A lot of technology is bought and sold based on how many features it has.

Vendors are certainly responsible for a lot of marketing, emphasising all their features while simultaneously claiming that their solution is incredibly simple and intuitive.

Buyers, especially those going through formal procurement processes with RFPs, massively overcomplicate things by including spreadsheets with tens, if not hundreds, of requirements.

At some point, everyone loses sight of two of the most important things:

The longer I've been working with legal technology, the more convinced I am that customers should be looking for relationships, not technology or particular solutions.

What do I mean?

There’s an ongoing debate about whether it’s better to have “point solutions” that only do one thing really well or a single platform that can do nearly everything.

There’s no obvious right answer but here's my thoughts.

The regulatory obligations that organisations need to comply with are rapidly increasing, and it's clear organisations are struggling to keep up and find ways to comply. Lawyers can help – ideally as part of a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating other experts and technology focussed on solving the business problem rather than just as legal advice without considering how it can be incorporated most efficiently into business processes.

The problem is not new. Even well-established legislation such as the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 is still causing problems for banks, with recent enforcement action being taken against two New Zealand banks for infringements over many years.

However, it is getting harder. New regulations are continuing to come out, with even more demanding ongoing requirements.

Last week said I think there is too much focus on whether a new initiative is innovative, which stops people progressing worthwhile, low risk, and easy to implement improvements that would make things better.

I recommend focussing on the problems to be solved and the required outcomes, using well-proven solutions to minimise risks. Each small step you take provides quick wins while opening more opportunities for further improvement. Whether is it is "innovative" shouldn’t come into it.

As an example of this approach towards continuous improvement, accumulating smaller wins towards more significant outcomes, consider what the Air New Zealand legal team  - winners of the ILANZ 2021 In-house Legal Team of the Year Award - did recently.

Are we too focussed on whether something is innovative?

That might seem an unusual question for me to ask, you might think. After all, haven’t I been on the Advisory Board for the College of Law’s Centre for Legal Innovation for the last five years?

Isn't a large part of what LawHawk does looking at existing processes, how they can be re-engineered, and finding new ways to work for better results?

Given how little innovation has occurred in the legal profession, don’t we want to see much more of it?

Much of what we do here at LawHawk is far more about relationships, rather than technology.

There are so many ways of doing things better, using different types of technology or none, that you can only figure out the right approach for a particular customer through collaborative, open, discussion.

I believe this is true in any industry, but particularly in legal because many common processes are so overly complex – and sometimes bizarre – that it can be hard to unpick how they currently work, and how they ideally would work given the people involved and other relevant circumstances, without really good communication and trusting relationships.

Two things particularly reminded me of this recently.

[Originally posted 9 May 2017. Updated 14 November 2019].

A number of my other blog posts have suggested clients should look at how their lawyers work and ask questions, like what systems do they have? What training do they do to ensure they provide the best levels of service? 

This time I want to look at the related topic of pricing.  I say related topic, because the pricing options a law firm can offer will depend heavily on the systems they have.  A firm that has not invested in good systems is unlikely to be able to offer transparent and certain pricing. 

Perhaps reflecting this lack of investment in systems, many lawyers still use hourly rate billing and loose estimates of cost based on time that will be spent (e.g. $3,000 to $5,000...), which is inherently unsatisfactory for clients as it contains little incentive to be efficient and can often lead to nasty bill shocks (e.g. $7,000) at the end of the matter when the lawyer advises that it took longer than they thought it would.

To try and get good value, clients often focus on discounts to the hourly rate, which does not solve the problem if the number of hours is open ended. The firm could just throw 5 people onto a simple job. 

Pricing in this way can be a complete finger in the air, where not only would different lawyers within a firm be likely to charge different amounts for the same piece of work, but the same lawyer could charge different amounts on a different day.  Isn't that bizarre? 

Firms that can give greater clarity and certainty on pricing - while still giving good outcomes and not taking shortcuts - should be rewarded by clients. But, for that to happen, clients have to look beyond hourly rates and ask the right questions.  

Will the future of law belong to large or small firms?  It’s a debate that is ongoing.  

ILANZ 2018 was another hugely energising and enjoyable event.  Thank you to everyone involved in organising it!

The official theme of this year’s ILANZ was “No 8 wire”, as a nod to our in-house lawyers' ingenuity and ability to innovate with limited resources.  Last year, I used this term in my blog to describe some of the cobbled-together solutions delegates were using – it was a term of endearment.  This year, I'm a little less certain we should be celebrating this.