means maintaining a clear focus on key technology predictions is of paramount importance. Doing so helps their practices to remain relevant, in demand and ahead of the pack.Mr Adler says MinterEllison has five technology predictions on its radar. The first is cloud adoption.Cloud adoption will finally hit the legal vertical, he says.Firms are starting to find the right balance between data security and the flexibility that only cloud models can offer.The evolution of technology will eventually create a new role in the legal profession, according to Mr Adler.A new role in legal will surface that is a true hybrid lawyer-technologist, he says.Due to the changing nature of a lawyers day-to-day work, this will be driven by necessity rather than being a nice to have.Thirdly, Mr Adler says cyber security controls will become more rigid and formalised in the legal profession, to ensure firms genuinely comply with their ethical and risk commitments to clients.A significant investment from boards and executives will be needed, he notes.As in many other professions, workflow tools will be heavily adopted and more deeply entrenched between law firms and clients, Mr Adler predicts.The efficiency and effectiveness of these technologies for both parties cannot be understated, and they will become a must in an industry that is becoming extremely competitive and facing deeper cost and pricing pressures than ever before, he says.Lastly, Mr Adler says technological advances will enable data to become a core focus point.If firms are not providing rich and actionable data insights to in-house legal operations teams and general counsel, they will find themselves losing their place on their clients panels, he says.CASE STUDY: HERBERT SMITH FREEHILLSThis global firm has implemented key technology measures, enabling its employees to work on any client matter, anywhere and at any time.In September 2016, HSF announced it had become the first global merged firm to achieve worldwide technology integration.Speaking to Lawyers Weekly at the time, HSF chief information officer Haig Tyler said this worldwide technology integration has enabled tech mobility to create a seamless global system for the firm from devices and software to the data centres driving it.The real key driver for the approach were taking in regards to technology is the overall business strategy of really becoming a single law firm, able to operate globally and able to have all of our people work on any client matter, anywhere globally within the HSF office network, Mr Tyler said.He added that this worldwide technology integration presented a number of other big wins for the HSF network.There are a number of threads to this, he said.In a slightly mundane way, what it means is weve got ourselves on a really up-to-date system ... But far more importantly, what it means is weve got a far more mobile and flexible workforce.Another benefit of having this single system is that it allows matters, whether client-related or directly firm-related, to be managed more quickly and efficiently, Mr Tyler said.More often than not now you can get to the end of a working day, have whatever management or technical problem and you know youve got