Ashurst Interview What will the 'Future Normal' look like for legal tech? Q&A with Rob MacAdam

Rob MacAdam, head of digital products in EMEA, provides us with some insights into trends they have been seeing in the market in response to C19, and give us some tips on how we can adjust to the 'future normal'. 

Rob – you joined Ashurst one week into lockdown. Tell us how you've found the experience of meeting your new colleagues remotely and settling into a new role away from the office?

I can't lie — it has been tough. However, the firm and the Ashurst Advance team have been incredibly supportive. All necessary tech was couriered to me a week before I started, so I was good to go from day one. Thankfully there have been no IT issues yet. Building new working relationships hasn't proved as difficult as I thought as I already knew, or had met, my new colleagues before I joined. This has certainly made remote working with the team much easier as I already know the personalities on the other end of the Skype call. I also joined the firm from Thomson Reuters — so I was used to working remotely with colleague in far flung corners of the globe who I never actually met in person. Something must be working as I feel as close to my new team as I would if I was sitting next to them in the office.

One thing I've come to realise is that informal meetings and conversations in the office are so important for getting up to speed in a new role. Remote working has done away with these interactions, but on the flip side it's been great to see so many virtual team coffees, drinks and quizzes popping up in the diary. I think the hardest thing has been juggling work with home life. My wife and I have three young daughters — Amelie (6) and her identical twin sisters Heidi and Nancy (4) — who have been brilliant over the past 7 weeks. However, trying to on-board into a new role and get up to speed quickly is challenging when you have the Trolls World Tour soundtrack blasting away in the background!

The last couple of months have seen a huge adjustment for many in their methods of working. What is your sense on how our clients are coping with remote working?

Very well. The technology and capability to support remote working has always been there, the only difference is that we're all now working from home — it's now the norm, not the exception. Many clients have traditionally embraced remote working and collaborative technology more than we do in the legal industry. Whether it's Microsoft Teams, Slack, monday.com or Trello — many large corporates were already set up well for lockdown. Adoption of any technology is always driven by need, and the Covid-19 pandemic has really forced people to collaborate remotely using technology (there's no other way). I think there has been a realisation that the tech actually works well and that we're all able to be productive even though we're not all sitting in the same building. In fact, my hope is that this leads to a fundamental shift in working practices and patterns. We are all so used to interacting remotely in our personal lives, that I think people are pleased that this has forced our professional lives to keep pace. I also think the shared experience of lockdown, and the personal nature of video meetings over Zoom and GoToMeeting (seeing each others' kitchens, lounges, spare bedrooms and kids), has actually enhanced interactions between ourselves and our clients — bringing us closer together. We could see some really strong bonds being built during this time.

What trends have you seen with regards to the uptake of technology in the last couple of months?

I would say that there are two immediate and noticeable trends so far:

1. Increase in use of video conferencing and team collaboration tools: This has certainly been the defining tech trend. In the absence of meeting face to face, we have all turned to video conferencing to maintain our personal connections. Whilst we're all familiar with plain old dial-in conference calls, these just don't cut it in the time of lockdown. We need to see people. We need the human-connection to keep us happy, engaged and productive. In addition to video conferencing, we are also seeing an increase in collaboration and messaging tools. Lockdown has deprived us of informal interactions in the office. Luckily, there are tools such as Skype, Microsoft Teams, Slack and WhatsApp that help replace these critical interactions in the remote world without clogging up our email inboxes.

2. Shift to electronic signatures: This may be the biggest change we have seen as a result of Covid-19 and lockdown. Whilst the technology has been around for a number of years now — the pandemic has forced people to embrace e-signatures as a way to have documents circulated and signed quickly and efficiently. To give you a picture of the scale of the uptake, the Digital Services team saw a 60% increase in Ashurst DocuSign users between April and March. The scale of the increase has necessitated putting in place thorough policies and guidance. Our Legal Technologists worked with the Expertise and Knowledge team during April to help create an e-signature/DocuSign policy for the UK, with equivalent initiatives in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. We now have policies and guidance that sets out key features of DocuSign, approved use cases and advice for certain circumstances (e.g. witnessing) and transaction types. A series of webinars covering the mechanics of DocuSign and the legal considerations of using the tool were delivered to the firm globally in April.

Has the current Covid-19 pandemic, and resulting government measures, led to opportunities for the greater use of legal technology?

Absolutely. In addition to the obvious increase in DocuSign usage, we are also seeing opportunities emerge to leverage our broader technology toolkit to support clients throughout these unprecedented times. The situation is moving and evolving so fast that businesses need to be even more agile and responsive than ever — people's businesses and livelihoods depend on it. Furthermore, information and advice is changing day-by-day, so it's critical to make this advice accessible so that businesses can make informed decisions in a timely manner. The Digital Services team at Ashurst have been using technology to support our clients in several ways:

• CBIL scheme: We've all heard about the UK Government's Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme that enables banks to make financial support available to small businesses with a government-backed guarantee for loan repayments. In the face of overwhelming demand, Banks are now faced with the challenge of how to process and execute loan and security documents quickly and efficiently. Luckily technology is here to support. For example, our Global Loans team was recently instructed by a large global bank to help it process loans for its customers under the CBIL scheme. Our Digital Services team automated 25 loan and security documents using Contract Express in just 10 days. In April, a total of 420 documents were generated for the bank using the automated questionnaire. Our Legal Analyst team are also using another of our technology tools, HighQ Collaborate, to project manage the intake and processing of each individual loan.
• CBIL eligibility checking: With so much government support and advice being provided, it's not always easy for businesses to understand what they are entitled to. For this reason, the Ashurst Advance Digital team created a web-based app using our BRYTER decision automation platform that enables businesses to assess their eligibility under the CBIL scheme. Businesses would access the tool directly, answering a series of questions to determine whether they are eligible for the loan and then receive confirmation of their eligibility (or ineligibility) at the end of the questionnaire. This solution is at the proof of concept stage at the moment, being tested with several of our banking clients as we speak. We are also looking at using HighQ and Contract Express to create an end-to-end approach so that the loan and security documents could be automatically generated after the questionnaire, should the business meet the eligibility criteria.

The current Covid-19 situation also presents many more opportunities for the use of technology to support our clients. In addition to the bulk generation of CBILS documentation, contract automation software could be deployed to support the bulk creation of high-volumes of employment contracts for rapid recruitment to help with contact tracing and testing, as well as in the pharmaceutical and care industries (where there is a current need for more staff). Furthermore, the growing requirement amongst businesses to review and rationalise their asset portfolios, as well as the need to manage the obligations within rapidly created and potentially transient contracts, means that we're likely to see more use of AI contract analysis tools such as Kira to help with the heavy lifting, as well as contract management tools. We've already seen some businesses leveraging AI tools to assess the force majeure position in their contracts.

If you had to give 3 tips to in-house legal teams looking to invest in some form of legal technology to drive efficiency, what would they be?

1. Know what problem you're looking to solve: The temptation is often to follow the marketing hype from some new legal tech tool that promises huge efficiency and cost savings. However, technology is rarely the silver bullet. It's critical to analyse current department and business processes and uncover the underlying issues before searching out a tech solution. Only when you know what problem you are trying to solve can you begin to examine what technology may be best to help out. In many cases technology will not even play a part in solving the problem. So my advice is to pause, analyse and evaluate before getting the check book out for some shiny new legal technology.

2. Talk to IT first: Even where you have analysed processes and determined that technology may have a part to play, it still doesn't mean that you need to procure new technology. Many businesses already have a powerful technology toolkit, but it is often underutilised. One of the main reasons for this is that teams and employees don't talk to IT and share their challenges and pain points — therefore IT can't help (even if they have the capability to do so). It's amazing how many in-house lawyers I've spoken to who say that after a quick conversation with IT they realised they already had a tool that could help them deliver efficiency or manage risk etc. The key is sharing and collaboration. So get chatting to your IT team as you may be surprised what you can achieve in a relatively short space of time.

3. Think about change management: Whether you decide to procure a new legal tech tool or deploy existing technology, you will not succeed without considering the human element. Most people don't like change. You could have the most game-changing technology, but it will fail if you haven't thought about bringing people along on the journey with you. Therefore, when rolling out any new technology make sure you involve people in the process, take feedback, explain the impact of the tool for them personally, and critically, make sure there is thorough training and support in place to help people through the transition. Finally, make technology deployment an iterative process by constantly taking feedback and evolving the solution — the tool that's needed on day one is rarely the tool that's needed 2 years later.