Business Law Podcast-Orrick and Microsoft Legal Productivity Hackers discuss innovation and Microsoft Teams

Vedika Mehera (Innovation Advisor at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP), Aneesh Mehta (Attorney for Experiences and Devices Engineering Organization at Microsoft, South Asian Bar Association of North America President), and Lydia Petrakis (Attorney for Experiences and Devices Engineering Organization at Microsoft) talk about the process of fostering ground-up innovation in legal business focused organizations. This episode starts off with a heavy focus on how Microsoft Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs (CELA) Productivity Hackers Team uses Microsoft Teams because this collaboration platform is instrumental to their mission of catalyzing a sharing, learning, and teaching culture that serves their department and their clients. It pivots to reflections on how Orrick builds innovation culture at their firm.

They discuss the CELA Productivity Hackers Team (3:00), how it scales learning (3:45), how it is led and how they drive conversation and content (5:45), why they use Microsoft Teams (7:45) how Teams works (9:45), how Teams differs from email (11:00) recording meetings to generate content (13:00); Teams as a hub for work (14:00) how channels work in Teams (17:00); how Teams differs from email (18:00); private channels feature (coming soon) (19:15); driving engagement with content in Teams (21:30), managing a Team (22:15), how notifications work (25:00), sending email content to Teams (26:15), getting Teams (27:30) the Teams mobile experience (30:00), how working in the open changes culture (31:15), when not to use Teams (35:45), the Orrick innovation process and how they use Teams (36:30), how Orrick enables innovation with time and incentives (38:15) hacking as customizing your workspace (40:10), prioritizing innovation investments (42:15), working across silos (44:30), starting with experimentation and pilots (45:30), bringing people along on the journey (46:45) Orrick innovation culture tenets (49:15), and the courage to advise clients to work with other partners (54:45).

References:

  1. Productivity Hackers Innovation Hypothesis
  2. Financial Times-North America Innovative Lawyer Awards 2018
How CELA Productivity Hackers uses Microsoft Teams