By Mobile Helix CEO & Co-founder, Seth Hallem in Legal IT Professionals

A good lawyer helps you see around the bend. In my experience over the years as a client, I have found that each time my attorney points out something in a contract or business decision that I had not anticipated, I ignore the next bill when it comes in and I pay it gladly. When I feel that my attorney is simply a contract factory, I look at each bill closely and start to wonder if there is a better way.

I recently had this experience with my company’s attorney and, as has become my custom, I did not pay any attention to the forthcoming invoice. I did, however, stop to think about how my company, as a legal technology provider, could facilitate more such interactions for our customers and their clients.

A few months ago, I read an article summarizing a survey conducted by Clio. The headline of this survey is that lawyers bill only 2.3 of every 8 working hours, instead spending the plurality of their day on administrative tasks. This article jogged my memory of another article from the American Psychological Association (APA) that outlined the significant productivity lost due to context switching and distractions. If my attorney is to be a source of insight, he or she cannot be compromised by distractions that lessen her effectiveness.