So, if your firm wants a better tool for interoffice communication than email should you use Slack or Teams? That was the framework for a presentation “Collaborating: What is the Best Tool?” at ABA TECHSHOW 2021.

However, the TECHSHOW planning board asked John E. Grant, the founder of Agile Attorney Consulting and Kenton Brice, Director of Technology Innovation, University of Oklahoma College of Law to do this presentation. These two might have a bit of a reputation for being overachievers. So, they “over-engineered” their paper for the session, in their words. And that benefits you as much of their written materials has now been posted to Grant’s Agile Attorney blog.

The first post is Slack vs. Teams for Lawyers: What do you need? This contains a simple explanation of this binary decision-making process. They are even some simple flow charts to help with this decision. It is not the most difficult technology use decision you will ever make.

Now is where the overachiever part comes into play. The second post is How to Evaluate Law Firm Technology. Evaluating technology purchases is a challenge for many types of businesses and law firms are no exception. Most lawyers love researching to solve their client’s problems much more than they love researching their business operation tools. This post contains a very sophisticated analysis which is very useful for any lawyer, especially one without a technology background.

But wait, there’s more. A third post, Frameworks for Defining Problems in Your Law Practice, delves into defining a firm’s legal ops problem and Jobs To Be Done (JTBD). This is simple and approachable for those of us who do not have MBA’s. One thing all lawyers appreciate from our law practices is you get a much better answer when you ask the right question.

These posts are all relatively short, beginning with the simple Slack vs. Teams question and moving on to more broad analysis. If you oversee technology purchases for your law firm, all three are great reads. If you are not in charge of that, then maybe you should share this blog post with the one who is.