The advent of new technologies has radically shifted the landscape in law; from automated contract drafting, to virtual offices, to new tools for research, more and more is being handled by sophisticated programs. When change is occurring this rapidly, it can be a good idea to take a step back and remember what the purpose of all of this change is. There’s no reason to adopt a new technology just because other firms are doing it; every piece of tech you adopt should serve one of a few purposes: cost efficiency, time efficiency, and better results for your clients. For all three of these elements, ease of use is key.

Ease of use can be broken down into two facets: the ease with which the technology can be learned, and the ease with which it can be used once it is learned. To illustrate: writing and sorting all of your documents by hand is easy to learn how to do, but not easy to do at all; it takes a lot of time and effort. Conversely, learning how to type up documents and use automated sorting software has a bit of a learning curve, but once you’re done, it’s much easier than the aforementioned method.

That means there’s an inherent tradeoff when adopting almost any new technology; you have to evaluate the amount of resources that will be spent in learning it, versus the expected resource gains once it’s learned. That’s why there’s a lot of inertia once you’ve chosen a product to suit your particular needs; once you’ve learned it, it might take a lot of new features to sway you to use a different product, and even that will only persuade you if you’re convinced the features aren’t just bloat. Don’t switch to new technology just because it has a lot of bells and whistles; if you don’t feel like the features would add value to your firm, keep it simple.

One of the difficulties when evaluating a new technology is determining how efficient it is at doing the things you want it to do. Concepts like efficiency ratios require hard metrics, while many technologies assist with soft metrics, like customer and employee satisfaction. In order to evaluate the efficiency of a technology, see if you can get a free trial, as well as training for you and your employees on the technology; pick a few hard, measurable metrics, and compare those metrics before and after the free trial. This won’t be exactly accurate (that darned learning curve again), but should give you some idea whether or not the switch is worth it.

The technology we offer is pretty easy to evaluate; if you would have otherwise missed a court date, instead, you don’t! Pretty simple metrics, right there. Our court appearance professionals are passionate about their work; we can find someone to make an appearance for you at the drop of a hat. There’s no learning curve at all; just let us know the details, and we can help.