Tara Waters was Assured’s chief digital officer until a month ago, leading multiple projects and ultimately rolling out Harvey across the firm. Now she’s considering her options. Artificial Lawyer spoke to her about the move and what’s next.
So first, why did she leave? She had not only held the top legal tech role at a global law firm for over five years, she was also a partner. The site noted that leaving was a pretty good thing.
Waters’ response is balanced: She emphasizes that Ashurst has been very supportive and the overall atmosphere has been a positive experience both in her role in the technology space and while working in capital markets as a partner and, prior to that, as an associate, focusing solely on legal needs.
“I’ve had nothing but love for Ashurst and I’ve never felt unsupported,” she says.
She adds that one of the challenges in trying to drive change and innovation in law firms is that across the industry, innovation teams are still fairly small compared to the size of the business – Ashurst has 27 offices in 15 countries, with a total of more than 2,800 staff.
You can call yourself Chief Digital Officer or “Head of Innovation” or whatever your title may be, but she points out that you’re one of the few people in your company who is paid to “think about different ways of doing business.”
This creates a scenario where what you are trying to achieve is a challenge in the status quo, but at the same time there are limitations to the resources you are given to achieve it.
“There’s a competition for resources, and it can be exhausting,” she says. “I started asking myself, ‘What’s the payoff for putting all this energy into this?'”
However, she was quick to add the disclaimer that things were moving forward in Ashurst and, indeed, “legally, things were moving fast.”
Waters then returns to the point that, as the head of a relatively small team within a very large, complex organisation, he is sometimes the “only person” in executive-level meetings who is actively working to achieve a specific goal of changing the way things are done.
But she is quick to add that “Ashurst’s management team” has been supportive, and indeed the company’s partners, for example, have enthusiastically embraced the genAI tools.
The challenge is that a project of this magnitude – leveraging a range of genAI tools across an enterprise, and doing so safely and in a way that drives real, positive change across the business – will require more than a centralized innovation team, and may in fact require a more enterprise-wide approach.
Waters also mentioned the “ebb and flow” of support for new technology initiatives, saying it’s great when the firm is serious about a project, but then there’s an inevitable “ebb and flow” and, in her words, the challenge is, “You can’t have a year of ebb and flow.” That said, she understands why that is the case: Firms have to balance priorities, but Ashurst is still “cost-constrained” when it comes to legal innovation, even though it’s a firm with over $1 billion in revenue.
Another reason is that Waters observes that he and his team haven’t worked as many hours since the pandemic hit, when the company’s increased reliance on digital technology has made everything more tense.
She concludes: “Innovation is not a lifestyle team!”
While some may think they are leaving the law industry to join legal tech in search of a better pace of life, Waters will attest that the legal tech industry is also extremely tough.
Overall, there have been many successes and much love for law firms, including Harvey’s recent global expansion, but given the structural and macro realities of law firms and the innovation being driven within them, those who have had a tough few years will inevitably wonder what else is out there.
That’s exactly what Waters does: He takes a break and thinks about what to do next.
What next?
The Artificial Lawyer has a few suggestions: Start a legal tech company, work as a consultant, or move to another law firm?
Waters said while it’s unlikely she’ll start her own legal tech company, she could help others build better products, adding that she loves being a lawyer and “it’s my superpower.” But getting a full-time legal job might not be her immediate goal, either.
We see things from a different angle.
“I want to be in a place where I feel more welcomed in terms of achieving real change,” she reflects.
Of course, she’s no naive about that, adding, “No organization likes to be told what to do.”
And on that note, we return to the legal sector: she notes that law firms can be afraid to share their current state of innovation because they are “afraid of being behind the times.” That’s a shame, she stresses, because “there’s nothing magic about what we do” and “we can learn from others.”
You can see that on this site: There are a lot of companies that are very open, but there are still a lot of companies that keep their innovation goals secret. This can sometimes give the impression that A) they’re working on something great new that they don’t want to share, or B) they’re probably doing the same thing as other companies, but they’re not quite sure how to communicate what they’re trying to accomplish innovation-wise. And 99% of the time it’s “B.”
Returning to the topic of what’s next, Waters said he launched a brand a few years ago called Innovation Esquire and might consider reviving it and perhaps providing thought leadership through it.
And in a more familiar field like consulting, Waters points out that running a business alone is a big change without a team around you: “At Ashurst we had a small but perfectly organized team,” she explains.
So what about leaving the legal industry? Waters says innovation is hard in any industry, not just for lawyers.
Finally, Waters correctly states, “The world is mine. I have a lot to offer the legal industry.”
And she’s right: we wish her the best of luck in whatever she does next!
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Finally, the insights here suggest that while law firms are willing and able to support innovation projects, it is an open question as to what is actually the right level of resources law firms need to put into innovation, especially now. This is a question that will be debated for a long time to come.