Thought leader

By Lisa Hammond, CEO and cofounder, Centrix

While globalisation and technology have enabled new business opportunities for legal practices, they have at the same time made the market more competitive and pressured. Whether a firm with offices around the globe or a single practice, law firms today have to bring together the best of what they have to provide personalised, high value – but competitively priced – differentiated services. Never has there been a greater onus on speed, agility and the need to know your customer.

Ability to share and analyse data, have vital information at your fingertips, launch new services and implement new working practices quickly, will all be critical to success. Law firms run on information, but getting the right information to the people who need it, when they need it, and in a secure, straightforward and timely fashion, is far from easy. And it’s also becoming harder, as increasing numbers of people need to work remotely, collaboratively or moving between locations. Technology options allow law firms to address these challenges, at the same time as driving down costs and upping productivity and efficiency. The question is just how well are they being put into practice?

IT has become the fourth major resource available to partners to shape and operate their firms. The other three – people, finance and physical assets – have been managed for years. IT is a relative newcomer, however – and in many cases it has been left to the IT professionals to manage and deploy within companies, with little or no involvement from senior partners or the ‘business user’. The resulting discord between IT and the business often means that many practices fail to capture value from their IT investments. Investing in technology is one thing, but is that investment aligned to business objectives or strategy and delivering measurable return?

It is high time to see IT for what it is – a major investment that can radically affect the way legal companies perform, serve customers, communicate externally and internally and build a brand. Understanding the importance of the fourth resource and building it into the operating imperatives of a legal firm, as well as into strategies and business plans, is an essential skill for today’s practice partner. The success of IT investments also requires common understanding among the senior partners responsible for running the business and the firm’s IT organisation. Senior partners know how to talk about finance, because they all understand the language and can agree on such common metrics as P&L, balance sheets and cost-to-income ratio. They can do the same with most elements of operations, marketing and sales. So why not with IT?

Given the speed of change in the business environment and the impact of globalisation, there is no room for senior partners to abdicate responsibility for IT. How IT is used to underpin service delivery could have a fundamental impact on the future success of the practice.