AI should be part of the journey, not the journey.
James Grice
In December 2024, Lawfront appointed James as Head of AI and Innovation. With over a decade of experience at Eversheds Sutherland, James is in the process of creating an innovation roadmap for Lawfront partner firms; Farleys, Fisher Jones Greenwood, Nelsons, Slater Heelis and the newly announced Brachers, with a focus on addressing challenges related to operational efficiency, collaboration, and client service delivery.
Tell us about your Career
So I guess the first thing I tend to always clarify when I get into any conversation about career, especially given that I work in law, is that I'm not a lawyer, and have no aspiration to be one. I'm a people-focused technologist at heart.
I'm not super techy and I don't pretend to be. I haven't written a line of code in my life, and probably never will. My focus is on the benefits that people get from technology and how it can enhance what people do. I got satisfaction from showing people things they didn't already know, leveraging technology in a way that saved them time, made them more efficient, and added something extra to whatever they were doing. I think because of that, earlier in my career during my days on the IT Service Desk, the management team around me saw the potential for me to move into a more training and change-based role rather than the more traditional, second and third line support progression.
To me the idea of standing up in front of a classroom of people and teaching technology terrified me, but it was probably the best thing that ever happened, It showed me a path to something that I ended up enjoying, learning the basics of how to teach people, how to educate people and help them see the benefits of technology.
I had the training room I inherited changed from a traditional classroom setup to a more dynamic setting, where I could stand up, be seen and present from the front of the room, which helped me better engage my audience. Over the years my role evolved from typical desktop trainer to project focused training and wider change. I became a qualified change manager, and a qualified project manager,
My director at that firm left to join Eversheds Sutherland and I followed six months later to be the IT training manager.
Tell us about your role at Eversheds Sutherland
I spent about 18 months in that training manager role when I was presented with the opportunity to be a business relationship manager, which felt a natural extension of the skills that I had developed.
I got to spend a lot of time with our real estate practice group, really immersing myself in what they did, and how they worked. My project management skills came in really useful when I picked up a project building a case management system for that practice group. It was my first taste of custom development from scratch. Over about a year, we built out an MVP and we delivered it to the business, which we then went on to win an external award for,
I was then set the challenge and given a bigger team to look at a wider client platform transformation. An end-to-end platform that all clients could engage with, that would run case management for the entire organization - a very ambitious task. I don't think we ever really thoroughly met the objective, but we learned an awful lot on the way.
We did develop some interesting client-facing solutions. I had the benefit of building what were the foundations of the team that I would go on to run for several years, layering on new skills in product development, process reengineering, solution design, understanding client needs and stakeholder management.
I think I changed job title, probably on average, once a year for about five years, not because I was job hopping around, but because whatever I'd done in the previous year led to an evolution of that role and new responsibility.
I transitioned from a relationship manager role to the client platform lead, and then global innovation lead in 2018. In this role, I started to look at firm-wide innovation and I was given a broad objective of “delivering something innovative for clients”, A very broad objective and the sort of blank canvas challenge I thrive on, this ultimately led me to design thinking.
Design thinking as a methodology was well established by this point, albeit not so much in professional services. I think we were one of the first to bring it to legal, as a way to deliver human-centered solutions or services. I trained to become a Facilitator at the Design Thinking Academy in London and learned how to take a step back, deep-dive with the people that you're building for, understand the problem that they've got, validate the ideas you've got makes sense, and then developed a solution with them that solves those needs. We would use Lean Six Sigma from a process optimisation and engineering perspective, and other standardized methodologies that formed our Legal Service Design Framework.
In my last 18 months at Eversheds Sutherland, my focus shifted heavily towards AI. I spent two years looking at the AI agenda and how the rise of ChatGPT and Gen AI would affect us.
Design thinking as a methodology is a way of delivering solutions to problems that are grounded in real people's issues, rather than an assumption-based approach.
What were your KPIs in this role?
I was never really heavily measured on any specific KPI, partly because every project was different. We used to talk about client stickiness, client retention, and keeping clients happy. My team was sent in when there wasn't an obvious solution to a client problem, and so we were very much focused on our top-tier clients and doing whatever was needed to meet their needs.
There were certain projects with a very clear objective. One example was to reduce the amount of time and costs associated with a complex worktype we did for a major client. This was in order to meet the challenging fee expectations of the client, and to reduce risks in the delivery of this work.
I would go into every new financial year not necessarily knowing what it was I was going to deliver that year because it would depend on what problems were presented to us.
Tell us about your role at Lawfront
My role as Innovation and AI lead is to look at ways to provide the same excellent service to customers that our partner firms are known for, with more efficient processes, thoughtful implementation of AI and other innovative technologies that can drive revenue without compromising on quality. This is refreshing because a lot of people think innovation means automation, process engineering or cost-cutting. That's not what we're trying to do here.
How much do you consider marketing in your role?
I work with our head of digital marketing, who was a new starter themselves just before I joined. We've had a few interesting conversations about how we can work together and I think for me, it is important that Lawfront is seen as an innovative organisation.
From a messaging point of view, we want people to see us as innovative and we want people to know that as a firm, we are trying to do things differently, without compromising service.
As I say, I am not a marketeer, it's not an area of expertise for me. I rely on those people who do call it their expertise to tell me how we can support them, but I'm not a fan of innovation theatre, innovation for the sake of innovation.
Legal is where I ply my trade at the moment, but I think there's a lot of value in me being industry agnostic because there's a lot that we can learn from other industries and other sectors.
Legal traditionally has been slow to adapt. All businesses need to innovate.
What advice can you give to law firms thinking of innovating?
One of the keys to digital transformation is the standardisation of processes, so you can automate them. If you try to automate bad process you just end up with inefficient automation. Get it to its most efficient state before you layer on the tech.
Legal traditionally has been slow to adopt new technologies, and that's something that most people would acknowledge. However, the Gen AI boom has been different, and I think one of the things I saw at Eversheds Sutherland and continues to be the case at Lawfront, is that they are taking the rise of generative AI, the power of AI and the potential impacts it can have on law far more seriously. They're looking at the benefits that it brings, but also, of course, all the risks that come with that.
For law firms thinking of creating a similar role, or understanding how to create an innovation roadmap, I have 4 key pieces of advice:
1 - Understand and get to know stakeholders - what they do and how they do it.
2 - Ask the question - ‘who are we innovating for?’
3 - Have access to clients and be client-facing.
4 - Create client-centric KPIs and focus on client success.
About I-COM
I-COM was founded in 2004, starting with just a handful of employees. Since then, we’ve gone from strength to strength, growing to a 30+ person team of passionate digital marketers, web developers, designers, project managers, and a fantastic leadership team.
Over the years we’ve had the pleasure of working with a great range of clients and are proud to currently lead the digital marketing strategy for several high-profile law firms, including JMW, Switalskis, Walker Foster, TJL Solicitors, and Graham Coffey & Co.
In 2019, we decided to become an employee-owned business focusing on delivering the best work for our clients. As a result, I-COM is still growing and ever-evolving.
