Chris Cartrett at Aderant on three to watch in the next decade of delivery
It’s somewhat serendipitous that we’re now talking about the law firm of 2020. Looking back at recent years, it seems as though every industry has had its own version of a ‘2020 vision’ and, as technology leaders, we’re prone to constantly looking toward the future. At Aderant, we introduced the concept ‘Your Firm 2020’ about four years ago. In a nutshell, it’s the things your firm’s technology must enable it to do in order to be successful in 2020 and beyond.
At the time, we predicted that four main concepts would be essential: automation, mobility, collaboration and cybersecurity. As we reach this landmark point in time, I think it’s safe to say these concepts have played out pretty much as we predicted.
According to Altman Weil’s Law firms in transition 2019 survey, 48% of respondents reported using technology to automate previously manual tasks in the quest to increase efficiency. In the same survey, 63.3% of respondents cited changes to when and where they work, therefore necessitating mobile access to tools and information.
Our own market research in recent years – the annual Business of law and legal technology survey – revealed that 57% of respondents use a mobile device for something as simple as time entry. In addition, 47% said the types of people with whom they collaborate inside a law firm now is significantly different to the situation five years ago. Finally, in the year 2017–18 57% of legal professionals considered cybersecurity to be among the top challenges facing their firm.
Although our predictions have, for the most part, unfolded accurately, we’re not going to sit back and say we told you so. On the contrary, we’re once again looking ahead to the next five years and the future of legal technology. The way we develop our products and navigate the years ahead is always done with an eye on what clients and employees are going to demand from their law firms. We predict that three main concepts will play out over the next five years: business-tobusiness collaboration, the adaptive experience and cloud adoption …
This article was first published in Briefing’s December/January issue ‘delivery of the decade’, click here to read the full article.
