Morgan Lewis creates differentiating products with a start-up spirit

Challenge

The search for a user-centric development platform

Routinely ranked as one of the most innovative law firms by BTI Consulting Group, Legalweek, and the Financial Times, Morgan Lewis is no stranger to innovation. To respond to the needs of its attorneys and customers, the firm created a Digital Transformation team, now an integral part of Morgan Lewis's Knowledge Management and Practice Services team. “Our vision was to develop customized internal and client-facing solutions for competitive differentiation,” explained Kyle Dumont, Sr. Director of Digital Transformation and User Experience.

However, to do so, the company needed a technology to support user-centric design and rapid, iterative development, with a particular focus on fast, efficient, and flexible UX design. Those criteria led to OutSystems.

Solution

Working with the business to transform customer experience

The Knowledge Management and Practice Services team uses OutSystems to bridge the gap between business needs and requirements and end solutions.

“We’re always looking to quickly get something tangible in the hands of the users because abstract discussions typically lead us nowhere,” said Kyle. “People don’t get excited about what they can’t see. And that’s how we use OutSystems. Once we get the stakeholder requirements, we can go to an initial meeting with a prototype and iterate on it. It’s a completely different experience.”

Six years later, Morgan Lewis has developed seven large applications that are transforming the experience and efficiency of attorneys and clients.

Two app examples that show the tight collaboration with the business include:

• AdviserDash: This app was an idea from Tim Levin, a leader of the investment management practice. Levin identified an opportunity to streamline the annual mutual fund advisory agreement renewal process that the practice manages for many clients. The AdviserDash, developed with the support of both Minsait and Noesis, replaced a previous process that relied on emails and Word documents, which had limited traceability and did not leverage past work.
• Vizbridge: This app was proposed by IP partner Rachelle Dubow, who was looking for an easy way to access a customer’s trademark portfolio. With VizBridge, Morgan Lewis’ multinational customers can visualize their company’s trademark portfolio across the globe in a highly visual way using interactive maps. The app was built with the support of Noesis.

Explore these two apps in the app catalog:

Results

Running a start-up inside a global company

With OutSystems, Morgan Lewis can innovate without borders. Kyle shared: “We went from literally not being able to do the work we needed to unlock these capabilities that differentiate our practice.”

According to Kyle, and using VizBridge as an example, it would have taken Morgan Lewis years of development to launch such a robust solution. With OutSystems, it took six months.

But more important than speed, it's the ability to promptly deliver what the business and clients need. "If it takes you 2-3 years to develop something, you will end up with very dissatisfied end users. With OutSystems, we're like a little start-up company that, in a matter of weeks, can unlock previously unmet value propositions," said Kyle. "These experiences have been key to establishing closer relationships with our customers, differentiating us from our competition."

In the near future, Kyle and the team plan to expand the use of OutSystems to tackle even more challenging opportunities such as GenAI. “Our focus is always solving a problem for a client. If that leads us down the GenAI route, so be it. And we see the benefits of using the OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC) to help our team accelerate the life cycle more rapidly,” shared Kyle. Some initial projects will include the migration and revamp of legacy applications.

Kyle also plans to expand Morgan Lewis’ OutSystems development team as the firm expands the use of OutSystems. Today, the company works with several partners, but it aims to grow its in-house team to enhance its cost efficiency.