Ashurst will this Autumn launch a digital strategy in order to facilitate firmwide cultural change around digital capability and delivery, as the UK top 20 law firm also moves towards working with clients in a more agile way. We first revealed the new strategy on the front page of our July/August Orange Rag newsletter out yesterday (10 August).
The strategy is being led by Tara Waters, who in May took on the role of chief digital officer. Waters was previously head of digital for Ashurst Advance, which is Ashurst’s ‘newlaw’ arm. Ashurst’s CEO Paul Jenkins was the driving force behind the new role and is also sponsor of the digital strategy that Waters is accountable for delivering on.
The digital board comprises Jenkins; Waters; chief technology officer Sid Maharaj; chief operating officer Geoff Gishubi and Hilary Goodier, who is a partner and co-head of Ashurst Advance.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Waters said: “We’re taking a lot of what we have learned and seeding it across the firm. Innovation shouldn’t be seen as something that happens elsewhere. We are launching a digital strategy that aims to help our people understand that being digital is not just about technology and tools – although that is the first step – but also about shifting the approach and the mindset of our people in terms of the way we work; how we collaborate; and how we extend the way that we engage with our clients to become more digital.”
Chris Georgiou, who is a partner and co-head of Ashurst Advance added: “The digital strategy has got sponsorship at the highest level to drive change throughout the organisation.”
According to Waters, the new strategy will focus on “helping everyone to feel enabled, not frustrated, by technology.” Waters said: “We’re trying to get rid of that friction and create better digital experiences across the firm. We’re bringing in more agile ways of working and providing more training and development on new approaches to delivering work.”
The firm recently hired its first agile scrum master.
Waters says that one of the aims of the new strategy is to ensure that Ashurst is mapping the way its clients have developed digitally. She said: “Many of them are coming out of transformation journeys that as a sector we are entering. We need to accelerate what we’re doing.”
One focus of the work that Waters is doing is looking at how the firm can leverage its data to provide a more end-to-end client offering, and Waters said: “We have had a lot of incredible successes and been able to win awards and figure out how to connect with our clients around data. We’re now looking more holistically around how we deliver the whole process.”
Waters is conscious of avoiding buzzwords and says: “Everyone talks about a client-centred approach but we’re trying to be more creative and find new ways of diving into that so it’s not just lip service.”
In May, Ashurst ran its first client hackathon with five clients across different industries, focusing on how to solve ESG problems. Waters says: “We have come up with some lightweight prototypes and are using technology to look at how to face the ESG challenge. We’re really starting to understand how not only to digitise our legal services, but how do we get to the bottom of a legal problem.”
The digital strategy follows a fairly lengthy consultation period, with Waters commenting: “We did a pretty significant exercise consulting with people at all different levels, ensuring everyone is part of the journey; there is an understanding that it needs to happen and that we need to provide support for cultural change. We’ll put together development
packages covering topics such as design thinking and service design to reflect our evolving expectations and enable people to skill up. There will be new opportunities for training across a host of areas.”
The digital strategy comes on the back of a broader transformation agenda and Georgiou said: “On the incentives side this year we saw a step forward: this is the first year we have provided partners with bonuses based on transformation outcomes. We changed it last year but this year we have about 15 bonuses and that is a first. Engagement in transformation and the outcomes were responsible. It will make a big difference and the teams have been doing a lot of work on training and development to embed digital skills and approaches into the whole framework.”
caroline@legaltechnology.com