Client Synopsis
Finlaysons LawyersOrganisation Overview
Finlaysons is one of Australia’s most respected major commercial law firms. It was established in 1850 in Adelaide where it is home to an executive team of 21 partners, leading a team of over 60 lawyers and 55 administrative staff. With its long heritage in the marketplace, Finlaysons’ advise clients with interests in South Australia, all other Australian jurisdictions and over 15 other countries. The firm has several specialist business units – banking and financial services, property and insurance.
Fragile to Agile Engagement
Fragile to Agile (F2A) was commissioned by Finlaysons Lawyers to conduct an end to end review of the internal IT function. The executive team within Finlaysons wanted to understand whether the IT function was delivering value for the organisation and to understand specifically what services it was delivering.
F2A conducted several interviews with stakeholders, including the Managing Partner and partners from each of the business units. F2A incorporated this feedback into its IT Review to reflect several themes for improvement back to the organisation along with specific targeted potential improvement opportunities. In addition to conducting the stakeholder sessions, it utilised a capability maturity model to evaluate Finlaysons position with regards to its IT operations and level of alignment of IT with the business needs. Some basic benchmarking activity was done with publicly available data for legal professional services to understand, at a high level, the comparative value of the Finlaysons’ IT operation and finally, an evaluation of the IT Operating Model was performed and recommendations were made as to where time could best be spent to deliver value for the business. This report was well received by the board and the recommendations were endorsed and enacted.