Artificial Lawyer: “A new report on the barriers to legal tech adoption has found that a lack of senior role models in law firms was a key cause, along with several other systemic factors. The report, conducted by deal platform Legatics, is the result of interviews and workshops with lawyers at Herbert Smith Freehills, DLA Piper, Pinsent Masons, Reed Smith, Osborne Clarke and Eversheds Sutherland. A survey was also circulated and answered anonymously by 133 lawyers across 10 leading law firms. The project was funded by Innovate UK. The survey found that: ‘The majority of participants believed … senior management thought innovation was important. However, … often the perception was that this message was not implemented and there were few senior role models for using legal tech.’ I.e. senior managers at law firms talk the talk, but are not always walking the walk. Of course, from what Artificial Lawyer can see there are many reasons for this, such as they are understandably focused on high value matters or team management issues; that associates tend to be the ones most likely to be ‘hands-on’ with using tech tools; and that simply the need to stop and plan for the use of tech in work processes is not incentivised…”