What it takes to manage a successful law firm has shifted. A firm’s accolades and long-standing tradition are now just a drop in the bucket for prospective clients.
While some law firms still aren’t sold on the use of legal technology, the top-performing firms today embrace legal technology by aligning their business operations with the digital processes that influence their clients’ daily lives. By implementing modern processes these firms experience predictable cash flow, increased visibility, improved productivity, and increased client satisfaction, to name a few.
You’ve probably heard the phrase legal automation or legal technology used more frequently in the legal industry, but you may still be wondering what it means. Simply put, legal automation is the use of software to automate manual tasks in a lawyer’s workday.
While legal automation can fill gaps in your business operations, it is not a complete replacement for your law firm’s process. It should be used as an enhancement, simplifying your daily tasks so that they’re easier and faster to complete.
For example, lead generation and onboarding take a substantial amount of administrative work that often consists of routine tasks. This is where a streamlined process with automated intake forms will save your firm time. Automated intake forms virtually eliminate the backend administrative and manual paper processes typically needed to onboard a new client.
You and your staff are then free to give the client the attention they need and start working on their case much faster.
The beauty of legal technology is that it is designed to meet the specific needs of law firms, no matter the practice area. If your firm is serious about implementing legal technology resources like law practice management software, you need to analyze your current processes to determine how the platform can best support your goals and relieve pain points.
A good place to start is with processes where your firm spends the most time. Common examples include trouble finding client files due to an unorganized or paper-first document management process. Your firm may also notice a high volume of late invoices that your staff is spending non-billable time following up on.
Once your firm has identified the areas of improvement in your business operations, you can start researching the best law practice management software that aligns with your goals. After you’ve narrowed the list of law practice management providers, you’ll want to schedule demos to see the platform’s functionality in action.
A few items to consider in your search:
The onboarding timeline
Ease of the migration process
Availability of support and training
Native features versus integrations
Client enhancement opportunities
Security and data management
While integrations to the platforms your law firm uses on daily basis like Outlook are beneficial, an all-in-one solution is more cost-effective and offers more visibility into the inner working of your firm.
A law practice management platform that requires more integrations or third-party subscriptions to function than native features will contribute to your firm’s overall monthly expenses.
We’ve covered how legal technology can improve your firm’s efficiency, and within this lies how these processes can improve overall profitability.
The easier it is for a prospective client to find and contact your law firm, the more likely they are to close. With a search engine-optimized website equipped with online intake forms, a client can submit a request for services or more information in a few seconds. This is typically the time, your firm has to capture their attention.
Once you’ve cast your net to attract the leads, it’s time to reel them in. Follow-up is a crucial touchpoint to closing new business but many firms struggle to find the time. Using communication features like 2-way business text messaging is a quick way to engage a lead without a huge time commitment.
Time is a luxury not always afforded to busy lawyers. Managing several clients at a time without a standardized process leaves room for human error and missteps.
Billing and invoicing can eat up a large portion of your firm’s resources and staff bandwidth. This is especially true if you’re constantly chasing down late payments or running to the bank.
Having an automated billing and invoicing process will make your law firm more efficient, reduce billing errors and even get your firm paid faster.
About this Author
Kamron Sanders is the Marketing Specialist at PracticePanther, an all-in-one legal practice management software. She is responsible for creating engaging content across multiple channels including social media, articles, videos, and more. Kamron views marketing through a customer-focused lens and equips legal professionals with the information and tools to automate their practice.
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AI continues to rise in importance as forward-thinking organizations strive to elevate services, enhance information access, reduce costs, respond faster to opportunities and threats, and create better products. AI and a host of related technologies such as augmented intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, process automation, and natural language processing are being deployed in areas as diverse as supply chain management, manufacturing, healthcare, medical research, and financial services.
Although definitions of AI and what it can provide organizations vary, a widely cited description developed by Gartner is that AI applies “advanced analysis and logic-based techniques, including machine learning (ML) to interpret events, support and automate decisions and to take actions.” While leaving room for differences of opinion, Gartner points out that in order to capture the opportunity of AI, it is important for an organization to articulate and agree upon a generally accepted definition focused on what it wants AI to accomplish.
With companies across industries today attempting to decrease risk, increase efficiency, make better decisions, and deliver better experiences, AI is on the rise. According to a 2021 McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 56% of all respondents’ organizations had adopted AI in at least one function, up from 50% in 2020. The report also noted that AI adoption since last year has increased most at companies headquartered in emerging economies. Across regions, the adoption rate is highest at Indian companies, followed closely by those in the Asia-Pacific region.
As with the last two surveys, the McKinsey study pointed out, “the business functions where AI adoption is most common are service operations, product and service development, and marketing and sales, though the most popular use cases span a range of functions.” Leading the charge as the top three use cases identified were service-operations optimization, AI-based enhancement of products, and contact center automation. “As AI’s use in business becomes more common,” the report added, “the tools and best practices to make the most out of AI have also become more sophisticated.”
With organizations recognizing the great potential of AI, it is not surprising that the market size is also expected to increase dramatically. According to Grand View Research , the global AI market size was valued at $93.5 billion in 2021 and is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.1% from 2022 to 2030. “The continuous research and innovation directed by the tech giants are driving the adoption of advanced technologies in industry verticals, such as automotive, healthcare, retail, finance, and manufacturing,” Grand View states.
As part of our efforts to focus attention on the innovative knowledge management vendors that are imbuing their offerings with AI and automation, in this issue, KMWorld presents the KMWorld AI 50: The Companies Empowering Intelligent Knowledge Management. We invite you to explore the companies on this list to understand why they stand out, and to also review the AI Trailblazer section in which executives of these organizations explain the value of their intelligent approaches.
Be sure to join us as we continue to explore AI and a wide range of other knowledge management topics in person at the annual KMWorld conference at the JM Marriott in Washington, D.C., November 7-10.
We encourage you to visit the websites of the companies on this year’s list. In the AI TRAILBLAZER Spotlights, executives share their opinions and how their solutions help customers realize their business goals.
KMWorld is the leading publisher, conference organizer, and information provider serving the knowledge management, content management, and document management markets.
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Enterprise content management is a set of defined processes, strategies and tools that allows a business to effectively obtain, organize, store and deliver critical information to its employees, business stakeholders and customers. ECM has rapidly evolved as different forms of content have been introduced to the work environment. However, these tools continue to focus on digitally managing a company’s information in a centralized repository and using the digital content to support business processes and help achieve goals.
Enterprise content management does not refer to a single technology or process. It is an umbrella term that describes the combination of methods, tools and strategies that support capturing and managing content, as well as the storage, preservation and delivery of information throughout its lifecycle.
The definition of content can range significantly, but it generally refers to any information that employees use to do their work. In the context of traditional ECM, content often took the form of paper documents such as invoices, resumes and contracts. As technology has advanced, the definition of content has broadened to include video and audio files, social media posts, email, web content and more. ECM can handle both unstructured and structured content:
ECM software helps streamline the lifecycle of information with document management and the automation of process workflows. It is critical for any organization with large volumes of content to define an ECM plan to eliminate operational inefficiencies, reduce costs and adhere to regulatory compliance mandates.
Some specific areas of business that benefit from the use of ECM software include the following:
Enterprise content management refers to the collection of strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver key organizational process information throughout its lifecycle.
Organizations can use ECM software to identify duplicate and near-duplicate content, allowing the organization to keep a few copies of a particular piece of content instead of hundreds. This variety of information will be organized in a central location with document metadata stored in folders, ensuring the content is available to the right people at the right time.
Approved users can find specific documents using full-text searches. The ECM platform retrieves the document and presents it to the user, allowing them to read, edit or print a copy of the information regardless of their location or the device they’re using. ECM software also lets users to look for specific words or phrases within the stored documents, decreasing the time spent scanning content and increasing productivity.
ECM has become increasingly important and complex in recent years for various reasons. Financial fraud and data breaches — and the regulations designed to prevent them — have made effective information governance essential not only for compliance reasons, but also to help protect the organization’s reputation. Organizations also need to manage content effectively for integration with business intelligence/business analytics (BI/BA) applications that help them to use the available information to guide business decisions.
Furthermore, productivity and efficiency within companies increase when they reduce their dependence on paper documents and create an organized, secure repository of unstructured information that considers business needs. Companies that don’t implement ECM risk losing time and productivity as well as potential noncompliance with corporate policies and regulations. If disaster strikes, companies that don’t securely store content can lose that information, leading to significant business interruptions.
Technological advancements are also making enterprise content management systems more important than ever. The proliferation of remote work has necessitated the business continuity and collaboration features that ECM provides. Advancements in machine learning, mobile and cloud technology are creating new opportunities for businesses. New types of content are also emerging in the form of social media, video and audio. ECM software must continue to adapt with these new forms of unstructured information so they can continue to organize data and optimize business performance.
ECM can be broken down into five major components: capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver. The purpose of each component, as defined by the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), is as follows:
An effective enterprise content management system provides everyone in the organization with easy access to all the information they need to make business decisions, complete projects, collaborate and perform their jobs with efficiency.
In addition to the obvious benefits of organization and efficiency, ECM provides a wealth of other benefits:
ECM software provides several capabilities, but companies that want more flexibility in choosing content management tools or don’t need all of the components of an ECM suite can purchase one-off applications from software providers to meet their needs. This approach to managing enterprise content — which includes content services applications, platforms and components — falls into the content services classification Gartner created in 2016.
At a high level, key elements of ECM incorporate the following:
Robust ECM software includes these features:
Some ECM software products include Alfresco Software, Box Platform, Hyland OnBase, IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, iManage, Microsoft SharePoint, Nuxeo Content Services, OpenText, Newgen and SER Group’s Doxis4.
Organizations can deploy ECM software on premises or in the cloud. Benefits of cloud-based ECM include flexible licensing models, easier remote and mobile access, and integration with other cloud services.
An ECM implementation is often a complex process that involves a variety of stakeholders and departments. Before implementing ECM, it’s important for organizations to develop an ECM roadmap or strategy to identify the priorities of the ECM implementation and get clarity on the necessary procedures and technologies it entails.
The first step of creating an ECM strategy is to perform a content audit by documenting all the types of content that the organization deals with, the business processes it’s part of and who handles the content.
Once an organization clearly understands the ECM strategy, the next step is implementation. Other steps to successfully implement an ECM system include the following:
In 2016, Gartner declared that enterprise content management had been replaced by content services — the strategic concept that involves content services applications, platforms and components, but is less concerned with centralizing all information into one enterprise-wide platform. As a part of that initiative, Gartner replaced the ECM Magic Quadrant with a content services Magic Quadrant in 2017. However, organizations still frequently use ECM to organize their information and achieve goals faster.
Content services platforms (CSPs) and ECM are not equivalent terms, and one will not likely replace the other. A CSP focuses on managing transactional content in the context of solving a particular problem. ECM is more broad; it seeks to manage all forms of content within the enterprise, regardless of its type or where it resides.
ECM has also evolved to become an approach rather than a single technology. In the future, enterprise content management strategies and tools will continue to change to adapt to the demands of organizations looking for more agility and integration. As technology evolves, ECM vendors add more features.
More organizations are incorporating team collaboration tools into their ECM approach. Plus, constant advancements in cloud, mobile and analytics technology continue to increase users’ expectations of ECM capabilities. Automation and machine learning are becoming key complements to ECM, and it is becoming more and more likely that cloud deployment will be the key to maximizing an ECM system’s effectiveness.
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