Emmanuel Caradec, General Counsel, EMEA at Natixis, draws on over 20 years of experience in corporate and investment banking. His approach to legal tech adoption reflects his expertise in managing diverse, cross-cultural legal teams and his keen understanding of the financial services sector’s unique demands.
Caradec will be speaking at the Legal Innovators UK conference in London on November 6 + 7. In particular, he will be part of the panel discussion on ‘In-House Efficiency Unlocked: AI, Law Firms, and Flexible Talent Synergy’ during In-House Day of the event.
Be sure to join us at Legal Innovators UK to hear Caradec and our other expert speakers share their valuable insights.
In the meantime, enjoy the interview!
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As a corporate legal leader, how do you navigate the balance between adopting new technologies and managing the risks associated with them? Have you faced any compliance challenges regarding integration of legal tech and what are they?
Navigating the balance between adopting new GenAI powered solutions and managing associated risks is a critical aspect of driving innovation for the Legal department while ensuring compliance.
It is important to carefully assess the potential risks and benefits of new technologies, particularly in the financial services sector where bank secrecy rules, data security and compliance with regulatory requirements are paramount.
One of the key challenges we are facing as a European bank is the need to align new technologies that often rely in part on US-based servers with data protection laws and the sensitive nature of the data we handle generally.
To address these challenges, it is essential to establish robust risk management protocols, conduct thorough due diligence on tech vendors, and involve legal, IT security and IT teams in the decision-making process to ensure that new technologies meet legal and regulatory requirements.
When selecting legal tech tools, what are the key factors you consider? How do you assess the return on investment, and what criteria do you use to ensure these tools meet your department’s needs?
When choosing legal tech tools powered by Gen AI, we take into account various factors, such as data security, effectiveness, user-friendliness and integration capabilities with existing systems.
After reviewing the available legal tech options, we have identified and selected certain technologies to test based on their anticipated ability to address specific use cases we have identified.
The criteria for evaluating the technologies we intend to test will include feedback from the pilots, ongoing support and training from the vendor to ensure effective adoption and utilisation.
The pilots will monitor the use cases tested with each technology being trialled, and will document quantitative and qualitative assessment data in scorecards.
Assessing the return on investment will likely involve evaluating time and cost savings, improved productivity, enhanced legal outcomes and improved lawyer’s experience.
The goal is to gain a clear understanding of the non-financial benefits in addition to the financial benefits and returns.
How do you envision the role of the legal department changing over the next five years? What role do you see legal tech playing in this transformation?
I believe that looking ahead, the role of the legal department is expected to evolve significantly thanks to Gen AI.
It may seem like we have been here before, as a few years ago, digitalisation and legal tech were full of promises.
However, those “traditional” legal technology solutions have only delivered incremental improvement.
Gen AI is a technology with significantly greater impact. Often, there is a tendency to overstate the short-term impact of such technologies while understating their long-term effect.
Here, Gen AI may not be a total game-changer in the next couple of years, but I think it will revolutionise our role and the way we provide legal services at some point.
Beyond efficiency, Gen AI will improve the legal experience by automating routine tasks and expediting value-added tasks, potentially unlocking entirely new capabilities, such as facilitating data-driven decision-making.
Legal departments are clearly a high-impact, high-opportunity area for the use of Gen AI.
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( Interview conducted by Alexandria Cordova, Marketing Executive, Cosmonauts. )