ACC Asia-Pacific Xchange: Transforming the Modern Law Department

How Operationally Mature is your Legal Department? Setting the Scene: Law Department Management/Legal Ops today; and where are you on the ACC Legal Operations Maturity Model?

These days every legal department, regardless of size, must deliver best-in-class legal services in a timely manner. This often involves doing more with less resources, enhancing efficiency, and using data analytics and technology to drive value-enhancing legal advising. The ACC “Maturity Model for the Operations of a Legal Department,”  is designed to assist legal departments with assessing and benchmarking their legal operations, and offers a foundational toolkit. Join us in this interactive session for a guided tour of the Model and associated resources and benchmarking data. Then warm up for the conference by participating in a discussion with peers about how to advance efficiency and cost-effectiveness in legal services. 

Speaker: 

Catherine Moynihan, AVP, Legal Management Services, Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)

9:30AM - 10:50AM

Opening Plenary: Leading Transformation in the Modern Law Department

Presented in partnership with UnitedLex

We’re ditching the traditional keynote speech for an informative, inspiring experience that will set the tone for the rest of the APAC event. Hear our panel of General Counsel who will deliver a TED-style presentation on the keys to leading transformation within the law department, followed by a fireside chat. Don’t miss this invigorating opening plenary session.

Speakers:

Paul Lanzone, Senior Vice President, DXC Technology (Moderator)

Chee Kin Lam, Legal, Compliance & Secretariat MD & Head, DBS Bank;  

Lisa Mather, Chief International Counsel, Paypal; 

Dion Harrington, Head of Legal Operations, Rio Tinto

11:00AM - 12:00PM

Legal Design Thinking: From Buzzwords to Legal Solutions and Useful Tools

Legal innovation, NewLaw, Legal Tech and now legal design thinking. These buzzwords have entered the legal industry lexicon but what is legal design thinking and when is it best to apply this in your legal department?
 
This session will explore:

• The rise of design thinking in the context of legal innovation, legal operations and Legal Tech
• What is design thinking
• The context of when to apply design thinking as a problem solving framework
• Outcomes from design thinking

 
Three key learnings:

1. Practical understanding on how to get started when applying design thinking in your legal department
2. How-to guide to start your design thinking project 
3. Examples of how design thinking has helped complex and legal information be understood more effectively"

Speakers:

Eric Chin, Principal, Alpha Creates

Rachel Delaney, Legal Counsel, Aurecon

Sarah El-Atm, General Manager, August

Transforming Litigation Risk Using Dispute Finance

An organisation’s legal claims are valuable assets. If leveraged, these assets can be transformed into a revenue source that boosts the bottom line. However, taking steps to realise this value needs to be balanced against the cost to the business of doing so. In the current economic climate, reserving capital for business continuity has become more critical than ever. Organisations are increasingly looking for financial solutions to enhance growth and sustainability, to innovate new business and legal approaches for the business and to positively bolster the bottom line. This lunch-time interactive session, will examine how dispute finance can help in-house legal teams untap legal assets to realise value while reserving capital for continuity and growth.

Speakers:

Adam Silverman, Investment Manager, Omni Bridgeway

Amy Spira, Senior Legal Manager (Group Corporate) Domain

Leanne Meyer, Investment Manager, Omni Bridgeway

2:00PM - 3:20PM

Why Innovation & Change Initiatives Fail - The Critical Human Element

Presented in partnership with HFW Consulting. 

If only we didn’t have to deal with people - a phrase often heard when change projects are being planned. The goal of every process change or change in the way business is done is to make it simple and easy. The reality is that the human element or the people responsible for working on the change, are often the very reason it can fail. But why? The list of reasons is often complex, but in reality it comes down to our inability to recognise the different emotions, behaviours and reactions of those who are impacted. So what can you do? Join us for a highly interactive and informative session where, together with a panel of leading regional GC's, we will explore a number of the core principles that will help to harness the human elements of change.

Speakers: 

Chris O'Callaghan, Director of Consulting, HFW Consulting (Moderator)

Bernd Dudel, General Counsel and Head of Compliance Asia-Pacific, Siemens Healthcare Pte Ltd

Jasmine Karimi, Assistant General Counsel - Regional Counsel, FMC Corporation

Lauren Ellison, Legal Business Partner, Asia and EMEA, Telstra

Speed Networking

Kick-off your day by getting to know more about your fellow attendees. Join us for short bursts of fun, small group video networking. Take the energy from this experience and use it to dive into the next hour of sessions.

Contracts & Data: Demonstrating Value of the Legal Department with Contract Intelligence

Presented in partnership with Icertis.

The contracting process has remained painfully manual and inefficient. Too often, it drives the perception of the legal department as the “Department of Slow” – and worse, the “Department of No.” This panel of legal department leaders and innovators will discuss how leading departments are transforming their static agreements and antiquated processes to turn contracts into strategic advantage for both their legal department and businesses. 
•    What process improvements is your department employing to stop “contract leakage”? 
•    What data are you mining to mitigate risk and improve compliance? 
•    How can you use contract data to demonstrate the value of the legal department? 

Speakers:

Bernadette Bulacan, Head Legal Evangelist, Icertis (moderator)

Troy Swan, General Counsel & Company Secretary, Winc Australia & New Zealand

Joanne Chuang, Head of APAC, Syke

Technology & Innovation in the Legal Industry: How Developments are changing the Roles & Responsibilities of In-house Counsel. 

Presented in partnership with Littler Mendelson

The past two decades have seen dramatic changes in how legal services are delivered. Innovation has played a significant role in their delivery including the introduction of a variety of legal technologies offered by traditional law firms, legal tech companies, and alternative legal service providers. Clients now have options, with competing legal service delivery models and technologies offering transparency in practice, better ability to manage legal spend, and actionable insights in identifying risk. Concurrently, changes in the very nature of the workplace, such as the advent of artificial intelligence, algorithmic hiring practices, and robotic process engineering have introduced new levels of complexity and risk to how companies manage their workforce. In this session, we will examine the evolution of technology and innovation in the legal industry and the impact on the role of in-house counsel to learn how you can anticipate these significant changes and take advantage of some of the leading platforms that can help you manage your matters, relationships with outside counsel, and legal department operations.

Speakers:

Trent Sutton, Shareholder, Littler (moderator)

Craig Katerberg, Chief Legal & Corporate Affairs Officer, Budweiser APAC

Scott Rechtschaffen, Chief Knowledge Officer, Littler

Vincent Ng, General Counsel, Klook

Snowed under? Microsoft 365 - A new way to Deliver Legal Ops

Boot up your Microsoft 365 suite! We’re going off-piste to explore lesser-known components of MS 365 suite and how they can be used in Legal Operations.  This interactive session features live demos and practical in-house insights on using MS 356 for matter management, task assignment, automated approvals and surveys to get immediate feedback from your colleagues and in-house clients.  
We also invite you to follow along on your screen to set up your own Outlook-based clause library for emails in real time, that is, we’ll work through this one together.

TIP:  If you have time, check with your IT team about getting access to the ‘My Templates’ MS Add-In ahead of time. Suitable for all levels of MS 365 experience and for snowed-under in-house counsel seeking a warm glow of inspiration. 

Speakers:

Graeme Grovum, Principal, Alpha Creates

Schellie-Jayne Price, Senior Legal Counsel, Chevron 

Closing Keynote: Non-negotiable: Building a culture of innovation and transformation into the legal function. 

Banking, technology and customer behaviour have all changed dramatically over the last 10 years.  Westpac, one of Australia’s major banks, has also undergone significant change in that period.  Against that backdrop, as Westpac’s Group General Counsel, Rebecca Lim and her team have supported the bank in dealing with significant regulatory, reputational and legal matters. In order to do this, and prepare for future challenges, Rebecca and her 150 person strong legal team have re-wired the Westpac legal function to have a much greater focus on innovation and change.  In this closing keynote address, Rebecca will reflect on the changing role of in-house counsel, and why it’s essential (and how) to build innovation and transformation culture and capability into the legal function

Speaker: 

Rebecca Lim, Group General Counsel & Enterprise Executive, Westpac Banking Corporation

A Guided Tour of the ACC Benchmarking Services 

ACC Research provides the data you need to help you excel in your role, make more informed decisions, and efficiently use your company's resources. This on-demand info session will shed light on how the unmatched depth and breadth of ACC's treasure trove of data — strategically organized to support your decision making on spending, work allocation, compensation and operations investments — can help you gain critical insight about where you stand now, so you can lead your legal department during these unparalleled times and clearly show the positive impact of your initiatives.

How to Stretch Your Resources Using Better Processes 

Whether you have a small legal department or a large legal department, we are all being asked to do more with less. Hear observations from experts on how they deployed human capital resources more effectively, including when to use outside counsel, streamline operations, and when to aptly use technology. Review details on how to "shift" or "borrow" resources from other areas in your organization to gain benefit.

Maximizing Value of Support Staff 

This session will be beneficial to any legal function seeking to build capability of their administrative support staff to take on higher value work for the department beyond basic support tasks. GSK has centralized administrative support into the operations function and implemented a standard support model to drive consistency in support expectations, as well as to create opportunities for assistants to take on higher value work and further their development. This session will present a case study and provide examples of tools used to support implementation, including change management/communications, standard work model, competency model and related assessments, and success criteria.

An on-demand encore from X20, this well-received session examined practical tips, tools, and real-world examples on building a strategic plan for Legal Operations. Expert strategists explained processes an best practices for aligning Legal Ops initiatives to the immediate needs of the Legal Department and the longer-term goals and strategic priorities of the GC’s leadership team, which are all connected to the mission of the Company.

ACC members at Zimmer Biomet have begun conducting in-depth reviews of annual law firm rate increases. Starting with the largest spend firms and working to lower spend ones, they have started to review the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of each timekeeper and the law firm itself. In this session, get a review of their process that helps to identify the highest billers and timekeepers with the largest increases over time as well as the history of increases of the firm. Identify methods of how to set targets and utilize the data to strengthen conversations/negotiations with both in-house and outside counsel.