Innovate Your Legal Practice: Key Tools and Processes
Innovating your legal practice or developing an innovative mindset are key to thriving in a competitive and changing market, so what knowledge and skills do you need to achieve success? Learn about business models, automation systems and the importance of legal project management skills. Plus, consider the future of legal practice, and the challenges and opportunities for the legal profession. Walk away with the tools essential to creating a more flexible, adaptable and efficient practice. WEB223NZA30
Description
Attend and earn 3 CPD hours
Chair: Prue Tyler, Director, Shift Advisory Limited and Shift Compliance Limited
1.15pm to 1.20pm Opening Comments
1.20pm to 1.40pm Legal Practice Management in the Digital Age: Lessons from Innovative Firms
- Business models and processes
- Strategy and practice capability
- Lessons learnt
Presented by Prue Tyler, Director, Shift Advisory Limited and Shift Compliance Limited and Katie Carson, Director, Avid Legal
1.40pm to 2.30pm How to Innovate within Legal Practice: Automation Systems and Processes
Innovative in-house legal teams are automating increasing amounts of ‘traditional’ legal work. Hear how these teams solve the same problems as law firms and use automation systems and processes to reduce labour-intensive tasks without sacrificing the level of service to their clients.
Presented by Jodie Baker, Founder & CEO, Xakia Technologies and Guy Smith, General Counsel, Upper Hutt City Council
2.30pm to 2.40pm Break
2.40pm to 3.25pm A Spotlight on Legal Project Management
In a competitive market, lawyers with legal project management skills will be in higher demand as they are more flexible and adaptable to changing client expectations and working conditions. Examine the important issues:
- Legal project management core concepts
- How project management applies to legal work
- Key tools and processes to improve legal service delivery
Presented by Shaun Plant, Chief Legal Officer, LawVu; Director, Nexus Law
3.25pm to 4.25pm Panel Discussion: What’s the Next Big Thing? The Law Firm of the Future
Hear from practitioners as they share valuable insight into the future of legal practice, and the risks, challenges and opportunities for the legal profession.
Panellists:
Helen Mackay, Director, Juno Legal
Shaun Plant, Chief Legal Officer, LawVu; Director, Nexus Law
Arran Hunt, Partner, Stace Hammond
Campbell McKenzie, Director, Incident Response Solutions
Jordan Oldham, Senior Associate, MinterEllisonRuddWatts
4.25pm to 4.30pm Final Q+A and Closing Comments by the Chair
Learning Objectives:
- Consider the key practice management learnings of innovative law firms
- Receive insight into the automation systems and processes used by in-house teams to increase internal efficiencies
- Understand the core legal project management concepts and how it can be applied to improve legal service delivery
- Discuss the future of legal practice, and the risks, challenges and opportunities for the legal profession
Presenters
Prue Tyler
Prue founded SHIFT in 2017, seeing the opportunity to deliver high quality legal and regulatory services and advice in a #newway. SHIFT is a positive, disruptive force in the legal services market and, through modern work practices, offers clients and lawyers more flexibility, value and, better outcomes in work and life. Admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand in 2001, Prue has now been practising law for almost 20 years. She has experience across a wide range of areas, but in particular financial services law. From establishing her career at two of the ‘big Five’ NZ law firms, Prue also gained experience in two successful boutique law firms and via in-house roles within the major banks. At SHIFT Prue has provided contract support to Kiwi Wealth and Westpac and has successfully placed SHIFT Consultants into all the major banks, and into a range of listed corporates. Prue is active in the industry and community. She is a passionate supporter of The Women’s Fund and The Kindness Institute, is a co-opted volunteer for Women in Super and has volunteered with The First Foundation. Outside of work, Prue loves to spend time with friends and family, enjoys the arts and being in the outdoors, in particular ocean swimming. She has three young children, wonderful friends, and loves a good catch up over coffee!
Katie Carson
Katie is a prominent adviser across all aspects of fintech developments, including open banking and payments technology. She is passionate about innovation, working with tech-based innovators as well as long-established businesses in the financial services sector to explore market opportunities, develop products, understand regulatory perimeters, and set up the right governance and funding structures.
Jodie Baker
Jodie is an innovator, entrepreneur, and advocate of LegalTech. Her passion to give in-house counsel greater visibility and control to their legal operations is the driving force behind Xakia, a seriously simple, in-house legal matter management platform – a ‘Legal Hub’ for connected and impactful teams of any size or industry, located anywhere. Jodie has a background as an in-house lawyer and financial analyst, was the architect, founder, and MD of Hive Legal, and a founding member and the immediate past-Chair of the Australian Legal Technology Association.
Shaun Plant
Shaun is the Chief Legal Officer at LawVu, providing legal advice to the organization and project management and legal technology services to legal teams across the world. Shaun has woven innovation and project management into all stages of his legal career both in private and in-house legal practice. Starting his career in contracts engineering, Shaun moved into the legal profession, with his focus on project and change management. His legal background spans public, private enterprises in environmental and project law, where he has delivered large capital construction projects. He teaches Legal Project Management with the College of Law (New Zealand) and enjoys transforming complex frameworks into simple and intuitive technical systems.
Helen Mackay
Helen is passionate about the value that great lawyers create when they work inside and alongside their client organisations. She helps companies and public sector entities get optimal value from their legal services, effectively manage risk and achieve high performance through their in-house legal team. With more than 20 years’ experience as an in-house lawyer in New Zealand and the UK (including seven years leading the professional association for in-house lawyers), Helen believes in the strategic firepower of business advice delivered by highly experienced in-house lawyers. Helen’s focus is to seamlessly connect Juno lawyers into organisations and improve the strategy, design and performance of in-house legal functions.
Arran Hunt
With a background as a technical business analyst in London and Auckland, Arran came to law as a second career. He now acts for a number of parties on technology based matters, with a particular expertise in the application of law in the digital world. He has worked on matters involving most of the well-known online entities, as well as being one of the foremost experts on the application of the Harmful Digital Communications Act.
Campbell McKenzie
Campbell is the Founder and Director of Incident Response Solutions Limited, providing forensic, cyber security and crisis management services. Campbell was previously a Director at PwC New Zealand (12 years) and led PwC's national "forensic technology" practice, and the Auckland "cyber security" practice, a combined team of 11 expert staff. Prior to PwC, Campbell was a founding member of NZ Police's Electronic Crime Laboratory (4.5 years) and as an expert witness, he specialises in electronic investigations, cybercrime incident response and eDiscovery matters. He is recognised by the District and High Courts of New Zealand as a forensic technology expert and has also been appointed as an independent expert by the High Court. Campbell understands how critical it is for law firms to mitigate the cyber risks they face. Therefore in 2020, Incident Response Solutions published the "Cyber Security Guide for NZ Law Firms", a contextual resource to assist lawyers and law firms manage their cyber security risk.
Jordan Oldham
Jordan is a Senior Associate in MinterEllisonRuddWatt’s infrastructure practice. He advises a range of private and public sector clients in all phases of a project’s lifecycle from procurement, through construction and into operation. Jordan currently advises central and local Government clients on some of New Zealand’s largest and most critical infrastructure projects and reform programmes (including Auckland Light Rail, City Rail Link and the Three Waters Reform Programme). Prior to joining MinterEllisonRuddWatts in 2019, he worked for leading law firms in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom, advising both public and private sector clients on a wide range of matters, as well as in-house experience on secondments in the United Kingdom. Jordan is a member of the firm’s Innovation Forum, a staff-led team established in 2021 to facilitate the consideration and adoption of new ideas throughout the firm. The team includes staff from a range of areas, including business transformation, IT, business development, information services, and project management. The Innovation Forum is currently running a project focused on improving team and client experience within the firm and this project was one of 16 projects selected across the Asia Pacific to be part of the Centre for Legal Innovation’s Incubator Programme.
Guy Smith
Guy Smith is a reformed private practice lawyer now working in-house as the head of legal at Upper Hutt City, a city in the Wellington region. Guy has over 15 years’ experience straddling private practice and in-house work. He has covered the in-house gambit from sole charge roles to substantial corporate teams, and has a lot of opinions about the delivery of in-house advice, legal team operations, and the procurement of legal services.