IT Departments Can Be Profit Centers by:Jay Bahel

Information technology in law firms can be strategic

. IT departments can help law firms generate significant profitability. Now, laws firms are working around the clock largely due to advances in technology. The opportunity for law firms is to support IT so that it can help make them more profitable. In many firms, areas such as marketing, business development and practice management are thought of as strategic delivery units, as they help generate profit for firms. What firm management often forgets (or doesn't know) is that IT in law firms offers the same if not greater opportunity. IT can help by delivering real-time information on clients, verdicts, client competition and profitable versus unprofitable matters. IT systems and data can help the firm take on more profitable work, avoid mistakes, improve value of delivery and remove costs via automation yielding fantastic efficiencies. The following are examples of ways firms can use IT to generate significant profitability:

An example of a statistically significant relationship is when a firm works on a merger deal. The firm's data might suggest that this type of deal typically creates opportunities to cross-sell that client to three other internal practice areas.

- IT can help firms develop further business and increase client satisfaction through the matter-closure process. Furthermore, firms should survey clients at the end of every matter to see how the firm did relative to client expectations. IT can help manage the automated workflow behind matter closure and help build systems on the firm's intranet to leverage lessons learned from past matters.

- IT can help firms assess the success of alternative fee arrangements. Many law firms are looking to alternative fee arrangements to help drive firm revenue and profitability.

- IT can help law firms remove paper to reduce storage and administrative costs and increase efficiencies within cases.

- IT can help firms easily find data. Within law firms, important data can live in as many as 10 to 20 different key systems, within, depending on firm size and scale, hundreds of software applications and databases. Dashboards allow lawyers and firm managers to easily find and measure information including case-related documents and records, client intelligence, competitive intelligence, cross-selling data, billings, cash collections, docketing data and conflicts, to name but a few. IT can help drive the analysis, design, implementation and effective use of dashboards by key stakeholders of the firm (and sometime clients).

- IT can help with litigation automation support. Litigation automation support is a key area in which IT can help increase the value of the firm's litigation practice to drive increased revenue better value along with decreased costs.

One key area of high-performance law firm IT departments is the IT strategic analysts group. IT strategic analysts within law firms bring a more business-centric view to IT and help drive the strategic opportunities mentioned above.

The opportunity to leverage law firm IT to improve firm profitability is significant. Great opportunity is locked up in law firm IT shops.

About the author

Jay Bahel is chief information officer and senior solution group leader of Project Leadership Associates, a Chicago-based IT consulting firm, where he advises law firms on how to exploit the value of IT. He has served in several senior IT leadership roles in industry, including CIO Services.

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