The Competitive Advantage of Technology for Private Client Firms

What challenges are private client firms facing?

The workload of a typical private client firm in the UK is demanding, multifaceted and includes many pressing deadlines. A lawyer working for a private client firm might start a workday by assessing their workload, progressing matters, responding to client emails and calls and reviewing drafts and documents. Then throughout the day, the lawyer will meet with multiple clients and spend hours drafting time consuming and detail-oriented documents and labour intensive IHT forms while juggling various administrative tasks. All of this is expected of our lawyer while they stick rigidly to compliance, clients are chasing, email queries are coming in, new legislation has resulted in out-of-date templates and our lawyer has ten different systems, spreadsheets and workflows to manage everything.

Many law firms in the UK are feeling the pressure as clients expect higher levels of service and communication while demanding quick turnarounds.

How can this pressure be alleviated?

What changes can be made to help an already successful law firm deal with extensive workloads, all while maintaining expert levels of client care? It might seem like an obvious point, but the biggest change a firm can implement is strategic adoption of systems and technology.

What may be the biggest surprise for many readers who hold the opinion that law firms have done a lot to catch up to the current processes and technology standards, only 18% of lawyers believe their firm is fast or very fast at implementing new technology*.

Many lawyers find some of their firm’s processes to be behind, with 52% rating their firm's legal research speed as slow.*

Reasons for these figures could stem from the fact that two-thirds of lawyers report that their firms are slow to respond to change.*

How have firms addressed these challenges?

Our LEAP Estates marketing manager Samuel Jackson, recently spent some time with Vanessa St John from Acer Prime Law to learn more about how they have adopted technology, up to date processes and have been able to respond quickly to change.

Acer Prime Law is a longstanding private client firm with multiple offices operating in England and Wales. Trading under its current name for the past seven years, the firm expanded into probate with the launch of a dedicated department under the leadership of Vanessa St John. What began as a one-person operation quickly grew into a four-person team. By September, Vanessa also took on management of the conveyancing department, bringing both teams under a shared mission: to modernise and streamline private client work.

Before making a change to their processes and adoption of technology, the firm’s probate work was managed using a combination of manual processes and separate tools as well as various spreadsheets. This approach presented several challenges, particularly when managing HMRC forms, estate accounts, and correspondence across multiple cases and users. Estate accounts are a common area of challenge for law firms, often taking hours to draft and finalise.

When it came time to realise change within the firm and invest in technology, Vanessa and her team selected LEAP Estates for its comprehensive approach to matter management and legal automation.

• “Everything was done manually… All the HMRC forms were done manually, everything was done independently and then just all logged together,”Vanessa explained.

Acer Prime Law were able to streamline their estate accounts and IHT forms processes, solving one of the key areas they were looking to strengthen.

• “We just liked all the functionality behind it — the fact that it does all the IHT forms for you. And the support is very good.”

• “The Estate App is really good... You can get an assets and liabilities printout really quickly, so if you’ve got a client in front of you, you just flick onto that section. It generates all the estate accounts.”

Many firms that invest in new technology find that it solves more than just the initial challenge they set out to fix. In Acer Prime Law’s case, it brought many existing and scattered processes all under the same software umbrella, enhancing visibility, efficiency, productivity and team cohesion.

• “We have everything in the same LEAP Estates programme. It’s just so much easier. You get all your management information. Everything’s all there.”

Another huge area of development, and where lawyers often feel their firms are falling behind is in the investment of AI. This was another area that Acer Prime Law was thrilled with when they adopted LEAP Estates, highlighting the benefits over using traditional methods of legal research.

• “LawY is excellent — really, really good. Everything’s in a logical order, so it’s much easier to use.”

Now, the firm is experiencing the benefits of technology adoption across every regional office, citing the improvements from having everything in one place and using the same workflow.

• “The whole probate team work remotely, so we’re all in different parts of the country. It’s great — they can access it anywhere in the UK. The team at head office in Norwich can access it too. It stores all the letters, it stores everything in chronological order.”

Lastly, one of the biggest improvements the firm has seen relates to a law firm's most valuable resource.

• “It saves time. It really saves time. It saves us doing everything manually. We used to do all our own letters manually — it’s done away with all that. You can literally print and press. It pre-fills everything.”

Conclusion

For Vanessa St John and the team at Acer Prime Law, the adoption of technology across the firm has proven to be a vital strategic decision, helping to support the complexity of private client work while improving daily operations, saving time, and enabling remote collaboration.

Using a system that is built for modern law firms, single practitioners or multi-site practices who want to deliver consistent, compliant, and efficient private client services has proved to be a fundamentally important decision for growth and staying ahead of the market.

If you’ve found this article helpful and want to learn more about how technology is supporting private client law firm growth, get in touch with our team of specialists today - Click here to get in touch.

Sources

• *The slowest moving areas of UK law firms, based on a 2025 report by LexisNexis, which surveyed 800+ law firms.