Hilary Goodier, partner and chief operating officer of Ashurst Advance, said the new roles would improve the firm’s ability to deliver complex transformation projects.

She said UK-based lawyers, Cath Kelly and Sophia Slade, had transferred from their current legal roles with Ashurst into the two newly created roles for Ashurst Advance effective 1 November 2020: senior legal transformation specialist and legal transformation specialist respectively.

“The appointments are part of our ongoing delivery of innovative and technology enabled legal solutions for clients and a key driver of the firm’s NewLaw transformation,” Ms Goodier said.

Ms Goodier told Lawyers Weekly that the development of these new transformative roles signifies the moves towards adopting and innovating the roles of lawyers who can meet the increasingly uncertain and complex challenges that will emerge post-pandemic.

“Like any transformation, the true transformative power of NewLaw lies in a deep understanding of the business or process it is seeking to transform,” she said.

“However a lot of ‘innovation’ in the NewLaw space is still occurring in isolation – starting with the technology and trying to reverse engineer the problem. 

“The power of these new roles is in the deep knowledge of how lawyers work and the challenges faced by legal teams and clients and therefore designing solutions that are meaningful. 

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“By coming at the problem with a client-centric lens, these transformation roles will drive greater change and greatly accelerate the adoption of NewLaw.”

For Ashurst, Ms Goodier said that demand for digital and transformation solutions had increased significantly during COVID-19 and the firm had responded quickly.

“Ashurst established its Legal Transformation Programme (LTP) as part of that response. It helps us to take a structured approach and prioritise the development of solutions which are scalable and transferable across the firm’s different practices and make the most meaningful difference to our clients,” she said.

As part of its growth trajectory, Ashurst Advance aims to embed the legal skills to help deliver the transformative solutions clients are seeking as they emerge from COVID-19 – both driving efficiency but also creating value.

“We have seen the considerable benefits that specialist lawyers can bring to transformation projects, given their detailed understanding from the lawyers’ perspective. The deployment of two ‘transformation legal experts’ further extends our offer,” Ms Goodier said.

In 2019, the transformer network sought to encourage lawyers’ adoption of the firm’s legal technology, project management and alternative resourcing offerings, with the Ashurst Advance team leading on a pilot with the global loans and markets practice. That team was one of the first to make use of its resources and was helping banks deal with large-scale regulatory and internal changes.

Ms Goodier said that driving change within a large law firm is not easy, and accelerating the pace of change is even harder. 

“The Legal Transformation Programme helps us to do that in a structured way and prioritise the development of solutions which are scalable and transferable across the firm’s different practices and make the most meaningful difference to our clients,” she said.

“As a NewLaw division, Ashurst Advance relies on a unique combination of skills and experience including legal analysts, technologists, lawyers and legal operations professionals to turn legal advice into innovative and scalable NewLaw solutions – and there is huge demand for that kind of client-centric offering.”

Ashurst Advance has expanded quickly in Australia. Following the launch of its global delivery centre in Glasgow in 2013, the firm opened an Australian centre in Brisbane in September 2018. In May 2019, Ashurst launched a dedicated digital and legal technology offering, Ashurst Advance Digital.

The latest firm results also revealed that Ashurst Advance had seen a 34 per cent growth in global income in 2019/20, with an additional 25 per cent headcount.