The Briefing Frontiers 2023 survey (formerly known as Legal IT Landscapes) highlights several continuing themes from recent years. The way to ensure that many of these strategic priorities are addressed is to start by focusing on where to secure the best return on investment, especially in the current and medium-term economic climate.

Technology is a key enabler for delivering on a law firm’s strategy for success. However, technology purchases are often made in silos to solve tactical challenges, as opposed to strategically to help deliver key firm-wide objectives (while simultaneously solving tactical challenges).

We believe the key is unlocking the information that sits in the multiple data sources across the firm. Leveraging the right enterprise technology proven in other global markets can be the differentiator to drive competitive advantage and address many of the challenges highlighted in this year’s research.

There are several challenges that can be addressed with a single strategic technology partnership. The most critical is delivering a firm business-wide data strategy – which 41% of leaders report their firms don’t have (or they are not aware of one).

According to the report, 86% of leaders expect to be increasing headcount over the next five years. At the same time, half think the economic outlook may lead to reduced headcount in business services/operational areas. Unlocking data across the firm can help to deal with complex workforce strategy. Leveraging technology to enable growth without increasing back-office functions will protect margins, improve accuracy and insight into performance metrics, and help firms to make strategic decisions quicker than ever before.

And 85% leaders say it takes more than one minute to access client matters and financial data, impacting productivity and trust in the data. In contrast, the automation of time-intensive, manual data collection and manipulation can enable firms to deliver on their data strategies by seamlessly providing financial and operational data. It can then be consumed with full auditability, enabling that data to be interrogated instantly to help drive data-driven decisions across the firm.    Furthermore, cloud solutions will support the changing working practices identified by the 69% of firms whose policies are likely to mean employees work in the office fewer than three days per week by delivering the information required to perform their role from any location.

Outside of these challenges, the right technology partnership in performance management also gives the firm enhanced visibility into its activities, enabling insight to be used by the fee-earning community to enhance client relationships. Bringing together data from across the firm’s full system landscape, and turning it into information, will enable the 45% of leaders who highlight financial systems for improvement to make the most of their investments. This will also enhance other key systems across the architecture to drive accuracy and firm-wide insight, and ultimately deliver on a business-wide data strategy to drive success.