UnitedLex, a technology and legal services company, is committed to delivering full-scale Digital Legal Transformation. The world’s most forward-thinking law departments and law firms rely on the company’s expertise in over 25 global jurisdictions. Founded in 2006, the UnitedLex team comprises 3,000 Legal, Engineering, and Technology professionals with major operations in 18 countries.
Developing Signature Strengths
Meg Ramsey is the Vice President of Product Strategy and Management at UnitedLex. She brings to her role a deep experience in developing product roadmaps and technology strategy execution. She is a passionate problem-solver in the cloud and IT infrastructure industry focused on helping customers on their digital transformation journey. Meg states that when one is just starting, it is hard to understand the value of their efforts and to know their worth. She joined a startup out of college that provided her with more responsibilities than what was usually given on expertise. Working for litigators required keeping to their court schedule, which meant significant overtime. Recollecting it, she says, “But I didn’t know better, so I kept at it and they kept asking for more.” Two years later, because of the extraordinary responsibilities from her previous position, she was able to join a new company and industry where the workload was more balanced. More importantly, she reported someone who respected her, encouraged her to grow and became her advocate in the organization. Meg recollects that he taught her the value of mentorship and demonstrated that a leader is only as strong as his or her team. To build that team, the leader must find and encourage the talents and natural abilities of the resources. Meg says that he also taught her the importance of having not just a mentor, but an advocate within the enterprise—someone who will speak up on your behalf, share your accomplishments and capabilities with other decision-makers. Meg concludes that the lessons she learned from him many years ago are the values she holds today and follows, as she builds and grows her product management team at UnitedLex.Building Innovative Products for Customer Impact
Meg believes UnitedLex’s focus on customer feedback is the key to successfully develop appealing technology products. When she joined UnitedLex, she ensured the team’s ideation processes revolve around seeking and receiving key customer feedback throughout the iterative process and the company’s development pipeline was prioritized based on expected customer impact. Meg observes that strategically it is UnitedLex’s unique combination of experience–the company’s deep legal expertise and a new team of technology and transformation experts—that gives UnitedLex a competitive advantage and allows the company to understand what the customers are asking UnitedLex to deliver and steer the industry to a new technological frontier.Leveraging Disruptive Solutions with Microsoft Azure
Meg and her UnitedLex team have centered their technology roadmap on bringing artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to their customers. She observes that UnitedLex jumpstarted its investment with its recent acquisition of a data science team and is working now to incorporate its expertise natively into UnitedLex’s products. Meg believes the legal industry is ripe for AI-disruption and the natural language processing use cases alone are endless. She adds, “With the help of our new data science team, we believe our incorporation of AI and NPL into our standard products will allow our customers to focus on outcome-based solutions for their end customers.” She states that UnitedLex’s new suite of services are entirely Azure based. Leveraging the public cloud and all the services it offers has allowed UnitedLex to focus on developing its differentiated enterprise legal services and getting to market faster while the cloud natively provides the security and compliance control customers require. In addition, the company’s Azure use allows the team to measure its development lead time in months instead of years. Public cloud use is a foundational tenet of digital transformation and in doing so, UnitedLex builds on Microsoft investment in its infrastructure services to deliver a more robust and feature rich legal application UnitedLex’s customers require. Utilizing Azure services also allows UnitedLex to deploy and implement its services in a matter of days significantly increasing customer satisfaction.Revolutionizing the Future with a Massive Shift
Meg expects that the legal industry will go through a massive shift in the coming decade. She asserts that because of the advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, especially around natural language processing, the current legal delivery model of time and materials will become outdated. She asserts that the focus would shift to delivering outcomes by leveraging technology to do the heavy research previously required of junior attorneys, paralegals and other legal professionals. She mentions that this entire industry is based on data, includinglegal precedents established over many years, litigation requiring discovery of terabytes and petabytes of data,and dense contracts that leave account teams unsure of what they’re delivering. Additionally, there are patent portfolios of unknown value in a continuously changing world. Meg continues, “These are examples of things researched by humans today, representing arduous and time-consuming work, that can be enhanced and potentially wholly replaced with technology.” By incorporating advances in cloud computing and artificial intelligence with UnitedLex’s deep legal expertise, Meg believes that the products the company is bringing to bear will revolutionize the legal industry and drastically change the current working model.Positive Outlook Towards Transformation
Speaking on the attributes of transformational leaders, Meg believes they require a balanced blend of vision and execution. A transformation leader must be able to paint a picture for the team of the possibilities of the future while also creating tangible initiatives and goals that build the pathway to that future. The path may require a couple of forks and maybe even a switchback, forcing leaders to remain flexible and adaptable while keeping the end goal in sight. She believes that a transformational leader can keep the end goal in mind and help others get to that destination.Valuable Advice for Emerging Women Leaders
Data drives outcomes. Meg states that, “We are building an exciting new world based on data and the outcomes it will drive are limitless”. She advises emerging women leaders to seek positions where they can get to drive change through data and will have a long and fulfilling career. Meg also encourages emerging women leaders should seek an advocate, not just a mentor. She concludes that a mentor offers useful advice, and says that, “An advocate takes it a step further, ensuring other leaders know your name, your accomplishments, and your potential.”Join our WhatsApp and Telegram Community to Get Regular Top Tech Updates
