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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

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

Fieldfisher partner appointed president as LSLA marks milestone year

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Firm promotes two lawyers to partnership across employment and family

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Firm promotes five lawyers to partnership across key growth areas

NEWS
Freezing orders in divorce proceedings can unexpectedly ensnare third parties and disrupt businesses. In NLJ this week, Lucy James of Trowers & Hamlins explains how these orders—dubbed a ‘nuclear weapon’—preserve assets but can extend far beyond spouses to companies and business partners 
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
Thousands more magistrates are to be recruited, under a major shake-up to speed up and expand the hiring process
Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
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