Innovation

Clients tell us that they want business solutions to their legal challenges. They increasingly expect that we package and deliver these business solutions using technology. Whether it is using our Contract Automation Portal to streamline their template contracts, our Law-Now E-Learning to support their worldwide compliance programmes or our Developers on Demand offering to navigate the process of legal tech procurement, we are looking at new ways to help our clients overcome the challenges they face.

We asked some of our key innovators how clients benefit from the use of technology.

Technology is key to our future as  a firm, as our industry transitions from a focus on advice to solutions. But we shouldn’t just think about technology in isolation. In my view, success in the future will be founded on a combination of three things: best people, best process and best technology. My experience is that clients benefit most when we deliver on all three.

CMS has a dedicated, multidisciplinary innovation team that maintains a close watch on the global legal services market.  It investigates and pilots new technologies, services and business models. Sorting hype from reality is a huge challenge given the current proliferation of legal tech and our clients’ differing needs. A key goal is to tech-enable our service delivery in ways  that best suit our clients rather than us. However, innovation is not just about  tech. Many client pain points might be  better solved by looking at processes  or resourcing.

Currently, CMS clients are benefitting from artificial intelligence solutions to accelerate contract review and due diligence as well as legal apps on particular topics and bespoke collaboration portals to share documents, knowledge and get regular matter status  and fee updates. They are saving money  and mitigating risk with custom automated documents and accessing specialist legal project management teams.

CMS Germany has been developing and marketing product solutions in the form of web-based applications since 2015. These applications contain legal and procedural know-how in standardised and automated form to deal with specific legal issues such as the assessment of liability risks. All products are designed as softwareas-a-service solutions and are embedded  in an innovative digital business model.

Browser-based access to the applications  is possible at any time, removing the need to contact a lawyer. In addition, access is not only provided to clients’ legal departments but also to their specialists. This means that the legal service is provided directly where it is needed and the legal department’s workload is lightened. The client can choose between different forms: analogue legal services, digital product services or a hybrid service consisting  of analogue and digital elements. This leads to more options as well as greater transparency and saves our clients time  and costs.

CMS has a dedicated, multidisciplinary innovation team that maintains a close watch on the global legal services market.

If a new technology is available that allows us to deliver a better, faster or less expensive service to our clients, then we use it. This way of thinking has led us to develop tools such as iiara, Contralto  or Francis Lefebvre e-Compliance. iiara is an algorithm that drafts simple tax clauses but also alerts clients if a more complex  tax situation requires a lawyer’s assistance. Contralto is a mobile app that gives users  a quick overview of reforms of the contract law section of the French Civil Code. Francis Lefebvre e-Compliance offers  a comprehensive compliance assistance solution, taking advantage of the possibilities offered by digitalisation  and the electronic processing of declarations, accounts and payroll.

At the same time, we constantly monitor the development of new tools and assess their potential benefits for our clients such as enabling higher quality and less costly services.