COMMITTEE NEWS
THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE: HOW ONE MAN’S INTUITION REVOLUTIONISED HIS FIRM on offer. He discovered nothing was designed to deal with the challenges he saw his clients facing. He explains, “I just could not find anything that would help the client cope with that first advisory conversation, so I started researching the issue and found it was a well-known problem”. Then Alan did something surprising. He learned some coding basics and started to use technology to create a new approach. “With no-code apps now available, I would not even need to do that these days!” he observes, wryly. Ten years on, the firm owns the Family Law Lab providing technology to help clients prepare for their first consultation. “It is all about thinking from the client’s perspective; if that was me, what would I want and need right now?”, he says. Alan’s research generated evidence which showed that what reassured clients most was keeping costs low and giving them a sense of control from the outset. With these insights, he set about using technology to become more efficient, enabling the client to share their experience and information early in the process. This had positive knock-on effects, letting the lawyer hit the ground running and freeing up time for client care.
On 15th December ’21 the Birmingham Law Society Legal Tech Meet Up featured Alan Larkin, a lawyer without any experience or expertise in technology, who revolutionised his firm by thinking hard about client need, being curious and putting technology to work to support his practice. What is striking about Alan’s story is his sense of purpose. He began by identifying a problem which was getting in the way of him being as effective as possible for his clients writes Nicola Jones, Co-Chair of Birmingham Law Society Legal Technology Committee. 24 www.birminghamlawsociety.co.uk
Over a decade ago Alan was in a good place. Co-founder and equity partner in a small, thriving family law firm in sunny Brighton, he had good work, a young family and every expectation of a rosy future. And yet, Alan tells me, he was feeling frustrated about his work. Doing things the way they had always been done was not giving his clients enough support as they navigated traumatic experiences like divorce or separation. In particular, his intuition told him that clients struggled with the emotion and stress of their first consultation with a lawyer. Never having had anything to do with technology, save the usual tussles with practice systems, he was drawn to explore what was
Alan agrees that putting power in the hands of the client can feel counterintuitive for lawyers who are trained to be authoritative and cautious. However, he also reports unlooked for benefits, “Taking innovation seriously has allowed us to invest in wellbeing. Staff retention is high and the firm is growing rapidly”. He explains this is partly down to colleagues feeling better informed from the outset of a case which, he feels, reduces stress, and partly because the firm now has a reputation for innovation and a client-centric approach. As a result of growth the firm is able to make their work available at no cost to universities offering free advisory services. Being clear about your firm’s purpose as a mechanism for improving the way people experience the law is crucial to Alan’s approach, “Ultimately”, he says, “this is about understanding your values and how you express those in the nature of your offering as a firm”.
