Peer to Peer Magazine

82 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SPRING 2016 Berys: Corrs has embarked on delivering a range of innovative solutions to enhance the way we engage with our clients. These business applications are providing value by delivering standardized and efficient business process automation that provides transparency across business practices and project delivery for our clients. Corrs achieves this by working directly with our clients to gain an understanding of how they want, and need, to work. Our services and applications are mobile, smart, simple to use and provide consistency in business operations, and they are delivered through a sleek dashboard interface. Corrs can rapidly build and deploy solutions for countless business processes for clients. Sco: Innovation has become a part of Liler's brand. It's very interesting from a marketing perspective because it's tangible. Innovation is something clients can latch onto and understand. When you have law firms with websites, brochures and other marketing materials that say, "We've got great lawyers." Most clients would say we expect you to have great lawyers. And "We collaborate with our clients." Again, most clients say we expect you to collaborate with us. Those are intangible things. But when you go to a client and show them ways to drive efficiency and the new products and services we've come up with, it is a competitive advantage and a market differentiator. How do you champion innovation within your organization? Sco: I am fortunate to have a large and terrific knowledge management group working with me. With between 15 and 20 aorneys working on the team full-time, researchers, legal writers and technologists, we have a great crew that is known within the firm as a valuable resource. We work with various departments, and our knowledge management aorneys are spread out across the firm, so we regularly interface with stakeholders in the organization. Our reputation has risen within the firm, and aorneys come to us seeking solutions. Andy: A previous boss of mine used to say that even if you think you've told somebody something 10 times, assume they don't know. That was the kind of experience we had early on; depending on our interaction with a lawyer, that was their understanding of what De Novo "did." What does De Novo do? Our small team tried to speak on our behalf, but that didn't resonate. We had to let it happen naturally, almost virally. Say we had five aorneys working with a particular client and someone from the De Novo team on a project. The aorneys would then work on a project without De Novo and ask why things weren't being done in a different way that's beer. They'd talk about their experiences with us and apply things to other groups, so the best way to promote innovation was to have success in innovation. It happened prey organically. Berys: We are embedding innovation into the fabric of our business so all our people feel empowered to orchestrate change and pioneer new ways of working to drive our clients' success. Traditional IT teams focus on the day-to-day running of technology systems and providing systems and services to internal (and some external) users. We are proactively helping the business look for improvements in efficiencies and productivity for the firm's clients. ILTA's Peer Award Finalists Innovate for Application Delivery ASK THE EXPERT BERYS AMOR Berys Amor is the Director of Technology at Corrs Chambers Westgarth. Contact her at berys. amor@corrs.com.au. ANDY PETERSON A founding member of DWT De Novo, Andy Peterson has helped various large companies create technology and staffing initiatives to solve legal and business challenges. He has also helped expand De Novo's team strategy, from its initial focus on internal improvement to the addition of client-focused legal solutions and to innovation consulting. Contact Andy at andypeterson@dwt.com.

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