5 Questions to Determine Your Firm's Technological Maturity

Is your law firm technologically mature? What does this mean? You may think you have a strong understanding of technology, but it might not be deployed properly within your law firm. 

Entity management software is just one option you have to help improve the daily operations of your business. Whether you are the firm manager, a managing partner, or the founding partner, you need to explore the technological maturity of your law firm by asking the 5 questions outlined in today’s blog.

1. Does Your Firm Use Data to Measure Maturity?

Data is the only way to measure the technological maturity of your law firm. You might have an idea of the maturity level of the firm technologically, but you won’t have a solid understanding without data. 

An entity management software system is a great way to measure data related to technological maturity for a law firm. Looking at data makes it easier to compare your law firm to other firms of similar size to see how they utilize technology. 

Seeing how you stack up to the competition can be eye-opening and lead you along the right path when it comes to improving the technological maturity of your law firm.

2. Do Your Priorities and Investments in Technology Line Up?

What are the priorities of your law firm? Is one of your priorities to hire outside counsel? How about managing how much the firm spends? No matter the priorities in place, your technology needs to match them if you want to consider your practice technologically mature. 

For example, if your main priority is controlling the cost for outside counsel, but you have a large investment in e-discovery software, your priorities and investments in technology do not align.

3. Does Your Firm Have an Advisory Board Dedicated to Technology?

The most advanced law firms will have an advisory board in place that is dedicated to technologies like entity management software. This board should frequently convene to ensure that the firm’s technology aligns with its top priorities and that investment in technology is done correctly. 

The board needs to make recommendations about technology for both the present and the future.

Your firm’s technology board should include members from all areas of the business, including partners, IT professionals, the legal operations team, and even outside legal vendors. The board should be able to provide your firm with as many different perspectives on technology as possible. 

4. Does the Firm Have a Technology Road Map to Follow?

Your firm has to start somewhere when it comes to a technology plan. That’s why you should create a technology roadmap that can be followed. 

With no roadmap in place, the firm will blindly purchase technology, which will likely turn into a waste of resources. Start mapping out technological purchases, like entity management software, to ensure that they align with the financial and strategic objectives of the law firm.

5. Can You Build and Sustain Engagement?

All of the aforementioned ideas about technology are great on paper, but they will fail if you cannot build and sustain the engagement of your employees with said technology. 

When implementing new entity management software, or any other type of new technology, you need your employees to buy into the new solutions. Getting employees to buy into the new technology is much harder than investing in it.

What Is Entity Management Software for Law Firms?

If your law firm has struggled to manage various aspects of the operations, like document management, then entity management software can help solve those problems. Entity management software can help your law firm with all of the following tasks:

  • Centralizing registration, governance, ownership, tax, compliance data
  • Recording, tracking, and getting notified of compliance events, including licenses, taxes, registrations, and annual reports
  • Automating manual processes
  • Managing organizational charts
  • Managing equity
  • Creating custom reports for ownership, governance, compliance, and much more
  • Granting access to users inside and outside your law firm with varying levels of authorization

Switching your law firm to such a program takes time, effort, and energy. You will need to have your entire team trained on this software so that they use it effectively. 

The software can also create documents that can be signed electronically, migrate current digital documents, and scan paper documents into the new system so they can be stored in the cloud. 

Running a law firm is challenging. You can lessen a lot of the burden on your management staff by analyzing the firm’s technological maturity level and then implementing changes along the way.

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"Very easy to use, modern interface, excellent support. Athennian has an amazing conversion team. They helped us migrate all of our data and the training was very good."

Megan W, Director

“When we were reviewing other entity management systems on the market, in some cases, we were not comparing apples to apples. But with Athennian, there was really no comparison. The paralegals were so excited to come on board.”

Linda Escobar, Senior Paralegal

"There are so many things I like about this program, but the one thing that really stands out is the user friendly interface. The program is fast and allows me to enter corporate information very quickly and efficiently. I would also like to note that Athennian provides the most the fantastic customer service."

Kelly R, Corporate Law Clerk