On July 18, Exela sponsored the Kansas City Association of Legal Administrators (KCALA) monthly chapter meeting for July 2019. Around 15 law firms from the area attended the luncheon meeting at Lidia's in downtown Kansas City, MO. The meeting featured a lively presentation led by Exela's Vice President of Strategy & Business Development, Matt Crumrine, and Exela's Client Engagement Director, Michael Marinelli on the topic, Legal Services - Trends and State of the Market.

Here are the highlights of the presentation:

It’s increasingly a “client’s market” for law firms

The digital transformation landscape in the business world is driving changes in the way clients regard law firms, the services they provide, and the fees they charge. With increasing access to data, data analytics, and alternative legal service providers, law firm clients now possess greater insight into the services they need, who (or what) should provide those services, and the terms of service delivery.

The economic environment for law firms is currently “slow growth.”

While Matt and Mike pointed out the overall demand for legal services remains strong, eight years of slow growth has put the legal industry in a hyper-competitive state. Fortunately, the possibilities for utilizing technology to boost law firm efficiency and productivity are multiplying rapidly, and law firm clients are ready to see those changes take effect. One industry periodical recently reported that one-third businesses would prefer their law firms to offer digital services, and 68% of lawyers surveyed by the American Bar Association have fielded at least one request to utilize new technologies, like e-discovery, in the last year. However, only half of all law firms have yet to respond by making use of the available technology.

Find out: is your law firm falling behind?

Even as some firms adopt digital transformation initiatives that contribute to more efficient lawyering, billing utilization rates continue to drop, with the average lawyer now working 144 less billable hours, per year, versus a decade ago.

Dynamic firms versus static firms

Recent data has revealed that law firms adopting a more proactive, or "dynamic" model of addressing client needs via alternative staffing strategies, flexible pricing models, evolving work processes, and better use of technology, are outperforming their more static counterparts. Interestingly, this suggests the gap between high-performing and lower-performing firms is not being driven through differences in practice area or areas of expertise, but with their approach to addressing traditional challenges through innovation.

Profile of a “dynamic” firm:

• Leveraging technology and automation to free lawyers’ time for higher-value work
• Offering clients flexible pricing and alternative fee arrangements upfront
• Embracing continuous learning, training, and knowledge sharing
• Top-down cultural transformation, the importance of which should not be discounted

As Mike points out, “Culture eats policy and procedure for breakfast.” In other words, a law firm whose leadership hasn’t embraced the tech-culture imperative can purchase all the systems and services available but shouldn’t expect the vast majority of its workforce to utilize them.

What’s lies ahead

We don't have a crystal ball and can't predict the future. However, Matt and Mike do believe that a small number of law firms will bet and win big on digital transformation, and a new generation of tech-native lawyers will continue to move their respective law firms toward the more dynamic approach. We've seen firsthand it is possible to teach an "old law firm new tech." We’ve got the case studies right here.

Historically, the legal sector has been one of the slower industries to adopt new technologies. However, the unique demands of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden boost in legal tech adoption. This uptick in technology utilization, along with the increased acceptance of specialized alternative legal service providers (ALSPs), are changing the way many legal teams operate.

In this edition of PluggedIN: How Tech and the Pandemic are Changing the Legal Sector, we dig into how law firms and legal departments alike are finding new ways to increase productivity and efficiency.

The full issue is available for download now at: https://www.exelatech.com/pluggedin

A defining feature of the human species is our ability to invent and continuously refine tools that help alleviate the burdens of labor. Since long before recorded history, humans have been devising ways to simplify daily activities to enhance our productivity.

Here are some notable examples of automation advancements made throughout our existence on this planet:

Prehistory

Among the earliest known examples of tools designed to increase productivity are weighted fishing nets. Sinkers used to anchor these nets in streams were recently discovered in South Korea that date back as far as 27,000 BCE.1 Even stone age people were engaged in automation, and since at least that time, humans have been constantly striving to find more effective ways to get the job done.

Ancient History

Timekeeping was automated in Babylon and Egypt through the use of water and shadow clocks as early as 1500 BCE.² Water wheels automated water collection efforts in Egypt as early as the 4th century BCE, and we have evidence from the Greek technician Appollonius of Perga that water mills used to grind grain had been developed as early as the 3rd century BCE.3

The Early Common Era

The Book of Ingenious Devices, published in 850 by the Banu Musa in Iraq, describes numerous automated technologies developed early in the Common Era. These included automatic fountains, an automatic flute player, and various regulators and valves that were important precursors to control and fail-safe systems we use today.⁴

The Renaissance

The Renaissance may be mostly remembered for the great advances in art and philosophy, but it was also a time of exciting scientific and technological developments. In 1439, Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type printing press changed the world by enabling the mass production of printed books.⁵ Toward the end of this period, Blaise Pascal laid the groundwork for advances in computational technology when he introduced his mechanical calculator in 1645.6

The First Industrial Revolution

In the late 1700s, the Industrial Revolution pushed technological developments to entirely new levels. James Watt’s continuous rotary-motion steam engine was completed in 1776.⁷ Edmund Cartwright’s power loom, designed in 1784, greatly reduced the labor needed to manufacture complex textiles.⁸ And Andrew Meikle’s threshing machine from the same year automated a very laborious process that absorbed roughly 25% of agricultural labor at the time.9

The Second Industrial Revolution

The massive expansion of the railroad system in the US in the mid 1800’s, and the Second Industrial Revolution, which reached its peak from about 1870 to 1914, spurred numerous advances—many of which coincided with, and relied upon, new electrification technology. In 1913, Henry Ford’s moving assembly line revolutionized mass production,¹⁰ and Bell Telephone Company began to adopt automatic telephone switchboards in 1919.11

World War II and the Post-War Period

The first programmable electronic computer, Colossus, was completed in 1943 to help the British break German encryption during WWII.¹² This burgeoning technology would greatly impact all industries and create entirely new ones in the process—many of which automated core processes to stay competitive. The term ‘automation’ was coined in the automobile industry around 1946, shortly before Ford established its first “Automation Department.” By 1961, Bell Punch Co. announced the world’s first electronic desktop calculator, ANITA.13

The Third Industrial Revolution

Advancing computer technology enabled exponential technological progress in the following decades. In the early 1970s, the Third Industrial Revolution, or Digital Revolution, was in its infancy, supported by developments in magnetic memory, microprocessors, and battery technology that allowed computer systems to be further refined. The availability of personal computers increased dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and this put us squarely into the Information Age that we are still in today.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

In humanity’s quest to automate tasks, we’ve created machines that can do an impressive variety of work. Semi-autonomous robots are now able to handle mundanity like sweeping our floors, and even incredible feats our distant ancestors could scarcely imagine, like exploring other planets. Machine learning enables automatic data extraction and interpretation, and powerful predictive modeling. Natural language processing has given us virtual assistants and chatbots, and artificial intelligence is able to produce news articles and even drive our cars. Recent breakthroughs in biotechnology, nanotechnology, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing will continue propelling advancements in automation ever more rapidly forward.

The pace of development in automation technology has quickened even further in the Information Age, and there are no signs of it slowing. Today, more than ever, humanity continues to seek better ways to maximize productivity and minimize labor. At Exela Technologies, we intend to be a catalyst for ever greater developments in the future, as we remain at the forefront of this latest era in the history of automation.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is well underway. Make sure your business is ready to take advantage of it.

1. https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/possible-evidence-of-worlds-oldest-fishing-nets-unearthed-in-korea/
2. https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/ancient-invention-water-clock-001818
3. https://books.openedition.org/pcjb/437?lang=en
4. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/book-of-ingenious-devices
5. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johannes-Gutenberg
6. https://www.britannica.com/technology/calculator
7. https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Watt#ref7786
8. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/cartwright_edmund.shtml
9. http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4656
10. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling
11. https://ethw.org/Electromechanical_Telephone-Switching
12. https://www.tnmoc.org/colossus
13. http://anita-calculators.info/html/development_of_anita_1.html