Barriers to the Adoption of Technology in the Legal Space

We’ve all heard of fintech, which refers to the financial technology sector that’s expected to peak at a value of $698.48 billion by 2030.

However, the term ‘Legal Technology’ is nowhere as well known, with this describing the use of tech and innovation to better deliver legal services and create more efficient administration procedures.

There’s no doubt that legal tech is evolving, and continues to improve the way in which clients interact with legal services. However, many barriers still remain to access, with the following some of the most impactful:

* #1. Financial and Resources: Let’s start with the basics; as the cost of integrating advanced technology into your existing legal services may exceed your existing financial resources. Certainly, some legal tech solutions don’t come cheap, while you’ll also need expertise to effectively deploy innovations and ensure that they deliver a viable and measurable return on your investment. Otherwise, you may spend heavily on legal tech that’s simply unnecessary or unused, with this representing a significant waste.

* #2. Trust: Not all legal service providers have been created equal, and it’s fair to surmise that older or smaller outlets may be a little mistrustful of advanced technologies. Similarly, savvy lawyers have an innate ability to detect when new hardware or software has been introduced but not used, causing them to disregard the technology in question and exacerbate the issue further. Over time, this can also cause stakeholders to lose trust in future examples of legal technology, causing them to overlook potentially valuable innovations.

* #3. Culture: On a similar note, you may find that older or more mature legal service providers have a relatively traditional company culture, and one that’s largely resistant to change or innovation. This can be hard to overcome, particularly as employees will need to drive system changes and embrace the introduction of new or exciting technologies. So, you may need to introduce new members of the workforce alongside your legal tech solutions, while appointing key stakeholders to help manage and drive their implementation going forward.

* #4. The Importance of Unanimity: On a final note, one of the biggest challenges facing legal firms is the need for new legal systems and innovations to be used by everyone and throughout the business. Without this kind of unanimity, gaps and pitfalls appear in the new system, which can lead to lost data, inefficiency and a failure of the technology to fulfill its original purpose. The latter point can be particularly damaging, as it can undermine your investment on a vast scale.

As we can see, there are significant challenges facing the integration of legal tech, with significant changes in attitude and emphasis required to overcome these in the future.