James Grandage has joined Alt-V Law as legal transformation advisor in the latest significant hire for the UK-headquartered global legal technology consultancy. Grandage has been a self-employed consultant for 18 months and before that was global head of knowledge management at Harneys, where he revamped the knowledge team.
We’re told that under his leadership, automation initiatives saved the firm approximately $2.5m in fee-earning hours in 2023.
Before Harneys, Grandage spent seven years at the Maples Group as global marketing technology manager, overseeing initiatives across 18 offices with an annual budget of $500,000. He negotiated the acquisition of the maples.com domain, spearheaded digital campaigns in funds and regulatory, and launched Maples’ first Asia-based investment funds forum, embedding technology into client engagement and business development.
At Alt-V he will focus on supporting offshore firms with BD, KM, and innovation strategies.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Grandage said: “I worked a lot with Alt-V during my time at Harneys and really built a connection with the team there on various projects. It was a bit of a no-brainer to talk with them and look at the opportunities, and it turned out that there was a good synergy.
“My entire career has always had a tech slant and at Alt-V I’m going to be focusing on business development in terms of the systems that marketing and business development teams tend to adopt and employ. I make sure that the processes around those technologies are embedded and working well.” Grandage’s background is in tech and he said: “Knowledge was a new area for me when I joined Harneys and it’s moving as such a pace. There has been an explosion in innovation in knowledge management and it’s the most important commodity in a law firm, so why not ensure that everything the lawyers need to service their clients is automated?”
Grandage will focus on areas including CRM selection and roll out, automation technologies, intranets and document management systems (including taxonomies).
He is looking forward to combining his varied career experiences at Alt-V and says: “As we know, it’s not just about tech usually, it’s often about the road map, the strategy, the understanding of what the overarching firm’s objectives are and what they’re trying to achieve. And then aligning that with the tech.”
Alt-V recently hired Sophie Wakenell as an associate and legal operations strategist. She was previously business manager to the CEO at Clyde & Co. You can read about that hire here:
