Erik Ruda
October 21, 2026
Law firms spend a lot of time evaluating technology.
They compare practice management platforms. They invest in document management systems. They add CRM tools, billing software, AI platforms, and countless other applications designed to make the firm more efficient.
But there may be a much simpler way to evaluate whether your firm’s technology is actually working.
Give yourself five minutes.
Pick an active matter and try to answer a few basic questions:
- What is happening on this matter right now?
- What are the next outstanding tasks or deadlines?
- What was the client’s most recent communication?
- What has been billed, and what remains unbilled?
- Where are the most important documents?
Then look at the clock.
If you can answer those questions accurately within five minutes, your firm’s technology is probably doing something right.
If answering them requires opening five applications, searching through email, messaging an associate, calling an assistant, or waiting for someone to send you a spreadsheet, you may have uncovered a much larger problem.
How Much Work Does It Take to Understand the Work?
A managing partner shouldn’t need to become a detective to understand what’s happening inside the firm. Neither should a lawyer preparing for a client call.
Consider a partner who gets a call from an important client asking for an update.
Ideally, the lawyer should be able to quickly see the current matter status, recent communications, upcoming deadlines, relevant documents, financial information, and outstanding tasks.
Instead, the process at many firms looks something like this:
Open the practice management system.
Check Outlook.
Search the document management system.
Look at the billing platform.
Message the associate working on the matter.
Ask an assistant whether something has been filed.
Those small moments of friction across dozens of lawyers, hundreds of matters, and thousands of working days, and they become a significant operational cost.
People Shouldn’t Be the Integration Layer
When technology doesn’t connect information effectively, people usually fill the gaps.
Assistants maintain spreadsheets. Associates send status emails. Partners ask staff for updates. Someone manually transfers information from one system into another.
Eventually, firms can become dependent on employees who simply know where everything is.
Those employees are incredibly valuable. But institutional knowledge shouldn’t be the thing holding your technology infrastructure together.
Your highest-value people should be using their time to exercise judgment, solve client problems, develop relationships, and move matters forward, not hunting for information that already exists somewhere inside the firm.
Visibility Matters
The five-minute test isn’t simply about saving lawyers a few minutes. Better visibility affects how a firm operates.
When information is connected and accessible, lawyers can respond to clients faster. Firm leaders can make decisions using better information. Teams can collaborate without constantly asking one another for status updates. New employees can understand matters without relying entirely on institutional knowledge.
And increasingly, connected information also determines how effectively firms can take advantage of AI.
AI is only as useful as the information and workflows surrounding it. If a firm’s data is fragmented across disconnected systems, adding another intelligent tool doesn’t automatically solve the underlying problem.
Before asking what AI can do for your firm, it may be worth asking whether your firm can easily access what it already knows.
Take the Test
Choose an active matter at random.
Set a timer for five minutes.
Try to understand the matter well enough that you could confidently speak with the client about it.
Can you see the important communications, documents, deadlines, tasks, financial information, and current status without asking someone else for help?
If the answer is yes, great.
If the answer is no, don’t immediately start shopping for another piece of software.
Instead, look at where the friction occurred.
Which systems did you have to open? What information was difficult to locate? Where did you encounter duplicate data? When did you have to rely on another person? What information simply wasn’t visible?
Those answers may tell you more about your firm’s technology needs than another software demo ever could.
At AllRize, we believe law firm technology should bring people, processes, and information together. Our Microsoft-first approach to legal practice management is designed to help firms modernize their operations while working within a technology ecosystem their teams already know. Contact us today for a demo.
