By Legal Futures Associate The Link App
The past 18 months have been difficult for law firms, from those facing a backlog of cases to conveyancers working flat-out around the stamp duty holiday deadlines.
It’ll be welcome news then that the Legal Services Board is reducing fees for the second consecutive year, collected this October, recognising the strain firms have been under during the pandemic.
You’ll save a modest but not-unwelcome £12 on your Practising Certificate fee this year, and if you’re running a solo operation you’ll be saving an additional £10 on your Compensation Fund contribution. But the real opportunity lies with law firms who’ll save £390 compared to pre-pandemic levels, injecting around £3.1 million into the UK legal sector. How could that money be put to work?
It’s an increasingly urgent question. Law firms stayed profitable through the pandemic, but they were only able to do this by cutting costs, reducing headcounts or working flat-out to an extent that’s unsustainable in the long-term. As they adjust to post-pandemic working, firms are going to see costs slowly creeping up again, and they’re going to have to think about how to streamline their business.
The legaltech sector has seen explosive growth over the past 18 months, in no small part because of how the pandemic forced firms to abandon traditional methods of working and communication. Many firms won’t be going back, and that’s just technology; a majority of lawyers want to work from home 2 or 3 days a week. Legaltech wasn’t a temporary fix to a temporary problem, these improvements are here to stay.
Why not use those savings, then, to explore how legal technology can make their firm more agile and efficient, saving even more money in the long-term?
Legaltech can make a big difference to your firm’s bottom on multiple fronts, from increasing the speed of operations to saving money spent on patchwork enterprise cybersecurity solutions. We know that getting buy-in from teams is always an issue with new software, but there are plenty of opportunities to integrate industry-leading tech into the CMS you’ve already worked to get your team familiar with.
Transforming the way your firm operates doesn’t have to be a huge upfront investment, for instance your firm’s Compensation Fund saving alone could set one of your team up with The Link App’s full subscription—including one-minute Digital ID Verification, interactive Smart Forms and mobile-friendly E-Signatures—for well over a year. On a pay-as-you-go basis that investment could benefit you even longer.
Adjusting to post-pandemic working won’t be without challenges, but in recognising the difficulty of the past year the SRA have given law firms a fantastic opportunity to invest in their future if they think about how to make the most of it.
The Link App was created to transform the client experience provided by law firms; traditional profession, modern approach. We drive the profession forward through a full-service, white-labelled platform including convenient and secure communications, digital onboarding, case tracking and document sharing between legal professionals and their clients, anywhere, any time, on any device. Book a short demo today, and see why 75% of lawyers who do begin transforming how their firm operates in just 30 days.
