P2P

12 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 0 to the attorneys about their day-to-day activities in order to document the current state of the processes, eliciting their pain points. With that in hand, the firm leadership could identify gaps and rearrange the processes so they could attend the clients' expectations. That lead us to hiring a technology specialist with a development background, who would help us solve said pain points either by buying technology or developing some in-house solutions. After a few months and a few more hires, our incubator had a name: we created our Technology Innovation Nucleus 2 . And I was the one to lead the team. Me. A lawyer. By that time, I had attended some conferences, finished a post- graduation course in strategic planning for law firms and started an MBA in Leadership and Business Management, but it was still hard to explain what I did at my job. After all, a lawyer who works in a law firm is expected to go to court, write legal documents and help clients with their legal problems. And, since I didn't do any of that on a regular basis anymore, was I still a lawyer? Don't get me wrong, I loved being a "regular lawyer", finding ways to win our hardest cases and representing our clients' interests. Still, at some point, when people started asking me what I actually did at RMS Advogados, I started doubting myself and questioning if I was really adding real value to the firm. But then, in May 2017, I attended a conference in São Paulo with some international keynote speakers, and one of them talked about how the North American market benefited from the implementation of Knowledge Management. I got curious at the time, but I thought it was something unattainable or "out of my league", just like some fancy "International Legal Technology Association" that the speaker had mentioned in his book. It was only a year later that I discovered that, even though we had done it organically and followed the gut feeling of our managing partners, we had been doing some knowledge management initiatives for a while. I also learned that ILTA had a major annual conference that gathered a lot of these KM professionals – along with other people who worked in legal tech. As a result, I decided to create an online account at the ILTA website and started following them on LinkedIn. F E A T U R E S I thought a Legal Technology Association would showcase fancy technology or feature expensive products. How surprised I was to find out that ILTA had a lot of interesting content available, which ranged from leadership development and soft skills to core IT. In order to have full access – along with the other 900 professionals of my firm – we became a member, on February 2019. The minute our managing partners decided to go on with the membership I thought: "Oh, my God! I have got to learn everything about ILTA and see if they really are as amazing and helpful as I hope they are." But they are so much more than that… 2019 was my first year as an ILTAn and I can say it was one of the most intense years of my life so far. I grabbed every single opportunity I had to meet new people and to learn new things. I also started feeling more confident when speaking on a topic that I had learned through my new connections. Having my firm to acknowledge the importance of Knowledge Management and to formalize my role as Head of Knowledge Management and Innovation just a few weeks after we had joined ILTA was a huge demonstration of their recognition and incentive to this path. A month later, when I was about to embark to Paris to celebrate my best friend's 40th birthday, it came to my attention that ILTA was going to partner with LEXPO19, in Amsterdam, just a week before my travel. I quickly thought that the universe was conspiring in my favor and I decided 2. In Portuguese: NIT – Núcleo de Inovação Tecnológica. "I grabbed every single opportunity I had to meet new people and to learn new things."

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