What Technology Is Actually Making Law Firms Money and What’s Just Costing You a Monthly Subscription?

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the dominant law podcast, where we empower attorneys as entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Angie. And today's episode is a wake up call for every law firm owner drowning in monthly software subscriptions. Because the hard truth is that most firms are spending on tools that never actually move a dollar of revenue. Before we get into it, a quick word about our sponsor, Equa marketing. Today's discussion is about separating tools that create value from tools that just create expense.

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Book it at www.dominantlaw.com slash MSM. Now, into today's episode, across five practical pillars, we explore which technologies are driving revenue and realization, which subscriptions rarely get used, which intake and communication systems earn their keep, how to evaluate ROI before you renew, and how to build a leaner, more profitable legal tech stack. To guide us, two of the most respected voices in legal innovation.

Monica Goyal, Vice President of Legal Innovation at Briefly Legal, an entrepreneur, legally trained innovator, and a leading voice on how AI, automation and legal tech actually get deployed inside firms. And Kristen Tyler, co founder and chief brand officer of Law Clerk, practicing attorney and partner at Garmin Turner Gordon. She is one of the sharpest voices on the ethics and economics of outsourcing legal talent. Let's dive in.

We do a lot of piloting. So before we kind of, you know, invest in something, we're, we're fairly confident that the attorneys are going to like it or have, you know, indicated interest, because we've already done piloting and serving and so forth, before we even get to that stage. And that's because I've learned from the past about what are some of the, you know, but rolling out and not having a success. So, so yeah, so I always pilot.

I believe that brings us to another common problem, right? Where do you see law firms confusing software activity with actual business progress?

Yeah, this, this is a really good question. And what, what we're seeing is, we're seeing lots of, like I said, activity use of like the AI tools. And, you know, the question now, right now, I think for a lot of law firm leaders is, what's the ROI? And the ROI really translates to the business progress, right? It's like, okay, people are using these tools. Now, what is that translate into in terms of business outcomes?

Is it improved client experience? Is it improved workflow? Like, you know, does that mean we can do more work? Should we be investing in other types of work? So, you know, this, I think is the real kind of question right now is like, how do we train? How do we take that AI? And how do we, that new technologies? And how do we translate that in our work into kind of, as you, as you termed it business progress, you know, into those business outcomes.

And it's a, it's a work in progress. Like right now, it's, it's trying to figure that out. It's right now, the thing that we're trying to do. And I think it goes back a little bit to some of the, some of the principles prior to AI, you know, thinking about use cases and thinking about what actually, how actually people do work, you know, instead of just saying, hey, here's a shiny new tool, use it, you know, it's like, oh, here's a new tool that you can use for transactional work.

And these are the workflows that would support that. Christine, I'd like to get back to you. What trade offs should law firms, law firm leaders rather, consider before adding another technology subscription? I think it's often all too easy to add another subscription, especially when the pricing on a lot of tools has come down significantly. It's easy to add on. And, you know, but before you, you do that before you add another service, I think far too many law firm leaders are not really confronting the fact that they're not already leveraging the tools that they have.

So whatever your tech stack is, every solution, every technology solution for law firms is constantly rolling out, you know, new versions with enhanced features. And I think it's easy for us when we're busy in our day to day work to maybe ignore those emails when we get them from our vendors, our suppliers, our different partners, or to, you know, blow off the call from the customer service rep who was trying to call and give you a personal one-on-one handholding walkthrough of new features and ways that you can use your existing tools.

So I think before you add anything, you need to pause from your daily, you know, busy schedule to reevaluate what features your current solutions already offer, or that you could add on through, you know, some sort of a, I'm blanking on the word, but, you know, either an add-on, a widget, or an integration with some other little add-on that would enhance the existing tool before getting a whole nother platform, a whole nother license, another login and password to remember, all of those things.

So I think a big thing that law firm leaders need to be mindful of is making sure they're already fully using the tools they already have before they just keep adding. What three questions do you think a leader should ask before approving a new technology purchase?

Kristen, you. Oh, what, three questions? Yeah, even two, it's fine. Yeah, yeah. I think you have to do a, an analysis of like the cost benefit of the cost and the time savings, a cost benefit analysis. I think you want to do, you always want to ask how this could improve your client's experience working with your firm. And also, I think, how could this improve the, the day-to-day working environment of your team members?

Because, you know, it's, you hear about these talent wars that are really at all levels of legal and people leave, and how can you use technology to make the day-to -day stress of being lawyers a little bit less for your existing team members so that they stay and they keep adding value? That is such a great answer, Kristen. Now, that leads us next, to the next question. Monica, what criteria should a law firm use to decide whether a new technology is a useful innovation or simply a cost, or costly distraction?

There's a lot of that right now, the costly distractions. And when, I think you, when you're, when you're going in and you're looking at a new technology, what I think you really want to think about is, how do you do your work? Like, you know, thinking about how you currently do your work and, or what practice area you're practicing in, and how does this support that work and that, and your work? So, let me give you an example.

There's a number of AI solutions on the market right now that don't have good integration into legal research. And if you're doing any type of litigation work, you know, having access to a repository of case law is very important for the usefulness of that tool. And so, I find that a number of people who are in the litigation space, they are really excited about AI, they purchase one of these tools, but then it's really not working for their workflows because it doesn't have the knowledge that they need for their work.

So, you know, really understanding your workflow, understanding what's the value it's going to bring, does it satisfy all the requirements that you have? And, you know, sometimes, you know, like, because there's like all this hype, it's really, you know, enticing to, you know, want to, you know, adopt and use one of these tools. But, you know, sometimes you, you know, if it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit. And maybe the right approach is to wait and see, you know, what comes in the market.

What we're seeing in the market is just such a deluge in terms of new technologies. And it's like, within six months, it's like, it changes drastically. So, it's like, if you don't find something right now, you know, you know, you wait six months, you might have a different experience. So, yeah, that's, that's, you know, one thing that comes to mind. Yeah, for sure. Kristen, is there anything that you'd like to add, maybe from the user's perspective?

What can make a technically impressive product a poor fit for attorneys and staff?

Yeah, I think it's, I think it comes down to any tool needs to be really clean and easy for a lawyer to use. Again, our work days are hectic. And if there's any friction in using a tool, if it's not really intuitive, you know, if the user can't just log in and kind of self-serve and intuitively figure things out, they're going to forget about it. They're not going to use it if they have. So, you really want to be mindful of trying to create tools that are, frankly, easy for lawyers to use.

We are very intelligent people. I'm an attorney, Monica's an attorney, you know, we, but we are juggling so many competing demands all the time that creating platforms that are clean and easy to use is going to keep your users coming back time and time again. All right, Kristen, getting back to you again, when should a law firm improve its people, processes of staffing before investing in more technology? Yeah, I think you kind of have to figure out a couple of things about where your bottlenecks are, and then is, are the bottlenecks a temporary situation or more long-term sustained problems?

So, you know, for example, if you are, you currently have a capacity issue because maybe you thought these three big cases were going to settle, but none of them are, and now you're suddenly going to trial on three cases back to back over six months, then that's a temporary solution where maybe you, you don't have time to go invest in new technology or totally revamp your process. You might just have to invest in staffing.

And there's a lot of really great staffing options out there for law firms, whether you need help in terms of paralegals or attorneys to just temporarily leverage talent through an outsource capacity to get you through that short-term season of that, you know, these unexpected cases that are all going to trial. Versus if that, if you're seeing these capacity constraints more long-term, then you probably need to look at all of those things.

Your existing people, where could you add staffing, you know, evaluating the work that your people are doing. And by that, I mean, you know, when is the last time that maybe a practice group leader has really looked at like the billing records for their whole team to look at, like, why is a senior partner writing discovery themselves? This is not a good use of your time. You know, looking at the nitty gritty of the day-to-day month-to-month use of time, where are people doing tasks that are not the best use of their time that should be passed down to a different team member or a platform or a technology platform.

And so I think that our, frankly, if you're doing hourly billing, and even I think a lot of people that do flat fee billing still track their activities to know what their people are working on. You can identify a lot of issues there that will then guide you whether you need to add more people, add new technology, or redo the process of, you know, senior partner is never allowed to do the first draft of discovery ever again.

Like, this is how this is going to work moving forward. So those are some things that can give you clues. I think you're on mute, Angie.

Thank you. So sorry about that. But yeah, I was saying that I think this question is very interesting. Maybe we could stay on this topic for a bit. Monica, what tells you that a firm has done enough process work to benefit from a technology investment?

You know, one of the one of the indicators is like, is that people are using it. You know, that's, that's what I kind of look at as a as a first kind of measurement is like, you know, are people using it, feedback is always important. Like, you know, we do, we do surveys, and so forth to understand, could be informal or could be formal. But we are asking, you know, asking the attorneys or asking the law clerks or paralegals, how do they, how do they like a particular tool?

The, the other thing that I think, I think, you know, Kristen, you had some great points that you made. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. It is really hard, like, you know, this, this, trying to get lawyers to use a tool, it's like, really, really hard. And so if you see, like, if you have a tool, which is easy to use, that that reduces that friction, you know, you sometimes see, you know, very good usage. So that's, that's one of the things that we look at when we're looking at tools and trying to evaluate them is how easy is it to use?

And that that will help us in terms of the adoption of the tool as well. All right, we'll take a little bit of break at this point, and share something with you. So before we move into implementation and measurement, I want to share a practical resource for firms that want help applying this framework to their own technology and growth decisions. We have spent the first half of tonight looking at how to distinguish genuine business value from software net activity and how to decide whether the real need is technology, people, process, staffing.

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Alright, let us return to the panel and move from the buying decision into implementation, adoption, ownership and measurable results.

Monica, let's start with you again. What implementation process gives new legal technology the best chance of succeeding after the initial launch? Um, you know, one thing that I found that works really well is having somebody who is championing the technology, like one of the attorneys, one of the law clerks, and that can drive that who will be the early user who can drive who can show to the other to their peers and colleagues how you how you use the solution.

And that has worked really well in terms of, you know, something that's been successful and something that's not been as successful. So I think that is really helpful. You know, when we're talking about implementation, again, we really look at the workflow. So we're looking at how does this fit into the workflow and training or educating, providing that training education to attorneys or to law clerks to help them understand how to fit that into their workflow.

Sometimes what I find is that when when somebody has the tool, they are even if they kind of have a sense of how to use it until they maybe see somebody actually doing it. So you you demonstrating it to them until they see that they are, you know, a little bit wary of using it. So, you know, having that support helping them through that kind of first iteration or first use, you know, kind of a little bit high touch at the beginning stages can really help in terms of implementation, implementing and adoption of the of the software technology.

What do you think should happen during the first 30 days after a new tool goes live? Well, first thing we do is we always do a some type of training or some type of, you know, education session where we go through, you know, here's the tool, this is how it works. Sometimes we have the vendor participate. So they, you know, participate, they provide that face of, hey, we're here, we're here to support you as well. And so that's one thing that has that has to happen.

Sometimes what we do is we do rollouts and phases. So we might have like a group. And so we're working with that group. Once we have that group, using it, confident about it, then we roll it to a larger group. So it just depends on the software. Christine, getting back to you, what adoption problems have you seen when attorneys resist changing how work is assigned or managed? Yes, yeah, that I see that a lot. I did want to chime in first that I'd love what Monica said about having a champion anytime you're introducing something new to the firm.

That is so key in a, you know, profession where we are often we're trained to look for the flaws and the problems and the holes and to point those out. You know, that's the way our brains work. It is so critical to have someone that is going to be a positive voice and point out all the highlights and the benefits and how great this is going at every level of rollout, whether that's with a tech committee or with practice groups or even with paralegal meetings where you're training.

You having that positive voice from a champion cannot be emphasized enough. That was a great point. So, but I think, Angie, you were asking now about, you know, where are the problems when attorneys resist changing how they assign work and how work gets done really? And so I see that a lot with my work at LawClerk, obviously, and the biggest problems, I think, especially when it comes to small firms and medium-sized firms is, you know, if the solo attorney or a small firm attorney, they think it takes too long to delegate and assign work.

They think, I'll just do it myself. It's faster, regardless of it really is or not, regardless if they're already burning the candle at both ends and not sleeping enough or not eating enough, not exercising. These, at the smaller firms, often, you know, the partner or each individual attorney can really be a bottleneck if they are resistant to delegate. And probably the biggest reason I get for that is either they think it takes too much time to delegate or they don't think anyone else could do even a, you know, 70% as well as they could on getting a first draft.

And typically once, and some people, there's frankly some lawyers that will never get over that challenge. But the ones who do challenge themselves to start assigning work to other people on their team or to work with outsourced resources, I always say delegating is an art, okay? You have to refine your art. You have to practice. You get better every time. You know, at the mid-sized law firm, those mid-sized partners are definitely more adept at delegating to the junior associate down the firm because they can walk down there and they tell them what to do and they've got all the templates in there.

And it's, you know, that is very routine at the mid-sized and bigger firms. Where I see the problems at the mid -sized level is when you have those partners who are very used to delegating to the real human associate down the hallway, but they struggle to delegate to perhaps remote associates, whether that's a remote team member or an outsourced remote attorney. That can just be some sort of mental barrier for a lot of people that if they would approach it really essentially the same way that they do when they walk down the hall to give someone an assignment in terms of saying, hey, I need you to work on this case.

These are the issues. Here's some documents you need. If you have any other questions, let me know. It's really not that different when you're working with someone remote and far too many attorneys are, you know, still trying to juggle more work than they can really handle because they're so resistant to refining their art of delegating to a remote associate. And so those are some of the challenges I see. That's such great insight, Kristen.

Thank you so much. Monica, getting back to you, how should law firms assign responsibility for technology training usage and accountability? I think it really, it depends on the size of the firm. So, you know, when you're talking about a solo or small firm, you know, you might be the person who is doing all three things, right? And so if I was giving advice to somebody who was a small solo firm lawyer, what I would recommend is leveraging the resources from the software vendors.

So the software vendors have lots of resources that are putting together. So like, for example, we're using Harvey, Harvey has something called Harvey Academy. So it has a lot of like online webinars, small firm owner is looking at some third party services out there. So there's a company called Legal Tech Hub, and they have evaluations of different software solutions. And that can be a really good resource in terms of understanding what are the tools out there, and how do people see those tools.

The other forum that I think really is helpful is bar associations or in Canada, the law societies, they have good kind of education sessions that help and bring some of that expertise. So you can, you know, you know, that they are credible, and you know, that the speakers are probably credible. And so that you can learn from them, I think those are really good places to learn. And I found for myself that conferences, like going to conferences and looking at the exhibitors, so like, you know, you go to a conference or conference where there's a big exhibition hall, that that is a really good place to kind of do research and understand the solutions out there.

That's a good point. Yeah, the conferences can be a great plus, it gets the attorney out of their day to day busy work life. And it really forces them to consider all these different options and see what's out there. Beyond that, one other tip that I often give smaller firms when they don't have that full technology department is just to make it a point to maybe schedule a quarterly check in, make yourself a quarterly law firm technology, you know, block an hour and evaluate, you know, maybe that's the time to look at tools you've implemented, and are they working or not and set realistic goals.

But you can calendar and have standing appointments to make you yourself do a check in. So it doesn't just, you know, another year flies by, and you're still using all the same things, whether they're really the best tools or Yeah, I think that's a great point. And one thing a friend of mine shared with me recently is that she's part of a group of attorneys where they talk about, they gather together to talk about a particular area of law.

She's a solo lawyer. And she said that recently, it's all about AI. So they share with each other, what are the different AI tools that they're looking at, and what their experience has been. So having that kind of peer group can be really valuable as well. That's a great idea. I love that. Kristin, getting back to you, what evidence shows that technology is genuinely improving lawyer capacity rather than adding more administrative work?

I can probably talk about that for an hour alone on itself. But adding lawyer capacity, I always am like, hesitant to talk about adding capacity, because I feel like so many people are already kind of at their max, you know, but if maybe you are in a position where your firm is growing, then obviously, you can measure whether you're improving your capacity by, you know, number of new clients, number of new cases opened every month, that could be an indicator, maybe even number of cases closed, if you're able to bring certain pieces of work to completion, collect that bill.

I think at the end of the day, if a technology is adding administrative drag, so, you know, this administrative drag to me is, is the technology resulting in the partners having to review more things than they're already reviewing? That probably isn't really solving a problem. Is the tool allowing the lawyers by and large to