Do any of you old-timers remember the first ten minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark? Let me refresh your memory.
Dr. Jones retrieves the golden idol and tries to escape the cave. A giant boulder rolls towards him as he frantically tries to get out of its way. Finally he jumps over a cliff, only to come face to face with some scary looking natives with bows and arrows. Things only got worse for him from there.
The potential rewards were great for Indie, but there were some scary obstacles to get past.
Buying legal technology may not get you a golden idol, but with it can come financial rewards and long-term viability. And yes, there are some risks involved, but nothing that is nearly as scary as what Indiana Jones had to deal with. Alas, you would hardly know that by observing how slowly lawyers adopt technology.
Appara has produced a report on the State of Canadian Legaltech, which shows that lawyers understand that they need Legaltech to achieve increased efficiency, better organization, reduced errors, cost savings, improved client service and enhanced collaboration. And yet, they are not rushing to buy it nearly as quickly as one might expect.
The report identifies what is holding them back. Of course, there are the usual culprits, such as budget constraints (who knew that you had to pay for the stuff?) What really caught my eye, however, was that many of the barriers were variations on a theme, and the theme is fear. Fear of change, technical problems, the required time commitment, security issues, and potential integration issues, keep them from jumping in.
All of that is to be expected. Being careful comes naturally to lawyers. The issue for law firms and in-house legal departments to address is whether they are allowing those fears to confine them to the Temple of Doomed Legal Practices, and whether being too slow to adopt legal technology is going to become problematic for them. Are they still thinking that Legaltech is ‘nice to have’ instead of ‘need to have?’
The question that I would ask Managing Partners and General Counsel is how professionally they are going about all of this. Is there a sufficient budget? Is there a C-Suite Executive in charge? Do they have a plan with key performance indicators? Are they working diligently on putting one together? Does someone’s very big bonus depend on doing this right? Or is it just stuff that they will get to when the immediate pressures of work subside – so never? Or worse, is it something that they will jump into with the first vendor that is sufficiently persistent?
And if they do have a plan, I would remind them of what Peter Druker said about planning: “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
You can read the Appara report here: https://lnkd.in/eebRJTzW