LPM LITL 2021 partner comment: Perfect partnerships, by Access Legal
People management hasn’t traditionally taken centre stage in SME law firms, but this report suggests attitudes are shifting. Asked an open-ended question about where they’d spend their LPM-gifted £100k, respondents pointed to areas such as learning and development, recruitment, resourcing, collaboration and performance management.
This is reassuring, since engaged employees, who derive satisfaction from their work, are productive, eager to grow
their expertise and fee-earning potential, engage with compliance training and deliver the best outcomes for clients.
There’s a clear incentive for firms to invest in their people and processes – and it should help them counter the commercial threat posed by the bigger players (the top concern for a third of respondents). By eliminating excessive paperwork and cumbersome IT systems, skilled professionals have more time to deliver excellent client services, so even smaller firms can differentiate themselves from the competition.
We also saw a clear appetite to invest the £100k windfall in technology, including case management and practice management software, the cloud, automation and IT consultancy. It certainly suggests many are frustrated with their current systems and are looking for more efficient ways of working.
It’s not just wishful thinking either – by 2025, just a fraction of respondents said they still expect to be using ‘fully or mainly on-premise’ software. Some 87% think at least half of their document management systems will be cloud-based, while 86% believe case management will be. A further 84% say case management is also set to move fully or partly to the cloud.
Moving their systems to the cloud opens up new opportunities for firms to work efficiently and flexibly in the post pandemic world. It’s worth noting here that over half of staff expect to work from home at least two days a week after the pandemic, up from just 16% last year.
The jury’s out on whether large-scale remote working increases cybersecurity risk or not – just over half said there was no difference, yet 41% believed the risk had increased. No matter how confident they are in their systems, robust
training in cybersecurity best practice will help to mitigate the risk. This inevitably goes hand-in-hand with investment in the systems themselves, yet it’s interesting to see that, as in previous years, the amount smaller firms spend remains low at around 5-6%, a fraction of their wage bill.
Ultimately, empowering people to be the best version of themselves by investing in their salaries, training and technology that supports their day-to-day responsibilities, will enable law firms to retain and attract the best talent.
This sponsor comment was taken from LPM Frontiers: Legal IT landscapes 2021. To read the full report, click here.
