It’s no secret by now that the way legal services are delivered is having to evolve to satisfy the changing demands of clients. However, the true value in transformed legal services will be how they are delivered by leveraging technology to optimise those services – while still improving relationships with clients. Oracle’s view is that, to enable that transformation, a laser-like focus on firm-wide performance management needs to be at the forefront of law firm thinking. 

What do we mean by firm performance management? We’re not only talking about managing the performance of legal professionals – although that is one element. Firm performance management needs to encompass: 

• Anticipating and responding to the changing legal market
• Providing intelligent and meaningful insights to all levels of the firm, reducing risk
• Linking strategy to operational detail
• Understanding, improving and tracking finance processes across the firm
• Move from data manipulation to intelligent insights
• Connected business processes across the firm
• Increased profitability while improving client retention. 

We believe these factors to be key to the successful law firm of the future. Leveraging performance management solutions will deliver increased profitability and give legal professionals analysis and reporting in real time, to enable them to focus on data insights to improve the services the firm offers to its clients. Reducing lockup and improving utilisation would be a few key examples of real-world benefits.

Oracle’s view of why this technology is transformational for law firms is based on our experience of enterprise performance management (EPM) in other sectors. This technology has been essential for professional services firms to successfully enter new services markets, following the shrinking profit margins of accountancy and advisory services. After the financial crash of 2008, the technology was critical for enabling financial institutions to plan and deliver against regulatory changes – and, in the retail sector, to help businesses embrace new commerce platforms and keep up with changes in consumer buying behaviour.

Powerful performance

So what does this mean at an operational level? A few key statistics from Oracle’s Value of EPM survey in June 2019 – which investigated the benefits of leveraging performance management technology – include: 

• A 20% reduction in the time to close businesses’ books
• A 44% reduction in the time taken to produce management reports
• A 71% reduction in budgeting cycle time. 

However, legal performance management technology needs to go much further than the benefits highlighted above. The tool needs to be flexible and scalable to manage the different complexities of firms, depending on size, practice area and location, all while delivering key information in real time that enables a legal professional, regardless of role, to have the information needed to analyse data properly. This ensures the firm makes the right decisions to improve their client relationships, service offerings and strategy for the future. A good example of this is using legal performance management to plan mergers and acquisition activity, not only from the perspective of the client base or the skillsets of the acquired or merged firm, but also from a funding point of view, and to ensure that firm partnerships get the best return on investment. 

Machine learning levers

The final element to consider is the leveraging of machine learning (ML), or artificial intelligence (AI), and other emerging technologies. AI powers our everyday life, serving us in the micro-moments when we need it most, understanding what we like and delivering highly personalised experiences. Think of how Netflix and Spotify suggest media we could be interested in. They are actionable and contextually aware, taking into account many variables: geography, political opinions, seasonality and life stages. They adapt to our changing needs, improve, get smarter over time and discover new knowledge. 

Imagine how AI could be leveraged in the workplace to predict the outcomes of strategy and operational plans. Oracle has already built AI/ML capabilities into Oracle Cloud, with the intention of moving to truly autonomous forecasting over time, and ensuring that the firm always has a real-time view of performance versus budget or forecasts. 

The other key element in any technology solution, however – especially a cloud solution – is security. Given the sensitive nature of data held by law firms, and the expectations around data security from clients, this is not a topic to be taken lightly. 

Oracle Cloud redefines how firms modernise, innovate and compete in a digital world, delivering complete and integrated cloud services. Oracle’s trusted and proven cloud technology is designed to be secure at every layer, including the physical data centre, networks, hardware, chip and operating system, database, platform and application layer. 

The company invests heavily in cloud security and continues to develop areas like autonomous services, which are self-repairing, and secure innovations that reduce risk, eliminate manual errors, help enable improved compliance and auditing, and increase productivity. 

Oracle’s proven EPM solution can enable rapid decision-making based on facts. Ultimately, it delivers transformational benefit in terms of a firm’s ability to provide intelligent insights to the right people at the right time.