Category Archives: Speakers

SA Lawyers Must Embrace Technology in Order to Survive and Prosper

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Someone wrote recently, “Technology won’t replace lawyers, but lawyers who use technology will replace those who don’t”. As someone who specialises in eDiscovery and witnessed the transformation in the UK of the use of technology before moving to South Africa some six years ago, I would totally agree with those sentiments. Since living here, it has been my mission to educate lawyers in the use of eDiscovery technology and to persuade the Department of Justice to amend the rules of civil procedure to incorporate eDiscovery, bringing South Africa into the 21st century and aligning with other jurisdictions. I feel privileged to have met Professor Richard Susskind OBE. Amongst other things, he is President of the Society of Computers and Law; IT Adviser to Lord Chief Justice (in the UK), and a renowned author and speaker. Of the many books that he has written, all with a similar theme, I commend at least four to you. There was one he wrote a few years ago entitled, “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services”, which particularly resonated. There is another called, “Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to your Future”, and another entitled, “The Future of the Profession: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts.” His latest is “Online Courts and the Future of Justice”. All of these and others are readily available via Amazon. Do you detect his theme and my interest? Of course, it is the technology and how its use could and should be changing how … Continue reading →

Legal Research in the Age of AI

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Ahead of his presentation at the 2019 Legal Innovation & Tech Fest, we briefly caught up with Juta and Company CEO Kamal Patel to chat about how Juta continues to remain relevant to its customers after 165 years in business, his predictions on the future of legal research and the predicted impact that Artificial Intelligence will have on the practice of law. Hi Kamal, we are looking forward to having Juta and Company as a Premier Partner at the 2019 Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. Can you tell us what it takes for a company with such a long-standing history in legal publishing to remain relevant in an ever-changing digital world? As an independent local player in the legal and academic publishing industry, and one that has weathered successive waves of technological change, it is a unique feat to have endured as we have since 1853. This milestone comes as Juta is poised to enter a new phase of technology-enabled growth. Juta continues to reinvent itself and does so by evolving to meet the shifting legal information needs of a range of users, and by diversifying our core skills and competencies. It’s one thing to be a respected and fondly regarded player in the SA legal information landscape, but it is imperative that Juta’s business remains innovative and responsive to emerging trends. We are constantly presented with opportunities that redefine the value we can offer to the users who rely on our content, which is a hallmark of our rapidly … Continue reading →

The Coffee Shop Office: Benefits and Challenges of Alternative Working Arrangements

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Lawyers David Lancaster and Munya Gwanzura, both experts in business management, reflect on the pros and cons of employees working outside the office. Munya will be speaking at the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest in June this year. Increasingly, business people are trading their suits for their chinos (and even their tracksuits) as the formal office appears to give way to comfortable workspaces at home and, at times, in coffee shops.  The introduction of new technology has enabled businesses to find better ways of achieving operational efficiency, including moving away from the traditional model, that requires employees to be physically present in the office, towards more alternative and flexible working arrangements.  The technology era is continuously disrupting the traditional ways of doing things and, if businesses are to survive, they need to move with the times and ensure they remain commercially relevant and competitive. Critical to achieving operational efficiency is having in place a technology infrastructure designed to assist employees to increase the speed at which they execute tasks and deliver goods and services. Motivated, skilled employees, who utilise and leverage technology successfully to create tangible value by delivering high-quality work, are essential. In considering a change in traditional working arrangements, it must be appreciated that technology can generally be accessed from anywhere and is no longer limited to the office environment. With a reliable fibre connection at home, an employee can seamlessly connect into the employer’s network and execute tasks assigned to him or her remotely. These employees can … Continue reading →

How Telstra’s Legal Team Saved 40,000 Hours

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In 2016 Telstra Legal partnered with Herbert Smith Freehills to run a series of design thinking workshops and innovation sprints to tackle a set of productivity opportunities. This collaboration resulted in a saving of a staggering 40,000 lawyer hours and recognition by Financial Times of Telstra Legal as Asia Pac’s most innovative legal department for 2016. Mick Sheehy is General Counsel – Finance, Technology, Innovation & Strategy at Telstra. He reveals how they ran the innovation forums and how they achieved this phenomenal time-saving. Telstra Legal Innovation Forum The Telstra Legal Innovation Forums are a collaboration between Telstra legal and one of our law firms, Herbert Smith Freehills. Initially, we invited 15 lawyers across Telstra legal, a mix of seniority and business units, to brainstorm a list of ideas for improvement across the business. After narrowing the list down to just four ideas, we used design thinking techniques to brainstorm how we might solve those problems, and then agreed to do a 10-week sprint where we would rapidly prototype our solutions and see what we came up with. This initial forum was such a success, we kept doing them, and haven’t looked back. We had our 7th Innovation Forum earlier this year, and the following four initiatives have now been implemented within the business as a result. All together these initiatives resulted in eliminating 40,000 hours in low-value, non-strategic work across the legal group. That’s the equivalent of about 17 FTEs in a group of 200, so it’s quite material. But it’s … Continue reading →

How HESTA Created the Ultimate Legal Filing System

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Legal processes depend on the smooth flow of documents – and the bigger the company, the more work for the legal team in keeping track of these crucial workflows. With no centralised documents filing system, it was no wonder the legal team at HESTA Super was finding it difficult to perform day-to-day tasks. When lawyer Jorden Lam joined the organisation five years ago, she decided to change all that. Jorden will be speaking at this year’s Legal Innovation & Tech Fest. The Search for a Tailor-Made Filing System HESTA Super represents more than 850,000 people working in health and community services. The company holds $46 billion in assets invested globally on behalf of members. Lam found there was a problem at HESTA around locating files, how to file contracts, and the process to follow if someone wanted to engage a particular service provider. “My CEO regularly asks me these things, and as a lawyer, I have a genetic defect: I have to know the answer to every question I’m asked. More and more we kept having conversations around what we were doing about contract storage.” Lam says people generally want to know where a contract is for two reasons: Someone has made a mistake and the contract needs to be consulted to see what recourse and rights are available. Someone wants to renegotiate on a fee or see if there’s a way to add an additional service without paying too much for it.   But at HESTA, the process of … Continue reading →