Has data proven to be “the new oil” for your organization? Data is both an invaluable strategic asset and a potential operational liability. Used well, it can help optimize business processes, drive informed decision-making, and unlock transformative insights.
Conversely, when mismanaged, data can become toxic waste or a corrosive substance that erodes operational integrity and exposes critical vulnerabilities. Data overload is a thing, and however it is described – bad data, old data, dark data, or any other – if left unchecked, it poses a business risk.
While in the legal industry, we have always talked about the imperative of deriving “value” from data, 2025 will finally be the year many organizations actively pursue this goal in earnest. In this article, I'll discuss strategic approaches to information governance, information architecture, cloud adoption, and software asset management.
Information governance: Moving beyond "keep or delete"
Firms have too much data, and in many firms, it's growing practically unrestricted. Many law firms continue to hold extensive amounts of business and personal data long after employees have departed, despite the sword of GDPR and other data privacy regulations precariously dangling over their heads. The hesitation to fully implement robust data retention and deletion policies has created significant compliance risks.
Cloud computing and the rising cost of cloud data storage have brought these issues to the fore. No firm wants to pay to migrate and store data in the cloud if it is duplicative or increases their liability and risks. The challenge for firms moving to the cloud is knowing what data to migrate, what to destroy, and when.
In 2025, firms will be compelled to structure and cleanse data enterprise-wide, not only to control costs, but to also prepare for meaningful AI technology adoption in the imminent future.
IA before AI: Knowledge management and data curation
Typically, data in the enterprise tends to become siloed within departments, functions, and teams. This fragmentation prevents firms from fully leveraging their collective expertise, experience, and knowledge, leading to inefficiencies and opportunity costs.
AI has the potential to enhance the efficiency of legal service delivery in terms of searching, drafting, analysis, and retrieval of valuable data. Without a well-thought-through information architecture (IA), however, organisations quickly run into the harsh reality of “garbage in, garbage out”. What firms need is a properly classified and curated information and document library, to enable advanced technology such as generative AI to access and fully utilize the firm’s expertise and insights.
In 2025, firms of all sizes should prioritise building strong information architecture (IA) and foundations to support the adoption of knowledge management and enable generative AI adoption. Harnessed properly, generative AI will transform knowledge management and its impact on the firm’s business.
Cloud adoption: A business necessity
Cloud adoption has steadily gained traction, with a majority of law firms moving their document management systems (DMS) to the cloud.
ILTA’s 2024 Technology Survey found that 67% of law firms report their DMS libraries are in the cloud. So what is holding back the remaining 33%? According to the survey, 36% of firms that are not yet using a cloud-based DMS cite costs as a major factor, followed by security concerns (22%) and potential performance issues (18%).
In 2025, the urgency to move to the cloud will become more acute.
Technology vendors are now natively embedding AI features in cloud applications, combined with easier and faster integration of complementary tools such as digital signatures, matter management, metadata management, knowledge management, unstructured data management, document automation, PDF manager, and more.
The long-term efficiency gains, alongside the ease of AI adoption, will simply outweigh the transition costs associated with cloud migration. Firms that fall behind may end up paying the price vis-à-vis their competitors if they are unable to take advantage of the latest features.
Software asset management: Streamlining productivity tools
Given the central role that technology plays in legal operations, over time firms accumulate various applications, often with sub-optimal utilization. There could be any number of reasons: users didn’t find value in the tools provided by IT; solutions may not have been upgraded regularly; or perhaps users weren’t suitably trained on them. Different departments might use similar tools as well, leading to multiple solutions for the same capabilities, and there may be redundant licenses, leading to unnecessary expense.
In 2025, firms will adopt a software asset management approach to assess their productivity tools environment, aligning application requirements with current operational and user needs, and analyzing total costs. Firms will critically evaluate whether existing tools remain relevant in this dynamic and rapidly changing landscape. For instance, with platforms like Teams and Zoom offering generative AI-led transcriptions, are the standalone transcription tools obsolete?
A strategic tipping point
In many ways, the legal sector has reached a critical juncture. The time is now to stop deferring change and adopt strategies that improve operational effectiveness while positioning the broader organization to take advantage of advanced technology.
We predict many firms will be taking a thorough and robust cost-benefit analysis of their information environment. By focusing on business requirements, 2025 has the potential to be a year of breakthroughs in how firms protect, harness, and leverage data.
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