I have met with a number of law firms over the past 6 months and 9 times out of 10 they are undergoing, have undertaken or are about to start, a project involving updating their website, marketing automation or implementation of a customer relationship management system. These are big projects and often involve a great deal of investment both in terms of time and from a monetary perspective. The end goal of course is to make everything more efficient thus saving costs in the long term.
It got me thinking and I found a useful article in the lawyer monthly that highlighted the fact that the average law firm actually spends between 45 - 50% of its client fee on office expenses! That is simply not a sustainable business model which is why some firms are going to extreme measures like culling the workforce and even using RPA (robotic process automation) to complete mundane admin tasks like expenses, billing and payroll. Moving to a cloud base IT infrastructure has also aided a number of law firms and has had the positive knock on benefit for employees in terms of being able to work remotely which in turn can even help with the recruitment drive in a traditional market.
We often talk about the efficiencies that can be gained by streamlining and improving the process of content production within law firms and this was recently effectively conveyed by our co founder Adam Elgar in his recent post and the great thing is that the benefits can be seen very quickly.
Of course all of this embracing of technology comes with an initial investment, but the benefits in the long run are there for all to see and will future proof law firms for years to come.
the Law Society points to cloud computing as another way of streamlining a firm’s operating costs. By moving IT infrastructures to a cloud server, companies can not only free up physical space and resources but also their tech team. Because IT staff don’t have to worry about maintaining physical servers, they can spend more time on improving the actual software employees are using.
https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2018/11/cutting-costs-as-a-law-firm-means-embracing-technology/