Technology

the drive for higher cost efficiency in the legal market has incentivized the
emergence of alternative legal service providers and the increased use of legaltech.

A spike in clients’ demands for lower costs in hiring external law firms following
theglobal economic downturn has been a significant change in the legal sector. In
view of the current political situation Brexit, US-China trade war, there is a possibility
of another spike in demands for better cost efficiency. This demand incentivizes legal
process outsourcing and legaltech. Will have impact in talent retention (entry level:
advanced delivery graduate & need to train them for the future – rather than having
juniors carry out mundane work more involvement & development, firms with the
resources to invest will lead but smaller firms will die out – might in the end be
acquired by bigger firms; legal firm partners felt that less legal aspect in their roles,
personalization of service.

Whilst law firms have proposed alternative fee arrangements as an attempt to

reduce legal costs, the two most effective factors in increasing cost-efficiency in the
legal market are the rise of alternative legal business and the impact of technology.

Other innovative models that seem to be paying off include the firm’s Belfast legal
and support services centre, which helped reduce the firm’s operating costs by £15m
through greater efficiency savings.

Mid-market

In-house lawyer – during my internship worked under the senior legal counsel –

New business and delivery models

So we created the A&O Strategy Group. Now, when we give clients legal advice on a
compliance matter, we can use our own management consultants who we have
recruited externally to roll it out.

Impact:
- providing deep, personalized service has become increasingly important
- developing future generation of partners
Hybrid approach – that said, as pointed out in A&O’s research, clients still prefer one
stop centre
By providing
- aosphere: no billable hours, no cost overruns ; 24/7
Advanced delivery graduates – to bridge the gap between law and IT

WD: We listen to our clients. They told us that they didn’t just want
legal advice – they wanted us to help implement it, too. So we created
the A&O Strategy Group. Now, when we give clients legal advice on a
compliance matter, we can use our own management consultants who
we have recruited externally to roll it out.

AB: We’re providing an integrated offering between law and

management consultancy. The consultants sit within our regulatory
team and work with the clients to help them implement our advice.

iFlex (the informal flexible working scheme)

the first time a top-tier global elite law firm had considered doing it

an organized plan Set goals – remind myself of the goal everyday – practice makes
perfect - Drove myself to achieve good results in IGCSE – top in the world –
awarded 100% scholarship to study IB Diploma Programme

As the Vice President of International Council of Malaysian Scholars, a non-profit

student organization, my goal was to expand the organization by increasing the
signups for membership by 20%. In order to achieve that goal, I led my team to
devise and execute marketing and outreach strategies such as affiliating with
Malaysian societies in other universities, leveraging social media posts and
organizing roadshows.

Allen & Overy; IHS Markit; and SmartDX Co-developed Margin Xchange, a platform to address the
challenges faced by derivatives firms implementing initial margin requirements. The firm defined the
terms for negotiation in the relevant agreements and worked with IHS Markit and SmartDX to
digitise and automate the process, allowing contract negotiation at scale and reducing client costs.

When in-house lawyers at Aosphere, Allen & Overy’s online legal service business, wanted
technology to improve takeover data reporting, the team worked with data provider Share
Disclosure, a start-up, to bring it to fruition.

The legal team at Aosphere, Allen & Overy’s online legal service business, already had a service
analysing legal requirements for takeover reporting. What it lacked, though, was one reliable,
consolidated data source for issuers that were subject to a takeover bid.

Allen & Overy Collaborated with Share Disclosure, a provider of market data for financial services
clients, to develop and launch a new product, Takeover Data. The tool scans official takeover lists
and news feeds in multiple jurisdictions for relevant market data to help investors that hold
securities, or other instruments referencing securities, to meet their regulatory reporting
obligations.\
It is because legal and compliance data touch so many parts of a business that collecting,
harmonising and analysing it yields useful insights about vendors, customers and staff. There are also
questions of cyber security threats and new data and privacy rules. The result is the emergence of a
new type of professional with operational and advisory roles, including in senior management
positions.

Prof Susskind picks out Margin Matrix, a digital derivates compliance system developed by Allen &
Overy with Deloitte. Or take

In other cases, the technology is up to scratch, but the expertise about legal and professional
services needed to apply the tech is missing.

Digital Transformation Strategies

William Samengo Turner

Corporate Venturing: an interesting market – corporate investor engaged in investments – Why?

insights into new models, new technologies, access to talent, people in competitive market, accessto
IP

For startups: capital to grow; reputation; deals in the market don’t have the fiscal drive as the
primary ones,

Does corporate venturing reflect the practice of VC firms e.g. terms used by British VC associations?

Allows fro smoother transactions, focus on points that really matter to investors

Who is doing this?

Seen across all sectors, most prominently where there is significant disruption – fintech

M&A

Compared to full blown M&As, are done under shorter timeframe important to focus on what is
important to the business

Key areas to focus on DD

Tyoically tech cos so IP, creator of IP, employees creating that IP assigning the IP to the company

If regulator space, regulatory obligations etc

Relationship b/ween investor & investee

Corporate venture (in classic M&A, have more control over the company acquired), in this case
companies have to be comfortable with the reduced control

Has large corp

Issues for corporate to start think about

Legal and business team  strategic rationale for making the investment in the first place (from
term sheet phase)  understand the reason for doing it

Different risk concerns (grow quickly and stops growing very quickly) – diff risk proposition

Potential culture clash

Part of the benefit of the underlying startup

Understanding how the 2 companies are going to work together post-investment

Investor companies need to be equally attractive?

Investor needs to be as attractive as possible

Investor needs to think carefully about how to become attractive but needs to stay true

Identiy red line e.g ability to call share

Being open and frank to target company to have a good and productive conversation early on to
ensure attractiveness as competitieo

Vision of investor companies

Strategic rationale of doing the deal

This form of investing can be a powerful tool to digitalization

Sarah henchoz, Sheila Fahy

Pay parity

Equal pay audit:

Cyber and date breachers: the questions that always arise

Cyber/data breach is not just an issue of tech, includes civil, regulatory, investigation, criminal

What are the priorities when receiving news about icyber/data breach:

A lot of key issues are capable of planning/scenario testing

Run internal training  issues that are going to crop up have already been dealt with

Signal the correct team to deal with this

Preserve potential evidence for taking legal action e.g. taking images

IT teams often just need to be focused on  what is neede from a legal pov is just what has
happened

Should go to police?

No general obligation to report to police

Should pay ransom?

Official line is you shouldn’t pay

There might be circumstances where lesser of two evils is to pay ransom

In 2012, RBS estlimated more than 1 billoin for external investment in firms when they become abs

UK 25 billion pounds legal market is far from efficient and there are great opportunities for offering
legal services in new, less costly ways

Could argue that only high street firms undertaking high volume low margin work will be affected

The Big Four Accounting Firms have already

Ripple effect

Moore’s law

Reinforcement learning in developing systems in law

Emerging applications do not simply automate – they innovate

-more for less  alternative fee arrangements (often repackaging of the original proposition) 
rather than pricing differently should work differently (collaboration movement)

A&O – offer assistance with rules and practices relation to international shareholding disclosure –
when first developed 6 banks came tofether and collaborated and shared the costs of producing the
system

A&O understands the client’s business

Axiom lawyers – Peerpoint

A&O Online legal services more than 12 mil in subscription revenues – online legal guidance

Not yet for deep neural networks and reinforcement learning algorithms but systems are proving
increasingly impressive in amnalysizing fouments

A quarter  using managed legal service by 2019

The changes are global 

Investment in alternative delivery models (peerpoint  flexible

A&O diverse range of legal servies is an appealing proposition

Value to clients = combination of these services & high end law firm work

Full service – needs to delivery non-tradiitonal services

v“The need for high-value legal services in specialised areas will not go away”

Impact: The largest increases are anticipated among organisations in the Middle East and Africa and
Asia Pacific regions, which will quickly catch up with peers around the rest of the world.
‘high-end work’  can be broken down into components that can be routinized and sourced
differently

Firms that claim that they only do high-end work might be relegated to the role of a subcontractor
 other organizations step forward to undertake project management roe of sizeable deals and
disputes

What A&O is doing well?

1. The success of hybrid approaches depends in part on superior project management. More
than half (53%) of our interviewees agree that it is challenging to coordinate different types
of legal service provider efficiently. This, perhaps, explains why more than a third (39%) of
interviewees say they would prefer to use a one-stop shop for legal services, which would
enable them to access different types of legal services from a single firm.
2. In 2016, when A&O collaborate with Deloitte launched MarginMatrix to help banks cope
with the documentation challenges arising from the new rules governing the global
derivatives market
3. A&O embrace alternative sourcing strategies
4. Mid-sized firms: should seek external investment to enable changes from current approavh
to noew, sustainable long -term business model- build reputations brands and capabilitie
5. Deep expertise and personal service – it is often the talents of a particular lawyer rather than
of a particular firm that is the attracton
6. Partners of law firms should be concerned about the long-term strategic health apart from
the short-term profitability

Trainee mental health & wellbeing