data related to technological maturity for a law firm. Looking at data makes it easier to compare your law firm to other firms of similar size to see how they utilize technology.
Seeing how you stack up to the competition can be eye-opening and lead you along the right path when it comes to improving the technological maturity of your law firm.
What are the priorities of your law firm? Is one of your priorities to hire outside counsel? How about managing how much the firm spends? No matter the priorities in place, your technology needs to match them if you want to consider your practice technologically mature.
For example, if your main priority is controlling the cost for outside counsel, but you have a large investment in e-discovery software, your priorities and investments in technology do not align.
The most advanced law firms will have an advisory board in place that is dedicated to technologies like entity management software. This board should frequently convene to ensure that the firm’s technology aligns with its top priorities and that investment in technology is done correctly.
The board needs to make recommendations about technology for both the present and the future.
Your firm’s technology board should include members from all areas of the business, including partners, IT professionals, the legal operations team, and even outside legal vendors. The board should be able to provide your firm with as many different perspectives on technology as possible.
Your firm has to start somewhere when it comes to a technology plan. That’s why you should create a technology roadmap that can be followed.
With no roadmap in place, the firm will blindly purchase technology, which will likely turn into a waste of resources. Start mapping out technological purchases, like entity management software, to ensure that they align with the financial and strategic objectives of the law firm.
All of the aforementioned ideas about technology are great on paper, but they will fail if you cannot build and sustain the engagement of your employees with said technology.
When implementing new entity management software, or any other type of new technology, you need your employees to buy into the new solutions. Getting employees to buy into the new technology is much harder than investing in it.
If your law firm has struggled to manage various aspects of the operations, like document management, then entity management software can help solve those problems. Entity management software can help your law firm with all of the following tasks:
Switching your law firm to such a program takes time, effort, and energy. You will need to have your entire team trained on this software so that they use it effectively.
The software can also create documents that can be signed electronically, migrate current digital documents, and scan paper documents into the new system so they can be stored in the cloud.
Running a law firm is challenging. You can lessen a lot of the burden on your management staff by analyzing the firm’s technological maturity level and then implementing changes along the way.