Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s innovation consultant Shawn Curran is to join Travers Smith today, 11 March, as head of legal technology, rejoining Oliver Bethell, who left Freshfields last year to take over as chief technology officer at the UK top 40 law firm.
Curran will be working with new technology and will be focussed on building relationships with internal and external clients of Travers Smith, to push forward the firm’s legal tech strategy.
He will be working with head of IT David Cassidy, who has been at the firm for 17 years. Legal IT Insider caught up with Curran at #GlenLegal19 and he said that he is looking forward to the move, commenting: “There are firms that detach the innovation function from core IT and there are firms that keep it the same. I’ve worked for firms at different stages that do both and my current view is its best to keep them together. I think it’s very important that the technology capability all pulls in the same direction. Any value that comes into the technology team should be shared throughout, whether its server provisioning or client pitches, everyone plays a role.”
Curran in 2018 was named as ILTA’s innovative IT professional of the year, for “championing projects or initiatives that have demonstrated the use of technology in efforts to enhance the practice of law or improve the productivity of attorneys in their organization.” He led the winning London team in the Global Legal Hackathon, with a terms and conditions app that enables consumers to identify where the T&Cs deviate from their expectations and build a profile of the digital services they consume.