Introduction\n
\nMy name's Chris Grant. I have been working with a number of technologies and startups that are all focused on developing new ideas for bringing technology to Legal.
During my time at Barclays, I actually carried out a couple of different roles working with the in-house legal team from an operations perspective, to think about how to work more effectively and more efficiently. Laterally working within Barclays ventures as part of the Barclays Eagle lab initiative.\nSo Barclays Eagle labs being a number of incubators opened up and down the country and predominantly a old brunch network where we were creating incubators for all sorts of ideas and new technologies that were coming through, founders looking to build up their businesses.\nI was focused on law-tech.
\nPart 1: Smarter, faster, better\n
\nWhy did I get into this? And why am I excited about legal and legal innovation? I guess all the way through my career, I've been looking at how to do things smarter, faster, more effectively, and more efficiently. This is an industry that has not changed in hundreds of years. And we're at this kind of precipice right now where things are starting to flex. Not only have we got technology that allows us to do things quicker, but actually the way that we practice law is starting to change.
Part 2: How to beat Goliath\n
\nIt's a very traditional model within legal everything from the law firms to the way that we operate, there isn't this drive to be more effective and more efficient than if we think about everything based on the hourly rate. You're not incentivised to do things quicker. If you're charging by the hour, the industry has to be more flexible and the industry has to change in many ways to be able to start to adopt new ways of working and think about how to adapt themselves, to be able to deliver that level of service.
Clients are certainly asking for something new. You can start to see that firms are moving with the times, and starting to think about how they can more effectively provide services to the clients that they're working with. The balance is starting to come through and the understanding how to deliver new efficiencies through new technologies, but pricing in a more effective way that actually can probably make them a bit more profitable if they thought about it, challenge yourself to be smarter, to work smarter, to think smarter.
\nSo suddenly with the pandemic. And of course we were no longer able to be in the office. The client was no longer in the office. Things had to change, you couldn't wet sign documents anymore, which was still happening. So though there's been e-signatures around for a long time. Finally, they got embraced. People have to work at how to do these kinds of things and have the world continue to turn. People are working in a more hybrid way, but we're also using technologies to allow us to do that.
\nPart 3: LegalOps as an agent for change\n
\nLegal operations. It's all over the globe, right now. Everybody's talking about legal operations within the industry and legal firms are talking about it, and it's certainly in place within in-house legal teams.\nMy own experience of it has seen it change already significantly from just being someone to help manage the people within a legal organisation. So partnering with the GC to help them to kind of run the function to now being much more agents for change and thinking about how to drive efficiencies and do things in a smarter way.
Cost is absolutely one of the biggest things that any in-house legal team will be focused on right now, how can they be doing more with less? And how can they be more effectively managing their external engagements and managing the partner firms that they work with? So that's very much where legal ops has now got a big role to play. And there are also key at thinking about how to, as I say, be that agent for change and drive efficiencies within an organisation and think about how to do things smarter. So being able to do process reviews, being able to evaluate technology that is coming in through the door and thinking about how better to, to apply that to the way that they're working, truly getting under the hood of understanding how an in-house legal team operates, what work is being done, who's doing that work. Who's the best person to do that work.
\nAnd therefore thinking about how the people that you work with, the processes you use, the tools that you have available to you can all help you on that journey, but also thinking about how the data coming out, the other side of that can help to inform the future.
\nOrganisations that are struggling to change will suddenly find that they have to change or will be forced to change if they want to be attractive to new employees coming in through the door. Allow lawyers to focus on the stuff that they really want to do. If you can take away some of the turn and churn contract management, pulling together documents, if you can automate all of that, lawyers can focus on the bit that they want to do, which is the negotiating. So if you can free people up to do that, then there's a real win from having that technology in place.
\nPart 4: Improving legal service delivery with Fibonacci\n
\nFibonacci is there to help to orchestrate, I would say, the way that you run your matters, it gives visibility around the way that you're doing things, and it gives you the ability to track all the stages that are happening within a legal negotiation. Fibonacci is different to others in that you've got that connectivity, but you've also got the ability to use what are like the Lego blocks to build it the way that you need it to build, or you want it to build, it flexes with you, it flexes with your process, and it works within the environment that you are in. So if you need it to connect to other tools, it can connect to other tools. You need it to work with Microsoft. Do you need it to work with billing tools, whatever it is you have in place, you've got that connectivity and there's no complexities to that.\nThe team have worked really hard to make that a very straightforward, manageable process. Something that gives flex and the ability to operate again at speed and be efficient, not only in the process that you're doing, but in working with the tools that you've got, we're not particularly lawyers great at evaluating technology. It's not necessarily within our toolkit. It's not in our wheelhouse. We've not been trained on that. So there's a kind of a gap that needs to be overcome, but some of the smarter technologies will help you to do that translation service, to be able to understand it, Fibonacci being very much one and a law advisor, being a team that helps with that.
We will see these challenges and adoption of technologies increase because one it's being easy, easier to do the translation. But two, the people that we're talking to are starting to change. Within in-house teams and even within law firms, there's a different group of people being brought to the table. People that understand innovation, understand technology, understand the implementation of tools, understand change management. They're part of the conversation now, and they never were before. There's also a new generation coming through from legal education that students are different, millennials. Everyone's got a different view as to how they’re willing to work or how they expect to work.
\nPart 5: Supercharged panel firm management with LegalEye\n
\nLegalEye is probably one of the most exciting tools that I've seen in a long time, because it is the one that gives me power as the client, because I suddenly start to get visibility around the firms that I'm operating with. I can start to see information around pitches, tenders, relationship, there's metrics in place that I can dictate how I want to measure performance and work with firms to be able to do that, kind of does two things. Cause it certainly from a client perspective, gives me the opportunity to get, visibly, see the health of relationship that I have with law firms that are providing me services.\nBut on the flip side of that for a law firm also really easily allows you to demonstrate value, which has been harder to do before. With LegalEye you've got the ability to control all of those core elements and not just control them, define them because of the way that the tools are set up and the flexibility that's built into it. It works for you as a user to be able to define what you want your relationship to be for you, to be able to set your expectations and measure against those and be able therefore to have that engagement with everybody that you use externally has to come through that kind of filter. They have to come through that funnel. That means that all of those metrics and those expectations are being applied to everybody that you're working with, you have got information at your fingertips that you will not have had before. You're empowered to make much better, more well-informed decisions about your engagements, about who you're sending work to. You're able to assess pitches, tenders in a way that you weren't able to before. You're capturing more information as to who puts together the right type of fee arrangement, who responds in the fastest amount of time and does better from doing that, who is getting used to providing you with what you need to be able to make a decision about who you should be sending your work to.
All of this is something you never had to before. So you're finally in the driving seat when it comes to controlling your law firms.
\nPart 6: The future of Law\n
\nI think the future of law is, we're definitely going to see technology step in. It allows us to become as lawyers more sophisticated in terms of the work that we can then focus on.
I'm really excited for the future of legal. There's so many opportunities. And we really are now at the precipice of something new happening. You've got organisations, certainly legal organisations that are embracing change. You've got challenges coming in the form of alternative legal service providers who are thinking about how to deliver things in a different way. And we've got technology that we didn't even think was possible.
\nWhat are the legal risks of the future, as well as the platforms that allow us to solve them? There's much more to come. I'm excited for that. And I'm excited to see what the likes of LawAdvisor are going to do to make sure that they're ahead of the game on that this is a team that continually, continually out thinks itself, in terms of how to progress and how to do things better.
\nI'm surprised every time I come back to see what the team has done, and if I try and think about what the team's going to be doing in two years' time, I've got no idea that alone five years, but I know it's going to be good.
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