Breaking Legal News & Current Law Headlines | Daily Legal Briefing
  • Home
  • Hot Topics
  • Breaking
  • Business
  • Big Law
  • Small Law
  • Law School
  • Legal Tech
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result
Breaking Legal News & Current Law Headlines | Daily Legal Briefing
No Result
View All Result
Home Legal Tech

The Complex Buying Process (Part I)

Daily Legal Briefing by Daily Legal Briefing
June 3, 2022
in Legal Tech
0
New Integration Seamlessly Ties Virtual Reception Services To Matter Management
4
SHARES
32
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


Back in February, Richard Tromans published a great article about why selling legal tech is so hard.

According to Richard, there are several reasons, including the challenge of the billable hour in law firms. Tech that makes attorneys more productive doesn’t translate into more billings — and in fact, it may be just as likely to do the opposite. Richard goes on to share a few other issues including the question, “Who are you actually selling to?”

The reality is that whether it is a law firm or a law department that is looking to buy a solution, the purchase process is just as complex from the inside as it is from the outside as a sales representative selling legal tech.

Legal tech is challenging because multiple stakeholders are involved: procurement, IT, an evaluation committee, leadership, end users — and still others who have a stake in the outcome, including those who feel they may be affected adversely by the change introduced by a successful solution. It is challenging for buyers and sellers, but let’s look at this from the buyer’s perspective.

The Keys To Success

There are three keys to success in the complex buying cycle: Stakeholder Alignment, Executive Leadership Support, and Change Management. In this installment, we’ll work through Stakeholder Alignment and Executive Leadership Support.

Stakeholder Alignment

When working toward the Stakeholder Alignment, it is important to first map out all of the stakeholders that are affected buy a potential new solution. Who might embrace the new solution? Who might resist it? What might motivate their behavior, and how might each stakeholder be persuaded?

This is a quick rubric that can help root out issues with each stakeholder and also help align your organization to support a new solution and the resulting beneficial changes. For each stakeholder, it is important to evaluate their needs from a tactical, strategic, political, and personal perspective.

Tactical issues. How does the proposed solution impact the day-to-day of a stakeholder across a year? Does the solution help them achieve the goals they have for the year? Does it make them harder? Does it fundamentally change them? Understanding the impact of a solution from a tactical perspective is important. If you can help someone understand how a proposed solution could help them achieve one of their performance goals, that is a great win.

Strategic issues. How does the proposed solution impact the future of a stakeholder? Does it help them solve a longstanding problem or help them achieve long-term goals? For example, if a department head knows she cannot hire additional staff in the coming years, does your solution help her keep her department running efficiently so she can keep delivering quality work?

Often, a strategic issue at one level in an organization is a tactical issue further up the management chain. More on that later.

Political issues. As you work with stakeholders in the organization, the political aspects of this process can kick in, especially at more senior levels. Politics aren’t necessarily bad, but they are a reality in most organizations and should be taken into consideration during this process. Will this solution help advance someone’s career? Is their downside risk if this implementation fails? These are very important questions, especially for someone who will have a significant role as the economic buyer or an implementer.

Personal issues. Stakeholders are people with emotions, feelings, and lives outside of work. If a new solution is going to make work harder for them, or cause them to miss their kids’ soccer games, that will often bleed into the opinion of a stakeholder about a solution. End users are not typically the economic buyer or final decision maker for a product, but an easy-to-use interface that saves them time will often score a lot of points at the grass roots level for a new solution. Something easy to use that makes their life easier (including access to a system at home) can be great for gaining buy-in.

Executive Leadership Support

Leadership support can be tricky. Frankly speaking, projects that are driven from the top down are more likely to be successful. For those that don’t have leadership support, finding a way to align with leadership objectives will go a long way. But how do you do that? If you map out all stakeholders and work through the Stakeholder Alignment rubric above, it helps to provide greater visibility and understanding of the big picture and how to solicit for executive sponsorship.

Here is a quick example for a law department. We’ve just gone through a pandemic and hybrid work arrangements are likely to be a more permanent aspect of many legal professionals’ lives in the future. With that in mind, as a law department practitioner, going into the office to work your network and find the contracts you need to do your job may not be an option anymore, so having a central repository of contracts housed in a Contract Lifecycle Management could be helpful. But the reality is that executive leadership won’t really care about your problem. By working through the Stakeholder Alignment rubric, you may be able to show that if this solution were adopted, your VP of sales can know when contracts are coming up for renewal. Or perhaps your CEO can understand the liability related to force majeure issues if your firm has significant operations in Ukraine. Maybe there is a strategic initiative around ESG in your organization. Positioning how a Contract Lifecycle Management product will help with managing the ESG impact of suppliers or calculating required disclosures might help secure executive support. By positioning solutions more strategically, you’re more likely to successfully align a solution with executive leadership.

For law firms, the challenge is a little tougher given the issues that Richard Tromans mentioned, such as the problem of the billable hour. Within a law firm, solutions may need to improve the prospects of new client acquisition, maintaining client satisfaction, or competitiveness relative to peers. Other opportunities may include reducing the risk of data breaches, supporting a lower cost structure for a firm if that firm is considering its long-term real estate footprint, or a staffing model that accommodates hiring qualified attorneys in a lower cost area of the country.

Aligning stakeholders and securing executive leadership support are incredibly important steps in the process of deploying a successful solution. As a buyer of legal solutions, working with and leveraging competent sales executives at vendors can really help in this process. A good technology solution provider will have great people that can help one navigate these complex buying processes.

Next month, I’ll shift the conversation over to Change Management and the successful implementation of a solution.


Ken Crutchfield HeadshotKen Crutchfield is Vice President and General Manager of Legal Markets at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a leading provider of information, business intelligence, regulatory and legal workflow solutions. Ken has more than three decades of experience as a leader in information and software solutions across industries. He can be reached at ken.crutchfield@wolterskluwer.com.





Click to Read Original Article

Previous Post

Uvalde Staffer Considering Lawsuit Against Firearm Manufacturer

Next Post

San Francisco Cops Are Accessing Autonomous Vehicle Recordings To Collect Evidence

Daily Legal Briefing

Daily Legal Briefing

The latest breaking legal news from across World all in one place.

Related Posts

Maryland Cops Can’t Seem To Understand Why Marijuana Legalization Means They Can’t Search Cars Just Because They Smell Marijuana
Legal Tech

Maryland Cops Can’t Seem To Understand Why Marijuana Legalization Means They Can’t Search Cars Just Because They Smell Marijuana

by Daily Legal Briefing
June 2, 2023
Exclusive: In A First For E-Discovery, Tech Company Nextpoint Is Launching A ‘Data-Driven’ Law Firm Under Arizona’s Liberalized Ownership Rules
Legal Tech

Exclusive: In A First For E-Discovery, Tech Company Nextpoint Is Launching A ‘Data-Driven’ Law Firm Under Arizona’s Liberalized Ownership Rules

by Daily Legal Briefing
June 1, 2023
When Is AI Good Enough?
Legal Tech

Law Firms Need To Get Lawyers Off ChatGPT And Onto Artificial Intelligence That The Firm Can Monitor

by Daily Legal Briefing
June 1, 2023
Introducing The ‘Reference Manual Of Legal Tech Lists’!
Legal Tech

‘Legal Tech Lists’: 5 Lawyer Tropes Upended By Legal Tech (Remote Litigation Edition)

by Daily Legal Briefing
June 1, 2023
Law Professor’s Advice To Avoid Another ChatGPT Fiasco: Always Check Your Work
Legal Tech

Law Professor’s Advice To Avoid Another ChatGPT Fiasco: Always Check Your Work

by Daily Legal Briefing
June 1, 2023
Next Post
San Francisco Cops Are Accessing Autonomous Vehicle Recordings To Collect Evidence

San Francisco Cops Are Accessing Autonomous Vehicle Recordings To Collect Evidence

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Premium Content

Biglaw Firm Defers Associate Start Dates To 2023 Due To Work Slowdown

Bar Exam Model Answer – Above the LawAbove the Law

January 21, 2023
How to Choose an Expense Tracking Software

How to Choose an Expense Tracking Software

September 20, 2022
Now View More Case Law As You Draft Legal Documents in Clearbrief, through Partnership with Fastcase

Now View More Case Law As You Draft Legal Documents in Clearbrief, through Partnership with Fastcase

December 20, 2022

Browse by Category

  • Big Law
  • Breaking
  • Business
  • Hot Topics
  • Law School
  • Legal Tech
  • Small Law

About US

Breaking Legal News & Current Law Headlines | Daily Legal Briefing.
Online coverage of breaking legal news and current law headlines from around the US. Top stories, videos, insight, and in-depth analysis.

Categories

  • Big Law
  • Breaking
  • Business
  • Hot Topics
  • Law School
  • Legal Tech
  • Small Law

Recent Updates

  • Clients Should Try Not To Contact Lawyers During Odd Hours
  • Jonathan Turley Rewrites Constitution To Include ‘Congressional Backsies’ Clause
  • The Biglaw Firm With The Largest Decline In Gross Revenue

© 2021 Daily Legal Briefing | Breaking Legal News & Current Law Headlines

No Result
View All Result
  • Contact Us
  • Home

© 2021 Daily Legal Briefing | Breaking Legal News & Current Law Headlines

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?