In fact, leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey from the American Bar Association, almost half of all law firms operating in the United States did not utilize cloud software in management of their firm. This means that nearly half of all US law firms were ultimately blindsided by the unprecedented shutdown of all in-person businesses at the beginning of last year. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that cloud computing is the way of the future, something that must be capitalized upon sooner, rather than later. Firms that utilized cloud management of their business were exponentially more prepared for the instant shift to remote work than firms that did not- going forward, it may be wise to consider cloud computing and management as necessary insurance to run a business.

Let’s compare the benefit of the cloud to needing a grocery list for shopping. How many times has something unexpected happened- your child or spouse throws away the list on accident, or you lose said grocery list in some other way. If you only keep a physical, one-copy record of your grocery list, it will be lost to the ages. However, if you happened to jot down your grocery list onto your iPhone notes (thus utilizing the cloud), not only would it be impossible to lose the grocery list- you would be able to continue to add or otherwise edit your list at any time, from multiple different platforms- from your phone, tablet, or computer.

This is the benefit that the utilization of cloud computing can provide. Who knows what can happen- maybe you’re forced to stay home from the office on a sick day, or need to access relevant casework from somewhere other than your office. Having the cloud as a practice management resource allows you to be able to access your firm from anywhere in the world. By using the right type of cloud-based software, not only will your work become all the more accessible at any time, but it will also become more secure than ever.

This is where NuLaw becomes all the more relevant. Powered by Salesforce, and as one of the most all-inclusive practice management software providers on the market, NuLaw is able to handle everything- from intake, prospecting, and matter planning, to reporting, billing, and scheduling. Additionally, NuLaw integrates with a laundry list of third party software while keeping everything under wraps with the same top-notch security measures utilized by the United States Department of Defense. As the working world moves to the future, help your practice stay prepared for anything that may come it’s way, and invest in cloud computing sooner, rather than later.

Indeed, consolidation is one of the most important organizational aspects of our day to day lives. When you make a grocery shopping list, do you make a separate list for each aisle, or do you make one single list for everything you need for your trip? When you’re moving to a new home, do you throw everything into random boxes, or do you strategically fit everything into as few categorized boxes as possible, in order to be more efficient (as well as cost-effective) in the process of bringing everything from point A to point B? When you are running your legal practice, do you want to conduct your day-to-day agenda by clicking in and out of different apps and tabs, or do you want to conduct your business efficiently, through the usage of a single, all-inclusive platform?

This is made possible by utilization of a platform that touts the ability to manage software integrations. Essentially, these integrations streamline day-to-day tasks, and make it easier to not only organize your firm from the top-down, while also improving the cost-effective efficiency with which your firm operates. Think about how much frustration and stress in the day that you can mitigate by not constantly sifting through different platforms just to accomplish one task for one case. Again, referring to the previous analogy- how hard would it be to unpack in your new house or apartment if all of your belongings are spread across multiple mixed-item boxes, when you could’ve just put specific belongings for specific rooms into a single box? With the properly organized moving boxes (properly coordinated integrations), you never have to stress out trying to think about whether you have lost or forgotten something again. Integrations are a proactive measure for any legal practice.

For example, think of a communication integration with a Case Management Software, such as chatter. According to a recent blog from ActiveCampaign, “[software integration] adoption increases the quality of communication between [employees] and managers by 56.9% — meaning less time spent on misunderstandings and more time spent selling.”  Additionally, the blog continues on to state “[Practice management] apps can increase sales productivity by up to 34%. The learning curve can be steep — although a strategic implementation process softens it — but the results are more than worth it and can save your sales team tons of time.” Why continue using a system that continually clutters and otherwise complicates your day, when you can bring in a new system that improves upon finance and efficiency for your practice?

NuLaw understands that consolidation is key to running any business more efficiently than ever before. That is why we have so many integrations available with our software. Powered by Salesforce, manage your firm’s day-to-day operations while utilizing software such as SharePoint, Outlook, Office 365, Gmail, Google Calendar, Quickbooks, airSlate, Adobe Sign, Docusign, and NuPay- all from the single NuLaw dashboard! Managing your firm from a single all-inclusive platform has never been easier, or more efficient. With NuLaw, enjoy the time-saving power of software that just works.

As the creators of a market-leading case management application based on the Salesforce CRM platform, we believe it is not enough just to know that modernizing technology is a good idea. We believe firms need to know why. After all, the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ is that which provides the motivation to modernize.

The basis for this post is a survey of millennial lawyers published in April 2019 by Major, Lindsey & Africa. There are three key statistics from that survey that really zero in on why technology modernization is so important for law firms. Bear in mind that the baby boomers are beginning to retire. Millennial lawyers are coming in behind them.

1. The Need for Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is very important to millennial attorneys. According to the survey, 75% say they would be willing to sacrifice some of their compensation in order to reduce their billable hours or have access to a more flexible work schedule. Simple enough, right? What is not so simple is understanding how technology effects work-life balance.

A modern case management app should, at the very least, make the modern law office more efficient. NuLaw does. Greater efficiency leads to more productivity. As such, attorneys who do their jobs more efficiently are capable of generating more revenue without having to take on more billable hours. Increasing efficiency is the first step toward offering millennial attorneys a better work-life balance.

2. Loyalty Among Junior Attorneys

Despite some 40% of millennial lawyers saying that they view partnership as a long-term career goal, 75% of them also admitted to either being open to new job opportunities or actively seeking them out. That is big. If 75% of the junior attorneys in your firm are actually looking for work elsewhere, where does that leave you for the future?

The point here is that making sure junior attorneys stay with your firm long enough to become partners should be a priority. It cannot be if your firm is still using outdated technology. Remember, the millennial generation was raised on technology. They expect that the technology they are given to do their jobs is up to date. They do not expect to be encumbered by legacy technology that has not kept up with the times.

3. Millennials Are Committed to Change

The millennial generation and their younger counterparts are somewhat unique in that they take very personally what they believe is a responsibility to change the world. Where previous generations maybe gave an affirming nod to the need for change, millennials and Gen Z members actually take an active role in facilitating change.

This suggests that the millennials at your firm are going to try changing the way you do business with the goal of better serving clients and the local community. But they will only try for so long. If your firm is resistant to change, those millennial attorneys will ultimately go elsewhere.

Some 62% of those who responded to the Major, Lindsey & Africa survey said that millennials are already changing both law firm culture and policies. More importantly, 70% said they were confident in their abilities to achieve their long-term career goals. Both statistics suggest that millennials are committed to change – whether their firms are behind it or not.

It’s time to modernize your law firm’s technology. If you are still behind the times, you’re in danger of alienating millennial attorneys.

Law is not usually an area that we normally associate with big data. But that’s only because the legal sector has historically been slow to adopt new technology. The fact is that data can be a tremendous help in the ongoing effort to grow a practice. It all comes down to understanding how a practice is performing in all areas of case acquisition.

A Few Key Questions

We will assume that your case acquisition program is not data driven. With that assumption, there are a few key questions to ask about your firm, questions that should illustrate the importance of making data part of the equation. Here they are:

• Do we know what our top referral sources are?
• Do we know how many referrals come from those sources?
• How many prospects do we expect to actually become clients?
• Among those that are converted, how much revenue can we expect to generate?
• Do we use online intake to convert prospects into clients?
• How do prospects find us online?

Believe it or not, a lot of law firm owners and managers cannot answer these questions. They do not really know the numbers behind their case acquisition efforts. They do know the bottom line, which is good, but they do not know what goes into making the bottom line what it is.

Data Provides the Answers

Hopefully you now have a better idea of why data is so important to case acquisition. It provides the answers to all of the marketing department’s questions. Data tells the marketing department where prospects are coming from. It tells them how successful they are converting prospects to clients. Data also measures how well attorneys are doing in the converting process.

By way of example, imagine your law firm works with other industry partners and website owners to exchange links. Let us also say that one of your backlinks has consistently delivered 12 to 15 leads every week. Suddenly that drops to just two or three. Your data tells you that something is wrong. Now you can go investigate and hopefully fix what is broken.

If you are not tracking referral sources, you would have no way of knowing that something is wrong with that link. You would not know to go fix it. As a result, you would have fewer weekly leads to follow up on. Fewer leads means fewer opportunities to convert prospects to clients.

Data Offers a Snapshot

Data-driven case acquisition is very much tied to marketing. But there is something else at play here: the current state of your law firm. Data helps by providing a snapshot of all the most important key performance indicators at a glance. Understanding the current state of your business makes future case acquisition efforts more productive.

For example, your case management app should be able to clearly tell you the current status of every prospect your firm is working with. Knowing that information makes responding to each prospect a breeze. On the other hand, not knowing the status of current prospects means your firm is less nimble and responsive to them.

Data-driven case acquisition is the way to go. If your firm is not using data for generating leads, contacting prospects, and converting those prospects to paying clients, it is time for a new approach.

A lot of people in the technology sector are talking about quantum computing. It is said to be the next big thing in computer technology. If all the experts are right, quantum computing will eventually find its way into the global legal system. But will it be good or bad? Does quantum computing represent a benefit or a threat?

Quantum Computing Basics

Quantum computers are built to take advantage of the natural properties observed in the science of quantum physics. If you are not familiar with quantum physics, it is the study of quantum properties at the subatomic level. It studies the relationships between electrons, protons, photons, etc. These properties can be applied to computing to create ever more powerful machines capable of completing the most complex tasks.

Imagine data currently stored on your computer being converted into quantum data. Where a traditional computer relies on magnetized bits of information organized as ones and zeros, a quantum computer stores data using subatomic particles arranged in certain ways. The benefits of the quantum model are found in the quantum properties of those subatomic particles.

Superposition and Entanglement

There are two quantum properties that are especially intriguing to computer builders. They are superposition and entanglement. Superposition is a property that allows a quantum system to exist in multiple states simultaneously. In space, you could have a quantum system that exists both at the far and near ends of that space. If the system were represented as a cube with the top and bottom, it could be both right side up and upside down simultaneously.

Entanglement is a property that allows quantum particles to be perfectly linked even separated by distance. Because they are linked, they behave in exactly the same way. If one moves to the left, so does the other. Entanglement is so powerful that it works across light years of space.

Legal Applications

What has been described here is little more than a basic introduction to quantum computing. More important to this discussion is its legal applications. One must remember that quantum computers are capable of doing things that classic computers cannot do. For example, no classic computer on earth can factor a 500-digit number. It is child’s play for a quantum computer.

Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize law practice in several ways. For example, it will likely be able to provide sound legal advice in place of a human attorney at some point down the road. Powerful quantum computers will be able to analyze and compare unfathomable amounts of data from legal documents, past cases, etc. to render sound advice.

It has been suggested that quantum computing might also be capable of replacing human judges and attorneys when deciding clear-cut cases that do not require intuition or moral judgments. And even if judges and attorneys are not fully replaced, quantum computing should at least help them do their jobs more effectively.

NuLaw is by no means capable of doing what quantum computing can do. But it is an excellent case management application for the modern era. Because quantum computing in the legal sector is still a long way off, you need the best case management app you can find right now. We believe it’s NuLaw.

E-mail has now been around for 30+ years. It is to modern communication what snail mail and the telephone were before the commercial internet. What is most remarkable is the fact that e-mail hasn’t changed a whole lot in that time. This suggests it is no longer up to the task for modern communication needs. E-mail in the legal industry is often kept separate from case management applications, which presents yet another problem.

If your firm still uses e-mail as its primary communication tool, here are three things to consider:

1. E-Mail is Inherently Insecure

E-mail has always been an insecure method of communication. Before you object to that statement by claiming that Google and Yahoo! go to great lengths to encrypt e-mail, they are but two organizations in a sea of e-mail options. Not only that, their encryption methods and reliability are in question.

The vast majority of e-mail is not encrypted. Even worse is that it is incredibly easy to make mistakes. Imagine sending an e-mail to one of your clients with a Gmail account. With a simple keystroke error, e-mail intended for a ‘gmail.com’ address could end up going to ‘mail.com’. Once sent, you cannot get it back.

2. E-Mail Tracking Software

Next up is e-mail tracking software. If you are not familiar with this kind of software, rest assured plenty of attorneys are. It is software that lets you track what happens to e-mails after they are sent. For example, tracking will allow you to know that a client’s server has received that e-mail sent this morning. It can tell you that your client has actually opened the e-mail.

Though this might seem innocuous, it’s not. Why? Because tracking works both ways. Tracking software pays attention to communication on both sides of the e-mail. While you are tracking clients, they also might be tracking you. The software provider is probably tracking both of you.

Note that numerous state bar associations have already taken official positions against e-mail tracking. Some have gone so far as to ban it when communicating with opposing attorneys.

3. E-Mail Service Tracking

Tracking is also an issue where service providers are concerned. For example, have you ever wondered why Google offers free e-mail to millions of users around the world? After all, it costs them money to operate the servers that make all that e-mail possible. Google is willing to spend the money because they can scan and track e-mail for the purposes of further developing advertising profiles.

Yes, Google computers scan customer e-mail. So does just about every other free e-mail service out there. They scan e-mails in order to build user profiles. They also track the links embedded in those e-mails and whether or not the links are clicked on. Sending e-mail to a client with an address from a free service virtually guarantees the message will be scanned and tracked.

So what’s the solution? A legal case management application with a built-in communication portal. You keep attorney-client communication out of the e-mail realm and, instead, confine it to your own cloud environment. Your communications stay between you and your clients. There are no intermediaries scanning, tracking, and having access to information that does not pertain to them.

One area in which many attorneys could afford to spend more time is that of legal writing. As an attorney, you are also a writer of sorts. The documents you prepare throughout the course of a given case will have at least some impact on the outcome. The better your writing skills, the more positive the impact of your documents.

Communicating with Clients

Attorneys often communicate with clients through written documents. Whether it is e-mails, snail mail letters, or legal documents delivered directly to a client’s door, they all contain the written word. They all represent an opportunity for an attorney to clearly communicate thoughts and ideas to a client who might have trouble understanding legalese.

The thing that is easy to forget is that clients do not speak the attorney’s language. Writing documents intended to go to clients should always be done with this in mind. Attorneys should make a practice of writing in language that clients understand. And where that is not possible for whatever reason, some sort of explanation should accompany language too complicated for clients with no legal training.

Writing for Attorneys and Courts

Preparing documents for other attorneys and courts is where legal writing tends to be most problematic. Unfortunately, attorneys have not escaped the modern trend of verbosity that seems to have overcome the corporate world. Attorneys are just as likely as their corporate counterparts to write long-winded opinions and arguments that don’t say a whole lot.

The thing to remember here is that attorneys are judged by the documents they prepare. A judge reading a five-page document that could have just as easily been two pages may question the ability of the attorney who wrote it to organize thoughts succinctly and with only the necessary amount of detail.

Opposing attorneys reading documents filled with spelling and grammar errors are likely to judge the author as incompetent and easy to take advantage of. Whether or not it’s actually true doesn’t change the perception of incompetence.

Research and Practice

So how is the attorney to improve his or her legal writing? Through research and practice. Once again, a cloud-based legal case management application can help here. We have already discussed how new software can make a law firm more efficient, thus giving attorneys more time to practice law. But there is another benefit, at least with NuLaw.

NuLaw includes a built-in library to support a firm’s legal documents and research. As an attorney researches ways to improve his or her writing, any information found online can be added to the library. The attorney can build a comprehensive set of resources devoted to better legal writing.

Those resources can then be put to use as the attorney practices. Legal writing can be compared to documents in the library, then modified to bring it in line with good writing standards. With practice comes improved writing skills that make an attorney more effective over time.

Attorneys, you are also writers of sorts. Don’t ever forget that. Your ability to communicate through writing will have an impact on your success as an attorney. One of your goals should be to continually improve your writing skills.

Time is money in the legal profession. We get that. We also fully understand that law firms want to spend as little time as possible on training. After all, they have clients to advise and cases to litigate. Yet adopting new software without investing time in training can actually make law firms less efficient and productive. Then the entire purpose for upgrading software is defeated.

NuLaw is built on the Salesforce CRM platform so it is already fairly intuitive and easy to use. It has a rather gentle learning curve as well. Yet we still believe there is real value in putting time into proper training. The more members of the firm are put through in-depth training, the more beneficial the software is.

Answers from the Experts

New software always engenders tons of questions. It doesn’t matter whether you are talking about an office productivity suite or a legal case management application. Formal training affords the opportunity to get answers to those questions from experts.

Yes, it is possible to learn on the fly. It is also possible to pick the brains of other team members who have had more time on the software. But expert knowledge is invaluable. Being able to take advantage of that knowledge during a formal training session reduces the learning curve tremendously.

Opportunities to Network

Formal training brings together various team members from the law firm into a single, collaborative environment. The end result is that team members have an opportunity to network while they learn the software. They are able to work together to see how this new technology can benefit their respective departments – both individually and as they interact with one another.

A lack of formal training tends to lead to different departments viewing the new software only from the perspective of what they do. They do not think in terms of how everyone else uses the application. This is something training seeks to avoid.

Hands-On Experience

Last but not least is the hands-on experience team members get from formal training. Without training, they are left to read help documents and figure things out themselves. They spend more time trying to teach themselves the software than actually getting work done.

Formal training occurs in a sandbox. It allows for hands-on experience which, ultimately, is the best kind of teacher. Team members actually work with the software using real-life scenarios in a controlled setting. They get to practice without having to worry about breaking something.

Learning How to Be Better

Training has a goal that goes above and beyond merely learning the operational skills necessary to manage a new legal case management application. That goal is to help team members learn how to be better. Remember that technology is a tool and nothing more. It is a tool to help you do what you do better.

Formal training absolutely does teach rudimentary software skills. But proper training also teaches team members how to use their new software tool to be better at what they do. It teaches them to look at new ways of doing things. It teaches them to think differently about what it is they do. If your firm is getting ready for new software, make formal training part of the deployment. You will not regret it.

As in-house spending increases and workloads get heavier, corporate attorneys are having to rethink how they do things. Their jobs are made easier when their employers provide the right technology – including a modern, state-of-the-art legal case management app.

Bringing Work Back Home

Altman Weil’s annual Chief Legal Officer (CLO) survey gives the legal profession a snapshot of what is happening in corporate law departments across America. The 2018 survey reveals some surprising numbers about outsourced versus in-house work. For example, the survey indicated that 42% of CLOs had plans to bring on more lawyers within the next 12 months. The reason? To handle increased workload.

The survey also revealed that, for the first time ever, in-house spend in corporate legal departments represented the single largest portion of the budget, with an average of 48% of the money going to in-house activities. In addition, some 32% of corporate legal departments decreased spending on outside law firms while 42% increased their outside spend.

In a nutshell, the survey shows that corporate legal departments are changing. Workloads are increasing, more work is being brought back home, and CLOs are looking to add to their staffs through increased hiring.

Technology Makes for More Efficiency

Managing workload is a normal part of the CLO’s job description. To be sure, addressing higher workloads merely through hiring alone is not the wisest course of action. It is better to combine increased hiring with new technology that makes the office more efficient and productive. That is where legal case management software comes into play.

While corporate legal departments have been slowly evolving to account for changes in how law is practiced, the rest of the world has been pushing forward in the technology arena. From cloud-based apps to secure communication platforms, technology has revolutionized just about every sector of the U.S. economy. It is finally making its way to corporate law.

The balancing act for CLOs is to find ways to adopt new technology without disrupting all of the other departments within the company. In the case of finding a new legal case management app, it’s a matter of finding something that will play well with the rest of the company software.

Case Management in the Cloud

The best way to go these days is with a cloud-based app. A good app is more than adequate for addressing basics like document preparation and calendaring. However, it doesn’t stop there. A good app increases efficiency with artificial intelligence capabilities, deep learning capabilities, and built-in libraries for storing documents and research information. A good app can collect, organize, track, and audit information in line with software from the billing department, the budget office, and so forth.

Cloud applications are ideal for these sorts of things. By their nature, cloud apps are designed to integrate with other apps within the same ecosystem. The cloud structure gives access to information in real time, to every individual and department that needs it.

Technology is the key to corporate legal departments modernizing. It is the key to helping CLOs looking to bring more work back home so as to rely less on outside counsel and tertiary support. Without technology, the beleaguered CLO has only additional hiring to rely on as workloads get heavier.

Apparently, we are not alone. According to the 2018 Legal Technology Survey from the ABA, 55% of surveyed attorneys acknowledged using cloud computing software within the previous 12 months. That number was 36% in the 2016 survey. So what is driving so many law firms to the cloud?

Based on the 2018 survey, here are the top five factors:

1. Ease of Access

The number one reason cited by attorneys is the ease of access cloud applications afford. By design, a cloud application is not hosted on a local network. It resides on a network server in a remote location. This makes an enormous difference in terms of access.

A cloud server is like any other internet server. It can be accessed from virtually anywhere in the world with just an internet connection and a device to get online. As such, cloud-based legal software makes information available to attorneys and support staff regardless of location.

2. Around-The-Clock Availability

Cloud-based software also allows for around-the-clock availability. Again, remember that you are dealing with an internet server that never shuts down. If an attorney decides to review certain aspects of a case after hours, he/she can do so in the cloud.

3. Low Startup Costs

Law firms moving into the cloud are often doing so because they have decided it is time to replace legacy software. They discover that the cloud option involves lower startup costs. Indeed, getting started usually means paying a small set-up fee and the cost of the subscription. Law firms do not have to buy expensive software or upgrade their network equipment.

When you consider how software licensing works in the modern era, lower startup costs suddenly become very attractive. Law firms access NuLaw on a subscription basis. If they were to purchase locally hosted software, they would also be purchasing licenses for every computer on the network – which can get costly.

4. Backups and Data Recovery

Locally hosted software has to be backed up on a regular basis. Backups have to be stored in a separate location in order to support data recovery efforts. All of this means extra work on the part of the law firm. That work goes away with cloud applications.

The application provider, NuLaw in this case, handles everything related to backups and data recovery. We keep the customer’s data environment protected. We make the backups and store them in separate locations. And should the system never crash, we handle data recovery as well.

5. Reduced Deployment Time

Finally, law firms are turning to cloud-based case management applications out of a desire to reduce deployment time. They want new software up and running as quickly as possible so that lost time and productivity are kept to a minimum.

Cloud-based applications like NuLaw are perfectly suited for this. The software itself is already up and running. New clients need only complete a brief onboarding process to activate their subscriptions and upload their data. What could take weeks or months to complete with locally hosted software can be done in the cloud in just days.

Law firms are moving to the cloud with greater frequency. There are plenty of good reasons for doing so, beginning with the top five mentioned in this post.