DEFINING DIGITAL IN THE LEGAL SECTOR IN ASSOCIATION WITH
HOWARD KENNEDY
DIGITAL REPORT 2021
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DEFINING DIGITAL IN THE LEGAL SECTOR 03
www.ho wa rdk e nned y . com
HOWARD KENNEDY
TONY MCKENNA AND JONATHAN FREEDMAN DISCUSS HOW TECHNOLOGY IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF LEADING LONDON LAW FIRM HOWARD KENNEDY
H
oward Kennedy is a London-based, fullservice law firm with a storied history stretching back to the late 19th century.
Evolution has been key to its sustained success, adapting to overcome contemporary hurdles and 04
act as a stabilising force for its diverse and international client base. When Tony McKenna joined the firm six months ago, he was thrust into the middle of perhaps the largest period of adaptation in recent memory, the COVID-19 outbreak and a now familiar quandary: how does business continue amid the countless disruptions caused by a pandemic? As IT Director, it fell to McKenna and his colleague Jonathan Freedman, Howard Kennedy’s Head of Technology and Security and a company man with 16 years at the firm under his belt, to swiftly transform the way their lawyers worked together, and how they interacted with clients. The vision was simple: “business as usual, but not in the usual place”, a strap line that has become a mantra for the firm’s overarching digital transformation efforts and ambitions.
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HOWARD KENNEDY
IT’S ABOUT TAKING SPECIFIC PROBLEMS AND SOLVING THEM WITH TECHNOLOGY AND PROCESSES AND PEOPLE, AND ACTUALLY DELIVERING BETTER VALUE TO THE CLIENT — Tony McKenna, Head of IT, Howard Kennedy
Howard Kennedy faces obstacles that will be familiar to every business this year: connecting a now dispersed, home-based workforce to one another and to their clients, and digitising the most vital business functions to ensure
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a smooth and seamless transition. On the communications front, Microsoft Teams has been implemented to keep the more than 400 lawyers and support staff connected. It was a crucial step in sustaining the organic collaborative environment of the office; Freedman reveals that more than 19,000 one-to-one calls were made between employees in the past 30 days alone. The transition was swift, in part thanks to Programme Horizon, an earlier initiative started by Freedman and his team in 2017 to spearhead the firm’s digital transformation. “Programme Horizon was all about delivering a seamless integrated
digital platform,” Freedman says. “But
‘innovation’. This process leads up to a
it’s very much aligned to the five strat-
defined transformation, avoiding what
egy areas we’d like to achieve as a
McKenna calls a “cathedral solution-
business. Essentially, we said, ‘this is
type moment”, where staff are forced
how we’re going to use that technol-
to adapt to an entirely new system all
ogy to deliver what the business is
at once - a poor result for productivity
trying to achieve’.
and empowering employees. “Rather
The goal was to implement incre-
than a digital transformation - because
mental changes and technology
we’re a law firm this year, and we’ll be a
for purpose, rather than nebulous
law firm next year - it’s much more of a
E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :
Jonathan Freedman
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Title: Head of Technology & Security Company: Howard Kennedy Jonathan Freedman is the Head of Technology & Security at London law firm Howard Kennedy, with a background in Enterprise Architecture and systems engineering within the UK professional services sector spanning more than 18 years. His current role is focused on both the development and implementation of new technology within the firm and leading the cyber security program. In addition, he is jointly managing the firm’s internal GDPR compliance program. He holds multiple industry certifications including, CCNA Security, Certified Ethical Hacker, TOGAF, CGEIT and ISO27001, with special interests in cyber security, ethical hacking, data protection, cryptography, secure systems design, mobile device security and technology innovation. www.ho wa rdk e nned y . com
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Menlo Security: shielding business in the cloud Mike East, VP EMEA of Menlo Security on empowering business through air-tight, automated digital security in the cloud Mike East, Vice President EMEA at Menlo Security, leverages his considerable 30-plus years’ experience of the full IT ecosystem to steer businesses through the crucial security aspects of their digital transformation. Menlo’s solution is clear and concise: “Menlo was born in the cloud and provides users with a 100% safe email and browsing experience by moving the fetch and execute functions of web browsing away from the network and brought back into the Menlo cloud.” Web browsing and electronic documents are isolated on Menlo’s cloud, instantly tested for malicious content, before being rendered and returned safely to users’ devices. During a pandemic situation, such capabilities enable organisations to secure employee activity outside the confines of the corporate network, which in turn brings enormous value. By sidestepping the need for a VPN, businesses also often save money and can offer their employees a more seamless experience. To power its own digital transformation and support hundreds of employees working from home, law firm Howard Kennedy’s Head of
Technology and Security, Jonathan Freedman, sought out Menlo. “Jonathan was looking to isolate documents and protect its users from weaponised attachments,” East says. “Now when lawyers click on that document, essentially the execution of that document is happening in the Menlo cloud. If it’s malicious, what we send back is a rendered view, which is completely harmless, on the user device. If it’s completely harmless, that also gets rendered back on the user’s device.” As industries accelerate their digital transformation, East says “the convergence of software defined networks and security is only going to accelerate.” And the Menlo team will be standing by: “Organisations should spend more time doing what they do, not building infrastructure to support what they do.”
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HOWARD KENNEDY
continuous improvement and that digital journey,” McKenna says. “It’s about taking specific problems and solving them with technology and processes and people, and actually delivering better value to the client.” The removal of paper from billing and internal expenses has been an immediate upshot of the project, feeding into ongoing automation efforts to ensure Howard Kennedy lawyers are free to dedicate their expertise to clients, rather than routine admin tasks. Video conferencing technology has also rev10
olutionised the way the firm now works; during the UK’s government-imposed lockdowns, hearings and mediations continue uninterrupted. “We’ve done quite a number of virtual hearings and virtual mediations, where normally you’d have people just gathered in a room. But now we’ve been using the technology, using the video conferencing, to achieve everything that they wanted to achieve,” Freedman says. “Our support teams have become a lot more proficient at supporting Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings, setting out multiple breakout rooms and ways to move people between different breakout rooms.”
WE CAN COMPETE WITH [THE BIG LAW FIRMS] ON LEGAL TERMS, AND NOW WE CAN COMPETE WITH THEM ON TECHNOLOGY TERMS AS WELL — Tony McKenna, Head of IT, Howard Kennedy
But it soon became clear to Freedman, a security expert, that the firm’s once resilient data centre VPN could not handle the new strains of hundreds of offsite terminals: “The biggest challenge we had was the way our security was set up. We were using a full-tunnel VPN, sending all of the internet traffic back to our corporate data centre, and that coincided with the enormous surge in the use of video conferencing.” Partnerships and access to “fitfor-purpose tools” would be vital to E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :
Tony Mckenna Title: Head of IT
Company: Howard Kennedy
Tony is currently Director of IT at Howard Kennedy LLP and chair of ILTA’s (International Legal Technology Association) European Program Council. As Director of IT, he is responsible for dayto-day technology services, business change, information security and technology innovation. As a senior volunteer leader for ILTA he chairs the annual European ILTA conference. Continuously improving technology service is mission critical to Tony, as is sharing his knowledge and ensuring everyone around him is given the opportunity to be the best they can be. www.ho wa rdk e nned y . com
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1940
safeguarding the law firm’s security systems, Freedman says, and it turned
Year founded
to third-party specialist Menlo Security.
£60mn+
and working on in the background was
Revenue in GBP
400
Number of employees
“One of the projects we’d had testing the Menlo Security project. The big thing was that we wanted to keep the security benefits of the traditional VPN, being able to filter and scan all of the traffic, but we wanted to remove the speed limitation with people working from home. We were able to implement Menlo’s technology platform, which allowed us to have staff go straight to the internet for their internet related www.ho wa rdk e nned y . com
HOWARD KENNEDY
BUSINESS AS USUAL, BUT NOT IN THE USUAL PLACE — Corporate Strapline, Howard Kennedy
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sites, but we didn’t lose any of the security of the traditional platform that we had before.” McKenna admits that while a small period of learning and “ironing out bumps in the road” was necessary, the solution accelerated what could have taken months via more traditional means. “We are confident that by the early part of spring 2021 pretty much all of our core products will be in a position to take advantage of the elasticity of these hosted solutions, which potentially would have been more of a challenge for us in a traditional data centre environment,” he says. This new way of working places Howard Kennedy on solid footing as we head beyond the disruption of the pandemic. “Our business aspirations are to grow our business, and therefore having a technology ready just to switch on in a dynamic way is a real business differentiator for us,” McKenna continues. “As we start to bring on other businesses or start to look at what we deliver against our strategic ambitions as a firm, we will be able to do that quickly and simply with the best technologies.” www.ho wa rdk e nned y . com
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HOWARD KENNEDY
WE SAID, ‘THIS IS HOW WE’RE GOING TO USE THAT TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVER WHAT THE BUSINESS IS TRYING TO ACHIEVE 16
— Jonathan Freedman, Head of Technology and Security, Howard Kennedy Further developments include AI implementation, further freeing staff from tasks that require little human input. “In terms of inefficiencies we’re just closing out a pilot of some AI technology that we’ve been working within a real estate area,” McKenna says. “Improving efficiency is one thing, but it’s accuracy as well as improving the work/life balance of our colleagues.” The pilot has already received positive feedback: ‘This is brilliant. Why
kind of statement from a lawyer,” McKenna adds. “It’s just great.” Further ongoing projects will come
would I ever go back?’ one lawyer
to fruition in the coming months, and
replied. “And you just don’t get that
open up an exciting future for Howard
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Kennedy in the post-pandemic world
“We can compete with them on legal
competing against the ‘magic circle’
terms, and now we can compete with
of big law firms. “We’re well known in
them on technology terms as well.”
the market for being a straightforward, straight-talking firm,” McKenna says. www.ho wa rdk e nned y . com
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