Jim Runsten, founder and CEO of Swedish law firm Synch, spoke at the HighQ Forum, London 2015, sharing his thoughts on the future of legal services and giving an inspiring case study about how his firm used HighQ to become the first to provide 24/7 digital services to its clients.
Jim began by giving a brief introduction to the firm and explained that when Synch was founded in March 2014, the team considered no other vendor than HighQ for their client extranet. The founders had used HighQ in previous roles and were confident in the platform; how well it worked and the fact the clients liked it.
Jim went on to explain how passionate the firm is about innovation and technology and how their mission is to change the way legal services are delivered and lawyers perceived. Synch were confident that with the technologies that HighQ provides, the firm could do the things it set out to: “it’s all about collaboration”, Jim raved.
In January 2015, Synch launched WeSynch; a digital services department focused on delivering digital tools to further support their clients’ needs. Jim explained how Synch created a suite of high quality digital legal tools accessible from any device 24/7. It takes the modules from HighQ Collaborate to provide templates and legal information, contract management, Q&A and transaction assistance, under the titles: WeSynch Contract, WeSynch Corporate, WeSynch Line and WeSynch Deal.
Jim was insistent that the digital services Synch provides do not only make their clients working lives easier and more efficient but also their own. He went through a slide for each digital service and spoke about the features it provided. For example, WeSynch Contract is a document suite that securely stores contracts electronically with the firm instead of a key person’s inbox or hard copy binder. Jim explained how this makes it easy and convenient for clients to put questions to the firm and provides an area to access their industry expertise; this means the firm gets less emails and phone calls and that everything is logged and traceable.
Jim told us how popular WeSynch has been with clients so far and how the firm are creating new modules and services based on requests and suggestions they receive from their clients. The firm are currently working on WeSynch IP, WeSynch Exposure and WeSynch Financing and expect to continue to develop additional services under the platform.
Throughout his talk, Jim emphasised the importance of collaboration in the legal sector and how times and practices have changed in the industry. His slides showed how lawyers used to work “traditionally”, compared to how they do now and highlighted the fact that it is digital tools that are enabling this shift in work practices. He discussed how paper is becoming redundant and that soon, young lawyers would no longer have to sit for hours flicking through a ring binder, as everything would all be digital; saving time and money.
Jim really sparked interest when he went on to talk about Synch’s future and particularly SynchLab:a centralised place for the firm’s innovation resources for developing and testing new tools, services, business models and ideas. Synch’s passion for technology shone through as Jim described SynchRobot and SynchTheLaw; two projects the firm has been working on.
SynchRobot explores the possibilities of artificial intelligence being used to further increase efficiency and provide a view alongside the human legal advice. Jim was confident that machine learning will replace the “leg work”of today and believes it’s not a matter of if it happens, but when.
SynchTheLaw introduces the idea of crowdsourcing legal advice; “why go to one lawyer, when you can go to lots?” Jim spoke about how Synch is planning its first legal hackathon where expertise from several jurisdictions, as well as industries, will come together to try and resolve challenges that are facing digital business today.
Although it’s still early days for Synch, Jim was confident that HighQ has been a great success for the firm so far and explained that the beauty of using HighQ is that the technology is all on one platform and a platform that is easily managed.
As the world becomes more digital, so does the legal sector and Synch are clearly working hard to be on top of the digital game. We can’t wait to see what else Synch will come up with in the future.
For more information about Synch and their services, read our case study here.
We’ve written about the other talks at the forum too, read about our CSO Stuart Barr’s HighQ update and product roadmap talk here.
