Half of large businesses training and hiring lawyers for a digital transformation

A survey of large British businesses reveals that over half of lawyers (56%) believe that digital transformation is a top priority in their businesses and 45% are actively hiring and upskilling their legal staff to support digital transformation.

Unfortunately, a further 36% of lawyers say they aim for transformation but don’t know where to start, with over a quarter (27%) feel “overwhelmed” by the demands of digital transformation.

Walker Morris gathered the data by surveying 500 general counsel and in-house lawyers at businesses with an annual turnover greater than £100 million.

The whitepaper contains:

• An overview of general counsel and in-house lawyers’ perceptions on digital transformation.
• A ranking of the key barriers which hinder successful digital transformation.
• Examination of the key priority digital transformation topics, including: AI, blockchain, automation, metaverse and cloud.

Crucially, as with any organisation-level transformation project, legal issues come into play. This is especially so for the adoption of nascent and emerging technologies, such as the above – which promise to change the nature of competition across sectors.

As such, the whitepaper also contains insight and guidance as to how to best: 1) navigate legal issues that arise from digital transformation projects, and 2) approach digital transformation projects strategically from a commercial point of view.

Sally Mewies, Head of Technology & Digital at Walker Morris, says: “Cloud technologies have been at the heart of many of our client’s transformational projects in recent years, so it is not surprising to see cloud technologies featuring strongly in our survey.

Although technology moves fast, it doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Sometimes lawyers who don’t deal with technology contracts on a day-to-day basis can be left confused by the jargon. However, there is a lot of information available to assist in-house teams with their contracts and having an experienced project team alongside can be invaluable in terms of picking up on key risks and mitigations.”

Luke Jackson, Legal Director (Technology & Digital) at Walker Morris, adds: “It’s encouraging to see AI and automation on the radar of so many GCs – we are seeing a lot of work across our desks for products that rely on these and undoubtedly each technology has its own contracting challenges. We find that, when dealing with such rapidly-evolving IT, our clients value being able to lean on our experience gained from what else is happening in the market.”

DOWNLOAD: Digital adoption: The transformative power of in-house legal teams