CEO Corner: Two Events That Prove “Legal Rising”
We’ve just had a very exciting October, and two of the highlights were the chance for us to connect with our clients and the legal community at two key events.
The first was our own Interact 2018 conference, then the ACC Annual Meeting that came just a few short weeks later, both of them here in our hometown of Austin.
At each event, we had the opportunity to present fresh innovations, including an entirely new product we’ve co-developed with the help of our clients. Yet what was really remarkable to see this year was how committed nearly everyone we spoke with was to pushing forward with technological transformation of legal departments and Legal Operations.
“Legal Rising” is a phrase we’ve used to describe the expanding leadership role being taken by legal departments around the world, as they look to embrace and accelerate change, becoming innovators within their organizations. This changing role is supported by forces I discussed in my Interact keynote, and evidenced by what we experienced at these two events. Here are some of the highlights.
First, I want to thank all the clients who participated in Interact 2018. Together, we got to enjoy a fantastic keynote from Salim Ismail on the power of innovation and technology to transform not only our organizations, but our understanding of what is possible. He set an optimistic, problem-solving, collaborative tone for the entire event as he took us through what it takes to be an exponential, rather than a linear, organization.
We announced the release of TeamConnect 6, our most connected and advanced ELM platform ever. TeamConnect 6 is the direct result of co-innovating with over 30 of our clients, and includes a major advance in our capabilities for business intelligence, our most fully featured and robust Microsoft Office integration, deeper document management integration, and out-of-the-box integration with the newest product in the Mitratech family, TAP Workflow Automation.
We saw an amazing level of excitement for how TeamConnect + TAP can be a cornerstone of digital transformation for Legal Operations, allowing legal to extend the power of TeamConnect to the entire organization through easy-to-use workflow and automation. We also previewed our upcoming Legal Hold product, which we plan to launch in early 2019.
Back in Austin just weeks after Interact, the ACC Annual Meeting was the world’s largest gathering of in-house counsel. Being in our hometown, this was a great opportunity for our team to spend time with customers, and it was a privilege to be able to show off the growth in our home city once again.
At the event, we announced the launch of TeamConnect Essentials, a configurable SaaS matter and spend management solution built on the TeamConnect platform, and designed for companies that are starting their journey into Legal Operations.
It’s incredibly exciting for us to now be able to offer many of the strengths of TeamConnect to legal departments of any size or level of complexity. It was also gratifying to see the degree of interest shown by attendees, both at our launch event and on the conference exhibit floor.
Another highlight of ACC? The awards ceremony honoring this year’s ACC Value Champions, winners of the ACC Value Challenge. Each represents the best of the best of law department leadership, nominated by their peers for efforts to increase the value driven from the legal department, including legal management innovations, implementation of process improvements, internal and external partnership, and community leadership and involvement.
Honoring these leaders is very much in the spirit of Legal Rising, and our Steven O’Donnell provides in-depth details about their accomplishments here.
Looking to 2019
As I said, there’s a very real Legal Rising movement underway that everyone I’ve spoken with at our events agrees will only accelerate in the next year. More CIOs, GCs, and Legal Ops leaders are searching for solutions for elevating both business performance and influence within the enterprise.
Technology plays a key role, of course, but the explosion of would-be legal technology vendors over the past few years has created more confusion than clarity. The leaders we’re speaking with aren’t blindly jumping into the deep end of the technology pool. Rather, they’re increasingly looking for innovation, integration, flexibility, reliability, and ROI from any solution they adopt, and a track record of co-innovation and outstanding support on the part of the provider.
Yes, they want to be the leaders and innovators that Legal Rising describes – but they also want to follow a clear and proven roadmap toward success. It’s up to every technology provider to help the legal industry chart that course. At Mitratech, we’re focused on helping our clients not only meet their short-term needs, but their long-term potential to transform an industry as well. It’s what we expect of ourselves, and something we believe that legal departments should expect of every provider they work with.
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