| Date: | 26th April 2023 |
| Time: | 8.30-10.30am |
| Place: | The Moniker, |
| 25 Fenchurch Ave. | |
| London |
Legal breakfast roundtable
In our latest Legal Breakfast roundtable we brought together senior leaders from across the legal space to share their experiences, challenges, and insights around 'Embedding Enterprise Systems in Legal'
After a lively conversation we reached a unanimous concluded that Change Adoption and the talent gap are the key obstacles to implementing new enterprise systems.
| Date: | 26th April 2023 |
| Time: | 8.30-10.30am |
| Place: | The Moniker, |
| 25 Fenchurch Ave. | |
| London |
Technology can transform the way legal firms operate, making them more efficient, productive, and competitive. However, adopting change can be daunting for many organisations, particularly if they have entrenched systems and processes.
How to educate lawyers
During the roundtable, need for a cultural shift to encourage change adoption at the fee-earner and partner levels in the legal industry quickly became the main topic of conversation. It was widely acknowledged that one of the biggest challenges is educating lawyers on the nature of change. As highly specialised experts in their field, it can be hard to convince them to learn new skills or processes that they may not see as directly related to their work.
To tackle this issue, we discussed various approaches, such as change training initiatives and champion networks, but came to the conclusion that there is no easy answer to this.
Time well spent
Further impeding efforts to implement transformation is the significant difficulty of bringing people together in an LLP setting, particularly at the fee-earner level. The highly demanding and often unpredictable nature of legal work, coupled with the high value placed on the time of the fee earners means that the legal industry is one of the most challenging and complex industries in which to navigate change.
We speculated that this may be in part due to a lack of sponsorship at a leadership level. There needs to be responsibility with leadership to recognise these initiatives as strategic priorities, rather than tick box exercises.
The legal IT sector is facing a talent gap, with a shortage of skilled professionals who can develop and implement the latest technologies.
Historically, the focus has been to look at software vendors to support implementation, but it was made clear in our discussion that the relationships between vendors and clients are rarely plain-sailing, as costs continue to rise and high demand causes quality of delivery to decline the frustrations were clear.
The overall feeling of being “overpromised, underdelivered” and poor after care, especially in regard to embedding lasting change, led all attendees to agree on the need to build an in-house knowledge base and look to both management consultancy and interim recruitment partners for support in the implementation of enterprise systems.
With most firms wanting to build internal capability and increasing levels of technology transformation within the industry, the in-demand skillsets are increasingly difficult to find. With the increased scarcity, we're seeing a number of firms embrace the opportunity for remote teams that was created during the pandemic to allow them to draw resource from a global talent pool.
If you’re interested in future legal industry events, please get in touch here.
