Even when your law firm is relatively small, it can be a challenge to keep track of all the work that needs to be done and who in the team is taking care of it.
As your law firm grows and you look to onboard new solicitors, a disparity can often form between the way that new hires work and the way that things have always been done.
Rather than enter into a battle for dominance, technology could create a peaceful solution where different angles can be taken to resolve the same problems.
What barriers exist between old and new solicitors?
The progress of time advances ever onward and brings with it new generations filled with people with fresh ideas.
This can often manifest in different approaches to technology and communication and can be frustrating for those who have been working for years and have established a consistent approach to tackling problems.
When new solicitors join a firm, it is not uncommon for tension to arise as senior staff struggle to understand the way that the new team members operate and the new team members struggle to recognise the logic behind some instructions.
This has been dubbed the discursive competence gap by researchers from the University of Oxford and speaks to a barrier of communication rather than any technical competency.
It is noted in the research that employees often lack the ability to “communicate their ideas in ways that trigger senior management attention.”
This is noted as being a separate skill from the abilities learned when studying law and is more centred on how well solicitors can operate in the workforce.
When this discursive competence gap is not adequately addressed, tension can manifest in law firms and prevent work from being conducted efficiently.
For new solicitors, they may find “limited experiential learning” prevents them from growing in the law firm resulting in them seeking employment elsewhere.
As we found that 19 per cent of firms already struggle to keep top talent, anything that can help prevent this exodus should be embraced.
Can technology resolve the discursive competence gap?
Given that new and more experienced solicitors often fail to understand each other’s perspectives, a workable solution would be to establish a clearly visible way of perceiving the other’s approach to work.
Smokeball is designed with workflow visibility in mind and can help to remove some of the discursive competence gap by letting more senior solicitors know exactly how new team members are tackling tasks.
The automated time tracking feature can provide reassurance that tasks are being handled efficiently even if approaches differ.
Alongside this, our AI, Archie, can summarise conversations and handle automated tasks allowing for more time to be spent developing skills.
Senior solicitors can pass on their insights more effectively to new team members if they are not having all their time absorbed with tedious tasks.
We want to bring harmony to law firms and disrupting the discursive competence gap is a key way to bring about this change.
Book a demo today to find out which barriers Smokeball can break in your law firm.
