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With warm summer days comes AALL’s Annual Meeting and Conference and a guarantee that the conference takes place somewhere with sweltering heat. This year’s conference, held in the nation’s capital, did not disappoint, both in terms of temperature and in terrific and timely topics. The event remains a must-attend occasion to catch up with colleagues and customers and learn the latest in the industry. While a slew of new analytics products dominated the conference conversation this year, the continued need to drive innovation (and by extension, incorporate new tools leveraging analytics, amongst other tools) remains a challenge for many in the industry.
Data continues to accumulate on the impact of innovation efforts. Wolters Kluwer’s Future Ready Lawyer survey found that — on average — Technology-Leading organizations (those currently leveraging technology effectively) reported greater increased profitability from 2017 to 2018 than their peers. The survey also found that these organizations plan to increase their investment in new technologies over the next three years, which may lead to significant performance gaps between Technology-Leading organizations and their peers that are trailing in technology adoption.
So how does one create the business case to invest in technology and innovation? At this year’s conference, I had the privilege of moderating a panel on that very topic: building the case for investment by focusing on best practices that successfully communicate the value of legal innovation to organization stakeholders and spearheading efforts to adopt innovation. To get more insight into the subject, I sat down after the conference with one of the panelists from my session, Catherine Monte, who serves as Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer at Fox Rothschild LLP. She offered some interesting insights on how her firm approached innovation.
Prior to her time at Fox Rothschild, Catherine gained extensive experience in Knowledge Management at Clifford Chance’s New York City office. The knowledge she gained from working in a global law firm carried over in a unique way to her role at Fox, a growing national firm that had expanded rapidly via numerous mergers and offered a wide span of practice areas. “When I started, the managing partner at the time believed it was critical to share knowledge across the entire firm — so my job was to get in front of as many different practice groups as possible, learn about their business needs, and ensure they had access to the right resources,” she said.
Building relationships across the firm helped Catherine lay the foundation for what would become the firm’s innovation hub. “Over time, information sharing over intranets evolved into configuring simple but effective collaborative platforms, and from there, we created customized sites for key customers that made information easily searchable and, in some systems, incorporated workflow. That process helped us conceptualize innovation in our firm and how we could deploy it for the benefit of our clients.” Catherine and her colleagues realized successes with these systems, and clients expressed satisfaction with systems that created efficiencies in their day-to-day work.
At the same time, Fox Rothschild was building up its competitive business research team, one of the team’s three distinct research teams at the firm. “This team provided significant context to Fox’s Knowledge Management initiatives,” Catherine commented. “With more competitive intelligence, we were able to look at our data differently. I realized we were approaching many projects in an ad hoc, reactionary way, and we needed to pivot to be proactive in our approach, both for our clients as well as internally for our own business development needs.”
“For example, we received a request from a partner with a specific IP need for their client’s product portfolio, and that led to us creating a customized site for that attorney. Once that site was successfully completed, we then worked with the IP team, showed them what we developed, and let them know that we had the capacity to create something similar for clients in that space.”
As the firm’s practice groups continued to expand, Catherine sought to identify and fulfill more administrative needs for the firm’s clients. “Increasingly, as corporate counsel are pressured to deliver value for a competitive cost, there are more opportunities for law firms to offer additional support and services that make the client’s work more efficient,” she said.
Upon identifying these opportunities, Catherine crafted a plan to make Fox Rothschild’s innovation efforts increasingly proactive. “I approached members of my executive team and gathered their feedback,” she said. “It took time for me to properly articulate what I envisioned, but after several iterations, a formal proposal was ready to present to the executive committee.”
The result was the creation of a dedicated committee focused on client needs and practice areas within the firm to drive innovative efforts. Committee members regularly attend practice group meetings to discuss innovation and gather information and feedback for new initiatives. “Currently, we’re focusing on efficiencies around document and contract automation. Our outreach has revealed a significant need for that for our clients right now,” Catherine said.
For intrepid would-be innovators in other organizations, Catherine offers the following advice:
- Know your audience: “Understanding the culture of your firm — and in particular, your leadership team — is key to bringing more technology into the firm’s practices,” Catherine said. “My managing partner recommended I find data that would resonate with our executive committee. I did, and ultimately, we presented a very compelling case to them.”
- Create a process: Once they had official buy-in, Catherine’s team established a formal process around innovation for firm stakeholders. “I knew we would need more structure, more formality, and specific attorney participation for this to be successful. While we were technically already driving innovative efforts, wrapping those efforts in a process made it easier for us to proactively identify more practice groups whose clients could use new tools and solutions.”
- Communicate results: “The fastest way to spark an attorney’s interest is to demonstrate value for a client in a meaningful way,” Catherine said. “Starting with one specific project, communicating how well it’s working, and demonstrating the value-add helps generate interest from others within your organization who may have similar needs.”
“We’re a few months into our process now, and we should have more to report on our progress soon,” Catherine said. “The big push for us is getting a deeper understanding of the client base we have as we continue to grow.”
At a time when the legal profession is undergoing a significant global transformation, all lawyers can benefit from examining how their organizations are investing in and maximizing technology. Catherine’s experience exemplifies that tech adoption does not happen overnight. Having a number of specific, successful use cases can be the key to building the business case for innovation, by proving to your stakeholders the impact that innovation can have. Driving innovation can take many forms — but understanding your organization’s business priorities, culture, and stakeholders is paramount to establishing a system that will not only have impact today, but will also help your business to thrive well into the future.
Dean E. Sonderegger is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a leading provider of information, business intelligence, regulatory and legal workflow solutions. Dean has more than two decades of experience at the cutting edge of technology across industries. He can be reached at Dean.Sonderegger@wolterskluwer.com.