Legal Tech investment has grown 5x since 2017
With legal tech disrupting the sector at pace, law firms would do well to examine how e-commerce businesses have used digital transformation to embrace sales success. Investment in legal tech reached $1.3bn in 2019, more than five times above the figure recorded in 2017. This is disrupting tried and tested legal methods – it’s changing the way clients want to access services.
To take a high-level view, e-commerce is ripe for repetition in the legal industry. Law firms have typically operated a sales process that’s reliant on person-to-person relationships. Retail businesses have automated interactions. Customers are demanding the level of convenience offered by digital services. Data and digital touchpoints allow firms to deliver higher-quality services efficiently.
But what strategies sit behind this digital shift – how can law firms follow suit?
Toward digital retail-inspired experiences
Changing how you operate is a daunting task and not without risk. It requires an approach that enables you to meet client needs and evolve with their expectations. Fast-moving professional services businesses are implementing digital convenience and agility into their ecosystems and it’s improving client relationships.
We’ve now reached a point where digital tools are smart enough to streamline professional services and customer experiences. For example, IronClad automates contracting workflows and approvals. The service, already used by L’Oréal, Staples, Mastercard and other leading brands identifies critical terms and entities, turning contracts into code and allowing users to search, tag and manage them.
It’s this type of technology that is allowing tactics used by successful retailers to be applied by legal firms. Here are six ways that law firms can replicate the experience of e-commerce experts:
Conversion-centric approach
A laser focus on continually enhancing the conversion to sales through the entire funnel.
Human-centred service design
Shaping digital experiences around a sophisticated understanding of customers’ needs.
Data-driven enhancements
Beginning with Conversion Rate Optimisation, data-driven accountability has become vital to making decisions throughout digital retail experiences. Every new feature is given targets and measured to highlight improvements.
Merchandising
Digital enables retailers to automate merchandising, making connections between what customers are shopping for and what they may also need.
Personalisation
Enables retailers to move beyond traditional demographics to build insight into individual users; creating user-specific experiences onsite based on real-world behaviours rather than assumptions.
End-to-end digital self-serve
Leveraging features like personal, account-based experiences and bot-driven chat to handle common questions.
Using the 6 tactics in daily operations
We’ve identified several key ways to adopt these strategies to offer more efficient and convenient services for clients. These include: personalisation, digital experience, new pricing models, optimising content and data-driven services. It’s vital to remember that throughout transformation, a focus on the customer is crucial.
While the tsunami of tech-driven change in the legal sector is well under way, you don’t have to do everything at once. If you’re considering taking a leaf out of the book of retailers which successfully shifted to the e-commerce era, then a digital transformation roadmap is key. That means that prioritising the highest-impact challenges with the agility to respond to market changes at any time.
The future is coming at us fast, but excellent client experiences are within our grasp if we take the right approach to adopting technology.