By Vincent Connor and Alison Laird of Pinsent Masons
An In-House Community Firm of the Year, 2018
E: vincent.connor@pinsentmasons.com
E: alison.laird@pinsentmasons.com
Changing how high-quality legal advice is formulated and excellent service is delivered.
For many people in the legal sphere, the word ‘innovation’ has become synonymous with ‘disruption’ — thought to be the next big tech offering that will change the legal world as we know it (robot lawyers come to mind). For others, the overuse of the word (and lack of subsequent implementation and change) has relegated it to just another corporate buzzword; a fad that will soon be forgotten.
However, innovation in law can simply be defined as implementing an idea, to address a specific issue, that delivers value for both the firm and client. And if that’s the case, legal innovation is here to stay.
At Pinsent Masons, we take great pride in the work we do with our clients to think differently. Innovation sits at the heart of our strategy. For us, it’s about more than finding ways to make an old model fit a new world. Innovation is about fundamentally changing how high-quality legal advice is formulated and excellent service is delivered. We partner with our clients to lead through innovation, rather than be disrupted by it.
We are a modern legal services business, transforming ourselves piece by piece from an expertise-based law firm, into a professional services firm, with law at its core. This means that we don’t just apply lawyers to solve clients’ problems; we deploy a wider range of professional disciplines, enabled by process and technology, to collaborate with our clients and others within the legal environment to develop solutions.
Innovative client solutions
Across Asia Pacific, our collaborative teams are working on and delivering a range of creative solutions to meet the diverse needs of our clients.
Our team in Hong Kong is currently developing a digital learning platform for an in-house legal team to help explain core concepts, legal risks in digital and to cut through legalese. The client brief required us to think outside of the box which led those involved in the proposal exploring alternative modes of delivery. The online delivery platform created will enable our lawyers to provide content for continuing client training.
Pinsent Masons has also developed a Procurement to Completion® (P2C) product, which is a legal risk management service for parties involved in infrastructure and energy projects. We have combined our knowledge, process and technology expertise to facilitate the service through a cloud portal: the P2C Platform. This is designed to be an easy, time and cost-efficient day-to-day tool that project teams can use to:
- aid their understanding of key legal risks and opportunities;
- access management strategies and tools which simplify the contractual process and increase the likelihood of compliance with contract requirements;
- develop management, reporting and record keeping procedures which comply with and enhance the position under the contract; and
- gain ready access to legal advice.
The platform also offers the protection of legal privilege (in common law jurisdictions) and confidentiality. The benefits are many, including in a recent client case involving a wall collapse where our Hong Kong team was quickly able to provide real-time practical advice using the P2C platform with all the relevant and up to date information easily to hand. In another case, the platform enabled the team to provide timely legal advice avoiding a potential dispute delivering a win-win result for the client and the contractor.
Our online workflow platforms provide our lawyers with step-by-step guides presenting the firm’s knowledge and materials in a user-friendly and accessible way to increase the efficiency and consistency in the work we do for clients. We use document automation technology to generate contract drafts and key documents and capture data about the work we do to help develop, improve and streamline the services we provide.
The best legal innovation comes when we collaborate with each other, with our clients and with other legal service providers to solve client issues in a creative and cost-effective manner. We look forward to collaborating with you soon.
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Pinsent Masons thanks our valued clients across Asia Pacific and we are thrilled to accept the award of Asian-mena Counsel & In-House Community Hong Kong Firm of the Year 2018 for our work in International Arbitration, Litigation and Dispute Resolution, Real Estate/Construction, and Telecommunications, Media & Technology. We’re very grateful to our clients for voting for us and look forward to our continued collaboration.
E: vincent.connor@pinsentmasons.com
E: alison.laird@pinsentmasons.com