With the increasing creation and adoption of automation and intelligent technology, the last few years have generated incredible potential to help law firms resolve their practice inefficiencies. However, these technology-based solutions have frequently failed to produce the desired results. That is because technology innovation in the legal space, in a technical sense, has developed faster than the ability of most firms to process and integrate these new and powerful—yet complex—tools. And what law firms are quickly learning is that vast sums of money spent on acquiring tools will not actually translate into efficiency gains if their users never actually learn to use these tools—or, even worse, get up to speed on the tools but find no value in their implementation.

It may seem counterintuitive for a technologist to suggest that law firms consider less tech-centric approaches to problem-solving and innovation. The basis for this call for introspection, however, is to help firms successfully integrate new technologies that actually drive measurable improvements to existing practices and workflows. The goal is to avoid frustration and apathy toward the adoption (not the implementation) of technology.