The AI company ‘s NZ lead outlines her key priority
In March, AI company Legora expanded into New Zealand. Former commercial litigator Jessica Turner was tapped to spearhead the move as Legora’s New Zealand lead, bringing her considerable experience leading launches in the UK and ANZ regions.
NZ Lawyer caught up with Turner shortly after her appointment; in the first part of this interview, she tells us her approach in working with the New Zealand market and reveals her key priority for New Zealand firms.
As the NZ lead for Legora, what will be your approach in working with this market?
It’s about spending time within a firm, helping them understand how legal AI can be applied to best effect and critically, deploying our specialist legal engineers to work with individuals and teams to help them integrate Legora across their workstreams and practice areas. It’s not enough to have the technology; you also need every lawyer in your team achieving confidence to use it. I think Legora’s popularity is at least in part due to the fact we take such a hands-on approach building AI capability within our partner firms.
What are your top priorities in this leadership role?
It’s really just one: helping NZ firms unlock the benefits of legal AI for their ways of working, and for the benefits of their clients. With all the noise around AI, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that many firms are just starting on their legal AI adoption journey. That’s as true in New Zealand as in every part of the world where firms are using Legora.
My ambition is that a year from now, we are presenting New Zealand as a best-practice example not only of AI adoption, but also of AI-powered collaboration with clients.
What is the biggest challenge you anticipate in working with the NZ market?
Not since the advent of word processing software has the profession faced such a moment of fundamental change in how it conducts the business of law. When it comes to legal AI, I think the challenges faced by NZ firms are the same as in other parts of the world.
Figuring out how to navigate this transformation, while under the pressure of competition and the unknown, presents as a huge challenge. But this is a challenge we’re in an excellent position to help firms overcome.
