In the article titled ‘The legal profession’s focus on the future’ 2020 (Nov) DR 4, I wrote about the effect that the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic had on the operation and sustainability of legal practices and legal practitioners. I stated that this impact could decrease in the future should legal practitioners choose to savvy up to technology and modernise the way their legal practices are operated thereby reducing operating/overhead costs. One of the points raised was the benefit of employing smart software solutions. In this article, I take a closer look at the types of software solutions that have been created to promote efficiency and productivity specifically within the legal industry environment.
These software solutions are most commonly deployed in the working world and are utilised heavily within the operation of a standard legal practice, whether it be for advice, court preparation, and preparation of conveyancing or any other similarly associated activity. Legal practitioners should take steps to facilitate the enhancement of staff productivity by deploying software solutions to assist with the ability for multiple users to work on the same documents in real-time from their separate locations. However, these solutions are not necessarily designed to be specific to the legal industry and assist with the general workflow of an organisation.
The sheer quantity of documents required during certain legal matters can present a logistical difficulty, especially when there is more than one legal practitioner simultaneously engaged in a matter. Taking into account the approach of seeking a balance between working from home and physical office attendance, the ability for multiple people to engage seamlessly on matters is of utmost importance to establish enhanced productivity that is sustainable, as well as produce greater value for clients. A further advantage is the ability to access the entirety of a file without any physical documents being present. Legal practitioners can employ the use of suitable and appropriate document management solutions to house large quantities of documents, files, and correspondence in a secure environment. This can be employed as a cloud-based solution, which would facilitate ease of access for multiple users, as well as eliminating the risk of file corruption due to things like power outages and interruptions. In addition to the current uses of document management systems, the implementation of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 places strict obligations on the management of personal information. Document management solutions will look to integrate these regulatory obligations in a manner that is compliant from the perspective of the legal practitioner.
An aspect that is often forgotten is the importance of secure password management. In a legal practice, besides from the trust account, any variety of hardware and software solutions may require you to login using a password. If these hardware or software solutions are connected to the Internet, this poses a cyber-security risk to both the legal practitioner and to their clients. Legal practitioners’ who are looking to eliminate this type of risk could employ the use of a robust and tested password management software. These types of software allow a user to set highly complex passwords that would not be ordinarily used and store them within the password management software application. The user then accesses the password management software application when logging into their various accounts.
This area is often difficult to manage on a manual system and the ability to track the amount of time spent on a matter is key to be able to bill clients correctly and efficiently for work done on relating matters, as well as to be able to maintain regulatory obligations of accurately accounting to clients. Legal practitioners have typically defaulted to a manual system of recording time, which can present inaccuracies. In addition, the actual time spent to draw the bill increases the time spent on matters, and this ‘billable time’ is absorbed by the legal practice as essentially an operating cost. Legal practitioners who are faced with these types of problems could consider timekeeping/billing software solutions to be able to record time spent on tasks as they are completed and to employ a solution to cater for the specific needs of that legal practice. An additional integration of a trust account management system would ensure that amounts billed, and amounts received are automatically reconciled and displayed in a manner that is easily accessible.
Legal practice management solutions operate by combining aspects of technologies in a type of all-in-one solution. Legal practitioners that are considering the migration from a manual operating system (so to speak) to a digital transformation may be well served by first employing a dedicated legal practice management solution, which combine aspects of document management, accounting, and file-sharing in a sample portion of their business to ascertain the efficiencies gained by this. Once legal practitioners are comfortable with the usability and are able to see the benefit gained, it is possible to expand these systems to other areas of practice.
As stated previously, a failure to digitise a legal practice, or even aspects of it, could result in the loss of income, whether by having to turn away work, or due to the inability to accurately and efficiently track the quantity or amount of work conducted on a matter. Irrespective of whether legal practitioners choose to utilise a myriad of software solutions, or a single software solution, the decision to do so will be highly beneficial to the operation, sustainability, and growth of their legal practice.
Arniv Badal LLB (UKZN) is a Practitioner Support Supervisor in the Risk Management Department at the Legal Practitioners’ Fidelity Fund in Centurion.
This article was first published in De Rebus in 2021 (Aug) DR 6.
