Janders Dean is renowned for their legal knowledge, innovation and technology focused consultancy work, and the fantastic conferences they put together, which are arguably the best in the industry:
- The LexisNexis® Pacific and Janders Dean 2015 Legal Innovation Index
- Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Thought Leadership Forum, London 2015
- 7th Annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference
- 6th Annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference
Their latest London conference was held last Friday. My invitation failed to arrive for the second year in a row and, again, I can only assume a serious mix up at Her Majesty’s Royal Mail. But it was nice to be missed …
Never mind, their Sydney conference is around the corner and I very much look forward to it.
In the meantime, I just had to settle for being a #HashtagAttendee at the London conference from the comfort of my couch. Thankfully, social media continues to be a popular method of engaging at legal knowledge, innovation and technology events, making it easy to get a valuable insight into the topics discussed.
Judging by the popularity of the ‘#JDHorizons‘ hashtag, this year’s London conference was another highly successful Janders Dean shindig.
A matter worthy of note at the outset, is the gender balance when it comes to the speakers at this latest Janders Dean event. Conferences, especially those with a legal and technology focus, tend to be inexplicably ‘male-heavy’, despite the significant contribution of women to business, and the proven importance of diversity to innovation and business success. This mysterious and dated chronic underrepresentation was not reflected at the Janders Dean Horizons Conference, and didn’t go unnoticed by those attending …
Last year’s main themes involved creativity and innovation, technology, the importance of non-lawyers, and the need to focus on client satisfaction.
I curated below what I consider to be the best tweets from this year’s conference, the same as last year. The tweets below offer an insight into current themes and issues in legal knowledge, innovation, and technology. The themes are not a huge departure from last year. They represent an evolution that appears focused on the significance of the human factor, at the intersection of technology, innovation, efficiency, and productivity, including:
- the unleashing of human talent;
- the importance of focusing on tools and methods that enable people to perform at their best, and be free to innovate (email not being one of those tools);
- a new generation of lawyers for whom technology is implied, and natural;
- the rise of the gig economy;
- the concept of knowledge as commodity;
- an increasing recognition that the solutions to issues law firms face won’t come from technology alone;
- the role legal education should play instilling an innovative mindset, business acumen, and project management and leadership skills in young lawyers – also one of the main points of contention at last year’s US National Summit on Innovation in Legal Services, specifically that legal education is failing to keep pace with a fast changing legal market; and
- an ongoing focus on client experience.
Were you at the Janders Dean London Horizons Conference on Friday? Do you have first-hand insights from the day which you would like to share? Please leave your comment below!
… and Janders Dean always finds the time for a little bit of fun too …
The Vue Post 