What does innovation in legal services mean to you?
True innovation is about identifying the value we provide to clients and thinking creatively about how we provide that value in a different way that might be better for us and the client. It is not just saying "this is a service we provide today, it's liked by clients, how can we incrementally make it better and more efficient?" It's thinking more fundamentally about why clients are buying the service in the first place and how best to deliver that value.
What is the current state of innovation in the legal industry?
The advent of generative AI has thrown a massive spanner in the works of innovation in the legal sector. There is an assumption by many that GenAI is a silver bullet which will in the immediate future revolutionise our lives. Absolutely it is going to catalyse huge change, but that isn't going to happen overnight. In fact, it highlights all sorts of foundational issues in areas such as data, governance, incentives that need addressing to make meaningful innovation in GenAI possible. GenAI has made leadership teams sit up and think about the change that is coming and people are seeing the acceleration of that change and taking the innovation agenda more seriously than I think they ever have done before.
There is an assumption by many that GenAI is a silver bullet which will in the immediate future revolutionise our lives. Absolutely it is going to catalyse huge change, but that isn't going to happen overnight.
Hannah O'Grady
Director of Digital Governance and Change
Law firms can be difficult places to promote new approaches and behaviours – what are the main lessons you have learnt in trying to implement change in a large organisation?
This isn't rocket science but I think it's incredibly important to pick off the big hairy things which will cause significant change alongside a selection of far smaller initiatives that will have short-term impact. This helps to build trust that change is possible, and a good thing, and builds a positive energy around change without ignoring the difficult problems. We also need to make sure we shout about what we're great at and what's we're achieving. It's important to tell the story about what we are achieving so people have the confidence that we are going on a journey.
It is worth noting that some of these bigger problems are really hard and speak to some of the fundamental premises in the industry. It won't be news to anyone that trying to drive change often requires time investment from fee earners and aims to drive efficiency in their working practices is totally at odds with a market where we largely incentivise our lawyers on the billable hour.
AI is already changing professional services and the legal sector is no exception, but in an industry where trust and accountability is so important, how do we strike the balance between innovation and ensuring proper guardrails are in place?
It's about having the right governance. That does not mean layers and layers of committees and forums where there is a vague group responsibility for something. It means you need clear processes which are documented and tracked with clear decision making responsibilities on particular items by the right subject matter experts. So, by the time you get to the go or no-go decision on something, all the variables have been considered by the right people. That gives the ultimate decision-maker the comfort all bases have been covered.
We have spent a lot of time over the last year enhancing our governance processes to ensure they reflect the changing regulation with regard to AI and are effective in a world where there is ever more change and complexity to be governed.
Are we likely to see a generation of lawyers whose foundation is technological expertise rather than legal expertise?
Not imminently, but I think this is a more existential question. When you have machines that can mimic human thought, how can you create the same learning and development opportunities for humans full stop? I think this will become an issue for people, not just lawyers. My eight-year-old will ask Alexa for answers before thinking whether he could possibly answer the question himself – that must be having a huge and scary impact.
What are we likely to see in legal innovation in the next two years?
I hope we are going to get out of this period of somewhat nervous uncertainty around GenAI and see more concrete solutions and products which are actually making big impacts – proving the impact the technology in a more practical way.
Our clients will also get more comfortable with us using technology and GenAI. The cycle we are going through at the moment is sometimes compared with the move to the cloud – everyone was very nervous about it, but it didn't take long for people to start asking why their stuff wasn't in the cloud. Hopefully we will go over a similar hump with GenAI soon.
A fear about AI development generally is competition creates a race instead of ensuring the technology is developed safely. Is the same true of the legal industry or is there more collaboration and sharing?
There is definitely collaboration in the industry in terms of sharing stories and round tables where people share how they are approaching things. We are all fighting the same battles. Everyone is a bit ahead or behind in different parts of the journey.
We also spend a lot of time working with vendors in the AI space to understand their roadmaps and influencing them when we can – there is generally a lot of openness to this which is great.
But I do think it's worth reflecting on the fact that a lot of the issues we are facing at not actually new. For example, new technology will continue to require us to think creatively and differently in terms of how we price when tools save time in delivery; and whilst the imperative to do this may be growing or becoming more pervasive in the firm it isn't a new problem for us as a firm. We have a huge e-discovery practice which has long been at the head of the market in terms of deploying technology and automating work, so we've been through the learning curve previously and we have to look back on those learnings rather than thinking this is all completely new and different.
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