Guest blog: Jonathan Ashley, Co-Founder and Director at etiCloud.
Every business faces challenges, but for law firms, those challenges are often uniquely associated with their Case Management System (CMS). Thanks to the fact that we work with more than 200 UK-based legal firms, we have an unrivalled insight into many of these difficulties and the good news is we have several solutions that you may wish to try if any of the following sound familiar!
Challenge 1: A stretch too far.
How old is your software? I really get the impression that some law firms are simply stretching ageing tech too far, and that’s hampering development overall. They’re trying to change an existing CMS that’s possibly a decade old (or more) into something that it’s not designed to do.
My comparison would be asking an Olympic-winning endurance runner to start competing in the 110m hurdles event. One is slow and methodical, the other is quick and agile. And transforming one into the other and still being world-class is very difficult to do. Getting your CMS to do different things, things it wasn’t originally designed to do, takes time and money, so the question is: is it actually worth it?
Speaking of investment, I had this perception that law firms were a) not investing in tech or b) not investing enough. I was, however, looking at this from entirely the wrong perspective. It’s actually that law firms, law tech (software) and managed services providers aren’t aligned properly. When I spoke with several companies at a conference last autumn, they weren’t sure what they were doing day-to-day when it came to tech, let alone what they could do with AI, for example. It had nothing to do with investment. As such, I learnt that we had to take a step back and help firms see the wood for the trees because, in a nutshell, it’s not about lack of investment.
I identified that law firms could be split into two distinct groups. One group adding and tweaking their CMS to see if they could get it to do what everyone wanted. The second group was the one in which the firm had had enough of the poor service they were getting from their MSP and/or software provider, so they were looking to move. The solution? Well, you need to ask yourself, do you want to ‘make do and mend’ ad infinitum and hope you can get your CMS into a state you want (hint: this could take forever)?
Or, do you want to simply thank your existing CMS for its loyalty, send it out to pasture and adopt a whole new CMS, one that is fit for purpose and futureproofed for all your needs?
Challenge 2: Where can I make the biggest improvement?
First off, you must revisit your strategic goals and then share those goals with your trusted partners. The objective is for all parties to fully understand them and determine where the tech gaps are in the business. And then you need to ask, what is stopping those gaps from being filled?
The key areas to address here are:
- How to improve engagement with clients across the board – one way to do this is to focus on transparency of communications as that always leads to better communication.
- The ability to see outcomes through reporting allows one to understand the current state of the firm and check whether business goals are actually being achieved, as is often the case.
- Fully address compliance and security as they play a considerable role in overall performance and growth.
Of all of these areas, I’m most passionate about transparent and effective communications. If a client is happy and pleased with the service they receive, they will stick with you and they will recommend you to others. Direct referrals are the best way to do business whatever industry you’re in.
Challenge 3: How to get better at engaging with others.
Start out by improving your engagement with the marketplace. It’s the most exciting it’s been for years, but the question is: Will a shiny new system make all the difference? And to answer that, you need to go back to those strategic goals we looked at a couple of paragraphs ago.
There are literally thousands of products out there targeted at law firms. Identifying the non-disruptive products that can work alongside your existing technology is the (not-so-secret) secret. Think of products like Legalito, which is specifically designed to make conveyancing easier, and the award-winning client onboarding solution from Minerva. Neither will disrupt what’s already in place, and they are both built with a nod to helping firms achieve their business goals, improving compliance, security and profitability. Plus, they’re really good value for money!
Challenge 4: Don’t get stuck in the gap.
It’s abundantly clear that the divide between legacy and new systems is continuing to grow. We’ve built a bridge across this gap that allows firms to get the best of both old and new worlds. We’ve done this by adopting a bespoke approach and solution as we always have done for our clients: retaining those very good elements of a legacy-based system and combining them with the best-of-breed CMS in the shape of Tessaract powered by etiCloud.
Challenge 5: Making sure you have the required energy and focus
This will help to keep your CMS project moving forward, which is imperative to tackling all of these challenges. Recognise that the test is you don’t want to give up your way of working, but you also want to move to a more flexible way of working, and that takes a significant amount of time and effort from you and your team. Get everyone on board, make sure they know exactly what’s happening and why at every stage and you won’t run out of steam. It’s crucial to your firm’s future success that you don’t.
If you’d like to discuss any of the challenges in more detail and how etiCloud can help you overcome them, or if you’d like a free demonstration of Tessaract powered by etiCloud, you can reach Jonathan via email: ja@everythingthatis.cloud or call 07469 118203.
etiCloud is the leading Managed Services provider for professional services firms in the UK. With a reputation for outstanding service, they provide IT Infrastructure, Communications, Legal Tech Software and Security that help over 200 law firms to excel.
As Public Cloud specialists, working with Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud, they developed their fully managed Agile Digital Workplace, a resilient and cyber-secure cloud-based platform that allows users to work securely anytime, anywhere. This enables a truly agile digital workplace and improves cost and time efficiencies across the board.
They are also the exclusive reseller of Tessaract, a ground-breaking legal practice management and workflow automation tool. Enabling you to manage your law firm from one system, it even includes a comprehensive accounting system. With a full reporting system embedded, you get total visibility across the firm putting you in control of business strategy.
Combined with support from their customer excellence team, their 90-Day Money Back Assurance, and an unrivalled level of service, let us help you to implement tomorrow’s technology, today.