The Innovator’s Toolkit webinar, run by HighQ, was attended by over 150 professionals from within the legal industry. HighQ’s Rob MacAdam (Head of Legal Design & Solutions) and Ben Wightwick (Product Director), were joined by Gail McNaught (Manager - Knowledge Management E-services, Pinsent Masons LLP) and James Thomas (Global Lead of Legal Services Technology, KPMG), to discuss practical tips for deploying legal technology, particularly the HighQ platform, to digitally transform and innovate legal practices and re-define client engagement and legal service delivery.
It won’t come as a shock to many lawyers to hear that law firms are facing huge disruptive pressure. There is now greater competition from their peers, new market entrants, legal start-ups and, as James Thomas admitted, even ‘the Big 4.’ Consequently, law firms have never been under more pressure to reduce costs and find ways of delivering value for their clients. As Rob MacAdam says, “Law firms need to become the ‘smart’ law firms of the future.”
HighQ coined the term ‘SmartLaw’ to refer to the new approach that law firms must take to adapt to the evolving legal landscape. SmartLaw encompasses a range of areas which law firms and legal teams are currently striving to improve, including a greater focus on clients, culture and technology. The ultimate aim of a SmartLaw firm is to find a more efficient, cost-effective, collaborative and value-orientated legal service delivery model to ensure excellent client experience and long-term success for the firm.
With the legal landscape ever-changing, can businesses afford to get left behind? James Thomas thinks not. He spoke about how KPMG are seeing more and more of their clients asking for help with digital transformation of legal service delivery, as well as digitisation of their own in-house teams: “We need to look at the key focus, and that is delivering value to a client. When it comes to technology, the bar is set fairly low in the legal industry. Law firms have been historically risk averse.”
Thomas went on to say, “I was with a large multinational bank just yesterday, and they’re discussing whether they should make it mandatory as part of their training to include coding and an understanding of technology, for all of their lawyers and in-house staff to prepare them for the future.”
Gail McNaught has taken a keen interest in the evolution of client requests, and how they’ve dramatically changed over the past few years.
“Businesses are now demanding new models and ways of solving their legal problems, and within Pinsent Masons we’re trying to bring all those components and requests together. We’ve built a team to look at all the online instructions we were receiving, and package it up into one product or service. Clients are just looking for a one-stop-shop these days, and products like HighQ can be the portal into this.”
But despite the positivity and passion in some quarters for transforming legal service delivery and client experience, how do law firms that are new to this get started? Rob MacAdam believes that it’s about finding the right talent and empowering them.
“The starting point is to find lawyers who are hungry for change, and to empower them to push their firm forward. It’s imperative that you create a framework where new ideas and solutions can be found, and both listened to and acted on."
“For this to work, the entire organisation must be on-board, from the top, all the way down. Transformation isn’t a job for just one team, it’s an overhaul for an entire firm, so to get the buy-in from senior management is an integral part of the process.”
MacAdam then went on to explain that the process being collaborative is an important part of the project.
“One of the most important things to remember is to keep the development process collaborative - it might involve trainees, PAs, paralegals or senior partners. No-one has the monopoly over transformation. Ideas shouldn’t just disappear within one team - all stakeholders throughout the process should be involved, otherwise an exclusionary approach will mean that change is inefficient.”
McNaught champions this idea, and stated that a digital culture has been achieved at Pinsent Masons, thanks to the board allowing staff members the opportunity to be innovative.
"Every single individual within Pinsent Masons can have an idea, and it'll be pushed through the Global Innovation Hub; no matter what the idea is, and whatever the solution is. This has been driven by our Director of Knowledge. With people like him behind us, as well a large team of smart-law delivery champions within the business, we're very fortunate."
One way of inspiring and developing the digital and innovative culture which McNaught mentioned, is by giving people a digital toolkit to experiment with - thus offering the ability to try new things, and in turn cultivating the digitally creative culture.
But how are people using HighQ as a digital toolkit? MacAdam offered a case study from Allens, focusing on their real estate due diligence app, which was built using HighQ, Kira and Neota Logic. The toolkit has helped Allens reduce the time and resources spent on reviewing complex leases. They summarised that the lawyers are now able to spend more hours on specific flagged issues, and they estimate that they're now seeing a 20-30% cost reduction as compared to the previous process, showing how HighQ and its integrations can help create a new and innovative legal service delivery solution.
The challenge for many firms is structuring for transformation. Finding lawyers and stakeholders who are hungry to change how services are being delivered, and empowering these people, is necessary for success. Once these people are put in a position to have an impact, the task is far easier.
At Pinsent Masons, McNaught told us that the lawyers are actively encouraged to engage with innovation.
"Innovation vouchers are provided, gifting lawyers innovation hours, in which they can dedicate time to innovation, and in turn, reduce their fee earning targets, so they don't feel that they're taking time away from fee earning, whilst engaging in innovative and technical projects."
For this to happen, a framework is essential, which helps to identify new ideas and solutions, and opens a continuing pipeline for these conversations. And, of course, communication and collaboration are key. Whether you're talking to other lawyers, the board or general stakeholders, it's important that everyone is on the same page. If these people aren't won over, then you're fighting a losing battle, MacAdam believes.
Once a framework is in place, a firm needs to embrace SmartLaw roles, and put the right team in place to carry out the work - whether that's design, build or implementation-based. Many new job titles have popped up in the past couple of years, including Legal Designer, Head of Legal Tech and Legal Solutions Architect. Having an agile innovation framework doesn't only apply to change within one firm. Firms are now being required to work together more frequently, particularly when sitting on a panel, to deliver new and collaborative solutions for a client. Inter-firm collaboration offers a more seamless customer experience than 10 law firms all acting independently for the same client.
Ben Wightwick believes that this offers a better experience.
"Client experience is key. It's important to look at the client, and see how we can strategically work together to achieve what the client requires, and often it takes more than one law firm to do this. Having an infrastructure that's flexible and allows us to do this is important. This means you'll also be able to see who is delivering what, therefore demonstrating your individual firm's value in a transaction or project."
The webinar was followed by questions from the listeners:
How do you deal with fee earners resistant to engage in time consuming innovation and knowledge projects?
It’s important to make engaging with innovation projects an acceptable and encouraged part of a lawyer’s role, and to align these projects with a lawyer's performance objectives (in much the same way as business development). Hourly targets are often barrier to engagement, with lawyers worried that non-chargeable projects will dent their utilisation, and scupper their chances of a bonus. Gail McNaught says that Pinsent Masons have found a creative solution - they offer ‘vouchers for innovation,’ which are hours vouchers, available to lawyers participating in innovation and change projects. The hours count towards chargeable targets, so the fee earner isn’t missing out on any hours-related bonuses.
Another way to encourage and enable participation is through secondments. Rob MacAdam notes that there has been a marked increase in lawyer secondments into technology, innovation and knowledge management roles within law firms. Secondments tend to be highly effective as they free up lawyers to focus solely on innovative projects, rather than having to also juggle the demands of fee earning. They also work particularly well for female lawyers returning from maternity leave; in fact, some of the most successful change and innovation secondments are those filled by returning mothers who are looking for a challenge that they can balance with family life.
Finally, with legal technology, change and innovation becoming such a strategic priority for law firms, there are increasingly new and exciting career opportunities available for lawyers who want to be at the vanguard of this new movement. Law firms are crying out for lawyers who are entrepreneurial, tech-savvy and who ‘think different.’ James Thomas, one of the webinar’s panellists is a prime example - he is a former M&A lawyer who now leads Legal Tech at KMPG, a far cry from his previous role, but a position that wouldn't be possible without his legal experience.
How do you prove success, and what does ROI look like?
Success can mean many different things in each project - it’s important to have clear value-driven objectives, so you can see what value needs to be delivered for the project to be called a success, e.g. number of new client wins, increase in knowledge sharing, reduced matter cycle times, percentage increase of new instructions from an existing client etc.
Always remember that value cannot be demonstrated without a benchmark; therefore, never embark on an innovation and change project without knowing how you’re currently performing in the target area. Where are you now, what are you trying to achieve, what value are you trying to deliver, and who is impacted? Questions like these need to be answered at the start of the project. A clear set of project stakeholders and sponsors is also critical to the success of the project.
It’s important to remember that ROI isn’t just about direct impact – innovation and change projects can often have indirect impact elsewhere in the firm. If a new tech-driven solution can be reused or repurposed within the firm then you can address multiple issues with the same solution or slight variant. One project can therefore deliver exponential value for the firm.
In reference to HighQ specifically, there is a very simple way of showing ROI. If you are a HighQ client and your firm has budgeted for a new legal-tech solution, then if you solve the problem using your existing HighQ platform you have directly saved that budget spend. Always look to your digital toolkit first – it can help you deliver a huge amount of value!
What’s the best way to identify quick wins and high priority projects?
Communication is key! As an innovation team, you need to communicate high level capability, and share success stories. Gathering insight and input from the business about specific pain points and needs will also help when moving forward - colleagues will either have a firm idea of what needs to be solved, or they will be inspired by the possibilities that the technology can bring to the team.
It’s important to find champions and key contacts throughout the firm, and establish a regular dialogue. These champions should be keeping their ear to the ground within their teams to identify opportunities and ideas for new solutions that might require the deployment of technology.
Also, if you’re able to spot trends in ideas and requirements, this is a good place to start. As Ben Wightwick notes, “If people are regularly pinpointing one area as being a bit of a headache, then focus in on that area and prioritise looking for a new solution. A list of IT projects that have already been budgeted for could be a key document to get your hands on. These projects, as they’ve been signed off, are ready to go, so copious amounts of savings and opportunities could be hiding here - a goldmine of information”.
HighQ sounds great! Where can I find out more?
We thought you’d never ask! If you’d like more information on HighQ, or a demo of the product, then please click here.
