Herbert Smith Freehills today officially launches its global Digital Legal Delivery practice led by managing partner Libby Jackson supported by newly-appointed chief technology officer David Turner.
As we wrote in April in an interview with Turner, the objective is to globalise and integrate technology and alternative legal services across the London and Sydney-headquartered firm.
HSF announced in June last year that Jackson had been appointed as managing partner of its digital legal services practice. While that drew together under Jackson’s leadership HSF’s Alternative Legal Services (ALT) team, legal operations, digital transformation and emerging tech teams, they remained separate units. Now all of them will operate from one DLD practice of over 420 people.
Herbert Smith Freehills global CEO Justin D’Agostino said: “We have long used digital innovation to deliver better services to our clients. With every industry operating in increasingly complex environments, we need to keep pace with new digital solutions as they emerge. Bringing all our brightest legal tech minds into one practice, sharing resources and innovation, will accelerate these services.”
“The new practice will enable us to rethink how we deliver all our core services to clients,” said Jackson. “We were an early adopter of traditional AI in law, often partnering with legal tech startups to transform how we managed and automated matters for clients. The new practice will enable us to scale up faster, redesign our technology stack and make the most of new research and tools as they emerge,” she said.