'Do or die' was the message from delegates at this month's Legal Week Strategic Technology Forum held in Portugal – keep at the cutting edge of technological developments or risk losing both clients and staff. Sophie Evans reports

It is a sign of the times that many of the issues legal IT professionals are grappling with are the same issues that are affecting lawyers. Whereas IT may have previously been viewed by fee earners as a back-office function, the strategic goals of IT and legal professionals have since become rather more entwined; both sides have a greater awareness
of each other's role within the firm. In the words of Allen & Overy (A&O) managing partner David Morley: "pretty much everything we are doing now has a technology angle, but it is not always obvious."

For IT professionals at law firms, spending time with managing partners is viewed as the key to using IT and knowledge management to guide firms through the issues facing modern law firms, from competition for clients to competition for legal talent.

This month's Legal Week Strategic Technology Forum, held in Portugal's Penha Longa resort, addressed the managing partner-IT nexus by kicking off the conference with a pre-recorded interview with three of the UK's most high-profile managing partners: A&O's David Morley, Berwin Leighton Paisner's (BLP's) Neville Eisenberg and Linklaters' Tony Angel. They chatted with IT consultant Richard Susskind, who quizzed them on how technology can help law firms address the challenges they face.

Working globally

Several themes emerged from the hour-long interview, notably the ability of technology to respond to the globalisation of legal service provision. Angel said a key element of Linklaters' technology offering is the facility for any lawyer in the firm to access their desktop – and all the same systems they are used to – on a single platform, from anywhere in the world.

Similarly, Morley said that A&O's centralised information repository, Omnia, offers access to one virtual file for whatever a lawyer is working on – wherever they are. And crucially, the trio agreed a law firm's technology plays a role in recruiting and retaining the best staff – a major challenge for law firms today as the tech-savvy generation of younger lawyers who expect the best technology join the ranks.

For an independent firm such as BLP, which has a network of referral partners around the world, being able to use technologies compatible with their allies is critical to making the network a success. Eisenberg said the firm uses technology to differentiate BLP from its competitors; be that offering tailored services for clients or sending their technical specialists to clients where needed.

While this may not be unique, the three agreed that law firms are increasingly expected by clients and staff to be at the cutting edge of technology. "If you are not at the leading edge, clients will begin to melt away from you," summed up Morley.

Firms may be able to steal a short-term advantage through investing in a particular technology, but others will soon catch up. Susskind asked the trio what motivates them to invest in their firms' technology – something every IT director and vendor is keen to know.

Angel cited technology as key to helping advisers and clients work collaboratively on complicated deals; while Eisenberg said technology has helped the firm win a number of important pitches – often by including a senior member of the IT department in the pitch team.

New ways of working

All three managing partners consistently returned to the themes of collaboration and lawyers using technology effectively. Nowhere is the shift in the way employees use technology more evident than in the new generation of lawyers. "As you go down the generations, the dialogue between technologists and other professionals gets better," said Eisenberg. Angel said having a greater proportion of lawyers who understand technology means teamwork has become easier – IT, knowledge management and lawyers co-operate to come up with new services.

But given the abilities of this new generation of lawyers, the way technology is presented to them will have to change. Linklaters recently canvassed its new trainees on the way they use technology, so the firm's decision-makers will know how the next generation of partners will want information presented to them. The key, all three managing partners agreed, is delivering information in context. The Google effect has meant people are quickly frustrated at having to wade through information that they did not request or need.

"We are seeing a step change here, the full implications of which we will not know for a while," predicted Angel. Morley agreed, adding that changes to the way people collaborate will be profound. A&O has been promoting wikis on the firm's intranet for a some time – a move that has sparked informal communication with clients that has gone down well on both sides. "There is a very intuitive feel to this – the technology is less clunky and it is more obvious what to do," said Morley. With clients increasingly demanding that their advisers share their knowledge with them, the use of wikis in this way seems set to explode in popularity.

Related to this is the concept of enterprise search -the Google-influenced technology that many firms are using as a firm-wide search tool or database for lawyers. It has proved popular for its ease of use – a crucial element for successful technology. Much hype may surround the launch of many new technologies, but those with longevity have been the simplest.

For managing partners and heads of IT and knowledge management teams, staying ahead of the pack is the most crucial but also the most difficult task on their agenda. "That is the real challenge – understanding the implications for our businesses of new technologies such as Facebook," said Angel, ruing the absence of a Linklaters crystal ball.

Law firms may view the potentially disruptive effects of Facebook as an unwelcome technological development right now, but its ability to allow users to manage all their contacts easily and in one place also offers a potential opportunity for firms hunting for new communication tools. After all, how many times has it been said that the young lawyer who will become a rainmaker is the one who can best manage his or her contacts?

The IT talent war

Lawyers are not the only professionals in short supply at law firms – delegates at the conference discussed the war for IT talent among professional services firms, and how to address it.

Good technologists with project management skills are by far the most in demand – candidates with multiple skill-sets are reported to be in short supply on both sides of the Atlantic. However, US-based delegates said they found recruiting for their European offices even more difficult than recruiting Stateside. Latham & Watkins chief information officer (CIO) Kenneth Heaps said the firm found hiring in Europe "very challenging" as the pool of potential recruits "just did not exist. We had to do quite a lot of 'expating' initially," he explained.

Delegates expressed concern over the apparent lack of a new generation to take over the reins. As White & Case director of IT service delivery and management Vince Cordo said: "there is a major shortage of people with duration in the industry, which leaves you with the dilemma of whether you look to hire people with a legal background or look for someone with the right skills but from outside the industry."

The increasing erosion of employee loyalty obviously makes retention even harder. "The handcuffs are gone – for older employees, the cost of moving is enormous if they are signed up to the firms' defined benefit schemes, but the cost of going somewhere else is not so high for younger lawyers. When the older generation retires, I think we will have a major problem on our hands," said Jason Haines, who is set to be A&O's new CIO.

Latham's Heaps said the firm has an "aggressive internal training programme" as a means of keeping staff feel valued and motivated – every member of the IT team goes through the programme every year. Similarly, Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw's Howard Niden said the firm budgets 40 hours training per person per year for paid, external training: "there is a huge cost in not training people" he said.

Given that more technology is being used by lawyers in their everyday work, this rings true for all firms regardless of the size of their technology teams. The way in which IT and knowledge management teams support lawyers is changing, and making sure the right team is offering the support will be crucial to the future success of every law firm, whatever side of the Atlantic they sit on.

To commoditise or not to commoditise?

The UK's law firms are arguably more open to technological advances than many international rivals – despite the ongoing debate over whether it is the done thing on the part of City law firms to embrace the concept of commoditisation.

On Wall Street, taking on high volume, relatively low-value work is still frowned upon, as one delegate reflected: "In the US, we see commoditisation very differently: we basically think our billing model will remain a traditional billing model – anything else is a challenge to our model of profitability." However, one US-based IT director whose firm has a London presence said the firm has had to do some commoditised work in the City "in order to remain competitive in the market and just to get in the door – with no expectation of being paid for it".

Among UK firms, however, there are a number of examples where firms have generated revenue through subscription-based, lawyer-light projects. Previously, standardisation was on the periphery of much of the work done by the largest firms, but it is now moving into core areas such as finance and transactional due diligence.

For all the law firms' resistance to the idea of commoditisation – and many do see it as a dumbing-down of the profession – the demand for it from clients is undoubted.

"Clients are increasingly looking for efficiencies in the services they want to bring, which impacts on their advisers," said one delegate. More and more information is being offered for free online, meaning clients come to expect more for free.

"Clearly, any information that can be commoditised is going to be, and will be free," said Allen & Overy's head of knowledge management David Jabbari. This does not necessarily mean firms have to fear commoditisation, however. Jabbari looked at Henry Ford's revolutionary production line, which introduced the idea of there being nothing mysterious in the assembly of a car. "One hundred years on, there are still big differences in what the car industry offers, which reflects different customer requirements," he explained.

Wragge & Co's Derek Southall reminded delegates that despite the opportunities presented by commoditisation, it is not always economic. "You have to make sure you do not confuse the business sense of commoditisation – if you do not do enough of a certain kind of work, then commoditisation may not be right for you."

With so many different and new requirements from clients, there is an argument to push back low-value work and "do the clever stuff" as Southall put it. The natural life-cycle in many legal products means that where an innovation starts off being expensive – look at eurobonds in the 1980s – it eventually ends up costing, in institutional terms, next to nothing to execute; the value of a service will inevitably drop.

The example of the iPod was used by one delegate to illustrate the potential in standardisation: the 'designed by Apple in California, assembled in China' slogan etched on the back of them is proof of the success of a two-tier way of working, using both high and low-cost bases to make a product that has the crucial brand recognition:

"If a piece of technology makes the kind of work you are going to do easier and better, then go for it. It is the packaging and the end product that matters, and that comes down to quality assurance," said Beachcroft head of IT Neil Attree.