What lawyers should keep in mind when choosing the right technology tools for their practices
Jim Calloway (left) and Chris Fortier speak at an ABA Techshow panel discussion about how to choose the right technology for your practice. (Photo by Shirley Henderson/ABA Journal)
Selecting the right software tools and supporting existing frameworks are essential elements to building a modern law practice.
At a panel discussion at ABA Techshow on Thursday titled “Tech Stack: How to Evaluate, Compare and Choose the Right Tools,” panelists Jim Calloway, former director of the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program and author of several books about law practice management, and Chris Fortier, an attorney/adviser for the U.S. Social Security Administration’s Office of Disability Adjudication and part of the 2026 Techshow planning board, offered their insight.
Affinity Consulting’s Danielle Hall introduced the speakers, who offered conference-goers tips on choosing software tools. They emphasized lawyers must make sure new programs and platforms align with their firm’s mission and vision statement and underscored the importance of regularly reviewing current business processes before buying new technology, since every firm is unique and evolving.
While Calloway presented seven basic law firm business processes—marketing/sales, client intake, communication, productivity (workflow management), personnel, finances and firm managing—he recognized that each firm may have a different goal and need a plan on how to achieve it. “Things happen unexpectedly,” he cautioned the audience.
“And sometimes you may be in situation where you have to make a quick change, and you may have to make a quick upgrade,” Fortier said. “Like when ChatGPT came out. One day it was there. Everyone went crazy over it, and client expectations followed quickly.”
One topic was how to align technology with strategic goals, which includes defining the role of the firm’s mission statement, having a definite vision statement and how tech can support the two. Another area of discussion was the case for automation at law firms, which often results in pushback from some people.
Follow along with the ABA Journal’s coverage of the ABA Techshow 2026 here.
Both speakers acknowledged that lawyers will most certainly encounter people who look at artificial intelligence skeptically. But they said automation is the new table stakes in legal technology, meaning it can support a firm’s minimum requirements.
“There’s a lot of interesting things you can do when you talk about your intake sheets to generate documents,” Calloway said. “When you are doing intake sheets, whether you are doing things by hand when you ask the client questions or doing it on the computer with the client, you have all these bits of information.”
Consolidating the information in one file will save time and effort, he said.
Both Calloway and Fortier said it is important for lawyers get client feedback and also give their own input to software companies so they can improve upon their products.
“We lawyers love to plan our litigation strategies, our negotiation strategies,” Calloway said. “It’s often hard to plan office upgrades and technology upgrades for the simple reason of that word that is challenging to law firms: nonbillable.”
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