Technology

Shocking No One, Lawyers Who Bother To Count Find Major Time-Savings In Tech

New MyCase report shows the benefit of investing in tech.

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The image of attorneys as tech challenged if not tech averse may seem unfair to the throngs of professionals perpetually connected to their offices, but the fact that lawyers can use technology — at least when it’s presented to them in a sufficiently user-friendly package — doesn’t mean they actually like it. Indeed the barrier to the tech-savvy office is unlikely to be the partner still printing out emails and responding with written notes, but attorneys at all levels who begrudgingly accept technology as a cost of doing business rather than embracing it.

Because while adoption matters so does enthusiasm. Even if attorneys use the tools provided when they have to, it’s not the same as when attorneys respect the tools around them. If lawyers view time-keeping software as “a database where I stick things” they’re going to have a different long-term relationship with tech than those who look at it as a site for automation or a space rich for for integration with billing platforms.

MyCase has a new report analyzing industry trends and while it gets into a lot of different issues from remote working to lead gen, the decision to sit down with lawyers and actually force them to figure out the value of technology might be the most useful finding. [UPDATE: originally I said that MyCase had surveyed its users and while many respondents probably were MyCase customers, the survey was not exclusive to them]

MyCase users are, by definition, more plugged in than the average lawyer so there is a bit of selection bias here. Still, the mere act of asking lawyers to stop making decisions with their gut and actually quantify the role of technology in their practices matters.

This is exactly the sort of technology where the level of enthusiastic adoption matters. Assuming lawyers even understand that automation templates exist in their system, it matters whether those tools are being leveraged to their fullest. Because you could use these document tools to just throw a caption on automatically or something but that’s like buying a Ferrari to drive to the mailbox and back. That power-users are seeing efficiency gains of greater than 15 minutes should tell you everything you need to know about the power waiting to be unlocked here.

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This one may be conflated with the size of the practice as the gains would be cumulative. But with the plurality of users gaining over 6 hours a month, it’s a testament to how effective it could be. But check out that “don’t know” figure. It’s hard to develop a control at this point — no one is going back to invoicing by hand — but assuming that figure is normally distributed, the majority of firms are looking at a 1-10 hour gain.

Online payments are an inevitability for lawyers because the clients are going to demand it. And this is where the attitude of attorneys matters: opt for the bare minimum in emailed invoices or get something that integrates into the practice management platform and really offers some time-saving. Once again, most firms are seeing 1-10 hours of gains.

But the key takeaway is that technology is always progressing. New features are going to make every task a little bit more efficient, the trick is being the lawyer willing to lean into it.

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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