Shawn Curran is director of legal technology at UK top 50 law firm Travers Smith. Here, he tells us why firms that fail to realign themselves with the new direction of travel risk falling behind rapidly.
The legal tech industry is constantly traversing the Gartner hype cycle and strategic hiring for its peaks and troughs is crucial. At the peak, it is paramount to have visionaries who can discern between true transformation and mere hype. The industry called that skillset innovation or legal technologists over the last decade. Conversely, during the trough, particularly after a significant hype cycle, individuals with high levels of execution and delivery are needed. That skillset could be considered IT.
In my opinion, the past year has highlighted some shortcomings within our industry, specifically this peak ‘innovation’ v trough ‘IT’ model. The depth of understanding of AI in IT teams is expectedly low and similarly, comprehending advanced emerging technology like AI on the innovation side was, in my experiences throughout the year, found wanting. Looking in from the outside, this seemed to cause a rather unfortunate situation for many firms. IT departments were eager for an AI win (Copilot anyone?), yet the clarity of a coherent return on investment was absent in my discussions with IT leaders looking to take that path – which they openly admitted. Also, a lack of technical depth on AI architecture on the innovation side seemed to lead to a multitude of products being both piloted and purchased, with most seeming to miss a key point – that almost all of these platforms were underpinned by the same supply chain capability, OpenAI’s GPT-4. Opting to partner with several intermediaries did nothing more than inflate the artificial intelligence capital allocated by those firms, potentially with limited return. Also, long term thin interface layer SaaS agreements will be eroded by continued innovation and competition of AI base models. Spending all your AI pocket money on a three-year contract with an AI product that has exclusivity to the GPT family, ignores the unbelievable capability of other base model vendors, like Google, which recently launched Gemini.
I think AI will be a wake-up call for our industry. We have always struggled to attract and retain high calibre tech talent. That deficit in technological expertise within the legal sector is concerning and we really must remedy this. Individuals who can talk-the-talk but lack the ability to lead a technical team or inspire their respect, or on the flipside, those who are resistant to ever increasing technological change in our industry, really have to challenge themselves on their ability to contribute to the technological future of our sector. Instead, we need highly efficient, progressive technology teams, embedded within the practice of law and capable of assisting their firms in staying abreast of this technological revolution.
For me, 2023 was the year that managing partners probably had their epiphany on the importance of having a strategic technology capability. At Travers, though we don’t have a designated innovation team, our technology team is considered one of the most progressive globally. We did away with labels like ‘IT’ and ‘Innovation’ as rival entities, and instead, operate with ‘Central Technology’ and ‘Legal Technology’ under Olly Bethell, our CTO. We share the same office, do the same stand ups, collaborate on the same projects and all teams, whether in Legal Technology, headed by me, or Central Technology, headed by Dave Cassidy, we strive to propel all of technology forward.
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution in private practice. In my view, firms that fail to realign themselves with this direction risk falling behind rapidly.