From Promise to Practice: Guidelines for Successful Legal Tech Projects

There are many new technologies and tools that promise to improve the way legal departments operate. Exciting innovations like data analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing open up opportunities to automate processes, increase productivity, boost efficiency, and supercharge collaboration within the legal organization.

However, implementing these new tools also creates challenges, and many legal tech transformation projects stumble. According to a 2022 survey, A staggering 77% of legal tech projects fail to deliver on their promises. Projects might be too expansive, lack buy-in from users, taking too long to implement or simply fail to provide measurable benefits.

So how can you improve the chances of a successful implementation? Let's discover some guidelines that could help you successfully implement new tech in your legal department and ensure your efforts pay off.

1. Correctly Define Your Objectives

1.1 Think Big, Start Small

The bigger the project, the more time, resources and stakeholders' buy-in will be needed. If this is your first attempt at digitalizing a certain domain, you might want to start with a subset of the problem first, intending to expand the solution later. A proof-of-concept approach allows you to show early success and get the necessary cooperation and buy-in to continue and extend the project.

1.2 Focus on the Benefits

Having a shiny new tool is nice, but no one will put any effort in it without seeing a clear benefit. When thinking about the benefits from the new project, remember that time might be the most important resource for the organization. Will this project save your legal team time? Help your administrative staff work more efficiently? Reduce outside counsel costs or eliminate compliance penalties? Be specific about the expected benefits upfront.

1.3 Prepare Detailed Requirements

Together with the relevant participants, define the practical requirements and expectations from the new project - in details. Having a detailed "wish list" helps you communicate clearly with internal stakeholders and with vendors, and better evaluate different solutions and tools.

1.4 Define Success Metrics

Establish clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the project's success or failure. Example metrics could include lawyers’ time saved, contracts processed faster, revenue recovered from avoided fines, etc.

1.5 Engage the Right Stakeholders

When starting the project, you should identify and seek out the relevant stakeholders throughout the organization to support the project, including:

• Management: both in resources and leadership support.

• Legal Professionals: the success of legal tech projects hinges on the time attorneys invest in the project and are willing to use the system.

• Non-Legal Professionals: remember that legal departments don’t work in a vacuum, so you should make the case also to non-legal teams who will use the new solution.

• Internal Customers of the Legal Department

• IT, Information Security, and Data Privacy Team: will need to ensure the new solution fits into your organization's IT infrastructures and guidelines.

Engage all participants early and often to discuss the benefits and their role in the project.

2. Select the Right Tool

2.1 Market Research and Tool Selection

Take a look at the different solutions available on the market to see how these fit with the objectives and requirements you've previously defined. It's a good idea to ask the relevant vendors to provide a demo of their respective solutions for examination before moving forward. Remember that choosing the right solution is a critical step - it means not only entering into a long-term business relationship with the provider, but also a significant investment of time and money on your end in implementing the specific tool.

2.2 Design for the Future

Prefer a solution that could be customized to your organization's specific needs and could be expanded for additional features or domains in the future (especially if you’re starting small with the intention of expanding the project in the future). This ensures your tech investment will continue to serve your organization for a long time.

2.3 Data Connectivity

Organizations collect and process huge amounts of data and already have their own systems. One of things that could easily kill a project is a need to manually enter the same data into more than one system. To avoid this situation, ensure your solution can connect to or receive data from other systems in the organization.

3. Project Planning and Execution

3.1 Have Clear Milestones

Plan the project meticulously, assign tasks to the relevant participants and set clear milestones as part of the project plan. Ensuring everyone is aligned on the goals is crucial for success.

3.2 Communication is The Key

Make sure you frequently update the stakeholders on the status and the upcoming steps to keep the momentum going, collect feedback and ensure you address all issues promptly. Make sure that the even participants who are not legal professionals will be familiar with the specific subject-matter of the project.

3.3 Have a Plan to Migrate Existing Data.

If you have an existing data set, such as in Word or Excel files, it’s important to create a process to migrate the existing data into the new system without errors. Make sure you can test and verify the process before using it in real time.

3.4 Effective Change Management and Adoption

Once you’ve got the tools you need and are happy with the technical implementation and data migration, the next step is to run a successful adoption process.

There’s no point to a new system if nobody is using it. This would require a change management process with the prospective users to ensure smooth transition and acceptance from their end. It's important to set out a specific transition date in advance. Proactive internal communications is essential, as well as training, adoption programs, and ensuring end-user support.

3.5 Evaluate, Improve, Repeat

Set a process to evaluate what's working and what's not. Be data-driven, not subjective. Try to continuously evolve, improve and optimize the solution based on feedback and results.

To conclude, these transformation projects are challenging but hold immense potential rewards for those who approach them the right way. Follow these proven guidelines to ensure your initiative doesn't become another failed statistic, and start a technological revolution in your organization.