By: Colin Bohanna, Managing Director, Dye & Durham UK
A year can feel short in the life of a profession that measures change in decades and centuries – but it can still reveal a great deal. I’m writing this while reflecting on my first anniversary with Dye & Durham UK, and thinking about the history, future, and present of both the company and the UK legal profession.
When I joined Dye & Durham UK, I wasn’t new to the legal industry or legal technology. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve managed change and helped organisations think strategically about the future. What was new to me was this company, its people, and its unique history.
This past year has been about getting to know all three. I’ve listened to colleagues who have been part of the Dye & Durham journey for decades. I’ve learned how the Company has evolved globally over 150 years. Most importantly, I’ve seen how that history connects with the needs of legal professionals here in the UK.
Throughout this past year, what has resonated with me is how much can change, yet some things remain the same. Legal practice is built on precedent and continuity, yet it has always evolved when the right changes come along. That balance – respecting history while embracing change that genuinely helps – is the same balance at the heart of Dye & Durham UK’s history, and the daily reality of every legal professional.
From Canada to the UK: The Story of Dye & Durham’s Growth
UK readers might be surprised to learn just how long and just how extensive the Dye & Durham history is. Our company was founded in Canada in 1874 as the Dominion Blank Form Company, supplying lawyers with the forms they needed to practise. When Shirley Dye and Sydney Durham acquired the business in 1911, they gave it the name we still carry today. That same year, the typewriter was patented, and just two years later, Alexander Graham Bell secured the U.S. patent for the telephone.
I have sometimes thought about the reaction to both the typewriter and the telephone when I think of legal technology. It’s hard to believe it now, but both inventions were met with skepticism when they were introduced – and not without good reason. They had genuine issues in their beginnings. Early typewriters, for example, only printed in uppercase and were “blind”, meaning you couldn’t see what you were typing, which made some clerks insist the pen was still faster and more reliable. Early telephones crackled with interference, and many professionals dismissed them as novelties unfit for serious business.
Yet both tools endured because they evolved and got better.. Both a typewriter, at the time, and a telephone, which is still relevant today, made daily work simpler, clearer, and more connected. That same principle has carried Dye & Durham forward for over 150 years – and from paper forms to digital platforms, Dye & Durham has always grown by serving the practical needs of the legal profession. Today, Dye & Durham supports more than 60,000 legal professionals globally, with 1,200 employees across five continents.
Here in the UK, that history runs just as deep. Since 2017, fifteen respected legal services providers – spanning practice management, KYC and AML, conveyancing, cashiering, and more – have become part of the Dye & Durham group, with the oldest of them serving law firms since 1978. Over decades, they earned reputations as trusted partners dedicated to the UK legal community. Today, we’re proud of the heritage and experience of those providers and how they have been brought together under Dye & Durham UK, combining local expertise with the resources of a global company. As with the legal profession, legal technology shines when it comes together to bring people together and to advance a common cause.
This is why I see Dye & Durham UK as the continuation of a story that has been unfolding for decades. Today, we are able to combine trusted local knowledge with global investment to deliver solutions that genuinely help law firms work more effectively.
Change in the UK Legal Profession: Tradition and Progress
Spending the past year immersed in this history and planning for the future has reminded me how deliberately the legal profession approaches change. I’ve seen first-hand the pressures solicitors and firms are under – first during and then recovering from the impact of Covid and the rapid change to work from home; managing long hours and heavy client loads; coping with legal aid shortfalls; and carrying heavy compliance responsibilities; all while giving clients the care and attention they deserve.
In most industries, those kinds of pressures would lead to quick fixes and reactive decisions. In law, the instinct is different. Lawyers approach change slowly, because they know their duty is not just to keep business moving but to protect clients and uphold trust. That is why the first questions about anything new are always practical: Will this improve accuracy or introduce risk? Will it save time or add to the workload? Will it make things clearer for clients, or more complicated?
That caution is sometimes mistaken for resistance. In reality, it is the mark of a profession that understands its responsibility, and one all of us at Dye & Durham UK respect immensely. I’ve also seen first-hand that when the right changes do come, lawyers adopt them—not overnight, but steadily, logically, and with a focus on outcomes that last.
History proves the point. The typewriter and the telephone were doubted when they first appeared (I’d wager most robustly by the legal profession!), yet both endured because they genuinely improved communication and productivity. The same logic applies today. More platforms, more logins, more add-ons do not automatically equal progress. In fact, they can create friction and fatigue. Change that makes sense, the kind that reduces duplication, saves time, and strengthens client service, is the kind that lasts.
That is the guiding principle at Dye & Durham UK. By combining decades of local expertise with the resources of a global business, we are focused on building technology that reflects the realities of legal practice here in the UK: high responsibility, high pressure, and with no margin for error from tools that add noise instead of clarity. We’re building technologies that respect how hard legal professionals work by making it easier for them to do what matters most—serve their clients.
Supporting Law Firms in the UK Legal Technology Market
I’ve been so happy to be with Dye & Durham this past year, and I am proud of the work we’re doing together:
What I hear most often from local legal professionals is not that they don’t have enough technology – it’s that they have too much of it, and it doesn’t work for their needs, or interact with the other five softwares they have to use, or it crashes at the most inopportune time. That’s objectively making legal practice harder than it has to be, and it’s an issue across legal software provision: more platforms, more passwords, more overlapping tools.
Progress does not come from piling on more tools that complicate already complicated processes; it comes from making the essentials work better together. That is the principle behind the systems we are building in the UK. Rather than asking firms to learn something new at every turn, our aim is to connect what already works, reduce duplication, and create more time for client work.
Looking Ahead: Building on Dye & Durham UK’s History
My biggest lesson this year underscores the very history of this business: change only matters if it makes work smarter. That has always been the difference between innovations that last and those that fade away.
So, my invitation is simple: let’s keep shaping this change together. Law has always adapted best when it balances tradition with progress. If we keep that balance in mind, we can ensure the next 150 years of legal practice – and of Dye & Durham UK’s history – are even stronger than the last.
About Colin BohannaColin is the Managing Director, UK at Dye & Durham, and has worked with and led customer service, sales and success teams for more than 20 years. Having worked with industry leaders including Clio, Indeed and Oracle, Colin has been at the forefront of how technology has evolved and benefited businesses for more than two decades. He has worked closely with legal professionals across the UK, Europe and numerous other regions to help them best identify and evaluate technologies that have helped them solve operational challenges, take advantage of emerging opportunities and increase efficiencies in their businesses that allow them to grow faster and with less effort. |
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