The client is king right? Now more so than ever, so why do so few law firms use the client as the epicentre of their data systems and data relationships? Or to put it another way why do so many firms still focus on their own output (ie documents and emails) albeit classified by matter as the focus of their data systems?

CRM or Client Relationship Management has been around for a number of years now in legal with arguably four main types of solution;

Bespoke Legal – e.g. Lexis Nexis InterAction or Tikit’s Client Connect

Adapted for Legal - e.g. Microsoft Dynamics (sometimes with legal bolt on)

Out of the box like it or leave it – e.g.Goldmine

Bolt on module – e.g.Elite Apex

The more sophisticated, bespoke legal solutions have evolved to reflect well the nature of the way a law firm does its business, with the focus on the strength of the client relationship rather than just an electronic rolodex, but are they effective? Ask a lawyer or an IT Director and you are likely to hear disparaging comments from ‘white elephant’ to ‘downright waste of money’. Ask a BD or Marketing Director and, well that’s like asking a fat, white bearded bloke who dresses up as Santa to vote for Xmas.

So if the firms get the importance of the client relationship and the software solutions, at least in functionality terms, are in the main good, why is CRM not enjoying the successful take up that you might expect?

In my view there are three main issues; the psychology of the lawyer, the quality of the data and the complexity of the system.

It may be a sweeping generalism to some, but the common view is that a large number of lawyers operate with a ‘my client’ mentality, usually comprised of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘why lose control of the client relationship by sharing with the other guys’ ideals. This not so forward thinking is a real challenge and unfortunately promoted by the traditional ways that lawyers are measured, ie by income generated and ‘following’, especially when the latter is used as the primary negotiating tool when moving firms. The answer? – remove any choice from participation and give something back to the lawyers.

Which brings me nicely on to the Single Client View. Unlike CRM which is typically a standalone system that may or may not integrate with other systems and almost definitely requires user participation, a well thought out SCV solution will simply be a client centric, intuitive core of a firms business system where interaction (small i) is second nature.

With a single client view, the key taxonomy for the firm becomes the client (and prospect), its industry and its geography. All other classifications whilst they exist are secondary to the primary view and navigation of data. Instead of going to a Document Management System to find documents relating to a matter, the lawyer selects the client from the SCV and then selects contextual matters and documents. Instead of going to a Practice Management System, financial data is again found under the client view.

Once the standard Client Data Page is designed, all other systems become irrelevant to the user as their single role in life is to feed appropriate data into the SCV. This has a secondary benefit of allowing the solution vendor to focus on the functionality and performance of the product rather than the user interface which is now irrelevant. In time, instead of constant DMS, PMS, CRM, KM upgrades and swap outs, the only change experienced by a user will be functionality which is in turn based on any changes to the way we do business, such as alternative fee modelling, knowledge management, legal project management etc

In addition some intelligence should be applied to incoming data streams such as email, telephone, twitter etc whereby with one click the Client Data Page dynamically adapts to the incoming data to provide the most appropriate view for the user. Imagine the scenario whereby an important email comes in from the GC at Barclays and with one click on the ‘SCV now’ button the entire view relates to all things Barclays having detected the @barclays.com in the email. In one click the lawyer has contact, relationship, financial and matter based information in a client context in one screen. News feeds and Twitter inform of recent client activity and contextualised industry news enables pro-active discussion.

The client data will have a direct link to Social Media tools such as LinkedIn whereby any updates made by the client themselves is automatically imported. This, by the way, would make huge strides towards resolving the usual data quality issues. There is no better data than that which the client provides themselves.

None of this is particularly new and lots of firms have started projects with similar goals but these are nearly all bespoke projects with internally coded solutions. So how do we get the vendors on board?

FWBS went some way towards achieving this prior to their acquisition and perhaps the best examples I have seen recently are Epona's Contact Manager and Peppermint ,originally showcased on The Orange Rag.

Like most things in legal technology, successful solutions require good marketing, a viral adoption approach and the obligatory 3 letter acronym so here’s to SCV – may the force be with you.