Leading international law firm, Clifford Chance has today announced the next evolution in the firm's Best Delivery and Innovation strategy, with the launch of two new units, Clifford Chance Applied Solutions and Clifford Chance Create, supported by an updated leadership and governance structure.

The new Best Delivery and Innovation Leadership Group, mandated by the firm's Executive Leadership Group and chaired by Clifford Chance Managing Partner, Matthew Layton will set priorities, targets and allocate investment to support the firm's strategic goal of delivering an outstanding client service experience, through the optimal use of the firm's extensive knowledge capability and smart technology, through the deployment of the right resources and best processes for each matter and by embracing innovation and new ways of working.

As well as the firm's existing Best Delivery programme, it will oversee:

• Clifford Chance Applied Solutions – the home for the firm's expanding range of digital products, powered by the latest technology, designed to provide increasingly efficient, consistent and high-quality outcomes to large-scale client challenges. Products in the Clifford Chance Applied Solutions suite will be run in separate ventures and using a range of flexible business models that will enable more effective roll-out. Existing successful products, such as CCDr@ft and the firm's MiFID II compliance tool, will become part of this unit.

• Clifford Chance Create – will bring together the firm's initiatives that underpin its innovation ecosystem, ensuring the firm stays at the forefront of the advances that will shape the sector and the firm's future client service model. This includes a new cloud-based platform, Clifford Chance Labs, which will foster internal idea generation and interdisciplinary solution development. The firm's existing wide-ranging innovation-focused collaborations will also come under the umbrella of Clifford Chance Create. This includes its partnerships with clients, e.g. Barclays Eagle Lab; with universities, e.g. around skills development such as the current secondment programme of data scientists from UCL; and with think tanks and other leading voices in the legal innovation arena, from Legal Geek to Singularity University. Clifford Chance Create will also lead the firm's support for legaltech start-ups, including through the firm's new Best Delivery and Innovation Hub in Singapore.

Cosmin Anghel, counsel Clifford Chance Badea and coordinator of the Bucharest FinTech practice, said: "As a global firm, we are fully immersed in the tech community and exciting developments that are happening at an increasingly rapid pace. The two new units - Clifford Chance Applied Solutions and Clifford Chance Create - are our natural response to our clients' increasing interest in digital legal products and inter-disciplinary innovative legal solutions tailored to respond adequately and efficiently to their needs. As a fully integrated office the Bucharest office is an integral part of these changes."

Bas Boris Visser, the firm's Global Head of Innovation and Business Change will chair both Clifford Chance Applied Solutions and Clifford Chance Create.

During the past year, Clifford Chance has significantly expanded its Best Delivery infrastructure with the establishment of its new on-shore centre in Newcastle (formerly part of CAS); a network of Best Delivery Partner Champions; and Best Delivery Hubs in London, New York, Singapore, Dubai and a virtual hub that brings together specialist resources in Continental Europe. The firm's Best Delivery strategy will continue to be led by Oliver Campbell, the firm's Global Head of Client Service Solutions.

Matthew Layton explains, "Best Delivery and Innovation are a fundamental part of our strategy and critical to our vision of being the global law firm of choice. They promise our clients that we will continually challenge ourselves to deliver a service that is ever more robust, consistent, efficient and innovative both now and into the future. Clifford Chance Applied Solutions, Clifford Chance Create and Best Delivery each requires a different business and operating model, different investment levels and investment horizons and different targets and support infrastructure. The new set-up is designed to help us focus our attention on the best opportunities and most important questions in each area. The over-arching Leadership Group will ensure that activities are aligned with the firm's strategic goals and, working with the Executive Leadership Group, will ensure we are prioritising resource and investment to maximise the impact for our clients.

There is a huge amount of interest in innovation in service delivery and in technology-based products, both from clients and from our own people, so this is an exciting step for the firm as it will enable us to accelerate our existing rate of progress."

At a global level, Clifford Chance is embracing technology to deliver the best service to clients. As such, the firm combines expertise with the latest technology.

The law firm has recently entered into collaboration with the global distributed ledger technology (DLT)/blockchain specialist - R3, one of the first companies to identify and practically apply DLT to the financial services industry. R3 is now an enterprise software firm working with over 100 large banks and other financial institutions, regulators, trade associations, professional services firms, and technology companies to develop and utilize its distributed ledger platform.

In 2016, Clifford Chance announced a partnership with Kira to enhance legal process management with Artificial Intelligence software and in 2017, it joined forces with NEOTA to develop an automated toolkit to help financial institutions to assess and address the impacts of MiFID2 regulation. Also, the firm has recently convened a global cross-practice Tech Group that will advise clients from all sectors on the risk and opportunity that technology brings.

It has also launched a Dawn Raids App, a mobile application that can be downloaded from Google Play for Android, and App Store for Apple iOS, that provides clients experiencing a raid conducted by regulatory authorities with real-time, step-by-step guidance on their rights and obligations, as well as instant access to Clifford Chance's specialists to receive immediate advice.
The latest initiative in this area was the launch of Tech Academy, a global training programme dedicated to learning and development in the Technology space. It provides staff and partners with a combination of online training and resources and a global programme of face to face workshops.


About Clifford Chance
Clifford Chance is one of the world's pre-eminent law firms with significant depth and range of resources across five continents. As a single, fully integrated global partnership, we pride ourselves on our approachable, collegial and team-based way of working. We always strive to exceed the expectations of our clients, which include corporates from all commercial and industrial sectors, governments, regulators, trade bodies and not-for-profit organisations. We provide them with the highest-quality advice and legal insight, which combines the firm's global standards with in-depth local expertise.
For more information, please see www.cliffordchance.com and www.linkedin.com/company/clifford-chance-llp.