Legal Business

Systems addicts – The CIO Power List

  • Mark McAteer and Joanna Goodman

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    With the use of data and technology increasingly central to a law firm’s success, the contribution of the individuals leading multi-million pound tech teams has never been greater. Meet the IT heads and chief information officers that stand out from the crowd.

    From law firm partners to former data analysts at banks, the individuals who control the deployment of IT and knowledge management (KM) resources at some of the UK’s top-performing law firms are a diverse breed. Some, such as Sheila Doyle at Norton Rose Fulbright, entered the legal industry relatively recently after distinguished careers at some of the world’s largest companies. Others, like Julie Berry at RPC, became one of the earliest adopters of the systems manager role at a law firm, building up the knowledge and experience to become one of the most effective operators in legal tech.

    What these individuals all share is influence at their firms and the ear of their boards. The ability for the most senior IT and KM professional at a law firm to communicate effectively with the executive is a prerequisite, whether that is through direct board representation or simply having the influencing skills to allow key decision makers to take notice. As Gareth Ash, chief information officer (CIO) at Allen & Overy (A&O), points out: ‘It is our responsibility to use our position and influence to bring people together and make things happen. By doing this the firm gains by being more than the sum of its parts, and our influence increases through continuing success.’

    Reflecting this sentiment, Legal Business undertook a sizeable research project covering law firm CIOs, partners and providers to draw up a list of 20 of the most influential and highly regarded technology professionals currently working in major legal practices in the UK.

    The 20 individuals listed here have various titles with some on their firms’ executive boards while others are not. However, be they IT directors or CIOs, these are the individuals singled out as having the knowledge, business savvy and influence to put their respective firms at the cutting edge of legal IT innovation and management.

     

    Gareth Ash, Allen & Overy

    Julie Berry, RPC

    Paul Caris, Eversheds

    Janet Day, Berwin Leighton Paisner

    Sheila Doyle, Norton Rose Fulbright

    Keith Feeny, Hill Dickinson

    Peter Gibbons, Withers

    Paul Greenwood, Clifford Chance

    Lee Hanley, Charles Russell

    Marcel Henri, Dentons

    Richard Hodkinson, DWF

    Tim Hyman, Reed Smith

    Simon Kosminsky, SJ Berwin

    Bruna Pellicci, Ashurst

    Daniel Pollick, DLA Piper

    Colin Smith, Pinsent Masons

    Stuart Walters, Taylor Wessing

    John Whitlow, Addleshaw Goddard

    Stuart Whittle, Weightmans

    Steve Whitwham, Burges Salmon

     

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    Gareth Ash

    Chief information officer, Allen & Overy

    Ash became CIO of A&O in 2010, promoted from head of global operations when predecessor Jason Haines became finance and operations director.

    As Ash reports to Haines and global managing partner Wim Dejonghe, he believes that the most important quality for a CIO is credibility. This starts with excelling at the day job – keeping the systems up and running for 5,153 users across A&O’s 42 offices in 29 countries. But as the role of the lawyer has evolved into much more than the execution and application of the law, so has the role of CIO, particularly in getting buy-in at board level. Ash also plays an important role in the global legal IT community, where he is European regional vice president for the International Legal Technology Association.

    ‘Credibility includes leadership, being a trusted adviser, diplomat, decision maker and motivator and remaining calm in a crisis.’ says Ash. ‘People respect professionalism and authority. As CIO, showing you are in control of the situation and have the right expertise carries great weight. But it is also about helping people.’

    A recent highlight for his team was the firm’s innovative technology project EPiC, a legal sales support system which includes databases of deals and cases, client pitches and marketing collateral together with a sales proposal generation application, which aims to keep lawyers up to date with the firm’s knowledge base relevant to specific clients. A new client relationship management module will transform the way the firm uses this data.

    ‘For me, this project was the blueprint for a successful change programme as it was sponsored by our marketing department and supported by IT with heavy partner involvement,’ says Ash.

     

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    Julie Berry

    Director of infrastructure and IT, RPC

    Berry, who has been at RPC for 22 years, works in tandem with the firm’s director of KM and capability Andrew Woolfson to cover the classic role of a CIO to enable the firm to get the most out of its technology and content. She says that it’s an intrinsic part of RPC’s culture that teams are not siloed.

    ‘The keys to success are: don’t get hung up on job titles; and don’t put solid lines around your team,’ she says. ‘If you have a firm with an all-powerful IT director and an all-powerful knowledge director you start to get silos.’

    Peers recognise Berry as one of the industry’s key players, with one competitor praising her ‘no nonsense approach to technology’, while another says she ‘has a wealth of knowledge and experience in legal which she is always willing to enthusiastically share’.

    Berry says that she and Woolfson get plenty of support to experiment from the executive but one of their key strengths is not to layer products. ‘Fundamentally you don’t want more products and more applications – you’re just adding more complexity. Our attitude is we don’t want to commit headcount to customisation when everyone is using the out-of-the-box industry standard products. What we do is introduce new solutions but using the products and applications and systems that we already have.’

    As for the future, Berry predicts that mobile technology will increase, cloud use will increase, 4G will play a greater role and people will move away from e-mail towards more social media-driven technology.

    ‘Lawyers traditionally want to work with their content in Word but is it going to carry on that way,’ she says. ‘Clients are looking for content rather than the wrapping. The wrapping lawyers have been used to, Word, is not necessarily what clients want anymore.’

     

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    Paul Caris

    Chief information officer, Eversheds

    Caris heads a team of just under 90 staff based in Eversheds’ ten UK offices and the Middle East, Hong Kong and Shanghai. However, an outsourced team adds another 50 or 60 people. He has a reputation for embracing progressive technology, business transformation and innovation, notably making Eversheds the first law firm to roll out iPads and use big data analytics for sector and industry analysis. As one peer points out: ‘It’s a big firm in changing times and requires creative input. [Caris is] one to watch.’

    Eversheds is currently rolling out voice recognition with automatic transcription and desktop dictation capability. While mobility – and particularly the smartphone – has transformed the way lawyers work, Caris predicts consumerisation and BYOD (bring your own device) will also change the way law firms buy software. ‘People are buying apps rather than software, and this is disrupting the software market,’ he says. ‘Ultimately, when businesses are no longer paying for software services per machine, software companies will have to reconsider their business model.’ Eversheds is developing services that leverage employees’ choices of both device and software.

    ‘Influence is not about who you report to,’ says Caris, who reports directly to Eversheds’ board through managing partner Lee Ranson. ‘It is about getting the basics right and making sure they work. There is no point in me talking to our CEO about big data if his laptop doesn’t work.’

    He adds that in order to succeed as a law firm CIO you cannot be afraid to fail. ‘In the current economic climate I don’t bet my entire budget on one project. I take measured risks by doing lots of small projects, knowing that one or two will be successful.’

    It is also about language and managing expectations. ‘I don’t do pilots or trials. I experiment. People do not expect pilots to fail, whereas they accept that some experiments can blow up in your face.’

     

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    Janet Day

    Director of IT, Berwin Leighton Paisner

    Variously described as the ‘godmother’ or ‘queen’ of legal IT, Day is one of the longest-serving and most respected specialists in the business, with one general counsel saying she is ‘very proactive, client facing and commercially focused’. Having worked at BLP since 1996 and A&O for 22 years before that, she and her team have picked up numerous legal and technology awards during that time. She now heads a 60-strong IT resource that covers 800 lawyers in 12 international offices.

    Unsurprisingly, Day is a member of BLP’s board, reporting to managing partner Neville Eisenberg. As such, she has built up a tremendous amount of influence within the firm and is clear on what the most important qualities for making IT deliver in a law firm are. ‘There’s an awful lot of noise around IT, so you need a clear vision and direction as well as a degree of mental robustness so that you can take the blows associated with running a project and carry on,’ she says.

    She considers developments such as mobile and cloud computing and consumerisation as enablers of law firm strategy. ‘The ability to virtualise and transport data changes how we think about technology as well as how we use it,’ she says. ‘It extends the reach of our imagination. Technology itself does not bring competitive advantage; it is about considering the possibilities and finding new, better ways of working.’

    One specific development relevant to the mobility of IT has seen Day oversee virtualised desktops so that staff can have secure remote and mobile access to the firm’s systems and data. As no data is held on the devices, this also addresses another primary concern – security and risk, which is about inadvertent data loss as well as intentional data theft. ‘If you don’t take the data away, you immediately increase the security parameter around the data,’ she says.

     

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    Sheila Doyle

    Group chief information officer, Norton Rose Fulbright

    In just two years, Doyle has managed to steer Norton Rose through five major integration projects. She hit the ground running when she joined the firm in June 2011. It had just entered the Canadian and South African markets through mergers with Ogilvy Renault and Deneys Reitz to later become Norton Rose Canada and Norton Rose South Africa.

    Within a few months, the firm merged with Canadian law firm Macleod Dixon and followed that with a full-blown merger this year with US law firm Fulbright & Jaworski, forming Norton Rose Fulbright, a firm with a total of 2,647 lawyers and their related IT needs.

    ‘I am most proud of the way we successfully integrated five partnerships in a very tight timeframe and ensured that the business was up and running on day one without any problems,’ says Doyle.

    From her first day at Norton Rose, Doyle, who reports to global COO Kevin Mortell, says her ambition was to ensure the dialogue between IT and the business exists.

    ‘The days of IT being in the engine room are long gone in my view,’ she says. ‘It’s really about taking people on a journey and explaining how these technologies are changing other industries and what’s happening in the marketplace – I find this very effective and find executives want to embrace what they are learning.’

    According to Doyle, cloud, mobile, big data and social media are all transforming the role of technology in business, with big data gathering significant momentum over the next 12 months while artificial intelligence will play a role in transforming the sector in the future.

    She says professionalism, organisation, strong relationship building skills and the ability to translate ideas into action are key to becoming a successful CIO. In terms of successfully integrating different IT processes, the right template is necessary. ‘We have done it quite a number of times so have a good track record. We have managed to bring together IT from six functional divisions and the cultural fit also really helps,’ she adds.

     

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    Keith Feeny

    Director of IT and operations, Hill Dickinson

    Having been at Liverpool-based Hill Dickinson since 1995, Feeny has seen the firm evolve from a North West player into a 55-strong IT team supporting 1,350 people in eight UK and overseas offices, including in Monaco, Greece and Singapore. A new office in Hong Kong opened in October 2013.

    The firm has invested heavily in IT recently, and is now looking at maximising the value of these investments. Major projects included moving 75% of primary services to the private cloud – to provide the same resilient service to users across the firm’s national and international offices. However, integrating cloud applications remains a challenge. The key driver is mobility, which also raises security issues. All desktop PCs have been replaced with laptops, which are encrypted.

    On big data, Hill Dickinson is ahead of the curve, having used data analytics before the term ‘big data’ hit legal IT – and often such innovation is driven by the particular demands of the insurance industry, a key plank of the firm’s client base. ‘We are working closely with our insurance business group on a major project combining workflow and business intelligence. Rather than simply reporting data to the client, we are looking at offering analytics and interpretation,’ says Feeny.

    Hill Dickinson’s anti-fraud screening database collects and combines information using data mining. ‘The next step is looking beyond interpreting data to forecasting and enabling clients to use our systems to mine their data,’ he adds.

    A law firm CIO needs political savvy. ‘You can have hundreds of bosses,’ says Feeny, who reports to managing partner Peter Jackson but works closely with numerous specific business groups. ‘Bringing people with you means breaking down the technology and explaining each project so that the executive can see the value it brings to the business. Get the concept right and work with the business to make it real.’

     

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    Peter Gibbons

    Global IT and operations director, Withers

    Gibbons joined the traditional private client firm 16 years ago and has watched it grow from one office to 11 global locations with 347 lawyers. He says his biggest achievement to date has been building an IT infrastructure fit to service all 11 offices. He became IT director of Withers at the age of 37 and within two years was promoted to operations director.

    ‘If you can be a CIO for over ten years, some credit has to be given as it’s not the easiest of jobs,’ he says. He currently sits on the firm’s managing committee and the international practice committee.

    Currently, Gibbons is busy undertaking a desktop refresh project that will re-vamp and virtualise the firm’s systems. As a result, IT expenditure has peaked to its highest level since Gibbons joined the firm. ‘This project will change the game. It will give people more access and create more opportunities. For example, we could set up in a location relatively quickly using this new software,’ he says.

    Gibbons evolved Withers’ IT systems, including the introduction of a dashboard of fee-earner information around six years ago. The firm uses business intelligence that produces information in real time, such as performance indicators and profitability in specific practice areas.

    Very soon, Gibbons aims to use business intelligence tools to analyse non-financial information like marketing and referral reports, with the aim of significantly speeding up business processes within the firm.

    While senior management has supported the firm’s IT developments, he concedes that things could be better. ‘Getting airtime is difficult and is never enough. I would like to have more time with partners, which can often be a challenge due to their extremely busy schedules. However, as IT becomes more prevalent, I see this changing in the future.’

     

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    Paul Greenwood

    Chief information officer, Clifford Chance

    ‘When you manage a large team, it is important to maintain global standards, so everyone in the IT function reports to the global organisation,’ says Greenwood who, having cut his teeth at McKinsey, knows a thing or two about management and getting things done within an organisation. ‘Too many CIOs focus on persuading different offices to join a global deal, for example, when they should be talking to the business. It is important to lift yourself up from the details and present on strategy so that you are seen as a valid discussion partner – not someone who can fix the printer!’

    With 35 offices in 25 countries, Clifford Chance (CC)’s geographic expansion into developing markets has presented frequent new challenges to Greenwood and his team over the years. With this in mind, the team has developed a bespoke solution for setting up a small office with a connection to one of the firm’s regional datacentres. Branded SPIAR (spoke in a rack) – ‘one rack of equipment and we’re up and running’ – it facilitates the speedy launch of new operations.

    On the KM side, analysis of financial and matter data helps to develop a greater understanding of trends and predict pricing. CC’s SharePoint document management system, which has been rolled out across Europe, supports this, as all new applications feeding business intelligence into the firm’s various systems operate on the platform.

    CC is also a pioneer of offshoring and its Indian operation has been running successfully for five years, handling day-to-day technical support. ‘It allows us to maintain a large IT activity and innovation at a sensible cost,’ says Greenwood. As the firm moves into more locations, other technical services are offshored or outsourced to specialist vendors.

    CC has strengthened its cybersecurity by implementing hi-tech solutions for spotting hidden malware. A strong internal communication campaign is used to raise awareness. ‘Law firms are good at recognising market-sensitive and price-sensitive matters, but we also need to understand politically-sensitive matters,’ says Greenwood. ‘We have some controls, but we focus on professional responsibility, and providing people with the tools and information they need.’

     

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    Lee Hanley

    IT director, Charles Russell

    As a growing international business, Charles Russell has 550 users based out of three UK offices and three international outposts. Hanley is looking to expand his 22-strong team to support the firm’s Middle East expansion – the firm’s Qatar office opened in August – and the decision to bring the helpdesk function, which was previously outsourced, back on staff to improve out-of-hours service.

    The Middle East brings IT challenges in terms of resilience and connectivity, so the firm has its own servers in Bahrain and introduced virtualised systems across its offices in the region.

    Top priorities include cybersecurity, cloud computing and mobility. Consumerisation is driving more intuitive technology. Charles Russell currently supplies BlackBerry devices, but is shifting its strategy in the light of the increased popularity of iPads and iPhones. ‘Although we allow other devices to connect to our systems, we do not provide support, but we are reconsidering this and deciding which devices to support,’ says Hanley, who envisages that eventually, users will access the same virtual environment on their desktop and mobile devices.

    The firm recently introduced Microsoft Lync to support inter-office collaboration via video conferencing and whiteboard sharing. Speech recognition – whereby transcription is built into the dictation process – has also proved successful. ‘It’s about finding the right users, and helping them to turn around work faster and reduce dependence on secretaries.’

    Hanley insists it is important to build relationships with stakeholders, get to understand the business, and be a good listener. Charles Russell’s IT steering committee meets every month and Hanley, who reports to COO Andy Staite, attends board meetings, project meetings and partner lunches. He is also setting up an IT user group to get direct feedback from different parts of the firm. ‘It is important to find the pain points and identify opportunities to deliver solutions. You also need a good track record,’ he says.

     

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    Marcel Henri

    Chief information officer, Europe, Dentons

    A one-firm man turned three-firm man overnight, Paris-based Henri’s 70-strong team supports offices in 19 European jurisdictions. Dentons has around 80 offices worldwide and a 400-strong global IT team, with responsibilities divided between four regional groups.

    Henri has spent the last few months working on one of the biggest law firm combinations of the year: the melding of SNR Denton, Salans and Fraser Milner Casgrain to create Dentons, a global law firm with some 2,600 lawyers and professionals.

    ‘The merger took place only four months after the deciding votes,’ he says. ‘The IT team was involved in the firm’s rebranding exercise, including redesigning websites and migrating to a common messaging system. Since the merger we’ve rolled out common conferencing, a common extranet platform, an intranet platform leveraging SharePoint, as well as emergency response and business continuity.’ Global consolidation involved merging and relocating staff in London, Kazakhstan, Russia, Paris, Shanghai and New York.

    Other key initiatives include managing big data, particularly integrating the LexisNexis InterAction customer relationship management platform with other best-of-breed solutions and third-party data feeds to classify and understand clients by region, by industry and by size as well as the type of legal services they use and identify potential referral work. Henri predicts closer online collaboration facilitated by platforms that merge to create new ways of working and more firms using big data analytics to leverage data and experience.

    IT is a law firm’s third biggest spend after staff and premises, so what qualities define an effective law firm CIO? ‘Diplomacy is important. So are language skills, in terms of being able to translate between technical talk and lawyer talk and making IT more accessible for our user community.’

     

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    Richard Hodkinson

    Chief technology officer, DWF

    Hodkinson says he couldn’t work somewhere ‘that was just standing still’ so after 17 years on the board at the constantly evolving Irwin Mitchell, the opportunity to join DWF in 2011 – just ahead of the firm’s rapid ascent up the ranks through five mergers in 12 months to become one the top 25 largest firms in the UK – was too good to pass up.

    But with such rapid change has come the need to radically overhaul the IT infrastructure to keep pace with a firm that had gone from a £83m, 500-lawyer business in 2010/11 to a £200m, 1,000-lawyer business by 2013. This included migrating the IT systems for nearly 500 people following the quick-fire acquisition of Cobbetts earlier this year, which had to be turned around in 14 days.

    ‘It wasn’t done on a textbook basis because, simply, there wasn’t enough time to do it on a textbook basis,’ he says. The hygiene process that Hodkinson has needed to push through has meant that IT spend has averaged around 6% of turnover in recent years – around £11m. One key project at the moment is a proof of concept that’s about to start with a household name company that will run for six to nine months to see whether big data analytics can help drive cases through the system on a learning basis (ie the more cases you put through the system, the better the decisions are). The aim is to reduce the amount of effort lawyers need to put in on case management and increase the number of cases a lawyer handles.

    Hodkinson describes DWF chief executive Andrew Leaitherland as very tech savvy – he ‘just gets it’, which is why he felt it important to have Hodkinson on the firm’s executive board. ‘It’s useful because I can input on topics that are not specifically my area,’ says Hodkinson. ‘Importantly, having a seat in the right forum allows me to test drive and sell ideas on possible investments. Being involved at this level also helps me to understand strategically where particular points of pressure are within the business and also where new opportunities are starting to arise.’

     

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    Tim Hyman

    IT director EMEA, Reed Smith

    Having had considerable stints at a roll call of leading City-based media and technology law firms during a career spanning over 30 years, Hyman and his 40-strong team now deliver IT services to some 440 lawyers in Reed Smith’s ten EMEA offices as well as supporting the firm’s continued expansion across the region.

    According to Hyman, who reports to US-based global CIO Gary Becker, the CIO role is evolving from buying and delivering technology to delivering ‘service as a service’ by providing a shifting portfolio of devices, applications and ways of accessing information, and adapting these as users’ and clients’ needs change in response to market conditions.

    One current initiative for Hyman is focused on large-scale legal process management, involving over 30 live matters and some 75 lawyers. The IT and KM teams work with lawyers and clients to identify the key processes and clients have real-time access to these processes throughout the progress of their matter. After-action reviews drive continuous improvement, as the results are fed back into the system. The project has enabled Reed Smith to build an historic pricing database which supports and informs alternative pricing arrangements.

    ‘This initiative is an example of modern knowledge management in action using technology and processes to find an alternative to the billable hour,’ he explains.

    The key to success for any IT project is having the right people. ‘US firms are more people-focused, whereas there is an emphasis in the UK to get people to multi-task,’ observes Hyman, adding that as a global firm, Reed Smith is well resourced for time-zone and continuity purposes.

    ‘CIOs are like the Hollywood fix-it man, because we have to communicate and empathise at every level. We have to understand what the business needs and make it happen,’ he adds.

     

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    Simon Kosminsky

    IT director, SJ Berwin

    Kosminsky has over 20 years’ experience as an IT director within the legal profession and is known to be a free thinker, unafraid to speak his mind, who garners a huge amount of respect from peers. As one CIO at a rival firm noted: ‘Simon is a recognised heavyweight who appears to mix strategic thinking with a common sense approach.’ Another says: ‘he always talks sense’ – a prized trait among IT professionals and one that ensures that Kosminsky is a regular on the conference circuit.

    Having introduced one of the first law firm document management systems (PCDOCS) during his Wilde Sapte days as well as introducing the first PC network in the firm and one of the first Windows-based environments in UK law firms, Kosminsky has been able to combine his technical knowledge with his understanding of business management in order to deliver significant changes to working practices, business efficiency, profitability and customer service at SJ Berwin.

    However, he faces perhaps his most significant challenge yet: thanks to a deal brokered this summer, SJ Berwin has become part of Australian/Chinese giant King & Wood Mallesons in a union that went live this month. SJ Berwin will become part of a $1bn firm based in Asia, with 553 partners and over 2,700 lawyers – and the very real concerns from clients over the cybersecurity and data privacy issues related to a firm that is in part sponsored by the Chinese state will need to be fully addressed as Kosminsky and his team analyse how far to integrate systems.

     

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    Bruna Pellicci

    IT director, Ashurst

    With around 14 years’ experience of the legal profession under her belt, including eight years at Nabarro before joining Ashurst in 2009, Pellicci is regarded as one of the safest pair of hands in legal IT, which is just as well as the firm embarks upon its high-stakes merger with Australian leader Blake Dawson this month.

    ‘It’s about aligning the IT to the business requirements, which are fast-changing,’ she says. ‘It’s about doing what we can to make lawyers and staff’s lives easier, as long as it’s cost-effective; and doing what we can to help clients and keep clients.’

    Pellicci says she reports on a daily basis to the firm’s CFO, Brian Dunlop and before that she reported to managing partner James Collis. She argues that the advantage of the team structure means ‘if we have a problem we can discuss it immediately, we don’t have to wait for the next round of the technology board’.

    The pressure to maintain cost-efficiency at firms has been paramount and a major factor behind Ashurst’s decision to launch a Glasgow office earlier this year and to relocate certain parts of some business support functions, including IT, there.

    That said, IT is not known at Ashurst for wasting budget. ‘We’re focused, we don’t waste money and for the last five years since I’ve been head of IT we’ve always come under budget,’ says Pellicci. ‘We’re a law firm, not a software house. We don’t need to be super leading edge, we need to be cost-effective and be a provider of a solid service. So sometimes you can’t go with the latest trends.’

     

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    Daniel Pollick

    Director of business infrastructure and chief information officer, DLA Piper

    As CIO at the world’s largest law firm by revenue, Pollick is responsible for the IT needs of 4,200 lawyers in more than 30 countries. He identifies three key focal points of DLA Piper’s IT strategy as cloud, unified communications and mobility, and he has presided over some of the largest global projects designed to transform technology in the legal profession.

    DLA Piper’s cloud desktops provide all users with access to a full Windows desktop from any DLA Piper office, their home or via their iPad. DLA Piper’s global rollout of Lync – and firmwide take-up – has transformed the way people communicate via message, voice and video.

    ‘The combination of presence and video conferencing has produced a fantastic network effect,’ says Pollick, who believes that the desk phone is just one hardware cycle away from obsolescence. The DLA Piper mobile application suite includes time recording, e-mail and access to documents and the next step is to enable users to use DLA Piper Lync connectivity on their personal iPads.

    ‘Our strategy is to globalise legal services delivery, so our lawyers must be able to operate from any device in any location,’ adds Pollick. He predicts enterprise social networking will play a big role, based on the way people currently use Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

    Pollick considers empowerment as crucial to the development of the CIO role. ‘All the CIO should need is the right level of empowerment to make a difference to the firm,’ he says. ‘It’s not about asking the executive to approve proposals; it’s about taking responsibility for making the right decisions and proving through actions, relationships and credibility that you are driving the business forward.’

    Communication skills are also crucial. ‘This means understanding end users and bringing together different stakeholders to get the IT department to align and be able to deliver business solutions to business problems, not just technology,’ he says.

     

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    Colin Smith

    IT director, Pinsent Masons

    Smith has been IT director at Pinsent Masons since 1991 and has seen the business transform radically during that time. His 92-strong team covers first, second and third-line support across 14 UK offices and eight international offices.

    Internationalisation is a key feature of the firm’s current three-year strategy, and the firm continues to expand, recently opening an office in Istanbul. As such, mobility and flexibility are top focus areas and users have become more technology savvy.

    ‘Consumerisation is changing the way lawyers work and the support they require from the IT department,’ says Smith. ‘It is a fundamental transition that we cannot avoid.’

    Smith reports to national managing partner David Ryan and head of client operations, Richard Masters, former managing partner of McGrigors whose role is focused on enhancing the client experience – a key strategic priority. ‘Clients have become more cost conscious and they are auditing law firm systems,’ says Smith.

    To this end he has created a client services function within the IT team – the front of shop to the business – to engage internal stakeholders and liaise with the clients to provide appropriate IT support. Other business support areas created similar groups to liaise between the operations team and specific clients. ‘The client services initiative together with technologies that we use shapes how we deal with clients and changes the dynamics of the IT department.’

    Business process mapping and workflows help to address price competition and deliver more for less, notably a series of bespoke client-facing tools that has helped the firm win regular clients. One example is Balfour Beatty, with which Pinsents recently signed a contract to be sole supplier of all of the infrastructure giant’s business-as-usual legal work. Keely Hibbitt, head of group legal at Balfour, says that Pinsents devised an IT portal through which she can centralise all instructions to the firm and monitor those instructions to gauge where issues proliferate. ‘The ability of the firm to deliver this technology was a critical factor in reaching this agreement,’ she says.

     

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    Stuart Walters

    UK chief information officer, Taylor Wessing

    In just two years, Walters has implemented numerous projects around process efficiency and adding value to the business. These have included centralising the secretarial service and introducing workflow, document assembly and printing products. The same strategy is being applied to due diligence, contract management, real estate portfolio management and corporate and commercial work. ‘We are focused on using systems to capture information and use it multiple times,’ he says.

    Walters, who reports to COO Clare Singleton and the board, played a key role in building the firm’s document review software in conjunction with a client under a separate entity, New Street Solutions, and it can be applied to any matter requiring document or contract review. The venture was spun-out from the firm in 2012, in a rare example of a firm exporting its know-how to deliver alternative revenue streams.

    Another project established a relationship and account management function for the IT department, which sees the team attending practice group meetings as well as inviting practice groups to present to the IT department. The idea was to ensure the IT team liaises with the different practices to quickly identify key pain points. The team received sales and account management training in order to sell IT services into the business and create ‘currency’ – content that is shared between the IT function and various stakeholders in the business and available to users on SharePoint.

    According to Walters, the most important qualities for a CIO are ‘not to get too hung up on technology but to stay close to the business, and the ability to translate tech-speak so that users can understand where it fits into the business’.

     

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    John Whitlow

    Head of IT, Addleshaw Goddard

    Within just two years of joining Addleshaw Goddard, Whitlow has led the IT directorate through a transformation across multiple areas, including business engagement, service and project delivery and information security.

    Whitlow entered the legal IT sphere after a series of stints in banking and says he was surprised by the large gap and lack of awareness of the importance of IT.

    ‘The legal sector has a culture problem. Lawyers are particularly challenging with their lack of understanding and awareness of security threats. A significant security breach may be required to overcome the cultural inertia,’ he says. However, he suggests that this attitude is starting to change. Devices like the iPad are now real business tools and help engagement on many levels, while collaboration technologies are also maturing.

    Whitlow leads Addleshaws’ IT change portfolio, including hosted private cloud and core platform upgrades in desktop, telephony, mobile, intranet, extranet and the website. The firm adopted cloud (SaaS) for non-client data and moved to a managed private cloud.

    ‘We can’t forget that law firms hold other companies’ greatest secrets and typically are seen as the weak link. With greater regulation coming, security will play a greater role in deciding on our IT strategy,’ he says.

    With the legal sector experiencing challenges of change within IT, Whitlow says he looks forward to seeing the developments. He says: ‘It’s less important to understand legal and more important to understand the business. Legal is not that complex in terms of the business tools it requires. It’s about visionary things and forward thinking.’

     

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    Stuart Whittle

    Information systems and operations director, Weightmans

    Liverpool-based Whittle is a very rare breed, having been a partner at Weightmans before moving into IT. Having originally joined the firm as a trainee solicitor in 1993, becoming a partner in 2002, he remains an equity partner in the firm and a member of the board of directors.

    He has been responsible for Weightmans’ information systems at director level since 2005, establishing and chairing its IT steering group. In 2010 his role was extended to operations, including information systems, marketing, HR, risk and facilities and projects. He is a director of LITIG – the Legal IT Innovators Group.

    Whittle, responsible for 120 staff with six direct reports, reports to Weightmans managing partner, John Schorah. He runs a dedicated IT team of 48 staff, who provide IT services to Weightmans’ 1,300 users in nine UK offices.

    Whittle is applying classic management tools to the firm’s processes, including Lean Six Sigma, in which he has a black belt. In preparation for updating Weightmans’ core systems, a cohort of partners, fee-earners and business support professions in HR, IT facilities and projects received three weeks of Lean Six Sigma training and are applying these tools and techniques to the firm’s legal and business processes. ‘We are looking to extract the underlying data from our systems in order to understand where the bottlenecks are and address them,’ he says. As Weightmans handles a significant volume of personal injury work, clients value the firm’s ability to conclude cases quickly.

    As a former lawyer and a technologist, he understands the pressures of both roles. ‘It is important to get across how technology adds value to lawyers and clients,’ he says.

    ‘Technology itself doesn’t produce competitive advantage – it is how you apply it to the business.’

     

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    Steve Whitwham

    Head of IT, Burges Salmon

    Burges Salmon’s Whitwham is recognised for some extensive experience gleaned from the cutting edge of the banking industry. ‘Steve has a great delivery record of transforming Burges Salmon. He is very capable in all departments,’ says a CIO peer of Whitwham, who heads a 24-strong team and reports to Emma Dowden, director of operations and best practice at the Bristol-based firm.

    Despite being ostensibly a one-site practice, Burges Salmon’s ambition is to be a UK law firm with cross-border reach. Therefore mobility is an important priority for Whitwham and his team. This includes replacing corporate handsets with iPhones and BYOD support for iPads. The online services project is delivering a mobile application that allows users to access all relevant information from all the firm’s resources presented on a single page. Whitwham is applying the ‘customer on a page’ application from his financial services days. ‘It is not breaking new ground from a technology perspective, but it is bringing an idea from outside the sector into our firm,’ he says.

    He is also applying a similar approach to the firm’s intranet. ‘We are trying to aggregate information and functionality from different core systems and display it in one place so that lawyers do not have to access multiple systems to find what they need. The idea is to boost productivity by reducing the number of steps in various processes,’ he explains. It follows that business process automation and workflows are key areas of focus as is voice recognition – lawyers want to work in real time, he adds.

    In just two years, Whitwham feels he has gone a long way towards strengthening the relationship between IT and the business. ‘We publish key management information monthly; I speak to every partner twice a year; and I maintain regular contact with all relevant partners,’ he says.

    Transparency is another critical success factor. ‘You need to be brave enough to communicate initiatives that are not going so well as well as those that are succeeding. Otherwise it just looks like spin.’ LB

     

    Also recommended…

    Sue Hall, director of information systems and strategy at Linklaters, is praised for her ‘In-depth industry expertise and knowledge, with a strategic understanding of the legal services market. Always happy to share knowledge and experience’. After spending six years as chief information officer (CIO) at Baker & McKenzie, Hall joined Linklaters in 2008 and is acknowledged as having ‘delivered on service and controlled costs within a huge environment’.

    Herbert Smith Freehills’ CIO Haig Tyler only joined the firm in 2012, but as an experienced IT executive, with senior roles at Bupa and Cable & Wireless, he is firmly believed to be the right person to guide the firm through a complex transitional phase as the merger of Herbert Smith and Australia’s Freehills starts to bed down.

    Described as ‘honest, hardworking and at a human level, a top bloke and great value’, Wragge & Co’s director of IT Nigel Blackwood has been at the forefront of guiding the firm as a key innovator in its use of legal technology, including a root-and-branch review of the firm’s KM strategy in the last year.

    Peers recommend Lewis Silkin’s director of IT and operations and board member Jan Durant as ‘Mrs Innovator’. As one industry colleague remarks: ‘Jan has demonstrated a clear strategic approach for her firm, and pursued her objectives with passion. Jan also recognises that the answer is not always just to follow the crowd.’

    Abby Ewen is a well-respected operator, after ten years spent in senior IT roles at Withers and then another ten years at Simmons & Simmons before joining Berrymans Lace Mawer in March this year. Peers say she was ‘one of the early leaders in recognising the role CIOs could play’.

     

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    Methodology

    This list of leading legal IT specialists is compiled based on a rigorous three-stage research process, involving hundreds of questionnaires sent to law firm management, IT vendors and peers over a month-long period during September and October 2013.

    Each individual received overwhelming praise from all three groups – not only for their role in ensuring the success of their own law firms, but also for their standing among peers and their overall contribution to the legal IT community.

     

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