Digitalization at full speed
As a knowledge-based law firm, DLA Piper focuses intensively on collecting and sharing knowledge, which greatly contributes to our ability to effectively deliver solutions of the highest quality to our clients.
In Denmark, our Legal Tech & Knowledge Management team, headed by Christina Jønby, Head of Legal Tech & Knowledge Management, consists of three full-time employees, who support our business broadly in relation to carrying through and facilitating Legal Tech projects and ensuring the rollout of new Legal Tech tools. The team continuously selects and implements new Legal Tech tools, and develops smart solutions and processes across the business
Automating +1,500 documents
The Legal Tech team's major focus over the past year has been document automation. Working with a large number of lawyers, the team has automated more than 1,500 documents across 16 legal practice areas in less than a year. In the process of automation, the team has involved a large number of lawyers and other employees, who have taken an active part in the very extensive work that goes into automation. The involvement in the process has had the added bonus that lawyers and other internal stakeholders take ownership of the product and want to be part of the journey – especially when the benefits are streamlined workflows, better processes and precise products of the highest quality. Above all, great involvement, ownership at partner level and a dedicated team means that the project has great progress and is perceived as a success throughout the business.
Part of the culture
Working with document automation is much more than smart processes. The project has created better unity and is a bonus to our culture, as it is an opportunity to talk to each other across departments and disciplines and together create structured processes and structure. At the same time, the parties involved help refine and revise the document packages and ensure that we can deliver our services quickly and efficiently in a streamlined and recognizable layout, and that time is spent solely on real value-creating work. In addition, focus on knowledge sharing and optimization of knowledge sharing processes has automatically increased, which is an important added bonus, as it results in better control of data and at the same time makes us even better prepared for the fact that we will see even more of e.g. AI and other long-term value-creating legal tech tools in the future.
”It has been absolutely crucial that the business has bought into and participated actively in the document automation process, and it is really impressive that the lawyers have thrown themselves into the process with commitment and great involvement. It is clearly a business that has been ready to take a quantum leap in relation to digitalization and the implied change of work habits and routines, but when you have influence and can see how much value you get out of the product in the end, it is actually not that difficult to get the lawyers on board”, says Christina Jønby.
The Legal Tech team also focuses on training in both existing and new digital tools to ensure optimal use of all our IT tools. It obviously creates added value for the business that both new and old systems are optimized and utilized to the fullest. Digitization of a business is not only about optimizing processes and changing work habits, but just as much about competence development and learning.
