We were recently invited to TechLaw.Fest 2018 to share our journey and how we embraced technology. Below is a short description of the panel, folowed by the full speech Mark shared with the audience in attendance:

Panel Description

Deliberate Disruption: A Tale of Three Law Firm Tech Journeys

In this session, three law firms will share their thinking behind decisions to embrace technology. The impact of technology adoption on productivity, business models, people development and legal services offerings will be explored. The matter of innovation in law firms will also be discussed, in particular the nature of innovation in a legal services environment and what is needed to support it.

Full Speech

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, today I am very happy to be here to share with all of you my journey of running a law firm for nearly a quarter of a century and the integral role technology has played during this time.

As you can tell from my age, I come from a time of pens, paper, folders, typewriters and hole punchers – in fact, if I recall correctly, my generation of lawyers considered the ‘Track Changes’ function in Microsoft Word to be revolutionary in the review of legal documents. It would not be an understatement to say many of us popped champagne and celebrated that ‘milestone’ in legal history. Gone was the archaic hell that was contract drafting.

Embracing technology and incorporating it into my daily operations of running the firm was a no-brainer for me. We are a small law firm and I have been operating for nearly 25 years. Small law firms have specific issues that are more acute to us, as opposed to a medium-to-large establishment where the same issues don’t seem as glaring.

As the owner of a small law firm, I am also essentially a business owner, which means that I have to pay attention to existential issues that individuals in a bigger law firm do not necessarily get to, OR need to, pay attention to.

I will be organizing my sharing today along the lines of these three main anxieties I have experienced as the owner of a small law firm and how COMPLETE DIGITISATION has impacted these anxieties positively:

  • Managing Operational Costs
  • Service Delivery & Philosophy
  • Talent Attraction, Management & Retention + Firm Culture

MANAGING OPERATIONAL COSTS

Getting rid of all our physical files was one of the best decisions I remember making. Storing everything on our secure, personal servers, rid us of having to deal with printing and photocopying costs every month; not to mention the very positive side effect of being more environmentally friendly, and reducing our carbon footprint.

And finally, being able to access all the case files digitally also meant that my lawyers and myself could work from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Perhaps COMPLETE DIGITISATION is a slight misnomer, because we do still need to print documents for clients and judges who request for them. But if we could choose, we would love to have everything digitally processed and integrated into the legal process. The biggest cost was office rent. Imagine paying the $20 to $30 per square foot to store boxes of files?

Providing, work spaces to lawyers and staff at premium locations was also financially not viable for a small law firm. By going digital, our daily processing, brain storming, planning and drafting work is done outside of CBD. We only need to go into CBD to meet with clients and go to Court.

Play