Bloomberg Law
Nov. 6, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

Lessons From Watching Lawyers Use Tech for Hours

Dan Carmel

Editor’s Note: The author of this post focuses on marketing strategy for a work product management company.

By Dan Carmel, Chief Marketing Officer of iManage

Change is constant even in the legal profession. But what is driving this change and what are the implications for legal technology, particularly those tools that are mission critical to most attorneys?

We have been studying what attorneys want from technology and what will get them to use firm sanctioned technology versus “shadow IT” apps downloaded from the Internet. To do so, we collected data through surveys of more than 2,000 attorneys. And we spent hundreds of hours watching attorneys use technology, then discussing their frustrations with and desires for managing the information they work with most closely. The biggest change we find is not with technology itself, but with the attitudes of how attorneys today relate and want to use that technology.

A new mind set is emerging that’s not necessarily linked to age. Since most large firms report that nearly half of their professional staff is under the age of 32 — the age in the U.S. where someone probably used Google Docs as a primary tool in law school, this transformation is clearly an up-and-coming phenomenon. We call this persona the “new” professional.

The new legal professional is mobile — often working outside the office, not the typical 9-to-5 hours and not married to a single device. Instead, they rely on multiple screens — desktop, laptop, smartphone and tablet — which they expect to work in concert to provide the information and access they need, when they want it.

If you are more senior in the firm, you may see desires of the new professional manifest themselves in something as small as a request for USB headsets for all associates, or more significant, such as the rejection of tried and true technology for unsanctioned consumer-oriented file sharing apps. Other changes include the dramatic increase in the ratio of attorneys to assistants – once 2:1 now 6:1 or 8:1; and the changing contents of an attorney’s physical desktop — two monitors, a USB headset, a smartphone or two, and a tablet.

New professionals also expect more from their software than just information storage and presentation. They are looking for ways to gain greater value from this information — through search and analytics — much like they see in their personal financial portals and news sites. They are impatient and expect their key systems to help them weed through very large sets of information to get to key insights or new information. And they want that information presented in new ways — sometimes in streams as opposed to folders. As consumerization of enterprise IT continues, the new professional wants a consumer-like experience with enterprise-grade functionality and security. Firms must embrace this challenge, or face the risk of professionals moving to unsanctioned applications that do.

Meeting the new professional head-on

Winning the battle for the new professional is a transformation that we have been working on for several years. It starts with who you listen to. Our research has enabled us to assemble a composite description of the new attorney, and this persona drives how we address their needs. Each software vendor will find different insights, but there are several points that we feel should be a part of any such effort.

  • It is more about communications than documents — Traditionally we refer to the core information technology platform that attorneys use as “document management.” But these days, more than 70 percent of the information we see stored in these systems is actually communications. It is mostly emails, but increasingly voicemails, text messages, images and other new file types. Today’s “work product management” must manage both documents and communications effectively and present both to the attorney in context of the matter or project on which they are working. The new attorney is more about communications than content.


  • Go all in with mobile — Focus on providing the new professional with a true mobile experience, rather than a solution that merely emulates a desktop. To maintain productivity and quality of work product, attorneys need native mobile apps, delivered with proper security on a device so the organization has assurances that information will not be compromised if the device is lost or stolen.


  • Focus on “jobs” not features — Traditional software approaches focus on defining features that users want. We have stopped modeling our products on individual features and instead are asking “What job is the attorney trying to get done at this time?” These “jobs” often traverse multiple products. By modeling the job, we uncover the integrations and flow that needs to be engineered between these different systems and create enterprise software that is more convenient and easier to use than consumer-like apps when accomplishing a complex task.Take secure file sharing with clients, for example. If this is defined as the feature, you end up with a separate product, causing attorneys to move information between systems and possibly lacking key requirements, such as metadata scrubbing, and security that is integrated with your core work product management. But, defining the job as “securely sharing with clients from within a document management or work product management system” leads you a one-click solution that automatically suggests who you should be sharing with, based on analysis of your email traffic. It also scrubs metadata, encrypts and wraps information in security policy, enables one click comparison to your on premise copy, and manages governance, thereby completing more of the “job” in an automated fashion.


  • Provide ever-increasing analytics and insight — It’s not about the information you are managing, but rather what the information you are managing reveals about the information — and that is what you need to invest in. Content analytics, search, process collaboration and automation that yields process analytics is the key to unlocking the next level of professional productivity and providing the insights that are hidden inside content as well as traditional data, such as financial or time and billing.


  • Update your IT environment — As user expectations have changed, your software hasn’t. In many cases, firms are still using older versions of their software and are not taking full advantage of the latest capabilities. Often simply refreshing and updating software can be the fastest, most cost-effective way to ensure your IT environment positively impacts productivity and user satisfaction. Your vendors have been listening and responding, but have you updated your own environment to take full advantage?

Time to act

If you do not have an active program for refreshing your environment to address the needs of the new attorney, time is not your friend. These trends have been changing the market for five years at least.

Regardless of your firm size, there is a groundswell of new attorneys entering your firm. The expectations of what fosters an efficient, effective work environment will soon become the majority view as more attorneys become comfortable with technology and as these new attorneys become partners and managing partners. It’s time to embrace this challenge and innovate.

Vendors have responded with products and systems that begin to embrace the needs of the new attorney. Firms that don’t take advantage and rethink the tools they use will suffer defections, as attorneys migrate to firms that provide platforms to enhance productivity and therefore profit. Stagnation will only lead to loss of competitive advantage as change remains the only constant in the legal market.

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