How private equity choose their investments

Having supported a high profile conveyancing firm secure investment Lanterna Consulting co‑founders Simon Farthing and Shona Kaye are well placed to tackle the topic of how law firms can present themselves to secure private equity investment. 

Investors are looking to scrutinise scalability, data foundations and operational maturity they explain. Firms without a coherent technology strategy risk being overlooked.

In a wide-ranging discussion the pair explore how outdated systems, patchy adoption, and decisions driven more by anecdote than strategy hold firms back. Kaye notes that many firms still rely on platforms decades old, propped up by internal developers and workarounds that mask deeper structural issues . The market, they argue, is now at a crossroads. Traditional, on‑premise systems remain deeply embedded, but modern cloud‑based, low‑code platforms are rapidly maturing and firms must decide whether to evolve or be left behind.

Private equity, they say, is looking for alignment between business strategy and tech strategy, between user needs and leadership assumptions, and between ambition and capability. Success involved getting the right people in the room; department heads, everyday users, and those who understand the firm’s unique processes.

The concept best‑of‑breed ecosystems has emerged, where a core case management “system of record” is enhanced with specialist tools. Integration, data quality and API openness now matter as much as functionality.

So how can firms make the right technology decisions to enhance their prospects of private equity investment? Listen in to find out...

The Today's Conveyancer podcast can be found on your preferred podcast provider and also at www.todaysconveyancer.co.uk. Subscribe and listen in for all the latest conveyancing industry news and views. 

Thank you to our podcast sponsors LEAP Legal Software and InfoTrack

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:33

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SPEAKER_01 0:46

Hello and welcome to the latest Today's Conveyance podcast. Today we are talking about technology. We have Simon Farthing and Shona Kay, co-founders of Lanterna, consulting on the discussion. And uh I think we're kind of trying to delve into why firms or whether firms, should I say, are particularly good at using technology. This is really across the legal services spectrum. I mean, initially, interestingly, the introduction to Simon and to Shona was via their work with a private equity company that has invested in legal services, which is one of your strands of work, isn't it? So lots to kind of get through over the course of discussion. Great to have you both on. First things first, though, tell us a little bit about yourselves and uh Lantern, Simon first, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Thank you. Hi, David. So I am sort of one of those hybrid beasts, different arms, legs, and heads. So I'm part lawyer, part technologist, part commercial lead. I've kind of come through a career which has been entirely in law, really, since I was born. You know, I've been in the legal services industry, either delivering legal services or helping people get more out of there. And I guess we talk about Lan Turner and show and we'll talk a bit about her sort of path to this. This was really about that kind of lifetime of you know meeting frustrated law firms who were feeling like maybe they weren't getting the most out of the tech, you know, maybe feeling that things weren't, you know, they were they were investing good money, they had a good plan, but maybe it wasn't the outcome they wanted. And a big part of why we created Lan Turner was to kind of solve that problem in a quite holistic way. So kind of quote, you know, Douglas Adams, you know, this sort of holistic detective agency. You've got to understand everything to understand why there's a problem. You can't just go in and say swap the tech. So that's that's kind of me, and that's that's why I'm here.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Fab and uh Shona, yourself, please.

unknown 2:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Yeah, perfect. So I met Simon, we worked together for a FTSE100 legal technology company, and basically started looking at some of the really common challenges that that clients are finding, and not just in terms of you know the tech itself, but in terms of adoption, in terms of selecting the right solutions, whether they're core solutions or solutions to you know complement process. And we started noticing a lot of the same patterns really that there's firms that you know struggle a little bit around change management, around adoption, around making that technology work once they've made the investment, but also in investment decisions as well. So, in terms of understanding, you know, which technology is right, not just the technology that the firm next door are using, but which technology is is right for their unique needs and requirements because every firm is is different. And really trying, I think part of our process is to make that technology turn into really positive outcomes. So it's not just an investment, it's about the outcome that you know ultimately the firm receives. So my background is in project and program management and business analysis, and a lot of that is just really ensuring that you know we get these requirements right, that we manage the project right, that we deliver in the right way. So we bring expertise and we bring delivery at the same time, and we try and you know complement those two things together so that the firm makes the right decision and then off the back of making the right decision has the right outcome.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

I mean, you know, the the problem of selection of technology and the ability of uh law firms to choose the right technologies very kind of hotly debated. It's a discussion that I know sort of happens quite regularly. Isn't it the case that the law is just bad at at this process, or is it the case that law firms are really very complicated beasts by virtue of the fact that they deliver so many different products and and services, combination of things, I suspect. But you know, what what's your experience?

SPEAKER_02 4:49

I think it's all I think you just described it brilliantly. It's all of those things. Yeah, if you think about it, law is heavily regulated, heavily controlled. You know, you can't you can't make it up as you go along. I know we have some non-regulated areas, but that doesn't mean to say it's the Wild West. You know, there is a structure to what you do, and there are things that have been established, and you know, you think about you know the Wills Act, for example, you know, it's it's it's been around 180 years, right? It's not like it grew up yesterday and it's an evolving thing. We have a real fixed structure, and the way you the law firms are owned that legal service providers are structured, quite often I think there's a lot of stakeholders involved. So when you make decisions, you you kind of have that group of folk getting together to arrive at a decision. And lawyers aren't on the whole, and I speak as one, that shy in sharing opinions. You know, if you sit around a table to select technology, everyone will say to you, Well, when I was at, or my friend over at, or why aren't we using this? I went to an event, it looked awesome. So you've kind of got to bring together the structure, the way that people operate, and the fact that the law, I think we're not seen as necessarily being willing to push boundaries, and that's not fair for everybody, but it is fairly consistent. You know, that the boundary push, well, we shouldn't do that, it won't work, often happens. And we have to prove stuff a lot, you know, prove that it would work and prove how it's going to operate.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

I think as well, the market's in a really interesting space at the moment, particularly in terms of you know, there being very traditional technologies across all of legal services, known products, known brands that people went to that they, you know, were proven, reliable, some big names with some very large providers. And I think actually there's been quite a shift in the market in the last sort of five years, very much in the last two years, around moving to cloud-based technologies, moving to solutions that are, you know, new but less proven, but potentially have different capabilities and help firms, you know, get to a more mature stage in terms of adopting AI, in terms of being able to build processes maybe a little bit faster, maybe with less development resource. And I think that there's a lot of leaders in conveyancing and other disciplines that are kind of at a bit of a crossroads at the minute, particularly with technology, where they're saying, you know, do we lean on the proven technology that everybody's had for a long time, or do we actually go down these new avenues with things that are maybe haven't had the time to get the same references, but are incredibly promising? And so I think there is a little bit of a crossroads at the moment around people moving to newer solutions, but also kind of taking those steps gradually because ultimately, you know, it's not as in in as much of a mature space. And I think over the next sort of five years, we're gonna see a lot more firms move on to more modern platforms, you know, cloud-based technologies, low-code design. But I think it is a process at the moment, and the market is changing, and a lot of firms are sort of navigating that that kind of growth and maybe the uncertainty that comes with it as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

That's really interesting. I it certainly used to be the case that the case or practice management system for the sake of argument had been in situ for what 15 or 20 years. I can't remember what the life the exact life cycle of of case and practice management systems were. But that has come down massively, hasn't it? Um is it still, and and I realise again it's a bit of a generalization, but is it still the case that firms are working on old software then that doesn't have some of the flexibility?

SPEAKER_02 8:35

So I think that that you see a couple of things happening. So the yeah, I mean the answer is yes. There are a lot of firms using systems that in some cases have been in 20, 25, 30 years. And if you think about the technology they sit on, you know, you have to build infrastructure around them because they're either you know server room somewhere or they're hosted in the cloud, but they're just a virtualized version of software that's been around 20, 30 years. But you need to build departments and teams and people around them to service them and care for them. So a big thing you see is if you've got an incredibly capable development platform, which you know a lot of the big convercing firms have, they have developers, they have business analysts, they have project managers, a lot of resource to keep those current, which is kind of where I think you see some of the change now. That you know, you know, we I used to joke you when I said this at a conference once, I had a senior partner who said to me, you know, he called me Skip, I don't know why, but he said, Skip, I've got the latest tech on my desk, and he showed me this computer and he hadn't even turned it on. And I think you you see that kind of analogy sometimes that firms, if they don't have for that tech, the business analysts, the project teams, the developers, the you know, the QA teams, if you don't have people behind it, it doesn't work brilliantly. So we've we've kind of evolved into a space now where firms are trying to layer stuff on top. So my my core platform doesn't work brilliantly, but it's so embedded in what I do, I don't think I can change. Let's add something to it. Let's see if we can make it a bit better with an online portal, let's see if we can make it a bit better with some integrated search management or whatever that may be. And you kind of just build a bigger and bigger beast without dealing with the stuff at the heart of it, which is have you got the people that you need to make that platform work? Have you got your data in the state that it needs to be to make that platform powerful for you to win your business, protect your business? And if you haven't, as you said, people are shifting quicker now because if I'm in the cloud, I can make a decision to wind up and wind down much quicker than I can if I've invested in all this talking, all this platform, just to kind of run my case management.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Do you advocate for the cloud? I've had various different conversations with uh technology people over the course of the last few years. I mean, it was very in vogue to go to the cloud, wasn't it? Do you guys advocate for cloud technology? Or and you know, is that the right thing for firms to be doing, or is on-premise still, you know, still an important thing to be thinking about?

SPEAKER_03 11:11

I think we definitely go by the needs of the firm as well. So we're running a system selection process currently, and they've said to us, look, we we want to go to cloud. We've been on-premise for a long time now. We're using yes to work from home. That's inconvenient from our users for our users. We do want to go to the cloud. But as a baseline to that, we we do, you know, pull in some traditional technologies as well that are on premise to give them a bit of a baseline and to show them, you know, what that might look like in terms of a path, in terms of a journey. Because I think there are some incredibly flexible solutions that are traditional that will allow firms to go quite far with what they want to do, particularly if they're running very granular processes. So we will absolutely provide that baseline. And but what we're finding now in terms of selection processes and in terms of the people we're bringing in, often the technology suppliers are saying, look, we are cloud-based, this is the future now, and firms are equally saying this is the direction and the path we want to go in. And I think that actually the the gap that we're talking about is, you know, in terms of flexibility with cloud-based providers now, if they're sort of low-code, no-code platforms, then maybe getting to the stage where you know the traditional ones were in terms of being able to build very granular things where that's required for firms. And I think that actually for a lot of these new cloud-based providers, and there's some really incredible solutions out there that we've seen and you know, we really admire. I think for a lot of them on their roadmap is is looking at how they make those workflows more granular, how they make it more flexible, how they continue to serve clients in the tools that they have to keep building the solution as well. So it depends what the firm wants in terms of you know how much resource they've they've got, um, based on what Simon said just now, but also you know, the roadmaps of the suppliers as well, helping firms to get to that stage where they can completely replace a traditional solution because they do provide that full flexibility.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

I think you just sort of look at it and to what Shana was saying there is it's almost like you've got we've had over the last decade two camps. So we've had the traditional providers who do incredibly well, are very embedded, and have got a vast amount of functionality that's evolved over the life cycle of the products, which is really hard to get away from. And then you've got the other side where you've got these new SAS first, you know, cloud, you know, built in the cloud for the cloud solutions, who've been rushing to build the level of functionality that's needed to compete with the on-premise. Yeah, they might have been more accessible, they might be easier to deal with in a disaster scenario because they just fail over to another environment, but they maybe don't have the coding ability or the changeability or the adaptability. So they've both been kind of rushing to the middle, and it's been a case of who gets there first. And I think you've you've seen a few folk on that journey, often through acquisition or investment, changing strats and saying, well, we're not gonna support our on-premise solution any longer. So actually, sometimes there's some solutions out there that are loved by the firms that have got them, but the owners are saying, We're gonna go to cloud, you know, we're not gonna keep supporting the platform. So Shana's right, the most important thing is understanding the firm's ability to leverage the solution, get the best from it, but also to match the needs for that firm in the round, you know, security, disaster, scalability, you know, and changeability, you know, the Pareto rule, you know, if if you 20% of what you do is coming from sort of just the ability to run a case, are you investing in a lot of stuff you don't need? So balancing that out.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

You've talked there about the importance of having the right people in the room and you know, really getting a a decent understanding of of what the firm needs to achieve success when it comes to their technology selection. I guess there's kind of two parts to my question. One is do firms really understand what on-premise and or what cloud really really means? Again, I sort of go back to the point about it being very fashionable to kind of be cloud-based. Uh but then secondly, who are the right people to have in the room and in that discussion? Because you know, I I I think about the law and I think about professional services in general, and I think about my own business. If I'm asked, well, what's the right technology for me? I I'm you know, I couldn't be 100% sure because that's not my bag. You know, I'm not a I'm not an IT person. So how how can we make sure that firms have got the right people in the room telling the right story to ensure that we get the right combination of technologies?

SPEAKER_03 15:43

Yeah, absolutely. I think really, really good question. And to know when we go into these processes, we are actually supplier agnostic in terms of you know who we work with, we don't necessarily prescribe a solution to a firm at the start because you know what's good for one firm isn't necessarily good for the next. But what you said is is really key as well, people understanding what these products are, and it's not just gathering requirements and then saying you now need to go to this solution. Actually, it's it's an education piece with the firms as well. So if we are looking at a new solution, say it's case management or document management, practice management, we do really take the time to try and educate the firm on what these solutions provide, what their approach is to roadmap, because that's really key. You know, if the product's about to end of life, it's not good for anybody. In terms of existing capability, in terms of security, in terms of implementation. So we try and look at, you know, with the supplier, how they'd approach these areas, how we score them, we present that back to the firm, and then ultimately, you know, they need to see how they get on with the product as well, the look and feel. So, in terms of demonstrations, I think that there's a lot of firms that they go in and something might look really good on paper, but they'll say to us, this doesn't feel like it clicks. And you know, sometimes it is about user experience, and that's the key thing as well. But in terms of your question, who how do you get the right people in the room? I think there should absolutely absolutely be a project board on the side of the firm that govern this process that you know help make that final decision. But you need to bring the right people in as well. So we need to bring in department heads to understand their unique requirements, how they're using the solution, how granular it needs to be, what it needs to integrate to. And then you need to bring users in as well. So it doesn't have to be every user in the firm, you know, we don't have the time, scope, or resource to do that, but we need a select group of users to come in, talk about their pain points, talk about their challenges, their desires for the future, and you know, what they'd like to see in terms of usability. Because I think you know, it's it's a really key thing, isn't it? You know, you come in, you log on, you're working for you know, 40 hours a week could be a lot more for some people, and they need to be able to get on with the product and it needs to be intuitive, they need to be able to like the look and feel as well. So gathering requirements from users is is really important as well. The decision is strategic, but we need to also make it aligned to the people that are actually going to be logging in every day and doing the work. So I think you know, user groups they have to come at lots of different levels, and you do different exercises with each one, but you can't just focus on one, you've got to do go across the firm.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

You you kind of look at the kind of what you sometimes see happening is when things have failed. It's not necessarily bad tech. So you you the firm's taking something on, and they haven't got the wrong solution in the sense of it's a good solution, but it's a bit like you know, somebody's saying, What's the best car I can buy? It's a Ferrari. Great, here's the top of the range Ferrari away you go. And then you say to them afterwards, what did you use it for? Well, I use it to tow a trailer, I've got four kids and a dog, and we live in the countryside, and the roads always flood. And I do, I think that bit that Shana said there about understanding the business first before you prescribe the best solution, and what somebody's prepared to live with, you know, what level of compromise they're prepared, you know, how much are they prepared to invest in it? If we're talking about a business that's high volume and it does lots of processing and lots of transactions, but it's desk-based, the needs can be very different to a business where they say, you know, we spend a lot of our time in the front room of our client. You know, I I write wills for people in hospitals, you know, a desk-based system that you can't access from a tablet or remotely isn't going to be a lot of help. So, what's the strategy overall? Who are you? What are you, what makes you unique? How do you actually want to operate? And then you know, how's that system line up to the practicality? Because best system, you don't adopt it, waste of money, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

In that spirit, there's been a real drive toward firms trying to adopt best of breed technologies and then trying to bolt them together. So, Simon, you made the point that you know there's a lot of established players with some really established functionality. My impression is that that sort of slowly moving into a scenario where we've got a core kind of central case or practice management system that we're then bolting kind of best of breed services onto. Is that a model that you kind of see and and how important is things like getting those integrations right to make sure that you know the whole system you know is is is cohesive?

SPEAKER_02 20:19

So it's a great point, Dave, because I think that what we're seeing is we talk about it as a system of record. You actually need to start getting to this backbone that is the correct source of truth. So, you know, the frustration a lot of lawyers have today is well, filled that information in in four different places. And it's not just that I filled it in four places, my client has probably filled it in in four places. So having a backbone where you have an understanding of a client journey and a system that supports you know data capture and process is really important. But then you talk about the individual departmental needs, different traditional all-in-one solutions might be better in, say, a particular volume area, or they might be better for commercial law. It's quite hard to shoehorn something to fit everybody perfectly. So you are increasingly seeing firms saying, look, if this works, 70% of this is great for everybody. How do we make it work for the people around the edges by what we add? And that comes down to again how that core system is really structured. Yeah, in terms of integration layers, does it offer open APIs? Can I connect to it? Can I communicate with it? Because what I don't want to be doing is spending all that technology time I've saved from you know moving to SaaS platform on building, you know, this middleware layer to integrate all the wonderful things I've got and have a team of 12 developers constantly saying, right, how do I get the data from that into that? And how do I call that and trigger that from there or there? So I as a as a scheme app, I think it works really well. But again, it's can it integrate to it? What will it integrate? And how does that link to that core journey we talked about? Because we don't want to detract from, you know, we don't want to do it three times.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Is that sort of part of the work that you do then? That you're helping firms really understand, okay, well, this you know, this might very well do what we want it to do, but we can't get it to work with this piece of kit. So we're gonna have to find a compromise solution or a work round over here.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's it's interesting how you go about that as well, because some Sometimes it's that you need to mobilize teams within the firm. So you need to mobilize that development resource. So, you know, Lan Turner is helping you with your project and delivering your program, but actually, you know, as a firm, you need to come in and do that. And other times it might be bringing in third parties to look at how they would build that layer or how they would build that integration. I think, you know, each time we go in incredibly flexibly because it does really depend on what the firm's capability is and what the resource is. But we do have different methodologies in terms of how we'd address these things. And each time I think it is just a case-by-case basis.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

I think you touched on the skills bit there, Shana. I think that one of the things we've seen that's quite hard is technology is becoming more and more capable, but there's so many considerations when we talk about technology and technology delivery. You know, whether you're talking about scalability and delivery of platforms, devices, software application capability, integrations. When you start to look at everything you need to consider to make technology work really well and make people happy, including the change management, the transformation, the training, all of that. We used to in the day have you know a very small team of people expected to do that ahead, certainly for a smaller practice, maybe ahead of IT, you know, an IT manager who had a couple of people that supported them in that. And that's really hard for anybody to be able to do all the things that today, you know, add in AI. You know, suddenly you're ahead of you're an IT manager for a law firm, you've your background is infrastructure and implementing you know solutions, and suddenly you have to know AI. You understand things like bias and you know the logic behind the way that you might prompt requests from AI. It's it's a really big ask. So a big part of what we're seeing now is about trying to help help support the teams on the ground, saying, look, you can't expect everybody to know everything. How do we help build the team out, you know, get the resource that you need, and accept that sometimes the need is a short-term one? You know, we're going through some transition, let's help you, you know, let's this it's a bit like a football team trying to get promotion. You know, we're a bit short up front. Let's bring a lone player in, you know, who's played at this level, who can score some goals. Let's use the resource, not because we want to kick anybody out of the team, but because we want to get you through the immediate need. So we're we're seeing a lot of that now. How do you get all the right folk on the pitch for the game in hand, you know, so that you don't expect, you know, it's not all on one person's shoulders.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

Yeah, absolutely. And presently we're also doing um fractional role within a major law firm as well, because they're basically they've got a roadmap and they want to get to a certain place and then put a full-time role in. But they've said, in the meantime, before we can get a stable role, can you help us solve some of these immediate challenges over this period of time? And sometimes that's the approach that looks like looks right for the firm. Sometimes it's coming in and delivering things as a project, but other times it's coming in as a short-term role for a set period of time and saying, these are the goals, these are the objectives, here's where we want to get you to in six months, three months, etc.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

I think the other bit is probably the lawyers themselves. So as a lawyer, I pride myself on being able to work a lot of things out. You know, I probably think that I can answer pretty much anything at that level of confidence. And I do think that when you're dealing with intelligent people who are good at asking lots of questions, they perhaps in the past have relied on their own skills and knowledge to find solutions. I think a really important thing is to enable them to articulate what they need and why, to talk about their particular problems in a way that they understand, but then be suggestive as to the solutions, whether that's the tech or the process or the delivery. So helping them get to the outcomes that are right for them and not expect them to understand all the things we just talked about. You know, enabling them to make an informed decision with a bit of bit of extra help.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

These topics are very difficult to condense into 25, 30 minute podcasts. So we're going to move on to your work with private equity. I said at the top of the discussion that our introduction came through some work that you were doing, supporting a private equity house, make an investment into a conveyancing organization. I wanted to kind of drill into what that work entails, really. What advice are you giving private equity? What are they looking at in law firms? And by extension, what are our listeners? What should our listeners be thinking about if they are looking to entertain private equity investment?

SPEAKER_02 27:01

I think probably the thing you start from is almost because we've seen private equity investment in the sector for quite a long while. So it's not a necessarily a recent thing. And I think when you look back a few years, some of the stories that came out of it weren't as successful as anybody perhaps wanted them to be. So I think there is a change that's really come about through kind of having the right partnerships. So having, if you're a PE company, finding somebody that that fits with the model. Now it may well be their attitude to how they deliver investment, it may be other assets they have in their portfolio, but it's also finding that cohesion between the investor and the leadership of that business where they can work together to achieve a really structured outcome. So kind of looking at that as like we I say it's a dating app, but looking at that in terms of finding a good match and finding that level of understanding is really important. If you're an investor, I guess you don't necessarily have that immediate subject matter expertise. You know how to make things make money, you know how to make things grow, you understand the investment side of stuff, but I think what good PE companies are really good at is saying, tell me about this. You know, in this industry, for this specific challenge, why is this important? So why is customer engagement important? And what are the technologies that are really going to enable that? You know, they'll look at perhaps a technology strategy and say, you know, tell me what's wrong with that, tell me what we need more of in that. Tell us about the things that specifically have happened in this industry that might be a threat, for example. And I think a lot of what we engage with is around contextualizing it. So is this a good technology plan? Is this a good operating model aligned to the expectation of the investment? Yeah, how do they manage things like data? Because I think private equity is incredibly good at understanding how things multiply and scale. So if you're looking at a law firm of any nature as an asset, what's incredibly good at is has relationships with clients. So how does the relationship with me help me scale that, grow that? You know, is there a good data foundation? You know, is there something within there that would enable us to go off and maybe target a new territory or deliver a new service line if we had the right investment?

SPEAKER_03 29:23

Yeah, and I think on a really practical level as well, from a technology standpoint, when you've got that bridge between the firm and private equity, it's looking at, you know, if we've got scaling ambitions of three times, four times, whatever they are, can the existing platform and all the associated integrations, you know, the technology across the board, can that scale? So if we're taking on three times more work, can it handle it? Is it going to withstand that pressure? Do we have the right strategy? We've got the right strategy, you know, at the current level, but if we're moving somewhere in you know, five years, 10 years time, do we need to change anything? Do we need to put new things in place? That might be technology, that might be outsourcing, that might be new process. But really, how do you get to that level where you know that becomes a reality and that that scaling is actually possible? So it's a lot of deep analysis around the firm's infrastructure, the firm's people, process, technology, and then really, you know, looking, reporting back to the the the PE firm and saying based on you know where the firm currently is at, it's either able to do this or it's going to need to take these steps to get to where it needs to be, and that helps inform their planning for the future.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

The first assumption that uh I sense here is that firms have a technology strategy. My suspicion is that there's an awful lot of firms, and this is not to disparage firms, but my suspicion is there are an awful lot of firms out there that simply don't have a technology strategy.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

I think it it can be for a number of reasons. I think that often firms start with a strategy, maybe things change, roles change, you know, you have different people in different positions. I mean, we have a lot of firms come say to us, you know, our CTO established this platform, it's now become very embedded, we want to move on, we want to change strategy, but actually, because of that embedded nature, it's going to be very hard and we're going to rewrite a new strategy. So, so I think that you know, strategy can change, it can evolve, but sometimes, you know, for some firms, it does need to reset, and that could be, you know, we need a brand new implementation or we need to start doing things completely differently. But I think we see firms of all levels, to be honest, you know, some that seem incredibly confident in the strategy and they just want to check a couple of things with us, you know, sense check it from a third-party perspective. And others that say we're really going to need help on this because we've got lots of fragmented pieces here and we need consolidation, we need to move into the future. How do we do it? So I think there is a real variety of law firms. I mean, you know, there's that's that stereotype, and we sort of discussed it at the beginning. Like, is law not as good at tech as some industries? I'd actually say within law it is incredibly varied. And some people you speak to and they they just get it, they just want a soundboard. Others, you know, I think they they want to start from the very beginning and and build that strategy up from you know, from the start, really.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

I think that's uh because it's funny, isn't it? Because we do if we took the assumption that law isn't great at technology, you're right, Shona, it's it's it's not strictly right. There is some amazing technology usage in the industry. There's people doing some really incredible things that probably most consumers don't get to see because they're hidden away somewhere. And why should they? But there are some fantastic examples of that. But I think when you talked about that, you talked about strategy and tech strategy. I think sometimes you have a firm that maybe has a tech strategy that's not aligned to its business strategy. So it's doing the right things for a tech point of view, but it's not delivering the value or the growth or the customer service that's expected of the business. I think the other thing you see is that sometimes firms, the tech strategy is very inward-looking. So they they know what they're doing with what they've got, but they don't necessarily know what their competitors are doing or new entrants to the market are doing, or how things are changing. So they might have had a show, they might have had a really good plan. They might have invested really heavily in building out workflows and having a really comprehensive case plan, but that isn't being informed by the wider market, or as we often say to uh clients, is that being informed by the market full stop? So look at other services, look at other industries that do what you do, provide services and advice to people, deliver things in a very modern way. Are you living up to the expectations of the consumer? I expect to pay for something by a couple of taps on my phone, you know. I expect to be able to share my ID by being able to hold my passport over something. You know, are you actually serving the technology needs of the modern consumer? Is your tech plan actually representative of the things that it needs to be for growth in an increasingly technologized and changing world?

SPEAKER_03 34:14

And we're doing a really interesting project with a client at the moment on the subject of trusts and estates around the different audiences or the different types of clients that might be consuming their wills. So you've got your traditional clients that might want to come into an office, they don't really want a technological experience in terms of payments, they they probably want to pay at the desk, they want to come and bring their passport in. Other, you know, and you could say younger generations, but it doesn't have to be younger generations, they want as few touch points with a person as possible. They want everything to be digital, you know, they want to pay online, do their ID online, do any checks online, they probably don't want to set foot in the law firm. Maybe if they do have to speak to, you know, a trust and estate solicitor, they want to do it online or they want their entire will written online. And so it's a really interesting exercise because that firm currently is evaluating not just how they deliver services to their clients, but how they deliver services to those different categories of clients as well, and how they can serve those different generations. And I think that that is a really interesting exercise, not just saying we go down one path here, we are completely technologised or we are completely tech traditional. Like, who do we have, who do we serve, and how can we fit our model flexibly to those different needs?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

We are fast running out of time for the podcast. But uh, and we were just discussing before we started the recording, it's now illegal to not record a podcast about technology without talking about artificial intelligence. So let's finish there. Tell me about sort of your views on AI and uh you now have AI enabled law firms, AI-enabled law. It's it's a really interesting kind of space, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 36:05

Yeah, and it's you're right, it is completely legal. And it's a good job you covered it because we could have had some difficulty over it.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

All sorts of things.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

We could have been awful. Good day, we could have been a real problem. But yeah, I AI for us is something that you know touched on everything we do with our clients, but it's fundamentally an enabler. And the thing that we're really passionate about is helping our clients to do their jobs better, more effectively, to feel more engaged with what they do, to provide better services to their clients. You can't ignore any enablers. But what I think we've seen happen is people are in times abdicating responsibility for their own thought process or their own outcomes by saying, well, AI can cover that. And we're almost treating it as a standalone separate approach to technology. I if you're not talking about AI, if you're not considering how it's going to be part of your tech strack, I think you're gonna have a problem as we move forward. But also let's think about how we enrich the path of the individual without removing things from them. Because you know, framing a question to AI, and we're getting so many law firms saying to us their clients are raising queries on their reports or they didn't give it an update, and AI has read the report and they've come back and they've said, Well, why aren't you doing ABC DE? And DE are completely irrelevant, completely wrong, not because AI isn't capable, but because it doesn't have the context or the understanding or the mindset, or often, frankly, the latest data set. Because you know, things like you know, short short dependencies that changed in May. If you look at most data sets, if you chuck it out there onto a to commonly available open AI, it will give you the wrong answer about things. So I think AI is really important of putting it in there as the enabler, the leverage, think about how it alongside other key business tools are going to make you deliver your ambitions, but let's empower the individuals, let's make them able to do more and delight their clients more without detracting from that or abdicating because of it.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Well, as I said uh in the course of the discussion, very tricky to cover this topic in such a short space of time. So we've had a good meander through all sorts of different topics. And I'm particularly interested in your comments on the views of of private equity, particularly for firms that are are looking at entertaining investment. It's been great to have you both on the podcast. Thank you so much for your insight. Thank you, please. Thanks, David. It's been a pleasure. It's also available on today'sconveyancer.co.uk. My thanks to Simon and Toshona. Thank you as ever for listening. And we'll see you again soon.