In today’s highly regulated, digitally disrupted business landscape, general counsel are no longer simply focused on providing legal services to their organisation. Their workloads are increasing as they take on more strategic functions, often without any additional resources. Faced with a tightening legal market, the pressure is on for legal departments to nurture their in-house talent and invest in technology that will enable them to become more agile and efficient than ever before.

In this whitepaper, we examine how intelligent technology tools combined with a future-proofed talent management strategy can upskill and empower your in-house lawyers to perform at their peak.

Knowledge management is often seen as an efficiency enhancer - a tool that leverages information so you can avoid reinventing the wheel to create effective work product, saving time for the firm and costs to clients. The one thing missing from that definition is that KM can also play a critical role in enhancing client service.

The report findings show that despite improvements in the large law firm market, firms must make "big strategic decisions" on how to deploy technology to ensure their best opportunity for future growth.

After four consecutive years of declining demand, the market returned to positive growth, albeit a mere 0.1%. Overall, the market showed growth in four key metrics: demand, worked rates, fees worked and utilisation – although none was greater than 1%. However, after contracting for most of the last decade, even this modest success may mark an important inflection point.

Technology in the legal industry has been an increasing topic of discussion on Insight this year. While forcing dramatic change, digital law firm revolution is enabling firms to manage ongoing industry disruption. There is a strong indication that early uptake of technology in law firms will be the key to small firms securing a competitive hold on the future.

So what will a digital law firm look like in 30 years - both from the outside, as players in a transformed market, and on the inside, as innovative work environments? Will small firms survive? And what can they do to prepare themselves for the future of law? Will we inevitably see Lawyers recognise that it will be commonplace for the future consumer to use online tools to manage their general legal needs?