Legal Sector Resilience: Digital transformation for law firms

Join us as we aim to unlock the secrets of digital transformation for the legal sector, as our host Emma sits down with Myles Peart, Technical Director at Wales-grown NetSec.
 
Myles sheds light on why digital transformation is not a one-size-fits-all process and the essential role of choosing the right partner to navigate this complex journey. You'll gain an understanding of NetSec's innovative approach and their collaboration with well-known brands, making this episode a must-listen for any ambitious legal practice eager to thrive in a tech-driven world.

This episode also dives into the significance of data security, featuring insights on the role of a fractional Data Protection Officer (DPO) and the necessity of cyber awareness training for global expansion. Additionally, we navigate the intricacies of cloud migration, emphasising both security and cost considerations, and explore sustainable practices like using refurbished technology to reduce costs while maintaining operational efficiency. 

For more information and signposting, visit the insights section on legalnewswales.com and use the 'Legal Sector Resilience Podcast' filter.

Chapters

• 0:00 Digital Transformation in the Legal Sector
• 11:39 Adapting to Technological Growth in Business
• 22:03 Navigating Cloud Services and Technology Solutions

Transcript

Emma: 0:00

Welcome to the Legal Sector Resilience Podcast, a series of one-to-one conversations with the people who are passionate about helping you create strong, relevant and thriving legal practices, led by me, emma Waddingham, editor of Legal News Wales, expect discussions around technology, pricing, people, culture, compliance, leadership, finance and more to help inspire you to confidently invest in the tools and solutions. To help inspire you to confidently invest in the tools and solutions to help elevate, sustain and grow your legal practice. So I'm joined today by Miles Peart, technical Director at NETSEC, one of our latest community partners and digital transformation specialists offering comprehensive IT solutions to multiple sectors, including legal. Hello, miles, welcome.

Myles Peart: 0:44

Hi, how are you doing?

Emma: 0:45

I'm good, thank you. I've invited Myles to talk through what we mean by transformation, particularly in light of the legal sector, how to prepare your law firm for digital change and growth, and the benefit of a strategic, proactive mindset and flexible IT plans and partnerships. So we're going to share the experience of other ambitious businesses in NetSec's client back and ecosystem. Netsec is committed to delivering positive change into the legal sector, and Miles and I have spoken offline at length about some of their exciting plans, some of the clients they already have, and so that would be a really good opportunity to set the scene.

Emma: 1:20

There's lots of conversations around transformation in the legal sector, whether that's in conveyancing, particularly practice areas, or for the business of law as a whole, and there's lots of eyes on what's working in other firms, so it'll be a great opportunity for us to talk about that. And obviously, tech isn't an optional add on anymore for any business. It's a fundamental driver of success. So tell us a little bit more about NetSec, who you support and some of your key drives and missions when you're working with your clients and partners.

Myles Peart: 1:50

Thank you for that, Emma. I think I'll start off by firstly saying that we're a Cardiff-born IT business. I think that's, for us, something that we're really proud of and we're doing lots in the local community, within wales, of course, outside of Wales too, and we're a unified partner as well, which we can come on to shortly - around what unification means. I think that's a really important word these days and something a lot of people are interested in. We're a unified partner for SMEs and enterprises across the UK, and our expertise extends into networking, security, servers, cloud and cybersecurity, and we've gone on a journey over time and those areas are something that we continually work on to ensure that we have innovation within those, that we're actually driving real change to the different sectors and different businesses. We've worked with some household names over the years which something as I guess, as a startup, n ot a lot of people can say they've done that!

Myles Peart: 3:07

And they range from Debenhams, Gregory Group, Ty Haven, Harding Retail, Kairos Group, now known as so, yeah, a lot of big names there, and we've learned a lot throughout the journey. So I think it's something that I'm excited to share with the legal community, to see not just what firms are doing, but what other companies are doing, and I'm sure there's lots that can be learned from that. Absolutely, and talking around what transformation is. That's a big part of our business, and why we want to partner with you guys really is to show firms actually this is what it looks like, and what we stand for as well as a business is simplicity, proactiveness, customer-centric, being vendor agnostic and, ultimately, growth-minded.

Emma: 3:58

So helping people improve and reach their goals, and one thing that really stood out when we, when we first met, before we we became partners, was the fact that you do support a lot of SMEs and fast growth as well, which is absolutely where the legal sector in Wales sits Multiple SME firms in the main, lots of people without that in-house knowledge and so relying on outsourced experts to support them and bring them the ideas and approach and mindset from other businesses. But I particularly like this idea of growing as a business transforms, and that's something that Netsec really excels.

Myles Peart: 4:36

Thank you yeah something we're certainly focused on.

Emma: 4:46

As regular listeners will know, we work really closely with different businesses to make sure they're the right fit and that you can provide the knowledge and the insight that we need for our audience, and we do a lot of due diligence around our partnership, so it's really exciting to bring you in today, as I say, and introduce you more widely to the rest of the Legal News World community. What does transformation mean? What does that look like for for some of your clients?

Myles Peart: 5:12

I think transformation is unique for every business. So I think for those who's listening, what it means for you today might mean something different for another firm tomorrow. So I think it's really important to understand that. I think a lot of the time you see things on social media and you think you need to be like other other firms or they may be having certain success around technology, that doesn't mean that that's going to work for you. So I think where we've sort of seen value as being a partner is making firms realise what that looks like for them, so giving them clarity and almost trying to simplify the journey, because I think the tech landscape is just forever changing. Nobody can keep up with it.

Myles Peart: 6:01

Luckily for us, we spend a lot of time understanding those market changes, what trends are, what actually works, and actually trialing and testing a lot of these new technologies. So I think when you choose that partner to go on that journey with choosing one that has that, those abilities and that passion for actually this might have worked great in this scenario, but this is not going to work for everyone. So we need to have more, I guess more more tools in our bag, should I say, to be able to help all different size firms, um, but also a massive part of of driving transformation, which is ultimately change, is budget, budget resources, time and the word culture, which sometimes surprises people around h ow culture relates to technology.

Emma: 6:54

It does, massively.

Myles Peart: 6:56

It's something that you have to have buy-in from key stakeholders and then from that you have to have an awareness of everyone else within the business to want to educate on this stuff and know, perhaps, how to use technology better or why we're putting these technologies in place, because I think, ultimately, the culture around law firms is often it's difficult to change things, it's difficult to change things. So I think a massive part of it is that culture education, like I said, and ultimately buying from the partners, the directors, and then it feeds down from there.

Emma: 7:34

And it's so difficult, isn't it? Because actually there's a lot of ambition to invest in new technology. Obviously, some of the challenges are where to start. Other challenges are the fact there's such a diverse offering within a lot of law firms, so you know there might be a greater need in one particular area or not another, and of course, you're spending a lot of money on one resource. It has to pay off.

Emma: 7:56

Equally, things like recruitment costs are rising, salaries are having to rise and also the fact that not every piece of technology is a perfect fit, and I think we've got really high expectations around tech and what it can do for us, and particularly in our personal lives and the apps on our phones. But then in the workplace there's always something that you have to, a compromise that has to be made, that it's not quite going to get there yet we might have to plug something else in, and so there's never going to be a one-size-fits-all and offers all. You're always going to have to build and add in various various assets to to make that kind of piece that works for you, so I can understand why. There are those barriers and challenges in many law firms.

Myles Peart: 8:44

Yeah, massively, and the transformation is about breaking those barriers down. I think it's not always a blank canvas type scenario. Unless you're a brand new startup company, you want to do this stuff from day one. You're always going to have people who maybe resist that change or question it, which then delays it.

Myles Peart: 9:07

I think all firms can't be expected to almost know where to start um this is where partner is really valuable, and we recently worked with a company called Tend legal, which I'm really proud of, I guess, to be partnered with a company like that. F rom day one really, they've really been honest in their approach - that they haven't got everything figured out.

Myles Peart: 9:31

They said we do need support. We're seeing the cracks starting to appear. You know, we've scaled quite, quite quickly, um, they're a remote-based firm, um, and technology is very much at the forefront of the director's minds in that case. So that's the perfect type scenario of where we come along and look to help that sort of customer, because they want to change, they want to improve, and for us then we have a platform to say we can look at your budget, what's your primary priorities at the moment, and we build a roadmap out from that then. So we can share more on that in this podcast, hopefully, but a great case to show that this is possible.

Myles Peart: 10:16

We still work with them to this day.

Emma: 10:22

As you should be, and I know we've put a case study together that's now on the website, so we'll share that as well on Tend Legal's relationship with NetSec and explain a little bit more. Now a lot of firms who are experiencing fast growth, which again brings us challenges.

Myles Peart: 10:55

These firms are embrace transformation. I think they're the ones who maybe will actually see more benefit from it from from my experience, because they have to be agile, you have to be able to scale up and down quickly, they have to be able to maybe react in a quick way and, ultimately, if you don't have an investment understanding of technology, it's going to hold you back. So, yeah, not in the law So, while such, but a perfect example that we've recently is Kairos Group, who I mentioned at the start, now known as Nugent. .

Myles Peart: 11:32

I'll repeat that because they'll probably tell me off for calling them their old name!

Emma: 11:37

And they're in the gaming space, is that right? It's a completely different type of arena, but again a very fast growth organisation. Tell us what kind of industry they're in

Myles Peart: 11:51

I think gaming is a huge part of their business but not the only focus.

Myles Peart: 11:57

They do a lot now with food retail businesses, they work with PepsiCo and they do a lot in that space, but then they have customers like Porsche, K rispy Kreme, etc, so lots of high demand clients that are looking for that level of slickness in terms of their delivery of their services . They are very much a digital based company as well in terms of what they're doing. E verything they do is um delivered through, I guess, digital platforms, and that's where the future is right so those types of companies are prioritising digital marketing, for example.

Myles Peart: 12:50

They spend so much time, effort and money on testing and trying what works and what doesn't, and that's a clear example of that works for them. So they want to work with a partner that can help them achieve their goals in a similar sense. So we've done a lot of work with them with our fractional data protection officer service, which again is another great offering for firms who are looking to grow, maybe expand globally, and don't understand how you should control that data. So we've done a lot of work with NewGen around how they expand into the US, potentially Asia, and making sure that they've got the right controls around the data in place and the right advisory.

Myles Peart: 13:33

I think that's again one of the key things I think is, with those fast growth companies, they very much prioritise the growth, but their mindset is still as a small business. Growth, um, but their mindset is still as a small business. Oh, it's that transition to go from a small business to a big business, but they forget the mindset part. So well, this DPO services. It enhances their understanding of, actually we need to start doing things like a big business now.

Emma: 14:16

of very well-established high street firms. You know big firms becoming Wales more corporate in their mindset and commercial because they've changed the, the structure of the firm. Lots of them are now incorporated, have been incorporated for a number of years, and so I'm kind of and establishing themselves internally as a that's through succession planning and people and recruitment and culture and well-being recruitment, up to how. They're asking 'what our business that enable us to do what we do? And I think just ' the

Emma: 14:58

I think that's where you know lots of the events that Legal News Wales offer aim to open as many doors to different vendors and suppliers that we trust to say, look, pick their brains, they're very consultative, ask them the questions that you don't have those skills necessarily in-house. These people are here to give you that knowledge.

Myles Peart: 15:39

Again, I think there's a lot of variables to factor into that change. Typically, though, we see that in a six to 12 month period of working with a client. The reason for that is it gives us time to put the right tools in place, have the right conversations.

Myles Peart: 16:00

We sit down with customers as often as possible. As a standard, it's every three months. If we can do it monthly, we always encourage that. But again, it's finding the time. But over time we find that firms actually start to make the time because they see value in those conversations.

Myles Peart: 16:20

And then also it's putting what you need in place initially, but then actually creating a roadmap to say, actually in the medium to long term, we're going to start introducing these changes. So, um, a new thing we've recently introduced to a lot of our customers is cyber awareness training, because that's a massive part around the education and culture within a firm. B ut initially they don't sort of understand the benefits of that and maybe see training as a time-wasting exercise or another expense to have to.

Myles Peart: 17:36

to our, we core at NetS ec of being vendor agnostic, um, and I think there's a. , or it might be device monitoring or training, wherever that may be, but, again, not every and. The smaller businesses need simplicity, whereas the larger businesses want . I and grow with them, so it needs to be feature rich. So, again, we always put our customers first and then build the solution around them.

Emma: 18:09

And you're dealing with not only, as you talked about, the servers and the cloud side, you've got the applications that people are working with, from Microsoft right through to the hardware as well, and the different ways of being able to scale the businesses. The hardware requirements change and tech evolves in that space too, being quite flexible. I think that's something we've spoken about quite a lot when we've we've met and and certainly in terms of the the case studies that we put out um, that need for your clients to have a flexible partner to be able to grow with them as well. T hat's something that strongly believe in, because not everyone can make everything happen at once.

Myles Peart: 18:51

So what we try and do is is make things bespoke to each customer, give them a modular approach, um, offer things like add-ons, because when the time is right, maybe that education is there or they have the time and resources, then we can always include that. But I think we wouldn't advertise ourselves as a transformation partner if we didn't feel like we could deliver the full end-to-end spectrum of application device cloud security around that. So I think for us it's showing that as a partner, we understand not just one piece of the puzzle but the majority of it. I'm not saying we understand it all, of course, but leveraging our partnerships with Microsoft, with Cisco and with other household names, we really can expand our horizons in that sense and sense and and help partners in in the way that they needed the most.

Myles Peart: 19:50

I think sometimes as technical people have a view on how things should be, but actually the business owners and partners understand their business better than anyone else. So it's sometimes taking a step back and seeing what's going to work for them, because they have a history to the firm. I'm sure, and you know they might have said actually in the past, this doesn't work for us for this reason. So for us, it's taking that into account as well.

Emma: 20:15

Yeah, absolutely, but equally offering clarity on the different options and solutions, whether that's, you know, from enabling to do more on in terms of using technology to offer more for their clients, so that maybe pulling a quote online or being able to contact them, and and facilitate things through plugins on the website, to as you say, working within the office space itself as well. And and while there are some firms that are coming, people are coming back into the office and, for various reasons, people want to be more present in the office. There are still a lot of hybrid activity. Equally, there's a lot of new office growth as well - fit outs of new offices and expansion and acquisition, so having that solid, flexible tech piece and support behind you is is increasingly important. Are there any other challenges, in particular for law firms when looking at some of their IT needs and the risks around it?

Myles Peart: 21:19

I think one of the things I wanted to talk about is the word 'cloud'. I think everyone knows about it now. It's taken uh some time to what we find is technology. Usually, new technology takes around 10 years to bed in but cloud is definitely mainstream now and I think that's a challenge because, like I said earlier on, around the pressures of people seeing what other firms are doing is huge - and perhaps they're leading the way, but that might not be the way for your firm. So I think it's the challenge is the perception that the cloud is going to solve all your problems and that's the right move for your firm.

Myles Peart: 22:06

A lot of these cloud services are designed to host your service, not provide complete cyber protection, for example. Okay, so people migrate to the cloud and forget about the security element, or they move to the cloud and forget about the cost of it. At the end of the day, you're using a resource of someone else's and there's a cost to that. So we have seen unfortunate circumstances where companies have moved to the cloud and had astronomical bills and gone all in on that and had to revert quite quickly.

Myles Peart: 22:44

So we'd say it's always worth a conversation with your partner to say, actually, is this the right approach for us? Does it give us the resilience that we need? Because ultimately, you know the cloud's in a way out of your control that we need because ultimately, you know the cloud's in a way out of your control, it's the provider's problem, so if they have an outage, you don't have any fallback so often. The hybrid cloud approach works well, but that's definitely something that you know an expert should advise you on, and it ties into your overall business strategy.

Myles Peart: 23:15

If you're looking to expand globally, maybe the cloud is a great option. But if you're local to Wales and you don't plan to move from there, then I don't think there's any problem with sticking to physical servers and keeping your applications on-premise. I guess there's always a plus or minus to that you know, there's more upkeep, potentially more upfront costs.

Myles Peart: 23:39

With physical servers, you can't leverage a subscription model, but long-term maybe that gives you more security and you can sleep at night knowing actually we have control over that and physically we can see it, touch it. I know that sounds crazy, but actually be able to turn it on and off again, as everyone loves to say in IT, but you can actually do that.

Myles Peart: 24:21

Asset know your data's on those also a devices and those people ultimately have a responsibility they need to upkeep for the firm. So I think that's one that's quite often overlooked. And with that as well, you know, I think us as a partner, we always want to help people improve the bottom line. At the end of the day, a lot of firms, uh, prioritize that and and of course that's understandable um, asset management improves that you prioritise decisions on what equipment you do need. Asset needs the best laptop in the world. Maybe the partners in the firm actually prefer using mac over windows, and and there's benefit to that for them. Um, you can't make Mac decisions Windows you don't have visibility of what you have, how You being utilized. Um, and actually sometimes the people you're doing those administrative jobs perhaps they're forgotten about utilised but Actually, people who need it the most yeah yeah, are perhaps and that can slow down your firm massively.

Emma: 27:02

because we all do that with our cars and our phones!

Emma: 27:07

It goes back to the things that we do in our personal life. We're almost so far ahead of what we're doing within the business and but it comes back down to, we can be a bit more spontaneous with device decisions outside of the office. Of course we can, because we're a smaller number of decision makers in the household. But when you're looking at a business there are those kind of more people. There's more spoons in the pot, obviously, so it's a bit harder. But if you've got a plan in place to go back to, then you can. There is still the ability to be spontaneous because you've got this solid plan in place.

Myles Peart: 27:43

Something else we've prioritised as a partner is to be more sustainable with technology, and so we now have a refurbished offering. Firms can benefit from up to 40% off what you would pay as a new price, and it goes through a process called BSI KiteMark, which actually certifies that equipment. So you have a grading system. If it's G rade then quite often this equipment almost looks brand new, you might have a new keyboard and screen that's repurposed.

Emma: 28:16

So I think sustainability is is a focus of ours too and something that we've committed to try and improve on and 100% a focus for the legal community that we interact with, particularly around trying to push towards carbon neutral .

Myles Peart: 28:38

And we've taken it one step further as well. We now offer a buyback scheme as well. So actually, if you're looking to replace that equipment, there's quite often value in that. So we can buy that equipment back off you and that will either fund, obviously, your new purchase or deduct from that. We're trying to make things easy and simple as part of that transition.

Myles Peart: 29:02

Data and I'll just finish on quickly as well. I won't dive into them too much. But data storage is another huge problem, Mostly around what we call

Myles Peart: 29:21

It should what your role is in the company and what access you get. w t a

Emma: 29:32

Me to law firms who deal

Emma: 30:26

the same with their approach to IT and I would presume as well, this stifles transformation. Are your ESG then, naturally by the culture working , more proactive in their thinking around businesses can be / take a which a? I

Myles Peart: 30:43

Reactiveness is a real problem for smaller companies and there's a reason behind that. A ll their time and effort is driven into the operation of the business, the service itself, making sales or firefighting. It's the day-to-day and I get that. You know we have those problems ourselves and we try and streamline to to navigate those. But naturally, in any small business, people wear multiple hats and it's often down that list of priorities.

Myles Peart: 32:12

It starts with exactly what you said before - to have those conversations with experts but make them regular enough, because you can't expect to have value out of those conversations if you're three, six months behind the tech market, and it changes every day.

Myles Peart: 32:30

I think a monthly or quarterly if that's what works for you IT um, then they're probably advised. Um, and I think there's a perception that firms think if I don't from my partner, they're doing something right, because we don't should have any problems. So we don't hear from them, and that's great. But it's actually the complete opposite. You could be hearing from your partner. They should be saying to you There's this wasn't right, we suggest this change, or here's how you can enhance this area or this system. Um, there's never a scenario where the partner can look at a firm and say there's

Myles Peart: 33:07

nothing to do, we have everything solved yeah just like a golden bullet type moment that that just doesn't happen.

Myles Peart: 33:14

So I think that's that's a case of turning a something for firm owners! themselves when was the last time we spoke to our partner, um, and and maybe encourage that? And if they're not open to that, then I think that's something to potentially consider changing, because without those conversations, how can you improve things? It's going to go back to that reactiveness and just fixing things, which you know IT is a lot more than that.

Emma: 33:42

Of course it's not just turning the plug on and off. No, absolutely not.

Myles Peart: 33:47

Yeah, absolutely, and with that as well, then you can promote what you need from your partner in those conversations. So one of those things is and don't leave one is interesting. I think most people . Get this huge surge now in ai. Everyone's interested in it because people are looking at things and thinking how can I benefit from that? How is that going to make my day easier? So those updates are really valuable. They don't have to be in in crazy detail but just knowing what microsoft's releasing or what apple have done, or you know, maybe an update, um that you should know about you might unlock features which actually that's going to make your day.

Myles Peart: 34:33

You're not taking advantage of it and you're paying for. S o license or you pay a lot of money for that device and, yeah, use it. It's there to Myles, um. So I think, it's not leaving technology on the table which could be used um, and it's getting more out of what you've got, which, again, is a massive part of transformation. It's not all about putting new investment into new technology.

Emma: 34:58

It's looking at what you have and further enhancing that and so if there's anything you want to leave with our listeners as a as a kind of a lasting piece, miles, what would that be? Um?

Myles Peart: 35:16

The tech space needs this. it

Myles Peart: 35:26

We welcome of it, needs that of human interaction and We're is a business is people before technology, because tech is great, but without the people buying into feedback, then the tech is no good to anyone. So, yeah, I think for us is we're a Cardiff based company, we've got offices in the heart of Cardiff and we welcome anyone to have that conversation with us. Um, you know, we're massively, uh, consultative in what we do. There's no sort of obligation to have in that conversation. Um, if you've been to our offices, it's a lovely place.

Myles Peart: 36:06

I really appreciate you inviting me on this podcast Emma, it's been great speaking with you, really a pleasure.

Emma: 36:16

We've got lots more plans, we've got some round tables coming up, so if anyone would like to join us and talk about transformation um across the the legal sector, and particularly in their business then obviously drop me line at emma@legalnewswales. com.

Emma: 36:30

Myles, I'm really looking forward to catching up with you again soon. Thank you for joining us!

Emma: 36:42

All our episodes of the Legal Sector Resilience podcast are available on legalnewsworldscom with further signposting or on all good podcasting apps.