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A Tech Adoption Guide for Lawyers

in partnership with Legal Tech Publishing

Legal Marketplace, Legal Operations, Technology

How Bridging The Gap Between Legal Operations And Technology Entities Is Benefiting The Legal Industry

Exploring common implementation tactics employed by law firms and others to integrate technology offerings into their business model

The past several years have seen a significant increase in technology based partnerships between legal service organizations like law firms/corporate law departments and technology/software companies. While we all understand, generally speaking, how dynamic the realm of technology is in today’s world, the confluence of these heretofore two separate classes of entities might be considered a somewhat striking structural development. It is interesting to ponder why these distinctive alignments between “buyer and vendor” are intensifying.

To begin, I think it is fair to note that the underlying rationale for this industry trend are numerous in nature. Operationally speaking, corporate goals such as receiving higher quality legal services at a competitive cost point highly motivates law firms and vendors to streamline processes, improve efficiency and provide bottom-line business value. From a societal viewpoint, as we increasingly electronically work on a wider variety of devices and platforms, there is a natural inclination for law firms to collaborate technologically with clients in an effort to “keep up with the Joneses” (no pun intended). And lastly, there are many strategic or visionary goals in play, many redefining how legal services are delivered via the use of innovations such as artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies which drive these partnerships.

So, stated as briefly as I possibly could, those are some underlying reasons for the trend encouraging legal operations and technology to work together in the field. That being said, perhaps the more interesting topic is exploring how entities in the legal industry are reacting to these needs?

As we explore these ideas, let us first identify a key demarcation point in the analysis. In my functional discipline, building software, it’s always best to factor out the identification of business requirements from an implementation strategy. This piece will take a look at the second component, specifically exploring some of the common implementation tactics employed by law firms and others to integrate technology offerings into their business model. Here are some of the more common approaches.

Partnerships/Preferred Vendors

This is an approach which is conceptually simple to grasp. Most law firms and corporate law departments are probably not geared up to be programming shops. But they certainly can research best practices and identify other leading individual technology companies whom they believe provide awesome value to their clients. This approach of partnering with best-in-breed companies is particularly prevalent in the eDiscovery area, a vertical market where advanced technologies such as technology assisted review, artificial intelligence and advanced linguistics capabilities clearly add immediate, tangible value to the discovery process. eDiscovery costs are sky-rocketing, so there is a huge business driven interest in this area from the legal operations area looking to slash costs in this area as well. It is not uncommon for software companies like Casepoint, Ringtail, Relativity, and others in this space to engage in these types of partnerships with their clients. It’s a great way for legal operations groups to execute various functions in a more efficient and productive manner for their stakeholders.

Technology Based Units

Partnerships are great, but there are some law firms which spread their wings a bit more freely in an effort to develop innovative products and services to their clients. For example, Reed Smith has launched a GravityStack venture, which is a spin-off subsidiary to create and license the firms’ technology products. The Littler firm offers a knowledge management arm, featuring products such as Littler LaborSmart™.  And my firm, Tanenbaum Keale LLP (TK), has run a technology subsidiary featuring our CaseEnsemble™ product for several years.

What are the tactical advantages of an approach like this versus a partnership? Here is one real-world use case. In the case of the TK technology subsidiary, Xerdict Group LLC, our case management technologies exist to support one of the key practices of our firm, our resolution counsel practice. As many know, trials tend to be interesting and high visibility events, but the vast majority of mass tort cases end in settlement, not jury verdicts. The TK resolution counsel practice supports companies with mass tort litigation who are required to track and report on a massive amount of data pertaining to tens or hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs (fields such as product usage, claimant demographics and financial information). The software we developed was tailored to meet a current client need and has helped grow and develop the legal practice.

That’s probably the key message here, that internally developed technology is often the best, and sometimes the only, strategy to help law firms or other legal operational groups meet certain unique, specific client needs in the legal marketplace. It’s an attractive path to explore when “off the shelf” options aren’t available to support client needs.

Incubation

Legal technology incubators are quite common. Unlike some of the other categories, these can be launched by a wide variety of entities — law schools, companies and bar associations — over and above law firms. They serve many purposes, everything from attorney training to the development of new legal processes and opportunities to focus on a specific emerging technology in more of the pure, basic research sense that a pharmaceutical company might have within their R&D unit.

Somewhat obviously, there can be a tendency for an entity like an incubator to be a bit nebulous or esoteric in nature. But if one applies solid project management principles to an incubator, concepts like defining mutually beneficial goals for stakeholders, limiting scope and integrating both technologists and the business into a unit, the incubator is more likely to be successful. One of the frequently cited industry models in this area is Allen & Overy’s ‘Fuse’ incubator.

The incubator model offers some nice advantages. Being that they generally span multiple organizations, they are perhaps free from some organizational constraints and arguably a touch more holistic in nature. Another nice aspect of the incubator structure is that segmenting a resource pool to focus on project based goals, separate and distinct from the distractions of day-to-day operational work, seems far more likely to bring project work to a successful conclusion.

Full Service Partnerships

The integration of a full-service litigation support and technology organization within a law firm or corporate law department is also a common approach. For example, companies like UnitedLex, Transperfect and FTI Consulting, to cite a few, tend to partner with leading legal technology software offerings in areas such as discovery forensics and collection, early case assessments, deposition, trial support, and other areas. They are, for lack of a better phrase, experts in the legal technology space.

Options like this can be outstanding choices for law firms or corporate law departments who might lack the time or technical expertise to immerse themselves in the legal technology field. By selecting a trusted partner, in essence a dedicated legal technology consultant, legal organizations can avail themselves of the expertise typically resident in a full featured legal support company.

Conclusion

We in the legal technology field are seeing more and more unique combinations of entities working to deliver process improvements in the industry. It is important to note that the tighter alignment between legal and technology professionals — two classes of professionals who traditionally speak very different languages — seems to be a symbiotic relationship which is yielding better technology applications and services as time goes on. Bridging this gap seems to be an organizational strategy which is benefiting the industry as a whole.

I know within my world at TK, constructing an infrastructure to track a myriad of data points empowers our lawyers to always negotiate from a position of knowledge. Information is power. This capability allows our lawyers to use empirical data, a powerful weapon against puffery or posturing, to arrive at fact-based, advantageous outcomes for our clients. And I have no doubt that many of the other collaborative partnerships cited in this piece deliver similar client outcomes.

And given this rapid pace of change and improvement, it’s truly very exciting to think about what other improvements we will all observe and enjoy in the next couple of years.


Kenneth Jones oversees various aspects of technology at Tanenbaum Keale LLP in the role of Chief Technologist. He leads efforts to support TK’s computing environment and infrastructure, one that features a strategy of professionally protecting and processing client data in the Cloud with highly skilled and respected leading-edge business partners in the technology space. Additionally, Ken helps lead and support various TK programs in the areas of security, compliance, business continuity and firm administration.