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26 February 2020
Issue: 7876 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Next generation software: next steps

How to find the best IT suppliers for your next generation software. A guide for Practice Managers tasked with pulling together a short-list, by Brian Welsh, CEO at Insight Legal

If you’re reading this then you won’t need telling about the winds of change blowing through the legal landscape. It’s a familiar tale. Everyone it seems is expecting twice as much to be done, in half the time for no more money! The rising expectations of clients, the requirements of the regulators and the growth of ‘volume’ providers are akin to a perfect storm affecting many firms’ financial performance.

Is efficiency, productivity and profitability important to your firm? If so, then a modern legal IT system, meeting the needs of the practice and its clients is vital for long-term sustainability. Sadly, the efficiencies that need to be found no longer exist by just improving existing methods. As Henry Ford, a true innovator said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

It may be time, at the start of a new decade, that your firm looked again at what IT software solutions can deliver.   
The challenge for Practice Managers tasked with scouring the supplier market, is whittling down a long list of ‘possible’ IT suppliers to a sensible short-list of ‘suitable’ IT suppliers. Only by finding the right supplier for your firm will the efficiency, productivity and profitability benefits be unlocked.

Sadly, unscrupulous suppliers do exist in the legal IT market. Sales tactics and retention strategies can be at the sharper end of what law firms are used to. Some suppliers see firms as soft targets; they are perceived to have deep pockets and are not as IT savvy as ‘real’ businesses.

Any independent evidence available about the quality of a software supplier is valuable. Accreditations or approved supplier status are two examples. Insight Legal is recognised as an Approved Supplier by The Law Society of Scotland and as a Strategic Partner of the Law Society of England and Wales.

Our commitment is to deliver an honest, proudly independent, approachable and technologically flawless service for law firms in an ever-competitive legal IT sector.

Our guide about choosing a reputable supplier, is designed to help IT Directors and Practice Managers through the process of identifying a supplier short-list and then how to select the right partner.


Issue: 7876 / Categories: Features , Profession
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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Slater Heelis—Charlotte Beck

Slater Heelis—Charlotte Beck

Partner and Manchester office lead appointed head of family

Civil Justice Council—Nigel Teasdale

Civil Justice Council—Nigel Teasdale

DWF insurance services director appointed to Civil Justice Council

R3—Jodie Wildridge

R3—Jodie Wildridge

Kings Chambers barrister appointed chair of R3 Yorkshire

NEWS

The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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