The fifth episode in the Wolters Kluwer's ELM Solution podcast series Legal Leaders Exchange, called Building your own legal tech roadmap, features our experts Nathan Cemenska and Jeffrey Solomon on how to ensure that the investments you make in legal technology actually help you achieve your legal and business goals. It’s an important point, especially now, when legal departments are increasingly turning to technology to help them maintain a high level of performance while budgets for internal hiring and outside counsel are not keeping pace with increased demands.
Across industries, legal departments that face these challenges are choosing legal technology solutions to help them close the gap between expectations and what they can deliver. This is a wise choice, as technology can help legal teams to operate more efficiently and control costs while continuing to deliver good outcomes.
Wherever your organization stands in terms of legal tech maturity, the job of choosing and implementing new solutions – and doing so wisely – can feel daunting. Here are some recommendations from our experts on how to begin that process.
- Ask questions. Engage your users and other stakeholders to find out where they have challenges. Understanding the pain points will give you insight into which areas should take priority. And it can help you determine where you are on the maturity curve, giving you a better picture of what your tech roadmap should look like.
- Start with an open mind. Don’t fall into the trap of asking what product you want to buy. Start by asking, “What problem are we trying to solve?” You want to avoid a buyer’s mentality and instead adopt a problem-solvers mentality. It’s possible that you might not need technology to address some of your issues – you might be able to do it with a process change.
- Don’t try to do too much too quickly. Many law departments have end users and other stakeholders who are at different stages of comfort with technology adoption and readiness for new processes. Those who are less comfortable with change could lose trust if they feel they are being rushed, which erodes your chances for success now and in the future. An iterative approach can give you smaller, successive wins over time, steadily making your stakeholders’ working lives better.
- Be ready to pivot. Thinking of your technology improvements as a series of smaller changes also gives you the opportunity to course correct or pivot as your organization’s needs evolve over time. A solution you think you need at the beginning may not be what ultimately solves your problems. With a foundation in place, you can begin to make improvements and get stakeholders on board. Once they are invested, they can better help you guide your technology program from one milestone to the next.
The podcast features more information on starting your legal technology transformation and to hear how to successfully manage significant change. Nathan and Jeffrey share their expertise on why a top-down approach of simply telling users what to expect is not the best approach, and they discuss how to get buy-in and support user adoption.
Listen to Building your own legal tech roadmap on our website or in your favorite podcast app. If you are a podcast app user, be sure to follow our Legal Leaders Exchange show on your favorite app (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Amazon / Audible.com, iHeart Radio), so you don’t miss any of our informative episodes.
