What Is a Legal Tech Audit? How to Evaluate Your Law Firm’s Technology

7 minutes read

Published Sep 4, 2025

What is a legal tech audit?

In simple terms, a legal tech audit is a professional and in-depth evaluation of the effectiveness, efficiency, and security of a law firm’s or legal department’s technology infrastructure. 

Alternatively referred to as a legal tech stack audit or legal technology assessment, this process helps firms identify outdated or inefficient systems and capability gaps, as well as where technology can be better utilized to automate manual tasks, streamline workflows, strengthen cybersecurity protections, and make more informed decisions about how to improve and make future investments in their tech stack. 

Importantly, while the assessment includes cybersecurity tools and infrastructure, a legal tech stack audit isn’t just about looking at IT systems; it’s about evaluating the performance, integration, and overall well-being of all relevant technologies and their impacts on key legal processes, including client intake, drafting, case management, billing, and beyond. 

Why law firms should do regular legal tech audits

In addition to being essential to stay competitive in today’s highly technological legal landscape, conducting a legal tech audit at least once a year can provide your firm with a wide range of cross-functional business benefits. At a glance, each successful legal tech stack audit should allow you to:

Identify outdated tools
Reduce spend on software with similar functionality
Enhance the automation of routine tasks
Strengthen data security and compliance
Improve integration between tools and systems
Accelerate adoption of new technologies
Reducing spend from underutilized software to free up budget

At a higher level, being disciplined about regular legal tech audits is crucial if you’re looking to future-proof your firm against evolving industry standards and expectations, as well as support ongoing improvements to everything from efficiency, productivity, and client experiences to compliance, cybersecurity, and cost management.  

What a legal technology audit should include

Because legal technologies belong to a growing variety of categories and use cases, many attorneys may be confused about exactly which tools a legal technology assessment should focus on. While the simple answer is all of them, at bare minimum a legal tech audit should evaluate:

When to run a legal tech audit

It can’t be emphasized enough that a legal tech audit should be utilized regularly as an integral part of your firm’s operations—not as a one-time event. This means an assessment should happen at least once a year, preferably around budgeting season, as a baseline effort to ensure you’re keeping up with the capabilities of other firms, as well as meeting the evolving expectations of clients who, according to our 2024 Legal Trends Report, are increasingly shifting to lawyers who are adept at leveraging AI and other advanced legal technologies. 

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t uniquely optimal times to conduct a legal tech audit. For example, if you’re starting to notice rising software costs or are considering a major technology investment, it’s probably a good time to evaluate your existing stack. Additionally, a legal technology assessment can help firms more effectively respond and move forward following an impactful event, such as a cybersecurity breach, team change, or period of significant growth. 

How to conduct a legal tech audit in 7 steps

While specific needs and desired outcomes will vary, law firms and in-house legal teams of all sizes and disciplines can begin conducting a legal tech audit right now using our suggested 7-step process.

1. Take an inventory of current tools

To start, simply take an in-depth inventory of all existing technologies within your tech stack. While this might seem like an obvious step and therefore easy to overlook, it’s also not uncommon at this stage for law firms to discover tools they’ve either forgotten about or didn’t know they had. Look through your credit card statements to catch those.

2. Assess each tool’s value and usability

Next, take the time to evaluate each tool and determine what specific value is being added to the firm. If people are even using the tools, what are they being used for? If not, is it because they aren’t necessary or because there’s something lacking in the user experience? Do people prefer any alternatives instead?

3. Evaluate integration and workflow alignment

Beyond each tool’s individual function, assess the level of integration between these technologies and your broader system. If integrated properly, all tools should be in alignment and contribute to a seamless operational workflow.

4. Identify pain points, gaps, risks, and overlaps

At this stage, you can begin evaluating both individual tools and your entire technology infrastructure to identify key pain points. These may include everything from capability gaps and data security risks to technological overlaps (e.g., duplicate or redundant tools and processes). 

5. Review technology costs and ROI

In addition to identifying weaknesses in efficiency and security, it’s critical to review both the cost and ROI associated with all technologies being used in the firm. Keep in mind that just because a tool performs well doesn’t necessarily mean it fits within your budget, and you may find there’s a different solution that offers the same or similar functionality at a lower cost. 

6. Gather team feedback

Before wrapping up your assessment, be sure to consult with all relevant teams and ask for their feedback. After all, no one will be in a better position to evaluate these tools than someone who uses them every day, and these conversations frequently lead to uncovering additional strengths and pain points that weren’t caught in earlier steps. 

7. Build an actionable improvement plan

Finally, you can now take everything you’ve learned throughout the legal tech audit process and start building an improvement plan. Critically, this plan will be instrumental in shaping the ongoing evolution of your tech stack, and it should look less like a vague to-do list than a clear, actionable roadmap for transformation. 

Common mistakes to avoid in legal tech stack audits

Legal technology assessments can be overwhelming and complex, and this often causes law firms to make some relatively simple yet consequential missteps throughout the process. Here are just a few tips for avoiding common mistakes when conducting a legal tech stack audit:

Don’t skip user input before building an improvement plan, as the most insightful feedback will often come from the teams who use legal software on a regular basis. 
Focus on cost and value when evaluating solutions, keeping in mind that updating legal systems is not a short-term fix but an investment in long-term growth and scalability. 
Don’t overlook integration friction as a key aspect of your assessment criteria, remembering that seamless alignment of legal workflows should be a top priority in your improvement plan.  
Don’t treat your legal tech audit as a one-time project, but rather as the first of regular, annual assessments that help establish technological evolution as a vital aspect of your law firm’s culture. 

How Clio supports your tech transformation

In today’s shifting legal landscape, conducting legal tech audits as a regular part of your firm’s operation is not only immensely valuable but increasingly crucial for ensuring scalability, keeping pace with innovation, and meeting compliance with constantly evolving industry standards and regulations. Put simply, legal technology is here to stay and will only continue to advance, and while the impact of these tools on the future of the industry may be unpredictable, one thing is for certain: the law firms best positioned for growth will be those that regularly audit and improve their legal tech stacks. 

But at Clio, we also understand that navigating the complexities of a legal tech audit isn’t what attorneys want to be—or should be—focused on, and that’s why we’ve built a legal software solution designed to both streamline technology assessments and make it easier to convert results into a clear, actionable roadmap for improvement.

By leveraging Clio’s leading all-in-one case management platform, your law firm gains access to an expansive, centralized suite of legal technologies that is simple to set up, intuitive to use, and delivered alongside constant expert support. With built-in AI tools like Clio Duo, as well as more than 250 trusted integration partners, Clio can provide a targeted solution to the evaluation and enhancement of legal processes across the entire client lifecycle, from initial intake to case management and billing.