USING TECHNOLOGY TO PROVIDE INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

Through its product and innovation department, people-focused law firm Weightmans is combining legal expertise with emerging technology solutions

An award-winning top 40 UK law firm, Weightmans has more than 1,400 people working from offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Newcastle.

Stuart Whittle, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Weightmans – where he began his legal career almost 30 years ago – is particularly aware of how innovative technology can be utilised to gain insights and enable clients to reach their true potential.

A qualified solicitor and board member of the firm since 2010, Whittle’s current role renders him accountable for Weightmans’ information systems department, data services department, and its business change and knowledge management department, along with its formative product and innovation department.

“What makes us different is our people,” he explains. “Our clients say we're an easy firm to do business with. Every law firm says this, but there really is a focus on delivering the best results for clients.

“We recognise the fact that we're a service industry; it's not like it was 30 years ago. Our job is to fundamentally make clients' problems go away and, ideally, make them look good in the process.

“Having been a lawyer, it's pretty demanding and can be quite an allconsuming job at times. So it's important that people get something from it.”

Weightmans: using technology to provide innovative solutions

The firm has been named a leading UK employer by the Top Employers Institute for 15 years in a row, with the firm scoring particularly highly in the most recent edition on business strategy, organisational change, onboarding, performance, engagement, values, ethics and integrity.

“Particularly when I think back to 30 years ago, one of our strengths is having built up increasing areas of specialism that enable us to meet the needs of clients,” Whittle says. “We've got employment specialists who really understand the health industry. We've got employment specialists who really understand unionised environments. And we regard ourselves as an organisation that can provide a full legal service to all of our clients.

“Ultimately, we want to be a top 30 law firm,” he adds. “Clients are at the heart of everything we do, and we aspire to be technology-driven, data-led, and innovative. And that's where the product and innovation department came from.”

Product and innovation department

As Whittle explains, Weightmans’ product and innovation team was born out of a desire to combine the firm’s legal expertise with emerging technology, delivering real benefits for businesses and allowing them to reach their potential.

“Many years ago, a consultant who worked in legal IT said to me that in law firms, if it isn't somebody's job, it doesn't get done,” he says. “So, three or four years ago, we created a very small innovation team with an even smaller budget just to see what we could do and get off the ground.”

A number of tools have since been developed, from a lawyer-led, outsourced HR department service to a scalable product that assists universities who are having to deal with students claiming compensation off the back of lecturer strikes. Then, around six months ago, Weightmans’ product and innovation department was launched, with an aim to systematise the firm’s approach to developing products and services.

“We've already got 60 potential ideas that have gone through a vision stage,” Whittle says. “We've narrowed those down to 30 at the first cut, and we need to narrow them down again.”

One such tool is an automated service which helps organisations calculate their casual workers’ holiday pay.

“There was a recent Supreme Court judgement that confirmed how employers are supposed to calculate holiday pay for casual workers,” he explains. “It completely affects any organisation which has seasonal workers, whether that is schools who employ term time people or retailers who employ people over Christmas.”

As a result, Weightmans built a holiday pay product allowing clients to push as much of their case load as they want to the firm, who will handle the cases and communication using their holiday pay tools.

“Off the back of that, we've also built a relatively straightforward fixed fee approach

Stuart Whittle

TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER

INDUSTRY: LAW PRACTICE

LOCATION: LIVERPOOL UK

Stuart is a qualified lawyer by trade but moved in to IT in 2003, taking on responsibility for Weightmans’ IT department in 2005. In 2010 he was promoted to IS and Operations Director, a Board role. From 2017 Stuart took on the role as Business Services and Innovation Director and most recently has taken on a new role, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer to help Weightmans build solutions for clients.

He has a MSC in IT, is a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and a qualified coach and was recently named Legal Week’s Legal Innovation Trailblazer.