Digital Transformation:

Digital Innovation

In order to achieve the greater agility necessary to respond to market disruptions, many organisations are now developing digital strategies that tie-in closely with other business initiatives and underpin some fundamental changes to business operations.

Over the last three years, cloud adoption has reached a critical mass. Fears of losing control and descending into security and governance catastrophe have been overcome by a recognition of the benefits on offer - such as consolidation, flexible financial models, and access to innovative platforms. Also, the fact that huge organisations in sectors such as Financial and Retail (and indeed Legal) have moved large workloads and data to hybrid cloud topologies has helped businesses view cloud as a safe and viable option.

However, adopting an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - or any other ‘as a Service’ offering - constitutes only a very small part of the digital jigsaw. What is required in 2019 is the ability to create smaller, ‘agile’ teams that can quickly demonstrate the sort of Proof of Value technology innovations that have a material impact on operations and customer advocacy. In this fast-paced, highly competitive business landscape, the journey forward must be constant and accumulative.

In this chapter, we will categorise and explore some of the primary areas of innovation that we are seeing in Legal at this time.

Channels of Information and communication

Customers now expect (if not demand) online access to interactions, information and services across all aspects of their lives - including when dealing with the Legal sector. As such, firms need to provide consistent and predictable application and data access to offer a superior service to their customers.

The savvier firms are already seeking cost-effective ways to provide centralised portals that can give customers a single point of entry to view their active and historic cases. These portals provide up-to-date details when and where a customer wishes to engage with the firm and support submission of additional supporting documents.

Office 365 (O365) is one of the more obvious options in this area, especially as it has good hooks into the most prevalent legal software (e.g. IManage) and helps facilitate more advanced communication channels with customers. Other providers we have come across in this area include TouchPoint, Firm Central and Onehub.

Instant Messaging (IM) is another important tool which can drive greater interaction with and increased advocacy from customers. A well-run chat tool offers clients instant access to knowledge, or with resource to assist them with their query. Some IM bots are AI run, with human intervention coordinated at certain trigger-points, depending on the question or topic.

The two key priorities when operating an IM service should be: firstly, establishing a knowledge base from which responses will be selected; secondly, making sure you have a very clear view going in of how the scope of the tool will be provisioned (with reference to use cases). Carefully deployed, an IM tool can bring major benefits in terms of securing prospective clients or progressing cases, but a badly deployed tool is worse than no tool at all.

Machine learning

A subset of AI, machine learning involves technology being deployed to learn trends, calculate optimal approaches and use data to enhance operations. Machine learning has two use cases that are high priority within the Legal sector in 2019.

Firstly, it can be used to support case research and information gathering. Software applications are available that review documents, identify key points or sections within the text, and collate the findings. This AI-powered software can also identify the most relevant or important articles from a set of documents, earmarking these so employees can focus on working with a reduced document set.

Machine learning applications can also sift through the mindboggling wealth of information on the Internet for context and data points; this can help assist in building an understanding of a case, and also in collating supporting information which can be called upon at a later date.

Machine learning, therefore, can free up legal resource to focus on the valuable interactions with a client, and can also can aggregate a large amount of data to mitigate human error or oversight.

The second use case concerns using machine learning to calculate the answers to outcome-based queries, enabling legal departments to test for the best course of action. To take a few examples, machine learning applications can be used to predict the probability of a successful outcome when going to trial, ascertain whether better terms can be negotiated, and outline key points to consider on regulatory matters.

Over time, these applications can optimise and adapt their algorithms to try and improve outcomes, or adjust parameters as changing conditions or legal practices influence the playing field.

Performance tracking and optimisation

As more data and processes become digitised, there is a growing opportunity to pursue efficiency by leveraging Business Intelligence capabilities to cross reference key data points. Not only does this technology offer the answer to dealing with the growing volume of data points and case information, but it can also be used to analyse and identify how highly successful, efficient individuals or teams work.

By identifying influencing factors - such as: time spent on tasks, types of cases, decisions at key stages and requests for information - an organisation can tailor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and introduce training to reproduce the same successful results over a wider ratio of the practice. This ultimately has a positive effect on profitability, increasing win ratios and reducing the cost of engagements.

Going paperless

While this seems like an obvious area in which Legal can modernise, very few firms have as yet achieved a total or even near-total paperless environment. Technology now exists, however, that can significantly reduce the amount of paper documents or forms necessary to support business operations. Document scanners, for example, can process paper documents using optical character recognition (OCR) to produce editable digital copies.

This reduction in paper and inputting of documentation into the digital process is advantageous for a number of reasons. Once in a digital format, processes and actions - including data population, workflow processing, notification and communication - can be automated.

Other benefits of moving towards a ‘paperless’ practice include:

Reduction of human error
Increased speed of processing
Reduction of physical storage requirements
Greater protection of documents (and therefore of data)
Enrichment of data (as data can be added or populated from a wider range of sources)

All in all, achieving a paperless model significantly increases a legal organisation’s operational agility.

Mobile and collaboration

A fundamental component of modern working is the idea of anywhere, anytime access. Flexible working is also becoming an expectation for new hires, and offering it as an option (or not) can be the difference between securing the brightest new talent and missing out.

The Technology sector has coined the term ‘moving data to the edge’ to describe the concept of enabling business information to be accessed outside of the traditional corporate boundaries. ‘Moving data to the edge’ can have very significant benefits, including:

Productivity: Empowering your workforce to access applications and data at any time and from any place allows them to respond to clients when required rather than only during traditional hours.
Employee morale: With the enablement of flexible working comes a more diverse and modern approach that will build trust and commitment between staff and the business should ensure more talent is retained.
Business resilience: If an office is closed or transport networks are disrupted, employees can still gain system access and continue working from remote locations.
Customer satisfaction: Responding to customers with greater speed and staying in touch with greater regularity drives a more personal relationship, increasing brand recognition and value.

To drive increased mobility, legal firms must consider the technology, process and cultural impact of deploying cloud application access and Single Sign-On (SSO), offering work services and applications via Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or smart devices, and enabling remote access.

There are two implications of mobile adoption that organisations need to consider and confront. The first implication is the impact mobile adoption has on security; this demands that organisations put sufficient controls in place - via both technology and processes - to protect access to data. The second implication surrounds governance, and demands that organisations maintain adequate control over systems and data to ensure they remain compliant to regulations such as GDPR. This second implication also extends to the human side of governance, and each organisation needs to consider how to ensure their workforce uses flexibility and mobility in a positive way - and doesn’t abuse this privilege.

The obvious solution is the extension of the O365 suite with Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), which provides Mobile Data Management, SSO and encapsulates security services such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Virtual Desktop (VDI) is another option, enabling organisations to provide secure, controlled access to a set of business applications.

The other area of focus to enable a greater level of mobility is the modernisation of file access. The O365 suite (SharePoint, OneDrive) offers options in this capacity but there are also Global File Share services which, depending on the use case, offer localised caching, cloud-backed storage and geo-redundancy.

The biggest barrier to Digital Transformation? Time.

One of the biggest inhibiting challenges to Digital Transformation - well documented by big shiny consultancies and business and change analysts - is the 'time is finite' conundrum. Put simply, it is very difficult for businesses to ‘stop’ maintaining current systems, ‘stop’ responding to service issues and ‘stop’ administration of systems or platform configuration in order to start innovating and start executing against a strategy of Digital Transformation designed to enable business agility.

It is estimated that in excess of 80% of time and budget is spent on maintaining current operations.2 With the remaining 20% being shared between all other business activities, education and annual leave, little time remains to achieve positive change. Having spoken with many business leaders, it is also clear to us that very few have the capacity to work harder. Without the option to invest more hours, the only option left is to work smarter!

In our experience, smart working first requires a business to identify what is critical to the success of the company - to identify the applications, operations and activities that add the greatest value to the business. These critical areas are where the business should focus skillsets, time and investment.

For non-critical areas of the business, the challenge is to maintain quality of service. Whilst even the wealthiest people on the planet grudgingly recognise time is one of the few things you can’t personally buy, you can, however, free up time by employing others to do tasks for you. Outsourcing operational-intensive or low-value tasks to specialist service providers enables a firm to focus on valuable business initiatives and innovation.

This approach also provides some other indirect advantages:

It removes the challenge of maintaining roles and resources to manage specific operations.
It reduces the operational risk that key employees with niche skills unexpectedly leave the organisation.
It enables you to take advantage of the experience and expertise of a service provider to deliver against Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and standards, providing an efficient, reliable service to the business and staff.

Common functions that are outsourced in the Legal sector include:

IT, Infrastructure management and Security: Enables the legal firm to focus on critical applications and data
Legal research: Gives firms access to experts who use tools, experience and datasets to deliver comprehensive results
Training: This offers firms diversity, skilled trainers and focused resources
Benefits admin: Offers specialist employee benefits that can provide modern HR services and maintain or enhance employee morale

Carefully choosing the right service provider (or providers) to work with is vital to the success of this approach. When there is a synergy, the partnership thrives and the legal organisation achieves improved levels of service and greater expertise.

Of course, the most important benefit is the recovery of time, which can be refocused on business transformation and gaining competitive advantage; in fact, by providing sound advice and thought leadership, the right partners can accelerate and support these processes, too.

Section Summary

Legal firms are Digitally Transforming in many areas to automate, to work smarter and to provide better services to clients.
Solutions such as O365 offer expanding portfolios to enrich and extend services, integrating with common tools and applications (Office Suite, IManage, etc.) while adding security by design.
Time is the biggest barrier to innovation. By selectively working with trusted partners, an organisation can refocus resources in a transition away from low-value operations, and instead drive a business transformation agenda that achieves competitive advantage.