supporting digital literacy and providing training and guidance for consumers remain of crucial importance and should be prioritised). Thus, we believe that Wales has the potential to achieve paradigm innovation as a sector, building upon, and connecting, the expertise, experience, resources and reputation of all its constituent parts: law firms, universities, start-ups, and scale-ups. To achieve this aim, however, it is necessary to achieve great collaboration and coordination in the sector, developing a fully circular Welsh legal innovation model. 6.3 A circular approach to legal innovation in Wales The interdependence between the various components of the Welsh legal services sector has been underlined by the start-ups and scale-ups we have interviewed for our research. These companies have highlighted the following key engines of circularity: • the sourcing of business problems from law firms and legal professionals, as a necessary input for the development of new LegalTech products; • the recruitment of technical and legal staff trained in Wales by Welsh universities, as the main source of expertise and human resources for start-ups and scale-ups; • the potential involvement of start-ups and scale-ups in teaching and employability opportunities offered by Welsh universities, offering the opportunity to contribute to the formation of future recruits and providing them with direct routes to employment; • the development of new LegalTech products in collaboration with Welsh universities and law firms, to embed cutting-edge research, ensure regulatory compliance, and user feedback essential to improve such products; • the marketing of LegalTech products developed in Wales to Welsh law firms, developing mutually beneficial, long-term relationships between start-ups and law firms. The examples of innovation happening in Welsh law firms and discussed in this report highlight further potential engines of circularity: • the provision of guidance and training as part of position innovation by law firms can benefit from closer collaboration with universities, while offering researchers a chance to communicate and further develop their research in collaboration with the industry; • the recruitment of legal engineers and other hybrid figures by Welsh law firms creates a demand for specialised training courses and offers a clear route to employability; • the focus of medium and large law firms on product innovation suggests the possibility of outsourcing the research and development to start-ups and scale-ups, or to spin off research and development activities, thus supporting greater entrepreneurship in the sector; • the demand for commercial LegalTech solutions intersects the local start-ups’ need for support in the identification of business problems, user testing and continuous development.
62
Made with FlippingBook HTML5