CASE STUDY

CMS

Helping clients manage legal and business projects more efficiently

CMS has set up a new team to drive further benefits from platforms like HighQ as part of the firm鈥檚 innovative approach to collaboration with clients.

John Craske, head of legal service design and delivery at CMS, says one of the biggest attractions of HighQ is the way it helps the firm help clients manage legal and business projects or transformations more efficiently.

The challenge: Adapting technology to the individual needs of clients

鈥淲e鈥檙e always looking for new opportunities to refresh how we鈥檙e working with clients,鈥 explains Craske. 鈥淲hether we鈥檙e pitching for a new piece of work or uncovering something interesting from our client insight program, we regularly stop to think about how we can improve the mix of people, processes and technology we鈥檙e deploying.鈥

Laura Fessey, product manager at CMS, adds, 鈥淚nitial conversations with clients on how they can improve the way they collaborate with their law firms or their own teams often lead to interesting opportunities. Everything starts with a conversation. We listen first and adapt technology to the individual needs of clients.鈥

Craske gives the example of working for HP on its $1B acquisition of Samsung鈥檚 global printer business, where his team used a combination of tech tools, project management and efficient resourcing to speed up complex contract management on the deal across multiple jurisdictions.

The solution: CMS Mix 鈥 identifying the right people, processes, and technology

鈥淧otentially bringing on board thousands of new contracts with distributors, partners and manufacturers, HP needed to quickly uncover and understand where they had suppliers in common with Samsung, key data such as their termination dates and which contracts they would or wouldn鈥檛 continue in future.鈥

The result: Increased lawyer efficiency and improved monitoring of project progress

Craske explains, 鈥淲e used the document management capabilities of HighQ to take advantage of the detailed playbook and conditional fields to ensure paralegals or lawyers are only asked questions, and therefore inputting information, relevant to a particular type of contract in the particular jurisdiction.鈥

That helped streamline the process and created a repository where both documents and metadata are accessed in the same place. Attaching statuses to contracts for project management and reporting purposes was also useful; for example, prioritizing progress on a particular contract category or in one language or country.

The future: Transforming innovation into practice for clients

A dedicated Tech Tools team has been created as part of CMS By Design, the firm鈥檚 integrated group of specialists from across the firm who help turn innovation into practice for clients. The Tech Tools team is helping partners and lawyers across CMS get a better understanding of what鈥檚 possible with technologies like HighQ, Kira and Brainspace.

As John Craske explains: 鈥淭he challenge for all law firms isn鈥檛 so much getting access to these new tools as it is developing deep knowledge of what they can do for you and how they can bring practical benefits to our clients. At CMS, we are building an ecosystem around our tools 鈥 supporting people with the practicalities of using a platform like HighQ, but also educating them on the range of use cases.鈥

In line with that direction, the team at CMS is self-sufficient at building HighQ client sites such as the HP example for itself. 鈥淭he IT training team offers some minimal HighQ training, but it鈥檚 easy to use,鈥 says Craske. 鈥淚f there鈥檚 anything more exotic than documents and folders to manage, the legal tech team are there to help, and of course they will become quite the specialists over time.鈥

Fessey adds, 鈥淲e have also prepared some training materials with guidelines, FAQs, and so on, but the idea is that in the future, lawyers will have access to a growing group of 鈥榩ower users鈥 they can learn from, so they鈥檙e more familiar with technology possibilities when talking to the next client. It鈥檚 about turning this from the innovative into a business-as-usual tool.鈥

For her part, Fessey now plans to measure success in terms of the range of use cases that are developed in collaboration with the tech team, and how deeply these start to run through the business.

鈥淲e recently pulled a report, and it鈥檚 no great surprise that the biggest use remains document storage,鈥 she says. 鈥淚鈥檒l now be measuring the volume of requests from the firm and support actions that take place, and would like to see more instances of people using HighQ in project and task management. The team are excited and looking forward to getting their hands on the workflow functionality too!鈥

鈥淎s well as meeting individual client need for collaboration or efficiency, more varied usage of the tools we have at our disposal will be another sign of success.鈥

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