Law firms are known for their profitability, but often the challenge lies in translating such financial success into capital value for the owners when they are looking to exit their practice. In this blog, I look at how forward-thinking law firm owners can create more value and recover much of it upon selling their ownership share by investing in digital solutions for their clients on a subscription basis.
Topics: Law Firm Management
A recent series of articles published by Zac de Silva and Mark Fisher touched on issues that we've been observing recently too.
Mark Fisher states, "I've never seen a candidate-short market as extreme as this… and I worked in London through the GFC from 2006 to 2012. It's putting so much pressure on all of us and that's across every single industry, whether it's nursing, retail, hospital, professional services, engineering, tech, digital – every single industry is dramatically short."
It's clearly become very challenging for law firms too, and it will get worse.
The article above contains some great suggestions on better managing retention and staff recruitment.
There's another lever that can also help – technology.
Topics: Practise of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation, Legal Operations
I had two interesting conversations with law firm clients last week.
Both involved scenarios under which our automation would improve an overall business process and result in the law firm needing to do less in generating draft documents.
Neither conversation was based on wanting to pay the lawyers less.
Topics: Practise of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation, Legal Operations, Value Pricing
Topics: Practise of Law, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation, Legal Operations
I often talk to in-house lawyers who are unhappy with a technology solution they're using and are looking for a replacement.
When digging deeper, it often appears that they are not using it as intended to be used and are overlooking core features, which is a large part of the issue. Without using it properly, I think it's unfair to make judgements about how good it is, and hard to tell what you need in an alternative.
Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Legal Automation, Email Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management
Artificial Lawyer recently published an article by Karl Chapman, the CEO of Kim Technologies. The Democratization of Document Automation: We have Reached the Tipping Point.
I'm sure that Kim is an excellent piece of technology, and anything that can make it easier to create automated templates at lower cost is a good thing. But this article significantly oversimplifies the work required to get good outcomes from an automation project.
Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Document Assembly, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Self-Service Legal Automation, Automated NDAs, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management
A lot of the focus when procuring new technology is on the initial upfront costs and the ongoing software and support costs. Fair enough, these are important in evaluating the cost of the new solution.
What often seems to be overlooked are the costs of the current process and the costs of delay. This often comes up when someone in charge of the business process has determined that they have a problem they would like to fix. When a solution they would like is agreed upon, they then need broader support from other teams, such as IT or procurement.
This can result in months, sometimes years, of delay, perhaps while the IT team consider if it would cost less for them to build a solution themselves.
Topics: Practise of Law, Document Automation, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Digital Signatures, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Contract Management
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have just released an Advance Notice of their intention to re-tender the All of Government External Legal Services contract, which expires on 22 September 2023.
The revised fee structure caught my eye.
Topics: Future of Law, In-House Legal, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation, Matter Management, Legal Operations, Value Pricing
Last week I had a call from a law firm that I first spoke to in June 2016, basically right after LawHawk launched.
The partner at that time told me “Yes, our firm is interested in the use of technology / automation etc in the profession. We have recently invested significant amounts of time (and some money) developing our own precedents and their automation using the Infinity system.”
Now, more than 5 years later, they don’t appear to have made any significant progress. Why not?
Topics: Document Automation, Legal Technology, Document Assembly, legal practice, Law Firm Management, Legal Automation
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?
Topics: Practise of Law, Future of Law, Legal Technology, In-House Legal, legal practice, Law Firm Management
021 339 527
lawhawk@lawhawk.nz
