A law firm in Auckland, he hypothesised, can have a client in Perth with an eight-hour time difference. “It’s one-third of the circumference of the Earth [in terms of time zones], yet, the expectation is that’s how it’s going to be moving forward,” he said.

“That is transforming client’s expectations. It’s clear that, while some law firms are on top of this, and ahead of the game and showing the way, there are many who are lagging.”

Speaking recently on The Lawyers Weekly Show, Mr Beaton and his colleague, beaton senior researcher and operations manager Shanan Kan argued that clients want transformation, not simply translation, in their dealings with their legal representation.

“Translation is going from meeting in boardrooms to meeting online. Transformation is about how we meet, who meets, how those meetings are prepared for facilitated follow-up,” Mr Beaton explained.

Law firms must go beyond simply facilitating virtual meetings with clients, Mr Kan added, positing that a more creative and innovative experience is needed to ensure that client feels better accommodated and safeguarded against such extraordinary events such as those seen in the past year.

“There is an increasing need for reliability from firms – not just in terms of the advice and continuity of business, but also being an anchor for certainty in times of great uncertainty,” he outlined.

“Clients are anticipating that there may be another event – whether it’s a pandemic or something else in the future – and they expect that their firms will be able to pivot and respond with the same agility that some have been able to respond with to COVID-19.”

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Sometimes, for example, meetings are not needed at all, Mr Kan suggested.

“Firms and clients are embracing a range of different collaboration technologies to be able to work together in a way that meetings may not be necessary, because someone could just log into a dashboard and see the progress on a matter and not need to waste everyone’s time for half an hour to an hour,” he said.

“I think that does put an onus on firms to be across the available technologies out there, to be able to deal with these on top of all the different communications meetings platforms from Skype, to Zoom, to Teams. These are new skills that firms need to learn, and partners need to learn, junior associates, they all need to learn these skills to not only be able to work internally, but also externally.”

But the technology is not the end goal, Mr Beaton insisted – behavioural change is.

“In other words, every member of the firm, both those who are client-facing and those who support them, needs behaviourally to be skilled, comfortable, progressive in the way they use technology in the collaborative way, both internally and with their clients, and to demonstrate that confidence,” he explained.

“We know the cultures of law firms are deep and old and with lots of legacies in them. This is a massive opportunity to pick up the baton and run with it, and get everybody in the firm running with it, which is much easier said than done. But attitudes and behaviours [can be] a huge impediment to change, and clients know this, of course; they clients sense this, and where you have got clients who are progressively hungry for transformational experiences, that firm is going to lag.

“That’s the number one challenge. It has been true for a very long time – it’s just been brought into sharper focus by COVID-19. It’s not more toys, and more technology, and more technology products that’s needed, it’s to use them better, and better, and better. Adding a new toy doesn’t improve the use of the toys.”

To listen to the full conversation with George Beaton and Shanan Kan, click below: