By Adam Curphey and Anna Busch, senior innovation manager and legal innovation analyst at Mayer Brown
As the end of the year approaches, many of us in the legal profession are looking forward to the new year and making plans for the technology solutions we might need. With that in mind – and with the looming prospect of a financially difficult 2023 for law firms and their clients – we thought it a good time to talk about the importance of strategic decision-making when formulating those plans. As we are also approaching a particular festive holiday, we thought the best way to do that would be to compare buying legal technology with buying Christmas dinner and how sometimes we put more thought into our turkey than our tech.
We’ve all joked about having too many cooks in the kitchen, but oftentimes it feels like our role starts at the grocery store. Let’s analyse a few scenarios…
“I don’t go into the supermarket knowing what I am going to buy for Christmas dinner. Instead, I just walk in and wander around the supermarket, looking aimlessly at random shelves and buying things I like the look of.”
We have all heard the old adage “don’t shop when you’re hungry.” The reason is that you are liable to buy too much and wind up with things you don’t need. In the same way, it is easy to be tempted by the many exciting solutions on the legal tech market. This is where a strategy is important. What are your overarching needs? What goals do you hope to accomplish? If you specify exactly what areas you want to prioritize in the coming year, your “shopping list” will keep you attuned to your goals. That is not to say you can never go off-plan – it is in the nature of innovation to be able to pivot as new needs arise. But there’s a difference between walking away with what’s on your shopping list and an extra packet of biscuits as opposed to buying whatever takes your fancy and discovering you have to make Christmas dinner with a red pepper, a packet of custard powder, a rubber duck and a t-shirt.
“Sometimes I force my friends to come grocery shopping with me. They don’t want to come along, and each of us has our own holiday tradition so they have no idea what I need to buy.”
We totally understand that selecting technology is a process that has to involve a large group of stakeholders. However, sometimes we have the tendency to invite those who aren’t affected by that technology, particularly in the early stages of selection. A lawyer at a law firm will look to tech and innovation teams to (at least) narrow down the options. What the lawyers don’t want – and don’t have the time for – is to attend every single demo of every single technology solution. There must be some initial vetting and selection process guided by a smaller group of people. If you start with ten different technology options and twenty stakeholders, a year down the line you are likely to still have ten different technology options with no decisions made. Just as your friends will prefer eating a cooked Christmas meal to being dragged to the grocery store for a shopping trip, your stakeholders will appreciate seeing only the relevant solutions more than accompanying you through your research process.
“I decided to buy one of my friends a Christmas dinner. I haven’t asked them if they need one and in fact I have bought them a nut roast and they have a nut allergy.”
While you don’t need to bring a host of thousands, you do need to make sure that the ultimate end users are involved in the process of selecting new technology. If your solution is not used then it is a failure, no matter how good a price you got for it or how well it slots into the rest of your tech stack. Before jumping to a new technology, make sure you understand the problem and the people affected. This particularly applies in firms with centralised innovation and tech teams: there can be a temptation that you know better than others because you have “innovation” in your title. But the facets of human-centred design teach us that the best chance of adoption is to involve the end users early on. How is the user affected? What would it mean for the user to have the problem solved? At the end of the day, you want everyone to enjoy their meal.
“When I am finally ready to cook my turkey, I realise, it doesn’t fit in my oven . Instead of taking the turkey back to the store or even buying a new oven, I call the maker of the oven to shout at them for not building my appliance for this exact purpose.”
You wouldn’t buy a turkey too big to cook, just as you wouldn’t buy new technology that you lack the ability to support. Make sure that you have the systems and processes in place to accommodate new technology before buying it. Does the tool satisfy your information security and data privacy checks? Will it integrate into the existing technology stack? Can you deploy it on your systems? Is there bandwidth in IT to introduce it? If you don’t check these things before buying, you’ll wind up with a signed contract and a to-do list full of urgent items. And it isn’t going to make other teams happy that you are now rushing, either.
“I bring all the ingredients for dinner home from the store. I assumed that, since I don’t typically cook, my housemates would make the dinner. My housemates assumed that, since I bought the ingredients, I was planning to cook. Now we’re stuck in an argument while the food slowly starts to rot.”
Who will be the cook? Just like passing blame onto others for checks you haven’t made, don’t assume that others will share your priorities. There are lots of different teams and practices within a law firm who each have their own priorities and aims for the year. Communication is essential. You need to ensure your new technology solution adequately fits into those priorities and that the people you expect to assist you with implementation know that they will be doing that implementation.
“I go out and buy every ingredient fresh for Christmas dinner. At home I already have most of those ingredients but I didn’t check first. Now I have too many of the same things and most will spoil before I find an excuse to use them.”
This is a good scenario to end on. Often we want to buy new things or are encouraged to buy new things by others. The best first step in those situations is to take the time to learn what you already have in the business, and reflect on how these tools may be leveraged. Is there a similar tool being used by a different team or practice? Can you amend something you already have, even if only for a proof of concept? The more you do with the tools in front of you, the more value you gain from these existing tools and the more money you save. So there you have it. The last thing you want to do when preparing for Christmas and taking some time off work is to be thinking about your legal tech procurement strategies but now we have done the job of connecting the two in your mind. For that we can only apologise, but hope this article gives you food for thought when you come into the new year. Happy Holidays!