Freeths: 'Encouraging people to work smarter - not harder'

LIF24 sponsor Freeths is a leading full-service UK law firm, with 1,000+ freethinking colleagues all working together to make the future better for its  people, clients and communities.

Established more than 200 years ago, its guiding values – smart, bold, and together - are its momentum.

Freeths is friendly, straight-talking and uses the expertise and integrity of its team to deliver smart legal services and a dynamic, inclusive and rewarding experience.

It is trusted by leading household names - from Aldi, Tarmac, Experian and Lloyds Bank, to charities, universities, private individuals – to think beyond the norm and get the best results.

The firm, which has 13 offices nationally, is in The Times Best law firms 2023 and consistently ranks in the top tier of the Legal 500 and Chambers guides.

Director, Emma Anderson, told Innovative Leicestershire why the firm is sponsoring Leicestershire Innovation Festival 2024. 

Why is innovation important to your organisation?

 
Any organisation that fails to innovate and evolve will eventually fade into obscurity.

That is as true in law as any other profession, and never more so than today.  

The legal services market is highly competitive, and emergent AI technologies mean that we need to embrace the opportunity to reinvent the ways we work. 

Our commitment to client service excellence never changes, but the ways by which we meet those goals must continuously evolve.

How does your organisation encourage innovation?

Freeths has always celebrated a freethinking culture.  Individuality, ideas, and creativity are actively encouraged.  

We regularly run design thinking workshops, hackathons, retrospectives, and other facilitative workshop formats that encourage our staff to rethink their working processes, and challenge our assumptions about client needs. 

We also invested early in cloud technologies, and are leading the market in adoption of legal AI, in order to empower our lawyers to innovate further in their service provision. 

Freeths was proud to win Technology Team of the Year at the British Legal Tech Awards 2023.

The festival theme is ‘Small Change, Big Impact’ - when has Freeths seen this?

 We are the first law firm to adopt Green Meadow’s Document Drafter to automate more and drive efficiencies.

We are also working with them to establish integrations with some public interfaces (Companies House, Royal Mail, Land Registry).  

When document automation is used, we have measured time savings of 20-50% in task completion and turnaround times.

Another example: we have implemented is a bespoke digital skills training programme covering the various applications that are relevant to both fee earning and support staff.

These consist of bite-size courses that encourage all staff to improve their efficiency, to drive productivity and to ensure that our people work smarter, not harder.