Tech-in together
Jem Sandhu speaks to some of the key players with a part in the new digital law group launched by Herbert Smith Freehills.
Transformation has never been easy, with digital transformation having an even lower success rate than the traditional variety. Nevertheless, the competitive benefits promised by capitalising on emerging technologies has elevated digital to the board level.
“Technological innovation is providing clients with opportunities to generate revenue, increase cost savings, and create new sources of value and new business models,” says Alex Cravero, an IT and sourcing lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills. But he has also seen this trend create new technical, operational and regulatory risks.
Team in formation
Clearly, clients increasingly need their lawyers to go beyond providing traditional legal advice. And this was precisely the thinking behind his firm’s new digital law group (DLG) – formally launched in November 2019. Currently at 28 members across eight global offices, the DLG works hand in hand with HSF’s lawyers across the business to advise clients on their digital transformation initiatives – from digitisation to data analytics, blockchain and smart legal contracts.
The UK team is co-headed by Cravero and Charlie Morgan (an international arbitration lawyer) as joint digital law leads. The DLG also works very closely with Cathy Mattis (head of legal operations, client solutions) and Fleur Kitchingman (head of client and technology solutions, ALT [alternative legal services]) in its work. Cravero describes a closely knit, cohesive, unit: with three distinct functions – the digital law group, alternative legal services, and legal operations – working together to solve the legal, technical, operational and strategic elements of a client problem.
“From the client perspective, there are a lot of things to be considered in addition to the legal problem – such as legal project management and technology. But it’s difficult for client teams to know which of those things you need to solve your particular problem. This group helps to solve that problem for them,” says Kitchingman. The ALT team at HSF was formed in 2011 to deliver both project-based and business-as-usual work for clients – and specialises in developing legal service delivery solutions.
And taking a client focus is nothing new for Mattis’s legal operations group either. In 2018, the function moved to align itself with how HSF’s clients were organising themselves. “Legal project management, pricing, process, innovation, automation, data analysis, strategic research – it was all pulled together under legal operations,” says Mattis, identifying some of the essentials of a joined-up approach to advising on digital transformation.
Read the full feature in Briefing May – It’s the screen team, here.
