Extract from Isha Marathe’s article “Law Firms Chasing Client-Facing Innovations Can Risk Ignoring Their Tech Needs”
The pandemic years have allowed legal technologies that may have once seemed futuristic— remote notarizations, blockchain prenups, and virtual court trials—to enter the mainstream, and law firms are chasing the windfall.
As buzzy terms like the “metaverse” and “virtual reality goggles” tiptoe into everyday legal tech discourse, some experts wonder whether firms seeking to catch up with the technological evolution might benefit from a review of back-end processes like end-to-end workflow automation before jumping into more novel innovations.
Whitney Stefko Dover, a consultant at legal consultancy Pollinate, thinks there is a disconnect between firms’ client-facing tech innovation as opposed to their internal technological innovation.
“It’s a lot about the power of the purse,” Dover said. “We’re seeing clients kind of demanding that their law firm step into a more mature tech forward-facing role, but there’s a disconnect, [because] a lot of firms are doing it because of that money motivation as opposed to a true desire for innovation.”
