The rise of applied AI in the legal services industry is picking up speed, primarily as a response to the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the 2021 State of the Business of Law report, 65% of legal pricing and project management professionals (LPPMs) believe most firms will use AI for legal work within the next 3 years, and 43% of LPPMs believe most legal departments will use AI to predict future outcomes and events within the same timeframe.
Although AI is a growing force in legal circles, some firms remain hesitant to adopt AI-based technology. Some firm leaders worry about the cost of implementing new tools, while others are concerned their teams will struggle to learn and adopt the technology. However, firms that don’t invest in AI-based technology — specifically automated pricing and legal matter management technology — will miss out on numerous advantages that could improve their efficiency and profitability.
Improving Pricing Strategies and Budget Development
Automated pricing and legal matter management technology saves lawyers significant time and effort when developing budgets. Rather than manually collecting and analyzing source material — which often leads to inaccurate reports or lost data — teams can rely on legal pricing software to review and monitor current engagements and ensure they stay within allotted budgets.
Using AI in legal services also better prepares firms for the future by analyzing characteristics of historical matters, thereby allowing firms to create subsequent matter budget templates and improve pricing strategies. AI-based pricing and legal matter management software often provides automatic categorization of time transactions, giving professionals and clients better transparency into work for each matter. Lawyers can use these insights to refine processes and discover efficiencies to improve outcomes for their clients.
Finding Success with Intapp Pricing
Intapp Pricing leverages AI-based technology and data science to deliver targeted pricing, improve financial accuracy, and increase firm profitability. Unlike other legal pricing tools, Intapp Pricing provides visibility into data across the entire client matter lifecycle. The software also helps firms easily scale their pricing processes to improve efficiency and better meet client expectations.
Professionals can also leverage Intapp Pricing — as well as the other components of OnePlace Operations & Finance and integrated Intapp OnePlace suites — to support a connected firm management strategy. The cloud-based Intapp platform brings together siloed data into a single source of truth, letting users easily access information and collaborate with one another. Most importantly, all Intapp products are purpose-built for the unique needs of professional services firms, and can be easily configured to match a firm’s unique needs.
The scalable capabilities of Intapp Pricing heavily prompted Fredrikson & Byron, a leading Midwest law firm, to select Intapp Pricing. The Fredrikson team worked with Intapp to tailor the user interface and make it easier for the lawyers and partners to use the solution. After a successful internal adoption, the firm began providing pricing information to clients quicker and more accurately than ever before.
“We’re able to confidently provide an estimate typically within a couple of hours — sometimes within 30 minutes, depending on our workload — and, at most, overnight,” said Steve Chambers, Pricing Manager at Fredrikson.
Preparing for the Future
Before implementing an AI-based pricing solution, your firm will need to tackle some prep work. Firms must first refine their time data to support the AI information requirements from a pricing perspective. Fredrikson, for example, focused on data mapping, cleanup, and coding during its initial phase of implementing Intapp Pricing. The firm relied on Engagement DNA
— proprietary Intapp technology that automatically sifts through and categorizes previous matters by shared characteristics — to continuously refresh and improve the quality of its proprietary data.
Although the effort may seem daunting, the benefits of adopting AI in your legal services work are ultimately worth it. In the long run, your firm will save significant time and effort, and gain a competitive advantage in the market. Meanwhile, firms that continue to put off investing in AI will quickly fall behind their competitors and face an uphill battle trying to remain relevant to clients who demand faster and cheaper services. Firms that want to gain new business in the future need to modernize their tools and processes today.
Schedule a demo to learn how Intapp Pricing can help your firm stay ahead of the pack.
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