Digital Disruption Creating Opportunities

D&I Quarterly Q2/2017

Posted on

22 Jun

2017

Dittmar & Indrenius > Insight > Digital Disruption Creating Opportunities

“Understanding the impact of the changing world to our clients has always been at the core of who we are”, says Managing Partner Anders Carlberg.

During the last couple of years there’s been a strong increase in demand for D&I’s strategic services relating to digitalization. Behind the increased demand are our clients, in particular every third Dow Jones Industrial Average company having significant operations in Finland and half of the 50 largest publicly listed companies in Finland. All of these clients lead their businesses in a digitalized world but their legal needs are almost never identical, Carlberg says.

“We have the leading digital disruption team in Finland.”

The common denominator for today’s clients is their need to capture opportunities of emerging business models and create baseline for future digital solutions within their industries. According to Carlberg, these are not routine tasks, but tasks that require the ability to perceive unstructured problems, create new ways of legal thinking, analyze critically various alternatives without unequivocal criteria for decision-making and, ultimately, the capacity to produce innovative solutions withstanding the test of time. When stakes are this high, it’s a tall order for any legal advisor. “Not everyone can rise to the challenge. We, however, have the leading digital disruption team in Finland, winning Powerhouse operating model and highly satisfied clients”, Carlberg says.

AI Ross, I Presume?

Executing digital transition in working methods and service experience is non-negotiable for any first-class law firm, D&I included. Just recently, Carlberg was interviewed for YLE Svenska on the future of legal services. Besides making the public promise of D&I being one of the first law firms in Finland to utilize AI-based software in due diligence reviews, he also predicted the legal market to divide even further.

“I’m on a mission to leverage our customer experience for competitive advantage.”

Carlberg feels passionate about capturing added value in D&I’s services through superior service design tied with digital innovation. “I’m on a mission to leverage our customer experience for competitive advantage”, Carlberg says smiling. “It means discovering the right ways to lead D&I’s team of 80 professionals through the digital transition, into a service mindset”, he continues.

However, Carlberg emphasizes that for high-end advisory firms such as D&I focusing on the most demanding cases for the most demanding clients, the key is not in “becoming a technology company” but excellence in new ways of legal thinking and in human-to-human interaction. “That’s the kind of excellence our clients value most at D&I”.

Rethinking Legal Services

The key for developing and designing their digital services is the perceived customer value. “I strongly believe in customer co-creation of services for improved customer experience”, Carlberg explains.

Just recently he invited clients who’d been attending D&I’s Technology Revolution Roundtable -series to attend the first Legal Tech Conference organized by the Legal Tech Lab, University of Helsinki. D&I was the sole sponsor of the conference where D&I’s partner Hanna-Mari Manninen acted as the moderator of the panel discussing the future of legal services.

“I’m a big supporter of bringing the academia and practical world closer to each other.”

According to Carlberg, Legal Tech Lab’s forward-looking mindset, topical research on blockchain, robotics and AI, as well as their network ideology are bound to have a positive impact on the future of our society. “Personally, I’m a big supporter of bringing the academia and practical world closer to each other. In an era of pervasive and ultrafast development, the way universities are raising our future lawyers must develop too.”

Most Recently D&I Has:

  • Assisted Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications by conducting a preliminary background research for the preparation of the Transport Code that aims to improve the Finnish transportation system and to pave the way for the development of the Mobility as a Service concept.
  • Advised one of the largest Finnish companies on the digitalization of its retail business.
  • Provided strategic advice in large-scale international data protection and data security compliance projects for large Finnish listed companies such as UPM Corporation, Uponor Corporation and Valmet Corporation.
  • Provided strategic advice in Intelligent Building and Smart Cities engagements for Tieto Corporation and SRV Corporation.
  • Advised PE house Ratos in the sale of Nebula to Telia. Nebula is a market leading provider of cloud services, managed services and network services to SME customers in Finland. The transaction is the largest PE deal so far this year in Finland and it involved topical legal questions related to cloud services, data protection, intellectual property and information technology.

 

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