Kieran Flatt, of Legal Week’s sister title Legal IT, assesses the importance of the common technology platform initiative
The notion of a common technology platform for the legal industry is not a new one. But it has become something of a holy grail.
From an outsider’s perspective it is a no-brainer; law firms should compete on the quality, cost and convenience of their legal services, not on how well their technology works.
All the pieces of electronic wizardry that large firms have developed or bought are basically no more than clever delivery mechanisms for legal services. Law firms do not maintain their own secret courier services for delivering paper documents around London. They just use one that works. So why have an expensive arms race over the delivery of electronic documents? IT contractors are laughing all the way to the bank.
Admittedly, there was first-mover advantage to be had. For early birds such as Allen & Overy (A&O) and Clifford Chance, virtual dealrooms generated lots of good publicity. Last year’s attempt by A&O to form a joint venture with its rivals failed in part because the technology was still new and sexy.
It should not be forgotten that it took the magic circle firms decades to agree on a common set of rules for physical dealrooms.
Clients should love virtual dealrooms because they are so convenient, and many of them do. But some clients have dozens of firms on their panels and they will not learn how to use as many dealrooms.
But it is not that simple. The project will only succeed if a sufficient number of arch commercial rivals can bury their differences – and some of the biggest corporate egos in the business have enormous investments to protect.
Paul Greenwood, chief knowledge officer at Clifford Chance, will have notched up a major triumph if the standard he is promoting is universally accepted – not least because it will have been negotiated on Clifford Chance’s terms.
What has changed?
Clients’ increasing frustrations aside, virtual dealrooms have become banal. Mid-sized firms can afford to buy them from software companies. Time is running out for the big players to dictate the standards on their own terms. And there are rumblings from big corporations that are threatening to force the issue.
If this standard is to succeed, clients must push other firms into compliance. Software companies supplying smaller firms must also be brought on board. And the project must produce dealrooms that are cheap, highly secure, and can talk to all manner of computer systems outside the legal sector.
