Article written by Chris Cartrett, CEO of Aderant
At Momentum Global 2025, legal professionals and law firms will be privy to several new groundbreaking product launches, all of which are the culmination of several years of hard work by our teams at Aderant. Specifically, we have made major strides forward on the AI automation front, especially as it relates to time entry and how that flows into billing. The impact of these changes will be seismic – we’re talking huge leaps forward.
Enhancing the Client Experience for Law Firms Worldwide
Aderant has grown tremendously and taken on more to help law firms drive productivity and efficiency. Wherever mid-to-large size law firms are, that is our sweet spot, and our company continues to expand operations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. As our technology toolbox and global business have expanded, so have the unique needs of our clients. In response to this increased level of complexity, we are evolving a more sophisticated view of Aderant’s interaction with clients – an emphasis on increased value and decreased friction.
Josiah Chaves has been one of the most impactful leaders inside our business, and recently he was elevated to Chief Client Officer. In this new role, Josiah’s sole focus is to help our clients have a more seamless experience with our software and our people. We want clients to extract maximum value from our technology and to feel confident that they have made the right choice in selecting Aderant. Our service and support are already strong points, but our objective now is to make our software so intuitive and user-friendly that they seldom must interrupt their work with a support call or knowledge base search.
The Day Still Starts with the A
A few years ago, we introduced a phrase “It Starts with the A” which acknowledged that our clients were often starting their day by clicking on Aderant applications. If an Aderant solution did not perform well, a client’s day could be ruined, so our solutions had to work as seamlessly and flawlessly as possible. This is a point of pride which we take very seriously. Part of paying the A forward is by broadening to a more holistic view of how our customers interact with us. At Aderant, we are constantly asking what we can do to structure our products and support to help the law firms run a better business with less interruption.
Change Management
As AI has become more pervasive across Aderant’s product lines, we’re seeing more of a change management challenge unfolding for law firms. Traditional tasks like time, billing and outside counsel guidelines have been reengineered with AI technology, but law firms are still noticing a gap between the vision and daily reality of applying AI to accelerate their workflow. Add the complexities of moving to the cloud, which many of our clients have done, and it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed.
Our goal – and Josiah is crucial to this initiative – is to align our support, service and client experience teams with our software to create a more effortless experience for clients. AI and the cloud will gradually make everything easier with automation, but helping our clients navigate the learning curve to reap benefits from that tech is the key. This initiative includes working with multiple constituencies at the law firm including lawyers, billing, finance, IT, security, and more. No two law firms are the same, so their technological needs are going to be different. At Aderant we understand the complexities law firms face every day, which is why we strive to be that trusted partner for law firms can count on.
Work to Cash
Aderant is also spearheading an emerging new legal tech product category – Automated Work to Cash. Our competitors are making attempts to automate some parts of this process, but our goal is to do it all. Modern law firms need much more than a loose confederation of point solutions. Firms need completely automated work to cash workflow, and we have achieved that.
Here’s the whole work to cash process in a nutshell. The firm is contracted to do legal work by a client, and the services agreement and outside counsel guidelines are created to dictate what the firm/client relationship will be. Then, when the firm starts the work, they are entering their time which turns into a bill. The bill is sent to the client, cash/money comes in, and some bills must be appealed. In the past, firms have had to pour many people into this process, but Aderant can automate most of this with people supervising and facilitating. With Aderant powered solutions, law firms can now supercharge the capabilities of legal professionals within their firm, which is part of our human-centric approach to building technology. There is an enormous opportunity to make this work, and AI is useful to fix problems and gaps that open up between human interactions. People are still in the loop and can see what’s going on, but the process is automated to make things run more smoothly.