Competing by Connecting: In an Increasingly Crowded Market, Litigation Teams Must Leverage Centralized Technologies to Rise Above Their Rivals

In pre-pandemic days, it was generally easier for attorneys to manage their cases and workflows with their own unique processes. While technology to do things more effectively was available, most attorneys were happy to continue conducting litigation the old way and managing it manually through emails and spreadsheets unless a client or specific case demanded something more of them. For this reason, upper management at law firms often regulated the pace at which new litigation workflow technologies were adopted and deployed. Whether a new and promising solution was purchased during this budget year or simply deferred to the next budget year was often a matter of convenience, preference and appetite for spending budget dollars. Little thought was given to timing, unless adoption of a solution was driven by immediate client demand.

Nobody considered that — in the blink of an eye — the world would fundamentally change and the second nature of in-office and in-person daily routines, manual practices and processes that law firms and their litigation teams regularly employed would become not only inconvenient, but very difficult to effectively manage. To address this new and what appears to be at least a partially permanent hybrid workforce, firms that once may have considered litigation management solutions that improve internal workflow and collaboration as "nice to have" now regard these same solutions as "must have," and are budgeting for them. Attorneys who may have been slow adopters have experienced first-hand the frustration and risk associated with disconnected tools, emails and manual processes, and now understand the pain and risk that is magnified when their teams can no longer work within the same office.