What are the top challenges facing an IS professional in a law firm setting?
Our firm has billed itself as a “technology focused” law firm, and the top challenge is to get the attorneys to buy into that principle. Getting a project’s initial sign-off from managing partners can be difficult, especially if they’ve already paid a lot of money to a consultant who has essentially ripped them off. If the managing partners truly believe in the high tech principle, then everything else naturally follows. People making the business decisions in the legal industry are not necessarily the best business people – they’re attorneys first and foremost. There’s often a lack of focus on where the firm is going. Attorneys may tend to focus on what cases are coming in instead of the firm’s overall profitability. If the managing partners are not focused on the latter, the IS costs are a sunken cost from day one. Getting a good IS team in place is also challenging. Having just the right balance of personnel with the right amount of work to do is key. With too many people, there’s a
