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Joanna Goodman meets Teri Hawksworth, managing director of Thomson Reuters Sweet & Maxwell
Teri Hawksworth officially took over as managing director of Thomson Reuters Sweet & Maxwell in July, although she has been in the role on an interim basis since January. Responsible for some 650 staff in the UK, she is one of the new breed of business leaders with roots in sales and marketing as opposed to finance, and focuses sharply on the needs of Thomson Reuters customers. In the legal sector this means law firms, barristers, in-house, academic institutions and public sector legal departments - and market entrants such as Cooperative Legal Services, which use Thomson Reuters Elite practice management system.
Her key strategic focus is bringing together the legal publishing and business software applications into a comprehensive set of fully supported solutions that can be tailored to fit the diverse elements of the UK's newly deregulated legal services sector.
Since Hawksworth joined Thomson Reuters Sweet & Maxwell in 2008, the business has changed dramatically, not least due to a series of acquisitions in the legal technology space. Hawksworth has significant experience in legal services and has known some of her customers for ten or 12 years. She leverages these longstanding relationships to guide her strategic direction. “I've worked closely with some of my customers for years and have seen for myself how their requirements are changing,” she says. “It's not necessarily the case that law firms want to change the way they work: they're having to change in response to their clients' demands and expectations. As general counsels have become more commercial, law firms have to operate in a more efficient, business-like way and train their people to work differently. And in the past ten years legal technology spend has increased threefold.”
Thomson Reuters legal offerings support the entire legal service delivery process, from business development and intake to matter and workflow management, connecting lawyers with the legal research they need to support their work - including legal updates and precedents - through to billing, financial management and creating and analysing management information for strategic and business planning. Management information has become an essential part of the legal IT toolkit. “The market is forcing law firms to look at their own businesses and become more efficient,” she says. “Equally, they have to demonstrate to their customers that they are working smarter.”
The overarching strategy is to deliver information wherever the customer - the lawyer -needs it, in whatever media they need it. Thomson Reuters Sweet & Maxwell aims to publish its legal information products simultaneously in print, online and mobile, reflecting the way lawyers want to access, search and use legal content.
E-publishing is an important business focus. A big project over the past 18 months has been putting print content - including the well-known Sweet & Maxwell legal textbooks - on to the Thomson Reuters ProView e-Reader platform.
Hawksworth's strategy is to bring the Sweet & Maxwell authoritative legal reference books into the 21st century. The ProView platform is particularly good for lawyers who are accustomed to print media as it replicates a lot of physical functionality in virtual format. For example, you can add highlights and annotate the text using virtual 'post-it' notes. Secondly, legal reference books tend to contain a lot of cross-references. ProView can link to related content in the eBook, or navigate to phrases, cases or paragraph numbers and in the near future will link through to the company's Westlaw UK service. Thirdly, cut and paste capability allows you to lift text from the screen into another application or a document. This facilitates document drafting and sharing.
Legal texts lend themselves to e-publishing in several practical ways. The books are pretty big and heavy so it is convenient for lawyers and law students to have them in an easily transportable and accessible format. Like many of Thomson Reuters legal resources, ProView is platform agnostic - you can use it on your iPad or PC. “The pace of take up has really accelerated in this area,” says Hawksworth. “It really could be transformative for barristers and judges, imagine if they no longer have to transport those heavy legal books to court.”
Thomson Reuters Global Business Law app is another useful mobile resource, designed for lawyers involved in cross-jurisdictional work. For example, it would enable a lawyer based in London who is helping an organisation buy a company in Brazil with finance from Switzerland to quickly identify all the relevant local law affecting the transaction. A general counsel can check the app before consulting external counsel. Content for the app is provided by Getting The Deal Through and the app is free to download. In-app purchases enable lawyers to access legislation from 160 jurisdictions and 46 practice areas - most corporate counsels are interested in between five and seven of these - and flick quickly between jurisdictions, transforming what would have been a time-intensive exercise into fast, intuitive preliminary research on an iPad.
When Hawksworth joined Thomson Reuters she was struck by its commitment to absolute connectivity with its customers. This front-end customer strategy has guided the e-publishing initiative. The first step was to consult law firms and in-house legal departments, identify their needs going forward and use this information to create one or more products. Customers were involved throughout the development process. “We actively sought their feedback and incorporated into the final design,” says Hawksworth. “It's not just about selling products; we are developing solutions to help our customers achieve their business goals.”
One example is Thomson Reuters business development product ContactNet which interrogates email activity to enable businesses to define and leverage customer relationships. “It automatically charts email traffic so you can see who in your business is talking to a particular client,” explains Hawksworth. This enhances connectivity with customers and facilitates cross-selling. It is particularly useful for law firms and corporates with multiple offices.
Thomson Reuters strategic vision is to align its products and services more closely to the needs of its customers. For example, a top 100 firm's needs are different from those of a sole practitioner or a public sector legal department. “We are realigning the entire business around our customers, enabling us to develop bespoke solutions using different combinations of Thomson Reuters resources.” Another strategic priority involves adapting US and UK products where necessary so that they can be sold across both markets.
This vision is embodied in the Customers Count initiative. Hawksworth is evangelical about this - unsurprisingly given her sales and marketing background. Customers Count means delivering world-class solutions - and support. The idea is to provide a comprehensive service: from initial consultation and planning, through to installation, training and on-going support.
Thomson Reuters has a central customer support system aligned to four customer segments: large firms and corporates; medium and small firms and barristers; and government and academic. Each group has specific support staff. It is a concierge-style 24/7 service, whereby customers call a single support number and are directed to specialist advisers for the each product or service.
Hawksworth explains that Thomson Reuters strategic priority across its legal business is to pull together the many different products it has developed or acquired and make sure they are connected to each other and work together to deliver a consistent, comprehensive service. This is being facilitated by the realignment across the global business. “We need to ensure that we get the best use of Thomson Reuters legal resources and continually develop new ones to ensure that we keep pace with customers' needs,” says Hawksworth. “It's about being responsive. We don't take Henry Ford's approach - you can have any colour so long as it's black. Instead, we work with our customers to identify their requirements and put together the right solution for their business. For example, some firms want all their tools and resources to reside within their firewall, while others prefer the flexibility of a hosted solution.”
Looking ahead, Hawksworth is focusing on developing more mobile resources and client collaboration tools, guided by a constant dialogue with lawyers in private practice and general counsel.
Thomson Reuters legal offerings are supported by the fact that much of the content of its e-publishing and other knowledge resources is developed and updated by lawyers working within the business as well as high-profile external experts. Its tax and accounting, financial and risk products and services also complement its legal offerings. “Ultimately it is about bringing together different elements of our business to support our clients across the legal sector,” says Hawksworth. “It is an exciting time to be part of the business.” Her enthusiasm clearly infuses her team, one of whom is waiting to give me a demo of the Global Business Law app.
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