30 Jul Cautioning Against Law Firms Entering Legal Tech Industry for Themselves

There are countless hurdles required for maintaining a place in the legal industry that attempting to develop a legal case management software, in order to obtain a place in a related, but different industry all together, seems unlikely at best.

Some law firms look to the legal tech industry and create legal software, in order to create a secondary stream of income or to revolutionize the field. However, the cost often is not worth the effort.

Between the costs related to development and the paramount need to keep up with the evolving trends of data storage, a key component to maintenance, your legal software would require constant attention.

With obtaining and maintaining your offices, managing phone calls, balancing budgets, recording hours, managing benefits, marketing your law firm, establishing a presence, and handling any IT issue that may arise, many firms of all sizes struggle to simply practice law.

This is why they do not pursue their own software and outsource those nonattorney tasks to legal service companies, like Lexicon, that can allow law firms to do what they do best: practice law.

Stick to the legal industry

To obtain a place in another field, it would be a large ask that would take you and your firm away from their practice. Even though industries like the legal technology industry tertiarily may be related, it simply is too much to accomplish.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught your law firm one lesson, it is to be accessible to cloud-based work. While technology platforms, such as the Lexicon practice management software, exist and offer comprehensive solutions for firms of all sizes and practice areas, a single firm attempting to create, maintain, use, and update that software does not allow for time and effort required to practice law.

Legal software costs and risks

A recent article on Law.com highlighted this issue that law firms attempting to find tech solutions to their cloud-based and pandemic-caused problems. Many of them are looking to develop their own solutions without fully realizing the costs and risks.

Not only will it require time and effort that law firms simply cannot spare, at the risk of forsaking their clients, but it also will require money. Installing, maintaining, securing, and updating costs a great deal of money, that may be out of the budgets for large number of firms.

Additionally, the article highlights how many firms have to be convinced that they should use cloud-based software, as opposed to server-based storage.

Server-based vs. cloud-based storage

The firms that utilize storage centers that house these servers have to worry about the scale, security, and functionality of their endeavor.

However, the money required to build this technology would be so exorbitant that it may attract criminals that wish to breach your cyber security measures and steal data.

If you are a smaller firm, you simply cannot commit the funds necessary to building the technology out, let alone protecting data. For larger firms, the security costs alone may be outside of budgetary restraints, or may take you too far away from the task at hand: practicing law.

Protect your data

As the article describes, cloud-based storage is an on-demand computer resource for law firms to utilize. It is a safer avenue that uses space on existing servers and scales its space to fit your law firm’s needs.

With cloud-based storage being a forward-thinking endeavor that enables you to work remotely and securely exchange sensitive data and documents between clients, attorneys, and legal staff members, your law firm needs to move away from the idea that it needs its own software.

Instead, utilize software, like the Lexicon practice management software, that already exists and focus on the needs of your clients. Contact Lexicon today for information on its legal software.