A Three Step Plan for Legal IT

Lawyers like doing "high end" legal work. They hate losing clients. And they like to argue about the value of IT. But as Bruce MacEwan writes on his blog Adam Smith, Esquire, this month has witnessed some kind of consensus about how law firms can best use technology for a sustainable competitive advantage.

Think of it as a 3 step plan to successful investment in IT:

1. Go for client-facing technologies, like online tools for creating contracts, that make clients' lives easier, and their relationships and ties to the firm "stickier". Inwards-facing systems are fine, but they don't touch the life of the client, and thus don't have the same impact as outwards-facing systems.
2. Give practitioners tools they can use enthusiastically, rather than complex back-office tools that are for "others" to use and that won't change the ways of front line professional staff (where innovation must happen if it is to be visible to, and valued by, clients).
3. Enable migration towards higher-quality, one-on-one interactions, by using tools that give profesisonals more time for - and a better quality of - client interaction, rather than using IT investment as a smokescreen for not facing up to this challenge.

For more details, read what Maister, Susskind and Flatt have to say on the subject.