MinterEllison partners with Josef to build digital fluency within firm with Bot Buildathon’23

“Digital dexterity is really important for us as part of our refreshed digital strategy, we want to equip our people with the skills they need to feel comfortable engaging with different forms of technology.”

To get the entire firm comfortable engaging with legal technology, MinterEllison hosted the Bot Buildathon’23 – a hackathon style event where participants could attend workshop sessions covering topics such as legal design and ideation and bot building in collaboration with Josef.

“We had a really successful Bot Week event in the past and wanted to build on that success to continue providing opportunities across the firm for people to engage with Josef so we can build a more digitally fluent workforce who have transferable skills for the future,” notes Emily Egan, Legal Operations Consultant at MinterEllison.

Taking learnings from last year’s Bot Week event, MinterEllison decided to expand this event over a span of two to three weeks rather than just the one-week sprint to increase engagement and improve buy-in from the members in the firm as they had more time to absorb the content from the workshop sessions. Participants from all over the firm from different functions across legal and business operations from different offices got together as a team to connect and brainstorm bot ideas.

“People appreciated having the extra space to give it some proper thought and this was reflected in the quality of the bots submitted this round of bots were definitely the best quality we’ve seen from any of our bot events we’ve ran in the past,” quotes Emily.

“A few people already had ideas of bots that they wanted to build and this was the perfect opportunity for them to bring those bots to life!”

5 bots were shortlisted from the list of submissions and were presented to a panel of judges during Demo Day which was the final day of the Bot Buildathon’23.

The winner of Best Bot Built went to Mehmet Kavlakoglu and Anuj Saraogi for their ER Triaging for Infants Bot. Their bot was designed to help teams in emergency departments in hospitals to triage patients faster and efficiently which is crucial when it comes to regulations and compliance within the medical field.

As for the People’s Bot, that award went to the Caring Responsibilites Bot built by Katherine Mroz and Chloe Nicolosi that was designed to empower MinterEllison employees who have caring duties outside of their career. The bot encourages users to talk openly with their team and provides HR resources outlining MinterEllison’s commitment to flexible work.

MinterEllison hopes to be able to expand events like their Bot Buildathon’23 to be a regular part of learning and development within the firm. With the success of this event, they are planning to pilot out a new program where bot builders can receive badges as part of their broader Digital Academy. Credentials earned can be used within the firm at MinterEllison or taken with the participant for any future roles.

“Based on the success of people obtaining credentials as part of the pilot program, there’s certainly an appetite there to make bot building a recurring part of our learning and development program to empower our people to earn credentials in Josef and to build on their digital fluency,” notes Emily.

When asked about the importance of legal automation and legaltech for the future of the legal industry, Emily also believes that digitally fluent legal professionals who are confident in various technology tools will transform the way legal services are provided, in addition to having a different approach to problem solving rather than sticking to traditional norms.

“I think clients are expecting more from their legal providers as they themselves are also on their own digital and automation journeys. It is important to them that the people who are providing legal services to them are similarly on their own journey to becoming more digitally fluent”.