What Digital Legal Can Learn from Industrie 4.0 Collaborations

Abstract

The digital transformation as a matter of fact is having a strong impact on the evolution of the Legal profession itself. It spans over how we organize ourselves cross-functionally, what capabilities and resources we need, how we leverage new means of technology and what shifts in culture and mindset this creates and demands. Having worked for more than 1.5 decades in a company that creates software solutions and services which enable the digital transformation of our industrial customers, this article is to share my respective experiences and observations, in particular as it relates to my involvement in building so called Transformation Centers. These are real-production environments which are demonstrating real-world industrial use cases, with that reduce complexities in understanding digital transformation and instead do provide for a “tangible” experience on the prerequisites and impacts of such transformation. Moreover, such centers evoke new collaboration models in the ecosystem that I had the pleasure to help enabling, both within and outside my classic Legal role, including creating a global collaboration with McKinsey on so called Digital Capability Centers, all of which provided me with valuable insights and tons of inspiration. Given that digital transformation on the one hand requires building new and holistic expertise as it relates to how the Legal profession advises its internal and external customers and clients throughout their journey of transformation, and on the other hand enables and calls for transforming the Legal profession itself, with this article I would like to suggest new methodologies and settings of capability building through collaboration that do support both of the aforementioned aspects in a comprehensive and interdisciplinary way. After all, this article is meant to provide inspiration and insights into what a Digital Legal profession on the rise can learn from trailblazers in the Industrie 4.0 space, how such learnings translate to our profession and the ecosystem we are operating in—and what limitations would have to be taken into account and dealt with on such exploration. By giving concrete examples and making specific suggestions on how Digital Legal can embark on a journey that other disciplines have already advanced on, I would like to contribute to triggering ideas and actions that make us embrace and actively shape our very own digital transformation.