Thomson Reuters case study: Addleshaw Goddard
Addleshaw Goddard is a premium international law firm known for the quality of its advice and the impact it creates. With an exceptional breadth of services, the firm combines a deep understanding of clients’ businesses with high-caliber expertise and a collaborative team culture. Addleshaw Goddard has a track record of innovation in designing and delivering legal services through new ways of working.
The challenge: How to make a smooth transition to remote working
With legal teams scattered in all directions due to ‘work at home’ orders, organizations with in-house legal teams needed fast and easy ways to keep track of legal matters. In-house legal teams have been under pressure to delivery more value for less cost for many years. The first step towards this is for the legal team to keep an accurate record of the matters they work on – a signal for Addleshaw Goddard to take a data-led approach to monitoring and analyzing workflows.
Aside from taking up too much time, traditional processes were just not possible with the lockdown and physical separation. From ad-hoc conversations to jotting down updates on legal matters, Addleshaw Goddard listened to the request from their clients who wanted one place to document, see and review workflow trends and origins. “Our clients told us that they need a list of what their in-house lawyers are working on, how long it’s taking and what the matter concerns,” said Ellen Catherall, Managing Associate at Addleshaw Goddard.
The solution: A user-friendly, cloud-based collaboration tool
Addleshaw Goddard is no stranger to HighQ from Thomson Reuters. The firm has been using versions of this innovative platform for years to help clients and lawyers streamline everyday tasks. For its immediate working need, the firm once again employed HighQ to deploy The Legal Front Door – a simple tool for in-house legal teams to log and track the matters they’re working on.
“HighQ is really configurable and also allows secure, third-party access, which is important to our clients and us,” noted Kerry Westland, Partner and Head of Innovation and Legal Technology at Addleshaw Goddard. “The feedback that we got is that there isn’t anything as simple as this out there,” said Westland.
This remote collaboration tool allows in-house legal teams to quickly and easily record case information, share valuable insights and track project data – data that did not previously exist in an organized form. They can log any matter into the system in just 30 seconds, anytime and from anywhere. Users can also access a dashboard with comprehensive data and charts on matters so they can better manage workflow. Specifically, it shows ‘at a glance’
- a filterable list of all legal projects the team is working on,
- an immediate view of which business areas generate the most work, and
- a quick breakdown of litigious versus contractual versus advisory matters.
- This real-time data helps in-house legal teams to manage their matters and workload, even in a remote working environment, so it can make informed business decisions.
The result: Simplicity and efficiency at clients’ fingertips
Thomson Reuters HighQ was about helping clients adjust to a situation they were forced into because of COVID-19. Clients and legal teams used to meeting in-person now gain valuable insight and knowledge from a modern digital tool. “It’s important that our clients have information at their fingertips. It’s really about capturing data,” said Catherall.
Moving forward with HighQ, Addleshaw Goddard continues to provide innovative technological support for legal matters worked on by Addleshaw Goddard lawyers, as well as helping clients’ in-house legal teams commission and implement legal technology that will help them digitize and accelerate their data-led journey.
The bottom line: A new way of working
There is a lot of technology in the market, and it is not easy to keep track of what is available and the best-fit for business. Using Thomson Reuters HighQ, Addleshaw Goddard cuts through the technology saturation to make it easy for legal teams to maintain business continuity, efficiency and collaboration.
“We listened to what our clients were telling us and reacted quickly to understand and provide them with something useful,” said Catherall. “I’m so proud that we were able to create something that provides in-house teams with a simple solution that will work for those teams.”
