Beth Patterson is Chief Legal & Technology Services Office at Allens. When I saw her at ILTA in Washington, Allens had just won the Janders Dean Lexis Nexis Innovation Award for its use of technology to support its lawyers and its clients.

The Allen’s solutions are, of course, not just about technology. Beth Patterson talks of the multi-disciplinary team which Allens has created which, amongst other things, uses predictive coding and advanced analytics to prioritise documents for review for litigation cases and investigations.

The benefits, Beth Patterson says, are not limited to time and money saved. Allens is able to offer alternative pricing models such as a fixed price per document and other ways of predicting cost which are in line with modern client expectations.

The approach developed by Allens goes beyond litigation. Using tools from Neota Logic and Kira, Allens has developed a due diligence system for lease reviews and other property-related transactions.

Allens achieves efficiencies by disaggregating the work and using different working models appropriate to the circumstances. Beth Patterson describes the approach as “client-centric”; many of Allens developments have been co-created with clients to meet the particular needs.

It was stories like this which made ILTA so interesting this year, with a fresh focus on how law firms are adapting to the challenges of serving their clients’ interests and not just on the technology they use to help them do it.

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