Linklaters' Alastair Bain argues that leading law firms will increasingly gain competitive advantage via the ability to access, manage and distribute information

Every day the news reminds us just how connected the 21st century world is. Natural and man-made disasters cause ripples across supply chains and economic uncertainty spreads across the world from the eurozone. For a global law firm, being able to carry out the practice of law across jurisdictional and geographic boundaries in an efficient and effective manner for our clients is of primary importance.

The technical foundation to providing a globally excellent service is a single set of core systems and data for the firm that is available worldwide at all times to all those in the firm, whether they are in the office, visiting a client site, at home or anywhere on a mobile device. These deliver a single source of information about documents, matters, clients and know-how for other services across the firm to build upon.

With these in place, the focus turns to enhancing the communication and collaboration of the firm with its clients, partners and service providers. Video conferencing, from desktop to telepresence, is becoming increasingly prevalent and starting to deliver the usability and inter-operability between systems and organisations that will allow it to become the primary means of communication. Alongside this, advances in speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies offer the potential not only to unify voice, instant messaging and email communication but, combined with real-time language translation, enables staff and clients to collaborate through video, voice and text in different languages from PCs, tablets and phones simultaneously.

Social approaches to working will become the norm and be used alongside the more traditional document collaboration practices. Communities of interest will form within and between firms to discuss areas of law and other topics.

Co-authoring – real-time simultaneous editing of a document by multiple individuals – could be used as part of the document production process to streamline the interchange and manipulation of documents within the firm and with clients and external parties.

Advances in technology are leading to efficiency opportunities across the legal process. Data mining and document assembly approaches can be used to automate the production of certain legal documents, while complex event processing and handling software could be used to provide suggested clauses or reference material for a more complex matter.

Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn capture and analyse an individual's web use and online interactions (social graph) to target advertising or recommend connections. Similarly, subject to national data privacy regulations, firms can use information to determine an enterprise social graph for business use. Email, messaging and telephone logs show links within and outside the firm, while calendar and meeting information extends this. Participation in matters and consumption and production of know-how introduces a way to add a legal jurisdiction and domain knowledge layer to the picture. This information can be used in many ways, including identifying the ideal individuals to work with clients and on specific matters, creating better understanding of the overall strength of the firm's relationship with its clients, and analysing the strengths of the firm and how these align to market opportunities.

To ensure true global coverage of a firm, the network of best friend and partner firms will be extended on an ad-hoc basis to cater for the needs of specific deals. Alongside the requirement to identify the correct partner firm or individual and ensure no potential conflict of interest exists, the ability to put rapidly in place, and subsequently remove, shared collaborative spaces becomes incredibly useful. In addition to the collaboration approaches already discussed, these must ensure the integrity and security of shared documents to protect client confidentiality and the reputation of the firm.

The amount of electronic information a firm stores is growing exponentially. Currently, the content is primarily text based. But the recent addition of audio and video content will increase the challenge of finding the correct relevant information within the 'information haystack'. Search and text analytics technologies are rapidly evolving to assist, but without some fundamental information architecture and governance in place the costs and effort to leverage the information assets of a firm may become excessive. The ability to return accurate, timely, relevant search results to a fee earner based on, say, the search query, their enterprise social graph and their location will prove a competitive edge in providing legal services.

The amount of information held within a firm represents a tiny percentage of that now available for consumption. The information provided by the incumbent providers, such as LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters, can now be augmented with all of the data available from the world wide web relating to the firm, its staff, competitors, clients and their staff. This comprises not only news stories and published content, but also social network blogs, wiki entries, comments and reviews. Analysing this material alongside internal and traditional information feeds not only informs an understanding of the sentiment towards and perception of the firm, but can also lead to insights into developments within the sectors in which clients operate. Indeed, the analysis of this aggregated information, presented at the right time and in context, will enhance the firm's understanding of clients, target clients, and the individuals within those organisations.

Alastair Bain is head of ISS architecture at Linklaters.