Digital Transformation in the Legal Sector

How are law firms using tech to transform services and enable law professionals to focus on their skills?

Law firms and no-code

partner-developer-icon

“Clients — not lawyers — are now calling the shots…” Forbes

mindmap-icon

22% of law firms are losing clients to firms using software automation

coins-icon

Tech-savvy law firms are boosting revenue with innovative new services

Request a demo

Law: modernizing a traditional sector

It's true that the legal sector hasn't been as quick to adopt digital solutions as other sectors, such as finance. But, by all accounts, digital transformation in law is now well underway. According to Forbes, investments in legal technology businesses reached $1bn in 2018, an increase of 713% compared to 2017.

Top law firms are now using technology to improve both internal processes and the service they offer to their clients. From automation to artificial intelligence, leading law firms are now using software to modernize a largely traditional profession.
Get the whitepaper

Why are law firms going digital?

A shift in focus

Law firms today face many challenges, with perhaps the greatest being client pressure.

To client expectations, leading law firms are beginning to shift their focus outward, from internal measures of success such as hours billed, to customers satisfaction.

It's impossible for law firms to provide the service clients expect if they're held back by inefficient legacy systems, time-consuming manual processes, and a general lack of innovation.

Legal sector challenges

  • Excel-based processes make for slow, error prone work
  • Legacy systems make changes difficult
  • Client expectations are adding pressure
  • New law firms are stealing clients through using technology
  • Highly skilled law professionals are spending too much time on repetitive tasks

“Clients — not lawyers — are now calling the shots and driving the transformation of the legal industry.”

mark_cohen_forbes Mark A. Cohen, Forbes

What does change look like?

The increased investment in legal technology is taking many forms. A different approach is needed by law firms, and we're seeing this with many leading law firms employing digital specialists to work alongside law professionals. Similarly, we've seen the introduction of the 'innovation hour', which affords law professionals the time to innovate, something the traditional billable hour model fails to do.

Though a little late to the party, the legal sector is now moving towards cloud-based computing, and reaping the benefits of improved security, collaboration, and accessibility.

The legal sector is even dipping its toes into the world of artificial intelligence (AI). AI tool, ROSS, has been assisting law firms with otherwise time-consuming research for the past few years. But perhaps a more common way that law firms are utilizing technology is through automation, as we'll see below.
background-image-white

Law firms and automation

Law professionals are highly skilled, their time is expensive. By automating processes, law professionals can focus on providing the best possible service to clients, instead of spending hours on simple, repetitive tasks.

chart_law

 

Tech-savvy clients shop around

In a survey by Altman Weil entitled Law Firms in Transition 2019, 22% of firms surveyed said they were losing clients to firms that have utilized technology to reduce the number of lawyers and paralegals in their ranks.

background-image-white

Case study: 30 hours to 30 minutes
with no-code

Betty Blocks was approached by an international law firm with more than 4000 lawyers and legal professionals at its disposal. The law firm's innovation manager opted to use the Betty Blocks no-code platform to achieve 4 key goals:
With these goals in mind, the innovation manager and his team went on to build 25 apps using Betty Blocks’ no-code platform — some internal and some client-facing.

Reducing a 30-hour process to 30 minutes, and saving at least one full week of development time, the law firm was able to achieve: applications that integrate with multiple web services, a back-end that handles vast amounts of data effortlessly and securely with no "time-lag", a standardized back-end across the entire firm, and updates deployed 5-10 times faster than with non-cloud-based applications.
background-image-black

Why no-code over traditional coding?

background-image-white

Secure and trusted

Security is always important, but in the legal sector, it's especially crucial. The Betty Blocks no-code platform is ISO27001 certified and is recognized by top industry analysts. Your data is safe with us.

Recognized by analysts

Keyvisual-FW-magazine

Betty Blocks is named as a Strong Performer in the Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Platforms For Business Developers, Q2 2019

Read more
Blue block (4)

Betty Blocks Named a Visionary in Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms

Read more
Keyvisual-FW-magazine

Betty Blocks is named as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Mobile Low-Code Platforms for Business Developers, Q3 2018

Read more
HubSpot Video

Law firms and citizen development

With Betty Blocks' drag-and-drop interface, law professionals can now contribute to building innovative software solutions. Read more about citizen development here.

platform-drag-drop

Enterprise-grade certainty

When it comes to the kinds of apps your law firm can build with no-code, the only limit is your imagination.

More about no-code in the legal sector

To read more about how software is enabling law firms to tackle their challenges and drive innovation, check out our whitepaper, No-Code on Trial: The Case for Digital Transformation in the Legal Profession.
Get the whitepaper