Emmanuel Giuffre is the head of legal and Australia general manager at LegalVision.

Speaking on a recent episode of The Corporate Counsel Show, produced in partnership with LegalVision, he discussed how leaders of in-house legal teams, whether big or small, can deploy low-tech transformation projects and why this is important in the current market.

As the profession moves more towards tech and efficiency, LegalVision has, as a tech-driven law firm, been “pioneers in the legal tech and legal innovation space”, according to Giuffre.

“Legal tech has always been critical to what we would like to achieve. And legal transformation has always been critical. It’s been embedded in our DNA. So, we’ve always wanted to not only transform legal services for our clients but also transform legal services for our lawyers, so for our employees to change the way that they are practising the law. And so much of our ethos is driven by our membership model,” he said.

“Given our clients are paying on a fixed fee basis, on an ongoing basis, it is so imperative for us to be able to deliver legal services efficiently [and] cost-effectively, but still maintain a really high quality. And the only way that you can do that is if you are deploying systems, process technology, great people and great training, and you’re constantly looking at it: how can we do things better? How can we do things smarter?

“So that underlies the main driver for why technology and systems and processes are so important for us. But our philosophy is that technology is only a part of the puzzle. You also need to have exceptional lawyers, and so much of LegalVision is embedded in our people and really good quality lawyers, great training, great leaders, people leaders and investment in their development.”

But despite tech changing the entire practice of law and in-house legal teams needing to implement it in their day-to-day, it doesn’t need to be complicated or costly.

“There is so much that in-house teams could be doing to be able to transform the way they are doing things, utilising low-tech and relatively low-cost transformation tools. We know that the vast majority of in-house teams in Australia are relatively small, so they’ve got fewer than five lawyers. We know that that segment of the in-house community in Australia is also relatively technologically immature.

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“And that might be for a variety of reasons, but largely the reasons are that they don’t necessarily have the budget to be able to deploy legal tech, or they may not have the business case at this time,” Giuffre said.

“And that doesn’t mean that those in-house teams aren’t still facing the same challenges as larger in-house teams around, operating in a difficult macroeconomic environment, needing to do more with less, and therefore needing to have a look at the way that they’re doing things and think, well, how can we do things smarter from an efficiency productivity point of view, and also how can we create more value for the business, be more impactful to the business without necessarily adding additional cost?”

Having a “low-tech approach” to transformation projects is about “having a really clear picture of all of the work on your plate”, as well as a clear understanding of “high-impact work streams” for in-house teams and really “getting those foundations right”, according to Giuffre.

“Whenever embarking on a transformation project, and this is something that we work with a number of in-house legal teams on, we always come back to the data, and do we have enough data to be able to make data-informed decisions around what we should be transforming and what is the right tool for the job? And so, and I would say for all in-house legal teams, that is the first place to start, making sure that you have a really clear picture of what your team is spending its time on,” he said.

“Are you spending your time on the most impactful work [that] aligns with your business’s priorities, and then when you have a really good picture of that, it’s about identifying what is working well, what isn’t working well, what are some of the pain points? What are some of the opportunities to transform? And so, and for many in-house legal teams, that foundation isn’t there.”

Setting up the right tools for a good foundation doesn’t necessarily have to mean setting up new technology – Giuffre said it can be “as simple as a spreadsheet”.

“Before you embark on any kind of transformation, it needs to be driven by an understanding of the data, of the raw data. The types of tools that you could then implement will become very apparent to you,” he said.

“And I have seen this within house legal teams, big and small, where they have deployed legal tech, some of it very expensive, some of it taking many months to implement, and the tool isn’t effective, or it’s not utilised. And that’s because there wasn’t enough investment upfront in understanding the need for it.”

It’s particularly important for in-house teams to be asking themselves these questions in the current market – especially as “the drive towards productivity is driven by business priorities” in an organisation.

“All business departments are facing questions around how they are utilising their resources and how they could be more productive. And I believe that that is really driving the conversation, more so than the noise around legal technology and AI and large language models. And so, this is the reason why it is so important for in-house legal teams, leaders of in-house legal teams, to really be questioning: what are they doing? Are they operating in the most efficient and effective way possible?” Giuffre said.

“And I think that it’s also really important for in-house legal teams, if they haven’t already done so, to look at embedding, transformation and a culture of improvement within their teams from the top down so that it is baked into their DNA and where they are constantly looking at how they can improve the way they’re doing things.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Emmanuel Giuffre, click below:

Lauren Croft

Lauren is a journalist at Lawyers Weekly and graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from Macleay College. Prior to joining Lawyers Weekly, she worked as a trade journalist for media and travel industry publications and Travel Weekly. Originally born in England, Lauren enjoys trying new bars and restaurants, attending music festivals and travelling. She is also a keen snowboarder and pre-pandemic, spent a season living in a French ski resort.