Whenever you’re looking at new technology, whether established or emerging, it should be for the purpose of fulfilling an internal use case where the return on investment (ROI) makes it a problem worth solving. There is no benefit to investing in technology unless it meets an expressed need, or fills a gap in your portfolio without which a current need cannot be addressed. As the legal technology market evolves, some may feel pressure to buy in to the newest trend in order to keep up with appearances. However, a license for that shiny new tech won’t actually help your firm or law department advance unless it is being leveraged to solve a real problem.

In today’s Fringe newsletter, Ab explores the trend of visual tools. The two solutions that are explored in depth, Jigsaw and Structure Flow, advertise their solutions as a means by which to model or visualize transactions and legal structures. In exploring whether you might have an internal use case for such tools, consider the “jobs to be done” (JTBD) matrix. This framework for market research was perhaps best expressed by the late Harvard professor Theodore Levitt, who famously told his students, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”