Legal IT Insider has been involved with all sorts of fantastic collaborations but none of them has ever seen us co-host a ‘Have I Got Legal News for You’ style gameshow. Until now.
At Shoreditch House in London, as part of Alt-V Law’s Legal Halo Live podcast series, Legal IT Insider celebrated 30 years of reporting with a lively panel of legal tech leaders, discussing everything from law firm governance to budgets and behaviour.
Legal Halo is vendor-free network featuring over 50 law firms, where the content and direction of live discussions is shaped by its members, and turned into only slightly censored ‘pods’.
This pod is divided in two: in the first half Jessica Lazarus, commercial director of legal ops at DWF hosts a no bull discussion on transformation. Midway we descend further into further orchestrated anarchy with a gameshow hosted by Legal IT Insider’s editor Caroline Hill.
The esteemed and at times unruly panel was made up of William Thomas, innovation solutions manager at DLA Piper; Sarah Harris, director of innovation at Kingsley Napley; Alex Hamilton, CEO at Radiant Law; Alexa Isaacs, head of project delivery at RPC; and Cheryl Ashman, associate director of business intelligence at White & Case.
The theme for this night was ‘How does a culture of transformation achieve agility- without compromising long-term stability?’
Lazarus opened the discussion with a cut-to-the-chase question – do law firms really want transformation?
With characteristic honesty, Hamilton replied: “It’s bollocks, isn’t it?” Clarifying (slightly) that transformation is often “performative innovation”, Hamilton, who set up Radiant Law as an escape from the traditional partnership model, said that firms want to look innovative rather than effect meaningful change, limited by the power structures inside partnerships.
Hill echoed that the partnership model can create limitations, observing that the people with the purse strings are often those with the least impetus to invest in transformation.
Discussions around transformation often begin not with strategy but with anxiety. Ashman said there is sometimes “fear of being left behind and not having the shiny new toy.” She added that creating behavioural change requires people to understand the motivation behind the change, saying that the foundation is understanding “what is their why.” In other words: transformation is not a communication problem; it is a motivation problem.
From there, the conversation turned to the human cost of change. Isaacs summed up the external pressure change teams sit under, observing: “Clients want change done for less.” Meanwhile internal teams often feel like they are paddling furiously beneath the surface, trying to appear calm while navigating shifting expectations. Thomas compared leading transformation to “moving a cruise ship down a fjord,” acknowledging that leaders must be frank that transformation will be uncomfortable.
In terms of tech, the panel generally struck a note of caution to AI, with Harris warning against putting firm data near anything untested. However, Hamilton urged the legal ops community not to let governance become a reason to block progress.
Lazarus offered a succinct description of what transformation professionals do: they act as “the connection between technical and legal.” They translate need into delivery.
For the second half of the podcast the panel seamlessly split into two competing teams for a rapid-fire quiz on the past, present, and future of legal innovation – our legal version of Have I Got News for You.
Hill hosted a three-part game format that looked back at old headlines from the archives; challenged the panel to decide whether recent headlines were genuine news stories or intentionally absurd fabrications; and asked them to fill in the blanks. If you want some light hearted relief from talking about AI, this is for you.
The full episode is now available below:
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