Since the Great Recession, arguably no change has had more impact on the delivery of legal services than the rapid rise of the Legal Operations revolution. Legal Operations, a multi-disciplinary function that seeks to optimise legal services delivery to a business or government entity, has forever changed the way that legal services are procured by corporations, and is redefining the skills and competencies that lawyers need to have to survive in the new legal services market. Connie Brenton, former Chairman of the Board at CLOC and Senior Director of Legal Operations at NetApp, Inc, will share her insights about what the ongoing legal operations revolution means for the future of the profession and for the professionals servicing in-house teams and educating law students and young lawyers.

One of the most fundamental challenges that law firms and in-house teams face is that their world is increasingly tied to data. In addition, client expectations have changed, and data is being increasingly used as a way of justifying conversations about cost-effective services and delivery methods.

How can we use this data-rich world as an opportunity for legal professionals to demonstrate their value to clients? Is there a way that we can calculate Return on Investment?

The panel will explore how lawyers are benefiting by applying metrics to analyse the impact of what they offer and how it’s delivered; making sense of this data and to using it effectively through the art of storytelling. How can we continue to feed information to clients that keeps them interested and wanting more?

Leadership in the legal profession does not reflect the public it serves, even though women have entered law in numbers equal to men for decades. This engaging, interactive presentation offers concrete strategies to remedy the situation by exposing the phenomenon of being shortlisted—i.e. qualified for a position but not selected from a list that creates the appearance of diversity but preserves the status quo. Shortlisting often occurs with professional advancement, whether the judge in the courtroom, the CEO in the corner office, or the coach on the playing field. Women, and especially female minorities, regularly find themselves equally or more capable than the other candidates on the shortlist, but far less likely to be chosen.

Based upon her forthcoming book, Shortlisted: Women, Diversity, the Supreme Court & Beyond (New York University Press), Professor Knake shares surprising revelations about women shortlisted for the U.S. Supreme Court to inspire individuals navigating the pipeline to power and to aid organisations in bringing diversity to their leadership ranks.

One of the most fundamental challenges that law firms and in-house teams face is that their world is increasingly tied to data. In addition, client expectations have changed, and data is being increasingly used as a way of justifying conversations about cost-effective services and delivery methods.

How can we use this data-rich world as an opportunity for legal professionals to demonstrate their value to clients? Is there a way that we can calculate Return on Investment?

The panel will explore how lawyers are benefiting by applying metrics to analyse the impact of what they offer and how it’s delivered; making sense of this data and to using it effectively through the art of storytelling. How can we continue to feed information to clients that keeps them interested and wanting more?

There is a clear need for a creative and innovative approach to educating lawyers for the 21st century. But what about the practicing lawyers of today? Erik will share how he is adapting his role as in-house counsel by utilising new technologies to identify and capitalise on new and unknown legal opportunities and respond to challenges including:

• The benefits of coding for lawyers
• Self-learning techniques for the digital lawyers
• The cycle of self-learning

Erik is the founder of Governance Tomorrow, a platform to better understand the digital and decentralised world, and regularly serves as an expert advisor to international organisations such as the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations, the World Bank, and national and local governments around the world.

This talk is based on the premise that in the current economic/political – post Hayne Royal Commission - environment Australian corporations must demonstrate more than just making profits or strict legal compliance; it must demonstrate that it is also creating public value - or at least not destroying public value - to thrive and survive in the community that it operates in.

In this talk we will cover how public sector management principles first developed at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government can be adapted for the private sector, and it will provide participants with a practical framework for incorporating “public value” into their corporate strategy. Legal Departments will be challenged to think more broadly than simply compliance to moving towards true alignment with a customer’s and the community’s values.

- What is ‘Public Value’ and how is it different to ‘Private Value’?
- Recent debate on the adoption of ‘social licence to operate’ and ‘community standards’ by Private Corporations
- A model for incorporating Public Value into Corporate Strategy
- Challenges and benefits of adopting this model

There is a feeling, currently, that the legal industry displays a lack of diversity of thinking and inclusiveness of thought in senior positions. Lawyers may leave the practice to become entrepreneurs in other areas simply because the demands of marketing, collections, and other “non-lawyer” tasks are too great.

In addition, early-career lawyers appear to care about different things and have different attitudes to the current leadership. How can the younger lawyers get buy-in from managers to innovate? How can they successfully promote access to justice issues that are of concern to younger lawyers?

These disconnects demonstrate gaps and skills and priorities at both the individual contributor and management level which are impacting willingness and ability to prepare for future legal services. Added to this is the consensus that the law graduates of the future will need a fresh set of skills to meet the demands of the profession.

Finally, lawyers will increasingly be in non-practicing positions in law firms in disciplines such as data science and project management, as well as knowledge management.

This panel will look at to what extent the profession is offering a balance between employee engagement and career certainty. It will also identify how the profession can ensure it is set up to maximise the potential of young professionals in the space.

Legal workplaces often overlook the importance of consciously investing in mental wellbeing. Developments in legal technology and Legal Process Outsourcing mean that lawyers in first-world economies need to focus on their unique human value-add to stay relevant and competitive.

Unique human value-add in the law typically requires higher-order cognitive skills, which can only function effectively and sustainably in people who are operating at their cognitive peak. Conscious investment in good mental wellbeing is essential for any legal business that wishes to remain relevant and competitive.

An in-house lawyer and Board Member for Minds Count, David will examine the need for lawyers in first-world economies to move to higher-order functions to remain competitive and the linkages between higher-order cognitive functions and mental wellbeing.

He will demonstrate how cognitive function is a point of competitive differentiation for legal businesses and the importance in frameworks for investing in workplace mental wellbeing.

Legal teams are often left without a clear workflow for processing the number of requests for assistance they receive in a day. Taking a leaf out of the book of hospital and IT triage processes, this session focuses on how in-house legal teams can map and re-prioritise their workload towards building workflows which automate and re-direct the simpler, more repetitive work requested of us whilst strategically dedicating more time and resources to the game-changers which are of strategic value to the business.

Using marketing as a case study, you’ll find out how to improve the user experience for both sides of the fence in lawyer and business interactions, including by:

• mapping the ticketing process for logging tasks from the business
• implementing triage to prioritise legal tasks and redirect non-legal queries
• selecting the right tool for the right job from people, processes and tech
• using data to measure strategic value and time spent on legal tasks
• securing stakeholder and executive buy-in for change and innovation.

We’ve all heard lawyers say that they don’t have to change because clients aren’t demanding it. Yet global surveys reveal that clients do want change – they just don’t know how to ask for it. In this session, Nicola will explore why lawyers fall short in understanding client needs, and how clients and lawyers can work together more effectively to improve the model of client service delivery.

Hear from one of the largest firms in the US on how they are tackling issues that currently serve as barriers to client – law firm collaboration – and what gives rise to these challenges.

• What clients wish their lawyers were doing for them
• How external lawyers can better understand and meet the needs of their clients
• What the most innovative firms do to improve client service
• An improved model of client service delivery
• The role technology plays in enhanced collaboration

Increasing automation of mundane tasks, complexity of work and increased workload coupled with high expectations from a more educated clientele is leading to higher stress levels that impact our cognition, health and relationships. Enter the science of connection. All business is in the business of relationships. The top skills needed identified for 2020 include emotional intelligence, people skills (social intelligence) critical thinking and cognitive flexibility.

In this keynote it’s time to consider why:

• Treating ourselves like machines, working harder and for longer is counterproductive; reducing performance, productivity and morale.
• The essential skillsets identified in 2020 include emotional intelligence, people skills (social intelligence) critical thinking and cognitive flexibility. What this means to your practice and future professional development.
• So-called “soft skills” have been shown to be the backbone to any successful business, because business is always the business of relationships. Discover what science has shown to be the most effective way to meet the needs of the modern workplace.
• We are human and function best when we embrace our physiological and psychological needs to enable sustainable high-performance. It’s about how to create better brain health to optimise how well we operate and knowing how to integrate and get on well with others.

Less can be so much more for smarter, sharper thinking.

Would you like to demonstrate your commitment to simplifying business to your customers?

Are you ready to make contracts understandable to reduce business risks?

Are you interested in using contracts as a tool to support collaboration? Then you should attend the workshop "Contract design".

In this interactive workshop, the participants get both: they gain a deeper understanding of a successful method tackling current challenges for the future of contracts. In a practical session they will learn THE most successful innovation method worldwide and apply "Design Thinking" to design user centric contracts.

In a facilitated design sprint workshop, the participants learn how to use design thinking and rapid prototyping for user-centric contract design. This innovative practical session allows participants to experience the methodology of Legal Design Thinking and put it into practice in a memorable, fast-paced 90-minute session based on a common practical contract challenges.
Why should you attend?

• You will understand what it means to apply design thinking in a legal context.
• You will receive a practical / hands-on session in contract design. You will experience creativity, simplification, ideation and prototyping and apply them to Contracts.
• You will find out why creativity and empathy combined with visual thinking are the best ways to address legal innovation challenges.
• You will understand why contract simplification is helpful in the age of digitalization.
• You will learn the difference between simple graphic design and design as a method.
• You'll learn why user-centric solutions make your customers happy.

As lawyers, we often say we need to find more time to innovate or do strategic work. Nearly half of us say the biggest barrier to finding that time is "getting enough time and resources away from Business as Usual".

In this presentation Steve will take a closer look at one aspect of our BAU that consumes much more time and resources than most lawyers realise – workflow queue management. Queue management is closely monitored and analysed in industries like construction, mining and manufacturing. But it tends to be overlooked in professional services.

By the end of the presentation, you'll have a better understanding of how queue management is stealing time from you and just how much it might be taking. And you'll learn some simple ideas to help you steal a lot of that time back.

Ever worked with a person you just didn't like? They seem like they know what they are doing but after time, you notice they talk a lot. They say a lot of unnecessary things. They don’t get to the point. They waste time on unimportant things. And their working style doesn't line up with your company's values.

Contracts can be just like this frustrating workmate. But they don't have to be! Verity’s team were presented with a unique business opportunity to redesign key sales channel contracts.

Drawing on academic research (and years of legal and commercial experience), you’ll hear how a cross functional team of lawyers built out contract benchmarking to increase contract readability, usability and trust.

• What is wrong with contracts?
• Key mindsets for contract redesign work
• How they tested the before and after results of the redesign
• Key indicators that show your contracts could benefit from a RUT redesign
• What worked (and what didn't!)
• A template benchmarking checklist to test your contracts based on science and insights from user experience from a contract makeover
• How this enhances trustworthiness in your legal team and organisation

There is a feeling, currently, that the legal industry displays a lack of diversity of thinking and inclusiveness of thought in senior positions. Lawyers may leave the practice to become entrepreneurs in other areas simply because the demands of marketing, collections, and other “non-lawyer” tasks are too great.

In addition, early-career lawyers appear to care about different things and have different attitudes to the current leadership. How can the younger lawyers get buy-in from managers to innovate? How can they successfully promote access to justice issues that are of concern to younger lawyers?

These disconnects demonstrate gaps and skills and priorities at both the individual contributor and management level which are impacting willingness and ability to prepare for future legal services. Added to this is the consensus that the law graduates of the future will need a fresh set of skills to meet the demands of the profession.

Finally, lawyers will increasingly be in non-practicing positions in law firms in disciplines such as data science and project management, as well as knowledge management.

This panel will look at to what extent the profession is offering a balance between employee engagement and career certainty. It will also identify how the profession can ensure it is set up to maximise the potential of young professionals in the space.

This session will provide practical examples of how the Legal team at HESTA is taking on roles beyond those of the traditional lawyer, and actively driving transformation within the business. HESTA’s #TeamLegal are currently designing procurement and vendor management frameworks, playing with tech that can make workflows and processes easier, and driving the organisational change that comes with introducing new practices and systems. You will:

• Gain inspiration on how even small practical changes to the way a team works together can improve team and organisational efficiency
• Learn how lawyers can use their strong communication skills in non-traditional ways like developing project communication plans to ultimately deliver on legal team projects
• Gain insight into how the next generation of legal teams will want to work and how to embed systems and practices that will support this

In-house legal teams are constantly expected to "do more with less", so reducing workload via culling of low risk or low value tasks becomes critical to success.

Automation has a become an important tool for legal teams and takes many forms. A key pinch-point for my team has been the triage of 'downstream' requests for amendment and negotiation with subcontractors and consultants on projects in delivery - at times consuming up to 30% of the teams' capacity.

Motivated by this, I have been spearheading a project at Lendlease to build a 'self service' approach to preparation and amendment of procurement documents for projects - being a platform for use by the business, not the legal team. The idea here is to prevent the work from reaching the legal team in the first place.

This project has been an interesting exploration of how automation can be used at the interface between business and the legal function, particularly in the context of:

• complex document building (well beyond a standard NDA)
• complex logic based approval workflows
• empowering project teams within clearly defined risk parameters
• ensuring that bespoke drafting and negotiation can still occur within an automated platform
• working within the confines of proprietary software platforms

In today’s competitive legal market where differentiators are difficult to find and leverage, it has never been more important to create a remarkable and profitable service culture that inspires staff, delights clients and makes your firm the provider and employer of choice. A first-movers advantage is open to law firms that to choose to invest in “CX”, and those that do, outperform in the marketplace.

• Understand the impact of consumer service on clients’ expectations of law
• Build a mandate among leaders and staff to achieve your firm’s service goals
• Consider the four key building blocks of driving Client Experience excellence
• Introduce design thinking to uplift the clients’ experience at every touchpoint
• Embed the new service culture with motivated staff that consistently “wow” clients

In today’s competitive environment, the practice of law is challenging. Being ‘constantly connected’, having clients demanding ‘more for less’, and working with a new generation of talent for whom traditional enticements of the partnership holy grail no longer command loyalty, all mean we need to think differently.

Differently about how we work, the experience we create for our clients and our people, and our interaction with the community in which we live and work. Sustainability – for lawyers and legal staff, for firms (in all their shapes and sizes) and for the profession – is a challenge we need to solve, together.

Presented by Kim Trajer, Chief Operating Officer and Louise Ferris, Director of HR at McCullough Robertson, they will explore the foundations and benefits to business of safe and inclusive workplaces, a connection to the community, environmental conservation and innovation - and how understanding your purpose and truly embedding it in your organisation, can provide the platform to solve this challenge.

In 2018 Clayton Utz was the only Law Firm to be named a Gold Employer at the Australian LGBTI Inclusion Awards and has set a target of 2022 for achieving 35% representation by women in the partnership. This session will explore how the role of diversity and inclusion in innovation is under-leveraged.

Alison and Justine will present a compelling business case for D&I with a focus on its role in driving innovation. They’ll examine the hurdles in the legal profession but also some of the positive changes we're seeing together with some real case studies across different industries.

We live in a time when innovator-entrepreneurs building brilliant new enterprises and changing the expectations of what technology asks of law. How can we, as lawyers, build a resilience to risk and failure so that we can thrive in a world that is ever more complex, uncertain and ambiguous? Join us to hear Erika share how she is creating spaces for lawyers and law students do this at The Legal Forecast by:

• Leveraging legal perspectives and lawyer mindsets in interdisciplinary teams
• Creating the 'hero's journey' in everyday life and work
• Fostering supportive spaces, creating tribes, and facing the upshot of failure

Erika has sought to combine creativity and technology to design better legal systems and processes. She is the NSW President of The Legal Forecast, Australia's leading legal-innovation not-for-profit run by early career lawyers and law students. Erika is also a host of the Global Legal Hackathon, an alumni of LawWithoutWalls, and has recently been featured on ABC News and in the Sydney Morning Herald commenting on digital disruption, law and technology.

Traditional firms are on notice because new legal start-ups have entered the market, offering clients agile and low-cost alternatives. To remain relevant, traditional law firms must adapt and deliver more rapid and transparent services to clients. Digital disruption has placed further upward pressure on the need to optimise legal operations.

To respond to this industry dynamic, MinterEllison have developed a practical Legal Operations Model. The Model is designed to drive meaningful innovation, continuous improvement and a genuine client-centric mindset. It brings together multidisciplinary professionals to align digital capabilities with deep and continuous legal process improvement.

Gary will share achievements to date, and offer you tips and advice for getting a similar initiative up in your organisation.

• How the legal operations model has been structured
• How to implement the model to ensure stakeholder buy in and facilitate real change
• Proven tips and tricks from the one year of operating the model

In 2018 Clayton Utz was the only Law Firm to be named a Gold Employer at the Australian LGBTI Inclusion Awards and has set a target of 2022 for achieving 35% representation by women in the partnership. This session will explore how the role of diversity and inclusion in innovation is under-leveraged.

Alison and Justine will present a compelling business case for D&I with a focus on its role in driving innovation. They’ll examine the hurdles in the legal profession but also some of the positive changes we're seeing together with some real case studies across different industries.

We don’t know exactly what the future of law is, but we do know that it’s not going to stay the same. The next generation of lawyers are ready to embrace the unknown, but some are being met with resistance.

Perveen and her colleagues are challenging the status quo. In fact, Perveen combines being a lawyer with the running of a Legal Tech Start-up designed to provide access to justice for University Students. She will share her and her colleagues’ collective insights into how companies can better understand and support young lawyers.

• What are the motivations of young lawyers?
• How lawyers are starting to wear more hats and what this means for the lawyer of the future and current law students
• How change needs to happen from the top down or risk losing your young lawyers
• ‘Balancing my “day job” and Anika’ – a personal story of passion for the work

Using data to improve decision making and to more effectively personalise the client experience is widely regarded as a competitive advantage. Yet many organisations are insight poor, despite being data rich.

• How HESTA’s purpose influenced how they developed their analytics strategy
• How focusing on the needs of clients and people created value and momentum
• How they used co-design to connect people with insight
• Pushing the boundaries – augmenting human intelligence with machine learning
• Moving beyond reporting and dashboards
• How data is now distributed across the organisation

This is a fascinating case study around how another professional services firm (HESTA) from another industry started their analytics journey and went from the ground floor to the bleeding edge in under two years.

Recent reports have suggested that the legal profession trails HR and Finance in its adoption of AI. Others suggest that competitive advantage in the legal industry will be defined by its humanity. So, does that mean that the people who know the most about people, might be the key to future proofing your practice?

In this session, Terri Mottershead will draw on her local and international experience in talent management to identify, analyse and discuss how legal talent management is contributing not only to legal innovation, but is also shaping the future of legal practice, one lawyerbot or person at a time!

There is a problem in the world of law firm marketing.

More importantly there is a problem with the relationship between lawyers and marketers. Research from ViewsHub conducted in 2017 shows business development teams in professional services firms, including law firms, are ineffective and do not command the confidence of other employees. This is a concern for lawyers and marketers especially as firms are under increasing pressure from digital disruption.

Fundamentally, many of the problems to do with law firm marketing and the relationship between lawyers and marketers come from a fundamental difference in the way marketers and lawyers think. In addition, most firms are defined by a rigid binary distinction between fee earners and fee burners. Even more importantly, when lawyers and marketers were able to bridge that gap, they can have some success.

This presentation will help you understand what makes both lawyers and law firms tick. Understanding these issues will enable marketers to build more productive relationships with the lawyers in their firms, and for lawyers to see the issues from the marketer’s perspective. This is not about providing neat solutions. It will provide you with a framework to apply in your own business setting and assist you to devise strategies to meet the sometimes-complex challenges you face.

Firms are increasingly outsourcing their IT while depending on technical solutions for strategic advantage. In this climate the relationships between providers and firms are more important than ever. Robyna will discuss strategies, project management approaches and ways to build strong, robust relationships when engaging external consultants.

-Overcoming the barriers to good relationships (mainly around lack of trust)
-Promoting a healthy relationship and what to do when it goes “pear” shaped.
-Understanding the important differences between customisation and configuration
-Understanding project creep and how to control it
-Outsourcing IT while retaining strategic control
-Project Management 101 for common IT projects

There is a lot of hype on LegalTech and adoption of LegalTech in the Australian market. This is an analytical excursion to explore how we got from 0 to 110 LegalTech firms in Australia – and to shed light on the drivers of the LegalTech market and also the different solutions and business models in the market.

• What are modern client drivers pushing for LegalTech
• How are law firms responding to LegalTech?
• How are LegalTech entrepreneurs / executives building their LegalTech firms?

In today’s competitive environment, the practice of law is challenging. Being ‘constantly connected’, having clients demanding ‘more for less’, and working with a new generation of talent for whom traditional enticements of the partnership holy grail no longer command loyalty, all mean we need to think differently.

Differently about how we work, the experience we create for our clients and our people, and our interaction with the community in which we live and work. Sustainability – for lawyers and legal staff, for firms (in all their shapes and sizes) and for the profession – is a challenge we need to solve, together.

Presented by Kim Trajer, Chief Operating Officer and Louise Ferris, Director of HR at McCullough Robertson, they will explore the foundations and benefits to business of safe and inclusive workplaces, a connection to the community, environmental conservation and innovation - and how understanding your purpose and truly embedding it in your organisation, can provide the platform to solve this challenge.

In recent years, a range of alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) have quickly gained ground in the Australian market. One of the most exciting trends is the emergence of ALSPs offering “Managed Legal Services” to Australian clients.

Thomas Kaldor will present on the burgeoning trend in the Australian legal market toward alternative legal service models, particularly the adoption of the "Managed Legal Service" that has already driven change in the US.

• What a Managed Legal Service really is
• How inhouse teams are adopting this model
• How these solutions are adding value
• Two case studies within two Australian legal functions.

Inclusive workplaces undeniably enhance organisational effectiveness, competitive advantage, enjoy better decision making, improved morale and people management and deliver higher returns to shareholders. Flexible work is a key building block for the creation of diverse and inclusive workplaces and where a move to agile working can contribute to organisational success.

Fay is an Employment Law & Workplace Relations Partner at Hall & Wilcox and a Flexible Work Day Ambassador. She advises HR, C-Suite leaders and Boards on compliance with workplace laws, change management, business protection, workplace strategy, cultural diagnostics and dispute resolution, having business acted for employers for over 17 years across a range of industries including health, sport, professional services, entertainment, manufacturing, community sector and local councils. Fay thrives on the insights gained from speaking at major industry events and is a regulator commentator on workplace issues in mainstream media and industry publications. She has served as Deputy Chair of Sport NSW and has been widely recognised for her achievements including by the NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards; Lawyers Weekly Awards and NSW Women Lawyer’s Association. In 2018 Fay was featured in the Smart Company International Women’s Day Campaign, Women Kind (the book authored by Catherine Fox and Dr Kirstin Ferguson), the 2019 edition of Best Lawyers and was a finalist for the highly prestigious AGS Australian Women Lawyers Award among prominent judges and barristers.

Most organisations who have succeeded in delivering a truly consistent and different Customer or Client Experience have done so by mobilising a major internal CX program with a strategic call to action. Rob was the top-rated speaker (out of 50+) at CX Innovation & Tech Fest and is a CX veteran with fifteen years of CX strategy experience with some of the world’s largest brands. Rob will offer insights and best practice advice on how to create an end-to-end CX strategy and how to bring it to life across every team in your firm.

• Why CX is a strategic objective, and what that means
• How to create a fresh CX strategy with a bold rallying cry
• Why the firm’s culture is the key enabler to CX success
• Embedding Human Centered Design into your CX
• How to bring a CX strategy to life
• 5 big key CX lessons (from mistakes I’ve made and seen)

SBS have seen an increase in the number of women joining the organisation by 75%; employees born overseas by 73%; employees with languages other than English by 14%; ATSI employees by 13%; and employees with disability by 600%. In addition, they have experienced a 60% increase in Linkedin followers and a 9-day reduction in time to hire average. With improved retention rates, they’ve halved recruitment activity.

Joshua and his team achieved this by rebuilding their values from the ground up, designed a brand-new learning management system and investing in employer brand. They’re currently executing against a newly developed inclusion strategy designed to eliminate any incongruence between the SBS content brand, employer brand and their employee’s lived experiences.

Rather than focusing on how the organisation can appeal to women, ATSI, people with disabilities, LGBTI people etc – they focused on user experiences, inclusiveness and universal design thinking.

We all want to be innovative in business, but how do we become innovative? This session introduces a contemporary model on how to think about the facets of innovation in work and how to trick the brain into starting that innovation journey. The material draws upon David’s behavioural science training and 6 years working at the forefront of neuroscience science research and application into disrupting mental models of work in global businesses. This method invokes a safe way to fail to allow innovation and an accelerated iteration of new approaches in virtual worlds.

We’ve all heard lawyers say that they don’t have to change because clients aren’t demanding it. Yet global surveys reveal that clients do want change – they just don’t know how to ask for it. In this session, Nicola will explore why lawyers fall short in understanding client needs, and how clients and lawyers can work together more effectively to improve the model of client service delivery.

Hear from one of the largest firms in the US on how they are tackling issues that currently serve as barriers to client – law firm collaboration – and what gives rise to these challenges.

• What clients wish their lawyers were doing for them
• How external lawyers can better understand and meet the needs of their clients
• What the most innovative firms do to improve client service
• An improved model of client service delivery
• The role technology plays in enhanced collaboration

This digital brand strategy workshop is for senior executives in the legal profession who want results from their marketing. Attendees will gain a clear understanding of what they need to do to create and grow a digital brand in a cohesive and strategic way and get a short- and long-term return on investment.

Digital marketing is now the mainstream and eclipses all other forms… but unless you have a solid strategy it’s easy to waste time and cash and get no measured return on investment. Deb is incredibly passionate about the power of digital marketing. During this interactive workshop she'll use case studies to illustrate how businesses can make giant leaps forward and get fantastic returns on investment using a strategic approach to digital marketing. She'll leave you with a framework to follow that works for any size legal business and a clear understanding of which activities will deliver the best return on time and dollar investment for your organisation.

Our lawyers received immediate benefit from accessing all of their content through iManage Work’s fast, innovative interface, wherever they are, and via whatever device they are using, enabling productivity, efficiency and making it possible to deliver an improved engagement experience for our customers. We have also built an agile platform that can adapt to our ever-changing needs, allowing us to add mission critical services as needed and easily adapt as the firm continues to grow.

We did two simple things: Moved our on-premise iManage DMS to iManage Cloud and upgraded to the latest versions of the desktop and mobile applications. We now have a platform that is easily extensible and gives us access to all iManage’s unique offerings, with minimal effort and time.

Leveraging technology such as iManage Cloud has given our lawyers the tools they rightly deserve to perform at their peak, and it has enabled our firm to focus on what we do best - delivering outstanding legal services to our clients.

Using an AI powered software platform KPMG have enabled a level automation in the application of legal expertise and knowledge. KPMG and Neota Logic will demonstrate two legal use cases which have embraced innovation and improved the client experience.

Successful agile app development is a combination of building internal architectural capability, effectively collaborating with the subject matter experts to accurately gather the requirements and focusing on the end user interface and experience. We will highlight some of the challenges we have overcome in achieving this success.

There are many manual processes which are ripe for automation and/or digitisation which enable increased productivity, improve client experience and show commitment to innovation.

With the rapid emergence of new technologies (ranging from the visibly cutting edge such as drones to more covert advances in existing technologies such as online email platforms), legal teams are more commonly finding matters on their desk where they have no point of reference or comparison. During a recent case where our digital forensic expert was engaged as a Single Joint Expert, it was the rigor of examining all relevant details of previous reports and drone exhibits which prevented the continued escalating costs and delay of engaging additional forensic experts.

The analysis of emerging technologies requires not only a high degree of technical expertise, but also the experience to apply an appropriate and defensible approach which satisfies all parties involved. In this session we explore how to successfully navigate such matters to secure accurate findings for parties to a dispute.

As drones continue to enjoy wider adoption by both legitimate and malicious users, there is no doubt that the art and science of drone forensics will become increasingly important. While there are many simple point and click forensic analysis solutions on the market, their results can be easily misunderstood and misinterpreted, more often than not, and especially in the case of highly contentious disputes, a deeper level on experience and expertise is required to retrieve and analyse the relevant information.

Electronic signatures are legal, trusted, and enforceable in industrialised countries around the world. Laws can vary, but Adobe Sign makes compliance simple. A frictionless digital experience makes signing documents 21 times faster than the tedious, manual paper-based process.

Digital document workflows and e-signatures ensure your employees and customers have improved experiences and increased efficiencies.

Adobe Sign is the world’s most trusted e-sign solution. We support the broadest range of legal requirements to give you the ultimate in compliance. Transforming document processes can increase revenue by 36%, reduce costs by 30% and yield 23% reduction in business and compliance risk.

What if software bots didn’t take the place of humans, but worked alongside them? Software bots could automate tedious and time-consuming work which would enable humans to focus on creative, challenging problems. You could design your workflow to capitalise on the best attributes of both humans and software bots, which could lead to many benefits.

The combination of artificial intelligence and automation – helps companies transcend conventional performance trade-offs to achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency and quality.

The future of work involves both humans and software bots working together.

Learn why predictive coding and continuous active learning are some of the best tools for saving time, reducing cost, and improving quality in the discovery effort.

Once trained, these systems can score documents within a large data set, indicating the probability that those documents will be relevant. The review team can then focus their review efforts on the documents most likely to be relevant. The quality and consistency of the results exceeds what a team of experienced reviewers can accomplish if money and time were not a factor.

Join us as Epiq TAR expert, Emily Small, takes you through the process and the potentially significant improvements you can achieve.

The working world is digitising at a rapid rate and the rise in virtual teams and employees is impacting all industries, including the legal sector. This results in organisations being more vulnerable to security breaches – making the need for cybersecurity training even more of a priority.

MinterEllison is an organisation heavily invested in the training and development of its employees. Sunil Saale, Head of Cyber and Information Security will be sharing his experience and the journey his organisation went on to find the right partner in a space where employee engagement is crucial to the success of the programme.

We’ve all heard lawyers say that they don’t have to change because clients aren’t demanding it. Yet global surveys reveal that clients do want change – they just don’t know how to ask for it. In this session, Nicola will explore why lawyers fall short in understanding client needs, and how clients and lawyers can work together more effectively to improve the model of client service delivery.

Hear from one of the largest firms in the US on how they are tackling issues that currently serve as barriers to client – law firm collaboration – and what gives rise to these challenges.

• What clients wish their lawyers were doing for them
• How external lawyers can better understand and meet the needs of their clients
• What the most innovative firms do to improve client service
• An improved model of client service delivery
• The role technology plays in enhanced collaboration

The working world is digitising at a rapid rate and the rise in virtual teams and employees is impacting all industries, including the legal sector. This results in organisations being more vulnerable to security breaches – making the need for cybersecurity training even more of a priority.

MinterEllison is an organisation heavily invested in the training and development of its employees. Sunil Saale, Head of Cyber and Information Security will be sharing his experience and the journey his organisation went on to find the right partner in a space where employee engagement is crucial to the success of the programme.

After making the decision to adopt an artificial intelligence (AI) solution, law firms and in-house legal teams are faced with the sometimes-daunting prospect of rolling out the solution to employees who are used to conventional ways of working. Drawing on our experience with onboarding more than a hundred customers around the world, we will share insights for how organisations can implement the use of AI in their workflow. This includes strategies such as developing internal case studies and organising innovation days to showcase how AI enhances the organisation’s value proposition to clients.

Hear how pre-eminent law firm Corrs has built a client technology solutions team and are using HighQ to provide intelligent and efficient process automation and data insights for their clients. By creating a dedicated client technology solution team who makes use of the right technologies, clients can manage their business processes, gain valuable business insights and access industry-specific services unavailable elsewhere.

• Learn how Corrs have tapped into ai/ml tools to deliver smart business process improvement solutions
• Find out how the firm uses web services, data analytics and visualisation in property development and lease management
• Understand the process behind turning a commoditised service into a sticky product

Hear how pre-eminent law firm Corrs has built a client technology solutions team and are using HighQ to provide intelligent and efficient process automation and data insights for their clients. By creating a dedicated client technology solution team who makes use of the right technologies, clients can manage their business processes, gain valuable business insights and access industry-specific services unavailable elsewhere.

• Learn how Corrs have tapped into ai/ml tools to deliver smart business process improvement solutions
• Find out how the firm uses web services, data analytics and visualisation in property development and lease management
• Understand the process behind turning a commoditised service into a sticky product

In this session we will walk you through the whole process from tendering to full the implementation of Legal Technology. Hear practical examples from Telstra and James Hardie, how we assist clients through the tender process, examine what a successful implementation looks and feels like. How providing customers with the education and resources they need to succeed. Listen to the tactics employed to overcome organisational change and the resistance to new Technology.

In this session we will walk you through the whole process from tendering to full the implementation of Legal Technology. Hear practical examples from Telstra and James Hardie, how we assist clients through the tender process, examine what a successful implementation looks and feels like. How providing customers with the education and resources they need to succeed. Listen to the tactics employed to overcome organisational change and the resistance to new Technology.

In this session we will walk you through the whole process from tendering to full the implementation of Legal Technology. Hear practical examples from Telstra and James Hardie, how we assist clients through the tender process, examine what a successful implementation looks and feels like. How providing customers with the education and resources they need to succeed. Listen to the tactics employed to overcome organisational change and the resistance to new Technology.

Clients are increasingly looking at new approaches to meet their monitoring and supervisory obligations. The emergence of the RegTech sector (as well as broader developments in AI/ML) present new opportunities to unlock productivity gains for compliance and legal teams. But are technology solutions in and of themselves enough? Enter Red Marker, an Australian case study of a RegTech/legal firm partnership.

Understand how engaging with RegTech is driving faster adoption of automated risk detection and smart compliance solutions by both regulated entities and their regulators.

In this session we will discuss

- What client value is created
- What role does each party play in creating that client value
- What are the lessons that we can learn

With firms constantly striving to gain the edge on the competition, the ability to attract and retain top talent has become a priority for many people leaders.

As well, there is a desire for more credible data to inform workforce strategies and the need for HR to deliver higher value services to the business. Together these issues are driving innovation across all aspects of people-related services, processes and technology within the legal industry.

In this session you’ll learn how other organisations have addressed these challenges through Digital HR innovation. With over 600 projects under his belt, Craig Aunger will share with you his experiences and guide you on the things you need to know to ensure your project is set up for success:
• HR technology is a fundamental enabler of HR innovation
• Understanding the HR technology landscape
• Why early planning and preparation is critical to your project’s success
• Key elements of an HR Innovation Roadmap and Business Case
• Using visual tools to communicate your change journey to stakeholders
• How to take the first steps in your journey with confidence

Three take-away points include focusing on;
1. How HR technology is a fundamental enabler of HR innovation
2. Understanding the 5 pillars of HR technology
3. Hearing insights into the resource effort and capability required to be successful

The rise of the gig economy and its impact on legal practice

Digital disruption is changing the nature of work and our roles in legal organisations. There are threats to repeatable, standardised jobs, which may disappear. This has an impact on retention and culture of the best junior lawyers.

Agile teams, matrix models, and project-based management structures are becoming more common. How you prepare for succession with a transient workforce will have an impact on technology and process change decisions.

New legal innovation solutions will need to reflect this modern way of working.

We may be seeing a fundamental shift in the composition of matter teams. This also affects the stickiness of client relationships. This panel will examine how technology will assist in bringing the right teams together to solve cross-functional challenges. With a new outlook on standard ways of working or reporting they will explore the impact on clients and those businesses who provide legal services.

There is a feeling, currently, that the legal industry displays a lack of diversity of thinking and inclusiveness of thought in senior positions. Lawyers may leave the practice to become entrepreneurs in other areas simply because the demands of marketing, collections, and other “non-lawyer” tasks are too great.

In addition, early-career lawyers appear to care about different things and have different attitudes to the current leadership. How can the younger lawyers get buy-in from managers to innovate? How can they successfully promote access to justice issues that are of concern to younger lawyers?

These disconnects demonstrate gaps and skills and priorities at both the individual contributor and management level which are impacting willingness and ability to prepare for future legal services. Added to this is the consensus that the law graduates of the future will need a fresh set of skills to meet the demands of the profession.

Finally, lawyers will increasingly be in non-practicing positions in law firms in disciplines such as data science and project management, as well as knowledge management.

This panel will look at to what extent the profession is offering a balance between employee engagement and career certainty. It will also identify how the profession can ensure it is set up to maximise the potential of young professionals in the space.

In 2018 Clayton Utz was the only Law Firm to be named a Gold Employer at the Australian LGBTI Inclusion Awards and has set a target of 2022 for achieving 35% representation by women in the partnership. This session will explore how the role of diversity and inclusion in innovation is under-leveraged.

Alison and Justine will present a compelling business case for D&I with a focus on its role in driving innovation. They’ll examine the hurdles in the legal profession but also some of the positive changes we're seeing together with some real case studies across different industries.

A digital transformation strategy has the potential to transform your business from being process driven to one that is data driven. It is not uncommon for businesses to embark on their unique digital journey from a purely technological perspective, and as a consequence miss the true power of digital transformation. ESP Solutions Group invites you to look at process automation through a data driven lens.

Are law firms and legal departments ready for technology enabled automation, and do they understand whether this is easy or hard to do? Do tech firms and IT departments need to do a better job at partnering with business and better articulating the value proposition. Or are the benefits of Legal Tech overstated? In this session we will discuss these questions as well yours from the floor with our expert panelists.

Companies of all sizes are embracing a more effective, paperless way of working. To stay competitive in this market, legal departments and firms can’t afford to waste time on administrative tasks like printing, faxing, scanning, overnighting and even driving across town to sign documents.
Join this session to discover how organisations like Macpherson Kelley have reduced the time to sign documents from days to minutes, eliminated errors, ensured compliance and recognised a sizeable return on investment.

Discover in this session how Macpherson Kelley

• Maintains complete control and visibility of its client documentation from a central location
• Stays mobile, signing contracts in the office or on site to keep its clients’ projects moving.

Companies of all sizes are embracing a more effective, paperless way of working. To stay competitive in this market, legal departments and firms can’t afford to waste time on administrative tasks like printing, faxing, scanning, overnighting and even driving across town to sign documents.
Join this session to discover how organisations like Macpherson Kelley have reduced the time to sign documents from days to minutes, eliminated errors, ensured compliance and recognised a sizeable return on investment.

Discover in this session how Macpherson Kelley

• Maintains complete control and visibility of its client documentation from a central location
• Stays mobile, signing contracts in the office or on site to keep its clients’ projects moving.