A law firm is a vibrant department. You would find everyone working on something, with rarely any lawyer sitting idly. The workload of a law firm is excellent, indeed. To manage this massive workload, law firms spend a fortune on legal technology.
Legal technology can help clear up the clutter, make the work more efficient and faster, and automate mundane tasks to free up some lawyers’ time. In addition, the effective use of legal technology ensures the optimization of task handling within law firms. This is why legal tech is central to the philosophy of legal operations in strategizing the legal branch.
If the following describes your legal department, you are in dire need of a technological upgrade:
Nothing is automated in your legal department
The routine work in a legal department includes several tedious, menial tasks that do not require specialized labor. However, many lawyers’ energy and time are wasted on things that can be easily automated using legal technology. Whether it is sending out regular emails or updating schedules, many law firms make use of legal technology to do such monotonous work. If your law firm is still doing these tasks manually, this is a sure sign that you need to invest in better legal technology. With a tech upgrade, your law firm could be more productive when its time is dedicated to specialized work and not monotonous tasks.
Helping clients requires a lot of your time.
The entire purpose of legal tech is to be effective in helping your clients. Through legal tech, you could search for the information your client requires in mere minutes by using a cloud search. The alternative is to go through the records and manually search files for the information that is needed by the client – a process that can take hours at best. If your computers take a lot of time to retrieve information too, what is the use for them? The client is still waiting for a long time before you can get back to him. In such a case, there is some merit to getting new computer systems.
Your office consists of a little too many file cabinets.
Why use file cabinets and cause paper pollution when you can go green and become more efficient by the use of a cloud system? Instead of storing boxes and files, you could free up some space in your office by keeping all your data in the cloud. Retrieving this data is very easy through the use of suitable computer software. Your information is also more protected against the threats like arson as well. If your current tech still requires you to have tons of space dedicated to file storage, maybe it is time for an upgrade.
Your computers do not function like they used to do
Do your computers lag and hang a lot? Are they boxy and heavy? Perhaps a museum would better fit these technological ancestors than a law firm. Keeping up to date with technology means using newer computers that are lightweight and innovative, with the latest processors that help you work faster than you could even imagine working on your old computers. Investing in newer computer systems is a good idea to give your firm some efficiency and get your work done smoothly and quickly.
A significant portion of your tech bill goes towards tech support.
Chances are, you have not upgraded your computer systems in a while, and they are sitting there, getting wear and tear in their gears. You call tech support, but the IT professionals have had a time since they encountered machines as ancient as your computers, and their training does not cover the quirks of these old machines. Therefore, they fail to get to the root cause of your computer’s ailments, and your already crippled system needs tech support again in a few weeks. This is an unsustainable model where your tech is doing you little good and is a cash drain for your firm. Newer computer systems would do you great in such a situation!
The software you use is no longer being supported
If the world is living with Windows 10 and your company is still running Windows XP on their computers, you must step up your tech game. Using an outdated operating system like Windows XP means that when you need some extra tech help, you likely will not get any because these operating systems are no longer being supported. Furthermore, legal software does not optimize itself anymore for outdated operating systems. Therefore, it is time to get new computer systems that support the latest windows!
Your employees take their laptops to work.
What do your employees prefer working on? The computers you installed in the firm or their laptops? If your employees are taking their own devices to work, the systems you have put in place in your firm are insufficient. Talk to your employees, take their suggestions, and upgrade the tech in your department as per their requirements.
Conclusion
Tech is an essential requirement of the 21st century, and legal departments are no exception. Using the latest tech at all times would help you optimize your work significantly. However, if you use paper as your primary means of storage and there is zero automation, your clients have to wait a long time to get the help they need. In such cases, a tech upgrade is needed. Therefore, ensure that your computers are the latest in the tech field, the developers support your software, you do not need tech support often, and your employees end up using the tech in the department.