Introduction\n
\nHi, my name is Paul Hogg. I'm one of the relationship managers at Barclays working in our external engagement team. Ultimately I'm responsible for managing the panel of our law firms and our legal service providers.
Part 1: The importance of panel firm relationships\n
\nSo it's important to have a panel because ultimately that will deliver the best value and the best strategic advice to an in-house team. Relationships become fundamental to that to understand really what are the objectives of the in-house team, what's their strategy? What expertise do they have in-house, but also what expertise do they need to acquire from a law firm? And then from a law firm's perspective, it's understanding the client, it's understanding what they need and how they can service the in-house team.
So I think the biggest challenge is time. It takes time like anything to build a relationship and to have that trusted relationship. It's an investment upfront from the law firms and it will take time to have a return on that investment. Think that's probably the biggest challenge. The other side, again, we've every relationship it's having that open, honest and transparent conversation. The in-house team is the client. So a law firm doesn't often want to say something that could upset the client or to pull out a negative or a bit more of a constructive piece of feedback. However, in any relationship to get the true benefit of that relationship, you need to come with the positives and the constructive side.
\nWhen you go to instruct a law firm, or you want to instruct a law firm, you need to understand their expertise, where are they particularly strong? How can they support the in-house team is key there on the panel. So naturally they have that technical expertise by default. It's really the additional pieces that come into place, or how do they work with the in-house team? How do they provide the value add activities? How are they bringing the whole firm and the benefits to the clients?
\nWe sometimes see challenges here, because as an in-house team, you want a lot from, from your law firms, you want to understand how they are delivering the product? How are they delivering the expertise, but also how are they collaborating? How are you working together? It's still a people business. So making sure that you understand each other and work well together as equally as important as the technical side.
\nPart 2: Innovating and Collaborating with the panel\n
\nInnovation and collaboration is key to the way that we work as a function, but also to the relationship with our panel. We expect our law firms to be innovative, to be collaborative, but then there's different reach-outs that we do. And having a tool like LegalEye fundamental to this, we've listened to our law firms. We've heard what they've said. We've heard what their offerings are.
One of the biggest challenges that they face is trying to grow with Barclays or grow with the in-house team and have the in-house teams understand really what can that law firm offer and how can they benefit from utilizing or working at that law firm?
\nLegalEye allows us to do that because we've built a collaborative platform that allows a law firm to promote what they do, promote some of the initiatives that they're working on, but also improve the way that they connect with an in-house team. We've got some great examples where that's worked already, but our BUK team, we put up a question which looked at optimization and how can a law firm support Barclays in optimizing processes and which was hugely successful. We had, I think, 15 firms that came back to us and said, we can support you on this initiative.
\nPart 3: Unlocking the power of data through technology\n
\nSo the biggest challenge that we have is access to good quality data. That's both on the in-house side and on the law firm side. So having a central platform that allows you to log all of your activity, but also access that and record MI and, and reporting from that is fundamental. It allows you to build that open and transparent conversation, pull out what's working well and not, what's not working so well, but also where are there areas for improvement? So if a law firm, for example, isn't getting access to a particular area or isn't included in tender activity, it allows you to have the data to drive that conversation.
We had a gap for a CRM system that we were looking for and trying to build in-house at the same time. LawAdvisor came to the table and said, we've got this fantastic product that can give you everything you need. We looked at the product and we thought this is good, but it doesn't leverage everything that we need as an in-house team. And there's an external engagement team for how we manage our panel. So with the platform being a modular platform, it was great because it allowed us to really build new pieces onto this. So things like as a common platform or a second job board, things like, uh, a piece called Barclays connect where we can really have our lawyers connect with, with legal counsel is fundamental. Again, the big challenge that we have with our law firms is they all want to grow. They all want to improve their relationships, but there's sometimes a bit of resistance or we don't need any new support in a particular area. But this Barclays Connect aspect allows us to ask a question that goes out to our full panel and the panel can come back and answer. So it removes that preference for a particular law firm and really allows the building of new relationships through technology.
\nPart 4: Strengthening the relationship between in-house and law firms\n
\nA lot of the processes can be somewhat archaic or inefficient just through time. No one really has the time at the moment to take that step back, look at the process and say, actually, this can be reformed or changed or re-engineered to drive efficiency.
So I think that's where there's a real opportunity to drive change, how to do that is to really understand the need of the in-house team, but also promote what you're doing as a law firm, promote the conversations that you're having with other corporates financial institutions. Look at what projects you're working on that have worked well, not just the technical legal side, but the efficiency piece, the process re-engineering because that's really where the market is moving. The introduction of alternative legal service providers is going to create a large disruption in the industry and law firms need to move with that process, move with that change, and really look at the way that they deliver a package and deliver legal services back to their clients.
\nSo about two years ago, we led an innovation consortium in Barclays. We have a number of our law firms, and we looked at the use of knowledge that law firms produce. A shocking statistic was between 75 and 90% of the knowledge base that law firms produced, isn't actually utilized by the in-house team. It's either filed in a folder with a I'll read it later, or it's deleted straight away because it's not from a law firm that our lawyers recognize, but there's a huge amount of investment on the law firm side that creates that content, that markets, that content, which through a product like LegalEye we can now leverage.
\nSo we have a central repository for knowledge base now where our lawyers can go in search and items such as climate change. And it will pull up all of the articles that our law firms have posted onto the platform, which is something, which is completely new, something that we haven't had before, but really allows us then to start leveraging some of that content. Some of that knowledge base that our law firms are producing. What it also then means is if we do have a need, we can go straight to that. We can see what content has been posted, which, what law firms are thinking, how are they working on their style? Or how are they presenting that back to Barclays and which one fits the way that we work as a team?
\nPart 5: Using Legal Technology to drive change\n
\nSo like everything in the legal industry, people aren't really open to change. And they don't like change. And that's the biggest challenge, I think that someone like LawAdvisor and the product, LegalEye is going to face, it's a fantastic product, it's going to drive huge efficiency, but it's measuring that efficiency and demonstrating that back to the in-house teams and to law firms that's really going to drive that adoption and then leveraging of that platform.
So I think here, we're seeing many more LegalTech solutions coming to the market. It's all about the adoption and it's which one has got the staying power, to see out the kind of boom that we've got at the moment or that's coming in the legal industry.
\nThe big challenge is onboarding. How do the platforms comply with each team's onboarding requirements, each firm's onboarding requirements, but the adoption piece is key. And how does the platform demonstrate that efficiency that it drives that allows lawyers to really do the lawyering, which is what they're paid to do, and which is what they want to do. So having technology to come in and partner with our lawyers, not replace them is going to be fundamental.
\nTake the plunge, technology is there to drive improvements, to become, to make you more efficient as a lawyer. It's not going to replace the work that you do, but it's going to compliment what you do. It will take away some of the admin tasks. So, you know, give it a chance. Technology is new, so you need to be a bit patient, but actually the long-term rewards are going to be huge.
\nIt allows you to build data-driven decision-making. It allows us to get access to better data, to better reporting, which then allows us to make more informed decisions, which is why technology is fundamental in industry as we move forward.
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