In 2019, HVG Law developed and rolled out the “Future of Law” pro­gram to embed innov­a­tion into daily prac­tice. “It is essen­tial to innov­ate and invest in the rap­idly chan­ging envir­on­ment and emer­ging digit­al­iz­a­tion”, says Hendrik-Jan Bleijerveld and Eva Verhoef, both of whom are respons­ible for innov­a­tion with­in HVG Law.

Future of Law con­sists of three build­ing blocks: (i) access­ing innov­a­tion DNA; (ii) go-to-mar­ket solu­tions; and (iii) in-house innov­a­tion. The innov­a­tion sprints, which take place every quarter, are cur­rently the most import­ant part of this pro­gram and have already res­ul­ted in the first go-to-mar­ket MVP (min­im­um viable product).

Devel­op­ing and access­ing innov­a­tion DNA is an import­ant object­ive of Future of Law. It turns out that HVG Law employs many innov­at­ive and cre­at­ive people, who also have an affin­ity with tech­no­logy. “We want to give our people the oppor­tun­ity to dis­cov­er, devel­op and access this cre­ativ­ity. We do this by organ­iz­ing a quarterly innov­a­tion sprint. After the first sprint, we already act­ively involved about 75% of our col­leagues in the Future of Law pro­gram.”

Innov­a­tion sprints con­sist of a kick-off with an inspir­a­tion ses­sion, brain­storm and use-case pitches, a two-day design sprint, a val­id­a­tion peri­od and a clos­ing Future of Law Day, where the res­ults of the sprints are presen­ted.

The first innov­a­tion sprint focused on Block­chain tech­no­logy and res­ul­ted in a first, val­id­ated, Block­chain MVP focused on inter­com­pany agree­ments.  After a tri­al peri­od, this product will be offered to HVG Law cli­ents

The kick-off for the second innov­a­tion sprint on the top­ic “innov­ate around a prob­lem” yiel­ded no few­er than 18 poten­tial use-cases, focused on in-house innov­a­tion and go-to-mar­ket solu­tions. “A tre­mend­ous way of gath­er­ing new ideas, but also of val­id­at­ing pro­posed plans.” The innov­a­tion sprints will take place through the end of this cal­en­dar year.

In addi­tion to organ­iz­ing innov­a­tion sprints and based on the “Build, Part­ner or Buy” prin­ciple, we con­tinu­ously mon­it­or any devel­op­ments rel­ev­ant to law and explore what products and ser­vices we can innov­ate and with which parties. In this con­text in the near future, we will launch an in-house Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Due Dili­gence tool that will help us to inter alia review con­tracts in a very effi­cient man­ner and to ana­lyze data for the bene­fit of the cli­ent.

We refer to the video below for an impres­sion of the HVG Law innov­a­tion sprint.