Every lawyer likely has those demanding clients, ones known for the volume and frequency of their requests, and their need to be in near-constant contact. The sort of client who has to be up on every aspect of every stage of every project. Someone who may call their lawyer at 1 AM if they suddenly have a question.
These clients remain eternal. What’s changing is that a growing number of law firms now have an efficient, innovative way to satisfy all of their requests: Thomson Reuters client collaboration tools.
How?
The benefits of client portals for law firms are nearly endless. These tools give your clients remote and secure access by which they can monitor the status of all relevant projects and work assignments. Your clients can interact with custom-designed artificial intelligence (AI) systems to get answers to their questions, and they can have 24/7 access to all relevant information concerning their ongoing work.
Remote work for clients and legal professionals
During the pandemic, remote work was the main way to work, and that experiment proved successful. In the post-pandemic era, remote work is still the preferable solution for many clients and legal professionals, and the demand for portal technology to share documents and exchange information is growing.
In our recent on-demand webcast, “Client collaboration technology for a challenging market webcast,” Eric Sham, LegalTech Solutions Manager at Bird & Bird tells us how client portals have differentiated their law firm. Sham notes in the webcast, “I see this is as a new era of work.”
Another factor is that many legal departments run lean and are under substantial time and cost pressures – there’s always the need for further efficiencies. Having the ability to use portals for managing projects, getting queries answered promptly, and to track ongoing costs is invaluable.
And client expectations have changed. In a world in which artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more prominent by the month, the idea of sending their lawyer an email that may not get answered for days is simply no longer acceptable to clients. A client who once got an expense sheet from their law firm on a weekly or monthly basis will now expect to see how much a project is costing them in real-time.
The multi-tiered approach
Law firms using client portals will often employ them in a multi-tiered fashion. Portals serve to enhance a firm’s internal operations, making them more productive and efficient. They’re also becoming the primary interface between firm and client.
Sham describes his firm’s current use of portals as being a three-point solution.
- For Bird & Bird, portals are a virtual deal room, giving lawyers a centralised place to store and share documents. Doing so “prevents different versions of documents being sent around and not knowing where they are,” Sham said.
- Portals are also essential firm/client relationship hubs. Each client gets a secure login to a standard portal with relevant information about the firm, a set of contacts, RSS feeds for BBC, Bird & Bird and property updates and lists detailing ongoing project statuses, costs, timelines, and other categories.
- These client relationship sites can evolve into more bespoke solutions, with the firm introducing modules to provide greater levels of insight to specific projects and to tailor the portal design to client specifications.
Why client portals are a “value-add” in anti-money laundering screening
In the webinar, Sham said that offering clients access to a standard client portal is often “a value-add.” The philosophy is that “we have a HighQ platform, and that’s the efficiency you get working with us. It’s like this is a given [when] working with a modern law firm.”
There’s great potential for client portals to continue to expand their functionality. For example, say that a prospective client needs to go through anti-money laundering screening and compliance requests. It’s now possible for all this documentation and verification to be done via a portal, with the client learning whether it’s passed the KYC requirements at the end of the session.
Client portals: the go-to solution
With Thomson Reuters, you can deliver an ideal client experience by streamlining collaboration and communication with your clients for all their legal needs on an easy, secure and customisable digital portal. Other firms have already begun optimising collaboration with their clients. Very soon, this will be the standard way to conduct business.
Watch our recent on-demand webcast, “Client collaboration technology for a challenging market webcast,” to learn more about client collaboration technology.
