An Insider Look at ILTA’s 2021 Trailblazer Award Winners: Simpson Thacher

Welcome to LegalTech Matters, a Litera podcast dedicated to creating conversations about trends, technology, and innovation for modern law firms and companies – big and small.

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Caroline Hill

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Insider podcast. I'm Caroline Hill, Editor-in-Chief of Legal IT Insider, and I'm joined today by Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett's Practice Innovation Manager Debbie Ting and Knowledge Management lawyer Molly Wolfe. Who won ILTA's new Trailblazer award for Adopting New Technology. Hi, Debbie. Hi, Molly.

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Debbie and Molly

Hi, Caroline. Great to be here.

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Caroline Hill

Thank you so much for joining me. So, anybody listening in? Just to give a bit of the background about the award. So ILTA created this new award from feedback from one of its G100 CIOs who pointed out that every time a law firm adopts new technology for the first time, they're taking a risk and they're helping others to forge a new path.

And the award had to be applied for jointly by a business partner and a member and ILTA had nine applications with Simpson Thatcher winning for the work you've done with Jigsaw, which for anybody listening in, and who's not familiar, they help to quickly build diagrams from corporate structure charts. We're here. I'm really grateful for you being here to talk through the we're not only going to talk through the deal, so we're going to talk about a little bit of background about the deal itself, how you got Jigsaw involved, but we're also going to talk about the sort of wider sort of considerations in terms of law firms using new technology and the importance or the thought processes behind that. But if you could just first say what would be great is if you could give us the background. I know it was a really big real estate deal, which I think you were preparing for closing. So, if you could just tell me a bit more about the deal and the scale of the properties or the challenge involved.

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Molly Wolfe

So, the real estate team, as you mentioned, was working on a very large real estate portfolio acquisition. It was the acquisition and financing of a portfolio of hundreds of properties on an accelerated timeframe. The real estate practice that since then is consistently a leader in the industry and the team really excels at exactly this type of complex transaction.

So, it was not atypical. So, to answer your question, what exactly was the challenge? Well, as part of the diligence process, in any acquisition like this, the team needs to look at the ownership of each of the assets that the client is contracting to purchase in commercial real estate transactions. And this can get very complex. If you're looking at a residential purchase, you might imagine seeing a single individual as a property owner or a couple as the property owner in a commercial real estate transaction such as this one.

The properties are owned by a network of different legal entities, each with a percentage of the ownership interest in the property. So as is typical, the Simpson team was working on this deal and reviewing legal documents as part of the due diligence to identify the ownership interest in each of the properties. Ultimately, this information makes its way into a very extensive Excel file which details all of the different ownership interests of different legal entities.

And ultimately in each property. So, at the end of the day, the team needs to be able to take that information and make it very easily and readily accessible to a wide range of people. So, the process that the team goes through is taking this Excel information that they have generated through the due diligence process and creating structure charts essentially visual depictions of each of the ownership interests in the property.

You could imagine an entire organizational chart that has a bunch of lines showing reporting lines for a big department. This looks similar, detailing the ownership in each of the properties and this particular deal, because of the scale of it, meant that the team was looking to create almost 1500 separate PowerPoint structure charts to depict the ownership of each property, both before and after the proposed transfer.

So, this is where we started to reach out to Jigsaw and really get them to be part of the story. Ultimately, what we were able to do with them is automate the creation of these structure charts. So, changing the process from a PowerPoint heavy exercise with each chart being created separately to an automated generation of nearly 1500 structured charts.

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Caroline Hill

I have to say this takes me back to my training contract, Molly. That sounds like a yeah, it makes me remember why I'm not a lawyer anymore. Now I remember the process. It's usually complicated, often very manual, very time consuming, which I guess was time to go back to my legal training now, but it was time of the essence.

Presumably, this was sort of under some pressure and time.

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Molly Wolfe

Yes, absolutely. It was an accelerated timeframe. We started the process when the team was still negotiating the purchase agreement, but they were looking for everything to be tied up within a month to have all of these diagrams available and then closing on a short timeframe thereafter.

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Caroline Hill

Yeah. So, is that okay? So, thanks for that. So, what was the decision-making process behind reaching out to Jigsaw, Debbie?

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Debbie Ting

Sure. As Molly mentioned, to create these structured charts and we discussed really like manual process. Anyone has created a chart in PowerPoint knows that you literally, if you just want to create a diagram and a drag each item with the line the shape the text box one by one, if you make any changes, you got to move each one around separately.

So, it can be a really tedious process and the knowledge and innovation team here. Since then, we were aware of this attorney pain point, and we were already looking at the efficiencies. So, we had done quite a bit of research on the legal technology market and had a short list of key players. And so, Jigsaw was already on our radar.

And what these tractor technology tools do is that they actually automate that process to create structure charts within a software that you can point and click to create the shapes and attach lines immediately on the text boxes already there rather than doing it manually in PowerPoint. And it's geared towards a transaction. So while we were exploring and support, we were at the same time building awareness with the firm and talking to our lawyers to gauge interest in this product and so fortuitously when Molly spoke with the real estate department to let them know that we were looking at these technologies, the real estate partner on this particular deal asked her about her particular scenario and if we could use this type of technology. So, we ended up deciding on Jigsaw for three major reasons. First, the Jigsaw co-founders were transactional lawyers, so they understood the time pressures to meet the closing deadline and to deliver the structure charts needed in an expedited timeline. They also had a proven track record of co-founders of a previous prior start-up that was acquired.

And then, you know, clearly, we were talking about the solution with them, a potential solution. They didn't have one in place, but they were really open to collaboration. They presented a clear vision and how it would customize the product, and they were willing to dedicate the resources to meet the client's needs.

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Caroline Hill

That's really interesting. So how? Because I'm familiar with Jigsaw and also XREF, which was their previous product. That's interesting that stood in their favor. So how long ago was this? Because I had seen a demo of Jigsaw, but you were obviously very early doors on this.

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Debbie Ting

So again, I think we knew that the technology could create the structure charts. And so, then we were just asking them what's the possibility of, we have a scenario, they'll chart with data. Could you create the structure charts for us? And so that actual functionality did not exist yet, but they were willing to present it to them and they had it.

They had a clear vision of how they could solve it for us.

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Caroline Hill

Okay, interesting. Okay. That's interesting. So, you were helping them sort of evolve. The sort of the basic tech was obviously there, but you were helping them to evolve, and they were presumably quite receptive.

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Debbie Ting

Yeah, they already had told us that they had thought it sort of something like that. So, you know, they were willing to work with us and customize the product to meet this need.

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Caroline Hill

Okay. Tell me about, so how was I mean, I think perhaps it's already clear, but so how was Jigsaw, you were you working with them from you know, sounds like the deal was fairly well progressed. So, were they working very much as a sort of part of the deal team or how did they get involved in Jigsaw?

Yeah. Jigsaw.

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Debbie Ting

Oh yeah. Well, we, you know, we, we, we asked to work with them. We weren't yet a client, but we wanted to work with them on the specific project. So, they were part of the deal at this point, at the stage

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Caroline Hill

Okay. And was a client did you have it was the client the client was receptive to this, I presume.

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Molly Wolfe

When the team got to the point where they were faced with creating this, you know, large scale of structure. This is when we first made contact with Jigsaw about this particular deal. We had already had conversations with them more broadly about using their product for talks at the firm. But what we did, as Debbie said, that they didn't currently have the functionality we were looking for, which was to take an Excel file and automatically generate the structure as a result.

So, what we did kind of an initial step was to speak with them about whether this was possible. Could we work with them to develop a bespoke script to read our Excel file and generate the structured charts. And we really started working hand-in-hand with them at that point. Okay.

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Caroline Hill

What do you think? Is it possible to talk about it's always difficult with new tech talking about ROI or time savings, etc. but how can you gauge what the time saving was? Have you got an indication of how much time you did save as a result of using Jigsaw Tech.

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Molly Wolfe

Well, you know, I don't know exactly the time savings. We couldn't calculate that. It certainly was a much more efficient process than it would have been otherwise. But I don't think that the end result was produced in any quicker timeframe. I think the team would have come up with another solution using many hands at Simpson using other supporting firms to be able to produce the result in the same amount of time.

In terms of meeting the deadline of the client. But certainly, this process went to a much more efficient use of some sedentary time.

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Caroline Hill

Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. So, I find that that makes a lot of sense. So. so you would have the same deadline, but actually it seems pointless using attorney time, doing repetitive tasks. It's the same old thing, isn't it? It seems pointless using attorneys to do repetitive tasks where we can use technology. This is what we talk about day in, day out.

And do you think I mean, I think I've asked you about I asked you whether the client was receptive, but do you think that there were sort of benefit, do you think with the sort of benefits intern of this client perspective, did they did you feel like in terms of the way the deal was received, do you think that it was appreciated that you were you were saving that time and doing it in the most efficient way?

I'm sure the answer must be yes.

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Molly Wolfe

You're I can't. I can't speak to exactly how they felt about it, but they were receptive to it. They were aware we were going to be using a new technology and they were receptive to it. And at the end of the day, they were very pleased with the end result.

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Caroline Hill

Yeah, it's quite a niche area, isn't it? Very is interesting. So, it's sort of like, yeah, it's a bit of a no brainer. So, what So stepping outside perhaps. I mean, let's talk about key learnings first, actually. So, what would you say your learnings were in terms of particularly perhaps a bit around being open to collaboration?

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Debbie Ting

Like I think this project was just a really great example of the firm partnering together with the legal technology manager to deliver a bespoke solution for the client and so we had four key learnings. One was to really plant seeds early and often to promote awareness and spur creating cases of legal technology at the firm. And we felt it was important to work with the right vendor who's open to designing the solution and to minimize risks when working with them by overseeing the process I think Molly can speak more to the collaboration or yeah.

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Molly Wolfe

Well, you know, this was really a team effort among the Simpson team and also Jigsaw on the Simpson side. I think we really benefited from having very strong support of the partner who was leading the deal and all of the associates who were working on really the complex legal aspects of this transaction staff, attorneys, paralegals. It was a wide range of Simpson professionals who were supportive of this project, and that was hugely beneficial to have everyone on board.

The other thing that I think we learned from this is that is the importance of having, you know, Debbie myself and other kind of knowledge professionals within the firm to help reduce what would have been potentially burdensome on the lawyers to, you know, in the middle of an ongoing transaction to stop and learn a new technology. There's just not the time and the bandwidth for that so I think we were able to step in and kind of translate the need to the legal to you, to the technology vendor and make sure that that process was pretty seamless without having to overly burden the legal team with learning a new technology which can sometimes stand in the way of actual adoption.

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Caroline Hill

I mean, I was interested in your point, Debbie, about I know a touch sort of touched on it at the time that the fact that you in terms of the sort of credentials I'm interested in, the fact that you said that they had the previous, you know, sort of what's the word you use to cover. But that they had some form for, you know, they've shown that they're capable and that they've got experience themselves of the legal sector.

It's really interesting that those are two things that presumably they sound like they gave you a lot of confidence and in Jigsaw as a start-up.

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Debbie Ting

Yeah, definitely. I mean, we look at all, especially the innovation team. We're always looking at new technologies. we keep our fingers on the pulse of what's out there, you know, so especially if you're dealing with early-stage technology, they really have to prove themselves out. The fact that they already had experience of working on a prior start-up, we knew that.

They knew they had what it takes to make sure that the product actually works and did what was needed. At the same time, our team is going to oversee, like, look at them and really evaluate them for the firm to make sure that they can deliver what they promised. Right. So, it was definitely a factor, but they still had to in this case, like, you know, perform the work that we needed.

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Caroline Hill

You, of course. Well, and when you come back on to talk about benefits to the firm of like, you know, using new tech, but only what we're on the topic talk about the risks versus rewards. So, so there are always risks. And being one of the first, you've talked about, you know, perhaps how you address some of those risks.

But what are your thoughts on whether law firms ought to be looking at new technology and perhaps how you weigh up the risks and rewards.

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Debbie Ting

I think it's important for law firms to look at new technology because it helps the lawyers do their work more efficiently. And you know, but you have to have a proof of concept. If you're trying to manage the risks, you have to prove them out. In this particular project, we outlined the process, and we did it in an iterative process to kind of manage stages to understand that the output was working properly.

So, we felt confident that we would meet the deadlines.

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Caroline Hill

And do you think in terms of the - so from a firm perspective. So, it's interesting, isn't it? You've got lots of you know, you've got Reyen Court and, you know, law firms, you know, they quite often want to be seen to be working with start-ups. Do you think that there are sort of any wider benefits from working with new technology from a wider firm perspective?

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Molly Wolfe

Well, you know, I think that Simpson's clients really expect us to be providing creative solutions to their legal problems. But we also believe this includes a commitment to innovation and to process efficiency. So I do think that, you know, the jigsaw project that we did with them really demonstrated that since it has a commitment to this goal and it will continue to be something that is top of mind as we work with clients going forward, making sure that not only are we, you know, accurately addressing their legal concerns, but doing so in in a way that uses new technology so that our process can be as efficient as possible.

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Caroline Hill

Yeah, I think what's really interesting, so you say with big firms like Simpson, you don't seem to have as much spin your clients, you know, so you work for the biggest leading, you know, the best things in the world, and they want things done quickly. I know that when it comes to technology with other firms, they perhaps sort of agonize over how do we address the fact that we get things done quicker?

You know what I mean? Whereas this seems to be from the types of, of, of companies that you work for unquestionable value in getting things done quicker. Does that make sense? That, you know, with other firms, they sort of seem to be concerned about what happens about it from the billable hour perspective? Etc. It feels like that's not such a concern when you're dealing with your sorts of clients where actually speed is absolutely of the highest value Yeah.

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Molly Wolfe

Well, I think it's something that oftentimes gives our clients a competitive advantage of assurance of closing on a quick time frame. And that's something that I think we're always trying to support our clients.

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Caroline Hill

Molly.

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Molly Wolfe

Yeah, I was going to say that and using the legal technology to kind of automate those manual, very manual tasks that the lawyers really shouldn't be doing so they can focus on the higher-level work. And that's how we can get both speed and accuracy.

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Caroline Hill

You know, what was the associate feedback? Because I have been an associate and I have done those jobs in the corporate life. Is this something that you're presumably, you know, you're engaging with them very heavily on this sort of thing. And I presume that they welcomed it.

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Molly Wolfe

The work that we did to help support this effort. It made their process a lot more efficient on this particular task. And of course, this is just one small aspect of the larger deal. So, it allowed them to focus their efforts differently than they would have otherwise.

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Caroline Hill

What have I not asked you? Is there anything I haven't asked you? I mean, you've got to I think this is great recognition. I was there on the in the award ceremony when Joy when Joy gave you the award, Debbie, as you both of you were that and I think it's I think it's great. I, I think that it's great that, you know, what I like about this award is that I like the fact that you had to pitch together.

I think this with some I think was kind of confusing for the market is that, you know, that there's lots of new tech out there. And I think sometimes it can be confusing. You know, there's sometimes and I'm not directing this at you, but, you know, there's sometimes a little bit of innovation by press release. So, I think what's really great about this type of award and this type of conversation is that really, you know, it's being driven by the law firm and talking about real life instances of new tech being used.

It's innovation, not press release, something quite concrete. That's what I really liked about it. That's one of the reasons I really wanted to speak to you, other than the fact that you've won the award. I feel like there should be more. You know, I think I'm thinking about it from my own perspective, how we can perhaps start to have more of these types of conversations, you know, where we bring you both to the table.

We talk sort of about it. In fact, it's a shame that we didn't bring Jigsaw, but I think it's great. Did you agree that it's great? I think it's great when you can sort of talk about the actual work that you've been doing and understand that you can't talk about the specifics, but nonetheless, you can talk about the deal and becomes a bit more meaningful.

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Debbie Ting

I think the challenge for firms is about legal technology, adoption and getting people to use the technologies. And I think one big takeaway we got was just to have an innovation mindset to promote the technologies that we were considering and let the lawyers know so they can have their own, that's what ended up sparking this creative idea.

Yeah, I think that and the other point I would make is that the technology vendors will present their use cases, but they say the right partner will be open to other use cases that they haven't got to contemplate, which is what happened here as well. Which I think was just why it was this such a really great melding of different experiences and timing.

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Caroline Hill

Yeah. Molly, did you have any last thoughts?

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Molly Wolfe

Well, you know, just what Debbie said in terms of having the right partner, I think we really benefited here, particularly given the fact that we were working on an active transaction. As we were working through the details of this project. Jigsaw was really the right partner for us to be working with. As Debbie said, as former corporate lawyers, they kind of immediately understood what we needed and the time pressure and the final product.

And so well, of course, there are risks with working with a new start-up. We felt we were really able to manage this and have concrete goals that they were able to achieve and hit kind of interim milestones to reduce any of that risk. So yes, I think we benefited from having a fantastic partner in Jigsaw.

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Caroline Hill

Yeah, well, it's been great publicly for Jigsaw. You, me a bit but no, that wasn't the purpose of it. It was all joking aside; I'm hoping to have more of these types of conversations about sort of concrete use cases. I think it's so helpful for the market. it really does. I do think it's provides really, you know, it's really beneficial.

So, I really appreciate your time and I look forward to hearing about the next deal when you do use trailblazing technology. But for now, Debbie Ting and Molly Wolfe, thank you so much for joining me.

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