Written by Gabriel Karawani, Co-founder at ClearPeople
The legal sector’s digital evolution is gathering pace. Over the last five years, the industry has witnessed more technological advancement than in the previous fifteen. Firms have begun to look beyond industry-specific niche products, and instead are turning to more widely adopted platforms.
The cause and effect behind this new trend is a self-prophecy. Each time a firm digitally transforms they become more agile, resilient and competitive. The increased numbers of digitally mature organisations create a competitive pressure on the ones who have fallen behind, who in turn realise that they must transform to adopt digital processes and business models in order to sustain growth and profit margins. This, coupled with the older, less digitally advanced workforces being steadily replaced by employees who have grown up surrounded by technology, is a massive catalyst for the legal industry to transform and adopt modern digital and cloud-based platforms. In some cases, it will be pure raw survival instinct driving the transformation, but for others, this will be the opportunity of a lifetime to get ahead of the competition.
The COVID acceleration factor
If the wheels of the industry’s modernisation were already in motion, then the pandemic has turbocharged changes to working patterns. The speed at which inevitable change has accelerated - be it working in cloud-based platforms or from home - is already presenting challenges for traditional firms or those with disparate platforms or ineffective cloud solutions. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella talks about years of digital transformation having been condensed to a few months for many organisations and whole sectors.
For firms willing to adapt, the speed of digital evolution represents a huge opportunity to overtake competitors - in the process bypassing what would be several generations of transition in ‘normal’ times.
The pandemic has forced (or is a free pass for) companies to restructure much faster than normal.
A catalyst for change
Systems becoming more efficient is not a shift which just happens. Invariably, the realisation of true staff collaboration and inclusiveness requires a dramatically different alternative. An alternative capable of supporting successful outcomes wherever work is taking place - without inhibiting those working from home - and which fully enables those working flexible hours. This alternative, I believe, is the core of an effective and people-centric digital workspace.
Let me explain why. The pandemic has forced (or is a free pass for) companies to restructure much faster than normal. As a consequence, more team members are juggling multiple posts and changing roles, requiring them to constantly learn and seek out “how-to” type information as well battling the fluid organisational map to identify colleagues that hold relevant knowledge and experience. Often, accessing this detail is extremely challenging - firms usually store information using numerous different tools, creating data silos which are tricky to navigate. There is, therefore, a clear correlation between failure to effectively digitise information, reduced productivity and declining profit ratios.
But through the use of an inclusive, accessible, and intuitive digital workspace platform, firms can create better working environments and higher staff satisfaction, in the process yielding higher productivity and also improving employee retention. Furthermore, such a workspace is more attractive to the younger workforce, who thrive off easy-to-use technology and work flexibility.
Whether your firm is just starting out on its digital transformation journey or is already well underway doesn't matter. What’s important is that it takes the opportunity now to jump ahead.
Driving collaboration through a digital workspace experience
Many organisations are starting to recognise the benefits which accompany the adoption of a digital workspace. Clear communication improvements and a more effectively engaged workforce represent just two columns in the “Parthenon of digital solutions''. Organisations that have moved to Microsoft 365 are starting to realise they can make the most of this cloud infrastructure platform. By investing in digital workspace solutions built on and for the Microsoft 365 tech stack rather than spending excessively on technology sitting outside of the stack. The legal sector is now picking up on this trend, across a range of systems including Knowledge Management, Extranets/Dealrooms and Search.
Furthermore, it was a digital workspace’s ability to break down barriers to knowledge and data silos which convinced firms like Weightmans - a top 45 UK law firm - to commit to full digitalisation.
The choice is clear - continue to spend money on legacy systems, traditional data centres and trying to keep pace with niche industry providers; or invest in a digital workspace platform capable of leveraging the digital cloud infrastructure and flexible enough to adapt that to what is ahead.
Weightman’s IT Director Kevin Brown explained: “We were keen to create a place where people can collaborate digitally. We really wanted to remove the firm-wide reliance on network shares and old documents, going back to 1995. Switching to a fully digital workspace allowed us to manage our documents more easily and make them more useful and accessible within our teams.”
Whether your firm is just starting out on its digital transformation journey or is already well underway doesn't matter. What’s important is that it takes the opportunity now to jump ahead.
In Microsoft 365, most firms and businesses already have the technical infrastructure they need at their fingertips. The choice is clear - continue to spend money on legacy systems, traditional data centres and trying to keep pace with niche industry providers; or invest in a digital workspace platform capable of leveraging the digital cloud infrastructure and flexible enough to adapt that to what is ahead.
My view is, despite the gloom of today, the future is bright and with a people-first digital workspace it's even brighter. Increased collaboration, inclusivity, productivity and knowledge, connecting people, data and processes across silos - making everyone's workday easier, ultimately yielding better outcomes. Legal services firms have the opportunity to make that bright future their own
