Forecasts predict the Software as a Service (SaaS) market will experience a compound annual growth rate of 25% in Europe between 2018 to 2023. Meanwhile, a flood of material has emerged detailing the failings of legal service providers to grasp the nature of the future legal challenges. The 2018 Report on the State of the Legal Market compared the legal industry’s reluctance to embrace change to France’s failed Maginot Line strategy in the second world war. The way you provide your legal services must be future proof if you hope to survive. Your services must be responsive and capable of adapting to technological and regulatory changes; not to mention the looming transformation occuring at the core of the legal service industry – the shift in access to legal expertise.
Legal SaaS creates time for you to focus on strategic legal work, enabling you to remain profitable while increasing your ability to compete with those offering alternative services to a diverse customer base. Yet, the immense growth in demand for SaaS has occurred in the context of immense growth in the number of SaaS providers.
In order to become future-proof, you need to adopt tech that works for you. Here are the factors you should consider:
Legal SaaS should
SAVE YOU TIME
Time is one of a lawyer’s most valuable assets. It either reduces in value as lawyers spend more time on a fixed-fee file or it’s billable in 6-minute increments. Maximising the amount of time that lawyers spend contemplating the more complex legal issues that are presented by their work is the way of the future.
Clients have already started demanding a reduction in the cost of legal services, with an increasing number of tasks being delegated to paralegals and support staff. Legal tech that reduces the amount of rote and repetitive work required of legal professionals should be prioritised by legal service providers hoping to add value for their clients into the future.
BE SCALABLE
Your SaaS solution should grow with you. Whether it’s additional modules that can be added once you’re ready to take the next step or simply adding on additional users as you grow, your SaaS provider should empower you to minimise your costs while maximising your use of their product.
INTEGRATE WITH YOUR EXISTING
SYSTEMS
The SaaS solution you subscribe to is only as good as
its ability to integrate with your current systems. If it
doesn’t communicate with the existing systems, the
reality is that it’s likely to lead to duplications of effort
which all but defeat the purpose of the legal software.
PROMOTE TRANSPARENCY AND CLIENT RETENTION
Legal technologies are paving the way for more transparent legal services. Clients no longer need to rely on their lawyers to respond to requests for updates, cloud-based SaaS solutions provide clients with secure access to the relevant Self-Service products and relevant legal documents as the file progresses.
While this level of transparency can seem intimidating for busy legal professionals who keep to tight deadlines, the reality is that your clients are more likely to derive value from transparent services. Moreover, it builds trust, highlights operational inefficiencies, and promotes client retention. it builds trust, highlights operational inefficiencies, and promotes client retention.