David Perla, along with co-author Sanjay Kamlani, discuss in a column for Above the Law what it takes for a legal tech company to achieve broad implementation at law firms. Analogizing to Russia’s performance in the 2018 World Cup—which was hamstrung by an overreliance on one player—Mr. Perla and Mr. Kamlani argue that legal tech solutions must be holistic if they are to be effective: If legal tech innovations solve for only one problem, they likely will not be versatile enough to take hold over everyday processes.
“Most [legal tech companies] can’t quite grasp why they are not able to gain traction in the marketplace—a contract workflow tool with a digital signature management function; a data analytics tool that predicts the length of time that will pass over the course of a litigation; an email security tool that blocks a sender from sending an email to an unintended recipient. The difficulty is that if these niche tools cannot be integrated into a larger suite of products that provide a holistic solution, the intended buyers are not able to achieve a successful outcome.”