
February 9, 2022
It’s hard to believe it’s already February when so much seems to have happened already in 2022!
For starters, you may have seen that I just celebrated a BIG birthday -- there are no secrets safe from our social media team!I can say now that Forty is Fabulous, but also slightly fraught with the expectations that milestone birthdays always bring. We've just reached the 25 employee milestone and we now have over 50 clients, so as I said in my last blog, I’m extremely grateful for where I am today, and where Law 365 is at the moment. But there are no flies on us because we’re still charging ahead at full throttle and this is going to be our Best Year Yet.
Here are just a few reasons why!
Tim joins Law 365 as Chief Vision Officer
Tim was born for this role. Being visionary is just one of the many roles he plays in my life – he’s also my husband, father to our two small children, party planner, and as Valentine’s Day approaches, I have to admit he’s probably also Chief of Romance as well. I won’t say more now, as I know he’s writing his own content, except to say that we both pictured this day a long time ago and I’m so happy to have arrived here together.
Making the Lawyer’s “Hot 100” list
This was such an amazing birthday present. It’s like the legal version of getting an Oscar, and an incredible honour if you’re a lawyer. For someone who still feels like a new kid on the block as a business leader, it really made me realise what we have achieved in a short space of time.
Launching our own AI
People who know me will know that our AI product is a meeting of minds – Tim’s and mine – for our vision for the future of Law 365. It’s a perfect synergy of our two loves – he’s bringing the tech knowledge to create it, and my team are the legal brains behind the machine!
Our Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) reader (I’m calling it our “Digital Lawyer” for now) is going to revolutionise the profession and make legal advice accessible for thousands of people who currently think they can’t afford it.
With over 20,000 Microsoft Partners in the UK, and many of them too small to take on a legal team, we challenged our in-house IT team to develop an AI solution for reviewing simple contracts. The goal is to democratize the legal process and empower our clients by giving them the Artificial Intelligence tools they need to protect their businesses.
Our challenge was accepted, and in the next few months we will be launching it to our clients to trial for free.
What is it? The NDA reader solves a problem that feels ubiquitous. Many business owners think NDAs are straightforward and so opt to save themselves some legal fees by doing them by themselves. This is rarely a good idea.
Our Digital Lawyer adds sophistication and, dare we say, intelligence, to the template they might have previously been tempted to download online. It scans an NDA, flagging important clauses that require attention and adding commentary that the business owner can use to make the right decisions.
It will show them where there’s risk and ultimately providing alternative wording to de-risk their position. Sounds simple but the machine learning capabilities of this is anything but! The more contracts the AI reads, the smarter it becomes. So our next challenge is to feed the beast with a substantial amount of data! As the technology is refined, we will apply it to more complex agreements.
We are also about to launch our forever contracts (read Tim's blog to find out more!) Have you ever wondered if your existing contracts are up to date with the latest legislation? With our forever contracts, updates will be made automatically. Need the latest signed copy of an agreement? No need to search your emails or look on the printer, you’ll know exactly where to find it.
Performance Coaching for our clients
Louise Otton has been my personal coach for years and I’ve had her coaching my team since I started Law 365. Last year she came in-house and offers the team both monthly 1-2-1 sessions as well as monthly training for the whole business.
The results are tangible – not only in the happiness and productiveness that’s plain to the naked eye – but also objectively measured by our Net Promoter Score which averaged 91 in 2021 (on a scale from -100 to 100) and the OfficeVibe score which is in the high 80s, in spite of the challenges of the last 2 years.
We realised that Lou was too good to keep her all to ourselves, so now she’s available to clients – using the same credits system we offer for legal services.
Just this week I joined Lou for a client workshop -- I focused on Negotiation Strategy, and then she followed with a coaching session on how to communicate more effectively. We got some brilliant conversations going around how they can improve on both these skills, and I think we left them wanting more! They all came out of it buzzing with new ideas and fresh perspectives on how to communicate with one another and with their customers. One of the longest serving employees said he never thought he would learn a new trick but had been proven wrong!
And there’s so much more in store! More of these in the following months:
- The Legal Walk 2022
We’re delighted to support this fantastic charity again this year – hosting the event at our office again, but hopefully with fewer Covid restrictions! - The Silicon Cup
We can’t wait to hit the high seas with our favourite Microsoft Partners again. We're already planning our fancy dress costumes! - The South Coast Summit
We’ll see you there, look for the sea of PINK shirts!
Watch this space!
Further reading
- The Legal Walk Tunbridge Wells 2021 (aka The £10K 10K) (law365.co)
- Law 365 sponsors the Silicon Cup Regatta
- South Coast Summit: A Swag-tastic Social Sensation (law365.co)