UKLTA Strategy 2023 – 2024
Our mission is to build a community where legal professionals, technology providers and consumers of legal services can come together to shape the future of legal services, collaboratively.
Strategy
We have 3 strategic areas of focus for the year ahead:
- Enhancing educational resources
- Fostering community in our membership
- Adoption of the UKLTA Supplier Charter
Education
The objective is to be a source of educational information for legal professionals, technology providers and consumers of legal services. We want to empower those in our network to have access to high quality, educational content that helps them to better understand the legal technology landscape, to understand where there are gaps and opportunities, and to learn more about how they can play a greater role in shaping the future of legal services.
We have lots of ideas for how we can achieve this core objective, and the team are already working on some of the following initiatives to support our membership:
- Thought Leadership
- Market Trends and Analysis
- Guides and Reports
- Demo Days and Events
- Student Representative Programmes
- Sounding Boards
Fostering Community for UKLTA Members
The outcome of the focus groups that we conducted with members in the last 3 months indicated that there was great appetite for a community forum through which members can ask questions, seek guidance, share information, and discuss challenges they are facing.
In addition to hosting more events with more opportunities for dialogue between members, we have set up a dedicated LinkedIn Group called the UKLTA members forum, to help to foster more collaboration and community in our member group. This is a private, moderated group designed to enable dialogue and discussion, and there are strict rules that prohibit the promotion or marketing of commercial products (i.e. no ads) and we encourage all members to communicate with courtesy and respect at all times.
To further support our values around collaboration and community, the UKLTA will also seek to build more partnerships across the legal services market, so that we are in the best position to provide our members with insightful content and information about the future of legal services.
The UKTLA Supplier Charter
The UKLTA Tech Sounding Board have drafted a Supplier Charter which has been approved by the Executive and Members Board. This document is in essence a Code of Conduct for Technology Providers to the legal services market. This Charter has been prepared with great thought and collaboration with our members, and is designed to help foster innovation, and facilitate procurement processes so law firms, and parties in the legal services industry can benefit from best-in-class technology and practices across all suppliers.
Given that transparency, collaboration and inclusivity are all key values of the UKLTA, it is important that we are proactive about promoting the adoption of this Supplier Charter. All members agree that greater transparency around areas like pricing, technology integrations, contracting terms and customer support are key to ensuring the health and success of innovation and evolution in the legal services market.
With this background in mind, we will require that all new members and all existing members of the UKLTA who are technology suppliers to the legal services market declare that they adhere to the terms as set out in the charter. This provides more assurances to our law firm members that the technology suppliers adhere to foundational requirements that enable greater adoption of legal technology, and ensures that we are maintaining high standards across our membership of technology suppliers.
Summary of Focus Group Findings
We are grateful to our Executive Board members and wider membership who have contributed to our focus groups about the strategy and direction of the UKLTA. There are several key themes that have emerged from the focus groups conducted, and we have several takeaways and learnings that will support some of the initiatives that we have planned for the year ahead:
- Enable greater content sharing across the membership base
- Ensure that content, events and information shared is educational and not a “hard sell”
- Create more opportunities for dialogue between law firms about challenges and opportunities
- Improve communication channels with members to enable greater dialogue and collaboration
- Encourage thought leadership from across all segments of the legal services market
- Consider opportunities for in-person events and forums
Concluding Remarks
The legal technology landscape continues to evolve at pace, and there remains a huge opportunity for the UKLTA to act as a bridge across the legal services market, enabling greater innovation, collaboration and community. We are excited about the initiatives that we have planned for the year ahead, and will focus on the core strategic pillars as outlined above, to ensure that our members are getting the most valuable and transparent information to support their own plans and development.