One of the founding principles behind iEnvision Technology was that, although we were a technology consulting firm serving the legal industry, our real value wasn’t the technology itself, it was the people behind it. Our goal was to build a trusted team with the experience, judgment, and practical knowledge to help legal organisations achieve their business objectives. We believed that if we focused on making our clients successful by providing trusted guidance, delivering consistent quality, and doing what we said we were going to do, the technology would become an enabler rather than the centerpiece of the relationship.

Building iEnvision from the ground up reinforced a lesson that remains true today: understanding what a client is actually trying to accomplish is far more important than selling them a product. Too often, vendors approach clients with a predetermined solution and then look for a problem to solve. We took the opposite approach. We wanted to understand the legal team’s goals, challenges, and operating model first, then determine whether technology, process improvements, or a combination of both could help them achieve those objectives.

That perspective has only become more relevant as the legal technology market continues to expand. Corporate legal departments and law firms are being presented with an ever-growing number of platforms, applications, and subscriptions, all promising transformative results. While many of those technologies provide real value, the industry’s focus can sometimes shift toward selling software rather than solving business problems.

At Kroll, our Legal Transformation practice continues to operate from the principles that shaped iEnvision. We bring independent, experience-based guidance to law firms and corporate legal departments, helping them improve processes, increase efficiency, and maximise the value of technology investments. Having spent more than two decades implementing solutions within legal organisations, we’ve developed a deep understanding of how legal teams actually operate, especially in corporate legal departments where budgets are constrained and expectations continue to rise.

One of the most important lessons we’ve learned is that meaningful efficiency gains are rarely achieved through technology alone. They are achieved when technology is aligned with the way legal work is performed. That alignment happens at the practice group and working team level, where the day-to-day legal work is conducted. Understanding those workflows, use cases, and operational realities allows us to provide recommendations that are both practical and impactful.

A good example of the gap between what clients need and what vendors think they need can be seen in today’s surge of interest around artificial intelligence. Many organisations begin by asking, “Which AI platform should we buy?” We typically start with a different question: “What process are you trying to improve?”

In many cases, organisations can achieve significant gains through process redesign, workflow optimisation, stronger information governance, and better data management before introducing AI. That’s not to suggest AI isn’t valuable. Quite the opposite. AI has tremendous potential to transform legal work. However, organisations are far more likely to realise that value when they first establish the operational and governance foundations that AI depends upon.

Before making significant AI investments, we generally recommend focusing on four areas:

1. Define the business process. Identify the workflows that need improvement and clearly articulate the outcomes you’re trying to achieve.
2. Understand the information requirements. Determine what data and content are needed to support the workflow and drive efficiency.
3. Establish a modern information governance framework. This includes creating the structures, controls, and content organisation necessary to support effective knowledge management. Interestingly, AI may finally help the legal industry achieve what many knowledge management initiatives struggled to accomplish fifteen years ago. Advances in metadata enrichment, content classification, and generative AI can automate much of the work that previously relied on manual effort, while still keeping legal professionals in the loop for review, refinement, and approval.
4. Develop the appropriate security and access model. Governance and security are critical in legal environments. AI systems should only have access to information that is appropriate for a given use case, which means understanding the underlying business and confidentiality requirements in detail.

Once these building blocks are in place, organisations can begin applying AI in a thoughtful and targeted way. The encouraging news is that modern technology has dramatically accelerated this process. What once required months of planning and implementation can often be accomplished in a matter of weeks.

If building iEnvision taught me one thing, it’s that successful legal technology initiatives begin with understanding people, processes, and objectives. Technology is incredibly important, but it delivers its greatest value when it’s applied in service of a clearly defined business outcome rather than deployed as a solution in search of a problem.