Tara Waters was until a month ago Chief Digital Officer at Ashurst, where she ran multiple projects culminating in a firm-wide rollout of Harvey. Now, she is considering her options. Artificial Lawyer spoke to her about the move and what she might do next.
So, first, why leave? As well as holding the top legal tech role at the global law firm for over five years she was also a partner. That’s quite a good thing to walk away from, this site observed.
Waters’ response is balanced. She stresses that Ashurst was very supportive and the general vibe is that it was a positive experience, both in her tech role and before when she focused solely on legal needs, as a partner, then as an associate before that, working in capital markets.
‘I have nothing but love for Ashurst and I never felt unsupported,’ she says.
Then she adds that one of the challenges of seeking to drive change and innovation in a law firm is that, across the sector, innovation teams are still quite small relative to the size of the business. Ashurst has 27 offices across 15 countries and over 2,800 staff in total.
As Chief Digital Officer, or one might add ‘Head of Innovation’ or whatever other title you wish to use, she notes that you are one of the only people in the firm who is being paid to ‘think about different ways of doing business’.
That creates a scenario where what you’re trying to achieve challenges the way things are, yet at the same time there is a limit to the resources you are given to achieve that.
‘There is a fight for resources and that can be tiring,’ she says. ‘I reached a point where I asked: what is the reward to put all of that energy into this?’
Yet, she immediately adds the caveat that things were moving forward at Ashurst, and in fact it was ‘fast for legal’.
Waters then returns to the point that as the head of a relatively small team inside a very large, very complex organisation, you can sometimes be ‘the only person at the table’ at a management level meeting who is actively trying to achieve certain goals around changing how things are done.
However, she immediately adds again that ‘the leadership at Ashurst’ were supportive – and in fact partners at the firm have enthusiastically embraced genAI tools, for example.
The challenge is that such a major project as getting the whole firm to make use of a range of genAI tools, to do it safely and in ways that drive real and positive change across the business, may well need much more than a centralised innovation team, and in fact need a more whole-firm approach.
Waters then also notes the ‘ebbs and flows’ of support for new tech initiatives, with the challenge that while it’s great when the firm really got behind a project, there then would inevitably be an ‘ebb’, and as she says ‘you can’t have ebbs for a year’. That said, she understands why this is. Firms must balance priorities and despite Ashurst being a $1 billion-plus revenue business, when it comes to legal innovation you are still ‘cost constrained’.
One other aspect as to the why, is Waters’ observation that she and her team had never worked such long hours after Covid. Firms increasing their dependence on digital technology just made everything more intense.
As she concludes: ‘Innovation is not a lifestyle team!’
While some might think that you join the legal tech world from law in order to find a better pace of life, Waters will attest that it’s very demanding as well.
Overall then, lots of success, including the recent Harvey global rollout, and much love for the firm, but one might say that the structural, macro realities of law firms and driving innovation within them, inevitably makes those who have been in the hot seat for several years wonder what else is out there.
And so that is what Waters is doing: taking a break and having a think about what to do next.
What Next?
Artificial Lawyer makes several suggestions. Start a legal tech company? Work as a consultant? Go to another law firm?
Waters says that creating her own legal tech company is unlikely, but she could help others to build better products. She also notes that she loves being a lawyer, ‘it’s my superpower’, she adds. But, moving into a full-time legal role is perhaps also not the immediate goal either.
We look at things from a different angle.
‘I’d like to be in a space somewhere where it will feel more welcoming in terms of achieving real change,’ she muses.
Of course, she is not naïve about that and adds: ‘No organisation likes to be told what to do.’
And on that point we go back to the legal sector. She observes that law firms are sometimes afraid to share where they are on innovation as they are ‘scared to look behind the curve’, which is a pity as there is ‘no magic to what we do’ and ‘we can learn from others’, she stresses.
That’s something this site can also confirm. While there are a lot of firms that are very open, plenty still shroud their innovation goals in secrecy, sometimes giving the impression that they are either A) working on some amazing new thing that they don’t want to share, or B) are probably doing the same as everyone else, but are unsure how to communicate what they’re trying to achieve when it comes to innovation. And it’s ‘B’ 99% of the time.
Going back to what next, Waters mentions that she created a brand, Innovation Esquire, a few years ago and may look at bringing that back to life, perhaps doing some thought leadership through it.
And on the consulting side, which is a path many others have taken, Waters notes that without a team around her it would be a big change to become a solo operator. ‘We had a small, but perfectly formed team at Ashurst,’ she explains.
So, what about moving out of legal? Waters replies that all sectors find innovation hard, it’s not just lawyers.
To wrap up Waters rightly observes: ‘The world is my oyster – I have a lot to offer the legal industry.’
And she is right on that. Good luck to her on whatever she does next!
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Last word – what some of the insights here show is that while law firms actively support innovation projects and do so willingly, it’s an open question what the right level of resources firms need to commit to innovation – especially now – actually is. That question will be debated for a long time to come!