Think automating your legal marketing is too much technology? Here’s a wake-up call: computational law that makes an automated legal marketing system look like a walk in the park. One of the leaders in computational law is Stanford University’s CODEX–the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. The best and the brightest researchers, lawyers, technologists and entrepreneurs are moving the frontiers of legal technology at light speed.
Today’s automated legal marketing systems, like the E2 CRM and CLIP® (Client Intake Process) systems developed by IMS, are frankly going to make the difference between the estate planning law firms that survive and those that struggle. Online legal services companies, from Legal Zoom to Nolo and countless others are already incorporating some of this bleeding edge technology. Think it won’t impact your estate planning law firm?
An affluent millennial couple wanted to set up an estate plan following the birth of their second child. Their first thought: Legal Zoom. They order groceries, electronics and all of their baby supplies online. Why not an estate plan? The wife started with Legal Zoom, entering in the family information and the system—not a person, but the system—automatically determined that their needs were too complex for the simple estate plan offered on the website. It offered a phone call with a staff person, who offered to refer the family to a prepaid legal plan option.
If you think that the nature of an estate planning practice is too personal to become automated, consider the enormous amount of programming now underway to create self-driving, autonomous cars. Could legal reasoning be far behind? Why not a highly sophisticated program that can draw on a vast database of documents, case law, statutes and regulations?
That’s why estate planning law firms need to become more fully automated: so that the time you do spend with clients is as personal and informed as possible and so that there is as little time wasted, both for you and for your clients.
It’s also about presentation: so that your human clients know that you have made a commitment to keeping your professional practice as up-to-date with the technology they have become accustomed to seeing at their doctor’s office, in the retail environment and yes, in the online world where they spend more and more of their time.
Times are changing for the legal profession. You’ll want to keep up!