How are law firms innovating to address client needs?
By Jennifer Brown, Editorial Consultant, ADB Insights
Law firms develop services and products to address client needs
It’s easy to say law firms lag behind other industries when it comes to adopting technology and tailoring services to client needs, but the reality is many firms have embraced the idea that to compete in today’s marketplace, they must implement processes and tools such as project management, data analytics and collaboration platforms to drive efficiencies, engagement and retention.
With increased pressure on general counsel in big corporations to cut costs, the pressure to innovate is real. However, some firms say many in-house leaders aren’t making it a priority, at least not upfront when it could be most advantageous to both parties. So firms are making the first move.
“We are definitely seeing more pressure in RFPs (request for proposals) but not as much as I would have expected it to be. You see some RFPs that ask what technology is being used because they want to understand that their firms are doing,” says Aaron Baer, a partner at Aird & Berlis LLP in Toronto practising corporate commercial law, primarily mergers and acquisitions.
Aaron Baer, Partner, Aird & Berlis
“It may be the next wave of GCs that start saying, ‘I’m not as loyal to this firm, let’s re-examine this.’ External counsel doesn’t have the power in that relationship, and it is really in the hands of the client to ask for what they want.”
Baer says lawyers have an obligation to the client to find ways to deliver service and ensure the end product is better. The legal profession is changing. It’s not just other law firms; other players such as alternative legal service providers or automated solutions that are replacing tasks lawyers would have done.
“If there are law firms who aren’t thinking about how to keep clients happier or provide better value, they are at major risk of being in trouble because you can’t flip a switch overnight,” he says.
Determining needs and setting expectations
“We make sure we have clarity in advance and leverage technology wherever possible,” says Baer.
Changing the approach starts with asking what the client needs to be successful on their matter, says Baer. “Are most lawyers truly client-service oriented? Some are and many intend to be, but I’m not sure most are because I’m sure most haven’t asked their clients what they want.”
Baer says lawyers need to dedicate time to looking at how to modernize. The pandemic sparked an enormous shift around how people work and serve their clients, triggering a new attitude to technology adoption.
“We bill by the hour, so shouldn't we be trying to be efficient with that time? And if we’re not leveraging good tools that are out there, is it fair to say to the client, ‘You agreed to be billed by the hour, and I billed you eight hours’ when if we had known about some piece of technology that could have taken an hour is that fair?”
Baer’s primary tools of choice include Diligen machine learning software for contract review and Closing Folders, a transaction management tool acquired by iManage in August 2020.
“I’m a power user of that tool, and I’m regularly in touch with their developers on potential features and suggestions. I use it almost every day,” he says. “It’s part document management tool, part project management tool and part workflow tool and part better closing agenda document tool.”
What clients want
At Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, the law firm also leverages its network of relationships, particularly within the tech sector, to develop solutions to answer the needs of clients and co-create products to answer the challenges faced by them and their lawyers.
“At BLG we are focused on continuous improvement in how we serve clients ensuring we are focused on delivering high-quality advice and service in the most efficient and effective means, says Cynthia Clarke, National Group Head, Clients, Sectors and New Services.
“We have implemented a variety of technological tools to assist our lawyers and client teams to collaborate across all of our offices. Our most exciting new offering is found in BLG Beyond — a new division of BLG which focuses on specific client needs we’ve identified that can be priced and delivered in a non-traditional manner,” she says.
This includes Beyond Leasing, which is designed to assist an organization with a portfolio of leases to manage those in an efficient manner by using technological solutions such as Diligen, Closing Folders and Contract Express to streamline the workflow. Beyond Lending, offers a similar offering for loans as well as a consulting offering and a strategic IP advisory service.
Cindy Clarke, , National Group Head, Clients, Sectors and New Services, BLG
Another addition, Beyond eDiscovery uses state of the art technology combined with legal expertise to streamline what has traditionally been an inefficient, time-consuming and hands-on-paper process. Working with its Digital Hub team, BLG is looking to maximize efficiencies through technology and process improvement.
“We understand that clients are seeking cost predictability and want an appropriate allocation of talent to the service needed,” says Clarke. “In our view, less complex, portfolio matters can and should be handled differently than bespoke complex one-off matters.”
BLG Beyond was created to address what the firm saw as a gap in the legal market – high-quality predictable services to be delivered in a manner that maximizes efficiency and use of technology.
“We also recognize that many clients value our experience and advice on business matters, not solely legal matters. It is for this reason we developed the Beyond IP Strategy and the BLG Beyond consulting service,” says Clarke.
Provision of services in a functional way
Finding the right delivery model to help clients get the advice they need when they need it is another way law firms are trying to improve engagement and service. For some, the use of client portals has proven successful.
Two years ago, Fasken launched Fasken Edge, a digital collaboration tool built on the HighQ platform to help clients manage their legal matters. The cloud-based portal is accessible and supported 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Since late 2018 the firm has been developing Fasken Edge for various practice areas. Pricing is based primarily on features, number of users, and sites. Clients can choose from a range of packages, much like a company or consumer might select a basket of services from familiar SaaS providers and pay on a quarterly or annual basis (upgrading or downgrading at any time).
Peter Stovall, Director of Innovation, Fasken
“We started out providing low touch, collaborative and accessible matter management, and that still remains the core,” said Peter Stovall, Director of Innovation at Fasken. “Since then, guided by our product focus groups, we have gone deeper into solving practice- and industry-specific needs.”
“While robust, scalable support processes are essential, engaging with our clients early and openly to understand their pain points is just as vital. That clarity enables us, together with our lawyers and subject matter experts, to design tailor-made solutions. It’s transformative.”
Fasken has customized its portal to provide solutions in several new areas. For example, a Data Governance Solution Suite of tools was released this month. It includes a CASL compliance tool, and privacy and cybersecurity health check tools. Additional features are set for release later this year – including a vendor risk assessment and employee skills gap analysis.
“We’re building this out for a few key practice areas initially,” said Stovall. “Legal services is a “target rich environment” of repetitive tasks that can be mapped, automated, and modularized.”
By removing repetitive tasks, platforms such as Fasken Edge free up lawyers to do more meaningful work.
“Some of the best feedback from our clients and colleagues, is that we have spared them repeat tasks and allowed them to focus more time at a higher strategic level,” he said. “By providing a one-stop-shop, we also ease the procurement headache for clients. Integrations include Microsoft Office, G Suite, iManage, decision tools, AI / NLP engines and DocuSign.”
As well as supporting the delivery of Fasken legal advice, Fasken Edge also provides clients with an elevated perspective and tools for easy oversight– including dashboard overviews of legal progress and spend.
Stovall says the firm knows Fasken Edge saves clients time and money. “Our data tells us that clients save on average 20 to 80 hours a year on Fasken Edge – more if used across multiple matters and stakeholders,” said Stovall.
One of the focus areas for this year will be to help in-house counsel clients achieve department KPIs using Fasken Edge.
The data question. Why not legal?
While data analysis is used to determine average time spent on matters or historical cost on routine work, what about applying data analytics to plot a better litigation outcome? Paul-Erik Veel, a Partner at Lenczner Slaght, has a strong sense it can and has embarked on a project to use data to inform the litigation practice at the firm.
“I think clients are interested in their law firms being more data-savvy, and they want objective, quantifiable answers and to be able to gauge their risk in quantifiable ways. I think as lawyers, we can do our jobs better if we can give them those quantifiable risks,” he says.
Veel is a commercial litigator who focuses on class actions and competition law. He says it can be challenging to tell a client there isn’t really any data on class actions.
Paul-Erik Veel, Partner, Lenczner Slaght
“It strikes me as crazy that if a client were to say, ‘In Ontario, what’s my chance of a class action being certified in Ontario? What does the data say?’ That’s not something we have a very good answer to right now,” he says.
Veel would like to give clients more accurate assessments on the likelihood of particular outcomes and what specific strategies can inform the advocacy they present to clients.
“It’s sort of shocking that we aren’t further along the curve than we are. It’s about data availability, which people have talked about a lot, but in a legal culture that hasn’t broadly embraced the value. However, both of those things are changing,” he says.
Last year, Veel’s first project was to create a data set of every Competition Tribunal decision since the late 1980s, which amounted to about 300 cases.
“Even based on just that set of cases, there are trends you can look at and see noticeable shifts in enforcement priorities by the Commissioner of the Competition Bureau in the last five years,” he says.
That was the proof of concept in the value of doing such an exercise for the firm. Veel came up with a spreadsheet and manually coded cases into an Excel document. The firm is now working on collecting data on decisions from the commercial list and Supreme Court of Canada decisions.
“We’re collecting a lot of data broadly about the Supreme Court on a couple of different dimensions of what the Supreme Court does. While we’re collecting data broadly about the Court, we’re focusing on analyzing civil and commercial litigation and public law data,” he says.
Lenczner Slaght is not looking to monetize this information; they want to provide more informed advocacy to clients.
“We are lawyers who have knowledge of statistics and data analytics, but we’re not computer scientists, and we’re not in the business of building legal tech,” he says. “It’s just what I view as another tool we can use to provide better advice and service to our clients.”
Ultimately, Veel says it’s something clients are going to expect more of in the future.
“If we were having this conversation 20 years from now, there would be better access to data, and there won’t be a need for individual data collection or analysis efforts. Right now, the market isn’t there, but when clients are expecting it, I think we have to step up and try and do that,” he says.