Blog

For years, maybe decades, to come, we will be analyzing, examining, and dissecting the impact of COVID-19. There are sure to be many opinions and viewpoints; one thing that all the pundits will agree upon, however, is that 2020 was a time of true disruption in so many ways. It interrupted our personal and family lives and it certainly disrupted our work lives, likely changing forever the manner in which we collaborate, communicate, and connect.

According to HBR’s 2020 Law Department Survey, a contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution is one of the top technology solutions that law departments plan to implement in the next one to two years. If your organization is looking to add a CLM solution, consider this number: 32,700,000. That is the number of hits for the search term “contract lifecycle management software” on Google. And, while it took the search engine 0.52 seconds to deliver its responses, it would take you years to sift through those results to find the CLM that is right for your business. You may never be as speedy as Google, but you need some way to narrow down your choices.

Law firms of all sizes are seizing the moment to rethink the strategic role of the IT function within their organizations and considering various ways that IT can impact their competitive positioning in the marketplace. As my colleague Erik Schmidt wrote recently, a number of these firms are learning that a bold strategic shift to an IT managed services model is helping them achieve greater efficiencies and reduce a variety of IT-related risks.

The evolution of the U.S. legal industry has accelerated in recent years. Law firms and other legal service providers have adopted an array of new technologies that have impacted both the business and practice of law. Meanwhile, these new technologies are driving a variety of changes to legal workforce dynamics that are forcing employers to navigate internal culture shifts. These simultaneous forces of technology and workforce changes are challenging law firms to rethink the way they deliver value to internal and external clients.

Did the recent Hafnium cyber attack scare you? It should have. It is the latest and broadest attack to hit law firms.

As we emerge—hopefully soon—from the coronavirus crisis, organizations are celebrating what they have accomplished and reflecting on what they have learned in a year marked by dramatic challenges. Responding to the ever-shifting circumstances of a global pandemic demanded adapting continuously, keeping a watchful eye on current and future needs, and recalibrating technological tools and capabilities.

All of us who work in the legal industry were forced into a work from home model in early-2020, virtually overnight, and suddenly found ourselves replacing in-person meetings with Zoom. It was a paradigm shift that had been quietly underway for years but accelerated with breathtaking speed.

Last year was a maelstrom of change—which of course also swept up Legal Lab, HBR Consulting’s annual gathering of leaders from some of the nation’s top law departments and law firms. Rather than the two-day, in-person event that HBR usually hosts, last year Legal Lab turned into as a series of five virtual sessions across multiple weeks.

It seems like everything was different in 2020—including Legal Lab, HBR Consulting’s sixth annual gathering of leaders from some of the nation’s top law departments and law firms. In place of the two-day, in-person event that HBR has hosted in the past, we reinvented Legal Lab as a series of five virtual sessions that unfolded across multiple weeks.

Everything was different in 2020, and Legal Lab, HBR Consulting’s sixth annual gathering of leaders from some of the nation’s top law departments and law firms, was no exception. Instead of the usual two-day, in-person event we have hosted in the past, last year HBR reinvented Legal Lab as a series of five virtual sessions that unfolded across multiple weeks.