Hogan Lovells hosts inaugural Legal Tech Fest highlighting commitment to innovation

Hosted by Washington D.C. Office Managing Partner and former TMT Co-Chair, Michele Farquhar, the virtual event offered panel sessions on digital knowledge products, eDiscovery, budget tracking and analysis, due diligence, lawyer efficiency tools, and out of the box end-to-end solutions.

Key discussion points from panel members at the event were:

Michele Farquhar, Office Managing Partner for the Washington, D.C office: “Hogan Lovells invested in legal technology and IT early on, providing our attorneys with cutting edge tools to assist with litigation, transactional, and global regulatory and compliance work. This investment has helped us move seamlessly to remote working and greater client collaboration on large complex projects. Our Legal Tech Fest builds on this platform to ensure that more of our attorneys and staff are comfortable with these tools, so we can drive innovation across a range of practice areas as well as ensure greater effectiveness and efficiency. The panelists also shared success stories and best practices for particular client and internal needs, which has fostered many follow-on conversations and training opportunities.”

Mark Brennan, global Lead Innovation Partner: “From our research, we know our clients really care about innovation – and as we all continue to pivot and adapt in a world shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, having a sound legal tech strategy is essential. As a firm that is first and foremost client driven, we have to master these evolving technologies to provide our clients what they need the most, when they need it.”

Mahvesh Qureshi, M&A partner, on budgets and balance: “A client said to me once: ‘Your job is to predict the unpredictable.’ In some ways they were right. Our legal tech allows us to anticipate when things are going in the right direction – and when they’re not. That gets increasingly complex for cross-border matters and when outside counsel are involved working in tandem with client internal teams – clients expect outside counsel to act as one both with their internal team and as a collective outside counsel team. AI tools allow us to check our assumptions as we work on a particular matter and are a key element to our client relationships where they expect transparency, more frequent communication, efficient management and timely reporting.”

Sharon Lewis, Financial Institutions and Insurance Sector group head, on LIBOR: “The first thing clients want is to identify all issues at play, and the key is to collect a list of questions which identify the scope of work. Clients want to see how documents need to be amended in a form they can easily re-use for briefing for their management.”

It’s not just financial institutions embracing different ways of working. The same old process won’t see us through in the future. Simply because a client instruction is high value, our clients’ pockets are not bottomless. Embracing legal tech solutions is a way of partnering with them to achieve efficiencies. Law firms should be pushed to think innovatively.”

Bill Ferreira, global regulatory partner, on using legal tech to help solve regulatory and logistical challenges of COVID-19: “Our clients, and particularly our university clients and hospital clients, have students, faculty and staff stuck across the world due to the pandemic. Travel restrictions, safety concerns, immigration issues and other problems have meant students are unable to come to the U.S. for school but expect their university to beam online education into their homes abroad so they don’t fall behind in their academic progress. This led to a natural global regulatory question: to what extent does a foreign country, as a regulatory matter, permit a U.S. school to purvey online education and coursework into their country?

“To solve this problem, we created the Education GOES International digital tool, which allows clients to access easily digestible information specific to the country they are currently dealing with, updated in real-time, to help achieve their business goals.”

Nate Gallon, Northern California Co-Managing Partner, on the development of alternative legal services: “Our Louisville-based Legal Services Center will provide us many useful ways to execute certain tasks in a repeatable and more affordable way for clients. Our vision is that over time we’ll have a broad set of corporate matters and transactions that the service center can work on. As we continue to develop our Legal Services Center, we will be able to offer pricing for due diligence and similar work in a way that will unlock more deal opportunities for the firm.”

Key examples of the firm’s legal tech offering are:

• Creating a Data Science capability of 72 algorithms which we applied to our entire enterprise database to build better client relationships.
• Creating a first of its kind, breakthrough technology using machine learning to ‘tokenize’ written languages (that for the first time is applicable in written Korean, Japanese, and Chinese).
• Our AI delivery toolkit for the LIBOR benchmark ahead of the 2021 deadline.
• Other leading LPM tech and digital knowledge solutions:
  • Cael, Clocktimizer and Smartsheets
  • Automated Contract Review including Kira.
  • Creating Blockchain Closing Tool for Real Estate
  • Global solutions for technology assisted review in litigation such as Relativity and Brainspace
  • Collaborate Dealrooms, a secure platform to view and exchange documents with clients during a “live” matter, and Collaborate iSheets, automating business processes and tailored workflow
  • Education GOES Global digital tool, allowing clients to access easily access digestible information specific to the country they are currently dealing with, updated in real-time, to help achieve their business goals