How Telstra’s Legal Team Saved 40,000 Hours
In 2016 Telstra Legal partnered with Herbert Smith Freehills to run a series of design thinking workshops and innovation sprints to tackle a set of productivity opportunities. This collaboration resulted in a saving of a staggering 40,000 lawyer hours and recognition by Financial Times of Telstra Legal as Asia Pac’s most innovative legal department for 2016. Mick Sheehy is General Counsel – Finance, Technology, Innovation & Strategy at Telstra. He reveals how they ran the innovation forums and how they achieved this phenomenal time-saving. Telstra Legal Innovation Forum The Telstra Legal Innovation Forums are a collaboration between Telstra legal and one of our law firms, Herbert Smith Freehills. Initially, we invited 15 lawyers across Telstra legal, a mix of seniority and business units, to brainstorm a list of ideas for improvement across the business. After narrowing the list down to just four ideas, we used design thinking techniques to brainstorm how we might solve those problems, and then agreed to do a 10-week sprint where we would rapidly prototype our solutions and see what we came up with. This initial forum was such a success, we kept doing them, and haven’t looked back. We had our 7th Innovation Forum earlier this year, and the following four initiatives have now been implemented within the business as a result. All together these initiatives resulted in eliminating 40,000 hours in low-value, non-strategic work across the legal group. That’s the equivalent of about 17 FTEs in a group of 200, so it’s quite material. But it’s not really about headcount reduction. What the Innovation Forum is doing is setting the business up to effectively respond to productivity requirements: We still have to do more with less, but we’re now better placed to do it. Even better we’re now able to take time saved and reinvest into more innovation projects. Here are four initiatives we have implemented as part of the Innovation Forum to streamline our time: 1. Reduced Internal Lawyer-Only Meetings Differentiated between decision making and information sharing meetings Capped the amount of information sharing meetings people can go to Resulted in 52% reduction in time spent We suspected that our people were spending too much time in meetings but the solution to reducing these wasn’t immediately clear. We knew if we were going to tackle this we’d have to focus on something we could control, so we looked at internal legal meetings. These are not meetings with external people from the organisation, they’re not meetings with clients; they’re just meetings between other Telstra lawyers. We surveyed our group and they told us they were spending a full day a fortnight in internal legal meetings. We didn’t know what the ideal amount of hours was, there’s no science to this, but we suspected this was too much. This particular stream went through quite a number of workshops in the Innovation Forum before we actually ended up with our ultimate solution which was quite simple but it worked. We made a clear distinction between decision making and information sharing meetings We figured there are broadly two categories of meetings: decision-making and information sharing meetings. We decided to run a trial, asking everyone in the legal team – no exceptions, all 200 have to do this – to stipulate in the meeting request whether it is a decision-making meeting or an information sharing meeting. The rule was if it’s a decision-making meeting, you can have as many of these as you like during our trial, but you have to do a few things: you have to articulate in your meeting invite what decision it is that you’re trying to make, you can only invite the people that are needed for the decision, you have to have all the information that you need to make that decision circulated and pre-read, and you should only allocate the amount of time that you need to make that decision. But other than that, go for your life. We also capped the amount of information sharing meetings people can go to A lot of our information sharing meetings were team meetings where the information has just been cascaded down through the company, and our suspicion was a lot of people were hearing the same messages quite inefficiently. So we said, “Go to whichever information sharing meetings you think you need to go to, but only go to 2.5 hours maximum a week,” basically capping the amount they could attend. This resulted in 52% reduction in hours spent in meetings. When we asked everybody, “Were you less productive? Were you missing out on information that you otherwise felt like you should have got?” 92% said No. But the stat that I really love is when we asked our team, “Were you more productive?” and 80% said yes. Yes, we had some criticism, but we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback, with people saying they really appreciated the leadership team respecting their time, they’ve now been able to focus on more strategic work, and they now felt empowered to say no to meetings that they’d previously felt that they were obliged to say yes to. The main effect was making everyone think about how they should be spending their time. It also showed that quite a simple change can actually result in quite a big impact. 2. Reduced Time Spent Reporting Previously spent 75 hours week producing a “Top 2/3 Report” Assumption that the report was highly valued by the CEO’s office – we challenged that assumption Now produce a simpler report that still satisfies needs Resulted in 60% reduction in time spent reporting Every week our legal team produces what we called a “Top 2/3 Report”, essentially all the main matters that are going on in a particular group’s practice. The report then gets compiled: lawyers will send in their matters to their manager, the manager will look at it – they might review it, discuss it, amend it, back and forth – it goes up to their manager and so forth. It eventually gets put into a report around 40 pages long that goes to our group general counsel and then to our CEO. It was a really comprehensive, pretty impressive-looking document. Challenging Assumptions Producing this report was really ingrained in our DNA as a team, it was something we were proud of. During the Innovation Forums, we worked out we were spending 75 hours a week producing that particular report, so we thought, “It better be pretty valuable”. The CEO before last used to say how much he valued the Top 2/3 Report, because it gave him so much insight as to what was going on around the company, but was that still the case? When we challenged this assumption we learned the current CEO didn’t put the same value on this particular report as the previous CEO, so we asked ourselves, “why are we spending 75 hours a week producing this?” A simpler report that still satisfies needs We realised that we still need the report, but we’ve now reduced it significantly, which has resulted in 60% reduction in time spent on it (around 43 hours a week now). And while the amount of time that goes into producing that report is remarkably less, we’ve lifted the level of materiality of the report, it is more readable and far more useful now. 3. Reduced Legal Review of Internal Communications Telstra was using the equivalent of one full-time lawyer to review internal communications Reduced to a small list of items that need to be reviewed Resulted in 29% reduction in hours spent reviewing communications Another simple one was the legal review of internal communications. We had little bits and pieces here and there that needed to be reviewed, but when we added it up we realised it was the equivalent of employing one full-time lawyer just to review internal communications. We managed to reduce this to a small list of items that need to be reviewed, which in itself created a lot of debate. We’ve now reduced the time spent reviewing internal communications from 3,470 hours per year to 1,008. 4. Automated Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) Previously had 2-3 lawyers with full-time NDA practices Built instant NDA Tool Resulted in 82% reduction in time spent When we first looked at NDAs, it wasn’t actually that apparent to us what the solution was. They were pretty simple documents, there was a feeling that they don’t take up much time. But when we surveyed the group, we found out that we had somewhere between two and three lawyers with a full-time NDA practice when you added that up across the group. Obviously NDAs are really important documents, they formalise the point in time at which we can exchange our confidential information, but they were never getting litigated, they never get pulled up out of the drawer ever again after. It seemed a really ineffective use of a skilled lawyers’ time. Telstra’s Instant NDA Tool NDAs are not so much about the document, it’s about the process and the culture and what are we trying to achieve. But spending all of our effort negotiating a document that is probably not going to see the light of day again didn’t feel like the right thing, so we built our instant NDA tool. It’s actually been a lot of work and we’ve learnt a lot about automation. It’s far more complicated than I thought it would be at first, and most of that complexity is in trying to make it simple and user-friendly. We didn’t want our clients to think we were making them do the work we were previously doing – so ease of use was a top priority. We considered the whole process and not just the elements of the document, and I think that’s really important as well. Saving 40,000 hours on below the radar opportunities like NDAs, internal reporting and meetings have provided the Legal Innovation Forum with a licence to now tackle much bigger pain points such as workflow triage can capturing key data and metrics. “Now, instead of logging back in after dinner, I get to spend time with the family”. This quote from one of our lawyers really sums up the value of the Legal Innovation Forum and the work we have done to reduce the time spent on low-value tasks. Our people are now able to focus on more strategic work, we can give our lawyers better work/life balance, and the one that I love the most is that we can actually now afford to invest into further innovation programs and activities. Mick was one of the top speakers at our 2018 Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. About the Author Mick Sheehy is General Counsel – Finance, Technology, Innovation & Strategy at Telstra. Mick has an extensive commercial and M&A background, with 20 years’ experience working on transactions in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia. In 2016 Mick founded the Australian chapter of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. Mick is passionate about innovation in the legal industry and the opportunities for lawyers to continually add more value to their clients. This post originally appeared on the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest Australian blog.
Demystifying the Vendor Conundrum: The Areas of Need
The changing landscape of legal sees many companies supporting an in-house legal counsel model, which brings great benefits for the company – some of which include risk management, access to legal support, performance management and succession planning. Samiksha Kader, Legal Counsel at Tiger Brands will be presenting at Legal Innovation & Tech Fest, sharing her learnings around the needs and challenges presented for in-house counsels. We caught up with Samiksha in the lead up to the event. Samiksha – we look forward to having you present at Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. What motivated you to get involved as a presenter at the event? I realised that many of the challenges faced and experienced by myself are also experienced by my colleagues and I would like to share my thoughts on the vendor conundrum as well as share possible solutions, and also learn from fellow colleagues on how they deal with common challenges. Tell us about your story/career journey in the legal space? And what do you enjoy most about your work? I was raised by a single mom. I was exposed to a very different reality than many of my friends and family, where my mum being the sole provider in the household and also my sole caretaker filled the role of what I later learned to be associated, in some instances with the role of a “man in society”. Being exposed to such an independent and strong female role model, I began to question at a very young age how society viewed and treated women. Given the strong opinions I would share, people regarded me as a feminist and in time, that passion to fight against the stereotypes of the world expanded to fight against racism and violence against women. I believe that law was already in my story long before I realised it was. I always want to contribute in some way to a better place to live. I suppose I gravitated to law to make that difference. Through my career, I was exposed to many aspects of the field, from matrimonial law, criminal law to IT law. I spent much of my career at Business Connexion Group, an ICT company. I really enjoyed being part of an innovative industry. What I enjoy about my job till today is that I am exposed to all facets of trade, which I get to learn about i.e. FMCG, IT, Pharmacy etc. I am still very much a human rights law enthusiast and although I have not had enough time to dedicate to it, I believe that I will keep trying to make that difference, however small. A challenge for in-house counsels is wading through the vendor conundrum to find the solution that supports all the requirements seamlessly. What are the areas that need to be focussed on to get this process right? 1. Data Management and record retention 2. Workflow management (audit trail, workflow and work load management, benefit analytics) 3. Template generation tools. About the speaker Given her background of being a specialist in ICT Law and having worked for one of South Africa’s most prominent ICT companies, Samiksha Kader had access to a fair amount of technology at her fingertips, most of which was never meant to support legal, but Samiksha found ways to make it work for legal. She is obsessed with efficiency and is always looking for answers to work smarter. Samiksha is very artistic in nature and believes the practice of law is an art form not administrative. She loves freedom, peace and nature. Her main ambition in life is to live with passion and love.
Have We Reached Peak Innovation in Legal?
We are lucky to have Graeme Grovum, Head of Innovation at Corrs Chambers Westgarth from Australia to present on the stage at the inaugural Legal Innovation & Tech Fest in Johannesburg this year. With his deep understanding of legal processes and love of new technologies, Graeme is well positioned to comment and share insights on some of the hottest topics in legal tech right now. Ahead of his presentation on open innovation at Corrs, Graeme shared some of his insights into the current state of innovation in the legal space.
The Future of Corporate Legal Services Delivery…Now?
The rules of corporate legal services delivery are changing. Technology, alternative legal services providers and the drive towards operational efficiency is disrupting legal services delivery, especially for corporate legal departments, who are under immense pressure to modernise and “do more with less”. Globally, corporate legal departments are assuming more work internally and increasing their role within the organisation and are on a drive to seeking innovative ways to mitigate legal risk whilst supporting business.
The New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence & the Implications for Legal
We are lucky to have Milos Kresojevic, Founder of AI.Legal Labs (UK) presenting at the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest in Johannesburg this year. We caught up with him to hear more about his experience in the legal industry and something he’s particularly passionate about – embracing artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal industry. Milos, we can’t wait to have you on the stage at the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest this year. Tell us a bit about your journey in the legal space. What do you love about working in this industry? My major legal journey started with Freshfields and American Express. At Freshfields, I started and co-led their innovation effort. The most exciting aspect of this role has been having the ability to make a significant impact on some of the most complex and largest matters in the world. The ability to “play” with the explosive mix of top-end lawyering and the top-end of technology (AI and ML) is a dream come true. In reality these innovations have resulted in amazing new revenue models and streams for clients, the firm, partners and lawyers. We’ve worked on developing completely new types of legal services and on a completely different scale, not humanly possible. Being a pioneer and part of such the efforts is a privilege and a thrilling experience. For me though, the best part of these new technologies is that they allow for the democratisation of legal services – allowing law firms of any size, as well as society at large to enjoy the benefits. Legal playing fields are being redrawn and there is a lot of talk about the future benefits of artificial intelligence in the legal industry. What excites you about developments in AI and why should we be embracing this new future as the legal industry? There are two aspects of AI – the threats and the opportunities. AI is disruptive technology by nature, and that means potential disruption of the value chain of the legal industry altogether. AI-enabled work currently done by lawyers might be performed by smart machines and taken over by your corporate clients, accountants or even – strange as it sounds – regulators (for example, the Roll Royce case in the UK where regulators used AI to audit the case). So you definitely don’t want to be the last one to the game since “legal lunch” might be eaten by some other players. Think of Deloitte, who is starting to enter the legal market. However on opportunity side, law firms and the legal industry should play to their strengths and assess how and where AI can and should extend their strategic play or barrier to entry. Pursue pure AI-strategic play and see where they can create new legal services that never existed, or were previously prohibitively expensive. What excites me is thinking of “AI as new electricity.” Just think for a moment how industries, lives, quality of life, services and societies at large looked before electricity. This will be the major shift of the business (and legal) world we live in, how we live and the kind of services we will provide and enjoy. And to be truly outlandish, how about new regulation being generated, reviewed and monitored by smart AI machines…in real time. Or to bring it home for legal firms, smart machines being able to store the legal expertise of your top partners and lawyers, so that you can own, maintain and use their expertise beyond their retirement or tenure within the firm. Let alone predicting profitability or partnership chances of your pool of newly graduated lawyers. That is what I call “new legal.” Tell us a bit about the AI initiatives you’ve worked on Two of the most exciting projects have been: Using AI for new anti-bribery regulation in Germany. It was first of a kind in the world for training new anti-bribery provisions in a matter of weeks, so we were able to review tens of thousands of documents, previously humanly not possible. Once trained our lawyers were able to acquire a significant new number of clients. Using AI on one of the largest class action suits in the world – assessing, categorising claims and court judgements, generation of appropriate arguments and documentation based on automated assessment and all within comprehensive and holistic view of information about claims, claimants, judgements and status across all representative law firms. What are your top tips for companies/firms looking to embrace “AI here and now!” My top advice is – for every large and medium client matter/project within your firm, ask yourself how and where AI can help and secondly how would you approach the matter/project if you adopted an AI-first approach from the outset. AI is not supposed to be just the back-office, lab play for techies but an actual major “tool set” for your lawyers and your top current client matters. And don’t just look into doing the same tasks better or faster but asking what other services and value-adds AI can provide to your clients. And that is the point at which your actual AI innovation starts – innovation of client services. AI innovation leads, and is at the core of innovation of client services. How do AI enabled client services equal value creation for clients and lawyers? Primarily at the moment, it’s an increase in depth and breadth of legal insights (information), that in turn means an increased depth and breadth of legal advice, legal risk assessment and provision of legal services. For lawyers it means the ability to focus more on the strategic, top end lawyering, expert-level type of work while being able to draw their conclusions from much deeper pool of legal information. It gives the lawyers the ability to take on more high-end lawyering type of work. It moves the lawyer up the legal value chain. For clients it is the ability to take full advantage of those deeper legal insights based on larger and deeper information pools. And secondly it means cost savings because of the lower cost of automated legal services – a factor that may drive more access to and demand for legal services. In one of the largest matters I was involved in, the estimated savings to the client was measured in millions of euros. About the Speaker Milos Kresojevic is the Founder of AI.Legal Labs, and is a thought leader on the use of AI in the legal industry. From Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to IBM Research Lab and Silicon Valley. Milos has an MBA Degree from Columbia University and London Business School and a MSc. Aerospace Engineering from the University of Belgrade. Milos contributed to the Law Society’s report on “Technology Innovation in Legal Services”, and regularly speaks on AI and Big Law globally – from New York, to London, to Toronto, to Sydney. He is the winner of the 1st European LegalTech Hackathon, and he presented at ICAIL 2017 at King’s College. Milos’ current primary focus is researching the impact of AI and wider disruptive technologies on Big Law and Access to Justice.
Law Firms Kick Against Innovation Tech
Law firms resist change – the only aspect that drives technology change in law firms is the external pressure from their clients, general counsel or legislation. Also, if they get burnt by something that technology could have prevented – like viruses, hacks, email snooping or server crashes. It seems absolutely crazy that law firms would resist innovation that would see their firms providing more efficient services to their clients, so why do law firms fight the changes that would help them down the line?
Lawyers of the Future: A Word of Caution
Never mind Latin, do you speak New Law? To stay relevant in the legal world you need to know your AI, from your LPO, ALSP and IG* – A language that I’m guessing wasn’t part of your law degree unless you graduated last year from a South African law school I don’t know about. While the majority of states in the US recognise that a duty of technology competence is part of the professional rules of conduct for lawyers, we’re a long way off from this in South Africa. In 2016 when asked to present on the Future of Law to a major South African university, I accepted their offer of a projector to show my powerpoint presentation, only to be directed to an overhead projector when I arrived. Enough said.
Why the Pace of Justice Innovation Has to Speed Up In SA
Change is coming, and it’s best to embrace it sooner rather than later. Where should justice innovators look for inspiration in South Africa? One place to start would be the financial services sector. It’s full of examples of creative thinking, innovative technology and how to be locally-specific and world-beating at the same time. Our banks are constantly finding new ways to address profitable but previously unserved markets: in 2013, 67% of South Africans used formal banking services. By the end of 2017, that number had risen to 77%.
Experiencing Conflict? Consider This…
We all experience conflict. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. We’re Simians navigating a tough world, competing for limited resources, with limited time. It turns out that disagreement is a natural and normal part of life – just ask anyone who’s married. But as natural and human as this dispute thing is, and despite the endless wars, divorces and subsequent jurisprudences us homo-sapiens have collectively accumulated, we seldom seem to have the wisdom to navigate conflict effectively or constructively. Put differently, when we disagree, most of us still choose to fight…
What to Expect at Legal Innovation & Tech Fest 2018
The inaugural Legal Innovation & Tech Fest is happening in Johannesburg later this year. The agenda has just been released, and it’s a whopper – 30 sessions over 2 days! We sat down with Legal Innovation & Tech Fest Program Director, Adi Hartuv, to get more insight into what we can expect from this event.