Joining a legal-tech: 3 things I have learned in 3 months.
Three months ago I joined Dye & Durham, a legal tech company. I was drawn to their mission to transform the legal tech industry and how they were tackling the problem. After meeting with David Nash, the new CPO, and who would be my manager, I was brought in. It was clear there were some big challenges but they had the right mindset to achieve success. Three months in… what have I learned? Was it what I expected?
Shared goals, shared success
One of the first things that really stood out to me when joining is how knowledgeable people are. We have a lot of people who used to be in the legal industry who have come with a lot of knowledge and expertise. Along with some really smart people who are experts in what they do.
As I spoke to more and more people around the company I started to build a picture that most people have a shared vision of where we need to move to. Having a shared vision makes creating change a lot easier.
Really exciting challenges
As I began to understand more about the different products we have, and how they fit together, that’s when I got really excited about the acquisitions. At Dye & Durham, we have some great foundations to build some great products that have a best-in-class user experience (UX).
We have the opportunity to create a seamless experience that not only helps law practices but also creates a better experience for their clients. Our recent acquisition of Quill and Credas, in combination with some of our other products, offers opportunities that create an end-to-end experience for our users. We are also experimenting with how AI can help users with some of the time-consuming tasks they face.
Leveraging async comms
The other dimension I knew would be a big change is working with a global company across timezones. Although challenging, we have upped our use of async (asynchronous) communication (examples mentioned below).
We have started experimenting with different types of communication to see what works for the team. We have done video updates and walkthroughs. We have used the comments in collaborative documents to close the feedback loops and make meetings super-focused and efficient. As a UX team, we have really embraced experimenting to see what works for us, and I love that about my team. We have managed to use the timezone difference to our advantage.
We are doing some really exciting things at Dye & Durham, so watch this space as we start to talk about some of the exciting projects we are working on.
