SA Lawyers Must Embrace Technology in Order to Survive and Prosper

Someone wrote recently, “Technology won’t replace lawyers, but lawyers who use technology will replace those who don’t”. As someone who specialises in eDiscovery and witnessed the transformation in the UK of the use of technology before moving to South Africa some six years ago, I would totally agree with those sentiments. Since living here, it has been my mission to educate lawyers in the use of eDiscovery technology and to persuade the Department of Justice to amend the rules of civil procedure to incorporate eDiscovery, bringing South Africa into the 21st century and aligning with other jurisdictions. I feel privileged to have met Professor Richard Susskind OBE. Amongst other things, he is President of the Society of Computers and Law; IT Adviser to Lord Chief Justice (in the UK), and a renowned author and speaker. Of the many books that he has written, all with a similar theme, I commend at least four to you. There was one he wrote a few years ago entitled, “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services”, which particularly resonated. There is another called, “Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to your Future”, and another entitled, “The Future of the Profession: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts.” His latest is “Online Courts and the Future of Justice”. All of these and others are readily available via Amazon. Do you detect his theme and my interest? Of course, it is the technology and how its use could and should be changing how lawyers think and work. I want to share a quote from the first book that I mentioned, “All lawyers must ask themselves, with their hands on their hearts, what elements of their current workload could be undertaken differently by using alternative methods of working?”. There are so many instances within the normal working life of a lawyer when technology, or a different method than the traditional norm, would positively affect their working lives and practices, and therefore that of their clients. In my case, it is all about using eDiscovery technology to assist with their cases, be they litigation, arbitration, competition or internal or regulatory investigations. Of course, we are not merely referring to lawyers in private practice, but also GC’s and in-house legal teams. A modern lawyer, who is perhaps more comfortable with technology than others, will adapt not only to the thinking but also the methods of using eDiscovery technology quickly. A modern lawyer will recognise that he does not have to look at every single document in a case and that he can use technology to filter out those that are unlikely to be of assistance or relevance. A modern lawyer will realise that using technology effectively in cases will reduce time and costs, setting him apart from those of his less enlightened brethren. A modern lawyer will have listened to his clients, the marketplace, researched the happenings in his field in other parts of the world, and be alive to different forms of assessing his fees. A modern lawyer will “sell” these innovative notions to his clients and potential clients…and win more clients! None of this is “rocket science” but it is about change and innovation. I went through this revolution in the UK and managed to train lawyers, some who thought a mouse was something that ate cheese, to use eDiscovery software successfully, in less than an hour.  I can tell you that many law students in South Africa are clamouring for more technology in their curricula. I have lectured at UWC in Cape Town and at Cape Town Law College and the interest of students is fantastic to see but also worrying.  Once qualified, they know nothing about technology as part of their work lives, which is so wrong. Similarly, a South African colleague told me recently that within her LLM course, IT law had been withdrawn. A very good friend of mine, a Senior Counsel and retired High Court Judge, and I are working hard with the LPC to bring more technology into their post-qualification courses and will go around the country lecturing. However, this is no substitute for including various aspects of technology in pre-qualification courses. Let’s go back to the beginning of this post and also my own working life. I worked in law firms as a litigation fee earner for many years before moving into the field of using technology in litigation cases. I worked in the traditional way but then I became excited when I saw the technological impact on what I had been doing. Richard Susskind’s books follow the theme. He is an expert and he knows what he is talking about – give them a read. About the Author Terry Harrison is the only independent eDiscovery Consultant in South Africa and he advises law firms, corporations and service providers. He writes an award-winning blog on the subject and is currently co-authoring a book on eDiscovery for the SA market.  Previously Terry spent 25 years as a litigation fee earner in law firms in the UK before moving into litigation technology where he was MD of a UK litigation technology provider in London. After 15 years Terry moved to Cape Town with his South African wife intending to retire. However, his passion for eDiscovery and global contacts together with the lack of knowledge of eDiscovery in SA soon put paid to retirement. Terry has single-handedly pressurized the Dept of Justice to incorporate eDiscovery into the Uniform Rules of civil procedure and the Rules Board have now established a Task Force to deal with this.

Legal Research in the Age of AI

Ahead of his presentation at the 2019 Legal Innovation & Tech Fest, we briefly caught up with Juta and Company CEO Kamal Patel to chat about how Juta continues to remain relevant to its customers after 165 years in business, his predictions on the future of legal research and the predicted impact that Artificial Intelligence will have on the practice of law. Hi Kamal, we are looking forward to having Juta and Company as a Premier Partner at the 2019 Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. Can you tell us what it takes for a company with such a long-standing history in legal publishing to remain relevant in an ever-changing digital world? As an independent local player in the legal and academic publishing industry, and one that has weathered successive waves of technological change, it is a unique feat to have endured as we have since 1853. This milestone comes as Juta is poised to enter a new phase of technology-enabled growth. Juta continues to reinvent itself and does so by evolving to meet the shifting legal information needs of a range of users, and by diversifying our core skills and competencies. It’s one thing to be a respected and fondly regarded player in the SA legal information landscape, but it is imperative that Juta’s business remains innovative and responsive to emerging trends. We are constantly presented with opportunities that redefine the value we can offer to the users who rely on our content, which is a hallmark of our rapidly changing legal information landscape. Technology such as AI has begun to radically shape the future of the legal profession and legal research, how does a company such as Juta view this and have you looked at how these needs can be addressed? Trying to predict the future of legal technology is all at once overwhelming and impossible yet also incredibly exciting because it is constantly shifting. Cognitive computing and AI are fundamentally changing the way we work and engage with information, this translates into our being both consumers and co-creators of content. We have also seen that the needs of an increasing diversity of non-legal professionals and corporate users requiring access to legal content to perform their functions have increased exponentially. The legal field has begun re-inventing itself and Juta has stepped forward to answer the call for re-invention by changing how we approach information. We are augmenting our core competence of creating and providing unrivalled trusted content with the power of technologically driven insights that put the power into both the hands and minds of our clients. We are really excited about your presentation where you will be joined by internationally renowned Legal Futurist and Author, Chrissie Lightfoot. Without giving too much away, could you tell us what you guys will be discussing and why it will be beneficial for delegates to attend? During our blended thought-leadership and Juta showcase session, we will share our knowledge, experience and insights on AI, the theory and the practice of cognitive insights and what it will mean for professionals and businesses. We will look at how we can prepare ourselves for the challenges and opportunities ahead. We will also look at the increasingly sophisticated information needs of the legal profession and business and how delivering results that radically redefine the user experience in unique and innovative ways is key to future-proofing businesses. Predictions about the impact of AI, cognitive computing and machine learning technologies on the future business and practice of law inform many of our current conversations. The extent to which these technologies will ultimately be adopted in legal environments will depend on a combination of trusted content, value-enhancing technology and superlative user experience. This blended thought-leadership and Juta showcase session will chart a journey of evolution involving Juta as a trusted content provider, the importance of technology partnering and the need to engage with customer insights and requirements in pursuit of a radically redefined digital future. Join us as we explore new frontiers in legal research, moving beyond legal information solutions into a world of legal insights. Our whistle-stop session will help towards future-proofing the delegates and looking into how businesses will need to bring humans and machines together effectively in order to compete and survive in the very near future. About the speaker Kamal Patel is the CEO of Juta and Company. He is an experienced leader with a career spanning several leadership roles in management consulting, strategy, operations and business development.  His previous positions have included Head of Corporates and Partnerships at Thomson Reuters Africa, Associate Director at KPMG and Management Consultant at Accenture. He has worked within the information technology and communications (ITC), professional services and financial services sectors. His experience in the technology sector is being used to great effect in delivering on Juta’s future digital and content strategies and managing overall business development initiatives. Connect with Kamal Patel on LinkedIn and Twitter

The Coffee Shop Office: Benefits and Challenges of Alternative Working Arrangements

Lawyers David Lancaster and Munya Gwanzura, both experts in business management, reflect on the pros and cons of employees working outside the office. Munya will be speaking at the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest in June this year. Increasingly, business people are trading their suits for their chinos (and even their tracksuits) as the formal office appears to give way to comfortable workspaces at home and, at times, in coffee shops.  The introduction of new technology has enabled businesses to find better ways of achieving operational efficiency, including moving away from the traditional model, that requires employees to be physically present in the office, towards more alternative and flexible working arrangements.  The technology era is continuously disrupting the traditional ways of doing things and, if businesses are to survive, they need to move with the times and ensure they remain commercially relevant and competitive. Critical to achieving operational efficiency is having in place a technology infrastructure designed to assist employees to increase the speed at which they execute tasks and deliver goods and services. Motivated, skilled employees, who utilise and leverage technology successfully to create tangible value by delivering high-quality work, are essential. In considering a change in traditional working arrangements, it must be appreciated that technology can generally be accessed from anywhere and is no longer limited to the office environment. With a reliable fibre connection at home, an employee can seamlessly connect into the employer’s network and execute tasks assigned to him or her remotely. These employees can still deliver tangible value without necessarily being physically present in the office. This is, of course, subject to confidentiality protocols being observed and the appropriate cyber security being in place to guard against unauthorised access to proprietary information. The concept of employees working remotely can be a rather daunting proposition for an employer as it means less control over remote employees during working hours. For an employer, there is something comforting about having employees visible in the office. However, should employers place greater value on having employees in the office even if they are not productive, or should the emphasis be on better productivity from employees even if they are working remotely? This must be seriously considered so that a decision can be made about what working arrangements work best for the business. It may well be that certain businesses are suited to having some or all their employees working remotely simply because of the nature of their work. Even if this approach is not currently suitable, alternative working arrangements ought to be considered as the business grows and in light of the increased costs associated with renting office space. The benefits of remote working are numerous and include that employers are likely to have a happier and more motivated workforce because they will feel valued and trusted, which inculcates a culture of responsibility and accountability. Further, a happier workforce generally translates into greater productivity and value creation which are the key ingredients to achieving both short and long term goals. In addition, office space can be substantially reduced and the money saved can be ploughed back into the business and used to reduce debt or to fund acquisitions in line with the business’s growth strategy. One should also not ignore the potential risks that may be involved in formalising a policy that permits employees to work remotely.  Employees may abuse the arrangement which could result in less productivity and have a negative impact on the business. The remote working arrangement must, therefore, be clearly articulated and should be legally supported by a mechanism for dealing decisively with employees who are not productive when working from home. When employees work remotely it may also have a negative effect on teamwork and stifle innovation, which is often achieved through daily interaction among employees within the formal office environment. While working remotely may be attractive for some people, others may find it alienating and lonely and it may also have the effect of undermining a sense of commitment to the company.  More importantly, research has shown the importance of the need for human interaction, and when employees work in silos they have been found to be demoralised and to not have a sense of job satisfaction. A delicate balance thus needs to be achieved. Employers can mitigate the risks successfully by carefully selecting the employees within a business whose tasks can be executed successfully in a remote working environment. Often such employees are the ones who provide professional services to the business, and these services are suitable for such an alternative working arrangement. Those employees whose tasks require them to be physically present (eg employees who are directly involved in production) would be required to work in the office or on-site. Various models should be considered to ensure that all employees are treated equitably in order to avoid any industrial relations issues. The world is changing at a rapid pace. Businesses are increasingly being forced to innovate to develop and establish better ways of working to achieve their objectives.  Today’s technology-enhanced market presents great commercial benefits that can be harvested from leveraging technology, and businesses that think outside the box and continue to innovate will undoubtedly remain commercially relevant and competitive in the future. About the speaker Munya Gwanzura was a dispute resolution partner at Webber Wentzel and Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, and has 14 years’ experience as an attorney. He holds BA and LLB degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and is a CEDR (UK) Accredited Commercial Mediator. Munya completed the Leadership Growth Programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science and is currently the Head of Dispute Resolution at Barloworld Equipment, a division of JSE listed Barloworld South Africa (Proprietary) Limited. This article originally appeared on Africa Legal Analysis & Opinion

How Telstra’s Legal Team Saved 40,000 Hours

In 2016 Telstra Legal partnered with Herbert Smith Freehills to run a series of design thinking workshops and innovation sprints to tackle a set of productivity opportunities. This collaboration resulted in a saving of a staggering 40,000 lawyer hours and recognition by Financial Times of Telstra Legal as Asia Pac’s most innovative legal department for 2016. Mick Sheehy is General Counsel – Finance, Technology, Innovation & Strategy at Telstra. He reveals how they ran the innovation forums and how they achieved this phenomenal time-saving. Telstra Legal Innovation Forum The Telstra Legal Innovation Forums are a collaboration between Telstra legal and one of our law firms, Herbert Smith Freehills. Initially, we invited 15 lawyers across Telstra legal, a mix of seniority and business units, to brainstorm a list of ideas for improvement across the business. After narrowing the list down to just four ideas, we used design thinking techniques to brainstorm how we might solve those problems, and then agreed to do a 10-week sprint where we would rapidly prototype our solutions and see what we came up with. This initial forum was such a success, we kept doing them, and haven’t looked back. We had our 7th Innovation Forum earlier this year, and the following four initiatives have now been implemented within the business as a result. All together these initiatives resulted in eliminating 40,000 hours in low-value, non-strategic work across the legal group. That’s the equivalent of about 17 FTEs in a group of 200, so it’s quite material. But it’s not really about headcount reduction. What the Innovation Forum is doing is setting the business up to effectively respond to productivity requirements: We still have to do more with less, but we’re now better placed to do it. Even better we’re now able to take time saved and reinvest into more innovation projects. Here are four initiatives we have implemented as part of the Innovation Forum to streamline our time: 1. Reduced Internal Lawyer-Only Meetings Differentiated between decision making and information sharing meetings Capped the amount of information sharing meetings people can go to Resulted in 52% reduction in time spent   We suspected that our people were spending too much time in meetings but the solution to reducing these wasn’t immediately clear. We knew if we were going to tackle this we’d have to focus on something we could control, so we looked at internal legal meetings. These are not meetings with external people from the organisation, they’re not meetings with clients; they’re just meetings between other Telstra lawyers. We surveyed our group and they told us they were spending a full day a fortnight in internal legal meetings. We didn’t know what the ideal amount of hours was, there’s no science to this, but we suspected this was too much. This particular stream went through quite a number of workshops in the Innovation Forum before we actually ended up with our ultimate solution which was quite simple but it worked. We made a clear distinction between decision making and information sharing meetings We figured there are broadly two categories of meetings: decision-making and information sharing meetings. We decided to run a trial, asking everyone in the legal team – no exceptions, all 200 have to do this – to stipulate in the meeting request whether it is a decision-making meeting or an information sharing meeting. The rule was if it’s a decision-making meeting, you can have as many of these as you like during our trial, but you have to do a few things: you have to articulate in your meeting invite what decision it is that you’re trying to make, you can only invite the people that are needed for the decision, you have to have all the information that you need to make that decision circulated and pre-read, and you should only allocate the amount of time that you need to make that decision. But other than that, go for your life. We also capped the amount of information sharing meetings people can go to A lot of our information sharing meetings were team meetings where the information has just been cascaded down through the company, and our suspicion was a lot of people were hearing the same messages quite inefficiently. So we said, “Go to whichever information sharing meetings you think you need to go to, but only go to 2.5 hours maximum a week,” basically capping the amount they could attend. This resulted in 52% reduction in hours spent in meetings. When we asked everybody, “Were you less productive? Were you missing out on information that you otherwise felt like you should have got?” 92% said No. But the stat that I really love is when we asked our team, “Were you more productive?” and 80% said yes. Yes, we had some criticism, but we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback, with people saying they really appreciated the leadership team respecting their time, they’ve now been able to focus on more strategic work, and they now felt empowered to say no to meetings that they’d previously felt that they were obliged to say yes to. The main effect was making everyone think about how they should be spending their time. It also showed that quite a simple change can actually result in quite a big impact. 2. Reduced Time Spent Reporting Previously spent 75 hours week producing a “Top 2/3 Report” Assumption that the report was highly valued by the CEO’s office – we challenged that assumption Now produce a simpler report that still satisfies needs Resulted in 60% reduction in time spent reporting   Every week our legal team produces what we called a “Top 2/3 Report”, essentially all the main matters that are going on in a particular group’s practice. The report then gets compiled: lawyers will send in their matters to their manager, the manager will look at it – they might review it, discuss it, amend it, back and forth – it goes up to their manager and so forth. It eventually gets put into a report around 40 pages long that goes to our group general counsel and then to our CEO. It was a really comprehensive, pretty impressive-looking document. Challenging Assumptions Producing this report was really ingrained in our DNA as a team, it was something we were proud of. During the Innovation Forums, we worked out we were spending 75 hours a week producing that particular report, so we thought, “It better be pretty valuable”. The CEO before last used to say how much he valued the Top 2/3 Report, because it gave him so much insight as to what was going on around the company, but was that still the case? When we challenged this assumption we learned the current CEO didn’t put the same value on this particular report as the previous CEO, so we asked ourselves, “why are we spending 75 hours a week producing this?” A simpler report that still satisfies needs We realised that we still need the report, but we’ve now reduced it significantly, which has resulted in 60% reduction in time spent on it (around 43 hours a week now). And while the amount of time that goes into producing that report is remarkably less, we’ve lifted the level of materiality of the report, it is more readable and far more useful now. 3. Reduced Legal Review of Internal Communications Telstra was using the equivalent of one full-time lawyer to review internal communications Reduced to a small list of items that need to be reviewed Resulted in 29% reduction in hours spent reviewing communications   Another simple one was the legal review of internal communications. We had little bits and pieces here and there that needed to be reviewed, but when we added it up we realised it was the equivalent of employing one full-time lawyer just to review internal communications. We managed to reduce this to a small list of items that need to be reviewed, which in itself created a lot of debate. We’ve now reduced the time spent reviewing internal communications from 3,470 hours per year to 1,008. 4. Automated Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) Previously had 2-3 lawyers with full-time NDA practices Built instant NDA Tool Resulted in 82% reduction in time spent   When we first looked at NDAs, it wasn’t actually that apparent to us what the solution was. They were pretty simple documents, there was a feeling that they don’t take up much time. But when we surveyed the group, we found out that we had somewhere between two and three lawyers with a full-time NDA practice when you added that up across the group. Obviously NDAs are really important documents, they formalise the point in time at which we can exchange our confidential information, but they were never getting litigated, they never get pulled up out of the drawer ever again after. It seemed a really ineffective use of a skilled lawyers’ time. Telstra’s Instant NDA Tool NDAs are not so much about the document, it’s about the process and the culture and what are we trying to achieve. But spending all of our effort negotiating a document that is probably not going to see the light of day again didn’t feel like the right thing, so we built our instant NDA tool. It’s actually been a lot of work and we’ve learnt a lot about automation. It’s far more complicated than I thought it would be at first, and most of that complexity is in trying to make it simple and user-friendly. We didn’t want our clients to think we were making them do the work we were previously doing – so ease of use was a top priority. We considered the whole process and not just the elements of the document, and I think that’s really important as well. Saving 40,000 hours on below the radar opportunities like NDAs, internal reporting and meetings have provided the Legal Innovation Forum with a licence to now tackle much bigger pain points such as workflow triage can capturing key data and metrics. “Now, instead of logging back in after dinner, I get to spend time with the family”. This quote from one of our lawyers really sums up the value of the Legal Innovation Forum and the work we have done to reduce the time spent on low-value tasks. Our people are now able to focus on more strategic work, we can give our lawyers better work/life balance, and the one that I love the most is that we can actually now afford to invest into further innovation programs and activities. Mick was one of the top speakers at our 2018 Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. About the Author Mick Sheehy is General Counsel – Finance, Technology, Innovation & Strategy at Telstra. Mick has an extensive commercial and M&A background, with 20 years’ experience working on transactions in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia. In 2016 Mick founded the Australian chapter of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. Mick is passionate about innovation in the legal industry and the opportunities for lawyers to continually add more value to their clients.   This post originally appeared on the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest Australian blog. 

How HESTA Created the Ultimate Legal Filing System

Legal processes depend on the smooth flow of documents – and the bigger the company, the more work for the legal team in keeping track of these crucial workflows. With no centralised documents filing system, it was no wonder the legal team at HESTA Super was finding it difficult to perform day-to-day tasks. When lawyer Jorden Lam joined the organisation five years ago, she decided to change all that. Jorden will be speaking at this year’s Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. The Search for a Tailor-Made Filing System HESTA Super represents more than 850,000 people working in health and community services. The company holds $46 billion in assets invested globally on behalf of members. Lam found there was a problem at HESTA around locating files, how to file contracts, and the process to follow if someone wanted to engage a particular service provider. “My CEO regularly asks me these things, and as a lawyer, I have a genetic defect: I have to know the answer to every question I’m asked. More and more we kept having conversations around what we were doing about contract storage.” Lam says people generally want to know where a contract is for two reasons: Someone has made a mistake and the contract needs to be consulted to see what recourse and rights are available. Someone wants to renegotiate on a fee or see if there’s a way to add an additional service without paying too much for it.   But at HESTA, the process of locating a contract involved everyone who had a part in its creation, processing and scanning into the intranet. Then there was the issue of versions – was the up-to-date contract the one labelled ‘Final’? ‘Final – Version 2.1’? ‘Final – use this one’? It could take a while to locate the active contract. “We thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could have all those files in one place?” Lam remembers. “Wouldn’t it be great if it was more than just a repository? Wouldn’t it be great, now people are a little more aware of legal risk, if we could have an end-to-end contract procurement vendor management system? One where people could be reminded when it’s time to renegotiate on a fee or if we had 90 days before a contract expired. If we could automate all this, then that work gets cut from the legal team.” With that in mind, Lam called other super funds, spoke to some contacts at banks and to friends in other industries, and posed the same question: Had anyone heard of a contract filing system that handled work flows? “Everybody gave me the same response, saying it sounded cool, but we don’t have anything like that.” Difficulties of Driving Cultural Change At this point, Lam recruits her colleague Nikki on her mission, who she describes as a “lawyer, project manager, change analyst comms consultant and friendly neighbourhood hustler”. “Every successful legal project needs a Nikki. She gets things done. She’s savvy, bold and energetic and unafraid to be a complete pest to all the executives in the organisation. Most importantly, she’s really good at building strong relationships. Because that’s what you need to get things done.” Nikki introduced the team to Yammer, which Lam describes as “Facebook for work”. Nikki used Yammer to engage staff and spread the word about the contract filing project, now known as Project Justice. Although innovation requires coming up with great ideas, Lam says the hardest part is driving the cultural change. The Project Justice team had selected a filing system vendor, but ran into trouble because it had not engaged properly with HESTA stakeholders: Risk and Compliance Member Engagement Administration and Insurance Investments Member Advice Technology Marketing and Communications   “The reason was that we were designing for me,” Lam admits. “I wanted to know where the contracts were. I wanted to know what our obligations were. I expected everybody to file their documents so that I could have that.” Taking a step back she realised ways were needed to engage staff across the company and make them see it was in their interest to get on board with the filing project. Recruiting Execs and Cheer Squads The team started by enlisting executive leadership, which is key to any company-wide project success, Lam says. Each HESTA department was filing documents differently – on someone’s hard drive, on a server, in a desk drawer. The aim was to make filing so easy, so intuitive, that everyone wanted to do it the same way. Convincing executives that the project was important meant Project Justice could enrol staff in workshops. Some of these lasted a few days, some a few hours. “We talked through requirements, like how do you want that click button to look?” says Lam. “We looked at that fine level of detail that allowed the vendor to build the program using staff feedback.” Then there were the cheer squads, staff tasked with spreading the good word about the new system. These sprang up in Risk and Compliance, Administration and Insurance, Technology, and Marketing and Communications. “As lawyers, we don’t necessarily spend enough time building these internal relationships,” Lam says. “It’s not just about engaging with Marketing when they want a PDS sign off, or talking to IT when they want a service provider agreement reviewed. “If you build strong relationships across all your business stakeholders, when it comes to something like a change project they are more likely to be on board, to be your cheer squad, and help the rest of the organisation come on board too.” Key Requested Features of the System The intensive staff workshops allowed the Project Justice team to identify the two main filing capabilities requested by staff. The first of these was drag and drop. Staff wanted to click on a contract and drag it straight into the system. However, the project experienced a hiccup when it failed to realise this needed to work the other way too. Certain teams needed to drag and drop multiple files from the system to an email at once. None of the vendors had that function built into their system because of security issues. But it was a requirement, and through working with their vendor, Project Justice came up with a way of achieving it. The second requirement was automatic naming conventions, the system had to automatically generate a file name. A tool like this is contingent on metadata tags entered with the file, which meant an easy way for entering metadata was needed. The solution was a populated pop-up box that appeared when a file was entered. Staff then ticked the appropriate metadata tags for that file. Change Requires Engagement Lam says Project Justice succeeded through strong engagement and by involving people in the design process. “As lawyers, we tend to work alone. But that’s not how you get projects like this done. It’s important to emphasise that legal services are so easily commoditised these days as guys out there are doing AI stuff. “Your value as a lawyer is in your ability to do so much more than just the technical legal. The technical legal is a given now, it’s this other area of engagement that’s important in your ability to get things done.” Lam says when her team took a step back and thought about how to get people to buy into Project Justice, they realised they needed to emphasise the fun of engagement. “The biggest part of Project Justice was that it was really fun,” says Lam. “It was a great way for the legal team to engage with the business, talking to people and helping make their lives easier.” Jorden will be speaking at the 2019 Legal Innovation & Tech Fest, inspiring audiences to rethink the role that a lawyer plays in a world rife with disruption. About the Speaker Jorden Lam is General Counsel & GM Commercial Affairs at HESTA Super Fund. In addition to key accountability for HESTA’s legal risks, Jorden is also responsible for developing and leading the implementation of a program of business improvement activities. This includes scoping and assessing the current and desired future state of the organisation’s commercial practices and processes, to identify solutions and improvements to complex challenges faced by the business.   This post originally appeared on the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest Australian blog. 

Demystifying the Vendor Conundrum: The Areas of Need

The changing landscape of legal sees many companies supporting an in-house legal counsel model, which brings great benefits for the company – some of which include risk management, access to legal support, performance management and succession planning. Samiksha Kader, Legal Counsel at Tiger Brands will be presenting at Legal Innovation & Tech Fest, sharing her learnings around the needs and challenges presented for in-house counsels. We caught up with Samiksha in the lead up to the event. Samiksha – we look forward to having you present at Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. What motivated you to get involved as a presenter at the event? I realised that many of the challenges faced and experienced by myself are also experienced by my colleagues and I would like to share my thoughts on the vendor conundrum as well as share possible solutions, and also learn from fellow colleagues on how they deal with common challenges. Tell us about your story/career journey in the legal space? And what do you enjoy most about your work? I was raised by a single mom. I was exposed to a very different reality than many of my friends and family, where my mum being the sole provider in the household and also my sole caretaker filled the role of what I later learned to be associated, in some instances with the role of a “man in society”. Being exposed to such an independent and strong female role model, I began to question at a very young age how society viewed and treated women. Given the strong opinions I would share, people regarded me as a feminist and in time, that passion to fight against the stereotypes of the world expanded to fight against racism and violence against women. I believe that law was already in my story long before I realised it was. I always want to contribute in some way to a better place to live. I suppose I gravitated to law to make that difference. Through my career, I was exposed to many aspects of the field, from matrimonial law, criminal law to IT law. I spent much of my career at Business Connexion Group, an ICT company. I really enjoyed being part of an innovative industry. What I enjoy about my job till today is that I am exposed to all facets of trade, which I get to learn about i.e. FMCG, IT, Pharmacy etc. I am still very much a human rights law enthusiast and although I have not had enough time to dedicate to it, I believe that I will keep trying to make that difference, however small. A challenge for in-house counsels is wading through the vendor conundrum to find the solution that supports all the requirements seamlessly. What are the areas that need to be focussed on to get this process right? 1. Data Management and record retention 2. Workflow management (audit trail, workflow and work load management, benefit analytics) 3. Template generation tools. About the speaker Given her background of being a specialist in ICT Law and having worked for one of South Africa’s most prominent ICT companies, Samiksha Kader had access to a fair amount of technology at her fingertips, most of which was never meant to support legal, but Samiksha found ways to make it work for legal.  She is obsessed with efficiency and is always looking for answers to work smarter. Samiksha is very artistic in nature and believes the practice of law is an art form not administrative. She loves freedom, peace and nature. Her main ambition in life is to live with passion and love.  

What to Expect at Legal Innovation & Tech Fest 2018

The inaugural Legal Innovation & Tech Fest is happening in Johannesburg later this year. The agenda has just been released, and it’s a whopper – 30 sessions over 2 days! We sat down with Legal Innovation & Tech Fest Program Director, Adi Hartuv, to get more insight into what we can expect from this event. 

Stories of Real Innovation From 5 Leaders in Legal

The inaugural Legal Innovation and Tech Fest in 2018 will demonstrate how legal innovation is being enabled by technology through a combination of case studies, thought-leader presentations and more. It will see the best leaders in the Legal profession up on the stage, telling their stories of success in innovation and sharing creative solutions to solve the most pressing issues facing the world of law today. Here are the first 5 legal leaders on the agenda and a glimpse of their stories – 5 reasons not to miss the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest in June! Mick Sheehy – General Counsel, Telstra (Australia) Mick is Telstra’s General Counsel of Finance Technology Innovation & Strategy and is passionate about innovation in the legal industry. Mick has an extensive commercial and M&A background, with 20 years’ experience working on transactions in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia. In 2016, Mick founded the regional chapter of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium Australia. Among other successes, Mick will be sharing The Telstra Legal Innovation Story and How to Create an Innovation Movement. This program in 2016 resulted in a saving of more than 40,000 lawyer hours and recognition by Financial Times of Telstra Legal as Asia Pac’s most innovative legal department for 2016. In 2017 Telstra Legal tackled an even bolder set of initiatives resulting in more top awards in the United States and a new Harvard Law School case study on the Telstra Legal innovation program. Graeme Grovum – Head of Innovation, Corrs Chambers Westgarth (Australia) Graeme is a legal technologist with 15 years of experience in the legal and financial services industries. He leverages his deep understanding of legal processes, optimistic mindset, and love of new technologies to deliver exceptional results in unexpected ways. From launching an incubator to developing products to streamline legal workflows, to acting as an agent for change within his firm, to recently launching Sydney Legal Hackers – Graeme is at the forefront of exploring and developing creative solutions to some of the most pressing issues at the intersection of law and technology. Graeme will be presenting on Open Innovation & The Power of Partnerships as a strategy that is not only the way forward for his firm, but for the legal industry as a whole. In his presentation exploring The New World of Legal Work & Exploring the Emerging Trends that Will Drive the Legal Industry in the Next Decade, Graeme will walk us through the rise of legal ops, proactive consulting vs. reactive advice, volunteer groups driving grassroots change, the rise of ‘New Law’ lawyers, and the rise of ‘New Law’ services. In his presentation, A Strategic Approach to AI: Corrs AI Toolkit, Graeme walks us through the journey of Corrs being the first large firm to adopt AI in Australia in mid-2016, doing so in a novel way by entering a JV with an AI company. Graeme discusses Corrs’ approach to AI, data capture and the firm’s application of Machine Learning to their time-keeping processes and leveraging historic billing data to accurately generate new matter fee estimates. Neil Comte & Retha Beerman – Director: Knowledge Management and Training & Director: Knowledge Management, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr Initially described as the “boy Friday” of Knowledge Management at CDH, Neil’s roles developed around innovation, learning and development, quality and professional support due to his relative tech-savvy-ness (for a lawyer) and his time lecturing law at the University of Johannesburg. Neil’s formal training includes business and law degrees from the University of Johannesburg. Neil is a qualified attorney and notary public, and also a director in CDH’s Knowledge Management team.   Retha is a Director of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr Inc, heading up its Knowledge Management (KM) department. The guiding purpose of this department is to enable the whole CDH society to deliver continuous improvements in the quality of professional services provided to their clients, at competitive prices, as well as to develop ways in which the firm may offer “more-for-less” to its clients. Prior to taking on a Knowledge Management role, Retha practised as an Employment Director, having completed an LLM at the University of Michigan. Neil and Retha will present the Cliff Dekker Hofmeyr case study about the introduction of AI capabilities to a South African law firm, with a view to enabling competencies such as data-driven pricing strategies; intuitive and immediate knowledge management delivery; and expertise linking and enterprise search. Insights to be shared include creating the innovation vision; concretising the vision – proof of concept, return on investment; and what ‘delivery’ of innovation actually means: understanding the art of the possible, and achieving incremental successes. Brendon Borgia – Lead Business Analyst, Independent (Financial Sector) As a child, Brendon would often look at a system and think to himself, “Surely there is a better way to do that”. During his career, Brendon has fulfilled many roles in various projects but has kept with this way of thinking. His fields of speciality have been made up of analytics, technology, process engineering and strategy development. Brendon will be sharing key learnings from a multifaceted legal technology implementation in the Financial Sector. From understanding the effort and cost to realising the benefits of technology (business case analytics); to internal and external integration considerations; to understanding capability/skills constraints with regards to solution development and adoption. This presentation also revises where legal counsel can add value in technology implementation, how the gap can be bridged between legal counsel and developers and whether you ought to pursue a hybrid lawyer/developer role. An overview and demo of the implemented solution will be showcased to illuminate the work and effort that isn’t always considered. Interested in our Research Report? The agenda for the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest is developed around a research report that was the result of 6 months of extensive interviews and roundtable discussions with the country’s leading legal professionals. You can download this report here.