Whether you are a fan of hybrid work or think it will erode organizational culture and performance, the reality is that most businesses will be grappling with some aspect of hybrid work over the coming months. In this post, we look at seven possible implications for legal technology, collaboration and automation in the hybrid work environment.
The Reality of Hybrid Work
Legal departments and law firms should assume they will be impacted in some way by hybrid work. This could be as a result of ongoing pandemic restrictions, as an organizational strategy to manage space, as means of attracting and retaining top talent, or out of necessity to work effectively with clients and customers. Faced with this new reality, now is the time to turn our minds to the ways in which a hybrid workforce could change the delivery of legal services and change the way we interact with our clients and colleagues.
It is a great opportunity for law firms and legal departments to put legal technology tools to work to bridge the gap between those who are in the office and those who are remote. Throughout this post we have listed some of the technology tools we work with and other products we are familiar with, but these are just by way of example and there are many more options out there.
1. Take Matter and Project Collaboration to the Next Level
Much has been written about how to effectively manage hybrid teams, including team communications, project management and information sharing. In the legal environment, we should be looking to technology that supports:
- Video and audio communication;
- A mix of synchronous and asynchronous written communication such as email, discussion threads and chat;
- Managing tasks, responsibilities, and timelines; and
- Creating and managing documents with the ability to collaborate on those documents.
Most of us have heard of platforms that do some or all of the above such as Microsoft Teams, HighQ or Clio. And there are many more specific tools such as Zoom and Webex (video communication); Slack and Jive (chat and discussion); Smartsheet, Trello, BaseCamp and Assana (project management); and GoogleDocs and iManage (document collaboration).
If nothing in this list is new, what makes the hybrid workforce different? Remote work has exposed user needs around online collaboration and has raised user expectations with respect to collaboration platforms. Heightened demands around collaboration include:
- Seamless integration with key systems such as document management systems, email and other communication tools.
- Access to specialized applications such as transaction management tools (e.g. Closing Folders and Transact) and litigation case management tools (e.g. Everchron).
- Access to other functionality and information that is useful to the team in the context of the project or matter such as financial information or similar representative work.
- Document collaboration that includes real-time co-authoring enabled by tools such as GoogleDocs or Microsoft O365, and that will, in time, integrate with document management systems such as iManage.
- Applications that replicate whiteboards and post-it notes in powerful online brainstorming, design thinking and team collaboration tools (e.g. Miro and Mural).
A number of our clients are using Microsoft Teams so we are interested in its potential as a new way to collaborate internally and externally which will be facilitated by integrations with some of our vendors such as iManage and InTapp. If you don't have a matter, project or team collaboration platform, it might be time to look at one. If you do have one, it might be time to make sure your platform is up to the task in the hybrid work ecosystem.
2. Make Hybrid Meetings Work
We recently spoke to several clients about returning to the office and a top priority for them is facilitating hybrid meetings. They are looking at both technology and meeting etiquette changes that will be required to have engaging and productive hybrid meeting experiences1.
Participants are going to want sophisticated video and audio technology to facilitate meetings between those who are remote and those who are on premises. They are also going to expect a means of collaborating in these meetings on documents, shared applications, and a modern whiteboard experience. Our first step of this journey is to deploy the interoperability application Pexip to bridge functionality between the Cisco technology in our boardrooms (both telepresence and traditional) and Microsoft Teams. Essentially, this will enable people in our boardrooms to participate in Teams meetings with those who are in a different office or are working remotely - whether they are internal colleagues or clients.
Getting this right is important given that board of director meetings, shareholder meetings, deal negotiations and discussions with regulators could all take place this way. This will be a tough challenge but investing in the right meeting technology could be a key to success in the new hybrid work environment.
3. Embrace Electronic and Virtual Litigation Proceedings
Last year, there was a swift move to electronic and virtual litigation and court proceedings across Canada and around the globe2. For the most part, Judges, lawyers, and litigants have adapted to the virtual environment as well as new online platforms such as CaseLines to support the process. As pandemic restrictions lift and we can return to physical courtrooms, what comes next?
The pandemic has been the catalyst for modernizing court proceedings in many jurisdictions and, as articulated by Justice Myers:
There are certainly nuances to be addressed going forward4 but legal teams should be anticipating a permanent shift to a mix of in-person and virtual in the long run. Training on these new court technology platforms is key for our litigators who are required to use them. Also, similar to addressing needs for hybrid meetings, we are considering whether dedicated physical space with appropriate technology is needed in our offices to facilitate participation in these virtual proceedings.
4. Explore Targeted Legal Technology Tools
The pandemic has brought to the surface ideas for better ways of working and delivering legal services and there are many tools in the marketplace that have been designed to target specific aspects of legal service or embed specific legal knowledge.
By way of example, we have been looking at tools that support:
- The drafting, validation and printing process for corporate finance transactions (ScribeStar)
- The citation validation process (CiteRite)
- Diagramming of corporate structures and transactions (StructureFlow and Jigsaw)
If you are looking for information (and inspiration), the Legal Technology Hub is a great source for information on legal technology tools around the world, as is The Stanford CodeX TechIndex
5. Automate What You Can
Working remotely has also highlighted pain points with certain legal tasks as well as organizational processes and procedures. Automation is one way to tackle these challenges which will not disappear with a hybrid workforce.
Legal Work: Automating repeat and routine legal tasks with document automation, legal apps or decision trees frees up lawyers to focus on higher value and more rewarding work. Automation can also be used by legal departments to promote self-service within the business. One barrier to making progress on these initiatives can be finding the right people resources and talent to do so. Embracing remote work for these roles means you can recruit from where the talent exists rather than where you are located.
Business Improvement: We are experiencing a renewed appetite to tackle processes that don't work or could be done better. Additionally, like many law firms and other organizations, we now have access to tools in the Microsoft Power Platform. These tools are making it easy for us to experiment with solutions and make small changes in response to immediate use cases that will hopefully add up to bigger improvements overall. By way of example, we used Power Apps to automate tracking of internal CPD attendance for lawyers.
6. Digitize Everything, Everywhere
Many law firms and law departments have been on a path towards digitization, digitalization, or digital transformation with varying measures of success. The remote work environment has tipped the scales towards these goals and it is unlikely we are going back.
Examples we have seen accelerate over the past year are:
- The use of digital signature tools such as DocuSign, HelloSign and others.
- The move towards next generation corporate entity management platforms such as Minute Box and Athenian that keep all data, filings and documents organized online in a central location. These scalable platforms are appropriate for a wide range of organizations and critically, can be accessed from anywhere at any time.
- The shift to a digital law library. The past year has provided insight into the use of our physical print collection and resources, with most of our lawyers seamlessly shifting to the use of alternative online formats. The time is ripe to continue that journey to a digital law library.[5]
7. Drive Adoption of Legal Technology
Finally, adoption of legal technology has never been more important. Over the past year we saw increased usage of our legal technology tools that speed up tasks (such as electronic signature software) or bring efficiency to file administration and organization (such as transaction management software). However, increased usage was not seen across all legal technology tools, nor was it seen consistently across our users.
Is this good enough when faced with the realities of hybrid work? Adopting consistent ways of working across in-office and remote employees is important for quality control and meeting service delivery expectations. If legal technology tools are part of delivering the service, then adoption needs to be consistent across all users. Even if we are largely in the office, consistent use of these tools is also important for interacting with hybrid client teams.
As a result, we are piloting a new approach that focuses on changing behaviour, rather than just training, to drive adoption of some of our legal technology tools. In addition to a consistent approach to some aspects of our practice, we are also hoping the strategy gives our lawyers some time back in their day!
Conclusion
The business challenge of hybrid work is not to be underestimated. But for those of us working in Legal Operations, KM or Innovation, it is an exciting time to support organizational goals by leveraging our experience and creativity as well as our legal technology and automation toolkits. I hope to hear about many of your initiatives, best practices and innovations over the coming months!
Footnotes
1 https://hbr.org/2021/06/what-it-takes-to-run-a-great-hybrid-meeting; https://thedigitalworkplace.com/articles/hybrid-meetings/
3 Arconti v. Smith, 2020 ONSC 2782 (CanLII) [19]: https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2020/2020onsc2782/2020onsc2782.html
4 https://www.cba.org/CBAMediaLibrary/cba_na/PDFs/Publications%20And%20Resources/2021/CBATaskForce.pdf
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