Why legal tech projects fail in law firms

The software is rarely the problem

Suppose a law firm with three lawyers buys a document automation programme. In the demo, the vendor shows how a template turns into a finished pleading in two minutes. Six months later, the programme is being used by a paralegal for payment reminders. The lawyers still write their pleadings in Word, just as they always have. Internally, the project is considered a failure, even though the software does exactly what was promised.

This pattern is typical. Anyone looking for the causes almost never ends up at the technology. A 2022 survey by legal-tech.de among around 270 lawyers names lack of time as the biggest obstacle to digitalisation, at 40 per cent, followed by lack of knowledge and lack of IT skills at 35 per cent. A limited budget comes only third, at 21 per cent. So money is less often the problem than it sounds in firm meetings.

Time is missing, not money

The figure on time explains a lot. A legal tech project requires working hours that cannot be billed: setting up templates, migrating data, adjusting processes, answering queries. In a small firm there is no IT department and no project manager for this. The work lands on one lawyer or one paralegal, on top of day-to-day business with deadlines and clients.

Digital consultant Lisa Wiesenfeld describes exactly this bottleneck as a common reason why projects fail: specialists are expected to handle the rollout alongside a full workload. Once the calendar is full, the deadline always wins, never the project. The rollout drags on, the initial enthusiasm fizzles out, and at some point nobody asks about it any more. The licence keeps running, the invoice arrives every month, and the half-finished templates sit in a folder that nobody opens again. What was meant to save time ends up costing both: time and money.

Tool bought, process forgotten

The second mistake begins before the purchase. Christian Ammer, formerly head of IT at a large law firm, puts it like this: in law firms, digitalisation is discussed first and foremost as a question of the right tool. What is missing is a target picture, an idea of how the firm should be working in three years' time. The result is isolated solutions running side by side, with no data flowing between them.

For a small firm this means: if you buy document automation software but have never decided which pleadings should be produced and how, you get a tool without a job. Each lawyer carries on in their own way, and the software waits for a process that does not exist. It is the process that turns the programme into a gain. Without it, it is just another icon on the screen.

Resistance within the team

The third reason is the most uncomfortable, because it involves people. Wiesenfeld names the lack of user involvement and acceptance as a common obstacle. Resistance to change, she says, is particularly strong in traditionally shaped structures such as law firms. Under stress, staff easily perceive new software as criticism of the work they have done so far. Anyone who has managed deadlines flawlessly with a paper diary for twenty years mainly hears, in "we're digitalising deadline management", that what they did was not good enough.

On top of this comes an attitude that has persisted for years. In 2017, the Soldan Institute surveyed lawyers: 46 per cent feared that non-lawyers would use legal tech to push into their business. Only 32 per cent expected relief from routine tasks. A third had not looked into the topic at all. Those who see technology primarily as a threat do not introduce it with enthusiasm.

Knowledge that nobody has

That leaves knowledge. In the 2022 survey, half of the participants felt well or very well informed about legal tech, while 44 per cent had only a superficial grasp of it. This gap shows at the point of purchase: without your own knowledge, it is the vendor's demo that decides, not the firm's needs. And it shows afterwards: if you do not know what the software can do, you use ten per cent of the functions and pay for a hundred.

The 2025 survey of around 80 participants, half of them sole practitioners, shows how far apart firms are. 47 per cent said their firm was largely or fully digitalised. 22 per cent were not working digitally or had only laid the groundwork. At the same time, 64 per cent planned to invest in AI over the next twelve months, while only 16 per cent were already using a specific AI tool. The curiosity is there. The knowledge to turn it into a working project often is not.