P2P

53 I L T A N E T . O R G On number 2, I stick to my guns in saying law firms first need clarity on their relative competitive position and practice mix first. To make good tech investments in the right sequence and at the needed pace, firms need to establish at minimum a shared view about which among the current practice lineup are most at risk for disruption by new entrants and/or untenable pricing pressure from clients. When we get to number 3, we are talking big investments in and out of the CIO's budget as well as the time, effort and political capital needed to squeeze returns out of those investments. I think for a majority of firms this needs to be on the strategic agenda in the next five years. That said, each firm's approach will and should vary. It will be hard enough for law firms to digitalize service delivery without changing much in their practice lineup or financial models. Other firms under extreme margin pressure will need to think hard about how tech can help scale knowledge and expertise assets to press down cost of delivery. In the last bucket is where I think our minor disagreements actually come together. Yes, every firm needs to figure out not only how well they can deploy tech but how much better they need to get at deploying tech (and when and where). What do you think CIOs need to focus on and do you see law firms making progress in these buckets? Brad: I think that's exactly the right construct, and I love that it can double as a sort of adoption curve or maturity model for CIOs, because each bucket requires an increasing amount of input from others in the firm. 1. Evolving enterprise environment for law firm operations and management As you point out, having the right infrastructure in place is critical for every law firm. The questions you pose are the right ones of course: cloud, infogov, interoperability and especially cybersecurity. While management will certainly be involved, the issues sit firmly in the domain of the CIO. You also mentioned data stack, and I think that's an area that CIOs should be focusing on more and more. I don't think the firms really see it yet, but good use of data provides an enormous competitive advantage. That can range from knowing more than your clients do to give you an advantage during pricing negotiations (which you, of course, know a lot more about than I do) to resource allocation by client value and even informing substantive legal decisions that can help the lawyers deliver at a higher quality. All provide a competitive advantage, and while firm leadership and the lawyers in the firm are only starting to see it, they will. And on the day they do, telling them that the firm's data is a mess and it will take two years to clean and organize . . . that will not go over well. 2. Practitioner toolbox for modern legal practice (lawyers and paraprofessional as users) Again, we're still pretty close to table stakes, but the difference is that adoption becomes a much bigger issue. Practice management tools really are only valuable if they are used by everyone (or almost everyone) in the firm. The searchability component of a document management system, which can be so additive for collaboration, is useless if the key partner insists on keeping the important documents in a folder on their desk. So functionality is important, and I know vendors love to sell bells and whistles, but CIOs really need to remain steely-eyed on what will get used. But we are at a point where most law firm leaders and even line partners believe at least philosophically that these tools are good for the firm, just maybe not enough to use them too much themselves. It also helps that these tools do not much change the amount of time legal work takes to do, and therefore do not negatively impact the hourly bill. 3. Builder toolbox to digitize services (clients as end users and a multidisciplinary team of makers that includes lawyers) As you point out, here we are talking big investment, real buy-in and also a real- time commitment on the part of attorneys who would probably rather be billing. The key here is incentives, and at many firms the only real incentive is what clients say they want. You're right. Firms should be taking the bull by the horns and identifying the areas for investment that will provide the most value to the firm and its clients and not just reacting to client complaints and RFPs. 4. Tech as key enabler or constraint in service and business model transformation, practice by practice This is the holy grail, and I think it's going to take big forces from outside the current client/law firm model to get there. The idea that real change is going to come from the clients pushing for it is wrong, and that's been proven wrong for the 30

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