Digital transformation allows lawyers to become more efficient, provide better customer experience, and ultimately increase their billable hours.
Why should lawyers digitally transform?
Digital transformation is the one of the hottest topics in boardrooms across the world, with almost all large and enterprise level businesses reporting it as a priority and a key part of both their short and long term strategies.
Yet the wider legal sector is significantly lagging behind in its adoption of new technologies, especially compared to the other professional services. However, some of the country’s largest firms and some smaller early adopters are embracing these new ways of working and are beginning to pull away from the competition.
Law firms, especially SME’s, that resist or delay digital transformation are starting to lose ground; and as more and more law firms realize the necessity of embracing change those who wait too long risk being left unable to compete.
In this article we will look at the five top reasons why lawyers should digitally transform.
But first let's look at what digital transformation means for the legal sector.
Digital transformation & the legal sector
Due to the complex nature of the legal profession and the importance of reputation to both law firms and individual lawyers, the majority of lawyers are not comfortable with the idea of trusting in software over their own knowledge and research in legal matters; especially with well publicised blunders of a handful lawyers that employed the nascent AI tools introduced recently.
And this is for good reason, but unfortunately it has led to most of the profession locked in manual and inefficient business processes as they discount the potential of digital transformation across their entire business.
By digitally transforming their business processes lawyers are able to have a more efficient and streamlined practice that requires less time and staff to run and allows lawyers to increase the amount of billable hours they are able to fit into their day.
Top 5 reasons for lawyers to digitally transform
- Increase your billable hours
- Reduce staff costs
- Increase your client book by expanding your pratice's reach
- Protect revenue, reduce losses and bad debt
- Remain competitive
1. Increase your billable hours
A lawyer’s time is best spent on revenue generating billable activities but these are limited by the various admin and compliance requirements that make up a practice’s general business processes.
This is especially true of compliance processes which can easily take hours to complete and come with the risk of regulatory fines should there be any errors.
Technology now is able to largely or completely automate almost all general and compliance processes, taking the staff time required down from hours to minutes or even seconds.
For example, with Red Flag Alert’s digital AML platform you are able to send a digital check (with your company’s branding) out with just thirty seconds of staff time. Your client then completes this conveniently on their device and you then receive a full AML risk report.
This whole process takes around 2-3 minutes and comes with a level of accuracy unobtainable by manual processes.
How much time would your practice be able to free up for billable activities with even this one form of digital transformation?
2. Reduce staff costs
It’s not just your legal staff whose time is required to be spent on manual and unwieldy business processes. Most practices require numerous support staff to handle the bulk of administrative and compliance processes.
Meaning not only are your revenue generating legal staff having to reduce their billable hours but profits are then further eaten into by support staff’s wages.
The truth is that now many of these support staff or performing tasks which software can complete more accurately and almost instantaneously.
Firms which digitally transform these processes are able to greatly reduce their support staff numbers and use the freed funds to hire more revenue generating staff or simply increase their profits.
3. Increase your client book by expanding your practice’s reach
Legal firms’ client books are still very much linked to their geographical area, with most SME law firms not seeking to attract business from further afield even if they have a capacity that their local area can not fill.
This is partly due to the sectors traditional way of operating and partly because most practices are stuck with manual compliance processes that require their clients to attend the office in person.
However, not only does the technology exist to take on clients in a compliant way without ever meeting them in person but it is actually clients’ preferred way of doing business.
Simply by adopting video call technology and a digital compliance platform your business is able to take on clients from all across the UK (and even the world). This is especially powerful as almost all clients will initially find a law firm via using a search engine on an electronic device. Providing as short a journey between discovery and onboarding directly leads to more business.
As an added advantage you will be improving the customer experience of all your clients by providing a much more convenient service which is inline with modern consumer expectations.
You can also leverage technology to make finding clients easier and run more effective marketing campaigns. Red Flag Alert’s B2B Prospector tool allows you to create searches that are as broad or granular as you would like to find the perfect clients for your practice.
To find out how you can find your 50 best prospects in just 50 seconds click here.
4. Protect revenue, reduce losses and bad debt
Digital transformation doesn’t just allow you to increase your revenue, work more efficiently, and provide a better customer experience it also allows you to mitigate your risks of bad debt and late payment.
Whether you are a B2C, B2B, or combination practice, credit check technology allows you to quickly see a person’s or business’s credit risk and payment history and screen for potential non-payers.
Whether you request payment upfront or refuse service, this simple step takes just minutes and has the potential to save your practice thousands.
How much as your practice lost to non-payment? It is likely that with the right credit check software you would have been able to avoid the majority of these losses.
We are the industry experts at the analysis of business financial health and credit risk, with the UK’s most accurate insolvency score. We provide detailed and easy to understand reports on every UK business which allows you to perform powerful financial due diligence in minutes and greatly reduce your practices risk of bad debt.
5. Remain competitive
The fact is that despite many lawyers reticence to adopt technology the advantages listed above will be too powerful to ignore leading to technology’s mass adoption. Especially considering the relatively low cost and ease with which the required software can be implemented.
This is leading to more and more firms leveraging technology to become more efficient, profitable, and able to reach more clients. Especially based on the success that early adopters are experiencing.
Those firms that stick to manual processes will be slower, less able to attract clients, and less profitable than their competitors; making their long term future extremely tenuous.
Red Flag Alert is your ideal partner for digital transformation. Talk to one of our experts today about how we can upgrade your credit risk, business data, and AML compliance processes.
