In a recent panel discussion hosted by Women in Wills, it was estimated that up to 40% of firms are benefiting from a discount on their PII renewals as a result of employing legal tech.
The panel, which included our own Strategic Relationship Director Emma Baddaley alongside Rob Hosier of the UK Legal Technology Association (UKLTA) and Pippa Shepherd, Head of Customer Engagement at Arken.legal, came together to discuss technology and process; culture and communication.
The result was a lively debate about how firms can use legal tech to their advantage to automate repetitive tasks, help to streamline current processes, and potentially mitigate risk. However, there is often a generational divide when it comes to how far practitioners are willing to go when implementing tech.
When faced with legal professionals who are adverse to change, Emma commented;
“It’s multifaceted. What tends to happen is when they say this, they don’t actually have a process. They just don’t want to change. It’s almost an epiphany sometimes with wills and probate lawyers: they need to have a process. In wills and probate, technology is demonstrating that there is a process. We overcome this objection by asking ‘let us demonstrate why your current way of doing things doesn’t work’. Having an opportunity to get in front of the team means you can drive knowledge forward about their pitfalls, educate them, they then come to understand there are lots of areas they haven’t even thought about.”
The pandemic accelerated technology usage in a lot of firms with the need to work remotely being a key factor, but it is also a trait of the modern consumer, thanks to online shopping and banking, to want things done quickly. So, it’s no surprise that insurers may react favourably to firms employing technology to create new efficiencies in the legal sector, as Rob Hosier suggested;
“On PII renewals, 30-40% of firms [in our latest review] got a discount because of the tech they’re using. Yet, some struggled to even obtain cover due to the lack of tech”.
To read the full breakdown of the discussion see Today’s Wills and Probate’s write-up here.