I spoke with Ben Gardner, a Data and Information Architect at Linklaters, last week about his session at ILTA’s INSIGHT, "Legal Innovation - More than just Artificial Intelligence." First we spoke about the “hype” around AI. Ben shared, “AI has become over-hyped. To hear yet another story of people doing a due diligence exercise, people must be bored of it, right?”… I think it’s the next generation of AI that is going to be interesting.” As a key takeaway for his session, he hopes delegates will learn that “It’s not just AI, there’s a whole range of technologies that are being used to drive innovation in law.”
Speakers on the panel include Ben Gardner, Milos Kresoevic of Freshfields, Drew Winlaw of Wavelength and Jan Van Hoecke from RAVN. Ben and Milos will discuss examples of these innovative technologies they have applied at Linklaters and Freshfields. Drew will then share how he uses innovative technologies in his alternative business structure (ABS), Wavelength, to practise law with a different approach. Jan of RAVN will offer the vendor perspective. Ben said, “Often a vendor has more insight into how a law firms tackle some of these problems or the challenges of getting law firms to tackle innovation.” This panel presents a nice variety of perspectives on innovation.
After sharing their stories on developing and applying technologies for greater innovation, the panel wants to teach delegates how to truly perform research and development. They will discuss the circumstances that should determine when to develop a tool or use an off-the-shelf product. They will ask delegates to consider prototyping with open source tools to keep costs contained. Ben explained the importance of protoyping. Though the prototype likely will not result in a full product, the developer and the firm leader approving the project can better grasp the potential capabilities of a final product than when one pitches an idea in the. Ben explained that the approach for R&D differs from regular software implementation in firms. He said, “Failures are as important as success. One of the big challenges in law firms is the fear to be seen to fail whereas in R&D you have to fail… If you play safe, you don’t learn.” He hopes to convince those attending the session of the value in R&D. Ben and his fellow panellists will also provide examples of their success stories in obtaining robust adoption of new applications.
I asked Ben to provide me with a short list of other sessions he hopes to attend at INSIGHT this year. He looks forward to the sessions on gaining efficiencies, “How Do I Prepare for the New Reality of Office 365?” and “The Business of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence.” He said we must get data into the “right shape” to turn information into something actionable to drive change.
Drive your own change by registering for INSIGHT today.