LexisNexis

Research highlights need for internal collaboration to make the most out of CRM within legal firms

LONDON, 10 September, 2007 — Recent research from LexisNexis InterAction highlights the importance of collaboration across all job functions within legal firms when capturing, storing and analysing contact information. Using a series of group discussions, interviews and surveys of 68 Business Development, Marketing and IT professionals within UK Law firms, LexisNexis InterAction also found that the main concerns of using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system were the same regardless of the functional role or size of an organisation.

Law Firms of less than 100 to more than 400 fee earners participated, and the key concern they cited was the frequency of updating contacts records.

John Rogers of Tandem Management Ltd, an independent consultant who advises law and accountancy firms on the specification and implementation of complex technology projects, said, "The challenge is to gain the active cooperation of fee-earners, and that will only happen if they see a direct benefit to themselves. This means that the CRM system must actually be easier to use than their current method of recording information about their contacts. Appeals to lawyers' good nature are doomed to failure; anything which makes their lives easier is likely to be a success."

The following statements were made during the course of the research which highlights this need for a working collaboration between all levels of staff within an organisation:

Facilitating change in business practices was also important across IT, Business Development and Marketing functions. Respondents shared concerns such as:

Daniel Von Weihe, Sales and Operations Director for LexisNexis InterAction commented, "Whilst the technology and demand is clearly there to support the client development of today's businesses, we must ensure that stakeholders from all areas of the business are trained not just how to use CRM software but on how the technology is to be used in order to achieve their business objectives."

Von Weihe concluded, "The use of CRM in the legal sector is becoming more prevalent, but buy-in throughout the organisation is required to ensure every client interaction becomes an opportunity to meet the short-term tactical needs and further the long-term strategic outlook of an organisation. We have plans to transform the end-user experience by investing in further development of the product and introducing more unique features that will fit into the day-to-day workflows and process of lawyers."

Businesses today are seeing the value in implementing a CRM system, in fact the preliminary estimate for the size of the CRM software market in Europe, the Middle East and Africa was approximately $2.3 billion in total software revenue in 2006. The market will maintain a compound annual growth rate of 11.3%, resulting in revenue of approximately $3.9 billion by 2011 according to Gartner.

About LexisNexis InterAction
LexisNexis InterAction enables professional services firms and other relationship-based organisations to create the relationship intelligence they need to uncover new business opportunities. InterAction has seamless Outlook Integration allows users to access valuable information and contribute to the system without leaving this environment (also integrates with Lotus Notes and Novell GroupWise). Essential Data Quality and Data Change management tools ensure data integrity and reduce the ongoing cost of ownership. The Who Knows Whom feature allows users to determine who else within a firm knows the contact and the nature and strength of that relationship. InterAction solutions are available to the Accounting, Financial Services, Legal, Management Consulting, Property and other professional services markets. LexisNexis InterAction is the market leading CRM application in the Legal sector and their software is implemented within 35% of Top 100 UK law firms (source: Legal Technology Insider top 250). Current customers include 3i, Eversheds, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, Lovells and Simmons & Simmons. LexisNexis InterAction European headquarters are in London, UK.

About LexisNexis
LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading provider of information and services solutions, including its flagship Web-based Lexis® and Nexis® research services, to a wide range of professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in 100 countries with 13,000 employees worldwide.

 
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