Technology tools

The challenge for in-house teams

With a plethora of new legal technology tools being developed in recent years, in-house teams are spoilt for choice. Despite this, 74% of legal operations professionals say that their current legal technology infrastructure fails to meet their needs (Consero Group 2020 Legal Operations Report).

There are a number of pitfalls which in-house teams face when selecting and implementing new technology, including:

• Difficulty cutting through the ‘sales pitch’ and technical jargon to select the right tool for the right process.
• Securing budget for tools which may be seen by the business as only used by or benefitting the legal department.
• Ensuring that the legal technology stack is future fit – particularly in an environment characterised by increasing complexity, rapid change, volatility and uncertainty.
• Trying to automate or improve processes that aren’t fit for purpose or shouldn’t exist.
• Jumping directly to the solution before fully understanding the problem.
• Underestimating the importance of stakeholder engagement and change management during the selection and implementation process.
• Failing to fully embed existing tools or to utilise available functionality which negatively impacts ROI, future technology approval requests and the perception of legal technology tools within the team and wider business.
• Resistance by lawyers to adopting new ways of working.
• Selecting point solutions which do not speak to other tools in the tech stack, creating data silos, duplication of processes and additional administration for users.
• Selecting tools on a piecemeal basis without a legal technology, roadmap or governance framework or in isolation, without reference to your legal department or organisation’s strategy.