Led by companies like Microsoft and GlaxoSmithKline, the demand for alternative fee arrangements is growing, putting pressure on law firms to make their services more efficient and cost effective. And in this transformation, technology like analytics inevitably plays a part.

But at the “Adapting to the New Service Model” session of Thomson Reuters' 22nd Annual Law Firm Leaders Forum in New York, many law firm and corporate law professionals noted that technology is only one part of the solution for law firms, in addition to creating new process and bringing in new nonlegal staff.

The problem is that many in legal get bogged down in the belief that technology, and the data it provides, can somehow automatically make their law firm more efficient. “Data is like crack for lawyers,” Lucy Bassli, assistant GC of legal operations and contracts at Microsoft, said. “We kind of don't know we love it, then we get a little taste, then we're seeing it more and more, and then we begin to look at our whole practice as a void of data.”

Peter Devlin,  president & CEO of Fish & Richardson agreed, adding, “I think people have a gut understanding that there is some mysterious insight in data, and when they say this word 'data,' there must be something good they can create value out of.” But, he noted, you can't “throw data at people and expect change to happen.”

After all, not all data is created equal. For Laura King, partner and global head of people and talent at Clifford Chance, it's important for law firms to put processes in place to collect and harness only the specific types of data that can be most useful in understanding firm productivity.

“I think everybody should record their time, the attorneys, the secretaries, everyone,” she said.

King added that while some law firms are already mining the right type of data, they aren't quite yet prepared to leverage it towards improving their efficiency.

“What I watched is that suddenly my forensics team has grown behind the scenes,” she said. “These things are creeping into firms without us adjusting our processes to cope with them.”

John Hall, CEO at Intapp, explained that a big reason for this lack of action is that historically, attorneys have been terrible at change and project management, and for the most part, such tasks were ineffectively delineated to the top brass. “Partners felt they needed to do everything,” he said.

But as a law firm grows, “the natural model is one where you have specialists to handle all these different functions,” such as reviewing and changing current processes around project or matter management, Hall said.

“Going from today's process to a truly new process with a new division of labor, that is what firms are going to have to figure out,” he explained.

For many law firms, however, bringing in project managers or technologists to work side-by-side with their attorneys to drive this change is easier said than done. “We've never forced people to disaggregate around a whole matter,” Bassli said.

Given the novelty of this evolution, many law firms may be resistant. But Hall said firms should be willing to embrace this change because it's not a threat to their core service offering. “The issue is about the efficiency of delivery, not the substance of the legal matter. It's about all this less important stuff.”

And some are already seeing this change take place within the market. “We, from an in-house perspective, are starting to see there are different people coming to the table,” Bassli said, explaining she's noticed law firms offering more “ancillary services around their core service.”