Developers of software and other technology products are passionate people. They believe deeply in what they’ve created, and when you talk to them about what they’ve developed, you can sense their excitement.
On occasion, however, you’ll come across developers who can no longer see the forest for the trees. These creators have gotten so wrapped up in their product that they’ve lost sight of who will be using the product, and how. Think of products where it seems the manufacturers have added features for the sake of adding features — adding capabilities simply because they can, without thinking about whether they should. (This is how I feel about many of the technologies deployed in new cars, which I find confusing rather than convenient.) In service professions like the law, you hear this constant refrain: the client comes first. In industries that revolve around making things, like software, there’s a comparable principle: the user comes first.
The user comes first. This was the key take-away from my recent interview of Dhananjay Nagalkar, Vice President for Product Management at Thomson Reuters. Before joining Thomson Reuters last summer, Nagalkar earned an M.B.A. at Cornell and worked for a series of major players in the enterprise-software space. In all of his prior roles, he maintained a laser-like focus on the user experience — which he has taken with him to TR.
“Software, no matter how sophisticated, must align with the user,” Nagalkar told me. “The user needs to feel that they can get into the software, accomplish their task with minimal effort, and get out.”
How does a developer produce a user-centric product? It requires truly knowing the customer — which is why Nagalkar joined Thomson Reuters when he decided to move into the legal space.
“I had an extensive background in building software, but limited experience in the legal world,” Nagalkar explained. “To build a product for the legal profession, you need deep domain expertise — which is where Thomson Reuters leads the industry. Nobody knows the legal consumer better than TR.”
What drew Nagalkar into the legal domain? In a word, opportunity. “Legal as a sector can be resistant to new technology,” Nagalkar said. “So there’s a tremendous opportunity to harness technology and help lawyers become more efficient and effective, allowing them to deliver better service to their clients.”
At Thomson Reuters, Nagalkar oversees the development and delivery of Firm Central, TR’s cloud-based practice management software. Firm Central is an end-to-end practice management solution that simplifies and consolidates the many administrative tasks associated with running a law firm. Firm Central handles such functions as time entry, expense accounting, billing, and even customer relationship management (CRM). This gives lawyers more time to do what they do best: practice law.
“Lawyers are looking for opportunities to get their back-office work done without changing how they practice,” Nagalkar said. Toward that end, Firm Central integrates practice management with substantive practice of law, combining managerial applications for timekeeping and billing with tools used in actual practice, such as TR’s industry-leading Westlaw and Practical Law offerings.
I asked Nagalkar: what’s the biggest challenge to designing a software product for the legal industry? “In legal, the biggest challenge is how greatly attorney workflow varies,” he explained. “It varies not just from firm to firm but even within a firm, from one practice group to another, and from one lawyer to another.” “Software works best in situations where there are standard processes followed by most people,” Nagalkar said. “If a task is predictable, it can be automated. There’s no need to reinvent these tasks, over and over again.”
The predictable tasks, such as matter intake and client billing, can be handled by Firm Central. The remaining tasks — focused on the substantive practice of law as opposed to practice management, and requiring greater insight and creativity — are performed by lawyers, each in their own way. And lawyers now have more time to spend on these higher-value (and more enjoyable and interesting) tasks, having outsourced the administrative work to Firm Central.
Of course, tasks and processes change over time. This led me to wonder: how does Firm Central keep up with the latest innovations? “Through the cloud,” Nagalkar explained. “Cloud computing has revolutionized the launching and updating of software.”
Prior to the cloud, users installed software on their computers using floppy disks or CD-ROMs (remember those?). When the software needed updating, the developer had to ship the user a new disk or CD-ROM, and the user had to install the update — a cumbersome and time-consuming process.
Now, thanks to cloud computing — the practice of using a network of remote servers on the web to host software, instead of hosting on a local server or personal computer — any updates and improvements to software become available to users in real time. This is true of Firm Central (and any number of other Thomson Reuters products, such as Westlaw and Practical Law). “Because of the cloud, we can adapt solutions much more closely and quickly to user needs,” Nagalkar said. “We can bring Firm Central enhancements to our subscribers immediately.”
As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Nagalkar: what does he see as the next big trend in the world of legal technology? “One certain trend — seen already in other industries, and quickly coming to law — is convergence,” Nagalkar said. “Customers want to be able to do many different activities in a single platform.” One of the best examples of convergence: the smartphone. Back when I was a law firm associate, I had a Nokia (remember them?) for my phone calls, a BlackBerry (remember them?) for my emails, a camera for taking photos, and a calculator for crunching numbers. Today I can do all of those functions — and much, much more — on my iPhone.
Think of Firm Central as the smartphone of law firm management. As Nagalkar put it, “With Firm Central, our clients can perform multiple functions in a single, user-friendly platform.” The unified interface of Firm Central gives attorneys access to time management and billing tools, an expenses tracker, a custom form generator for building documents and sharing them, a client portal for secure communication — and so much more, including the world-class legal research of Westlaw and the invaluable know-how of Practical Law. Because Firm Central is a web-based platform, users can access it anywhere and anytime, which is essential in this age of mobile computing. And in this (unfortunate) age of hacking, Firm Central boasts world-class cybersecurity: customers connect to Firm Central via HTTPS sessions that are protected with 256-bit encryption, and its data security system is SOC 2 Type II compliant and certified.
“With Firm Central, and at Thomson Reuters in general, our goal is to provide comprehensive solutions — so our clients can focus on their clients,” Nagalkar said. “If we can do that, we can make our customers’ lives so much richer and more fulfilling.”
Firm Central [Thomson Reuters]