Australian Corporate Lawyer - Autumn 2017

acla.acc.com
THE LAW AND TECHNOLOGY
– PANEL INTERVIEW
Chaman Sidhu
David Bushby
Vered Keisar
Luke O’Sullivan
Boasting extensive experience in
Australia and the U.S, Chaman offers
a deep understanding of global and
cross-border legal matters including
general commercial transactions,
M&A, governance and intellectual
property. Chaman currently serves as
the General Counsel and Company
Secretary of Xero and brings a passion
for people, culture, and innovation to
the organisation.
Chaman was a panelist at ACC
New South Wales and Victorian
Corporate Counsel Days 2017.
With a background encompassing
both professional practice and a variety
of in-house roles, David currently
serves as Managing Director for Lexoo
Australia, an online legal marketplace
matching commercial lawyers with
businesses and in-house teams. He’s
also the founder and curator for Law
Hackers, a weekly newsletter curating
the best of legal technology and
startup trends in the legal sector.
As the Associate General Counsel – Asia
Pacific at ResMed, Vered is responsible
for the provision of legal services
across Asia Pacific and the Middle
East, while holding global legal
responsibilities for healthcare
informatics and data privacy.
Vered is admitted to practice law in
Australia, England and Israel and is an
ambassador and a regular speaker for
the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Vered is a member of
ACC Australia’s NSW
Divisional committee.
Vered was a panelist at ACC
Australia’s Victorian Corporate
Council Day 2017.
With over a decade of experience
across technology development,
encompassing vendor, purchaser and
private practice advisor, Luke has a
deep understanding of the convergence
of technology and the law. Luke
currently serves as Regional General
Counsel at Symantec, leading the legal
team for Symantec and its subsidiaries
in the Pacific region, as well as leading
the Privacy function across Asia-Pacific.
Luke was a panelist at ACC
Australia’s Victorian Corporate
Counsel Day 2017.
1. How has technology changed
or influenced the way in-house
counsel operate?
Chaman Sidhu: In the same way as
technology has fundamentally influenced
us in our broader society. The way I
communicate, collaborate and produce is very
different from 10 years ago due to technology.
For me personally, adopting agile and lean
ways of working, which I learned from
colleagues in software development teams,
has been a huge influence on having a more
flexible, innovative mindset in my legal roles.
It’s also exciting that technology has allowed
more personally flexible ways of working
that focus on results, which supports greater
happiness and diversity at work.
David Bushby: Technology has changed or
influenced the way in-house counsel operate
in two ways: first there’s the technology itself,
which not only helps in-house counsel do
more with less (e.g. when a business unit can
self-serve with automated documents or an
expert legal systems) but also helps legal
departments improve their operations by, for
example, identifying legal bottlenecks or cost
blowouts through analytics. The second way
is around project management methods, such
as Agile and Kanban workflows, which have
their roots in software development, but are
now being practised in corporate legal teams,
such as Lonely Planet.
Vered Keisar: As our organisation moves
faster, we as in-house are also expected to
accelerate our service delivery. For most inhouse
lawyers the most valuable commodity
is time. Therefore any technology that can
save us time, increase productivity and assist
in generating metrics that demonstrate
our value to our organisation is welcome.
Technology is influencing the volume and
complexity of matters that we can handle inhouse
because we can use systems that help
us expedite the creation of legal documents
and advice. Legal research generally no longer
involves going to the library or even opening
a book. With templates and smart documents
we only need to draft a clause once. Overall,
technology has substantially improved the
quality of our work and enabled more time
to focus on more complex matters that add
higher value to our organisation.
Luke O’Sullivan: The way in which the role of
in-house counsel is performed, or ought to be
performed, has changed fundamentally. Over
the past decade and a half we have moved
from limited availability of concentrated
data sets to the proliferation of data. This
has led to many great opportunities for
counsel (for example: data insights; real time
departmental analytics; and data-based legal
decision making). It has also led to increased
efforts in managing risk and a greater need to
maintain currency of knowledge, about not
only the law and its development, but also
technological development. It is up to counsel
to be aware of which tools are available to
support their needs, and to then leverage
effectively those tools to ensure the best
outcomes for their organisation.
2. Amongst all the noise of startups/disrupters
in the legal sector,
how do you figure out what
technology is relevant to your
needs? What legal technology
have you invested in?
C.S. There are so many options these days
that it can be confronting. I think the best
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