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On 22 September we welcomed back panellists and lawyers after the summer in our first autumnal event for in-house counsel supported by and . We also welcomed Lisa McClory—founder of and —general counsel at esports brand Fnatic. Our discussion this time focused on trends in digital transformation and how legal teams are approaching these changes. As well as highlighting trends in the sector, revealed through the latest ÀÏ˾»úÎçÒ¹¸£Àû research, our speakers provided us with top tips on how to manage workflows and increase efficiency using digital tools.

As always, we asked for your insights to launch the discussion. Efficiency, innovation and flexibility were among the top terms which came to mind when we asked participants to consider what digital transformation means for their teams. 

Half our respondents felt that the primary challenge their legal teams face is too much time spent on low value repetitive tasks, something which Andy and Lisa showed us can be substantially improved through the assistance of technology.

The primary barriers for greater adoption of technology identified by our participants were varied, with an equal split between lack of understanding of which technology is better for the organisation, lack of time and lack of budget. 

Tech trends in 2020

ÀÏ˾»úÎçÒ¹¸£Àû head of in-house legal marketing, Louisa Van Eeden-Smit, then took over and ran us through five macro trends in digital transformation in legal teams that have arisen in the past year.

ÀÏ˾»úÎçÒ¹¸£Àû surveyed around 120 legal teams across the UK, covering different team sizes, organisations and industry sectors. The research looked at how teams are adopting legal technology, its benefits and the overall impact of this on evolution of legal departments.

The key trends uncovered were:

1. Unsurprisingly, tech adoption will continue to increase—promisingly, the percentage of in-house lawyers that feel deploying and integrating new tech as a barrier to adoption has also dropped, from 40% in 2020 vs 56% in 2018. Furthermore, there was also indication that when teams do invest in tech, it is now more likely to be used than was seen in previous reports

   However, 60% of those surveyed said they do not intend to increase their legal tech budgets in the shorter term—likely due to covid related financial constraints
   

2. The report reflected the results of the poll conducted at the beginning of the session, in that increasing efficiency remained the main driver for tech adoption. Key ‘pain points’ identified here were finding effective comms with the rest of the business (raised by 56% of respondents) and spending too much time reviewing documents (51% of respondents

    

3. Looking three to five years into the future—lawyers want greater data insights from technology. However, what kind of insights lawyers want differs between smaller and larger teams:
   1. for 70% of smaller teams improving accuracy of legal work becomes more important
   2. for medium (71%) and larger-sized (66%) teams the ability to decrease security risks for their organisation becomes more important 
4. Once again, as reflected in the polls, the report indicated that time and resources are key barriers to digital transformation—less than 40% of legal teams reported giving attention to legal operations, and those who did were part of larger legal teams. Legal teams had high expectations of their law firms when it came to delivering benefits from technology and helping their own legal teams make the best use of tech, with half of legal teams surveyed expecting their law firms to provide advice on which tech they could benefit from as a legal team
   
5. The report also indicated that in the future in-house legal teams will grow to be larger, specialised, diversified, with 62% of the counsel surveyed agreeing that legal teams will continue to grow as increasingly work is done in-house

Louisa left us with three recommendations to consider when implementing a tech strategy or digital transformation initiative:

1. Aim to deliver better legal and business outcomes—a multi-disciplinary approach can help get buy-in and adoption from stakeholders and can flag pitfalls that could be avoided or opportunities that can be harnessed to save time and money
   
2. Make time for innovation—by standardising key workflows and expanding the use of automation, time will be freed up to focus on high value specialist legal work where legal can have substantive strategic impact on commercial outcomes.
   
3. Invest in specialist, operational and technical roles—as these can help you do more with fewer resources. Beyond full time hires, you can also consider:
   1. Leveraging resources already in the business in other departments
   2. Using a consultant
   3. Considering using part time or contracted resources

Legal tech is not a panacea

Louisa then handed over to our external panellist Andy Cooke, who gave an overview of his own experiences of using legal technology. He spoke of the following challenges and provided tips on how to overcome them:

• Securing resources—a lack of time, agency and control leads to an unhappy workspace. To improve your workflow, you need to find time and be rigorous about it. Andy suggested putting yourselves in the shoes of an outsider— if a new person was to replace you, how would they look at your workflow and improve it? For example, could they outsource or delegate anything?
• Using legal technology effectively—don’t try to improve the whole process in one go. legal Technology will uprate your existing capabilities so you will spend best if you know specifically what you want to solve.

Andy highlighted the need to improve processes before applying legal tech—legal tech is not a panacea. Furthermore, much like a musician learning a new piece, to improve processes, teams need to divide the work into chunks, focusing on each one before stringing them together to hear the completed melody.

Even at the outset of a matter it is possible to streamline legal processes. Andy suggested getting things sent over by clients through a standard form.

As an example of optimisation that can be applied after looking at workflow improvement, Andy suggested the use of bots such as by Josef. They give clients the advantage of speed to market and don’t require knowledge of coding.

During the matter, software such as can help maintain records of work and follow workflows.

Tips for sharing knowledge

Lisa McClory, founder of Fractal Legal then gave a presentation on tips for using Microsoft and the Google suite of products.  

She discussed the differences and similarities between Microsoft 365 groups and Google workspace to help listeners choose the most efficient tools for collaborative work.

Lisa then provided practical ways in which knowledge can be shared within legal teams, ensuring maximum efficiency and minimum duplication of work:

1. Create surveys through Google or Microsoft forms to gather information about plans and ideas
2. Gather contract templates or documents, using Forms, Power BI and other data analytics software
3. Make a matter intake form through Microsoft Lists and connect it to other processes using Power Automate, Google Apps Script or Zapier
4. Launch a knowledge community on Sharepoint or Google Sites—include Lexis RSS feeds in these to ensure you stay on top of industry insights
5. Upgrade newsletters to make them more visually engaging (see Microsoft Sway) and use SendFox or MailChimp to obtain reader analytics

Lisa reminded listeners to think about accessibility at an early stage of the process, in order to help all colleagues and clients access the materials.

The session concluded with a demo of LexisCreate and , two new tools to help you work smarter.

To join the conversation and access all the materials discussed in this talk, join the .

Join us at the next session for your essential regulatory and commercial news update on Wednesday 3rd November, 10:00 – 10:45.

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