Addleshaw Goddard's creative approach to legal technology has once again received external recognition, taking home the 'Best Use of Technology' award at the British Legal Awards for its work developing a unique legal portal, packed full of innovative features, to help the Sainsbury's in-house legal team harness the collective benefits of their panel firms.

Created in collaboration with both Sainsbury’s in-house legal team and CMS, the portal, which is based on HighQ, is designed for use by both the Sainsbury's in-house legal team and its external panel lawyers to create a virtual 'Legal Community'. The portal houses a number of capabilities, including MI data-analytics, document storage, matter tracking and training, helping the Sainsbury's team to drive greater efficiencies in managing the relationships with its external panel lawyers.

Built in an ambitious 6-month timescale, the Legal Portal provided Sainsbury's with the first of its kind collaborative platform that delivers tools that are business critical, save time and costs for both the client and their 11 panel firms.  

This work has also previously been Highly Commended at both the Law Society Excellence Awards for 'Excellence in Client Service' and at the Legal Week Innovation Awards for 'Client Management Innovation'.

Katherine Kinch, Head of Commercial and Property Law, Group Legal Services, Sainsbury's, commenting on the win, said: "Attempting innovation in a world of constant change, competing opportunities and cost-restraint required the best advice available. I am delighted that CMS and AG have worked hard to understand our business and requirements in supporting us.  Bringing their working knowledge and real expertise of legal tech enables Sainsbury’s to innovate in a way that is absolutely right for us. The benefits of efficiency and data are well known but the real success in this collaboration is that Sainsbury’s will be able to move at pace, adopting technology that works for Sainsbury’s having regard to our established ways of working/legacy systems."

Partner Ian Smith, who led on the project at Addleshaw Goddard, continues: "Collaborating with CMS has allowed us to share our combined best practice and market knowledge to create a bespoke solution deploying the very best in cutting edge legal-tech The portal has received a great amount of external recognition since its launch, which is testament to our commitment to creating ground-breaking, customised technological solutions for our clients and their individual needs."