Digital change is reshaping the global economy.
At Herbert Smith Freehills, we focus on how digital innovation responds to and creates growth opportunities in our clients' businesses and in our own firm.
Digital innovation is relevant to all our clients' businesses, and often brings our clients into fresh areas of collaboration or competition. We enjoy guiding our clients through the challenges of the rapidly-changing digital landscape, and as a result, we regularly advise on cutting-edge issues at the intersection of technology and law.
As a firm, we believe innovation means creating an environment that cultivates new ideas, encourages collaboration across legal and non-legal disciplines and helps us to keep improving how we work with our clients. We partner with our clients to understand and respond to the evolving opportunities and challenges they face in the digital landscape, and we embrace digital innovation to transform our own ways of working.
Technology and data give our clients myriad opportunities to become more efficient, faster, cheaper and resilient. They also introduce new outcomes and risks which need to be understood and addressed from a legal, as well as a commercial perspective.
Realising those benefits requires skillful navigation of often far-reaching, complex legal issues. It demands an analysis of laws that were simply not made for the digital age. We work as one global team to deliver the market-leading expertise that our clients need to succeed.
Whether in our technology, finance, real estate, employment or tax team, you’ll work across a variety of legal disciplines that break new ground. We invest heavily in you before and after qualification. We provide the resources and environment you need to achieve your full potential, including training and professional development opportunities.
Our cutting-edge digital work includes advising existing large companies and exciting start-ups on:
- Blockchain and digital assets, including the establishment and operation of crypto exchanges and the world's first syndicated loan using blockchain technology.
- Artificial intelligence, including AI-driven drug research, investments into market-leading AI businesses and the ethical use of AI.
- Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), including the digitisation of vehicle data by leading automotive manufacturers.
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Digital disruption is changing the shape of the legal industry.
We take a proactive and adaptive approach to digital change and innovation. We think and work differently to keep pace with technological advances and evolving client needs. Our legal, technical and operational experts work as a single, global multidisciplinary team to develop innovative solutions and enhance the way we work.
Our digital innovations include:
- 'Smart legal contracts' that automate the performance of contractual obligations by incorporating computer code into contracts, including establishing a collaborative venture with IBM and CSIRO's Data61 to develop blockchain-based infrastructure to run those contracts.
- A technology tool to help business owners prove the presence of Covid-19 within a certain distance from their business to support insurance claims made under the "disease clause" of policies.
- A market-leading decision analysis service based around building sophisticated decision trees derived from legal analysis. We assess the financial implications and probability of case outcomes to quantify legal risks more clearly, helping clients make data-informed strategic decisions.
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