Legal Tech B(L)OOM!
Legal practice and technology have had to align more than ever in the new pandemic reality. Practices and Lawyers who were tech-shy before March have had to adjust, using the pandemic as crash-course in employing electronic resources to keep their clients and firms afloat.
For young lawyers and licensing candidates, this bloom of open-mindedness towards tech in legal practice is a welcome and long-awaited change. Before the pandemic, technology and legal practice were slowly moving together by necessity, but recent events have forced a much-needed tech revolution in both private practice and the justice system writ large. Even the most traditional courtrooms have transformed themselves into fertile fields for legal tech (and general tech) implementation.
However, the legitimate concerns that plagued technology and legal practice before the pandemic -- like client privacy and cyberattacks -- have not magically evaporated and will continue to be a real concern in the post-pandemic world. If we want to keep this tech boom going, client-first thinking will need to dominate legal tech developer offerings and the implementation of tech in practice.
Most importantly, however, I think lawyers, and particularly small or solo firms, have learned that they do not need to have a huge legal tech budget to bring their practice into the technology era. In some cases, general consumer technology can be just as effective and useful as "legal tech" and learning how to use consumer technology more effectively can help with practice management and improve one's work-life balance.
If This Then Then (IFTTT) is one such example of general technology that can help lawyers manage their practice more efficiently. If you don't know what IFTTT is or how you can use it your practice, I'd encourage you to read the following CBA National article I recently wrote with Naomi Sayers...
