Legal Innovation Briefing - November edition
November 09, 2018
Contacts
Welcome to this month’s Legal Innovation Briefing, a monthly selection of insights and updates curated for in-house legal teams.
Doing ever more with ever less” - this was the challenge constantly repeated on the dedicated in-house stage at the recent Legal Geek conference in London. It was standing room only as representatives from legal teams across various industries shared practical tips and advice on ways to deal with the “more for less” challenge.
Although case studies around the implementation of various technology-based solutions were shared (eg document automation, compliance management, workflows and machine-learning document review), there was an overwhelming message that people and process must come before technology in order to make sustainable and cost-effective improvements.
Towards the end of the day, Alex Smith, Innovation Hub Manager at Reed Smith, did a great job at summarising what numerous speakers had highlighted around prioritising people and process. He talked about:
- the importance of engaging people and not chasing awards/press releases
- building deliberately diverse teams (cross-team/organisation and external providers)
- lighting small fires and starting with small projects that solve real problems
- dedicating time - innovation and change is messy, need time to think and listen
- doing something, measuring it and doing it again
- leveraging existing technology before implementing new technology.
Two other big takeaways from the Legal Geek conference were the importance of the wider legal sector ecosystem working together and Legal Design as a way to make complex legal issues more simple and engaging.
Below we provide more detail on ecosystem developments in the UK. And in next month’s briefing we will do a rundown of the Legal Design element of Legal Geek and a collaborative project that we have signed up to involving 50 organisations looking at creating a benchmark guide for contract management lifecycle.
The Big Idea: importance of the wider legal sector ecosystem working together
With over 2,000 attendees at Legal Geek, it was great to see such a diverse range of organisations represented. There seemed to be a well-balanced split of in-house teams, law firms, legal tech providers and start-ups, universities, law companies and representatives from government and law societies.
It was interesting to hear Christina Blacklaws, President of the Law Society of England and Wales, talk about the recently established LawTech Delivery Panel - a team of industry experts and leading figures from the government and judiciary who have been formed to help build a dynamic and supportive legal technology environment.
Blacklaws encouraged the tech community to engage with the Delivery Panel and share their views of what is required to create such a dynamic and supportive environment. Richard Collins of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) also highlighted the SRA’s desire to encourage as much innovation as possible in the sector.
What we are up to: Survey - transformation activity of NZ in-house teams
We’ve seen first-hand through our Legal Innovation workshop series that New Zealand’s in-house legal teams are engaging in widespread transformation activity to improve and innovate their services.
Up and till now however, it’s been difficult to get an accurate snapshot of the specific activity happening across the sector.
That’s why we’re conducting our survey: “Transforming the In-house Legal Team”. It aims to capture the exciting plans and positive results happening in this space, as well as challenges faced by in-house teams when implementing transformation activity
The survey will be circulated early next week and will take 5-10 minutes to complete.
We encourage you to participate as it will allow you to compare your team’s transformation activity against the rest of the sector. All participants who complete the survey will gain access to the full summary report and insights from the survey results.
Digest: further insights from Legal Geek
- Women in LawTech Panel - our very own Caroline Ferguson featured as part of the panel at Legal Geek and Technomancers has put together a great summary of the key points.
- The One where Reality overtook Hype - Brian Inkster from The Time Blawg shares a comprehensive summary of the conference and additional information about the legal sector generally.
