What should we prioritise in our IT budget?

Law firms, in particular, are seeing an increase in client demand for value for money, rising cyber insurance and energy costs and more frequent cyber threats and ransomware attacks. So, it’s no wonder senior leaders and FDs are struggling to prioritise and manage their IT budget.

What can you do?

1. Improve your IT programme management – Be aware of all projects across the firm that make demands on the IT team to avoid bottlenecks in costs, capacity and time. Having a good overview of your full programme will help to prioritise resources.
   
   
2. Insurance Premiums – IT budgets and capabilities are not keeping pace with rocketing cyber insurance premiums. Talk to your insurer or broker to ensure you have the correct level of protection in place – while expensive, it is cheaper than being a cyber victim. Also consider moving cyber risk from IT to a business risk, managed by an appropriate role to free up some of your IT budget.
   
   

3. Improve data management – Ensuring your data is well-organised and managed using simple tools and processes can highlight areas where you can make big gains in digitisation, innovation and cyber protection.
   
   

4. Think carefully about digitisation – The digitisation of law, or processes within a transaction, is key to efficiency, but beware of buying technology for the sake of it. New tech can start off as a “great idea” but can soon become a sunk cost.
   
   

5. Hybrid working – Hybrid working is changing the fabric and culture of firms, but do your systems and technology support this way of working? It’s likely that you’ll need a different approach to embed hybrid working into your culture.