Osler Undertakes Legal Innovation

It’s pretty rare for a law firm to undertake something like this”  (Mike Fekete (Technology Partner and National Innovation lead @ Osler) and Jennifer Thompson (Head of Osler Works)). 

Mike and Jennifer joined me for this podcast to discuss how Osler is driving innovation, building tools, and launching platform solutions with reusable elements to help clients work better.  In this talk, we focused on one of their many solutions – Osler Capture – a collaborative information sharing platform hosted on Microsoft Azure allowing lawyers and clients to collect and share sensitive information from multiple sources.   

Their journey has many of the elements that our Modern CELA team at Microsoft loves to see: (i) focus on real client problems; (ii) interdisciplinary collaboration; (iii) meeting people where they are; (iv) user-friendly experiences; and (v) measurable impact. And Osler built it…for their clients.

We talk about the problem they were solving for (3:59); their approach to building the solution (6:30) and the building blocks they used (9:07).

Mike and Jennifer speak about the importance of their interdisciplinary team to bring the solution to life (13:42), challenges they faced in building out the solution (16:33), driving tech adoption (19:00), and the goals in measuring value and success (20:40). 

This is not a single use application; it is a platform solution investment (22:28).  Even though they chose to first target the undertakings process in Canada, Osler Capture has multiple possible use cases such as data breach notifications, regulatory investigations, and tax audits. Legal teams (in-house and law firms) across the globe can identify with these scenarios.  

We close with the overall experience – from ideation to use (24:50).  Thanks for joining us. Reach out to Mike and Jennifer to learn more about innovation at Osler!