Y
our client wakes up in the morning to
the sound of a smartphone alarm. They
check their calendar for the day, then
review their personal and professional
inboxes. They check the weather and
traffic on respective mobile apps before heading out the
door. Next, they might call a car or pre-order a coffee
to be waiting by the time they get to work. Today's
consumers increasingly expect convenience, digital
innovation, and transparency
— and businesses everywhere
are rising to the occasion.
Accordingly, law firms
that neglect to elevate client
interactions to a similar level
of convenience and ease run
the risk of being left behind. As
standards rise and competition
stiffens, firms that build client
trust and foster collaboration
for more productive and
positive client interactions
will prevail. But this can be
difficult for firms that continue
to work in silos across teams
and practice areas. Law firms
are also further fragmented
by point solutions that don't
integrate well — or at all.
According to Thomson Reuters' Large Law Firm
Technology Survey, most participants said that increased
interoperability would help their firm become more
efficient by bringing essential information together into
one convenient location. In fact, 62% of respondents said
they see interoperability as more valuable than any other
concept or technology.
Arguably, we've arrived at a place where almost all
agree that the legal industry needs more efficient ways
of working – and that these silos are bad for business.
While individual point solutions may beautifully solve for
specific tasks or pain points, they take lawyers out of their
workflows and cause inefficiency.
The Rise of a New Kind of Client
The corporate clients of today expect transparency and
innovation, something with
which most law firms have
long struggled. Why does all
this matter? When evaluating
law firms, corporate clients
are not only comparing
services to other firms' but
digital services in general. In
recent years, even industries
like healthcare, retail,
banking, and hospitality
have undergone a digital
transformation in an effort
to convenience and retain
customers.
Your clients are less
inclined now than ever to wait
for firms to catch-up with the
rest of the world. Take, for
example, the rise in consumer search terms from Google
that represent a rapid shift in consumer expectations.
Google search results provide a glimpse into how rapid
digitalization is reshaping consumer expectations;
Google's Ads Research and Insights team uncovered how
the following search trends have grown in popularity
from 2021 to 2022:
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I L T A N E T . O R G
"Firms that
build client
trust and foster
collaboration for
more productive
and positive client
interactions will
prevail."
