“Legal sits on so much valuable commercial information. If you capture it, you can use it to have strategic conversations with your board about how your business can do better.”– Thomas Stone, Senior Legal Technologist, TLT
Watch the full interview with TLT's Thomas Stone.
Last month, Tom’s FutureLaw team won Legal Technology Team of the Year at the Legal Business Awards 2024. What for, you ask? A cutting-edge employee training solution built alongside telco giant Vodafone–all on Josef!
TLT is one of the most decorated law firms in the UK, having won Law Firm of the Year three times in a row, and is internationally renowned for its expertise in financial services, clean energy, retail, and technology.
You can think of Tom’s FutureLaw team as the firm’s technology arm, developing innovative legal solutions for the firm and its clients, and, in Tom’s words, “cutting through the hype to find legaltech that really adds value.”
In this fireside chat, hosted by Co-founder and COO Sam Flynn, Tom explains how more lawyers are looking to create digital solutions than ever before. He shares how in-house lawyers are fast becoming data-driven juggernauts, and, amongst a whole lot else, why TLT automates on Josef.
Watch the interview to hear the conversation in full, or read our recap below.
The day before the fireside chat, Tom and TLT won an award for their Dawn Raid solution, which ensures all Vodafone employees are able to respond appropriately to a raid.
Tom says the key to building successful client-facing technology is collaboration and agility. Part of this was the technology (Josef!), but another part was the design.
He says, “What was really interesting about the solution was that our lawyers were able to develop an initial draft, putting in place all sorts of expert guidance needed to resolve issues. Then, we could take it back to the client, who could get hands-on shaping it for their individual business needs.”
“It was no longer just an off-the-shelf solution. It became a business solution designed perfectly around the client’s needs, reflecting their unique profile, such as their business locations and their people. It’s all factored into the tool!”
“There’s nothing better than winning an award with a client,” Tom says.
“Legal sits on so much valuable commercial information. If you capture it, you can use it to have strategic conversations with your board about how your business can do better.”– Thomas Stone, Senior Legal Technologist, TLT
Before jumping onto Josef, Tom shares that the firm had an abundance of ideas and “a lot of existing technology, but we just couldn’t get ideas out the door fast enough.”
“We found that Josef would allow us to get from 0 to 60 pretty fast.”
The ability to easily collaborate was a big draw too.
“When you’re taking a process or task away from a lawyer with a new piece of tech, there’s always a level of discomfort that you need to navigate.”
“Josef allows our lawyers to get hands on in the building process. This is really powerful because they can see how the flow works and their ideas come to life, and they can really shape the solution to develop exactly what they need, which is really exciting.”
Hesitancy surrounding legaltech is becoming a thing of the past.
“Five years ago, we were talking to lawyers and clients, trying to work out how we could get them to do things in better ways and embrace new ideas.”
Now, it’s the other way around!
“Now, they’re coming to us, and we’re the ones responding and developing the interesting solutions they want to create.”
Tom explains, “Lawyers have learned that they don’t have to do the really boring stuff.” With more digital solutions at their disposal, “They can now focus on those really interesting tasks that actually add value,” and that they were actually trained to do!
“In-house teams are moving away from being cost centers,” Tom says.
“They’re looking to become value creators within their organization.”
Tom explains, “In-house lawyers are gatekeepers of some of the most valuable commercial information that goes through a business in the contracts that they run. If you can capture the data from those contracts, you’ve got a fantastic bank of information you can then use to have strategic conversations with your board about what and how the business can do better.”
“Legal can become strategic advisors who can really jump in and add a lot of value. Technology is one of the things helping them make that transition.”
One of the biggest opportunities Tom sees for GenAI is its ability to “find information more efficiently.”
“With something like generative AI, you can take all of the really good information you’re producing as a knowledge-based industry and make it available to all of your people. It augments the experience of everyone in the firm and allows them to really maximize what they already have.”
“GenAI is inspiring lawyers to do things differently too,” Tom notes.
“I’m noticing that more people are willing to come forward with new ideas. From there, we’re able to figure out whether GenAI is the right tool for the job and really run with their energy to develop the right solutions.”
“When people start automating, one of the common pitfalls I see is getting over-focused on the tech.”
“It’s much easier to build something useful if you focus on the actual need first. There are real benefits in working intuitively.”
“Start small too,” Tom advises. “If you pick just a few of your client’s needs, you can iterate and build up from there. It’s often easier to get those quick wins in place, to get buy-in from the people who’ll be using it, and then improve it from there.”
“And don’t forget about the user,” he says. “Make sure you think about the user and focus on getting something that’s really good, clean, simple, and easy to use.”
Teodora Pimpireva Tapping, Bumble’s Global Head of Privacy, knows the benefits of automating firsthand.
“By automating legal compliance, you can actually focus on in-depth analysis rather than filling out a spreadsheet,” she says.
“This allows us, as privacy professionals, to dig deeper into the legal question at hand and not think, ‘Oh no, yet another tedious compliance question.’”
Watch Teodora reach “dangerous levels of privacy geek” in conversation with Josef Co-founder and COO Sam Flynn.
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