Law firms looking to keep pace with client demands for innovation often find themselves at odds with their own infrastructure. It's something that Bas Boris Visser, global head of innovation and business change at Clifford Chance (CC), has faced again and again in trying to produce innovation at the firm.

"We find that the people who want to be involved in these kind of things need a certain level of freedom and space to operate," Visser explained. "They need to be able to experiment, and lawyers simply don't like to experiment because it may go wrong, and we don't like to make mistakes."

CC's recent launch of two new 'innovation units' – Clifford Chance Applied Solutions and Clifford Chance Create – is an attempt for the firm to eke out the necessary space for experimentation. The Create unit will be charged with helping the firm flesh out its technology ecosystem and partner network, while Applied Solutions is dedicated to helping build and scale out technology systems for clients.

Visser explained that the firm decided to move forward in creating these innovation units after deploying a MiFID II compliance tool co-constructed with Neota Logic, where they saw the potential to scale and monetise the venture.

"We see a fantastic opportunity to monetise experience in tech solutions. We have to make sure we're acting on those lessons learned," Visser said of the experience.

To do that, the firm opted to create these two divisions, each headed by Visser, to operate slightly outside of the firm's traditional leadership structure.

"If you really want to do this successfully, you need to have in your ecosystem people who are really focused on customer satisfaction and product development; all the skills that you would typically expect in a software-based or subscription-based environment, but which are not necessarily present in our normal law firm ecosystem. It's really a different mindset and a different way of working," Visser explained.

In the endless debate as to whether firms should seek to bring in or look outside for technology developers, Visser said CC looks more to the latter. "Our philosophy is that we're really good at the legal stuff; we hope to bring the best legal expertise to this venture, but we also know that there are others that are much better at the technology part," he said. The firm is actively engaged in building relationships with technology companies like Kira Systems and others.

Unlike a software company, however, Visser sees the firm's role as more concerned with implementation than strictly engineering. "We realised it's not just about building a great tool and selling as many licences as possible, but [clients] were really interested and encouraging us to help them to make sure that the over 2,000 licence holders would actually go to the platform and use the tool," he said.

Visser hopes these two new innovation units might be able to inform the core business of the firm. "We're learning a lot of lessons on how we can get our own core business better," he added.

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