Colin Turner is IT Delivery & Transition Manager at AG and is based in Edinburgh.

Five years ago he was HBJ's IT Director, leading a small IT team.

'5 years ago I never thought I would…'

Have travelled across Europe without leaving my home office, experienced a pandemic and replaced all our core business systems!

With AG opening six European offices as part of its expansion strategy, being involved in five of them has allowed me to work with many of the Business Service teams, appreciating their expertise and the way AG supports the incoming teams. Working with GC&R, HR, PCOS, Business Change, Business development and of course all the IT Teams has challenged and helped my understanding of how an international law firm works. 

Of course, I do not think any of us would have expected to be dealing with a pandemic, the level of change we have experienced as a direct result of Covid from an IT perspective has been staggering. The accepted work from home world we now inhabit has consolidated five years of technology change into less than 18 months, and I suspect many more years of culture and business thinking strategy into that same timeframe.

One other small opportunity that came my way was AG Core, a truly ambitious project to replace HR, Conflict and Business Acceptable, Finance, Reporting and Business Development systems. A necessary change to our critical business systems to support the continued growth of the business and one I suspect will continue into my sixth year.

Given I was IT Director at HBJ with a small IT team I am so glad I have had been on this journey with the support of a very skilled and clever IT team at AG.