businessman hurdles

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from the Reinventing Professionals podcast, hosted by legal tech speaker and consultant Ari Kaplan, provided to Legaltech News. In this episode, Ari Kaplan interviews Chris Cartrett, the executive vice president of Aderant, a legal industry time and billing software company.

Ari Kaplan: Tell us about your background and role at Aderant.

Chris Cartrett: I'm responsible for strategy and growth, which includes sales and marketing. I have been in this industry since 1992 and have really enjoyed my last four years at Aderant.

Ari Kaplan: How are law firms adapting and responding to the changes in the legal market?

Chris Cartrett: Over the past few years since the financial crisis, we are seeing law firms become some of the more innovative and risk-taking businesses out there. It's really exciting to see what's going on in the area.

Ari Kaplan: Can you give us some examples of innovations that your most dynamic clients are implementing?

Chris Cartrett: Law firms have become more creative in servicing their clients and managing matters globally. One of the biggest changes we've seen is firms focusing on generating more efficiency. They are working with different people and various teams to apply new strategies for approaching matters and client relationships.

Ari Kaplan: What tools can produce the greatest impact on law firm efficiency and profitability?

Chris Cartrett: In a recent business technology survey, there was consistent interest from law firms in automation. They realize there are ways efficiency can help them serve their clients and provide more value. For example, there has been a rise in the use of matter planning software, as well as pricing and monitoring tools. While law firms have always done a pretty good job at understanding their business intelligence, there has been a shift in how they manage their billing to remove the wasted time involved with running the business. This effort is enabling them to invest that time back into servicing their clients.

Ari Kaplan: What is the level of complexity involved in implementing technology like this?

Chris Cartrett: It is all about change management. As law firms adopt new technologies, change has to happen. They have to accept different ways of working with individuals and teams. Whether it is something as simple as making billing processes paperless with automatic workflows or managing global matters, the law firms having true global success are constantly re-evaluating their processes, always trying to simplify, and developing protocols that offer flexibility and agility.

Ari Kaplan: How can a law firm display agility in its approach and its culture?

Chris Cartrett: Agility in this context refers to a law firm that can respond to clients by creating new processes and new ways of managing matters immediately. On the back end, where many of these challenges happen, we try to allow enough flexibility in our software for a law firm to shift and change based on a creative idea of how it wants to service a client. Our software is flexible and can help them to respond accordingly.

Ari Kaplan: In what areas do you see the legal industry innovating even further?

Chris Cartrett: There are two big things you hear at every single meeting or seminar that you attend today: the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud. I'll echo what everybody else is saying.

While I've read a lot recently about law firms focusing on the ultimate goal of replacing lawyers, I don't see that at all. We see AI as an enhancement and it's been doing that for years in e-discovery and legal research. More broadly, I think you will be able to talk to your computer prior to a client meeting and have everything about that client read to you and transferred to a mobile device. AI will really enhance the professional relationship between a lawyer and their client.

With respect to the cloud, I cannot begin to tell you how many firms I talk to today who are prepared to evaluate all of their processes and standardize in ways that they never considered before. They don't want to lose their secret sauce and still want to be great at what made them successful, but the rise of cloud technology will enable them to improve access, share information more easily, simplify their back office processes, and create greater efficiencies.

Ari Kaplan regularly interviews leaders in the legal industry and in the broader professional services community to share perspective, highlight transformative change, and introduce new technology at ReinventingProfessionals.com.