Foot Anstey: A Window to the Client World
Originally Published in Briefing Magazine, November 2021
While law firms have long strived to get better visibility over their clients’ needs and behaviours, Foot Anstey CTO Dave Bloor explains how his firm has found a portal drive to technological transformation, with help from Peppermint Technology’s data architecture and CRM tools.
If there’s one competitive factor law firms have been striving to make progress on, both before and since the pandemic, it’s the desire to build stronger, stickier client relationships. At Foot Anstey, finding ways to improve the client experience has been one of the top priorities for Chief Technology Officer Dave Bloor, who joined the firm in June 2018 and has brought onboard experience from industries beyond the legal world – namely retail and the automotive sector.
A key enabler of his approach in the last few years has been technology: “Coming from outside legal, it was interesting how far behind the industry was in terms of digital transformation. A lot of the way legal matters are dealt with are still very ‘human’ – which is really good in parts, but quite inefficient in others.”
Bloor has set about bringing onboard new technologies to both increase the firm’s efficiency and enhance one of its core values – that of transparency with clients, which, he adds, is intended to give the firm a competitive advantage by offering additional value: “There’s a huge opportunity in legal to innovate – in everyday life, we’re used to a level of convenience via apps and technology that’s absent in the broader legal market”.
One factor in this strategy, he says, is enabling clients to self-serve through client portals – a capability the firm has been implementing with Peppermint Technology in the last year. “Historically, when we created a precedent or template in the course of completing a matter for a client, we had to resend it to them every time they wanted to use it again. A portal gives clients access to their templates 24/7.” In addition to precedents, templates and other legal documents, Foot Anstey will be making billing information accessible through its portal technology, making for smoother conversations during and after a matter is completed – and the beginning of what he calls the “Amazon experience”.
Changing Channels
But portals are just a part of Foot Anstey’s new, “omnichannel” approach to how clients interact with the firm. Instead of the “multichannel” approach in which clients interact with Foot Anstey across multiple systems and data stores, all interactions the client might make connect to a single source of data, Bloor explains. Building out that data architecture has been significantly enabled by Peppermint, he adds. “Previously, a lot of data was being kept prisoner within its separate system – we couldn’t access it easily and use it to drive insights for the client or for us as a business. Now, our data and our systems are interoperable and set up for the way we want to deliver client experiences.”
That change, in turn, has allowed the firm to offer a more customer-focused experience. “Clients all have the same needs across industries, whether that’s shopping online or managing the lead time of an expensive car – I see the same desire in legal for updates and more information on a matter at key points in the process.”
Another key component of this transformation has been adopting Peppermint’s customer relationship management (CRM) tool, Bloor says, implemented in Q1 of 2021. This sits behind the client portals and allows the firm to automate the flow of information, right from the point of onboarding. “The person who has spoken to a client can go into the CRM, tick a box and a secure, client facing portal is made available instantly and we can demo it within minutes.” Both externally and internally this has proven a more efficient way of doing things”, he says, “removing the need to manually move and copy information, such as who the client lead is, financial information and everything else Foot Anstey people need to know, around multiple systems – all of which continues to add value for our clients”, he adds.
As part of this push, Bloor adds that Foot Anstey is also implementing Peppermint’s case and matter management (CMM) module, which will be rolled out in the first quarter of 2022. While the CMM module and CRM do different things, he says having the two integrate will be key to improving the firm’s internal processes: “We want lawyers to log into one system and, from there, navigate all the information they need to manage the client relationship. That starts from the perspective of the CRM but we don’t want to constrain ourselves – we can be flexible in terms of what we put in the CRM display for fee earners.” He adds that those internal user displays may contain a lawyer’s key matters, which clients they need to get back to or key tasks for the day, week or month, all of which will also link to outlook.
While this integration will primarily be of benefit internally and provide efficiency wins to the firm, Bloor adds the dashboards and methods of interaction will, in theory, mean better results for clients as well. “If we can be effective and efficient with our time, we can offer an enhanced client experience.”
Transformative Tech
In addition to specific experience around data management and client portals, Bloor says his priority while at the firm has been to drive a different emphasis on the use of new technology tools, such as those provided by Peppermint. Digital transformations have often been looked at as a way to make existing processes more efficient, rather than as a way to transform how the business goes to market, he says – but things have changed. “Technology has moved from hardcoding to low-code/no-code platforms, and software providers are putting more power into their client’s hands – our hands – so we, in turn, can configure unique experiences for our clients. That also allows us to leapfrog a lot of the early learnings and get straight into more sophisticated things.”
Aiming to be agile and responsive in this way necessitated a move away from software not developed for such configurations, he adds. “We try and work with modern software architectures to innovate on the data we’re collecting and how we’re using it, and we support a number of smaller tech companies – for instance Robin AI, a startup that’s been helping us automate NDA reviews – to that end. But some of the more well-established systems weren’t made for that. That’s why we shifted away from those providers to Peppermint.”
And, in terms of how Foot Anstey goes to market, Bloor explains the firm structures its approach along sectoral lines, focusing on six key sectors: retail and consumer, private equity, private wealth, energy and infrastructure, developers and Islamic finance. This has been a key factor in the firm’s recent success, which saw net profit rise 12% and sector fees increase 15% during the most recent financial year. Bloor attributes this to the firm’s approach around addressing clients’ broader business challenges, rather than focusing on the legal services provided by a specific practice area.
While it’s currently too early to see the direct effects of implementing Peppermint’s software modules on the firm’s growth, Bloor says the CRM tool allows lawyers to record clients’ needs and ally efforts across practice areas to service that requirement: “Rather than just selling as a practice area to a client, we can ask ‘what other problems have you got?’ It makes best use of how we already organise ourselves to offer clients multiple lines of service.”
And this approach, in much the same way as the ‘omnichannel’ experience works on the client end, aligns with what Bloor calls the 360-degree view of a client – enabling everyone in the firm to access relevant information and share actions being taken on that client’s behalf. “It’s about driving a culture of effective client relationship management and using the technology that’s already there to get a better overview of what’s going on. We can tell the client, for instance, how we think the risk of their litigation case changes after speaking to another party, and let them know what we’ve done. Those things are really valuable and build trust.”
An Ingenious Brand
The transformation has also played into a new strand of innovative services at Foot Anstey: Ingenuity. Launched early in 2021, Bloor explains it’s the firm’s home for productised services. “The solutions we’ve created apply to more than just one client – we aim to share them under the Ingenuity brand.” Though still in its infancy, Bloor says he expects to see more products within it in the next year, as it picks up steam and plays out the firm’s philosophy of supporting clients across a broad remit. “In terms of opportunities for products, we’re really only at the starting line for what we’re looking at delivering.”
Ingenuity, he adds, has very much been built on the foundations laid down by Peppermint, both in the client portal technology and the data architecture. “That’s a fundamental part of the offering, because, in addition to structuring our data in a more useful way, it allows us to reuse data safely for different purposes, depending on how a client wants to take a service from us.”
Much of how the firm approaches these products, he adds, is collaboratively delivered with clients, including UX design workshops. “We would never force solutions on clients but we talk them through what we could do and, nine times out of 10, they’re keen to co-design something with us. For us the goal is about building a human-centric relationship, supported by technology that enables self-service and transparency.”
And, as for the future? Bloor says the CMM module is the next big focus for roll out on the technology front, but, just as Foot Anstey is working to enhance its relationship with its clients on new products and solutions, it’s getting a similar treatment from Peppermint, working with Peppermint’s head of product Clare Bonsall on the tech roadmap. “We’re actively feeding in new ideas to innovate on, later this year we’ll be sitting down with [Peppermint CEO] Gary Young to discuss what a partnership looks like beyond the standard, commercial agreement.” And that spirit of fostering broader relationships, enabled by some smart tech and transparent sharing of information, sits at the core of Foot Anstey’s approach to achieving better client relationships.