Allen & Overy
- Most senior IT/tech professional: Andrew Brammer, IT and shared services director, reporting to managing partner Andrew Ballheimer
- Other senior tech personnel: Kevin Oliver, head of advanced delivery; Jonathan Brayne, partner and chair of Fuse; Richard Punt, chief executive of Peerpoint; Marc-Henri Chamay, chief executive of aosphere
- Size of tech team: 264
- Main providers and tools: Kira; iManage – document management system; Thomson Reuters Elite – 3E business management system; Intapp – tool for data integration across multiple systems
‘Someone within their PR team must have been given the direction that any press release they issue has to have the word “innovation”,’ quips one partner at a City firm. Yet despite claims that the firm makes more noise than is justified, Allen & Overy (A&O) deserves its reputation of top tech and innovation team among the UK elite.
‘We feel we have given ourselves a competitive advantage on other law firms because we have a proposition that is more mature, so it results in us winning more work of the kind that we want from the clients that we want,’ says Brayne.
As well as a six-year-old, 100-strong legal services centre in Belfast, since 2014 the firm has fielded its 300-strong, flexible interim resourcing business Peerpoint, led by highly rated chief executive Punt.
Meanwhile, incubator Fuse hosts and supports legal tech start-ups. It first selected eight companies out of 84 applicants in September 2017. The second round, in April this year, saw five more established names, including Kira, join three of those from the first cohort. Kira co-founder Noah Waisberg says A&O wanted younger companies to learn from more established ones.
Fully-owned separate company aosphere has developed and sells banks and asset managers online subscription products covering recurring legal and compliance queries in the derivatives and data protection spaces.
Ashurst
- Most senior IT/tech professional: Noel Jordan, chief technology officer, reporting to Jan Gooze-Zijl, chief financial and operations officer
- Other senior tech personnel: Mike Polson, director of Ashurst Advance
- Size of tech team: 160
- Major technology providers and tools: Kira; iManage – document management system
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