Meet Michelle Mahoney
Executive Director, Innovation, King & Wood Mallesons
Michelle is in a rare position within the legal sector. Innovation is being unleashed as KWM pushes to reach the full potential of its market positioning and expansion throughout Asia. She is tasked with spearheading a different perspective on commercial thinking and the client experience. Her broad ranging remit is to generate a culture of creative partnerships with its clients.
You can’t make holistic changes to a culture without executive belief in what you’re trying to do.
Michelle Mahoney, Executive Director, Innovation at international law firm King & Wood Mallesons is in a rare position within the legal sector. She is tasked with spearheading a different perspective on commercial thinking and the client experience. Her broad ranging remit is to generate a culture that is no longer constrained by 6 minute charging intervals to one of creative partnerships with its clients. Innovation is being unleashed as KWM pushes to reach the full potential of its market positioning and expansion throughout Asia.
The legal sector is not known for taking the lead in adapting to changing business or technological landscapes. But, like many other sectors, it is being motivated by customer demand to accept it has to either be rolled over by automation, standardisation, the spectre of improving cognitive computing – or to grasp it, leverage it and secure the future.
Three buckets of innovation
Michelle identifies the new areas that are transforming how the legal sector navigates the future: working smarter with process refinement and digitised service apps; technological breakthroughs such as blockchain and cognitive computing; and advising on new areas of law.
“These lead to a refinement in how we think, how we cement deep client relationships, and expand our offering. Each firm will be taking differing amounts from each ‘bucket of innovation’ depending on the mix of internal and external drivers. Internal productivity has a huge impact on margins and prompts many firms to start with this low hanging fruit. Reduced demand or clients encouraging their law firms to do it smarter results in positive change and positive impact. Prioritising how much is applied from each area is largely driven by underlying capability and resourcing,” Michelle says.
The most significant change for the sector is the very clear client focus. While companies strive to produce their own innovative products and services, governments are scrabbling to create the legal frameworks that will not only keep up with digital disruption, but also regulate new developments. This frenetic activity is opening new opportunities for law firms offering services beyond traditional legal compliance. The marketplace is looking to innovative partners and firms are helping those they represent to be competitive, stay ahead of regulatory changes and keep abreast of market trends. New products are also supporting clients to work smarter – be they apps or systems.
Partnerships and stakeholder management when investing in ‘the new’ technology is redefining what legal partnerships look like – inside and out. Typically, firms tend to run on an annual budget cycle with profits distributed to partners at year end. With financial models that don’t retain earnings, law firms don’t often carry R&D. Michelle describes the constraints as: “You’re taking money out of partners’ hands so you absolutely have to have senior buy in.” Then it’s a matter of democratising innovation. Since 2015, KWM’s innovation strategy has been a key priority for its annual focus, to drive business success. The firm-wide, crowd sourced ideas are reviewed against set criteria before being clearly defined and cascaded through the organisation: “This brings fresh thinking with a top down imprimatur for everyone to have a go”.
KWM has a very clear position on what and why it is innovating. Staff have in their personal plans where they’re supporting innovation. They are encouraged to demonstrate things like new ways to participate in events, collaborate with clients, or leverage language capabilities. “Everyone is encouraged to contribute because the firm’s culture is built on valuing improvement – it becomes a natural mindset. Consistently, KWM is reinforcing the innovation vision, it’s part of the firm’s marketing initiatives as we build our creative reputation,” Michelle says. The Innovation team, led by Michelle, then helps bring those ideas to life by facilitating development, marshalling resources, bringing to bear whatever it takes – marketing, processes and toolsets, IT and training.
King & Wood Mallesons – a global elite firm for the next century www.kwm.com Recognised as one of the world’s most innovative law firms, King & Wood Mallesons offers a different perspective to commercial thinking and the client experience. With access to a global platform, a team of over 2000 lawyers in 26 locations around the world works with clients to help them understand local challenges, navigate through regional complexity, and to find commercial solutions that deliver a competitive advantage for their clients. As a leading international law firm headquartered in Asia, they help clients to open doors and unlock opportunities as they look to Asian markets to unleash their full potential. Connecting Asia to the world, and the world to Asia. They work with clients, focusing not just on what clients’ want, but how they want it. Always pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved, reshaping the legal market and challenging their clients to think differently about what a law firm can be.
You need to deeply understand the issue before you start – do we really have to have flying cars because the traffic’s bad or should we share cars? Problems don’t need to be earth-shattering, just a frustration. And their answers can be quite straightforward.
– Michelle Mahoney
All individuals interviewed for this series were selected based on their professional standing and experience, and are wholly independent of any commercial relationship with Konica Minolta. Their comments and insights were provided freely without any form of payment. None of the comments provided constitute an endorsement of Konica Minolta products or services.
