Work Better: How Mills & Reeve’s hackathon ended up helping its clients
Teams across the business came together to solve a brief, which focused on freeing up more time for in-house legal clients.
Work Better: How Paul Hastings reacted to the murder of George Floyd
Following the killing of George Floyd, Paul Hastings initiated firmwide conversations about racial inequality and discrimination.
Work Better: How Addleshaw Goddard transformed due diligence
Due diligence loses law firms money. It is a disparate process, with many people involved, all feeding into an overarching report. It takes a huge amount of time to collect and collate the information, with large cost implications. However, creating a process where the right data is delivered in the right way requires serious planning. […]
Work Better: How 1 King’s Bench Walk took mini-pupillages virtual in the pandemic
In March 2020 1 King’s Bench Walk Chambers (1KBW) had to suspend its mini pupillage programme due to the government-imposed lockdown. The family courts closed and conducted hearings by telephone and video conference. In the months that followed it became very difficult for the next generation of family lawyers to obtain work experience and get […]
Work Better: How DLA Piper used AI to detect cartel risk for clients
Despite regulators and competition authorities becoming more sophisticated with their ability to detect and investigate anti-competitive behaviour, DLA Piper legal director Ilan Sherr says historically the firm’s clients had struggled to pinpoint cartel risks within their organisations. Working with Australian partner Simon Uthmeyer and US partner Lisa Tenorio-Kutzkey, Sherr developed and delivered Aiscension, an artificial […]
Work Better: How DAC Beachcroft brought back law’s lost talent
In October 2020, DAC Beachcroft (DACB) launched a career returners programme to support legal professionals considering a return to the profession after time away, for instance to have a family or to provide care. Reconnect: A Life That Works As You Return To Law was part of DACB’s revamped diversity and inclusion strategy, which promotes […]
Work Better: How Browne Jacobson boosted its diversity
Five years ago, when Browne Jacobson analysed what little data it had on diversity and inclusion at the time, the results came as a shock. Although, the firm looked and felt no different from its competitors, in 2016 its junior lawyer population included just 7 per cent Black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) individuals, while […]
Work Better: DWF’s Ethnic Minority Access Scheme
In summer 2020, the #BlackLivesMatter movement created an opportunity for DWF to accelerate its progress on improving Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) representation within its workforce. DWF partner and head of the firm’s diversity and inclusion leadership group Seema Bains led the initiative. She says: “The Black Lives Matter movement had raised a lot […]
Work Better: How an alternative board flattened Shakespeare Martineau’s hierarchy
Introducing a shadow board and the Connectors reverse mentoring programme was not about addressing a specific problem, according to Shakespeare Martineau chief marketing and people officer Ben Buckton. Rather, it was responding to an opportunity to flatten the hierarchy and offer a platform for a greater proportion of the firm to influence its direction. “If […]
Work Better: Inside Slaughter and May’s Business Development Academy
Slaughter and May’s Business Development Academy sought to address a problem shared across the industry. How to attract, develop and retain the best junior business development population. The firm had found it was consistently recruiting from a very narrow pool of individuals, experiencing high turnover, and needed to improve resilience and job satisfaction. “Our team […]
DAC Beachcroft Claims Solutions chief Bill Paton exits for RSA
DAC Beachcroft (DACB) Claims Limited chief executive Bill Paton is set to exit the firm at the end of March to join insurer RSA as UK and Western Europe claims director on 1 May. Paton joined DACB in 2012 from one of the firm’s biggest clients Zurich Financial Services, where he was European claims director […]
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Rental arithmetic: how the UK’s top firms are managing their property
Despite a growing momentum in favour of alternative and ‘agile’ working models, many firms are still struggling to find a way to fit their working practices around reducing their property costs. It is three years since The Lawyer started collecting real estate data from law firms as part of the research for the annual UK […]