You might be surprised to know that the legal industry was one of the first to look towards digital transformation in the past. The large volume of paperwork and information made governments and legal businesses become one of the first adopters of software for electronic processing of documents, case management systems, etc. more than 10 years ago. Ironically, today legal companies are the ones who lag behind many other organizations in terms of digitization, flexibility, and security. If they want to remain sustainable, however, they need to take more active steps and digitalize at a faster pace.
Do you perceive legal firms as techy or old-school?
Legal work requires a lot of attention to details, caution, confidentiality, and reliability. For decades now, legal firms have established legacy practices for performing this type of work which might give us the reason for the slow pace of innovation they have. We can observe this even when it is obvious how clients and staff can benefit from cloud computing, for example. Even the pandemic hasn’t triggered a wider adoption of digital transformation, as per the American Bar Association (ABA), and we can even witness a growing share of law organizations neglecting online security in 2020 and 2021. However, the light at the end of the tunnel exists.
A large field for innovation in legal organizations
In general, digital transformation has helped us do more business, increase productivity, learn more, earn more, and communicate better. At the same time, it seems that digital transformation has not revealed its full potential for solving real issues in the legal industry such as the most common problems for law firms that come with the increasing workload they get:
- Human errors – mistakes that clerks make are never good for stakeholders but have an extremely negative impact in legal businesses.
- Booming workload – no doubt, the legal profession has become much more dynamic and intensive than it used to be in the past. This puts companies and their staff under much higher pressure to stick to deadlines and respond to clients’ needs.
- Personal time vs. working time – a great share of legal businesses consists of small and medium-sized organizations with one or a few lawyers and several clerks. The increase in their workload (more clients; more requirements; slower case processing, etc.) makes them sacrifice their spare time at the expense of longer hours at the office.
- Burnouts – all the above soon or later will lead to people stop being capable of performing their job and worsening the situation.
We have already demonstrated that all these are issues successfully tackled by digital transformation. The only concern for companies might be related to the way lawyers and staff would react towards the idea of initiating and speeding up the digital transformation journey.
Let’s jump to 2025
The world has already invested close to 3 trillion U.S. dollars in digital transformation. The Managed IT Services industry is experiencing the forecasted boom in demand for smart services and solutions that enable flexibility, cost-savings, efficiency, automation, and new business opportunities. Employees work under less pressure taking advantage of cloud technologies that ease communication, collaboration, accessibility, and save time. Customers have a greater choice and trust only the organizations that provide exceptional customer service and keep their data secure.
In comparison, your law firm looks too ancient to survive. Is that the future you want for it?
Run your law firm like a real business with Cloudscale 365
Now your question might be how you could build a law firm that is mostly or entirely digital and that operates with the same quality as all the common legal businesses we know. Even a glance is enough to prove that innovation and digital transformation can shape a much brighter future bringing:
- Global footprint – if you serve your customers in the digital space, if you process their cases online, if you secure their data, then you will be able to work with anyone around the globe. The legal profession in future will involve much more intensive cooperation with international entities and stakeholders and only modernization of your business can get you there.
- Cost-effectiveness – with your business’ digital transformation comes the reduction of paperwork, overheads, rents, administration, etc. You will be surprised to know that new technologies, cloud solutions and managed IT services can be affordable for any business, regardless of the scale and market presence.
- Data security and protection – there is nothing more important for a legal organization than clients data protection. It is high time businesses acknowledge the potential of cloud solutions to keep operational, financial, and personal data secure and accessible from multiple locations and devices.
- Customer experience in the digital environment – it is not enough if you simply introduce software to perform certain tasks for your legal business. This might boost your operations and productivity, but you also need to consider users’ interaction with your applications. Conduct market research, analyze your clients’ needs and offer them an outstanding digital interaction during all the stages of their journey.
- Optimal IT infrastructure – just like you take care of your physical amenities you will need to ensure proper data flow, access and storage, reliable option for hosting meetings, and constant accessibility and connection between your business and partners.
- More satisfied workforce – we already mentioned automation of all these repetitive tasks that clerks, and lawyers will not need to do in future. This will save a lot from their time and efforts, which could be put into more meaningful tasks than paperwork or postage.
All these may sound natural for companies in the IT or the E-commerce sectors, but we at Cloudscale 365 know that they are too challenging for legal businesses. Here is why we design IT managed services and solutions customized for the law industry to make your organization scale and turn the legal profession into one of the jobs of the future.
Interested to learn how we can help your legal business? Get in touch with our team and bring it into the 21st century now.
