By Lavinia Calvert
The pandemic has thrust law firms into a digital future that has forced an accelerated investment in technology – especially in the front office. This brings good news for marketing and business development (BD) teams who benefit from increased access to the tools they need to operate effectively in a digital-first world.
The marketing technology landscape is full of solutions that make the task of building and maintaining the right tech stack difficult. Where to start? Customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise relationship management (ERM), social media, experience management, marketing automation, web content management, proposal generation? For some, it’s all of the above!
For companies seeking to digitally transform their operations throughout the customer lifecycle, the answer is not in acquiring multiple, disparate applications that don’t talk to each other or that create fragmented piece data set. This is not a sustainable or scalable solution for the company of the future.
1. Connected Applications
In part, the answer lies in our first trend to watch: the concept of connected applications. In common terms, these are applications that are interconnected and integrate with others, and share a centralized data source.
Supported by the right enterprise architecture and data model, a connected approach to applications will bring many benefits for your company. This includes the ability to become more data-driven across the organization, to reveal client insights faster and with greater relevance and, perhaps most importantly, to deliver a more seamless client experience across all touchpoints .
2. Sole Source of Truth
Law firms generate very high volumes of data throughout the client lifecycle, from usage to invoicing, and it is often held in different databases, depending on where it comes from in the lifecycle. This makes it difficult to get a holistic view of the company’s business and relationships. However, data about clients, prospects, issues and company experts are like engine oil for a high-performance marketing and BD machine: without high-fidelity fuel, it’s unlikely to run very well, or win in any race.
Directly related to the concept of connected applications, our second trend to watch is the notion of establishing and operating from a sole source of truth. One can define it as a philosophy, a practice and a desired state all rolled into one. Essentially, it defines the concept of consolidating and structuring data from multiple systems into one place, so that users from across the organization have a single reference point no matter how that data is used.
For law firms, this often requires the integration of many key systems, such as a financial management system (FMS); HR system (HRS); time, usage and conflict systems; and CRM, ERM and marketing automation solutions.
Aggregation, aggregation and a robust underlying data model are central to building a single source of architectural truth — but it doesn’t stop there. Companies looking to unlock the full value of a source of truth also need to carefully consider the workflows, data management, and the user tools needed to share, analyze and visualize of data.
When integrated in a coherent, scalable way, companies can turbocharge all their operations, leading to better insights, increased collaboration and better efficiency across the enterprise.
3. Low-Code/No-Code Platforms
Possibly new buzzwords for some, our third trend to watch is low-code/no-code platform. They represent a new generation of software that makes it relatively easy for users with limited or no development experience to design, build and deploy applications quickly. Examples include Microsoft Power Apps, ServiceNow and Intapp’s OnePlace platform.
For law firms, low-code/no-code platforms offer the potential to design software solutions to business needs more quickly, without the added expense of a development team. Sophisticated real-time dashboards, for example, can be easily built using point-and-click interfaces that do not require a deep understanding of the underlying operating system or data architecture.
While the adoption of low-code/no-code platforms can offer a greater degree of autonomy and democratization for non-IT professionals within the firm, governance, security and training are remains an important consideration.
Successful companies will be those that strike the right balance between embracing the increased creativity and agility these platforms offer, along with the necessary organizational and cultural constructs to support this change.
4. AI-Assisted Workflows and Insights
An article about tech trends is incomplete without mentioning them workflows and insights aided by artificial intelligence (AI). — our fourth trend to watch.
AI and its close cousin machine learning (ML) have the potential to transform the ways in which law firms handle nearly every aspect of their digital operations. Answers to strategic, complex or esoteric questions are possible at lightning speed with AI. Companies are now able to automate, speed up and assist all manner of legal processes that until now relied on manual, human intervention.
For law firm marketing and BD teams, the potential for applied AI is a particularly exciting development. There are technologies available today, such as QorusDocs Proposal Management Software, that use AI and ML to automatically detect and offer recommended responses or text for pitch documents and request for proposals (RFPs). Ultimately, this helps bid teams fulfill these requirements up to five times faster. Imagine a future where the long-term task of completing Chambers and other directory submissions is largely automated. It’s closer than you might realize.
Many next-generation software providers have already embedded sophisticated AI and ML into their solutions today, and we can expect more and more innovation as these technologies evolve.
From automating tedious or repetitive tasks, to personalized insights and nudges at scale, AI offers companies a future where the art of the possible seems limitless.
5. Collaboration Tools and Workspace
Even before the pandemic, law firms sought to achieve greater collaboration among practice groups, offices and core client teams because they instinctively understood that this was what their clients demanded of them most.
But this is not an easy thing to achieve, not least because most companies are made up of subject specialists who operate in specific areas. As a result, the company’s collective expertise tends to be widely distributed across individuals, practice groups and geographies — which can be a structural barrier to managing complex issues that require a multidisciplinary, multijurisdictional approach.
Almost overnight, however, the pandemic catalyzed exponential, rapid growth in the adoption of applications like Zoom, ON24, Microsoft Teams and Slack — delivering some of the very tools needed to facilitate more collaboration with people, places and teams on accelerated timelines.
So, our fifth trend to watch is collaboration tools and workspaces — a trend we predict will truly change how law firms work internally and with their clients. It is a technology category that combines engagement-centric document management, intelligent workspaces, virtual meeting spaces, and centralized knowledge capture and compliance. This sets the stage for seismic shifts in the way law firms work.
For many, the widespread adoption of such tools across partner, practice and client domains is likely to represent a major step forward in the firm’s ability to achieve the financial, cultural and institutional advantages long believed to be possible from true collaboration.
The Takeaway
Many law firms have been catapulted into a digital future that they may not have prioritized with the same urgency, were it not for the pandemic forcing new ways of working. This change has brought an increased focus on the technology and tools required to operate in a digital-first world.
While software alone is never the answer by itself, modern companies are beginning to pursue IT strategies and solutions that more seamlessly connect people, processes and data across complex operational ecosystems. This is great for law firm marketing and BD teams, who are largely responsible for orchestrating a streamlined experience throughout the client lifecycle.
From connected applications to collaboration tools — and almost everything in between — law firms and their clients are poised to benefit greatly from advances in both the development and use of technology as a significant enabler of digital transformation.
As overwhelming as it may be for some, there is only one way to face the future: embrace the opportunities and challenges of the present.
Intapp
Lavinia Calvert leads the marketing and business development solutions business at Intapp, serving the front-office technology needs of professionals in the legal, accounting and consulting sectors. Calvert brings a deep and diverse base of international business experience. He has held several executive leadership roles in the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, including CMO at OnePlace, CMO at IP law firm AJ Park and executive vice president strategy and marketing at Reuters Media.