Is your Legal Firm’s technology landscape effecting client retention?
Digitisation has stirred much interest in the legal sector as law firms adopt innovative legal tech to streamline processes, such as document automation, contract review, due diligence, e-discovery, and legal research.
These developments have transformed the nature of legal operations, particularly how firms acquire and retain clients.
Law firms rely on emerging legal tech to deliver client-oriented and client-focused services to in turn positively impact client retention rates.
Legal service providers can look to innovative technologies to address their client’s legal needs in real time.
Challenges in Client Retention
Landing new clients is vital but retaining them for long-term engagement is essential. However, ensuring a high client retention rate is challenging in a diverse and highly competitive industry.
The following list describes some of the challenges that inhibit firms from retaining their clients for longer than one interaction.
Poor Client Relationship Management
Managing client relationships successfully is a key driver for accelerating firm growth.
However, poor communication management is a top factor in damaged client relationships.
Some law firms perceive their clients as fixed firm assets and assume their loyalty is unconditional. Unfortunately, clients shift their allegiance to competitors who have invested in the right legal tech to ensure excellent communication for sustained relationships. Inadequate tech investment stifles effective communication, thus negatively affecting the customer experience and causing clients to want to leave for better firms. Poor communication leads to poor customer relationships, which is why 37% of clients leave a law firm if they are not informed on time.
In the age of reviews and social proof, legal forms must shift their mindsets to view clients as customers with the freedom to choose between provider for each legal interaction.
Adopting client portals and case tracker software can serve to vastly improve the lawyer- client relationship.
2. Resisting Change
Failing to change outdated working strategies, tools, and processes in an era where clients have become accustomed to new realities, like the use of legal tech, can harm a firm’s relationship with its clients.
It is unrealistic for a firm insisting on using outdated traditional processes to expect client loyalty while competitor firms have invested in digitization. For example requiring clients to verify Identification documents in person rather than digitally or not accepting E signatures can slow down processes and lead to dissatisfaction.
Clients are unwilling to go for inefficient services resulting from failure to use modern legal tech solutions.
For example Despite this, 47% of law firms are yet to develop plans to digitize their operations. Accepting change is fundamental to retaining existing clients and acquiring new ones. It is high time for law firms to leverage legal tech advancements to remain competitive and retain their clients.
Adopting Legal Tech to Retain Clients
Adopting legal tech is a primary enabler of business growth.
For example, legal tech facilitates project transparency.
A cloud-based, automated legal tech stack such as a case management system ensures all team members are aware of the project progress to reduce time wastage and confusion.
In turn this provides the client with efficient and timely services, creating trust and a willingness to use the firm again when needed.
An example of this can been seen in legal conveyancing. Most clients will usually engage with a solicitor for the first time when purchasing a property. If this transaction is managed well then the firm can expect to engage with this client again on future purchases. As a result, 66% of UK-based law firms hail legal tech as crucial to improving client relationships, and a happy client will stick around for long-term partnerships.
In addition, legal tech consists of automation tools that eliminate repetitive processes. This gives lawyers more time to complete and solve client cases.
For instance, deploying cloud-based predictive technology enables lawyers to automatically collect and analyse vast amounts of data, including judicial precedents to establish a pattern and predict a case’s outcome to prepare a winning court argument.
Automated legal tech can also handle mass documents and automates contract management to increase speed and accuracy whilst reducing risks.
Clients are looking for modern law firms with streamlined processes to simplify the onboarding process and get the most efficient legal services. Adopting legal tech provides the requisite tools for sustained law firm-client relationships.
Incorporating AI-enabled legal technology increases firm productivity while reducing client costs. The pricing models for most law firms are based on charging clients for the time used in handling their cases. For example, a law firm uses traditional manual processes where junior lawyers and paralegals review hundreds of documents and conduct due diligence. It would take much more time at the expense of the client’s finances, whereas using legal tech software.
Practice and case management systems ensure more effective processes, less time spent on each case, and fewer costs. As a result, legal tech can help law firms provide the most effective services at a competitive rate for the client. In turn clients are more likely to stay where they can save money but still access the best legal services.
Much like all public facing sectors, effective client care is essential to retaining clients for long-term business. One of the most common complaints to the UK Legal Ombudsman is delays in receiving support and essential services.
Fortunately, leveraging legal tech can enable law firms to meet client expectations accurately and on time.
Quicker and more accurate processing of routine legal procedures leads to increased client satisfaction. Since some clients may require their lawyers to solve emergencies quickly, a cloud-first approach ensures that systems, documents and data can be accessed easily and securely from any internet enabled device.
With a cloud first approach your legal firm can provide your clients with dedicated client portals. Client portals permit customers to track the status of ongoing cases in real-time. In contrast, a traditional legal operation keeps clients waiting for updates for hours or days, which can be frustrating. Hosting the legal tech stack in the cloud permits lawyers and clients to exchange and access data in real-time and provides clients with an opportunity to assess their ongoing cases.
Start Your Cloud Adoption Journey with Cloud Geeni
Cloud Geeni has been a trusted supplier to the Legal sector for over 15 years.
Many of our clients within the legal sector have over 150 employees with thousands of end clients and multiple office locations.
When choosing to partner with Cloud Geeni the difference from many cloud providers currently available to the Legal sector is our infrastructure is private.
This means your environment and infrastructure are uniquely yours, space is not shared with other companies and all aspects of your IT landscape are fully managed by Cloud Geeni’s in house team of Microsoft Gold certified engineers.
We understand the complexities the legal sector and the fundamental shift that is currently occurring within the industry. From adopting remote working to using technology to influence client satisfaction, Cloud Geeni are the ideal partner for firms looking to begin a digital transformation.
To discuss your firm’s requirements and operational goals, schedule a call with a cloud expert today.