While “intrapreneur” is rarely a formal job description, finding individuals who can enable continual change has become a strategic aim in law firms.
Such intrapreneurs tend to take up a new idea, often from scratch; win backing within the firm; and have an effect on both practical approaches to getting things done and on the organisational mindset. US law firms, in particular, celebrate generators of revenue, but these innovators’ work in the background is increasingly recognised as crucial to the business’s overall success.
With that in mind, the panel of judges in the intrapreneur award category of the FT Innovative Lawyers awards were looking for impact and leadership. Six strong candidates duly impressed, with efforts that ranged from pioneering technological breakthroughs being used across their firms, to changing the culture among colleagues — or a combination of both.
Ultimately, the judges deemed that Suzanne Turner at Dechert stood out most. Her early vision and impact in making pro bono work integral and planned within law firms has consistently developed. Not only are pro bono hours now embedded routinely in many law firms, but the scope of such programmes is often managed as an international commitment.
In addition, Turner has pursued constant innovation — a recent example being notable for the use of generative artificial intelligence to improve efficiency in pro bono efforts.
Profiles compiled and edited by RSGI researchers and FT editors. “Winner” indicates an Innovative Lawyers 2024 award; the rest are in alphabetical order
WINNER: Suzanne Turner
Partner, Dechert
Suzanne Turner chairs Dechert’s pro bono practice. In the US, under her leadership, Dechert was one of the first law firms to require minimum pro bono hours for fee earners. Last year, the firm completed 105,000 hours of such work on more than 1,700 matters. Before joining the firm’s office in Washington DC in 2006, Turner worked for Dechert in London, where she became its first international pro bono partner. Her brief was to professionalise the practice and develop a global infrastructure to guide the firm’s efforts in the field.
Turner became a pro bono pioneer in 1988 when, as a Philadelphia-based third-year associate at Ballard Spahr, she persuaded the firm to back her in a dedicated pro bono role.
Recent work includes the application of generative artificial intelligence in screening potential miscarriage of justice cases, as part of Dechert’s collaboration with the Innocence Project.
Alma Asay
Chief innovation and value officer, Crowell & Moring
Alma Asay joined Crowell & Moring in 2021 as the first member of its innovation team, which has since grown to nine people. Her focus has been on developing technology to help lawyers with client matters, so she started by creating a centralised platform for easily storing and searching the firm’s data.
Asay led the development of the firm’s generative artificial intelligence platform, CrowellAI, which creates alerts on legal risks affecting clients’ specific industries. Staff can also use it to summarise cases and speed up other time-consuming tasks. The search systems are designed to support lawyers who are unfamiliar with making “prompt” requests in chatbots. So far, around 45 per cent of the firm has been trained to use the tool.
After working as a litigation lawyer, she developed a project management system, Allegory, that was sold to legal tech company Integreon in 2017.
Byong Kim
Senior director, technology innovations, Seyfarth Shaw
Since joining the firm in 2013, Byong Kim has designed technology tools for lawyers and their clients. In 2024, he completed a 10-year project to consolidate the systems that clients use to access information about their matters into one cloud-based platform, Seyfarth Link.
Kim has also launched the firm’s own AI portal, to aid contract analysis and ediscovery and provide technology training and education resources via a single source. Since its launch to nearly 2,000 staff in March, the portal has averaged approximately 1,100 visits per month. One of its tools, a chatbot for querying documents, has handled 5,000 interactions since its introduction.
His first job was as a programmer for IT consultants, but Kim also holds a graduate degree from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. He has led the firm’s technology team since 2016; in 2019, the team was rebranded as Seyfarth Labs.
Lisa Mayo Haynes
Director of technology innovation, Ballard Spahr
Lisa Mayo Haynes was promoted to director of technology innovation this year, after 34 years as a director of data and analytics. She has helped lay the foundations for Ballard Spahr’s adoption of technology and development of facilities to centralise the firm’s data.
Under Mayo Haynes’s direction, the client value and innovation team works with the firm’s lawyers and clients to create a range of user-friendly tech applications that are tailored to their needs, and do not require complex programming knowledge.
Examples include: litigation and regulatory trackers on topics such as artificial intelligence and the application and disposal of hazardous chemicals used to make consumer goods; a chatbot that can be built into existing applications to generate summaries and respond to questions; and a know-your-client tool that combines third-party information with the firm’s data warehouse so lawyers can assess their clients’ legal needs.
Jackie Park
Co-US managing partner, DLA Piper
Jackie Park was promoted to her current position at the firm in 2020. Since then, amid the disruptions to the workforce caused by the pandemic and the ensuing competition for skills, she has focused on staff training and development. In reviewing the traditional training system, she found the mentorship programme’s value too often involved luck: some mentors made time to support associates, but others expected them simply to carry out low-level tasks — to the extent that some left.
Park has replaced the mentoring programme with a five-month training scheme for new associates that emphasises legal, interpersonal, and technological skills. She aims to ensure that staff at all levels receive support and has introduced mandatory training for lawyers to acquire the skills required for partnership. Additionally, she has enhanced the support, guidance, and feedback given to lawyers during their first years as partners.
Janet Sullivan
Global director of practice technology, White & Case
Janet Sullivan has played a crucial role on the firm’s innovation committee in responding to generative AI over the past two years. Under her leadership, the firm has made significant investments in systems that take advantage of the technology while protecting client privacy. For example, it has developed its own privately licensed generative AI software on its encrypted network. This provides reassurance to clients that their data will not be accessible to third parties, used to train other external AI services, or mixed with other clients’ information. The firm has used this system to create customised non-disclosure agreements for a private equity client, for instance.
White & Case also uses standard public AI software for administrative tasks. To drive the adoption of new technology within the firm, Sullivan led a project that gathered feedback from hundreds of clients to help identify areas in need of improvement.
