User adoption is arguably the most critical piece of your legal team’s technology transformation. After all, legal tech won’t work if your team doesn’t know how — and why — it fits into their workflow.
Whether legal teams are looking to replace their software system or install a modern solution for the first time, they should consider their user adoption strategy, which includes identifying potential roadblocks to adoption, plus benchmarks that will determine whether the transformation is working.
Fortunately, there are experienced technology vendors that not only can offer the right software solution for your team, but will partner with you to drive user adoption after launch. The best vendors will have a proven track record of training teams on their solutions, multiple real-world examples of user adoption strategies, and can show your team how software can solve their challenges or client needs.
Here are three ways the best software vendors drive legal tech adoption:
They turn your critics into champions
Often legal teams contain some self-proclaimed “Luddites” who say they can’t learn new technology. Some teams might say those objections present a big enough roadblock to adoption that they’ll doubt a legal tech transformation is possible.
But sometimes these Luddites actually are using technology — it’s just that their tool, while effective and efficient, only addresses their needs, or the needs of a few on the team. The right vendor can help get your team past the blame stage and help convince them to use a comprehensive product that provides the whole group with more efficient solutions while also addressing niche needs.
For example, do you have members of your team who use a one-off tool to produce chronologies, or make transcript designations? The right vendor can show them how modern case management software integrates multiple features and still fulfills their particular need. Once they see how the new software works for them, they might even spread the word, and become a champion for the new technology, which is the goal.
As a 2021 McKinsey survey found, successful transformations are more likely than others to involve influencers, and organizations with influencers saw up to 1.4 times the likelihood of a successful transformation when those influencers:
- Acted as thought partners to managers on the changes being made
- Supported other employees in developing the capabilities and mindset changes they need to succeed in a changing environment
- Role-modeled the new mindsets and behaviors that support the changes being made
- Disseminated transformation-related knowledge and best practices throughout the organization
The right vendor will have past knowledge and training expertise to show your team members how new technologies can work for them, arming them with the knowledge to become technology evangelists to their coworkers.
They show your team why legal tech matters
Another way to convince your legal team to adopt new technology is to connect it to the bottom line: How will it help them or the firm make more money? Or how can it reduce client dissatisfaction, and in turn, result in more business? How can it alleviate stressful situations?
Connecting your legal team’s tech transformation to financial or other metrics-based goals is a great strategy to drive user adoption. Top financial performers are more likely than others to anchor their tech transformations in strategic business priorities, according to McKinsey’s latest Global Survey. Those top performers reported a 29 percent higher realization of new revenue streams, a 10 percent better employee experience, and 5 percent more reduced costs than the rest of the survey respondents.
If your legal team is looking to improve client relations, technology also matters. According to Thomson Reuters’ Consumer and Business Client Experience surveys, 28 percent of consumer clients and 26 percent of business clients are unsatisfied with their lawyers’ use of technology. Simply adopting legal tech can change these metrics if your team has a client satisfaction goal to meet. The surveys also show that consumer clients have unanimous satisfaction using online portals, 96 percent satisfaction with online document review/ mark-up and 97 percent satisfaction with e-signature for consumers. The studies show business clients are more than 90 percent satisfied using updated technology.
Legal technology vendors have experience with past successful technology implementations and can tell firms about how that affected clients’ bottom line. Getting those successes in front of firm leadership as well as connecting the team’s work to client success improves team engagement in the updated technology.
They bring deep experience
Look for a vendor that has years of experience migrating legacy software projects to a modern solution and has developed multiple strategies for implementation. Ask yourself if they can work closely with your team to develop a realistic user adoption plan.
There’s no point in buying a tool that your team simply doesn’t want to learn how to use. Make sure your vendor can be a partner in developing a transformation plan so that your team can jump right in and get to work analyzing and strategizing.
Source: JD Supra
