The development of tech in the legal profession
Technological development and internet marketing. For many branches in the Netherlands, this is the most normal thing in the world. As a result, there are also many companies involved in technological development. In the field of software, but also in terms of internet marketing, companies are growing like mushrooms.
But what about the legal profession in the Netherlands? In particular, many small law firms are active there, which traditionally have little interest in technological developments. This group is therefore well behind in terms of technological developments.
What are the consequences of not keeping up with technological developments, for example for a personal injury lawyer (Dutch: letselschade advocaat) and what are lawyers in the Netherlands doing with the available technology? Is progress visible or are the lawyers sticking to fixed patterns that clearly no longer work?
Personal injury technology
In the following we will discuss the technological developments in the field of personal injury. Because due to technological developments, it is precisely this group of lawyers that is having the most difficult time in the Netherlands.
If you have an injury as a result of a collision, an industrial accident or a dog bite, you can make free use of the legal assistance of a personal injury lawyer in the Netherlands. If you search for a personal injury lawyer in Google, such as for a personal injury lawyer in The Hague (Dutch: letselschade advocaat Den Haag), the first results will not be personal injury lawyers, but personal injury agencies. How is this possible?
The cause is clear, personal injury lawyers are in many cases not entrepreneurs. She didn’t have to be before. Lawyers mainly advertised locally, in a newspaper or door-to-door paper. This was enough to find several new clients every year. Many personal injury lawyers had (and have) never heard of internet marketing. That is why little, or nothing is done with technological developments such as internet marketing or social media. Personal injury lawyers, as they always did, waited quietly by the phone until someone contacted them. But that no longer works!
Entrepreneurs realized that in the Netherlands as a personal injury victim you are entitled to free legal assistance from a personal injury specialist. This does not necessarily have to be a personal injury lawyer tee. This group of entrepreneurs, often also tech entrepreneurs, have little or no knowledge of personal injury stories. What they do understand is reaching litigants through the internet, apps and social media. To help these clients claim personal injury after an accident, they set up personal injury agencies and hired personal injury lawyers who do the substantive work for them.
Technological developments have sidelined personal injury lawyers in this way. This is also apparent from practice, the number of lawyers specializing in personal injury has therefore decreased in recent years and the existing lawyers are having an increasingly difficult time.
What do lawyers do to turn the tide?
In the Netherlands, the number of personal injury lawyers has decreased due to the arrival of smarter entrepreneurs. This is due to the fact that most of them do not keep up with technological developments.
A good example of the legal profession lagging behind are the results on Google. It is immediately noticeable that both with regard to the advertisements on Google and with the organic results, there are mainly many personal injury agencies to be found and only a few law firms. This shows that lawyers have clearly missed the boat.
Fortunately, there are a number of law firms in the Netherlands that have started working with technological developments. They have also been involved in all kinds of technological developments for several years. For example, these personal injury lawyers developed better websites with many technological gadgets such as a personal injury scan. Clients can also log in to a file themselves so that the victim of a traffic accident, dog bite or industrial accident can manage his file himself.
In addition to the website, you now also see that a number of personal injury lawyers are also tackling other matters, such as starting advertising campaigns on Google and preparing landing pages to ensure that they are easier to find in the field of SEO.
The legal profession in the Netherlands therefore has a hard time keeping up with technological developments. However, a number of law firms have started with all these developments. However, this remains very difficult, especially for small law firms. There is a chance that these law firms will disappear in the future.
