Extract from Chris Johnson’s article “Managing Change, Improving Adoption: How IT Can Better Support the Legal Department”
Lawyers have a reputation—sometimes deserved, sometimes not—of being technophobic Luddites. While there are certainly exceptions, many lawyers resist change and avoid new technology. When change becomes inevitable, those same lawyers may complain about the disruption to their workflow or call IT to report frequent problems.
As an IT professional, your job is to support everyone in the company, even the most tech-averse holdouts in the legal department. But how? How can you find technology that will help the most hesitant users get started and ensure that they can—and do—use it successfully?
In this case, understanding the concerns of the legal team is the key to doing your IT job better. Here are a few questions to ask in your quest to understand the essential characteristics and concerns of the legal professionals you support to give you a deeper insight into their worldview.
How Do Lawyers And Other Legal Professionals Approach Risk?
Lawyers are known for being risk-averse, but why? Is this because they’re naturally risk-averse or even, dare we say, pessimistic? Do they get it from their training to become lawyers, or is this characteristic why they pursued a career in the law in the first place?
