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Game Changers: Megaport

After interviewing several innovative Queensland lawyers, Jemima Harris (Chief Legal Officer at Megaport, an ASX-listed, global tech company headquartered in Brisbane) completes this series by turning the spotlight on the work of her team at Megaport.

Our business has undergone significant and exciting change in the last 12 months or so, including hiring over 20 new employees into our global sales team.

In order to help our new colleagues get up to speed on our contracting processes, how to engage with the legal team via our workflow intake system and other key legal processes, we started a series of training sessions we’ve called Legal Bootcamp.

This was inspired by a conversation with an in-house lawyer I met last year who had designed a similar program that had been really successful in his business.

Bootcamp sessions are online, live, informal training sessions held at either end of the business day to cover both the North American and Europe time zones.

These are run by members of the legal, privacy, telco and cybersecurity compliance teams with a view to empowering our colleagues to get deals done faster.

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Problem-solving

It’s challenging to get face to face time with our colleagues in a global business, but it’s important to us to develop strong working relationships and share information to get deals done as fast as possible, both where we’re helping onboard customers or engaging suppliers. We also wanted to cater to different preferences for receiving information, as some of our stakeholders prefer to engage live so they have the opportunity to ask questions, rather than read a document.

Most innovative aspect

I think the most innovative aspect is seeking to communicate with end users of our services in their preferred format, rather than what is the more traditional legal service model of providing wordy documents.

Implementing ideas

This part was pretty easy – we just gave it a go! We designed some content, then scheduled our first session which was focused on sales-contracting processes and started from there.

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We’ve subsequently run sessions on privacy and cyber processes which have been well attended and had high engagement.

We’ve found these sessions have also been a great opportunity to connect with colleagues across the business who we may not work with on a regular basis which we’ve really enjoyed.

Advice to others about implementing innovation in their business

Just give it a go! Things don’t need to be perfect to have an impact, and it’s important to test and iterate things with real users. People are often reluctant to provide feedback on something they think is final, so you’ll often get better insights launching something on a trial basis.

Judging success

We have had great feedback on the sessions so far and have had increased engagement from our business stakeholders. As mentioned above, each session has been well attended and great questions asked which demonstrates a high level of engagement with the materials.

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We’ve noticed an improvement in the quality of instructions that come to the legal team since commencing these sessions, which in turn helps us to turn contracts around faster for the business.

Learnings

Rolling out the bootcamp series has confirmed what we already knew, which is that there is no better way to build rapport than in a live conversation, even if online. Keeping the sessions fairly informal, including live demos of systems where relevant and allowing plenty of time for questions ensures a high level of engagement.

Biggest challenges to legal innovation

Probably the biggest thing I’ve observed from discussions with other lawyers is a fear of trying something new because it isn’t yet ‘perfect’. Innovation requires a bit of bravery and willingness to iterate.

Next steps

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We’ll continue to build out our catalogue of training sessions and build these into a library to assist in onboarding new team members, both in the legal team and broader business, as well as enable stakeholders to refer back to the training for a refresher as needed.

Jemima Harris is a Founder of Invia Legal Operations. She is recognised as an expert in legal operations, strategy, transformation and continuous improvement. She is a member of the QLS Innovation Committee.

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