George Psiharis is the chief operating officer at Clio. At Clio, Psiharis specializes in customer success, business...
Sharon D. Nelson, Esq. is president of the digital forensics, managed information technology and cybersecurity firm Sensei...
John W. Simek is vice president of the digital forensics, managed information technology and cybersecurity firm Sensei...
Published: | December 17, 2020 |
Podcast: | Digital Detectives |
Category: | COVID-19 , Legal Technology |
The legal world has made more forward progress since the start of the pandemic than many expected it could do in a decade. Lawyers formerly resistant to technology suddenly found themselves with no choice but to adapt and embrace digital-friendly legal practice. For a closer look at how these changes are playing out in the profession, Sharon Nelson and John Simek talk with George Psiharis about Clio’s 2020 Legal Trends Report. They discuss who is weathering pandemic-era shifts most effectively, the mass movement to cloud-based services, the importance of focusing on customer experience, and which COVID-era changes will likely carry on beyond the pandemic.
George Psiharis is chief operating officer at Clio.
Special thanks to our sponsor PInow.
Digital Detectives
Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2020: A Look Into the Future of Law
12/19/20
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Intro: Welcome to Digital Detectives reports from the battlefront. We’ll discuss computer forensics, electronic discovery, and information security issues, and what’s really happening in the trenches, not theory but practical information that you can use in your law practice right here on the Legal Talk Network.
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Sharon Nelson: Welcome to the 122nd Edition of Digital Detectives. We’re glad to have you with us. I’m Sharon Nelson, President of Sensei Enterprises, a digital forensics, cyber security and information technology firm in Fairfax, Virginia.
John Simek: And I’m John Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises. Today on Digital Detectives, our topic is ‘Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2020, A Look Into the Future of Law.’
Sharon Nelson: Before we get started, we’d like to thank our sponsor PInow.com. If you need a private investigator you can trust, visit PInow.com to learn more.
John Simek: Today, we are pleased to have as our guest, George Psiharis, the Chief Operating Officer at Clio, specializing in customer success, business development and data operations. George has worked extensively with law schools, bar associations and other legal professionals to help make information on cloud computing and law firm economics increasingly accessible. He’s also fluent in Greek, a skill he’d love to use as Clio expands its global offerings. It’s great to have you with us today, George.
George Psiharis: Thank you very much for having me. It’s great to be here.
Sharon Nelson: When we attended the October Clio Cloud Conference, Clio CEO Jack Newton said, “We’ve moved 10 years into the future in 10 weeks,” which was a very memorable line which I have stolen frequently since that time. Can you explain what Jack called the tectonic shift in the practice of law?
George Psiharis: Yes, a great opening section. So, you know, like other industries, we found that the legal profession took an unexpected and quick toll earlier this year. As soon as many shelter and place orders or other pandemic measures were taken in most areas and in most geographies in the United States, legal took an immediate impact in terms of the net new business they were seeing and needed to react both to remain operational, but also to continue serving new and existing clients as we embarked and embraced the initial impacts of this pandemic.
And so, one of the things we were able to study in the 2020 Legal Trends Report was that lawyers began adapting much more rapidly in particular in their use of technology than we had ever seen in recent times, and it prompted us to really think about the fact that we were seeing perhaps the next 10 years of technology adoption that would be happening at what you may consider to be its organic rate get accelerated very, very quickly by the circumstances of the COVI-19 pandemic. And so, we saw lawyers adapt and embrace a digital first mentality and, at the same time, we saw consumers and their expectations and requirements adapt as well. So, we saw both lawyers and clients looking for the same things in terms of technology adoption, and those firms we believe that were the best at adapting to being tech-driven but also client centric were those that moved ahead, and we’re able to adapt most quickly to this large shock that we saw.
You know in our analysis, it wasn’t so much seeing things that we never expected to happen in the profession. It was seeing them happen much more rapidly. Hence, the perspective that the next 10 years happened in a matter of weeks as opposed to years.
John Simek: George, we’re both fascinated by the data that from the Legal Trends Report that was released at the same time as the conference back in October, but one thing that certainly jumped out at Sharon and I was the increasing numbers of clients and lawyers that have reached a conclusion that the old brick and mortar offices are not so important anymore. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the stats reports contained addressing that?
George Psiharis: Yeah, that was a really interesting observation area where we weren’t quite sure what to expect. And so, one of the data points we collected is something that in the stats industry is called a MaxDiff analysis. But, effectively, it’s a ranking of preferences, and we asked lawyers and clients to comment on the same list of preferences ranked from the things they consider to be the most important to the things they consider to be the least important. And so, typically, when we do our Legal Trends Report studies, we find and report on these big gaps. You know, lawyers are often in one area in terms of their sets of expectations and how things should work. Clients are, of course, on another page and with slightly different expectations of both the lawyers but also how their experience should work.
And for the first time in the 10 years that I’ve been working at Clio and the five years that we’ve been doing this analysis, we saw those expectations converging and, of course,–
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Right at the top of the lists were both lawyers and clients looking to drive referrals and reviews. Right at the bottom of the list was bricks and mortar office spaces mattering. So, for the first time, we saw both groups saying that that was the least important thing right now and potentially in the future what will be interesting to observe is, you know, the shock of the pandemic definitely drove some of these behaviors and responses, but we do believe that we won’t see things go back to what we considered normal before.
So, we had about 21% of firms already operating without a commercial office space; 7% saying that they let go of their office space since the start of the pandemic; and 12% more are saying they’re unsure if they’re going to maintain commercial office space in the future. Rounding some of this out were observations on what we were going to use the space for. And so, about 69% of consumers said they preferred to share documents, for example, electronically; 65% saying they preferred to pay electronically through online payment methods; and even 37% saying they preferred video conferencing when meeting their lawyer for the first time, and that’s certainly very, very different from patterns and behavioral preferences that we saw prior to the pandemic.
Sharon Nelson: Well, I certainly want to say that you need to tell Jack Newton that having this Legal Trends Report this has really been useful as a marketing tool for him, not only because of Clio because people like us who lecture a lot. We now have in our future of law presentation three slides from the report. So, I really think that was a stroke of genius because we’re not pumping up your actual product but, nonetheless, you’re getting lots of great publicity. So, I always appreciate a good marketing initiative.
John Simek: But you have a picture of Jack there, too.
Sharon Nelson: And Jack or Chloe, somebody sent me a picture of jack, which is just wonderful. And so, that’s even a separate slide with that quote about 10 years in the future. So, Jack is doing very well by his marketing.
George Psiharis: Well, that’s great Sharon. Hey listen, we’re humbled that you’d feature us and would have us included.
Sharon Nelson: Well, it’s great data and people really do enjoy it and it really. But since most of them are not at the conference, it’s a great way to learn about how to prepare for the future. And speaking of that, you know that we are huge proponents of the cloud, and we’ve been saying forever the best time to get on the cloud was five years ago. The second best time is today.
[Laughter]
So, when Jack did an interview with me during the Clio conference, he said, “The cloud has become table stakes.” I also tend to quote that line a lot because it’s a good one, but can you explain to our audience what he means by that?
George Psiharis: For sure. Well, over the last 12 years that Clio has been in development in 10 years for me as I mentioned, one of the observations we’ve had is that switching to running your practice in the cloud is often still looked as being innovative, being ahead of the curve, being forward thinking, and standing out from your peers. And through the course of this pandemic really with the rapid nature of the change that whole point around 10 years of evolution happening in 10 weeks, it’s kind of gone from being something that gets you ahead of the pack to just being table stakes, and it’s table stakes in terms of client expectations.
When clients come to a law firm now, they’re not expecting to have in-person exchanges be at all the main way that they interact with their law firm. It’s also becoming table stakes for how lawyers and law firms expect to operate in serving their clients. Both first, of course, out of necessity, but increasingly out of preference and what will we expect to stick around post pandemic hopefully with the exciting news we have around vaccines and so on, we’re not there yet. But once we return to or kind of build a new normal, it’ll be interesting to see some of these behaviors stick around.
In our study, we found three particular areas where despite — and maybe, I’ll back up a step here. Overall, the months since the beginning of the pandemic have not been great from a business perspective for any law firm. There’d be some that have outperformed their peers, but for the most part, the industry as a whole has taken a big hit. New client intake, matter volumes, revenues have all struggled to rebound from initial impacts that were both pronounced and intermediate. Now, despite that circumstance, our study revealed that there were firms that were significantly outperforming their peers, and when we looked into the data and published some insights, we found that firms that were deploying technologies in three particular areas were outperforming the pack in a very significant way, and those were firms that were deploying an online intake or CRM tool.
This is a customer relationship management that helps you respond to new inquiries and manage interactions before someone has retained you as their lawyer. There are firms that were deploying online payments. They were getting paid much more quickly and more predictably than their peers. And then, finally, there were firms that were using online client portals.
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So, secure methods of exchange to have folks do things like sign documents, exchange messages, get updates on their cases. All of these things replace what could have been perhaps in-person interactions, someone coming to the office or coming to the firm, and the impact was substantial.
So, for those firms, we estimated that, over the course of 2020, their fee earning lawyers would bill 40% more or as much as $20,000.00 per lawyer more than their peers. At Clio Cloud Conference, I kind of posed this to the audience as we were broadcasting what would you be doing right now with 40% more collected revenue, probably a lot of things and it would go a lot of way to helping all of us in this circumstance, but that is the extent of that difference and it’s kind of what points to us that embracing the cloud, moving your practice into the cloud, and taking advantage of these benefits is very much table stakes.
Sharon Nelson: Yeah, the way I sometimes put it see if you agree is that if you’re not in the cloud, you can’t even play the game because you don’t have table stakes.
George Psiharis: That’s it. That’s exactly it. Great! Well said. Not even at the table.
John Simek: Well, George, for years and years and years, Sharon and I have been trying to recommend to lawyers that they need to be moving to the cloud. So, this is a great segue, but the pushback has typically been that a lot of them feel it would jeopardize the client’s confidential data by moving it into the cloud. But so, how would you address that concern about cloud security?
George Psiharis: Yeah, a really important point and part of what law firms obviously need to think about with the ethical obligations they have to their clients. So, at Clio, we have a dedicated security team with more than 40 years of combined cyber security experience. They’re available to us 24 x 7 by 365; so, basically, full-time to respond to any security incidents or vulnerabilities.
In addition, we continuously monitor for potential vulnerabilities and review updates to our code and system configurations to ensure that we’re right in the head of the pack and that our customer data is always protected. A big one for us is that we apply what’s called in transit and at rest encryption using industry best practices. So, these would be protocols like HTTPS and TLS. Happy to, of course, expand on those further for folks or to direct them to information on those, but these are encryption practices that ensure firm’s data is stored and transmitted securely.
And then, we also deploy a series of certifications. So, our web interfaces are verified by DigiCert, which is a trusted security authority. We also deploy really high internal standards for code quality, code reviews and things that prevent vulnerabilities from ever occurring in the first place. So, you know, one of the things about the cloud that I think does matter a lot and it can be a value added to law firms is firms like Clio are spending very, very deliberate and dedicated extensive resources on guaranteeing security and enforcing these practices.
At the same time, the effort level of the economics of trying to do this on your own as a small or even mid-sized practice is much, much more difficult. You’re there to practice law and be excellent subject matter experts and serve your clients. And so, it’s always important to get professional support certainly where applicable, but also part of where cloud applications can really help is having folks whose full-time job it is directed at these things, so that you don’t have to focus on those.
John Simek: And that’s usually what we tell them too is that the cloud can protect your data better than you can.
George Psiharis: Lot of servers still in closets plugged in that I run into over the years. I’ll tell you.
Sharon Nelson: Usually, with a rat’s nest of wires, too, and cables.
George Psiharis: Yeah.
Sharon Nelson: So, Clio is really an extraordinarily successful example of a cloud-based case management program. Can you talk to us just a little bit about how Clio addresses cloud security because I think it’s poorly understood especially in relationship to cloud-based case management programs?
George Psiharis: Yes, absolutely. So, over the past 12 years, we’ve had the opportunity to both learn from but also engage in the conversation around security and ethics and cloud and making sure lawyers feel safe and informed in storing client information in the cloud. In terms of our specific best practices both for law firms but also in general, some of the things we can recommend are creating and implementing a data security policy very, very key, continuously training staff on mitigating data risk. Even things as key is using strong passwords and encryption at all times are really, really important. Securing communications and having access controls seem like table stakes or obvious things, but quite often take a deliberate and focused effort. There is a process around conducting regular audits in internal reviews. Those are both internal, but also using external auditors and folks who review processes.
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There’s a very careful process deployed in vetting vendors and third parties carefully. There is an emphasis also on mobile device management that is really, really key where we encrypt and secure any kind of devices involved in running a firm like Clio, but also in just as applicable in legal practices and, of course, there is training involved in building knowledge and security awareness as well around the human factors. It’s called in data and security circles.
So, always having people being security conscious and having that front of mind is a really important piece of what we do.
John Simek: Well, before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick commercial break.
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Sharon Nelson: Welcome back to Digital Detectives on the Legal Talk Network. Today, our topic is Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2020, A Look Into the Future of Law. Our guest is George Psiharis, the Chief Operating Officer at Clio.
John Simek: George, in ILTA’s Tech Survey this year, the respondents said simply cloud with every upgrade. That was kind of the theme and that was a trend across all different sizes of firms. What do you think about that plan to move to the cloud?
George Psiharis: I think it’s an interesting one and, certainly, taking down a big problem and breaking it into achievable parts is always really smart, and a key part of that strategy that I really appreciate. It reminds me that the shift to cloud-based services both in terms of lawyer experience at firms, but also in the client experiences that are delivered are kind of much more than just a coping mechanism for the changes and stresses of 2020. There are things that are here to stay. And so, I love the permanence of the advice like get moving on the change and have it be a one-way trip.
I think another important consideration there is the need to work remotely that has driven the online transition that many law firms are seeing take place and, you know, from what it’s worth legal professionals are more resilient. They’ve got better work-life balance and they’re better able to provide service to their clients that they’re proud of in the studies that we do and in the information we were able to publish in the Legal Trends Report. So, quantifying that a bit, 68% of legal professionals feel they’re more prepared to handle the impact of future waves of COVID- 19 or something similar; 58% of legal professionals say technology has improved their work-life balance; 68% of legal professionals say technology has helped their firms deliver better client experiences during the pandemic; and the vast majority of legal professionals say they’ll continue using these technologies beyond the pandemic.
So, 84% of them saying they could serve their clients even better with more parts of their practice automated or available in the cloud. Those are really, really interesting to see and they’re certainly very different from the data points we’ve been able to collect prior to the pandemic and bringing that back to the insight from the ILTA 2020 Tech Survey, I think every step a firm can take cloud with every upgrade, cloud with every change is key in getting them there and for even middle or large size firms, I would say even if client experiences aren’t pulling the change to the cloud as much as we see them in solo and small firm practice do consider the impact that it has on the employee experience you’re providing.
You know, each new generation of lawyers entering the profession and joining firms is arriving at it with certain set of expectations of what their work-life balance, but also their ability to work remote, their ability to engage in tech will be like, and I think this is going to be one of those transformative impacts that’s going to be much faster than it would have been without the disruption of the pandemic moving forward here, so very important to consider and as the ILTA survey pointed out, if you can’t do it in one go and have so disruptive a change make efforts to definitely upgrade and move into the cloud one step at a time.
Sharon Nelson: Well, that same ILTA study showed that 50% of respondents had their email in the cloud or that it was going ahead there soon. The stat though that really fascinated us was that only 6% of large law firms were using Microsoft 365 or Exchange online, but 55% expected to adopt it or one of them within 12 months. Why do you think that large law firms have been so slow to make this move when 52% of the small law firms were already there?
George Psiharis: It’s a very interesting insight. I think that moving to a platform like Office 365 certainly requires users to stop using their old email platforms and transfer all of their previous emails.
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Of course, the larger the firm, the larger this body of previous work and emails that needs to get moved, but that would include by the way emails, contacts, calendars to the new Office 365 mailbox. So, one of my guesses would be that this is a pretty resource intensive act to move users out of their old system and into the new, and it’s never a good time. And the larger the organization, of course, the bigger the challenge, right? The bigger the disruption and in a large firm, you know, the wheels will get turning right away around. Time is money and calculating a dollar value of the disruption.
So, it’s one of those things that’s difficult to build momentum around, but the appeal for me would be the longer you procrastinate it, the longer that disruption builds up, and the inertia is around making the change. So yeah, very interesting insight and that would be my take on what we’re seeing there.
Sharon Nelson: It was a very, very good take, and it’s funny how long it takes the law firms to get there.
John Simek: But, you know, there’s this technology. It’s called the migration tool.
George Psiharis: I’ve heard about it once or twice. Yeah.
John Simek: It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to run that. Anyway, Jack Newton, he’s long been a proponent of the client-centered law firm, which happens to be the name of his book. But, George, why do you think that that’s so pivotal to lawyers these days?
George Psiharis: Great question, John. I think one of the things that over the years of doing our Legal Trends Report studies that has jumped out to us the most is how unaware, not unintention but unaware lawyers are of the experiences their clients tend to go through. One of the biggest parts of this digital revolution is the switch to being cloud-based across all of business, not just in the legal profession, but across all the business that we’ve seen is that it puts the client’s experience in the forefront. And in legal, we see a tremendous opportunity, but also the general standard lagged behind the experiences folks are having in in other professions or even in other parts of the economy when they go and buy stuff or get advice.
And so, we’ve described this as a better normal for us as being cloud-based and client-centered. So, having cloud technologies be the foundation and having client-centered experiences and service be the focal point of how they’re delivered. A great saying is that the future of legal is already here, but just not evenly distributed yet. So, we certainly see this happening in many places and across the board, but it’s not evenly distributed that it’s not yet become the norm of what clients can expect. And I think there is a mentality a change mindset, a growth mindset often that we talk about that is required to proceed simply implementing the technology tools. This is one of the key pieces that are brought up in Jack Newton’s book, ‘The Client Centered Law Firm’, but also one of the big opportunities that we see out there.
Client experiences win firms as we mentioned earlier in the interview that deploy client facing technologies and deliver experiences over them aren’t just kind of feeling better about themselves, but they’re making a lot more money in this moment. They’re collecting 40% more revenue per lawyer. So, clients are responding to that with their dollars, and the key piece I think it removes as we continue to go through an economy impacted by the pandemic here is friction around clients engaging with lawyers.
So, one of the areas that we talk about a lot is the access to justice gap and how a recent world justice survey project found that about 77% of what could be considered legal problems go without legal advice. Now, most of us are acquainted with how many of these problems simply can’t be served in the current cost model that we have and that it’s often an issue of willingness to pay our access to funds on behalf of clients, and there are folks in the pro bono and legal aid worlds doing incredible work to serve those needs in society.
Above and beyond that though, I’ll say that there is a very significant portion of this underserved market that either doesn’t know they have a legal problem still has willingness to pay just not around exactly the way that we do things with the billable hour today or often just turns away because of how hard it is, how much friction there is in finding lawyers in retaining them for their services. That piece is the one that is dramatically unlocked by those firms that master online client experiences, cloud-based client experiences to be specific. They can remove the friction and the difficulty and make it more comparable to what they experience when they order that Uber or order something on Amazon Prime. They’re not much more likely to make sure they power through and find a lawyer and retain their services and that will drive a ton of opportunity but, of course, it’s a change that will be a difficult one to navigate for folks as that is a big one for many folks I know out there who are practicing lawyers.
Sharon Nelson: Well, I just want to mention that the book, The Client-Centered Law Firm’ is available on Amazon for $1,999.00 in a soft cover,–
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And I happen to know that because I own the book, but you can get it for I think $5.00 less or something in Kindle format, but I wouldn’t recommend that because this is the kind of book where you want to take some notes and do some highlighting and I never find it as easy in the Kindle as I do in a soft cover book. But, one of the things I noted when I took a look at the reviews was one of the reviews came from our friend from the UK, Professor Richard Susskind, and he talked about focusing relentlessly on the needs of clients and ceaselessly improving client experience going forward.
So, I thought those were a couple of very apt and eloquent phrases in a review, and we suspect you agree with all of that. Can you give lawyers an example or examples of how they might do that?
George Psiharis: Yeah, you guessed it a big fan and proponent and supporter of that perspective and happy to dive into that in a bit more detail. So, the journey there begins with a virtual event that we hosted actually featuring Richard Susskind and his son, Daniel Susskind, who co-authored a recent book with him on the title of our session was “COVID-19 and The Future of the Professions,” and though timelines are unclear on exactly how this is all going to happen, we know that life will start to at some point ease back into perhaps, not the same but a new normalcy and both Susskind’s took some time to shed some light on what this process might look like. Their description of that revolves around something called “The Five Phases of Recovery” for professions as it relates to the global pandemic.
Recovery, as we know, is a process, and the Susskind’s help kind of understand what we can expect and how to emerge as one of these top law firms and, of course, this ceaseless improvement of client experience was identified as the key place to start. And so, a couple of the insights that we have that can help drive or I know it’s a very broad topic, right, and the listeners are for sure hungry for how can we focus, how can we zoom in. I think a general way to think about it is in driving client experiences that result in two things.
First, in inquiries that get responded to, you know, in previous studies one of the things we found is it’s actually really hard in the pre-pandemic it was I should say really hard in the pre-pandemic market to even get a call back from most law firms as industry responsiveness levels and service levels as they relate to getting back to folks who could be a prospective client were quite poor. With 60% of inquiries when we tested, a thousand law firms going unanswered altogether. So, a quick sidebar comment for me there – we’re not talking about rocket science here. Sixty percent of inquiry is going unanswered is something that’s pretty low hanging fruit at least in my opinion for us to improve upon, and it’s not always a matter of doing something really, really super sophisticated. And I know there are challenges that get in the way of being able to be responsive, but these are places where cloud technologies, automation and different tools can really, really help. But, I think that is one very, very focused area where most law firms can do better, and it’s also the first point in which the client experience begins. Do they even get a callback or is it an easy process to get an answer to their inquiry really, really a key first step.
A second area that we found over the years passed is delivering client experiences that drive reviews and referrals. I know these are forever the bane of most folk’s existence. They can be quite frustrating when they don’t go the way they wanted, but also when clients seem not to have experiences or results that meet their expectations, we know all too well that they will take to the internet to be heard. On the flip side though, there are ways to control your destiny here and to get those positive reviews and referral business and the key steps to that in my mind are mapping the steps of a client journey, setting appropriate expectations along the way, and delivering on them. It’s not often or always a requirement to drastically exceed expectations. It’s more important to meet them.
So, for example, if we do an intake with a client get started with whatever the legal matter might be and then don’t communicate them for a while, their heads are spinning in narrative. What’s going on? I haven’t heard an update? That person just take my money and not get back to me. You know, in worst case scenario, for example, if we redefine that interaction and say, “Okay, there won’t be development on this for the next three or four weeks. I’ll schedule a time to follow up with you then and set that expectation with you. If you don’t hear from me in the interim, feel free to log into an online client portal and see what actions have taken place on your case if any, but know that if there’s no update there, that’s okay and also what you can expect from us. It just dramatically transforms the client experience in simple ways that we find are much more likely to meet client expectations and result in those positive client reviews and, of course, referral or repeat business.
So, if i had to pick two places to really, really prioritize, I’d Zoom in on those and, of course, part of the story with cloud-based technology is that they all function to make this stuff easier. It’s not possible to be in two places at once, to be in court and picking up the phone when someone inquires,–
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But there are ways to use automations and tools to deliver information and experiences to clients that make it better.
John Simek: Well, time passes quickly and here we are in December, George. What have you seen happening since the October conference and are there any new ideas for lawyers and law firms who are still struggling through the pandemic?
George Psiharis: It has passed quickly, John. And I can’t believe we’re at this moment two weeks or so out from Christmas. It’s absolutely crazy.
John Simek: Yes.
George Psiharis: It doesn’t feel like it’s time for that yet. But, you know, since October and in the rapidly evolving world that we’ve seen — look obviously, the news of vaccines coming up is very important and a light at the end of the tunnel for many, although we need to, of course, temper our expectations on how quickly things are going to happen, but I think the big ones that we’re seeing are more and more folks committing to either hybrid or remote environments for their legal practices, especially in the solo and small firm segment. The more we get into this and even from October to now, we’re seeing more and more firms commit to being either hybrid, part-time, virtual. And the big thing, I’m seeing is the split between transactional interactions with clients and with each other and completing work at the firm switching to being largely online and asynchronous I should say, too, so interacting by messages or in portals or in mobile apps.
And on the flip side, high value human interactions being prioritized for now for Zoom calls or Facetime type video calls versus asynchronous interactions and those would be points like meeting a lawyer for the first time and doing an intake and, of course, learning about the legal aspects of a case. So, when someone needs the real download of what is the situation that I’m in, we find folks veering to you and seeing those as being high value moments to do synchronously in person by video and we’ll see how that, of course, adapts once it’s safer to get back together again.
And with that said, all of the adjustment we’ve seen to people switching to doing many things online. So, these would be things like electronically sharing documents for signature, electronically accepting payment in firms for the first time, electronically collaborating over platforms and mobile apps as opposed to a phone call or even an in-person meeting every time there’s an update on the case. I’m seeing adoption of that continue to expand rapidly, and I don’t see it going back from a prediction’s perspective. There will, of course, be some folks who always prefer doing things in person, but there’s a whole bunch of the stuff that suddenly got more convenient. We got thruster trying it for the first time and even from October to now, I’m seeing that develop quite rapidly.
Sharon Nelson: Well, we’re seeing exactly the same thing, and we certainly want to thank you for being our guest today, George. I think this was one of the most practical podcasts out there because, of course, what everybody’s looking for is where’s the crystal ball for what’s going to happen, what do I need to start thinking about doing that I’m not doing now, and there was a lot of this in this podcast. So, thank you so much.
George Psiharis: It was a real pleasure to join you, Sharon and John. Thank you so much for having me and looking forward to connecting again soon.
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John Simek: Well, that does it for this edition of Digital Detectives and, remember, you can subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com or an Apple podcast. And if you enjoyed our podcast, please rate us on Apple podcast.
Sharon Nelson: And you can find out more about Sensei’s Digital Forensics Technology and Cyber Security Services at senseient.com. We’ll see you next time on Digital Detectives.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Digital Detectives on the Legal Talk Network check out some of our other podcasts on legaltalknetwork.com and in iTunes.
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Digital Detectives |
Sharon D. Nelson and John W. Simek invite experts to discuss computer forensics as well as information security issues.