My ex-wife worked for a legal software firm. One thing to note is they were threatened with lawsuits ALL THE TIME, because, after all, their customers were lawyers. So any bug or whatever else would end up with some nasty email from some customer exclaiming, "We're going to sue!" In reality, not many (if any) actually carried through with it, but if that sort of threat makes you queasy, better be (or have) a really good lawyer yourself if you go this route, and not just as a domain expert for the software itself.

So true! I built a solution for a legal services outfit a few years ago. First bug they see, they want to sue you. Forget about working with the vendor to refine the solution. They just want to sue you. Never want to work with lawyers again.

Hahahaha that is such a funny anecdote. But really scary too.

Thanks for sharing

This. So MUCH this. Legal-related software is mostly souped-up search engines, there is so much to be done here.

Many legal professionals are barely computer-literate, of course (and that is a big issue) but many are increasingly savvy and feel constrained by various proprietary solutions.

(Edit: typo and further commentary)

Is it because lawyers charge for their time and have zero incentive to be more efficient

There is always an incentive for saving time. For example, lawyers can use that time to take on more clients or simply be more thorough.

It really depends on the area of law, type of firm, type of client, etc.

In immigration or family law there is lots of procedural work, the lawyer might be solo, and the client is an individual or family. In this case the lawyer can generally not charge thousands per hour, they're doing most or all of the work, and the work has lots of steps that are repeated every case. This is a good case for the use of software to increase efficiency.

In big corporate law the work is specialized, the lawyer belongs to a firm, the client is a multi-national, paralegals and associates do a lot of the work, and the firm can charge thousands per hour. Here there's not a lot of incentive for efficiency.

Practice management software targeted to solos and small firms is very successful, look at https://www.clio.com/

Or they can just lie about their time and chill. Either way, lawyers have an incentive to be more efficient.

Do they need something like Kialo? https://www.ft.com/content/4c19005c-ff5f-11e7-9e12-af73e8db3...

Look at what happened to Atrium though.

Atrium is an example of a failed pivot. They started with law services and tried to move to tools and were toast within a few months.