Firms expend valuable resources tracking the market for innovation progress, to understand where they sit in relation to competitors. Doing so is problematic and time-consuming, as the information is not always publicly available and the data is imperfect. Legaltech Hub has developed a framework for innovation benchmarking, and will be tracking the data on innovation in the market, so that firms no longer need to. We will be joined on the panel by Andrea Alliston who will speak about the experience of innovation benchmarking from the law firm perspective, having worked with Legaltech Hub to develop and utilize the framework. The session will provide insights into the benchmarking framework, the key criteria that make a firm more innovative than others, and what that means for your firm.

Traditional law firm strategies often involve broad, aspirational goals or tactical implementation plans for individual practice groups. This critical activity is primed for a new approach where truly strategic practice group plans drive the firm’s overall strategy. Focusing on market demand, competitor analysis, alternative service delivery, talent capacity, and a strategic mindset, Knowledge and Innovation professionals can drive this effort and establish a new paradigm for strategic planning.

A data-backed crash course on how every law firm can make better use of their existing AI tools (no matter what the tool is).

Firms have been making use of AI tools to support their transactional practices for a number of years, but some may not be making the most of these tools.

In this session:
- we will give an overview of common machine learning technologies used to classify + extract data from text
- we will share examples of how to get more out of these different tools (e.g. by capturing, cleaning and preparing your data, scaling usage, running an effective team, and working with your vendor)
- we will also give a few tips on how to organize your data according to KM principles, and futureproof your work for the next wave of AI that makes use of neural networks 

Foley & Lardner perceived a need regarding review of commercial contracts, which can be an overwhelming task for many organizations. Such reviews are time-consuming and often contracts can either go unreviewed or detract lawyer attention away from other higher value efforts.

 To create a more efficient review process, the team spent over 500 hours designing Foley Equipped, powered by ThoughtRiver. The underlying machine learning model is trained to identify categories of interest within a 3rd party contract document and identify high-risk clauses, highlighting provisions that may be outside of commercial norms, and flagging when terms are missing. The tool uses a Word plug-in, providing Foley’s sample clauses or a client’s preferred language to modify agreements with a few simple clicks. Clients also benefit from Foley’s playbook advice and commentary, and vendor contracts can be turned around in as little as one business day.  This increased efficiency, combined with standardization of terms across organizations, helps reduce legal spend in the face of the current uncertain market conditions.

Lessons learned regarding effectively building, scaling, and managing teams during intense growth periods (and having fun doing it). Topics covered include: 

• Talent Acquisition, Agility, and “Fail Fast, Fix Faster”
• Skills, attributes, and experience needed to truly drive innovation
• Think the three C's: Culture, Communication, and Collaboration

As one of the legal industry's earliest adopters of work allocation technology, Christy will provide the background to resource management at CMS and the aim of its latest project.

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote from legendary management consultant and writer Peter Drucker. He didn't mean that strategy was unimportant – rather that a powerful and empowering culture was a surer route to organisational success. William will therefore explore how Capacity supports and enhances firm culture by leveraging strategic work allocation.

To advance DEI and more equitably distribute work opportunities among students and associates, we are implementing an algorithm-based Work Allocation platform working with a tech start-up. We developed a policy and procedures that require all lawyers who allocate work to others to both assign individual tasks and staff matter teams using the technology. Lawyers describe what area and level of knowledge and skills they need when they need the work done, and other information about the work to be done, as well as indicating whether they want to assign the task or put it out for tender. If the latter, the system notifies all lawyers with availability who match the profile of the tendered work; if the former, the system displays lawyers matching the criteria ranked by availability and suitability for the assigning lawyer to select.

Join us for a case study of how FBT, a law firm of 575 lawyers, started a brand-new Data team. We will discuss how we set priorities, change management to establish why a data team was needed, what we accomplished over the last year, and the road ahead. Major topics include Snowflake, Experience Management, Data APIs, Matter Types, and Industry Lists.

Any law firm innovator's role is challenging, with the need to highlight to clients and potential clients the innovative solutions and processes your firm can implement. But sometimes, the even more challenging job is the inside sell--educating attorneys about the possibilities you could implement, convincing them to adopt new technologies, and getting them to promote your services to their clients.  You cannot succeed if you do not earn your attorneys' and other business professionals' trust--and your marketing team doesn't always have the bandwidth to help. 

 Learn how amplifying your work, your personal brand, and your clients (both external and internal colleagues) can help you drive new connections and trust to soar to reach your goals.

TozziniFreire was the first full-service Latin American law firm to deploy a structured innovation program, branded as ThinkFuture. Since its release back in 2018, we faced a challenge of how to engage innovative projects not just for internal transformation, but also to enhance a client's experience with advanced solutions embedded to our legal services. We have learned many lessons about the combination of multidisciplinary professionals to grant a broader approach for innovation (not just tech) and how to solve external and internal clients' demands through technology, design, data and other fields. We will present an online platform for data privacy compliance, the delivery of more than 200 legal design projects to clients, and how we are engaging partners, lawyers and in-house professionals on innovation initiatives.

Tools like Salesforce and GitHub first gained adoption through “bottoms-up” sales. They marketed directly to employees, who fell in love with the software, then lobbied their CTOs for company-wide adoption.

Law firms ensure that their employees cannot access any software that the information security team has not reviewed and approved, making “bottoms-up” sales impossible. But we see potential in an adapted version of this strategy: top-down-to-bottoms-up.

We built powerful collaboration and sharing tools in our application, enabling Version Story to go viral within a law firm following approval by InfoSec. This minimizes adoption risk for the CTO. And it provides us with long-term viral growth as lawyers move between firms and recommend Version Story to their new CTOs.

In this session, we will go over case studies that prove the effectiveness of this approach. We will also discuss other ways that legal tech can go viral.

Lawyers have long asked for tools to solve the “redline chaos” that occurs when they juggle multiple mark-ups to a document—for instance, when the attorney holding the pen needs to manage suggested edits from co-counsel, the client, and specialist attorneys; or when the team needs to see how the current version compares to multiple previous versions. With only 1-to-1 redline tools at their disposal, consolidating constantly changing provisions from different parties is a manual and frustrating process that remains a thorn in every corporate attorney’s side. Hear how a law firm and vendor partnered to tackle this problem together.  

Gunderson Dettmer asked if attorneys could ever really be citizen developers, and if they should? The firm rolled-out Josef’s no-code automation platform and a tailored education and training program to a select group of attorneys. The firm's Practice Innovation Attorneys became the first set of superusers. The rollout is now in full swing. The firm and Josef will use the presentation to explore how to drive adoption, and what knowledge management and governance of no-code applications looks like at scale.

Joe Green, Counsel & Director of Client Experience, Gunderson Dettmer

Firm growth depends on "client <-> firm" success. This presentation will discuss how an IP firm intakes clients and the KM tools they use to validate a prospective client's ranking to an ideal client/project profile before a first meeting. We'll cover how prospective clients are sources of pre-meeting knowledge which may reveal important factors that can influence a later client <-> firm success, and actions that can be taken to direct KM to this important challenge.