Global businesses are forecast to spend $10 trillion on digital transformation in the five years to 2025, capitalizing on rapid technological developments that are reshaping every corner of the corporate world. While digitalization is game-changing, it comes with risks, challenges and obligations that must be understood and navigated to succeed. Globally, complex laws and regulations are leading to significant legal obligations around digital responsibility for companies – which often diverge, rather than converge, across various jurisdictions. These laws extend significant duties and expectations to boards and senior leadership to ensure adequate oversight and governance in this area. In 2022, it is a business imperative to employ the right strategy to deal with these risks and obligations. ‘Going Digital’ Versus Digitalization There is often confusion between a company ‘going digital’ and digitalization. Implementing new technologies in a siloed manner, without consideration of the business-wide implications, can lead to major negative repercussions for the most senior leadership of an organization. Digitalization – the application of digital technologies to transform business activities, processes, competencies, and models to fully leverage the opportunities from technology and data – encompasses companies’ procurement, deployment and use of such technologies. It also includes businesses developing, selling or licensing out these technologies. This could be for internal use or customer-facing purposes, making it relevant to all companies, regardless of sector. Businesses in Asia, and globally, are seeking a competitive edge and digitalizing at breakneck speed, a trend that has been accelerated by the global pandemic. Fifty-five per cent of products and services are at least partly digitalized today, compared with only 35 per cent in 2019, prior to...

From barrister to offshore law – and the lessons learned in between   Q: You head up the litigation team in the Hong Kong office of Carey Olsen, one of the leading offshore law firms, having started your legal career and practiced for many years as a barrister. In what ways is leading a practice in an offshore law firm different from being a barrister, and how has your background helped you in your work now? It is a real positive that there are now many different routes to progress a legal career and the professions have benefited from having a greater range of backgrounds and experiences: we all bring something slightly different and my team at Carey Olsen is all the stronger for it. As you mentioned, my own practice started with a decade as a barrister, which often focused on the end-point of a case, being the trial, judgment, order or appeal. This reinforced for me the value of the outcome. There is no point having an elaborate strategy to achieve various “successes” if at the end of it your client is no better off, the most poignant example being a hard-won judgment which cannot be enforced against an impecunious defendant. I have continued to focus on truly understanding the client’s objectives, asking what success looks like and then working backwards to find a strategy. As to differences, whilst there are practical and structural differences between the role of a self-employed barrister and the wider role at an offshore law firm, at the core I find there’s a great deal of commonality. The role continues to turn...

Demand for flexible legal resourcing has risen sharply during the pandemic. The Peerpoint team reflects on the drivers behind this rise and explain why 2022 is a great time for lawyers to explore legal consulting as a career option. What Impact Has The Pandemic Had On Lawyers’ Attitudes To Legal Consulting? Initially, the pandemic resulted in a slowdown in the flexible resourcing market. However, it has been buoyant again, particularly over the last 10 months. One reason is that many more lawyers switched to consulting over this period as part of a trend that some economists are dubbing “the great resignation”. Millions of people are now using the unprecedented disruption and uncertainty caused by the pandemic as an opportunity to re-evaluate what they want from life and assess how their careers can make those goals happen. “A lot of people are rethinking their careers and looking for the variety, control and new learning opportunities that legal consulting brings,” says Marie Kirby, Head of Talent at Peerpoint. “In-house lawyers, for example, can sometimes hit a career ceiling and see fewer options to progress, so legal consulting offers different challenges and opportunities in new environments. Sometimes a change is as good as a rest, and this change can give their career the boost it needs.” In terms of client demand, Peerpoint has seen a very sharp rise in clients seeking out resourcing solutions as in-house legal teams experience budget constraints and resourcing challenges. “There is a clear talent shortage for permanent hires, which is where the flexible and short-term solutions that Peerpoint and similar providers offer is key,” says Helen Libson,...