FEATURE
Technological Maturity in Legal Departments By BARRY ADER
T
echnology is useful only insofar as corporate legal departments can persuade lawyers and support staff to use it. Many departments are rapidly onboarding tech solutions that can either improve efficiency through AI-powered workflows or facilitate data-driven insights for smarter decision making — a big win for any organization. But technological maturity is about more than just throwing the right tools into place. Legal departments that approach the change
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management process strategically are better positioned to maximize return on powerful technology solutions. It’s easy to see why in-house teams would be interested in upgrading their tech. Much of the time-consuming work that in-house attorneys or paralegals do, for instance, can be modernized by adopting technologies that automate critical, laborious functions. Tasks like bill review and management of contracts can be greatly simplified through
automated workflows, which can reduce costs and free up those resources for more value-added work. These types of tasks are present in every area of every company. The level at which businesses embrace and invest in technology is frequently referred to as “technological maturity.” It is a scale that more and more organizations seem interested in achieving — the quicker, the better. For example, Wolters Kluwer’s 2021 Future Ready Lawyer Survey found that BACK TO CONTENTS
