Future-proofing your law firm - Advanced Supplement

Future-proofing 

your law firm 

An Advanced guide

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Future-proofing your law firm : An Advanced guide 

Contents 

4 Advanced: Pushing forward 

through Adversity 

Featuring Doug Hargrove, 

Managing Director, Education 

and Legal, Advanced 

8 Overcoming challenges 

through collaboration 

Featuring Kelly Rotheram, Chief 

Executive, Sternberg Reed 

12 DELTAS – an expanding initiative 

with a limitless horizon 

By Janet Day, Independent Consultant 

16 Case Study: Scott Moncreiff 

& Associates Ltd 

By Catherine Stewart, Product 

Marketing, Advanced 

18 Case Study: How to tell if it’s 

time for your mid-sized law firm 

to invest in a document 

management system? 

By Doug Hargrove, Managing Director 

Education and Legal, Advanced 

22 Meeting the challenges and 

opportunities on our digital 

horizon head on 

By John D. Haskell, Senior Lecturer, 

Manchester University 

26 Cloud continuity: when business 

is disrupted, harnessing the 

opportunities offered by digital 

technology moves to the top 

of the agenda 

By Doug Hargrove, Managing Director, 

Education and Legal, Advanced 

28 Preparing for the next generation 

of Legal Aid professionals 

By Rohini Teather, Head of 

Parliamentary Affairs at LAPG 

Welcome… 

To a very special Modern Law supplement 

– the result of an exciting collaboration 

with Advanced Legal that presents a 

detailed insight into how firms can look 

to futureproof, as we head into 2021 

and beyond. 

Advanced are the third largest software and services company in 

the UK. They help organisations create the right digital foundations 

that drive productivity, insight and innovation – all while remaining 

safe, secure and compliant. 

Advanced enable their customers to achieve increased efficiencies, 

savings and growth opportunities through focused, right-first-time 

software solutions that evolve with the changing needs of their 

business and the markets they operate in. 

Their Cloud solutions are used by organisations across many 

varying sectors and delivers immediate value, positively impacting 

millions of people’s lives. 

This supplement contains an exciting mix of interviews and features 

with key members of Advanced and Sternberg Reed, as well as key 

clients reflecting on their work with Advanced and industry experts 

covering a plethora of topics that look to answer the all-important 

question – how can we survive and thrive after this pandemic? 

We kick off with an interview with Doug Hargrove, Managing 

Director, Education and Legal at Advanced. The aim was to find out 

a bit more about what exactly Advanced can do to help law firms 

secure their future in this industry and how we can all make better 

use of the technology out there. And there’s much more. 

But don’t just take my word for it, read on… 

31 P4W’s adaptable technology 

supports innovative 

business models 

By Catherine Stewart, Product 

Marketing, Advanced 

Modern Law Magazine 

is published by Charlton Grant Ltd ©2020 

All material is copyrighted both written and illustrated. Reproduction 

in part or whole is strictly forbidden without the written permission 

of the publisher. All images and information is collated from 

extensive research and along with advertisements is published in 

good faith. Although the author and publisher have made every 

effort to ensure that the information in this publication was correct 

at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby 

disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption 

caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions 

result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. 

Will Cotton 

is Editor of Modern Law Magazine 

Advanced Supplement | 3


Interview 

4 | Advanced Supplement


Advanced: Pushing forward 

through adversity 

To kick off the supplement in style, Modern Law spoke to the ever-impressive 

Doug Hargrove, Managing Director, Education and Legal at Advanced. Using his 

expert knowledge, the aim of this interview was to discover what new technologies 

would enter and disrupt the market, how cloud and big data has changed practice 

management for the better, and where Advanced fits in with all of this as we look 

to 2021 and futureproofing our firms. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your 

role at Advanced? 

I joined the legal division at IRIS Legal back in 

2010. My role at IRIS and then into Advanced 

which acquired IRIS 5 years ago, was to run 

the legal division. This involves everything 

from strategy, product investment, customer 

acquisition, customer retention and satisfaction, 

employees and obviously any acquisitions 

where we feel we can go faster. I suppose 

ultimately the key performance indicators 

that govern me are 1. Business growth 2. 

Customer retention and are our customers 

happy? 3. Are we delivering the incremental 

value our customers need and would invest in 

for the future? 4. Are we focusing on the right 

acquisition targets to complement our offer to 

the market – and will these acquisitions allow us 

to go faster as a business? 

How does Advanced drive market insight 

and industry expertise into innovative 

product solutions? 

All of our investment products have a commercial 

leader called a product manager. Importantly, 

the product manager is less concerned about 

the features and functions of a product (this 

role being undertaken by a product owner 

who spends significant time with the customer 

community), but more about the commercial 

success and strategy of their product. 

Where is the future of my product going? 

What are our competitors doing? What other 

technologies are out there? What’s happening 

with AI, and machine learning? The role of the 

product manager is to really lay out the vision of 

the product and one of the strongest voices in 

laying out that vision is the voice of the customer. 

Ultimately, we’re trying to deliver solutions, 

product capability and value - that will allow 

our law firm customers to deliver the change 

in behaviours and ways of working that they 

need. That might be through the way they 

engage with their customers, use technology 

to drive efficiencies, collect their cash or 

even the way their fee earners can operate 

seamlessly whilst mobile. 

In addition, we are always watching what’s going 

on outside the legal market, whilst simultaneously 

seeking to understand the real technology 

pressures within the legal market. From that we 

are then able to create a roadmap that clearly 

indicates how our customers will truly maximise 

value as they use our products. 

What new technologies do you think will 

enter and disrupt the market and how 

should the legal sector capitalise on that? 

I see three areas where technology is going 

to have an impact. Interestingly, whilst much 

of this technology is already well established 

in other industry verticals, the legal market is 

just a little bit more risk averse and therefore 

slightly slower in adopting technology. 

The first has got to be Artificial Intelligence 

and machine learning. Whilst there are, of 

course, projects underway in the legal market 

typically driven by larger law firms, there is 

certainly scope for using Artificial Intelligence 

and machine learning to drive the delivery 

of repeat business, high volume/low value 

activities, processing large volumes of work, 

customer interaction and speeding up the 

court process. It is of particular interest at the 

current time, that with significant pressure on 

the judicial process and cases being heard in 

court as we have all dealt with the pandemic, 

technology can certainly assist with certain 

case outcomes in the future 

The second area is ‘Bots’. I see Bots playing 

an increasing role as they have done in other 

industries. Again, I must point out that I 

wouldn’t advocate them in all instances, but a 

level of customer interaction, case processing 

on line and even DIY law are all areas where 

BOTS could make a difference and speed up 

the delivery of legal services to customers. 

Across Advanced 

and certainly 

within the 

legal division, 

absolutely 

committed to 

moving our 

products to 

the cloud 



The final area is low-code/no-code solutions. 

These are tools in the marketplace that allow 

law firms to take any process they have, for 

example a process of complaint management 

and allow lawyers and support staff (without 

having a coding or technology expert) to build 

a portal, or build a process, that can deliver a 

capability internally to help with compliance, 

repeatability and a high value resource not 

getting caught up in low value activities. 

Increasingly the idea that lawyers will become 

more aware of, and be more comfortable 

using, simple to use technology is likely to have 

an impact in the market. 

Again, I need to clarify that I’m not advocating 

that all fee-earners get their hands on this 

technology and build their own workflows and 

portals, but the idea that you can automate 

more with the lawyer able to focus on the 

highest value tasks is definitely the direction 

law firms should be taking in the future. 

How have cloud and big data changed 

practice management? How important 

really is Cloud-strategy to success? At 

Advanced are you seeing more and more 

firms moving to this way of working? 

There are two different types of Cloud that I’m 

keen to talk about. Advanced has successfully 

delivered hosted/managed service solutions 

for many years. We host our own software 

applications for customers alongside many 

3 rd party solutions that a customer requires 

to run their practice in our own managed 

data centre. A customer wouldn’t have any 

onsite server infrastructure and Advanced 

deliver the software experience to a desktop 

or a mobile device for the customer, and they 

would then consume the service as a per 

user, per month fee. 

If you roll back ten years ago, this was very 

much the first level of Cloud platform that 

we provided as a service. What has been 

very interesting during the pandemic is 

the number of customers that have taken 

the decision to host with Advanced as a 

direct consequence of the challenges of 

managing on premise infrastructure without 

the freedom of access to fully support that 

infrastructure. As you can imagine, the 

dynamic of law firms being shut out of their 

office, not being able to get access to their 

servers if there was a problem, has meant 

that the principle of a hosted managed 

service which is outsourced to a company 

like Advanced, has increased. My view is that 

demand for this type of service will increase 

in the future as law firms continue to seek 

greater levels of flexibility with the provision 

of their technology, office footprint and 

serving a user base that is likely to remain 

distributed in their working practices in 

the future. 

The next level of hosting is utilising the public 

Cloud. As a leading, forward thinking UK 

software group, Advanced are committed to 

embracing the public Cloud and both building 

new and migrating our well established, 

industry leading solutions to the Cloud. In 

the legal business we are no different and 

we already have a number of Cloud first 

solutions and Cloud first modules delivering 

significant value to our customers. These 

solutions are built to leverage the public 

Cloud, Amazon web services or Microsoft 

Azure for example the underlying technology 

and security they can offer. 

Do I think that’s important for law firms? 

Absolutely. On the one hand, it answers the 

same question as hosted, which is law firms 

want to consume software in a different way, 

(per user per month), but also it brings a 

heightened level of security through things like 

single sign-on and security of data. 

Big data is again very interesting although this 

is still new in the legal marketplace. I think 

there is an acceptance that there is a huge 

amount of data in law firms and that data if 

serviced in the right way, could be extremely 

valuable and powerful. We’re doing a number 

of proof-of-concept projects at the moment 

around how we could service data resident in 

practice management solutions to law firms 

to give them real insight into their business, 

their customers and the services they deliver. I 

feel that at the moment, the use of big data is 

better established in the top 100 firms that are 

starting to employ people like data scientists 

to extract and manipulate the data into 

meaningful management information. 

However, where we’ve got a lot more 

customers in the mid-market, there’s still 

a period of time to go, more work to be 

done, and we’re trying to understand how 

we can package solutions to turn data 

into information. I do believe that real 

management information will be a key area of 

focus in the future leveraging of the underlying 

data already present in law firms. 

2020 was a huge year for both Advanced 

and Tikit. Put simply, why did Advanced 

take the decision to acquire Tikit? 

We’d been interested in Tikit for a while. 

There’s three reasons I could probably give 

you now that sum up why we were attracted 

to Tikit. 

The first reason is that Advanced Legal 

(pre-Tikit) had a good position in the UK 

mid-market, but we felt it needed to be a 

larger scale. After speaking in depth with our 

customers, we felt that it was really important 

for us to have a stronger position in the midmarket. 

Some of the intellectual property in 

Tikit’s mid-market, such as Partner 4 Windows 

- and the community that comes with it – was 

very much something we were keen to have in 

the Advanced portfolio. 

We are always 

on the lookout 

for high-value 

assets that 

we would like 

to own and 

that would 

extend both 

our mid-market 

capability into 

higher value, 

and our large 

law capability 

across North 

America 



Secondly, within Advanced (pre- Tikit), though 

we were a market leader with our ‘forms 

products’ that were used widely across the 

country’s top 200 law firms - there wasn’t 

enough additional software solutions in our 

portfolio to larger law firms. We saw that Tikit, 

and in particular their products like ‘Carpe 

Diem’, would give us a lot more opportunities 

to engage with the top 200 and alongside 

some of the other products in the Advanced 

portfolio; Cloud HR products, appraisal 

products online etc. - the software would give 

us an even greater presence. 

Thirdly, our Group acquisition strategy over 

the past few years has started to include entry 

into the US market.Tikit had built a credible 

North American business with a strong client 

base of large law firms using Carpe Diem. 

In addition, Tikit is a strategic partner of 

NetDocuments in both the Canadian and 

EMEA markets. 

How does Advanced see themselves 

becoming the number one supplier in 

the legal market? 

We have a very clear vision to be just that. A 

combination of growing organically, winning 

new business and offering our solutions to 

our existing customer base, will continue to be 

an absolute focus. It’s really important to us 

that the customers see value in having more 

solutions in our portfolio, thus allowing us to 

grow our customer community. 

In addition, we continue to look for high-value 

software companies that would extend both 

our mid-market capability, our proposition 

into larger law firms across EMEA and 

increase our capability in North America. I 

believe a combination of continuing to win 

business, broadening of our customer base, 

continuing to provide more value to our 

customer community - particularly with some 

of the very exciting products we have within 

the Advanced Group alongside high-quality 

targeted acquisitions – will allow us to reach 

our goals. Today we have around 7000 law 

firms, principally in the UK, using solutions 

from Advanced and we are very keen to grow 

that number and to see our presence in North 

America expand. 

This supplement is aimed at providing key 

information to our readers about how 

they can future-proof their firm. What 

one piece of advice would you give to law 

firms reading this now? 

Don’t delay in your investment decisions. 

For every industry, Covid-19 has caused an 

impact. Within the legal market clearly, it’s 

been quite disruptive. It’s caused law firms 

to have to move to remote-working, courts 

trying to deliver virtual hearings, case backlogs 

increasing. It’s been hugely disruptive, there’s 

no denying that, but the market is recovering 

and getting stronger. 

Whilst the pandemic has caused a reaction to get 

employees home working just to operate day to 

day, it’s important that law firms should continue 

to think about the future as we have continued 

to do in Advanced. We have not slowed down in 

our own investment decisions because we know 

that mobility, digitisation, customer portals, 

Artificial Intelligence will all be just as important 

in the legal market as they were nine months 

ago and in some respects our expectation is that 

technology may well be consumed faster than it 

would have been previously. 

My advice to law firms, as they may be sitting 

on older technology that isn’t supporting 

the new ways of working that have and are 

emerging during the pandemic, is don’t hold 

back on that investment decision. Think about 

having your workforce able to work remotely 

with ease and your customers able to log 

in via portals, quickly and efficiently. If the 

technology you’ve got today doesn’t support 

that, then you really need to be thinking about 

that investment, because that is very much 

what the future’s going to hold. 

Finally, what does the future hold for 

Advanced? 

I think it’s very exciting. We have lots of very 

exciting product plans across the Group and 

lots of plans to share some of that high value 

technology between different markets. For the 

legal market that means we will be delivering 

valuable new releases of our industry leading 

legal products alongside introducing other 

group products that we know will be of value 

to our customer community. 

We know that we cannot afford to sit back 

and that the technology we can offer today 

and are building for the future will enable law 

firms to embrace the new future, allowing 

the ultimate flexibility of their workforce, 

sensitively allowing efficiencies and engaging 

and delivering a customer experience that 

matches their clients’ needs. 

In addition, we have great people and ensuring 

they are developing to their maximum 

potential is something that is very important 

to us as a Group. The future in Advanced is 

always be challenging the status quo, getting 

better every day and importantly, continuing to 

listen to the customer’s needs and make sure 

the technology we deliver is easily assimilated 

within their business to deliver ultimate value. I 

believe the future for us is positive and indeed 

the future for the profession is also positive, 

as we get the virus under control and move 

forward together. 

Doug Hargrove, 

Managing Director, Education and Legal 

at Advanced 

I see Bots 

playing an 

increasing 

role when 

considering their 

well-established 

role in other 

industries 



Interview 

The key for 

growth in the 

sector is how 

we meet that 

challenge of 

user experience 

going forward 

and maximise 

the client’s 

experience 



Overcoming challenges 

through collaboration 

In this interview, Modern Law sat down with the wonderful Kelly Rotheram, Chief 

Executive at Sternberg Reed. The aim was to discuss the value of User Groups, 

the benefits of collaboration and the importance of pulling together as a legal 

community to overcome the challenges of the pandemic. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your 

role at Sternberg Read? 

I’ve been at Sternberg Reed for about eight and 

a half years and my current role at the firm 

is Chief Executive. I’m not a lawyer by trade. I 

actually come from a finance background and 

I primarily work in project management, that’s 

always been my forte. I love getting involved in 

anything new and innovative. If a business can 

be helped to grow and achieve greater aims 

- that is something that I’m really passionate 

about. Since joining Sternberg Reed, I’ve been 

enjoying getting to grips with the Legal Aid side 

of the sector and all the wonderful challenges 

that it presents. It’s very different to the big 

corporate world of law firms (which is where I 

first started with Russell Jones and Walker), but 

it’s something that I really love. 

Both inside and outside of work, you’re 

known to be a keen motivational speaker. 

So, what have you spoken about recently 

that you can share with us? 

Well, it’s been a bit dry recently! But yes, the 

last engagement I did was at a local high 

school where I spoke at a leadership awards 

ceremony to around 200 teenagers. It was part 

of a leadership program they’d been doing in 

the school and the aim of my talk was to show 

what it is to be a leader and generally to help 

inspire and motivate them going forward. They 

were all fantastic and I often wonder if they 

needed me at all! 

Now that we have entered 2021, what are 

the top challenges law firms face? What 

challenges are present in terms of data and 

technology? 

I believe the biggest challenge for the law 

sector is maximising the client experience. We 

have to look at law firms in the context of the 

whole retail sector and look at what the retail 

sector has been doing over the last few years. 

To give an example - when buying Amazon 

purchases, you are notified when the order 

has been received, how quickly it was 

dispatched and when it’s going to arrive at 

one’s house. Law firms need to move more 

towards that sort of client experience, where 

you’re constantly communicating with the 

customer and they’re never in the dark 

about anything. 

I believe we need to be telling them at every 

point in their case, exactly what’s going 

on and providing options for self-service 

wherever possible. The ability to provide 

information easily and electronically without 

the client having to come into the office to 

provide written documents, is something that 

everyone should be looking to achieve. 

If you don’t offer that level of customer 

experience, then it’s getting harder to keep 

up that repeat business because people shop 

around so much more now. If they have one 

bad experience, they’re not going to use you 

again, it’s as simple as that. 

The key for growth in the sector is how we 

meet that challenge of user experience going 

forward and maximise the client’s experience. 

That means right from the very beginning 

when obtaining a quote, all the way to the very 

end of the matter in hand. 

What impact has Covid-19 had on your 

firm? What has changed within your firm 

as a result of it? 

The biggest impact from the very beginning 

was what it did to the court process. There 

were so many court closures and very quickly 

the courts were having to completely change 

the way they worked. 

They suddenly had to invest in technology and 

try and catch up with active firms as quickly as 

possible. To be frank with you, it’s been hugely 

beneficial in some ways for the industry. In 

particular, I refer to the family courts, which 

has become far more electronic now. 

Certainly, a lot of the time that we might 

have spent in the past preparing multiple 

copies of paper bundles, is now being 

invested in more important areas of a case. 

Everything is going electronic and it’s a more 

streamlined process now. 

I have to say, 

those events are 

by far the best 

events in my 

calendar every 

year! They’re 

fantastic for lots 

of reasons 



Nevertheless, one of the challenges in this is 

how do you empower your advocates in a law 

firm to be able to present their case properly, 

when they’re having to think about the vast 

array of technology at the same time? 

At Sternberg Reed, we spent a lot of time 

working with our advocates to come up with a 

solution that works well for them. To give just 

a couple of examples, we’ve invested in more 

hardware and also set up rooms for hearings 

that have video conferencing and software 

that allows our staff to engage with their notes 

around those cases electronically. There’s been 

a lot of training and investment that has gone 

into achieving that, but I think it’s something 

that’s really future-proofed the firm and made 

us better at what we aim to do going forward. 

How important is collaboration between law 

firms? In your opinion, has the pandemic 

helped push forward the need to collaborate 

and what strategies would you suggest to 

ensure success in the legal sector? 

Personally, I believe collaboration has 

always been important for law firms. One 

of the things I found during the pandemic 

particularly, is actually collaboration has been 

extremely important when the environment 

around us, as in the courts and the Legal Aid 

Agency, has all been changing so much. 

It’s been great to be able to collaborate 

with other law firms and have that shared 

information at our fingertips about what is 

working well for some people, how are people 

using technology and are there things that we 

can learn from one another? 

We’ve had some shared webinars with other 

law firms where we’ve been able to share 

ideas between each other and come up 

with solutions that help everyone. I’ve had a 

number of phone calls from my counterparts 

in other law firms where we’ve been able 

to talk through some of the problems 

and challenges. 

You want to be able to deal positively and 

professionally with firms on the other side, 

even if you’re presenting a completely different 

argument because there’s still that sense 

of understanding about the challenges and 

where you can find common ground that 

consequently will be best for both of our clients. 

So yes, I’m very much in favour of collaboration 

going forwards and I believe there’s room for 

everyone to do well through it. 

An example of fantastic collaboration is 

the Advanced P4W National User Group 

which has been a brilliant opportunity for 

connecting legal professionals who are 

committed to using P4W to its full potential. 

Please tell us more about these events – 

why are they helpful? Who are they for? 

What you have gained from User Groups 

like these? 

I have to say, those events are by far the best 

events in my calendar every year! They’re 

fantastic for lots of reasons. Firstly, they are 

just so well attended and by such a diverse 

range of individuals, that you really do learn 

so much from them. You’ve got everyone from 

law firms, CEOs, lawyers, other suppliers etc. - 

all working together. 

I always go with a notepad in hand and I’m 

constantly writing things down because it’s such 

a flurry of ideas. Everyone has different ways of 

using the ‘Partners 4 Windows’ system to best 

effect and so it’s such a great environment to 

come to the User Group, and to hear and to 

see, through various presentations, how people 

are using the system. 

What’s more, as a group, we’re not generally 

precious about our intellectual property. 

Often you go to this event and people are 

more than happy to share things and say “I 

created this form to use, here, have a copy!” 

We all work together and we all keep in touch 

outside of the User Group, so it’s a very social 

environment, quite a family feel actually. 

I would say one of the other things that makes 

it brilliant is just the level of engagement that 

comes from the Advanced staff. They really want 

to be actively involved in the User Group and 

offer help and support as much as they can. 

It’s also a great opportunity for us as users to 

influence development going forward. We can 

visibly see things that we’ve suggested at the 

event go through development cycle, and then 

be available at the next User Group meeting. 

I can’t recommend it enough! It really is unlike 

any other conference that you can go to, just 

because the way it’s set up to be so incredibly 

innovative. As I mentioned earlier, there’s 

often lots of other suppliers there as well, 

showcasing their products and again, with a 

mentality of really delivering something that is 

useful to people. 

What will the industry’s biggest challenge 

be for the next generation of women? 

I believe the biggest challenge will be in 

providing truly flexible working. That said, 

we’ve definitely gone some way towards that 

for sure. I think the pandemic has certainly 

helped law firms be more confident in allowing 

anyone, women or men, to work from home 

I’m very 

concerned 

about the level 

of cuts that the 

government 

continue to take 

in terms of legal 

aid, when it’s 

already having a 

very detrimental 

effect on 

the market 



in a flexible way. There’s still an element of 

reluctance to allow lawyers to work part-time. 

Often, we are concerned about the client 

experiences i.e. their lawyer isn’t around as 

much. However, one of the things I’ve found 

is that part-time workers can be incredibly 

effective and efficient and still get everything 

done for their clients whilst managing their 

time really well. 

As an industry, we need to offer workable 

solutions so that women aren’t held back when 

they come to have children and don’t face having 

a stagnant period in their career. At the moment 

though, women are often having to choose 

between one or the other. I think you really 

can have both in this environment and I think 

it’s pleasing to see that men have been more 

actively involved in taking care of the family. 

I believe there should be a bit more of a 

family first approach to providing solutions 

in the workplace that work for everyone. Yes, 

mindsets are beginning to change a little bit 

towards that, but there’s still a lot more that 

we can do. 

What do you think is the most significant 

barrier to female leadership within the legal 

sector? 

I actually think the biggest barrier is other 

women, more often than not. I’m sure some 

people would disagree with me, but often 

there’s a strange competition between women, 

and we still feel that we need to compete with 

one another and we don’t always help one 

another to move up the ladder. 

The more that women in leadership roles can 

empower other women to progress and to 

provide opportunities whenever possible, the 

quicker we’ll get there. 

What do you think about the government’s 

continued Legal Aid cuts? Has the pandemic 

put even more pressure on law firms to 

deliver a service? 

Certainly, the Legal Aid cuts have been brutal. 

From when I first started working in Legal Aid 

the difference is enormous, and I think it’s now 

very, very hard to be a sole Legal Aid practice, 

without compromising on the level of service 

you are able to deliver. 

I believe the cuts are quite dangerous for 

justice, or could prove to be dangerous going 

forward. The thing that concerns me most is 

the difficulty in recruiting at the lowest levels 

into criminal law. Trainees just don’t want to 

move into that area of qualification. It takes so 

much to qualify anyway, but then you’ve got 

to look at police station representation and 

getting all of those qualifications on top. It’s a 

very challenging area where you’re having to 

work 24/7 because police stations do not close. 

I believe it’s just an area of law that young 

people don’t really want to get involved in 

anymore, and that’s because it pays terribly in 

comparison to other areas and it’s immensely 

challenging for those reasons I just gave. 

So, yes, I’m very concerned about the level of 

cuts that the government continue to take in 

terms of Legal Aid, when it’s already having 

a very detrimental effect on the market. 

Certainly, since the pandemic hit we’ve seen 

massive increases in domestic violence cases 

in family law. At times, the level of work 

coming in has been four times the average 

than in previous comparable months. 

There’s no doubt that lockdown has created 

challenges for individuals, and it has 

undeniably driven an increase and created a 

huge amount of pressure for firms to deliver. 

As a firm you won a Law Society Excellence 

award for your Associate and Partner 

development programme. How do you 

develop new Partners at Sternberg Reed? 

We were very excited to have won awards in 

2017. It was a keep fun night and it seems like 

a very long time ago now, given how much the 

world has changed! 

As a law firm, we developed a scheme 

whereby anyone in our firm can join onto the 

‘Associate and Partner Development Program’. 

What we aim to do, is to help them to succeed 

within the firm by offering them one-to-one 

mentoring meetings every six months and 

setting them achievable targets based on the 

development pathways that we have. 

So, for example it might be that they have a 

skill in marketing that they wish to pursue and 

we will pair them with a strong marketeer and 

help them develop their skills. Ultimately, we 

will do anything we believe might help them 

to progress their career and hopefully achieve 

that promotion as quickly as possible. 

It’s worked really well in the fact that we’ve 

had a number of very young solicitors able 

to be fast-tracked through that program. 

Furthermore, it is beneficial for the firm as well - 

in that we’re able to welcome new Partners and 

aid in succession planning. The program helps 

people feel a part of the Sternberg Reed family 

right from the very beginning of their career. 

Kelly Rotheram 

is Chief Executive at Sternberg Reed 

As an industry, 

we need to 

offer workable 

solutions so that 

women aren’t 

held back when 

they come to 

have children 

and don’t 

face having a 

stagnant period 

in their career 



Feature 

DELTAS - 

an expanding initiative 

with a limitless horizon 

Frances Anderson of NetLaw Media has quite a bit to answer for 

and quite a bit to be proud of – because she’s a key catalyst in the 

establishment of the DELTAS. 

Firms have 

learned that 

they can 

manage without 

splendid events, 

without jumping 

on a ‘plane and 

without printing 

and throwing 

away in excess 

of 50% of the 

paper they used 

It started with an awareness that there 

were fewer women in senior roles in 

legal technology in, say, 2018 than there 

had been 10 years previously. Frances 

gathered a group of us (female legal tech 

people) together to think about the why 

behind that and the what does that mean 

and what can we do. She brought to that 

lunch a friend – Jacqueline de Rojas who is 

President of techUK, who broadened our 

background knowledge of the technology 

sector in general. 

The conversation expanded and as a group 

we focussed on other concerns. Not only 

were there not that many women, not just 

in senior roles but in a whole range of roles 

in technology – but there were a lot of other 

groups who were poorly represented – 

Ethnicity, gender, background and experience 

all seemingly having a part to play in what 

looked like an increasingly, inadvertently, 

exclusive club. 

The next time the group got together, it was 

not just the ladies who lunched it was a much 

wider range of individuals involved in legal tech 

– all with an interest in bringing more people 

from the widest possible range of backgrounds 

into legal technology. 

DELTAS operates with significant support 

from NetLaw Media and from a range of legal 

technology suppliers in the sector. It has its 

own website https://deltassociety.com/ - it 

has a representative board (ambassadors) 

drawn from the legal technology community 

in the United Kingdom. It gives the opportunity 

for individuals or organisations to join – not 

just making a financial contribution, but also 

getting involved. It has published objectives 

– and above all it has energy and enthusiasm 

and is committed to increasing the diversity of 

the working population in legal technology. 

It seems so unlikely that anyone should not 

be aware of the need for greater diversity 

in working teams – initially reports like 

the one generated by Lord Davies in 2011 

looked at simply the number of women on 

FTSE 250 boards. Those targets, like the 

30% club, have moved on and now with, for 

example, the Parker Review we see the UK 

government targeting FTSE 100 companies 

to have at least one board member from 

an ethnic minority by 2021. The report 

acknowledges that companies will find this 

hard, but it is a firm target. 

Now maybe the relationship between FTSE 

250 companies and law firms technology 

departments does not immediately leap off the 

page – but most definitely it is there. If every 

discipline in every organisation established 

for itself a target to increase the diversity of its 

own group – not just at the leadership layer 

but also throughout the team – then we would 

eventually have an increasing pool of talent for 

more senior roles and a wider and therefore 

more effective set of offerings. All groups 

should be following these drivers, not just the 

board – the entire business. 

‘Eventually’ is however a very dangerous word. 

Eventually allows for delay, for setting long term 

aspirational horizons and plenty of room to fail 

on the way – without probably much blame. 

DELTAS was and is not about ‘eventually’ targets 

– it wants to drive change and it wants to do 

that now. But where to start? Well one obvious 

place is at the beginning. 



The relationship between DELTAS and 

secondary schools in the London area started 

when various DELTAS ambassadors visited 

schools, spoke at careers conventions, spoke to 

staff, worked with the STEM teachers to think 

about how to increase an understanding of 

what working in a legal tech team means and 

what the career path looked like. The firms 

from which the DELTAS members are drawn 

also got involved offering summer placements 

and work experience opportunities. Some firms 

were able to offer a fully designed programme 

to ensure the students involved got to see a 

range of roles in the technology area. 

When the DELTAS ambassadors spoke at 

these events it was a new experience for 

each of them – most had spoken at legal tech 

conferences over the years – but a sea of 15 

and 16 year olds who might well not find this 

exciting is an extremely intimidating audience. 

Determination is however a great weapon – and 

those individuals with determination, humour 

and good planning engaged the group and 

generated an exciting range of questions. They 

bought legal technology alive to a group which 

had previously probably never heard of it. 

The feedback from this initiative was 

extraordinary – the pupils involved loved 

it – indeed it generated some long-term 

recruitment opportunities, the staff from 

the schools were delighted both by the 

students’ reactions, but also by the range 

of information and understanding the law 

firms were able to offer. This was, probably 

for the first time, an opportunity for a range 

of students to hear about roles which would 

otherwise pretty much never cross their 

experience path. 

That of course was 2018 and 2019 – but we 

all know that 2020 was a year of marked 

difference. So many of these plans have had to 

be severely modified for last year – or indeed 

even put off only until this year (hopefully). 

DELTAS did not stop because of the challenges 

COVID-19 created, it held a virtual conference 

in the Autumn of 2020 to bring members up 

to date with what had been done so far, to 

celebrate that success and to start planning for 

what is hoped will be a more predictable and 

manageable year coming. 

That conference also involved looking at pupils 

in tertiary education. Amongst others, leaders 

from The University of Law described their 

initiative in setting up and running a Legal 

Technology Master’s degree. There is also an 

interesting initiative at Oxford University’s 

Law & Computer Science programme where 

equal numbers of Law and Computer Science 

undergraduates are brought together with 

industry mentors to create solutions. 

The firms from 

which the Deltas 

members are 

drawn also 

got involved 

offering summer 

placements 

and work 

experience style 

opportunities 



The industry 

needs to move 

the narrative 

beyond how 

they enable 

diversity to how 

they maximise 

its benefits for 

their people, 

clients and 

businesses 

So now DELTAS is connected to both the 

secondary and the tertiary sector, and more 

activity will follow that. But what else is there, 

what else can be done, what else is being 

done, what else should we think about? 

Law firms have had to publish the salary 

differentials between men and women for a 

few years now. It has not been the greatest 

experience for many of them – and many firms 

have embarked on an exercise to remove 

the them with different timed targets for 

conclusion. Enter into that scenario the group 

with the greatest punching power – the clients. 

Clients are now dictating that firms include 

their D&I statistics in tender responses. 

In the US and the UK clients are not just 

looking for D&I data, but also data around ESG 

initiatives. For some organisations, law firms 

who have not got specific targets around D&I 

and ESG are not able to submit responses. 

Simply – to get work you have to be addressing 

these very human, environmental and 

organisational challenges – and that is not real 

grass roots initiatives to drive change in the 

way organisations conduct their businesses. 

The pandemic has acted in some way as a 

catalyst for change – maybe this is somewhat 

grasping success in the face of a crisis – but 

speedy changes have often been engendered 

by a crisis or war. Firms have learned that they 

can manage without splendid events, without 

jumping on a plane and without printing and 

throwing away in excess of 50% of the paper 

they used. We have learned to change – and 

change at high speed. Much of that change 

will be enshrined in the way we work going 

forward. We need greater imagination on 

the potential scope and scale of how we can 

operate – including entirely new business 

ideas, collaborations and expectations. 

What does this mean for DELTAS and for 

legal technology recruitment? Well, it creates 

opportunities and the clients are again 

helping drive that initiative for change. At 

a recent UK conference talking about the 

operation of law firms post the current 

pandemic crisis, a number of General Counsel 

were on various panels. There was a clear 

sense of direction from them – they are 

looking for law firms to offer diverse, multidisciplinary 

teams. Those teams should 

include not just lawyers, but legal project 

managers and relevant technologists. 

As everyone reading this article knows – 

a single vote from a client is worth 100 

lawyer votes. So diverse business support 

teams as well as diverse lawyers are going 

to be the norm. Lockdown has seemingly 

helped this finally become acknowledged 



as rational fact. The industry needs to move 

the narrative beyond how they embody 

diversity, to how they maximise its benefits 

for their people, clients and businesses. 

Those already at that next conceptual stage 

will have a competitive advantage. 

Increasingly technology teams in law firms 

recruit from a wide range of experience – 

not just those who are embedded in deep 

technical understanding, but also those with a 

broader range of business experience. The allpervasive 

emphasis of technology throughout 

every element of working life has meant that 

the profile of technology and the technology 

team within the law firm has changed. The 

managing partner of a leading City law firm 

said memorably at a recent conference that 

the resignation that would frighten him the 

most at present was that of his CIO – what a 

difference a crisis makes. 

What else can DELTAS do to improve this 

situation? Best practice guidance is important. 

Encouraging law firms to look at unconscious 

bias training, actually using gender neutral 

language in advertisements, advertising in 

different areas – not just using LinkedIn, but 

looking at where various ethnic or religious 

communities might search for opportunities 

and working in that space. 

Continuing the partnerships with with the 

secondary school population and looking 

outside the London area partnerships. 

As location becomes a less important 

consideration – because if we continue with a 

‘working from home’ or hybrid working style 

location does become less important – we 

need to increase those links into other areas. 

Developing and enhancing the partnerships 

at the tertiary level – appearing at (probably 

virtually) university and technical college 

careers fairs. Each of these activities is 

important, and whilst no one activity will 

suddenly revolutionise the market and 

catalyse the change overnight, each will and 

does contribute to that change. 

Then of course there is looking at, being 

involved in and understanding, the various 

UK government initiatives so that we move 

hand in hand with these changes. Look at the 

McGregor Smith Review and the work the 

government is doing around that. 

Suppliers too, have a role to play – not only 

should supplier recruitment concentrate on 

encouraging diversity, but it should also work 

in conjunction with law firms to look at what 

skills are necessary – maybe suppliers could 

get involved in these careers fairs – offering 

a taste of what it is like to be a software 

developer in the legal content market, or 

helping someone understand what the 

myriad of products within this sector are 

designed to support. 

Finally, this is as always about people. I doubt 

there is an IT team in the country who has 

not been run ragged for the last 10 months 

– and for most of those individuals there is 

no respite in sight. Yet, that does not mean 

we can park this concern, and come back to 

it when the going gets a bit easier. What has 

been a delight to see is the continued energy 

and enthusiasm not just from the DELTAS 

community, but from the wider community 

supporting it – law firms, suppliers and 

publications – each are contributing by 

increasing awareness and focussing on what 

can be done. The world has always said ‘if you 

want something done ask a busy person’ well 

I doubt there are any busier than IT teams in 

every industry at present, but I also know that 

not a single member of that legal technology 

and wider technology community will shirk 

their responsibility for a second. 

We will, together, improve this – and we are on 

that journey now. If you want to get involved 

– go to the DELTAS website and see what you 

can do to help. 

Janet Day 

is an Independent Consultant and member 

of DELTAS 

The all-pervasive 

emphasis of 

technology 

throughout 

every element 

of working life 

has meant that 

the profile of 

technology and 

the technology 

team within the 

law firm has 

changed 



Case 

Study 

Scott Moncreiff 

& Associates Ltd 

Are using hosted ALB to help deliver innovation. Flexible, scalable 

Advanced technology offers their lawyers efficient remote 

working and helps them progress client matters smoothly. 

New joiners 

can see that we 

are a very wellrun 

firm with 

the right tools 

and resources 

available to 

help them get 

their work done 

and keep their 

clients happy 

In the 1980s, the UK’s legal landscape 

was very different from what it is today. 

Traditional law firms had worked in the same 

manner for decades and work-life balance 

was rarely, if ever, considered a topic of 

interest. Working for a firm that didn’t offer 

flexibility was the trigger for Lucy Scott- 

Moncrieff to establish Scott-Moncrieff with 

two other partners. 

Following the birth of a son, and with childcare 

responsibilities now a consideration, she 

decided that a very different approach to the 

established working structure in law firms was 

required. This led to Scott-Moncrieff being set 

up as one of the very first virtual law firms, a 

brave and leading-edge concept at the time. 

In subsequent years, several other firms have 

established successful practices by using the 

same business model. 

This spirit of innovation has continued, 

and today Scott-Moncrieff Associates Ltd 

is represented by 60 experienced legal 

professionals who work with clients throughout 

England and Wales. Each works independently 

from home, with access to meeting rooms 

when they are required. A centralised team 

manage all of the practice’s administration from 

their hub in Temple, London. 

Originally focused on Legal Aid work, the firm 

has now expanded into private client and 

commercial areas of law and they continue 

to add new lawyers and areas of expertise. In 

this case study, Roland Watt, Practice Director, 

speaks about the ways in which Advanced 

has helped support Scott-Moncrieff’s growth 

by attracting new practitioners who can work 

easily and efficiently from remote locations. 

A growing practice 

We put a lot of effort into attracting the best 

lawyers to work with us. We have learnt 

that they have to be very experienced, well 

established and disciplined to make remote 

working suitable for them and the firm. 

Having a supplier like Advanced has really 

helped us, as this software is something we 

can offer potential practitioners. Before they 

join, they invariably ask what tools they will 

have to work with. They are always concerned 

that remote working might have a negative 

impact on efficiency. 

The Advanced hosted desktop environment 

with Microsoft Office, Email and ALB for the 

case management system, helps alleviate their 

concerns. New joiners can see that we are 

a very well-run firm with the right tools and 

resources available to help them get their work 

done and keep their clients happy. 

A change for the better 

We adopted hosted ALB in 2012. We had 

been using a very basic web-based case 

management system but as the firm 

expanded, it had become unwieldly. Document 

downloads were taking a long time and 

everything froze when we had several people 

working on the system at one time. The firm 

had grown to the point where it was clear that 

we needed something better, a system that 

could easily scale with our business. 

We required a product that was future-Proof, 

rather than one that could only accommodate 

our current needs, and we had to be able to 

easily add new users very quickly. We also didn’t 

want the burden of having to run our own 

servers. The cost of upgrading servers, servicing 

them and paying for IT staff to take care of 

them is high. It’s an unnecessary expense. 



Desktop efficiency 

What Advanced offered us was the hosted 

desktop. This provided us with the real flexibility 

we needed to be able to work efficiently from 

anywhere, at any time. Users connect to the 

secure Advanced hosted desktop via a simple 

click of an icon on their own PC. Instantly, their 

work computer is available on their own device 

and everything they need is in front of them. It’s 

exactly the same as if they had just walked into 

the office and turned their computer on. 

With hosted ALB, we can take on any number 

of people at any one time and it doesn’t impact 

the stability of the system. We simply place an 

order for any extra users and everything is up, 

running and available. Because we have been 

operating remotely for so long our systems, 

processes and procedures are very streamlined 

and they work exactly like we need them to. 

Tried and tested 

When the 2020 lockdown came into play, we 

were very fortunate to have our remote work 

systems in place because it meant that it was 

just business as usual for us. We were able to 

adapt really quickly and, as an added bonus, 

our stability has attracted new practitioners 

who were impressed by our ability to carry on 

normally. It’s the hosted desktop that really 

gets their attention. They find it very useful to 

have easy access to the full system, directly 

from their own device. 

Another benefit is security. Users can 

confidently store their client documents in 

our hosted environment knowing that all of 

their information is backed up regularly. They 

wouldn’t have this benefit if they were working 

from their normal home computer. They 

appreciate that a lot. 

Advanced provide our training. Due to the fact 

that the system is so user-friendly, intuitive 

and straight forward, it’s an easy transition for 

new users. As core tasks are the same across 

all systems, users don’t have any problems 

adapting. If users do have any issues, the 

Advanced support team are always friendly and 

happy to help. 

The functionality we need 

The Advanced hosted desktop and ALB solution 

provides a solid foundation for our business, 

offering stable and dependable IT and case 

management functionality. Opening and closing 

accounts is easy, and all of our management 

accounts requirements are met in a very 

productive way. Our lawyers find features like 

time recording and document management 

work very well for them. I would absolutely 

recommend the Advanced hosted desktop and 

ALB solution to other legal practices. 

Catherine Stewart 

is Product Marketing at Advanced 

Opening and 

closing accounts 

is easy, and 

all of our 

management 

accounts 

requirements 

are met in a very 

productive way 



How to tell if it’s time for your 

mid-sized law firm to invest in a 

document management system? 

Most mid-sized law firms rely on a practice and case management 

system to ensure that work flows smoothly, but such systems 

can have limitations for some types of practice. In this article, 

Doug Hargrove notes where case management systems can fall 

short, and identifies the point at which firms ought to look at 

boosting performance with the addition of a dedicated document 

management system. 

If the firm’s 

commercial 

lawyers 

habitually don’t 

use the case 

management 

system but use 

a local file store 

instead, you’d 

be well-advised 

to think about 

the impact 

that might 

also be having 

on the firm’s 

compliance risk 

For some time now, most mid-sized law firms 

have used a practice and case management 

system to help run the firm. Such systems 

typically manage accounting and billing, 

look after case and client records, and 

almost invariably handle time recording and 

elements of business intelligence. Many, in 

addition, incorporate document management 

tasks that ensure compliance. As such, case 

management systems are like the Swiss Army 

Knife of legal technology. It follows that most 

firms that have one probably can’t and don’t 

want to imagine life without it. Nor should 

they, because such systems enable the 

delivery of an efficient, integrated and highquality 

service to law firm clients. 

Boosting productivity 

That said, however, firms that are ambitious 

to boost productivity might want to look at 

the areas where efficiency is being lost. They 

could well find that some lawyers are working 

inefficiently simply because they’re only using 

the case management system some of the time. 

This happens because the typical case 

management system is designed to push 

documents through a sequential workflow. This 

is the case in transactional areas of law such as 

conveyancing, family law and personal injury. 

The case management system understands and 

structures the efficient progress of the work. 

This performs well in those areas of the law 

where the workflow is predictable. 

However, the case management system 

document handling toolset is less useful 

in some other areas of practice, typically 

in commercial law. In areas like mergers 

and acquisitions, employment law, IP and 

contract law, the workflow isn’t predictable 

or sequential. Consequently, the document 

handling capability of the case management 

system is less helpful to lawyers working in 

the commercial practice areas of the firm. As 

a result, there can be a tendency for those 

lawyers to opt out of the case management 

system workflows, and to keep their documents 

to themselves, stored locally rather than fight 

their way through a case management system 

that simply isn’t designed to complement what 

they do, and the way in which they work. 

Now you might say, “That’s okay.” But actually, 

it’s not, because it leads to inefficiencies and 

more. For one thing, documents might be 

stored in places that make them hard to find – 

especially as time goes by. This results in a lot 

of time being wasted on merely searching for 

the right document. 

In addition, where documents are held locally 

and outside of the case management system, 

there’s often only the most rudimentary version 

control, which again can result in the wrong 

document being worked on for some time; and 

more time being wasted on searching, opening, 

checking and searching again. 



We also know that in today’s world, a very high 

proportion of work is conducted on email. 

Yet it’s a cumbersome and time-consuming 

process to copy an email and diligently save it 

in an electronic matter file. 

Finally, when lawyers are working outside of 

the case management system, their capacity 

to collaborate efficiently with colleagues and 

clients is greatly hampered by the need to 

email documents back and forth; or post them 

to a web-based transfer site. It means that 

collaborative work on documents becomes 

very clunky and time consuming. It all adds 

up to a big potential hit on the efficiency and 

productivity of the firm’s commercial lawyers. 

Reducing risk 

However, that could be the least of a firm’s 

worries. This is because when lawyers are 

working outside of the case management 

system it not only introduces inefficiencies, 

but very importantly, it also brings increased 

risk. For example, posting important client 

documents on a file-sharing internet site to 

enable collaboration is clearly not best practice 

when it comes to data protection. 

If the firm’s commercial lawyers habitually don’t 

use the case management system but use a 

local file store instead, you’d be well-advised 

to think about the impact that might also be 

having on the firm’s compliance risk. After all, 

when documents are held ‘off system’ their 

security and integrity cannot be controlled by 

the firm. In particular, when these ‘off system’ 

documents contain personal data, it makes 

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 

compliance extremely difficult. 

In addition, think about the risks to the firm 

when commercial matter files are incomplete 

– something that’s not at all unlikely, because, 

as noted above, electronically filing emails is a 

hassle. So relevant emails aren’t systematically 

filed in the matter file. Things get forgotten, 

and can languish forever unseen in Outlook. 

There’s also a danger that documents are lost 

or misplaced in local files. This is compounded 

by the lack of version control and document 

audit trails. It all increases the chances of the 

wrong document being given to a client – 

introducing unacceptable risks to the probity 

of the firm’s legal service delivery. 

All told then, if your case management system 

isn’t meeting the needs of all your lawyers, 

it could be that the firm is thereby exposed 

to unnecessary inefficiencies and risks. It 

then becomes wise to seek a complementary 

solution in the form of a dedicated document 

management system. 

How a document management system fits in 

A document management system is just that 

– it’s dedicated to managing documents as 

efficiently as possible. The good news is that it 

It’s the simplicity 

with which they 

can achieve 

full access and 

functionality 

on any device 

that increases 

people’s capacity 

to use their time 

efficiently 



If your case 

management 

system isn’t 

meeting the 

needs of all 

your lawyers, 

it could be 

that the firm is 

thereby exposed 

to unnecessary 

inefficiencies 

and risks 

will work in conjunction with your existing case 

management system. The advantages are that it 

has the capacity to increase your firm’s efficiency 

and productivity; and decrease your exposure to 

risk. It’s also perfectly possible to configure your 

document management system only for those 

practice areas that will benefit from it. 

Efficiency and productivity are increased 

in several ways. Firstly, you eliminate the 

inefficiencies of working independently in 

local storage files. But as well, a dedicated 

document management system makes 

document and email management more 

efficient. In particular, you should look for 

systems that automate predictive email filing. 

It’s also very valuable to introduce a Cloudbased 

document management system. This 

heightens efficiency because lawyers, as well 

as paralegals and secretaries, are able to 

access documents using a simple login from 

any place where they have internet access to 

enable a more efficient use of their time. 

It’s also worth noting that a web-based 

document management system also lets you 

access files and documents on any device. 

So, in addition to remote working, it enables 

mobile working. 

If you are reading this in the middle of 

lockdown 3, the distrinction between remote 

and mobile should seem very important. 

Lawyers and support staff will welcome the 

ability to access files at court, on a train and so 

on – wherever they happen to be. Again, your 

people may be able to access the firm’s case 

management system on any device, but the 

functionality and/or performance could well be 

compromised. So once more, it’s the simplicity 

with which they can achieve full access and 

functionality on any device that increases 

people’s capacity to use their time efficiently. 

Collaboration and security 

Importantly, a web-based document 

management system also enables slick and 

secure document collaboration between 

lawyers and their colleagues, and between 

lawyers and their clients. This has been hugely 

useful throughout the challenges that Covid-19 

brings and something that many clients 

greatly value. Document sharing is part of the 

document management system’s front-end 

functionality – so no middleware is needed; IT 

doesn’t need to get involved, and lawyers can 

make it happen very quickly and efficiently. 

Finally, a web-based document management 

system will reduce the firm’s risk on several 

fronts. These days, data is very secure in 

the Cloud, because Cloud providers typically 

invest huge amounts of money in data 

protection measures. 

These should include military-grade data 

encryption, built-in data loss prevention, 

two-factor authentication, the use of 

blockchain technology and platform-wide 

security audits and certifications to the 

recognised international information security 

management standards and regimes, such as 

ISO/IEC 27001 and SOC 2. 

A document management system will also 

provide full document audits and version 

control and ensure that the firm’s data 

management remains compliant with data 

protection laws. 

Not every firm needs a document 

management system, because perhaps all its 

practice areas are fully catered for within the 

case management system. But for those firms 

where mainly commercial lawyers are going 

‘off piste’, there are clear advantages to adding 

a document management system. 

Doug Hargrove 

is Managing Director at Advanced 


Boost your practice and 

case management with 

NetDocuments 

The military-grade secure cloud document and 

email management system. 

Document search and retrieval, one-click predictive email filing, collaborate 

better with colleagues and clients, share documents securely, integration with 

other platforms, and expert training and support. 



T: 0330 404 6937 


one-advanced


Feature 

Meeting the challenges 

and opportunities on our 

digital horizon head on 

In this article, John D. Haskell, Senior Lecturer at Manchester 

University writes a series of answers to questions posed by 

Modern Law. The aim was to gain insight on what he felt the 

future of legal tech looked like, the importance of the next legal 

generation having technical skills, and how legal tech in North 

America was currently being embraced. 

Computer-based 

technologies 

are definitely an 

important part 

of our futures, 

but the actual 

content of the 

programmes 

and the 

design of their 

implementation 

will have a lot 

to do with their 

success 

Tell us more about your talent academy? 

Why do you think it’s so important to teach 

your law students technical skills? 

It seems to me that we live in deeply 

confusing times. We simultaneously feel that 

we are collectively undergoing significant 

transformations to the way we experience 

and organise our lives (e.g., ‘disruption’, 

whatever industry 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0), and yet 

so much of the time, the way people speak 

about these transformations is predictable, 

almost scripted (e.g., being reminded that 

‘tech isn’t a solution in itself’, breakout 

creativity sessions with Lego blocks). We 

are told that digital technology is opening 

up new societal vistas and industry-wide 

opportunities, but it seems to also usher 

in a future where precarity seems the one 

constant norm across the ecologies of 

daily life. 

Digital technologies promise enhanced 

freedom, efficiency and democratic 

possibilities, but we find these exact realities 

under threat. And all-too-often, while we 

know that digital futures are upon us, it feels 

that many initiatives are just chasing the 

promise of revenue and trying to be ‘up’ on 

the most recent trend. So, it is an exciting 

time, but also ripe for miscommunication and 

costly mistakes. 

The aim of what we are trying to do here at the 

University of Manchester is to systematically 

rethink how we train the next generation 

workforce (and citizenry), to meet the 

challenges and opportunities on our digital 

horizon without falling into these traps. We talk 

about this as a talent academy because on the 

one hand, more than ever there is a need for 

new private sector and cross-disciplinary talent 

to be included in helping design and deliver 

on the curriculum, and on the other hand, 

our central purpose is to equip students with 

the literacy and skill sets needed to be ready 

when they graduate and to succeed in their 

future adventures and contribute wherever 

this leads. In some ways, these talents are 

traditional: critical thinking, detail-oriented 

composition, effective communication, 

familiarity with how to interpret the relevant 

law; in other respects, it means new territory: 

learning how to automate documents, design 

apps, read a balance sheet, know how to speak 

to a range of professionals, from bankers 

and computer scientists to c-suite executives 

running innovation teams and various clients 

and customers. 

We try to offer students a range of different 

learning environments and evaluation 

formats to really experiment with what it 

means to become a hybrid professional. One 

week students may be learning the basics 

of if-then reasoning through hands-on app 

building, the next week walking through case 

management systems, and the following week 

considering different fiscal and monetary 

theories at stake in cryptocurrency regulation. 

In other words, we focus in on technical skills, 

but in doing so, we are trying to work with a 

wide range of experts and organisations to 

reimagine what those competencies include 

and how to best nurture diverse student 

talents. We are learning from each other and 

it is serious work, but it is also a lot of fun. 



What do you teach your students about the 

future of legal technology? Is it the Cloud? 

Do you discuss recent trends in the market 

with them? 

One of the central takeaways for participants 

in the programme is that market behaviour 

and money operations are not separate to 

politics. The private always operates in the 

shadow of background institutionalised rules. 

The law is there to formalise policy choices 

over the allocation of entitlements and 

liabilities and to offer a vocabulary for parties 

to make and avoid claims on one another. 

A lot of our discussions drill into these implicit 

infrastructures that shape market trends 

and experiment with how we might legally 

redesign market conditions and incentive 

structures to achieve different economic 

and social outcomes. Put simply, the future 

of legal technology is not simply natural or 

the outcome of irreducible complexity; it is 

something we can have a substantial amount 

of control over. What digital technologies teach 

us is that law is a form of engineering. 

Of course, life is radically uncertain and 

law, of all professions, is based on the 

indeterminacy of outcomes. Why else hire a 

lawyer if not that contract terms are open to 

interpretation, if not that risk is not something 

you can eradicate but something to hedge 

and orchestrate around. Entropy is always 

lurking in the wings of our best practices and 

professional certainties. 

We also spend quite a bit of time thinking 

about how things can go in different directions 

depending on our frame of reference and 

we practice argumentative and conceptual 

moves to shift the terrain of debate. In doing 

so, we try to think about the distribution 

stakes and various policy consequences 

to the different ways we choose to think 

about digital technology. When we study 

blockchain technology, for instance, we not 

only look at the details of hashing, but situate 

this phenomenon in relation to contract 

and investment law regimes, different fiscal 

theories of state spending and banking 

operations, and hands-on experience setting 

up digital wallets, following crypto exchanges, 

participating in staking, and so forth. 

Cloud computing is a perfect illustration of 

these complexities that we try to grapple 

with. One would want to think about distinct 

national characteristics (Alibaba in China 

versus Amazon in the United States), the 

costs and benefits of business models within 

these new platform economies (the role of 

data at Google), the regulatory and security 

concerns involved in outsourcing servers (you 

can pass laws but how do you ensure that 

they are being followed when compliance 

is highly technical and geographically fluid). 

Also, the profound questions of freedom and 

democracy involved in technological advances 

(beyond but including the question of whether 

a person consents with a click to their privacy 

being distributed), the shifting political 

economy of global markets (services rather 

than ownership), how to make investment 

choices over ETFs specialising in Cloud 

industries (allocation in portfolio to Zoom 

versus Alphabet). Another consideration is 

there is a real 

role to be played 

by industry to 

take a longer 

term, holistic 

view of what 

sort of profit we 

are creating and 

for whom and 

what that world 

will look like for 

our children 



Put simply, the 

future of legal 

technology is not 

simply natural 

or the outcome 

of irreducible 

complexity; it 

is something 

we can have 

a substantial 

amount of 

control over 

understanding the specific services provided, 

especially in relation to legal services and 

getting a sense of them in practice. 

And with all this, not losing sight of the fact 

that any Cloud services within a company are 

only as successful as they are meaningfully 

integrated into the professional culture, which 

turns us back into questions of managerial 

tactics, understanding business models, 

understanding organisational communication 

and how to establish ethical and effective 

feedback mechanisms to ensure the best 

outcomes. We could even contextualise 

this further, and think of Cloud computing 

in relation to broad governance questions 

about web 3.0, or sustainable development 

outcomes, or how it links to international trade 

and investment. 

What we are finding is that to really drill 

into these issues requires a detail oriented 

but eclectic mind set, which really cuts 

across generational barriers or professional 

experience: there is a lot to learn together 

whether you are an undergrad student in 

anthropology or a postgraduate law student, a 

paralegal or a law firm partner, a compliance 

officer in a bank or an accountant in policymaking. 

There is so much learning and work to 

be done, all of which can be scaled up or down 

depending on the specific interests of the 

student cohort. Higher education is uniquely 

equipped to sandbox all these learning needs 

and open the door for a very diverse crosssection 

of participants. 

After acquiring Tikit in March, Advanced 

Legal now has a large presence in the US 

and Canada. As an American, where do 

you see the difference in legal technology 

between the two countries? 

I wish we had more space here to listen to 

your insights about how Tikit fits into North 

American markets. It might be useful to 

even expand this question, and think about 

differences throughout English speaking 

countries around the globe and recognise 

the need to create a taxonomy of different 

markets that cut through these geographies. 

A lot of my work when advising outside 

formal academia is making sense of these 

contexts, especially as it relates to higher 

education and how we are collaborating 

with non-academic stakeholders, developing 

research initiatives and (re)training people 

around new thinking and innovations at the 

interface of law and technology. 

I think there are at least two things we need 

to internalise. First, there are very real areas 

where the traditional ways we conceptualised 

how we deliver services has to change: for 

instance, in relation to billing, how we store 

and share documents, or – with the pandemic 

– the extent we demand people commute 

into offices with high overheads. But equally, 

established practices are not just bad or 

expendable because they are not new; often 

they are in place because they bring a lot of 

stability, legitimacy, demand, and competency 

to industry and societal needs. 

If you think about it, disruption is often a 

bad thing in our lives, and the same goes for 

industry sectors. Now, that doesn’t mean 

we should be wary to adapt and be ahead 

of the curve; but when it comes to digital 

technologies, a lot of times what is offered 

is not really new and ultimately feeds into 

existing trends and institutional constraints. 

There is a temptation to just chase existing 

trends, which ends up with a lot of group think 

and change for the sake of change. More often 

than not, this sentiment functions to hollow 

out institutions for accounting-led short term 

returns on equity. 

In some ways, this is the fault of policy makers 

who have a significant role in creating the 

climate for sustainable growth, but this is 

also where there is a real role to be played by 

industry to take a longer term, holistic view 

of what sort of profit we are creating and for 

whom and what that world will look like for our 

children, and then to help lobby those visions 

with legislators and regulators. So, established 

practices are not bad per se, and digital 

innovation can be part of the problem or part of 

the solution – and it is not a zero-sum game. 

Second, we are in this exciting moment where 

people are open to transformation and sense 

that our world is deeply interconnected. 

Advanced is a great example of this in action 

where it offers services ranging from consultancy 

and marketing to case management and 

security. We can imagine there will be increasing 

pressure at the top end of accounting, finance, 

legal and management industries to integrate 

these services in new ways, especially as we 

transition into Web 3.0, and these directions 

will trickle down to smaller actors across a 

range of service markets. How companies 

and governments are able to translate highend 

proprietary technologies for the general 

population is going to be especially interesting, 

and there is a lot of room for development in this 

direction – and maybe one place where higher 

education industries would become relevant. 

However, even with this new hybrid, onestop-shop 

approach to legal tech services, 

a lot of times the actual technologies and 

management strategies are reliant on out-ofdate 

but entrenched styles and theories of 

organisational change. For instance, you hear 

a lot about the need for ‘emotional intelligence’ 

in the workplace, but it rarely translates into 

harnessing the cutting-edge insights from 

communication theory to rethink how we 

interact within the firm or with clients. 

We talk about are organisations being attentive 

to the mental health of employees, but rarely 

does it escape the box of outsourced CBT. 



Computer-based technologies are definitely an 

important part of our futures, but the actual 

content of the programmes and the design of 

their implementation will have a lot to do with 

their success and this is often neglected. 

In a world of infinite possibility, it is amazing 

how often we fall back on the same solutions. 

So, meaningful diversity and new perspectives 

means actually thinking against the box, and 

this is not a turn-key operation. 

Is there anything particularly you have had 

to change in your teaching style for the 

talent academy due to Covid-19 restrictions 

on universities? 

We are running our sessions completely 

online to ensure the safety of staff and 

students. There are real costs attached to 

online learning and it is definitely not an 

ideal learning environment even if there 

are ways, we experiment with mitigating 

these challenges (e.g., breakout rooms). 

At universities across the UK, there is a 

temptation for the pandemic to accelerate 

calls for streamlining administrative staffing 

and to increase work allocations at the 

ground level of delivery while increasing 

management and audit/assessment 

processes, which I don’t think are necessarily 

helpful in the long term. This might be a 

conversation, I guess, for another day. 

I have been very lucky with the programmes 

I am developing at Manchester to have such 

a wonderful community to work with – not 

only within the school, but our stakeholders. 

Jay and JP at DWF, Vlad with Ethereum, 

Brian and Joanna at Jackson Lee, James 

at Addleshaw Goddard, Kieron at Clearly 

Gottlieb, Andrea and Nicky at Freshfields, 

Stuart at Weightmans, Alistair at Syke and Jo 

at Bryter, academics at other universities like 

Andrea Leiter, Delphine Dogot and Dimitri 

van den Meerssche, all these people and 

their organisations have just made a world 

of difference for what we can pull off on 

the curriculum and for making the whole 

experience exciting. I just am really grateful to 

everyone involved, especially when we all live 

on such constrained bandwidths these days. 

The final thing I might add about the 

pandemic, is that I think it really brings home 

our collective vulnerability. We learn from 

evolutionary biology that species adaptation 

and survival is based on its capacity to 

accommodate failure. As a society we often 

forget that experimentation and innovation 

works best when there are safety nets that 

minimise risk. A person is a lot less likely to 

leave that dead-end job to try that new idea if 

they have a lot of student debt hanging over 

their head. How many great companies are 

still-born because there is not the environment 

in place for people to feel they can afford to 

take a potential loss? 

For that matter, how many great musicians 

have been lost to the industry and consumers 

because we defunded music programmes 

and got rid of the dole? Our individual 

freedom is dependent on our collective 

security, and I think in our classes at 

Manchester we try to really prioritise listening 

skills as a first step in that direction. Paying 

attention to vulnerabilities in a spirit of open 

listening is a key to our future prosperity and 

well-being, as business owners, citizens, and 

professionals in the workplace. 

John D. Haskell 

is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester University 

specialising in Law-Money-Technology and 

International Law Interests 



Blog 

Cloud continuity: 

when business is disrupted, harnessing the 

opportunities offered by digital technology 

moves to the top of the agenda 

As this is published, legal firms throughout the UK are facing the huge 

operational challenges brought about by Covid-19 and the subsequent 

requirement for social isolation. The Law Society is continually monitoring 

the situation and providing regular updates to provide information and 

guidance. Many of the responses posted by the Law Society point to very real 

concerns about job retention, the delivery of services and remote working. 

Survey 

respondents 

told us that, on 

average, they 

review their IT 

software and 

services every 

17 months. 

Surprisingly, 

9% said they 

wait three years 

or more 

We’re providing this short summary of 

how Cloud technology can provide business 

continuity in order to support the many 

firms who will be reviewing their options 

and working practices throughout the 

coming months. 

Indications of reluctance 

When our annual Trends Survey was published, 

it highlighted some interesting trends that 

have an even higher resonance just a few 

short months later. 

Survey respondents told us that, on average, 

they review their IT software and services 

every 17 months. Surprisingly, 9% said they 

wait three years or more. That’s a remarkable 

figure when you consider how quickly and 

significantly the landscape can change. What 

the results didn’t show us was whether, after 

identifying the challenges of their current IT 

software and services, businesses actually 

addressed them. 

When we asked respondents, what was 

holding them back from modernising key 

processes or systems, 52% cited either the 

potential disruption to staff productivity or 

managers remaining unconvinced about 

recommended investments in technology. 

Nearly half (48%) were also concerned about 

the monetary cost of change. 

It’s not business as usual 

Recent events have made it clear how critical 

easily accessible technology, is to business 

continuity. Organisations that were deterred 

from transforming to digital, have found 

themselves unprepared for what the future 

has delivered, often at great disruption and 

expense to themselves. 

Now standing centre stage is Cloud technology, 

the single most important factor in the sudden, 

unprecedented shift to remote workforces. For 

those who were ready, their investment is already 

paying the dividends of secure and consistent 

delivery channels for the services they provide. 

The good news 

It’s reassuring to know that planning for 

business continuity needn’t be complicated 

or expensive. Cloud technology enables the 

expedient delivery of the SaaS (Software as 

a Service) model. This means that business 

stability, with minimal business disruption to 

current operations, is within easy reach for 

many law firms. 

One of the best ways for legal firms to protect 

their intellectual assets, valuable data, workin-progress, 

and archived records, is to store 

and manage them from the Cloud so they can 

be securely accessed remotely by authorised 

users. This flexibility offers business agility and 

progression, regardless of where your staff or 

clients are located. 



Cloud ready firms have continued to deliver high 

levels of client satisfaction. When unable to meet 

clients face-to-face, many firms are relying on 

Cloud platforms like Skype to hold video meetings 

or conferences, causing little interruption to 

normal working practices. Cloud solutions 

can also make it much easier to share matter 

information with clients, which consequently 

ends the requirement for time-consuming 

administration and information updates 

Although events have been challenging for 

many law firms, perhaps being forced to 

reconsider a digital mind-set presents one of 

their greatest opportunities for future success. 

Moving to applications that are independent 

of user location can allow firms to change and 

adapt quickly and to gain a competitive edge. 

Maximising the benefits 

The benefits of Cloud technology, beyond 

business continuity, are well documented 

and include: 

• Reduction of costs and resources associated 

with purchasing, and maintaining, a physical 

technical infrastructure 

• Convenience of a central repository for all 

data, communications and processing that 

can be accessed by all authorised users 

from any location 

• Scalability enables a firm’s technology platform 

to easily expand as the company grows 

• Automatic risk management as files are 

backed-up and stored digitally off-premises 

in secure data centres 

• Regulatory compliance for data with builtin 

record-keeping, audit trails and access 

permission control 

• Greater protection as cloud services are 

constantly upgrading their security measures 

to meet the latest standards 

• Less time spent on manual management of 

document retention and storage 

• Better client experience with provision of 

access to information and services 24/7 

• Efficient information sharing with both 

colleagues and clients 

• Wider functionality can be had by 

integrating multiple Cloud-based solutions 

seamlessly via APIs. 

• Improved corporate social responsibility 

performance by reduction in carbon footprint 

If you have found this of interest, you should 

read our whitepaper ‘The connected law 

practice’ to discover the steps your firm can 

take to gain greater digital efficiency. 

Doug Hargrove 

is Managing Director of Legal at Advanced 

For those who 

were ready, their 

investment is 

already paying 

the dividends 

of secure and 

consistent 

delivery channels 

for the services 

they provide 



Industry 

Expert 

Preparing for the next generation 

of Legal Aid professionals 

An issue of huge and growing concern for anyone who cares 

about social justice is, where will the next generation of Legal 

Aid barristers and solicitors come from? It sits within the wider 

context of what the profession will look like and how the system 

will work in the years to come. 

Achieving 

diversity is a 

complex issue 

but one that 

must be tackled 

Note to the reader: 

The next Inquiry session 

on 28 January will focus 

on the experiences of 

those practsing at the 

publicly-funded Bar. 

Confirmed speakers 

include Prof. Jo Delahunty 

QC, Marina Sergides, 

Michael Etienne, Dr S 

Chelvan and Natasha 

Shotunde. Free places can 

be booked here: 

https://www.eventbrite. 

co.uk/e/the-westminstercommission-on-legal-aidthe-publicly-funded-bartickets-128605653973 

These are just some of the questions that 

the Westminster Commission on Legal Aid is 

seeking to answer. Launched in October 2020, 

by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Legal 

Aid 1 , the Inquiry panel is comprised of Karen 

Buck MP, James Daly MP (as Chair and Vice- 

Chair respectively), Baroness Helena Kennedy, 

Baroness Natalie Bennett, Lords Colin Low 

and Willy Bach, Gareth Bacon MP, Andy 

Slaughter MP, Daisy Cooper MP and Yvonne 

Fovargue MP. The Inquiry was conceived in 

response to an absence of concrete data 

about the Legal Aid workforce since LASPO 2 

came into force in April 2013. Before LASPO, 

much of the evidence about how the Legal 

Aid system operated in practice was collected 

by the now defunct Legal Services Research 

Centre. Cuts to the Legal Aid budget mean 

very little data is now collected or analysed, 

and despite a number of Commissions and 

research projects looking at Legal Aid and 

access to legal advice, there is an absence of 

centralised data about providers themselves. 

This was concerning before the pandemic but 

is alarming in the new economic climate. 

To counter this, the Commission is working with 

academics from UCL, Cardiff and Newcastle 

Universities to conduct research into the Legal 

Aid workforce. We will be launching the most 

ambitious survey of its kind in March 2021. The 

survey aims to reach students and would-be 

practitioners, practitioners in all areas of Legal 

Aid and, crucially, practitioners who have left 

Legal Aid in the last decade. Complementing 

this work is six oral evidence sessions with our 

Parliamentarian panel, members of the Ministry 

of Justice and the Shadow Justice team. These 

will highlight the key issues of the Inquiry’s 

focus: fees that don’t cover the cost of providing 

a service; hugely complex, demanding work for 

vulnerable clients; sticking plaster solutions that 

do nothing to address the systemic need for 

change. That was the intention, but somehow in 

the two sessions to date they have gone far so 

much further. There is power and pathos in the 

stories that we are hearing from those on the 

frontline, and in their own way they are a love 

letter to the profession itself. 

I am writing this on the cusp of our third 

session which will revolve around public law 

and civil Legal Aid at a time when attacks on 

“lefty, activist lawyers” by the Home Office and 

the popular press have become commonplace. 

This reflects the urgent need for an ideological 

change in society’s perception of the law. 

Despite attending court, rushing to police 

stations at 2am and answering the phone at all 

hours to victims of domestic abuse throughout 

the pandemic, and being recognised by the 

Government as key workers, lawyers are rarely 

treated as such. We do this work to uphold 

the principle that all are equal before the law 

and are entitled, without discrimination, to its 

protection. If that public perception could be 

shifted, could be more nuanced and informed, 

perhaps the system would receive the 

investment it so desperately needs. 

So, what have we been hearing to date? As 

you might expect, there has been a particular 

focus on remuneration, and the need for it 

to properly reflect the work carried out on a 

case; for fees to be lifted in line with inflation 

and to take account of the thousands of pages 



that are read in preparation for a case. There 

is a certain taboo about speaking about rates, 

fuelled by the inaccurate portrayal of Legal 

Aid lawyers as ‘fat cats’, but for any profession 

to survive, junior practitioners must see it as 

a viable and sustainable career and those 

running organisations must be able to recruit, 

retain, plan and invest. Currently, Legal Aid 

fees only enable this through heavy crosssubsidisation 

by other, more commercial area 

of legal practice. 

A large part of the Inquiry’s focus has also 

been on the barriers to practise, whether 

that’s ethnic, socio-economic, at an entry 

level or at a more senior stage of a career. 

We have heard from a number of witnesses 

from BAME backgrounds and also those from 

different economic backgrounds. Achieving 

diversity is a complex issue but one that must 

be tackled. Recruitment is highly competitive 

in some areas and highly problematic in 

others, and there are much wider, structural 

issues about who is actually able to access 

the profession. Students incur a great deal of 

debt and the odds are often stacked in favour 

of those who enjoy significant financial family 

backing, not just to qualify but to survive in 

the profession long enough to carve out a 

career. Given these obstacles, those from 

a BAME or poorer background may not 

have sufficient financial support. And the 

profession will be poorer for it. 

I mentioned a love letter however, and that 

is what we’ve seen over and over again. The 

evidence given by our witnesses has been 

detailed and often incredibly moving. Legal 

Aid work is generally complex, urgent and 

emotionally draining. Witness after witness 

has explained the hours they work, the 

sacrifices they make and the extra mile they 

go for client after client. They do so to ensure 

expert, professional advice and support can 

be provided to traumatised, disenfranchised, 

desperate clients. People who would have no 

ability to enforce their rights without access 

to a Legal Aid lawyer, and who benefit from 

the support of professionals who do so much 

more than the limited services covered by the 

scope of Legal Aid or the fees on offer. This 

is alarming, given that low fees, long hours 

and heavy caseloads mean that organisations 

don’t have the resources to adequately 

support their staff and individual lawyers are 

not able to sufficiently exercise self-care. 

What we are also hearing consistently is 

that Legal Aid is a vital service to society. It 

underpins the rule of law by making such a 

lofty ideal accessible to anyone subject to 

British law. But it is not something that society 

can have for free. It is a choice that we make 

as a society: either we decide to enshrine 

these values or we don’t. If we decide that 

we do, there is a cost. It is a comparatively 

small cost and it is a cost more than worth 

paying. And we have learned that we need 

compassionate people, willing to sacrifice 

lucrative legal careers for the common good, 

not just today but coming through the system 

to ensure there is a future. And we need to 

fix the system for them so that they can carry 

on with this critically important work. 

The pandemic has shone a spotlight not just 

on the fragility of the Legal Aid sector, but on 

its absolute necessity for a healthy, fair and 

equal society. And that is exactly what we 

intend to demonstrate through our Inquiry. 

1. https://www.apg-legalaid.org/node/706 

2. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders 

Act 2012: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/10/ 

contents/enacted 

Rohini Teather, 

Head of Parliamentary Affairs at LAPG 

There is power 

and pathos in 

the stories that 

we are hearing 

from those on 

the frontline, 

and in their own 

way they are a 

love letter to the 

profession itself 



Case Study 

P4W’s adaptable technology supports 

innovative business models 

Keystone Law’s bespoke platform enables lawyers working 

remotely around the world to deliver legal services with ease. 

P4W was 

selected because 

it offered the 

very specific 

administration 

and financial 

functionality 

that we required 

Maurice Tunney, 

Director of Technology 

and Innovation, 

Keystone Law 

In 2002, a lawyer from a mid-tier law firm 

believed that the legal market was ready for 

a new approach. Using technical innovation 

and modern working practices to drive 

productivity, he created Keystone Law to 

deliver legal expertise in a more efficient way. 

Keystone lawyers work independently, from 

whichever location is most convenient for 

them and their clients. The firm provides all of 

the support and infrastructure required by the 

fee earners including a suite of meeting rooms, 

marketing, compliance, finance and IT support. 

At the heart of the business is a bespoke IT 

platform known as Keyed-in. It’s a flexible 

system that ensures lawyers can access 

everything they need from one central location. 

Today, Keystone Law is one of the UK’s 

leading law firms, with over 400 lawyers who 

offer exceptional levels of knowledge and 

experience to thousands of clients across the 

globe. The Legal 500 2021 recognised them as 

‘one of the go-to firms’ for their ‘great roster 

of highly experienced talent’ and in November 

2020 they were awarded the coveted ‘Law Firm 

of the Year’ accolade at The Lawyer Awards. 

A custom-fit approach 

Keystone started using P4W in the early years 

of the business. At the time, this system was 

selected because it offered the very specific 

administration and financial functions that 

the firm wanted, without requiring significant 

administration to deliver them. As Keystone 

has grown, so has the way the firm uses P4W. 

P4W’s flexible structure, which integrates with 

many market-leading technology solutions, 

was quickly realised by Keystone. They worked 

with the P4W team to transform Keyed-in from 

a simple intranet into an award-winning tech 

platform and today it is used by hundreds of 

lawyers who can easily access information 

whenever and wherever they require it. 

One source efficiency 

Maurice Tunney, Director of Technology and 

Innovation at Keystone Law, sees P4W’s open 

access database as one of its biggest strengths. 

He says “using the system’s single database 

means data only has to be entered once. That 

provides us with a significant reduction in input 

time and eliminates the risk of data duplication.” 

Joined up finance 

The Keystone Law finance team use P4W to 

run the entire finance workflow of the firm. As 

a result of a smooth back-end integration to 

Keyed-in, lawyers are able to readily access all 

of the financial information they require. 

With this integration, Keystone have achieved 

massive time savings for both their legal and 

financial teams. Running their daily work lives 

from one platform enables the lawyers to work 

efficiently across diverse locations and remain 

very self- sufficient. 

Lawyers no longer need to be in an office or 

to constantly log in and out of various systems 

to find the information required to progress 

matters. Everything they require is available, 

regardless of where they are working, or what 

tasks they need to complete. 

True partnership 

Maurice commented on working with the P4W 

team; “over the years we’ve required a fair 

amount of support to ensure the technology is 

configured to work exactly the way we need it to.” 

“Having access to P4W’s knowledgeable support 

team and their consultancy services has made a 

real difference in being able to deliver a solution 

that is so unique to Keystone Law.” 

“With a fast-growing business, a partner that 

is agile and results orientated is crucial. We’re 

thrilled that P4W have been by our side every 

step of the way and that it continues to ensure 

every need we have is met.” 

“It’s not often that you find a supplier who 10+ 

years down the line is still as committed and 

supportive as P4W are. It has been an absolute 

pleasure to work with them from the beginning.” 


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