Heinan Landa - The Modern Law Firm: How to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Technological Change

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The
modern
law firm

The
modern
law firm

How to Thrive in an Era of

Rapid Technological Change

heinan landa

2020

The Modern Law Firm: How to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Technological Change

by Heinan Landa

Published by Optimal Networks Books
15201 Diamondback Drive, Suite 220
Rockville, Maryland 20850

2020 Heinan Landa. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-7345764-0-5 hardcover
978-1-7345764-1-2 trade paperback
978-1-7345764-2-9 electronic book

Cover and title page design: Metadog Design Group

Contents

: A Shifting Landscape

: From Threat to Asset

: Building the Foundation

: Realizing the Vision

Preface

W hat does a thriving law firm look like in five years?

In a word: different.

Over the three decades Ive spent in Information Technology, I have never seen such rapid and dramatic changes in technology and its impact on our daily lives. And across the three decades Ive spent serving law firms, I have never seen such unease surrounding the future of the legal industry. Here are some of the things I hear clients say:

• We used to have maybe three or four real firms to compete with. Now there are twenty, thirty other firms in the area, and were all going after the same business. How do we differentiate ourselves in a way that actually means something to our clients?
• Theres this palpable tension between how our firm works and how our clients expect us to work. They want answers immediately, they want results immediately, and more often than not, that just isnt possible. How are we supposed to keep up?
• The pace of work has gone completely through the roof. We can already get so much more work done in a day than we used to, but it still feels like were never quite going fast enough, never making enough progress. Its exhausting. Is this just how its going to be from now on?
• We have these young associates walking into our firm, and they act like theyve walked into the Twilight Zone or something. They look at our technology with this mix of confusion and exasperation on their faces. I know we dont have the latest and greatest, but are we really in such bad shape compared to other firms like ours?
• With all these new firms popping up left and right, theres not just the risk of losing clientstheres the risk of losing our people, too. And our younger associates quite literally embody the future value of our firm. What can we do to keep the new talent we bring aboard?
• Everything we do is under a microscope. Any misstep with a client and any conflict with an employee can wind up as a nasty review onlineand all anyone can see is their side of the story. Are we really at the point where one disgruntled person can cost us business? Cost us new hires?

Law firm leaders come to me frustrated, overwhelmed, and anxious. They have practices full of brilliant, hard-working people. Theyve accumulated years of successes and accolades. They are steadfastly devoted to the success of their firms and are doing everything in their power to ensure a bright and profitable future. But they can see trouble brewing. And it all comes down to technology.

I founded my outsourced technology firm, Optimal Networks, in 1991. Back then, providing technology support to law firms meant sending a network engineer to your offices once a month to check your servers, swap out your backup tapes, and give your secretary a hand with some glitch in WordPerfect. Technology played an important but small role in the firms overall operations, meaning that my company played an important but small role in the firms overall success.

Fast-forward to 2015: A law firm reached out to me for help. Thanks to a poorly architected cloud solution and equally poor support, they were losing $100,000 in billable time each and every month. Their clients were quickly losing patience with the firms inability to provide responsive service. To top it off, the attorneys were so sick of fighting against their technology, having to devise their own workarounds, and falling behind on their work that firm morale had reached an all-time low. This firm was now looking to me to help them recover their revenue, mend their reputation, and prevent their people from walking out the door. Their business was in jeopardy as a direct result of their technologyand improving their technology would be their only saving grace.

Thats why Im writing this book. Technology now plays a central, dominant role in how we live and how we do business. It can singlehandedly bring an otherwise healthy law firm to the brink of failure. And on the flip side, it can empower firms to achieve a level of success that its leaders might not have thought possible. My goal is to provide your firm with the clarity and the tools to do the latter.

This book is organized in four parts:

1. A Shifting Landscape: Well examine how law firms have traditionally operated, why this approach wont work going forward, and what your firm stands to lose if you stick with the status quo.
2. From Threat to Asset: Well discuss how a shift in focuspowered by technologywill allow you to convert this new terrain from a series of stumbling blocks into a competitive advantage.
3. Building the Foundation: Next, well assess your firms baseline Technology Operational Maturity Level and determine which critical gaps might need to be addressed before we can realistically dig into more complex initiatives.
4. Realizing the Vision: Finally, Ill recommend specific solutions and strategies as they relate to our vision and discuss how to get your whole firm on board with the changes ahead of them.

Along the way, Ill be drawing on several main sources of data:

• Thirty years of my own experience in meeting the technology needs of law firms in the Washington, D.C., Metro area
• As many years running a nationally and globally ranked professional services firm
• My teams collective technical and strategic expertise (which totals over 200 years of combined tenure at Optimal alonenot to mention their previous work experience!)
• Formal interviews with a generational cross-section of partners, lawyers, and Firm Administrators, combined with a number of more informal discussions Ive had with clients of mine, members of our local Bar Associations, and members of our local chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators
• Research, research, and more research

Because my involvement in the industry has been focused on small to medium-sized firms (say, ten to one hundred attorneys), thats the size and perspective Ill speak about. Solo practitioners and large firms may still find value throughout this book, but the content will resonate most with those in the middle.

So, while my background is technical, this will not be a technical readyou need not have any expertise in technology to make sense of the pages that follow. Instead, Im putting on my founder & CEO, Wharton MBA cap and approaching this book from a business perspective. Technology is only as valuable as the business results it helps you realizeincreased revenue, decreased risk, or improved morale, for example.

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