Pain Points of Law Firms and Corporate Legal Departments Today

“Since the beginning of the economic recession nearly a decade ago, law firms have been forced to navigate an increasingly competitive business environment. They found that consumers of legal services are seeking more reliable services at the most affordable price. So, to meet the needs of customers, law firms and legal departments are going through a hard time in today’s economic conditions, facing the pain points of law firms.

It is not enough to provide quality service and your work is over; being an owner of the law firm, you need to develop marketing strategies to establish your brand name in the market. There are a number of law firms and legal departments out there in the market, but the question is, What sort of uniqueness or techniques are you using to make your service unmatchable?

No doubt, there will be many obstacles that you need to face when it comes to establishing your name in the market, as you are from a service-oriented sector.”

Pain points of law firms and corporate legal departments

1. Hidden liabilities- 

Being a human being, we are not perfect; how can we expect a business to be perfect? There are many issues and headaches to be dealt with by the legal industry, from giving direction to the business in line with its legal obligations, benchmarking their teams with the industry standards, advising board members, and much more. It is not easy to keep up with. So herein, your liabilities are considered as your issues within your legal corporation; if they increase ultimately, it will affect the growth of your law firm.

2. The volume of unstructured data- 

It is common for corporate legal departments and law firms to have to deal with a greedy amount of data throughout the process, which results in unstructured data. As the number of data increases, the sorting and processing of this information becomes devastating.

According to the information, unstructured data facilitates 90% of the digital industry, which estimates that these files are growing at a rate of 60-70 percent per year. When the data storage size starts showing in gigabytes and terabytes, it is absolute that there will be huge amounts of redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) data in it.

While dealing with cases of various priorities, it is necessary that crucial information is readily available. Information on cases from legal departments and outside service providers needs to be in a single place for anyone to access.

3. Beyond practical approach- 

Lawyers must put their efforts into making the best out of a case; while they know resources don’t fetch minds, hard work does. Just sitting in front of the computer and reading vivid things won’t make you a better lawyer or increase the productivity of your firm, but litigating relevant information as per the case will do. So, you must try to bring a practical approach to your work style.

4. Division of corporate workers-

Usually, in law firms, due to excessive workload, the intellectual lawyers spend their valuable time more on paralegal tasks, which disturbs the hierarchy of legal departments.

The reason behind this complexity is the lack of resources; law firms don’t want to spend much on hiring a litigator or a paralegal as they are expensive, so they ask their in-house team to perform these tasks, which eventually burden the experienced lawyers as they have to work overtime apart from their core activities.

5. Less interaction– 

When you have a communication gap within your organization, there are more chances that you can avoid small issues that your junior associate may have, and later on, this may lead to big issues.

So it is essential for the legal department and law firms to interact with their employees and ask for their review or keep a brainstorming session to adopt new ideas that will eventually help your business to grow.

6. Understanding the competition-

 Usually, the economic and market condition dynamically keeps changing, and it mostly impacts the service sector. So, lawyers must be aware of the change and competition in the market. They should analyze what customers are demanding, how the other firms are handling so many clients, and why people prefer the same lawyer or legal department.

You should ask yourself this question and see where you are lacking. In this way, you can improve yourself and survive in the cut-throat competitive market.

7. The obsolete way of working-

The main cause behind the de-growth of law firms is the traditional work style. Law firms need to change their work style according to the change in technology.

There are various software available in the market, and the most trending nowadays is Cloud-based storage. Every industry stores its valuable data in a cloud with concern for security and an automatic backup created by the cloud. So, the lawyers must understand that they need to leave behind their obsolete way of working and opt for the latest technology.

8. Lack of time- 

No doubt, lawyers and law firms always run short of time as they are preoccupied with workloads such as document and contract review, researching a case, writing a legal document, and much more.

Lawyers spend their valuable time on non-core activities, which is not helping these law firms to improve their productivity. That’s the reason law firm management is crucial and needs experts to manage.

9. Adopting new technology-

Technology has brought a revolutionary change in every industry, businesses have little choice rather than to adopt new technology. Technology disruption has a great impact on every sector, it has not only changed the legal services to customers but has changed the ways it works. For example, these legal departments use software to assemble the relevant documents that will be read by artificial intelligence (AI).

10. Real savings are still unknown– 

With huge efficiency in savings, apparently, businesses are adopting the latest technology. Instead of hiring a team in-house to manage a particular task or look over the data stored in paper form, opting for the latest software and legal outsourcing services has not only reduced the cost but is also saving the valuable time of law firms and legal departments. This has become one of the cost-effective solutions in the legal industry.

Conclusion

Law is an ocean of knowledge, which is never-ending. So, the lawyers and legal departments need to be updated with every now and then changes that are going on. Outsourcing legal support services has become a crucial part of law firms, which has enabled them to focus on their core legal activities at a cost-effective price.

Have you been trying hard to cut down costs while improving operational efficiency? Make it easier by outsourcing legal support services to Cogneesol. We are a team of qualified and experienced lawyers who can provide the level of support you require. To know more about us, call us at +1 646-688-2821 or send an email to [email protected].

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