Legal Technology Journal

The gradual commoditisation of legal services means that IT will be increasingly important for law firms. Don’t get left behind.

Despite Nicholas G Carr’s argument that the days of IT as a business strategy are over, the future looks bright for legal technologists. May 2003 saw the publication of a leading and very well-considered, if controversial, Harvard Business Review article, ‘IT doesn’t matter’, by editor-at-large Nicholas G Carr. It made some astute points. The primary assumption put forward was that ‘as information technology’s power and ubiquity have grown, its strategic importance has diminished’.

Omnia is Allen & Overy’s global, matter-centric virtual file system. Here we look at its development and roll-out.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has been widely regarded in the legal market as among the leaders in knowledge management (KM). It has had a long KM tradition in the London market, dating at least from the early 1980s, and this tradition had been enthusiastically embraced by all of its offices, throughout its global expansion in recent years. With these foundations in place the firm decided, in 2003, to commission a six-month strategic review of its KM activities by a small group of senior partners and KM leaders.

As technology continues to progress, it looks as though e-learning in all its forms might be here to stay. According to a recent study by the Ark Group, the e-learning market is due for a renaissance. The study indicated that 77% of organisations either have implemented e-learning or are considering it for the future.

Are specialist legal IT systems really necessary for law firms, or can they get what they need from the office packages they already use? Although this article was written before ‘The Future of Legal Practice’ (the LSSA Conference 2006), research carried out for that conference emphasised several themes which have echoed throughout recent years:

Have you been throwing money away investing in IT for the wrong people? Perhaps it’s time to look at the bigger picture.

This article is aimed at partners and law firm business managers – not IT staff. As such, it does not pretend to supply the answers to your IT needs and issues. Instead, it aims to challenge some of your preconceptions about legal technology, not least whether many law firms’ business development plans have been doomed from the outset because either their IT strategies were operating in a vacuum or else channelling their focus in the wrong direction.