You don’t need us to tell you that our beloved legal industry is undergoing change! But while technology is serving up a plethora of “new shiny things” if one thing is missing, they invariably all fail, regardless of how good they are!
At Practice Proof, we get technology! We’ve built our own software, our own chatbots, our own document building apps etc, integrated and deployed plenty of them and other legal software products for our clients, and there’s usually one thing that lets them all down, lack of forward thinking by the firm.
AI, Smart Forms, Chatbots & Automations
By way of example, let’s say your law firm is integrating document automation software for the purpose of selling online documents. 5 Years ago, even 2 years ago, generating traffic to your law firm’s website or in the case of firms selling products, your e-commerce store was considerably easier than it once was! These days, if you don’t rank for keywords you‘re chasing, if you’re not running Google Ads, or if you don’t have any other traffic generation source, embed as much smart technology as you like and all you’ll hear is crickets! That’s one problem we typically see with technology integration for law firms, but there are many others, that in isolation can undermine the smartest technology.
One other problem we find is that a new technology that a practice group has instigated, doesn’t garner 100% support of the wider firm, for whatever reason and ultimately never gets traction. For example, we deployed our own review software (helps legal practices get exponentially more Google Reviews) for a law firm, only to ask the question three months later, “why no reviews” and we found that a specific practice group didn’t believe that Google reviews were of any merit and hence, shelved the project.
What Do You Mean?
At Practice Proof, we talk a lot about understanding the problem before devising the solution. You should read our blog, Problem Solving for Lawyers!
But basically, the premise is, that regardless of your law firm’s practice areas or size, understanding the problem that you’re trying to solve should always be the starting point, with the integration of any new technology, new service offerings, or revised brand or design strategies.
At Practice Proof, we can sell you our own products that will generate embeddable smart forms on your website, aided and abetted by chatbots and automate documents, book appointments seamlessly into your calendar, give clients access to their own customised portal, but if they’re not the solution to your “real” problem its just unnecessary white noise.
For example, we’ve worked with firms excited by new technology integration and then built customised solutions for them, only to later find that client engagement proved both a challenge and problematic. It’s a consistent theme for agencies like ours throughout the World, regardless of industry. The adage, “build it and they will come” is a myth.
How Does Our Law Firm Minimise the Risk
Again, understanding the “real” problem is fundamental. In the context of integrating any new technology, start with these questions:
- What’s the Problem?
- Are our clients saying this is a “problem”?
- If our clients are saying this is a problem, is there an opportunity of involving some of them in devising the solution (or part of the solution)?
- Will the Integration of this technology solve the problem?
- If the relevant technology integration only solves part of the problem, what are all of the other parts?
- Will there be other problems that may derive from this technology integration that need to be considered?
- Is everyone within the firm all on board?
- Will this integration add a further or additional value proposition to our law firm?
- How will your firm make potential and existing clients aware of this new or revised value proposition?
- How will we drive attention to both this updated value proposition and of course, the technological solution we’re devising?
- How will we test and at what intervals to ensure the solution is solving either fully or in part, the problem?
What Next?
Answering these questions is a good start! Whilst we think Automio, Settify, Family Property, Josef and Templafy are awesome products, focus on the problem before the solution.
At Practice Proof, we can help in the problem-solving process! We call them “sprints” at our place and do plenty of them for firms.
