The Legal Workforce of the Future Working Group - Portrait of a Legal Solutions Architect (Part II)

By: Jennifer Zajac, Claims & Litigation Management, Legal Operations at Airgas

Welcome to Part 2 of our blog series about the Legal Workforce of the Future and how to accelerate your career in times of disruption. Do you know the new roles most critical to the legal industry and the skills, competencies and experience you and your team will need in the next year? How about the next five years? And most importantly, do you have the drive to not just survive, but thrive? The SOLID Legal Workforce of the Future Working Group’s goal is to identify and demystify those evolving and emerging roles and crucial skills and this blog series aim to provide the community access to our Working Group's insights.

Our first blog included background and detail on WHAT defines “emerging” roles (net new positions gaining traction in the last few years) and “evolving” roles (positions that are taking on new value and impact), the VALUE of these roles and WHY we identified these roles as top picks in the Legal Workforce of the Future that you need to know now!

This week's blog focuses on the evolving importance of technologists in legal – specifically the emerging role of the Legal Solutions Architect. Technology champions in the legal space are already creating practice innovation and growth; one such champion is Amani Smathers, Legal Solutions Architect at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, De Novo. Amani is leading the charge in digital transformation, and shares her insights on key trends she is seeing in the LSA role as her clients alter the way they work and practice law. I had the chance to speak with Amani about the evolving LSA role and you can check out our interview below.

Please stay tuned for our next blog where we take a deeper look at emerging opportunities in the corporate legal space. For more information on The Legal Workforce of the Future Working Group or the Summit on Legal Innovation and Disruption (SOLID), please visit www.SOLID.Legal. Both this working group and our Summit are excellent ways to accelerate your career by watching, listening, and learning from those who are leading the charge.

As always, the opinions of this blog are those of the author/interviewee and not representative of Airgas or Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, De Novo. Final thank you to Navigant – the sponsor of our working group – our work would not be possible without your tremendous support of our thought leadership efforts!

Jennifer: What is a Legal Solutions Architect (LSA)?

Amani: In a sentence, a Legal Solutions Architects (LSAs) can supplement a firm’s legal services with business capabilities like process improvement, legal technology, data analysis and visualization and even play a role with finding alternative staffing solutions. We help clients internally and externally solve issues with people, process and platforms within legal business challenges. We wear a lot of hats!

Jennifer: How do you see this emergent role impacting the legal community? Do you think we will be seeing more people in this space?

Amani: I think we will, although I don't know if everyone will have the exact same title. This is similar to how I see people in the LSA role helping firms look more holistically at clients' challenges and mirroring legal operations consulting. Also, there’s a potential to be an R&D arm for a firm and impact the legal community by helping firms grow into new legal service delivery methods.

Legal Solutions Architects can be agents for continuous improvement and “sustaining innovation” in the legal market. We can be change agents. We make recommendations and provide tools to clients, and when we get a positive response to these tools from clients - that leads to positive response internally in the firm as well. 

Jennifer: I love that you touched upon your role as being a change agent. What trends do you see right now around using technology to improve processes within the corporate legal or law firm space?

Amani: That’s a good question, and the key is to focus on what it takes to improve processes. The first step to bringing in new technology is really to undertake process improvement steps. You really need to stop and identify the root causes of the challenges. Stepping back to process map and identify areas of blockers, rework and bottlenecks, for example, can help illuminate what technology would be most effective to solve the real issues, and can be a lot cheaper than picking technology first and applying it to a still-suboptimal process.

There’s a lot of cool tech out there, but first we have to stop and look at what are the problems we are trying to solve. Honestly sometimes it‘s really not a tech solution – it’s a people solution, or maybe it’s a process that can be slightly changed and solve the problem. I see several key trends for technology in the legal space:

Key Trend 1 – Shared Matter Info and Collaborative Tools

In terms of tech to improve processes there is still a lot of low hanging fruit so I suggest going after that first. For example, help a team graduate from tracking matters in Excel or email into more collaborative methods. Implementing shared matter information and other online collaborate tools is often a quick process improvement win. This is a big trend I’ve seen on the ground. It’s not really sexy - but it has a big impact, like making it possible to handle higher volumes of work, and at the same time building a data source of information that can be analyzed for broader insights. 

Key Trend 2 – Data Visualization and KPIs

I’ve seen a big trend in data visualization and analysis to help point to key areas of process improvement. A lot of clients are interested in tracking KPIs and viewing data to head toward actionable insights. One example of using data to drive action is the ‘most negotiated contracts provision’ analysis we undertake in our high volume contracting program. Through this we can see what is slowing down a lot of contracts, and as a result we can suggest changing language or having an approved fallback that could help remove a common blocker and improve turnaround.

Jennifer: What is “the next big thing” corporations should be looking at in the technology space?

Amani: I think my pick for this is contract review and e-diligence. We’ve already seen e-discovery take off with TAR and machine learning and natural language processing in the litigation space, and now there seems to be increasing interest in applying similar technologies to transactional work. For companies at the “early adoptors” side of the adoption curve looking for the “next big thing”, they may be looking to tools that incorporate AI and automated workflows such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Here is a link to find out more about this idea: https://www.thelawlabchannel.com/stephen-poor-ai-biglaw-adapting-to-a-new-paradigm/

Jennifer: What path did you take to become a Legal Solutions Architect and what suggestions do you have to help someone move their career from now to next?

Amani: I was lucky to attend Michigan State University College of Law at the time it was starting the “Re-Invent Law” (now Legal RnD) program which focused on data, design and delivery in legal services. Also in law school there was a sense things were changing during the time of the Legal Services Act in the UK and I knew this would impact legal services industry. I moved into the space by taking relevant classes and networking, learning and speaking at conferences during a really unique time in the legal tech space. 

To help someone move their career from “now to next” I suggest three things: continuous learning, networking and doing. For learning in process improvement, research Lean and Six Sigma methodologies, or if you are interested in legal technology and data you could check out blogs and free courses from https://computationallegalstudies.com/.

Networking is always important and can’t be underestimated. And even if you can’t attend every industry conference, get involved in Twitter conversations and keep on top of what is happening in legal ops and legal tech and you can build a network there.

Lastly ‘Doing’ involves demonstrating an interest within your current career to show a new potential employer how you’ve addressed challenges in your group and implemented solutions. I’ve seen in-house professionals move into legal operations roles by demonstrating an interest and undertaking process improvements or data projects, which then lead to a role change. If these areas interest you, keep working on projects that can lead you into legal innovation and seek process improvements in your own business to make things better. You don’t need a certain title to identify the root cause of challenges and work toward solutions. 

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