Mills & Reeve’s Award-Winning What the Tech?! app

Supporting technology discovery across the firm.

Winner of KM Innovation award 2020

Over 500 staff engaged with the app in the first 2 months

Positive increase in tech enquiries

Background

Mills & Reeve is an award-winning UK firm with over 1,200 people including over 550 lawyers working from six offices nationally. Their work spans a broad range of legal sectors and jurisdictions for a diverse range of clients: from multinational listed companies and fast-growth start-ups to entrepreneurs and some of the world’s most established and prestigious organisations.

Their Knowledge Management team was looking for a solution that would improve Partner awareness of the legal technology solutions and tools they had available to help them and their clients.

The team wanted to make this information available at the touch of a button and to prevent any blockers for their lawyer group in obtaining the information needed.

Problem

Mills & Reeve had several challenges:

Not enough bandwidth in the innovation team to answer individual questions coming through from lawyers
Low awareness amongst Partners of the technology solutions they have available to help them and their clients
Getting time-limited Partners to engage with traditional training methods such as Technology Briefings
The information about tech tools and solutions available was not easily and readily accessible for use in pitches and client meetings
Information was conveyed through a lengthy FAQ document and traditional technology briefings

Solution

"We needed a solution that would allow all parts of the business to understand what client-tools and legal technology we had to help them and their clients."

Emma Jackson

Client Innovation Manager, Mills & Reeve

The firm needed to find a way to communicate their legal technology offering to staff in a way that was:

More effective in spreading knowledge
Easier to access and use
Less dependent on the resources of the Innovation team

An app was the obvious solution to them to enable instant access to the information for all staff, whenever and wherever they needed it.

After mapping out the app functionality in a spider diagram on paper, the team created prototypes for the apps screens utilizing Fliplet to develop, test and deliver the ‘What The Tech?!’ app in just two weeks. The initial launch was to Partners before rolling out to all staff.

The primary features of the app are:

Secure access for approved app users
Advanced decision tree functionality that aids technology discovery and enables Partners and Lawyers to make informed technology decisions
Provides access to ‘Sales Packs’ for improved client conversations
An ‘Ask the Team’ button to enable staff to contact the client innovation team directly via email/push notification for further information
Admin analytics so that managers can see who is using the app and what features/content they are accessing, then optimize accordingly
News feed highlighting the latest tech news with ability to like and comment to drive conversation
Push notifications to keep all staff informed of updates and changes to the tools and solutions available
Staff directory providing contact information across the business

Outcome

The firm’s iPhone application, “What The Tech?!” was described as a highly innovative, neat, simple and very effective solution to make sure Partners are keeping up-to-date information to help them make informed decisions at the touch of a button.

The Legal Innovation Awards 2020

The team developed an award-winning app, recognized with The Legal Innovation 2020 award for Knowledge Management Innovation.

The key benefits of the app for Mills & Reeve are:

Positive feedback from launch amongst Partners within the firm
Over 500 staff have engaged with the app with over 7500 screen views
A large proportion of Partners have engaged with the app
Simple enquiries to the Client Innovation team have reduced
A positive increase in the number of enquiries by people who want to use the technology that they have learned about while using What The Tech?!
Partners able to demonstrate legal technology options in pitches and client meetings
Uptake in use of legal tech options by clients
Ability to continually update the app with new technology options for clients, optimize functionality and features based on performance analytics, ensuring the app continues to be utilized and engaged with
Directory data can be repurposed across other Fliplet apps

"I used the What the Tech app in a client meeting. Felt very savvy."

Partner

Mills & Reeve

Further information

Press Release

What is Fliplet?

Fliplet enables non-technical and technical people to produce mobile and web apps. Fliplet includes a broad selection of app templates that enable organizations to rapidly deliver apps for staff or customers and are distributed to public or enterprise app stores, and online.