While the fundamental nature of legal work has remained consistent throughout recent history, the processes, pace, and scale of practice have evolved dramatically.
The bulk of transactional and litigation work is performed by lawyers, who are often resistant to utilising automation for legal work. Yet law firms are relatively small organisations, especially compared to entities like banks, and there is a perception that lawyers need to "keep up" by adopting technology at a comparative rate.
The actual motivations for tech adoption differs depending on the size of the firm. Large firms tend to approach technology from the perspective of future-proofing their organisation, as well as impressing clients. In particular, technology partnerships can help to improve a larger firm's prestige, which can enhance their ability to successfully bid for client work.
In comparison, smaller firms tend to focus their use of technology to cut their non-billable administrative workload, and to expand the volume of clients they are able to take on. In both cases, adoption is treated cautiously, with firms preferring vendors who can provide a ringfenced environment for their firm and client data.
Notably, when smaller firms adopt legal tech, they benefit from far shorter procurement cycles compared to their larger competitors. This is partly because legal vendors tend to lock large partners into multi-year contracts, handcuffing them to a specific innovation cycle, whilst the wider tech landscape moves on.
Larger firms often segment work for a single client across multiple lawyers. Smaller practices generally will not, keeping matters under one lawyer. The tighter ownership within small firms gives them better intuition to optimise their workflows, albeit they have less capacity to do so.
Ultimately, tech adoption remains contested. Some lawyers are skeptical or exhausted by marketing, and the billing model disincentives the optimisation of most work. Regardless, we are at a point in time where practitioners can extract more value from investing in their technology than ever before, which is finally endearing lawyers to tech.