How to find the best IT suppliers for your next-generation software

Insight Legal article.

A guide for Practice Managers tasked with pulling together a short-list

By Brian Welsh, Chairman at Insight Legal

If you’re reading this then you won’t need telling about the winds of change blowing through the legal landscape. It’s a familiar tale. Everyone it seems is expecting twice as much to be done, in half the time for no more money! The rising expectations of clients, the requirements of the regulators and the growth of ‘volume’ providers are akin to a perfect storm affecting many firms’ financial performance.

Is efficiency, productivity and profitability important to your firm? If so, then a modern legal IT system, meeting the needs of the practice and its clients is vital for long-term sustainability. Sadly, the efficiencies that need to be found no longer exist by just improving existing methods. As Henry Ford, a true innovator said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

It may be time that your firm looked again at what IT software solutions can deliver.

The challenge for Practice Managers tasked with scouring the supplier market, is whittling down a long list of ‘possible’ IT suppliers to a sensible short-list of ‘suitable’ IT suppliers. Only by finding the right supplier for your firm will the efficiency, productivity and profitability benefits be unlocked.

Sadly, unscrupulous suppliers do exist in the legal IT market. Sales tactics and retention strategies can be at the sharper end of what law firms are used to. Some suppliers see firms as soft targets; they are perceived to have deep pockets and are not as IT savvy as some other businesses.

Any independent evidence available about the quality of a software supplier is valuable. Accreditations or approved supplier status are two examples.

Our commitment is to deliver an honest, proudly independent, approachable and technologically flawless service in an ever-competitive legal IT sector. Insight Legal is already the software of choice for over 900 law firms in the UK and Northern Ireland, all supported by a team with law firm experience as well as technical expertise.

Our guide about choosing a reputable supplier, is designed to help IT Directors and Practice Managers through the process of identifying a supplier short-list and then how to select the right partner.

To download our White Paper on how to choose a reputable software supplier click here