Derek Busby offers some suggestions for practical IT solutions

Is it time for lawyers to face the facts? And might one of those stark facts be that lawyers have been spending up to 90% more per user per annum on IT than other similarly sized businesses? With the winds of economic downturn blowing through many practices, this is a figure that cannot but chill the hearts of legal practice managers.

Lawyers tend to see information technology as a necessary tool and, typically, have limited interest in its nuts and bolts. But the centrality of IT to a firm’s operation suggests that more attention to its importance might not go amiss.

The questions they should be asking are: do we have the right level and quality of IT advice and support? Are we making the most of the rapidly advancing technologies that are out there? Could we get better value for money? In my experience, only a very few firms undertake a thorough analysis of the subject.

One key question is why legal firms spend so much more than comparable enterprises on their technical support. The simple answer, probably, is because they could. Traditionally most firms in Scotland have kept control of information through in-house provision and, because they could afford the resources, they have enjoyed the luxury of a more expensive IT support model and have not necessarily taken the time to consider alternative, lower cost methods of delivering IT.

The result in recent years has been that the legal profession’s IT staff costs have been significantly higher than in other sectors. That, of course, may have been acceptable when times were good, but there are few people out there now who would argue that the past can be a guide to the future.

If it can be demonstrated that partnering with an outside IT business with expertise and proven track record can deliver, an equivalent or improved level of service at a saving of approximately 20 per cent, might it not be worth investigating?

This may appear to be a bold statement, but these savings and the cost models for them which are detailed and available, are based on the condition of legal firms after they have already undertaken the redundancy cuts which have been forced on them by the credit crunch. Firms clearly cannot lose partners, associates and paralegals without a comparable reduction in support staff. Where an IT department contracts to a level below a required minimum size, partnering with an IT business is often the most cost effective way to ensure continuity of service to the fee earners.

Moreover, if firms factor in that specialist IT partners are exposed not only to one legal firm model, or the legal sector in general, but to many sectors, this reduced cost is also buying them professionalism and in-depth expertise at a much higher level than can be achieved or delivered by in house IT staff.

Contrary to what many legal partnerships fear, working alongside an IT partner need not lead to the practice being swamped by people unfamiliar with its ways of working. Frequently, existing IT staff can transfer over under TUPE protection and enjoy both the opportunity to be part of a larger IT organisation and the chance of a greater degree of IT career development.

This can have enormous benefits for them. They can, for instance, continue working in the premises of their former employer, or they can relocate to work on a wider spectrum of client sites and range of technologies. How ever they proceed, they will have the opportunity to develop and move towards technical specialisms within a relevant technology area while having access to a larger group of technical resources.

TUPE-based transfers can be advantageous to IT specialists working in law firms since no matter how competent, trusted or well liked they may be, in practice it is likely they will receive a lower level of training and development than a comparable position in a professional IT Support Business. As a result they are in danger of becoming left behind in what is, after all, a very fast-moving industry.

Lawyers are resistant to having anyone other than their own in-house personnel look after their IT affairs, but the arguments in favour of the old model may no longer stack up. All industry sectors have utilised outsourcing to one degree or another as a means of better managing their core business activity. The legal profession has a long history of outsourcing certain areas of their business such as back office and reception services. Why then is there so much resistance to extending this model, that works very well, to other non-core, non fee earning areas, such as IT. At a time when the deregulation of the profession is being pushed through by the ground-breaking changes implicit in the Legal Services Act, the moment could be ripe for a shift in mindset on the issue of IT provision and support.

After all, IT is not a core function, it is a utility, as vital as telecoms or energy. And shouldn’t lawyers really be concentrating on what they were trained to do, secure in the knowledge that they are receiving the IT support their practices absolutely must have?


Derek Busby is divisional manager of PracticeCare, part of NVT Group.