The 5 trends for law firms in 2021
In this article, the most important trends for law firms in 2021 are listed. We see that routine based tasks will be more and more minimized and optimized, to enable the lawyer to spend more time on billable work. At IRIS, we are able to provide solutions and services to ensure the modern lawyer and its firm can succeed in delivering the highest value for its clients.
From re-using your precedents and clauses, transaction management, flexible collaboration with internal and external stakeholders to comparing complex documents: we offer a wide spectrum of solutions to enhance processes, so you can focus on what really matters.
Knowledge Management
Many organizations struggle with how to search for data from disparate systems and easily find relevant information needed to make better decisions. Knowledge managers today are being challenged to not only identify and manage knowledge assets but to go further by making documents and clauses available for easy re-use and identifying internal experts for further consultation.
New innovative solutions help your lawyers to find information across systems including iManage Work, local and shared file systems, third-party websites, instant messages and social media with one single search. Efficiently set up ethical walls and restrict access to sensitive data so that it’s only accessible on a need-to-know basis.
Artificial Intelligence
Every year, law firm associates and other professionals spend millions of hours extracting key data points from unstructured legal documents stored in different locations throughout the firm’s system. This manual process not only takes time and can be very expensive but it is also prone to errors, which can enhance reputational risk.
In 2021, Artificial Intelligence will really break-through in daily practice. Today’s law firms face pressure to keep operating costs lower than ever while managing an increasing number of legal documents. Manual document classification and extraction processes take costly time and money from your business and can be riddled with inaccuracies. This issue is why a growing number of companies are turning to the power of artificial intelligence to streamline their document management.
Digital Signatures
One of the most appropriate processes that a law firm can streamline is contract signing. First of all, you offer your customer added value because he no longer has to go after the signatures of the signatories involved. The signing software takes over this task.
In addition, people can sign anywhere in the world. This generally makes the process much faster. Your customer therefore falls back on a much faster and more cost-efficient process. And your advantage? Your customers are sure to be satisfied and remain loyal to your office.
Thanks to the option to sign electronically, you go a step further than others. This is how you make a difference because you do more than just provide legal advice.
Integrations between management systems and communication tools
Every organization has its own IT systems in place to enable employees to work efficiently: Teams, Zoom, Document Management System, Practice Management System, Time Registration tools. Now that communication goes through many systems, integration has become increasingly important. It’s important to connect multiple systems within your law firm with each other, so that no matter which way the customer contacts you, you can offer the same service and quality everywhere. Not only the customer benefits from further integrations, but it also brings many benefits internally. Colleagues can communicate more easily with each other when everything is connected.
As we have implemented many information management solutions in all kinds of industries – we noticed that we could extend these solutions with specific tooling. With this goal in mind, we developed several integration, migration and functionality add-ons for iManage and OpenText.
Working from home
Many offices have learned that working from home can and will continue very well. For a while, there was suspicion about productivity, but most offices have seen that working from home often leads to more productivity. No matter when or why you need to work remotely as a lawyer, it’s entirely possible to do so. Choose secure tools, communicate clearly and effectively about the way your remote practice will work, and ensure you’ve got a strong internet connection, and your firm will be able to thrive from anywhere.
With our leading compliance and risk management solutions, you can pro-actively analyze user behaviour to conduct effective risk assessments and detect outliers. Ensure to detect and naturalize external and internal threats as soon as possible to minimize the risk of bad actors disrupting your business activities.
How we can help
At IRIS Nederland we take information management seriously. Information is the source of every organization and therefor requires intelligent, future-proof solutions which meet the needs of organizations and their users. We keep that promise to our customers for over 20 years now. Whether you are looking to implement a new document- or any other information management solution: we have the experience to support you with such a project from start to finish.
Get in touch with us if you want to know more how our solutions and services can make your organization work more efficient, secure and smarter.
