Page 34 - CCCA Magazine Winter 2017

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stepping up Your teCH gAme

By Helen Mackay

one of the great benefts of attending in-house Counsel World 2. it people are kind and generous if you
summits is the opportunity to learn from and share with in- give them the chance.
I am constantly impressed with how
house counsel from around the world. Toronto’s in april 2018, sharing the community of IT profes-
offered in conjunction with the CCCa’s national Conference, will sionals is. Open source is often the de-
fault, and if they can make others’ lives
be my third, after Paris in 2016 and singapore in 2014. What better using technology, they have lived
always strikes me is how similar the experiences and trends are their purpose. But in the busy, priority-
driven in-house setting, we might be
in every part of the world. forgetting to acknowledge and value our
IT colleagues and let them know how
much we need their help. Whether the
or the in-house legal teams we work 5 lessons From our legAl issue is not respecting each other’s pro-
with in New Zealand, we are seeing a teCHnologist fessional perspective, not speaking the
Freal drive to professionalize the prac- same language or the in-house counsel
tice of in-house legal in the same way that being seen as “high maintenance,” fix
many other business operations have been 1. legal teams are doing it the hard way. it—this is a key relationship that should
subject to increasing discipline over the At Juno, we are still searching for the per- not be left to fester.
years. In the past, legal teams were some- fect in-house legal team, with seamless
what immune from these pressures and information management of documents, 3. immediate knowledge is key.
could operate like mini law frms within records and knowledge, and robust mat- If knowledge is the bread and butter
an organization. However, one area where ter management that gives great visibil- of lawyers, being able to access that
in-house legal teams often fall behind ity and risk management. If you are that knowledge instantly is the jam on top.
their private practice cousins is in tech- team, please get in touch, as we’d love Increasingly, it is what will separate ef-
nology investment and implementation. to learn from you and showcase your ficient legal services from those stuck
From needing better information achievements to the global in-house com- in the past. The net multiplier effect
management, practice management or munity. Or this might be a unicorn ideal! means that legal teams and individual
personal productivity tools, many legal Most teams have systems that are not in-house counsel are wasting thousands
teams we work with face signifcant tech- fully integrated and don’t support legal of hours per year on inefficient infor-
nology challenges. Whether there is an work well. The worst example given to mation management, where they can’t
enterprise-wide solution for document me recently was by an in-house counsel find what someone else previously cre-
management that doesn’t ft the specifc who said that their system is so bad they ated, their organization’s established le-
needs of the legal team or an unwilling- have to write down the full path name of gal position on a matter or even what
ness to consider cloud-based practice any document they save or they will never they personally filed last week.
management tools, in-house teams are fnd it again. Several general counsel have
not feeling well supported by their current told me they are unable to give full decla- 4. We must dive in head frst.
technology. Our resident legal technolo- rations during discovery, as they are not In other words, we have to practice what
gist, Matt Farrington, has also observed confdent in their document retrieval sys- we preach. For me, this means I have had
that Legal and IT teams often have tricky tem. The ineffciency and wasted effort— to introduce a level of discipline previ-
working relationships, both as customers which can be remedied—makes our legal ously missing to my own practice-for
and providers to each other. technologist Matt want to weep! instance, handling emails once, saving

34 CCCa MaGazine | WinTer 2017 hiVer