Digital Transformation

What does it mean for the Legal Sector?

Digital Transformation is a term that has become ubiquitous across both Tech and other sectors to describe a new momentum in the way organisations are adopting or leveraging digital platforms to solve traditional problems.

The term Digital Transformation, however, much like the term Cloud, means different things to different people. It is a term that has become routinely abused, as technology and service providers either embellish or reinvigorate technology offerings in an attempt to surf the wave of marketplace momentum and remain relevant to prospective customers.

A recent sector survey1 highlighted that all ten of the top ten legal firms surveyed identified technology as the key challenge to growth in the next two years. This offers a valuable insight into the dichotomy of the situation: on the one hand, digital innovation is a powerful enabler for competitive differentiation; on the other hand, business leaders have concerns over how to achieve it. It is viewed, therefore, as both an opportunity and challenge.

The same survey also highlighted that 70% of the Top 11-25 and 58% of the Top 26-50 firms are somewhat concerned about the threat of new market entrants to the Legal sector. To counter this threat, the top firms simply must innovate. Digital Transformation is no longer optional.

So what does ‘Digital Transformation’ really mean? By drawing upon insights from customers, business leaders, transformation projects and sector analysis, we can squash vagaries and debunk myths to demystify the phrase.

It’s a phrase with a wide spectrum of applications, but the goal of Digital Transformation can be distilled down to one simple - but very powerful concept: AGILITY.

The agile business

Agility is the goal every organisation must strive towards on a daily basis in order to capture competitive differentiation and increase profitability. Every team’s mission, the goal of every core business function, and the centre piece of every strategic objective should be to deliver greater agility.

In this chapter, we will briefly inspect a few core business functions to highlight the vital role agility plays in the success of the modern business.

Speed to market

In this digital age, speed to market is crucial in every industry - with Legal being no exception. With consumer needs constantly shifting, the demand for anytime, anywhere access to information is a key driver of market disruption.

An agile legal organisation can rapidly respond to opportunities to deliver new services and capture market share. For proof of this, we need only look to the digital-native organisations that have recently disrupted the legal market, achieving large revenue streams in the process.

One such organisation is the start-up DoNotPay. The DoNotPay app (available on both desktop and mobile) uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide legal assistance to its users, helping them to - for example - fight parking tickets. More and more services like this are sure to surface as AI advances.

Another company that exemplifies how digital legal services now extend beyond so-called 'virtual' law firms is LegalZoom, which helps its customers create an array of legal documents without necessarily having to hire a lawyer.

Efficient operations

Driving operational agility has big financial benefits for legal organisations. From machine learning that automates document processing and instant messaging that facilitates knowledge sharing, to centralised portals that improve case collaboration, operational agility drives greater efficiency and minimises the time spent on individual cases.

Customer satisfaction

Possessing the agility to shape and engage with customers across multiple channels (online, phone, face-to-face and mobile) has a dramatic positive impact on customer satisfaction and improves case efficiency.

Section Summary

Digital Transformation is about agility. Driving greater agility through the adoption of digital platforms is fundamental to Digital Transformation.
Agility is critical in every function of business operations, from speed to market of new services, to customer services, marketing, case processing and employee productivity.
The Legal sector must use Digital Transformation wisely to protect against digital-native offerings such as DoNotPay and LegalZoom.