Several voices in the technology advisor community are currently full of doom and gloom about the state of the legal software industry and the Practice Management arena specifically, ownership and cost being the main issues.
This view is not just fundamentally flawed, it's more than a little counterproductive, rooted in the past, and serves only to drive a wedge of distrust between consumers and suppliers - just when we are seeing an influx of outstanding new solutions that are properly funded, designed, developed, tested, and supported.
The simple truth is that the days of the SME, owner led, software companies that once saturated the legal market, are generally behind us due to the immense levels of investment needed to research, develop, test, and bring to market competitive, compelling, and integrated solutions.
Globalisation of the legal software industry by well backed, large scale providers is a good thing and will result in a smaller number of properly funded and well supported solutions that are robust, futureproof, and widely used.
But there is a journey to get there for both suppliers and consumers. The remaining legacy products will need to be retired as many have not received the necessary investment over the last decade to stay current and as a result cannot develop new functionality at the pace required, exist properly in the cloud, or integrate well with modern complementary solutions.
Largely, the old CapEx licencing model was to blame for not driving sufficient revenue streams for re-investment and growth. With the rapid pace of evolution in the IT sector as a whole and the significant cost associated with software development, this has had to change and that cost inevitably must be passed on to the consumer.
I believe this is an exciting era for the legal software industry and the law firms that use these solutions and now is the right time to make a move to a platform that will drive your business forward and support it well for the next decade and beyond.
Hindsight Legal Consulting have taken the time to evaluate the software market and focus on advising law firms clearly and concisely by signposting the products that you can be confident in engaging with while providing as much or as little support with that process as you require.
