Of course you know what I am going to say – it is very risky! However I am not convinced that the majority of firms have really addressed this issue. With each new technological innovation the risks increase. Working with multiple applications, integrated or not; working remotely and on a wide range of devices with different levels of security; dealing with data which may be shared in deal rooms or in the cloud…the modern lawyer needs to stay abreast of all this and still do the day job.
Addressing the issue of technological competence has been fairly low down on many firms’ priority list. Lawyers don’t tend to think in terms of applications – as in Word, Outlook, DMS, etc. They think about what they do, how they work, the processes they follow to find, create, navigate, amend, submit, share and review documents. They often struggle with the volume of emails they receive and send, let alone filing them in an easily retrievable way. Searching for documents and emails is a daily chore, and with less support from secretaries now that the ratios lawyer:secretary or lawyer:paralegal have increased, this can take costly time if they are not doing it efficiently and can be a serious risk if the documents are incorrectly filed or lost.
Clients are demanding more transparency with the bills they receive, even when there is a fixed fee agreement. Corporate counsel are increasingly asking their existing and potential outside counsel to prove how tech savvy and efficient they really are!
The quality of documentation, its formatting and the ease with which it can be amended by other parties, is very important. It would be great if all UK law firms adopted the UK Document Excellence Group’s Standard Styles so that style names, at the very least, are consistent. Ensuring that a lawyer understands what a style actually is, and how using them can facilitate so many document features like cross references, tables of contents and other links, is critical training which should be happening in the law school as well as within the law firm. This would reduce the risk of poorly formatted documents which get corrupted and cause delay, late filings, etc.
Ask any law firm IT trainer whether today’s trainees are tech savvy and he or she will tell you…”yes, but only with Instagram, Facebook, Hotmail and Whatsapp. They may know how to type in Word but understanding the more complex features which make legal documents work properly is generally unfamiliar territory!”
So this is a plea for law firm CIOs, IT Managers, HR and L&D to take technology skills seriously, to include them in all individuals’ professional development plans and demand that all staff – lawyers and their support staff – achieve an acceptable level of competence. Then join LTC4 (Legal Technology Core Competency Certification Coalition) to see how this can be done (www.ltc4.org) and share the ideas of the more than 100 other law firms who have decided to address this serious issue. The LTC4 competencies are all workflow based and cover everything from Time & Billing to Managing Documents and Emails…there are 10 in all including the latest which deals with e-Discovery and is being launched next week at LegalTech in New York.