The success of the modern law firm hinges on its ability to adapt and pivot. Even before being struck by a global health crisis, the profession has been experiencing significant disruption due to rapid changes in technology that reshaped client expectations. Today, the combination of these two factors results in an urgent need for law firms to embrace change like never before.

So, what will the law firm of the future look like? What can firms do now to succeed amid the chaos and how can they prepare themselves for future disruptions, challenges and pressures? In order to answer these questions, we must direct our focus to the client experience. I spoke with Heinan Landa, founder and CEO of Optimal Networks and author of “The Modern Law Firm: How to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Technological Change,” to get his perspective on how law firms can embrace and deliver on a client-focused strategy. Here he shares his ideas and expertise based on three decades of providing IT services to law firms.  

I’ve noticed throughout my career that it takes any new technology five to 10 years to really infiltrate the practice of law — except during a pandemic. Over the last six months, closed offices and teleworking have created an accelerated environment for the adoption and implementation of new technologies. With the restrictions caused by the pandemic not loosening anytime soon, even those who are extremely leery of new technology platforms may want to rethink their ways.

In that spirit, I share with you my top six tips for mastering the current tech landscape of 2020:

By Brad Blickstein, principal of the Blickstein Group and partner and co-head of NewLaw at Baretz+Brunelle

Back in June 2019, I presented “The Annual Law Department Operations Survey: Decoding a Decade of Data to Map the LDO Journey” at LMA P3 – The Practice Innovation Conference. During that session, I outlined how the law department operations role has changed since the 2008 launch of the survey, which asks in-house legal operations professionals to provide insight into many critical success factors for effectively managed corporate law departments.