Improving Law Firm Efficiency by Helping Lawyers

The Ambiguity of Technology: Speed without Productivity

Software products have expedited discrete tasks in a law office; however, this task-orientation has distorted the practice of law. Although seeking ways to address the delivery of legal services, law firms are distracted by technologies directed at administrative functions.

The timing varies, but the distortion follows a certain path.

• The task-orientation of each product leads to the purchase and maintenance of multiple products. The cost of this maintenance adds to the overhead and forces more attention on technologies and administration.
• Because records area spread throughout multiple products, the firm suffers from an “atomization” of information. Since the reliability and meaning of a record depends, in part, on its context, several databases must be accessed. This process negates much of the time saved through the technology.
• With the atomization of information, the multiple software systems spawn a workflow that is tenuously related to the practice of law. The law firm’s culture, from personnel to business processes, evolves from the firm’s investment in these systems and all but replaces the core values that built the firm.

The attention of the firm’s leaders shifts, at least in part, from the quality of the services rendered by lawyers to the inventory of technologies delivered to the firm.

Translating their procedures and their obstacles to technologists is the only way that lawyers can obtain technology that actually helps lawyers.