How midsize firms are achieving growth through adaptation
Ari Kaplan. (Photo by Tori Soper)
Ari Kaplan recently spoke with Debbie Foster, the CEO of Affinity Consulting; Jennifer Sherman, the chief product and experience officer at Caret Legal; and Laura Wenzel, the global marketing and insights director at iManage.
The three companies are part of a consortium that supported The Changemakers Report: How Midsize Law Firms Are Achieving Growth Through Adaptation, featuring the perspectives of 30 law firm leaders.
Ari Kaplan: What surprised you about the findings in The Changemakers Report?
Debbie Foster: While not surprising, several results stood out. For example, 60% of participants reported that their technology objective is enhancing efficiency. However, they noted that law firms grow in baby steps with no single activity that will instantly transform how they work. There’s no skinny pill, magic bullet or a quick way to complete tasks. It’s about incremental improvement, and you must consider increasing and improving efficiency at a lawyer’s desk. We see generational differences and variations in technology savviness, so what might improve efficiency for one lawyer or paralegal may not apply across a firm. In terms of optimizing the technologies they had already purchased and are planning to add, gone are the days when you bought a software program that updates once a year. Changes happen frequently, and only some people try to learn new features because they cannot absorb what they already have. It has to be a daily focus on how to leverage the tool optimally.
Ari Kaplan: Half the participants indicated talent acquisition and retention as their most significant challenges. What qualities do law firm leaders apply to help their organizations thrive in the current market?
Debbie Foster is the CEO of Affinity Consulting; Jennifer Sherman is the chief product and experience officer at Caret Legal; and Laura Wenzel is the global marketing and insights director at iManage.
Laura Wenzel: This is the second year we have seen legal leaders challenged by associate retention and talent acquisition. It is a perfect storm because midsize legal leaders simultaneously try to grow their businesses and navigate a rapidly evolving and maturing technology landscape. To address these objectives, they seek new hires with the skills to grow their firms and manage their technology portfolio. The Changemakers Report supports the premise that leaders driving change must empower their teams to be successful by communicating, asking and answering questions, and showing up with a curious mindset. They are also changing the culture by trying to understand workflows instead of mandating direction to determine what teams need to be successful.
Ari Kaplan: Sixty percent of the respondents advised that efficiency is their top objective for deploying technology, followed by a commitment to increasing productivity, enhancing security, and empowering client service. How do you see different teams within a law firm collaborating to ensure they select the right tools for their organizations?
Jen Sherman: I have seen technology projects fail because the team was not aligned on what they were trying to accomplish, and change is harder if your mission is not coordinated. Firms that assemble a cross-functional team with unified priorities, whether the pains they are trying to address or opportunities they are pursuing, tend to thrive. The Changemakers Report emphasizes that starting small and being agile allows the core team to consistently build on each success, rather than enjoy intermittent victories, making that change management problem even harder. Ultimately, all stakeholders must be represented in their decisions.
Ari Kaplan: The research revealed that training is essential to effectively deploying technology in a law firm. What training should leaders offer to help their teams thrive in the current environment?
Debbie Foster: Junior lawyers need training on how to practice and serve clients. More experienced lawyers need training in developing business and managing client relationships. The Changemakers Report focuses on the connection between technology and training and how it relates to change management, as there is so much opportunity to empower others through education. The research does emphasize a recurring theme that many professionals claim to be too busy to go to training despite acknowledging the benefits, so the fundamental issue that teams need to solve is how leaders can raise the profile and amplify the value of training. They need to make it part of how they review performance and show the importance through their actions by making time for it a priority.
Ari Kaplan: In my interviews with the participating changemakers, automation was a significant topic. Fifty-seven percent automate document creation, 50% automate email filing with a CIO specifically acknowledging iManage for that purpose, and 40% automate data extraction. How should teams balance their technology deployment with the individual effort that helps personalize an experience?
Laura Wenzel: Many in the legal industry believe they are unique in their operations, but when you evaluate their workflows, you can often find common, uniform aspects to replicate. The research revealed that changemakers understand this and can encourage their organizations to adopt automation where appropriate. For instance, email filing has a strong element of compliance, making it a valuable use case for consistent action. When influential leaders in the firm explain why an action matters, such as centralizing communications and the value of complying to enhance responsiveness, it is an attractive activity. Teams can also minimize risk and security, which are convincing factors that attract adoption. Changemakers are balancing the available automation with the ability to explain the value of higher-level opportunities to streamline the firm’s work to the organization.
Ari Kaplan: Thirty percent of the participants reported using generative AI through pilots, experimenting with ChatGPT, and deploying the features built into their existing platforms. How do you see their cautious optimism evolving?
Jen Sherman: Generative AI has been on a roller coaster in the past 18 months. Suddenly, it would be writing legal briefs, drafting complaints and interpreting caselaw. Then there are very public embarrassments by those overstretching and trusting the technology too much. We were expecting it to replace seasoned legal professionals in its first year of existence, but we have more realistically been identifying realistic use cases. In general, this technology can free up time by drafting a basic email response, scheduling a meeting or converting a table of data into a graph. There are places where this technology can add time and peace of mind without trusting it to replace our highest level of thinking in the law, so I am cautiously optimistic about small experiments that are making professionals more efficient but are not necessarily trying to replace skills that have taken years to develop.
Ari Kaplan: How do you see generative AI affecting the way legal teams work and, in fact, even the model that law firms apply to their businesses?
Debbie Foster: It might be the least popular opinion in the room, but we need to stop talking exclusively about generative AI and start talking about a suite of tools people can use to help them get their work done more efficiently. It might be generative AI, but it also might be teaching someone how to use Microsoft Word or Outlook more efficiently. Or it could be the AI built into their existing document management system. When we focus on generative AI as a game-changer, we also need to consider evidence that merely implementing new technology in a law firm does not revolutionize how lawyers work. Instead, we must set a foundation for productivity to maximize generative AI. Law firms are also generally scared of many aspects of AI. They might not be worried about themselves, but they are worried about just putting its power in the hands of those who might ignore its output. Generative AI will not solve all problems, and if not used properly, it could create more problems than solutions.
Ari Kaplan: Ninety-three percent of the participants said that legal technology improves client service, 90% said it increases revenue, and 73% indicated that it drives growth. What do you think leaders are doing to realize that level of success?
Laura Wenzel: The legal sector has matured significantly in its tech adoption, but simply throwing technology at a problem was a knee-jerk reaction during the pandemic. Many have learned from that experience and seek to understand the problems they are trying to solve, but they apply any technology to it. Leaders focus first on setting the foundation for solutions, then assemble the team of people and set of processes to implement them and build a culture of adoption to ensure success. Without their entire ecosystem supporting the technology, teams risk not maximizing the return on their investments, so changemakers are providing incentives to increase adoption and telling an effective story about its promise.
Ari Kaplan: The chief operating officer of a 55-lawyer firm said, “You are either the steamroller or the pavement, so you need to be progressive in your thinking.” Many participants acknowledged that technology is giving smaller and midsize law firms the opportunity to compete with their larger counterparts. How do you recommend that they get started?
Jen Sherman: A law firm partner told me you were an established law firm before the pandemic if you had a big fancy office. Not as many people are going into an office as often anymore, so the way they know you’re a big established law firm is through your technology. And while that is not a measure of size or prestige, it does signify tech savvy and the ability to scale. Smaller and midsize firms leverage technology to elevate their opportunities and enhance their growth and efficiency. In particular, leaders are focused on their CRM capabilities, workflow solutions, task management tools, and document management and automation, among others. They decide where they are and the problem they are trying to solve, select a technology, implement it slowly and iterate.
Listen to the complete interview at Reinventing Professionals.
Ari Kaplan regularly interviews leaders in the legal industry and in the broader professional services community to share perspective, highlight transformative change and introduce new technology at his blog and on iTunes.
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
