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The Shift: It Takes a Village to Tackle Tech

A lot of law firms and corporate legal departments have their "tech experts," someone designated to be the knowledge base for how the organization handles legal technology. But as the legal industry is increasingly looking to become more efficient—and an explosion of legal technologies makes keeping up-to-date a difficult endeavor—many law firms and corporate legal departments are finding that moving beyond the "expert" to implement a formal tech program may be easier said than done.

The most forward-looking among them tackle this problem using a three-pronged approach: people, process and technology. The people part can seem tricky, especially for organizations without much of an IT bench. However, it turns out tech knowledge isn't necessarily the differentiating factor: The most successful organizations are finding that cross-functional teams are the way to handle tech decisions, with multiple (and even non-technical) viewpoints represented in the room.