Picking the right legal technology platform
What makes a good legal technology platform? Accesspoint’s commercial director, Gary Shaw, describes the building blocks to consider when choosing the right platform for your law firm.
As we’ve seen over the last few years, the legal sector has experienced some of the most dramatic changes it has ever seen. Not only have the technological advancements seen in today’s world prompted a shift in workflows and expectations amongst clients, but without a doubt, working through the pandemic over the past two years has accelerated the need for a more joined-up approach to working smarter – with remote working at its core.
With limited margin for error, there’s one key solution that should be sat at the forefront of every legal professional’s mind – legal platforms.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, the answer to efficiency and innovative working lies in secure and dedicated cloud based legal platforms. For those of you who are still in the dark as to what a legal platform is – in a nutshell, it’s a collection of intelligent, bespoke, and innovative products under one ‘umbrella’. A big plus is that, when built correctly, a legal platform can create a beneficial ecosystem for various tools and apps to interconnect, helping a firm to modernise its process and revolutionise the way it operates. The utopian environment that results is capable of enhancing the main areas of law firms that are constantly under review, such as team productivity, billing and reports, security, and community collaboration/accessibility.
Whether you are just finding out about this concept, or you’ve been ahead of the curve for some time, one thing is for sure – the most important step is choosing the legal platform best suited to your needs. Consider keeping an eye out on the building blocks for what makes a great legal platform, as one wrong step could leave your firm with long implementation times and high costs.
Firstly, building a legal platform can be a very complex task – one that can take up months of precious time, not to mention the level of coding and technology skills that will be required to get the full effect. Therefore, it is advisable that your first point of contact be with a legal IT specialist, who understands the task ahead and has full knowledge of how to create the platform around your firm. All this while still leaving room for scalability and flexible add-ons for the future, as well as creating an aesthetically pleasing and fully functional portal for you and your clients.
Next, think of the bigger picture. Does the platform cater to a truly interconnected environment – where various apps and tools are built to work alongside each other so they can input data into the platform and output valuable information to your firm? A platform that is worth investing in will certainly provide these functionalities – as it is a clear way to retrieve important information such as matter updates, project status reports, knowledge, and insights about cases as well as pull billing information, documents, reporting and more. When joined up with automated legal software, your firm will be able to use apps centred around reducing the amount of manual work and data handling seen within a firm – resulting in major efficiencies and cost savings as well as an improved end-user experience. All of this will support and translate into what your clients receive as a by-product of a much smarter working process model.
Additionally, today’s legal departments are sitting on a wealth of valuable data. A good legal platform will use this data on every level possible through smart automation and clear reporting. With this, your firm will be able to maximise its analytical capabilities and, as a result, guarantee that smart, data-driven decisions are made for the firm’s benefit. A great example of innovative automation and reporting being used within legal platforms to streamline an otherwise tedious process is prospect time recording. Once this module is set, you can adjust it to your firm’s liking so that it automatically begins the recording process from the start and transfers the data straight into your case management system. Not only does this allow your firm to view how time is spent throughout the day, but it also prevents missing out on potential payments from clients. Other areas in which valuable data can be automated and analysed could be through digital onboarding, website lead tracking, web payments linked into your PMS, and much more.
The power of a legal platform is becoming more apparent every day – perhaps this year could truly be the time your firm gains full capabilities and maximises its efficiency. Keep an eye out, your perfect bespoke legal platform could be available sooner than you think.
