Why Don’t Law Firms Invest in Tech?

A small illustration of a truism that is floating around, in answer to the title question.

Legal Design - Truisms about Legal Innovation - why dont law firms invest in tech

4 Comments

Wouldn’t being more efficient allow firms the opportunity (time) to take on more clients to offset the loss of billable hours? Then their message could be we work faster and more efficiently to keep client costs low.

There is definitely an opportunity there — it’s just figuring out how to get law firms to change the model, and embrace this message. I’ve heard another truism — that law firms want to win new law school grads from top schools — and to do this, they want to offer high salaries to them — and to offer those kinds of salaries, they think they can’t move towards a more ‘efficient’ system, they need to stay with the old-style billable hours….
Whatever the reason, it’s a countdown til law firms will HAVE to become more efficient, regardless of what they PREFER.

I agree Margaret! The healthcare industry (specifically individual practices) is being pushed towards better administrative technology through Healthcare Reform and incentives from the government. Not sure they would have gone there willingly on their own.

Is this still as true as it was 2 years ago? I think about ways to improve law firm efficiency a lot, but within the context of the pro bono departments (where it would seem to be in the interest of the firm to increase efficiency since the work doesn’t bring in actual dollars).