During his recent visit to India, Lex Witness initiated a conversation with Neal Suggs on how technology has impacted the legal profession as a practice for both, in-house and external counsel. Drawing from his over 15 years at Microsoft, Neal shared his experiences with technology as an enabler for his own practice as well as the innovative substantive challenges his department faces every day.
Firstly, we’re no longer merely an on-premises software provider. When we go and talk to customers about Digital Transformation as a concept, it doesn’t take more than 60 seconds to be on the same page. They exactly know what this term means today.
Microsoft in itself has undergone an accelerated paradigm shift towards digital transformation, under the aegis of Satya Nadella, our CEO. He’s really changing the foundations of our company. In my perspective, we’ve shifted from being considered a very arrogant company to a company that has much more humility; and is significantly focused on our customers and partners, putting them at the center of our efforts. We don’t make products for ourselves. We make products to make others better, which I think is a lot of fun.
As I look through the lens of the legal environment, there’s actually a lot of hope. Lawyers – and I’m not specifically speaking about the Indian market, I’m speaking about the U.S. market lawyers as well, who have historically been unable to find the power button on a computer, are now really recognizing that technology can come in and revolutionize how we work. They are looking at our toolsets that allow customers to manage work better. There are a lot of document requests that play a key role in a practice like litigation and similarly other practice domains. It’s probably a similar scenario in India. We now have tools based upon our experiences with the EU and others; we’ve built tools into our products that now make it a lot easier for customers to organize data. A legal department today really looks for ways of making use of our technology help them make their jobs more efficient. I think as we look at AI and blockchain, it’s really quite exciting to see where that’s going to go.
So, the three major priorities I have are largely as follows. Firstly, continuing to modernize our approach on the way we go to market with customers. We want to ensure that customers get easy access into our dynamically changing technologies. Every time I go around and see a Windows 95 screen, I realize there have been four iterations. And this one I use today doesn’t look anything like Windows 95, which means, we’ve got to get people to move.
Secondly, I focus on preparing the company for the modern go-to-markets of the future: AI, blockchain, Machine learning and, ultimately, quantum computing. These will require different licensing models and we’re working full steam ahead as far as getting adapted to the change.. We need to be sure we are on the front foot on all new technologies and will lead with that.
And lastly, of course, my priority is to ensure our company remains 100% customer focused. My job is to make sure that all that we as a department can do to participate in the company’s future, we do. This is not only from the transactional perspective but also from the perspective of advocating for customers in areas such as privacy, security, cybersecurity and law enforcement access. Thus, we ensure that we’re being constantly responsive and open to feedback from customers so that they can consume our products and services more comfortably.
Well, certainly the biggest change over the last 20 years, aside from the way anti-trust and competition laws have evolved, is the number of new products and services that are putting enormous pressure on statutes that were written hundreds of years ago and, in some cases, even 20 or 30 years ago. So, what we’re seeing is that technology is moving expeditiously and regulation is following it. If you look at any major transformation, it takes anywhere between three to five decades for the regulatory environment to catch up. We don’t have that time! So, I think one of the biggest things we’ve seen is the legal department grow at a pace that is enormously surprising. For instance, when I started practicing, it was certainly a commonly held belief that if you wanted to work, you’d choose to work at a law firm first, and then you would go in-house. However, those are mere vintage thoughts now! I can surely tell you that right now in-house lawyers are providing value by not only serving as litigators and legal advisors but also by becoming strategic business advocates. Privacy is a business opportunity and not just a compliance
obligation!
If we look back and think it over, we’d realize that now, having an effective legal team that can adapt and goes after these opportunities at the same scale as the businesses they support becomes tremendously advantageous for the company’s growth. And there are other companies like us doing it. To add on to that, let’s not forget that at the top 400 companies in the world, most of the cutting edge legal deliberation in being managed in-house and not by the external counsel. And technology is making that difference but, of course, there’s a recognition that the lawyers have to sit a lot closer to the business to be effective.
Well, there could be several reasons, but there’s no doubt that the opportunity in India is massive for us. Right from the massive talent pool in the country to AI innovation, India proves out to be a very interesting market for us. As far as numbers are concerned, it could be the 50 million small and medium business customers, or the multiple billion-dollar valued companies, or the soon to be country with the most unicorns in the World, or the tech alent and AI innovation that is going on. Any way you look at it, the opportunity in the Indian market is massive for us. I think if we look around the economies of the world, India is one of the most exciting, fast-paced and quickly growing economies. The opportunity is ripe to come to a market that has all of this talent, capability and not only provide our products but also learn from the marketplace. Things are happening here in a way that you just don’t see in the U.S. or Europe. And I think it’s an incredibly vibrant and incredibly talented market. Everything I read suggests that India is quite well aware of its structural challenges. Yet, I think the technologies we’re talking about can blow through the structural challenges and really transform the economy and do some exciting things.
Well, what I can explain is what I see in other markets and I’d say you’ve hit the three very big sectors that are transforming. Take some machine learning capabilities that can predict five years in advance that somebody is on track to have a heart attack. What could you do? How could you transform healthcare and what would be the cost to society? And it’s very simple. You take the iPhone 10, a Samsung Note 8 or Galaxy 9 and you take the iris sensors. Iris sensors can read information that would give you a lot of early warnings about heart disease, among other things. You combine that with the ability to understand people searching for shoulder pain or antacid relief. And now you have a set of tools and information that can really help people. However, you have the potential risk as well of the information being misused.
There’s just a tremendous opportunity to come into a market that is really starting to become the cutting edge for technologies like AI. I’ve been working throughout the last eight years very specifically on this road and it’s just remarkable to see the opportunity that has been leapfrogging the rest of the world in capability and that’s what makes the Indian market so important, so vital for us.
Well, that’s a great question and we’ve written a book about it. But let me see if I can get specific on projects. One of the things we’re doing with our philanthropies efforts is making sure we’re putting a certain amount of cloud computing into the hands of state-owned enterprises, civil society organizations or even non-profits. We are making sure that we can get the benefits of technology in the hands of folks who can really make good use of it.
I think we’re transforming things like healthcare. We have a great story for example, about a particular type of congenital heart disease where we worked on making sure we could make the solution comply with Privacy Law in the U.S. as well as Europe. We created a solution which allowed doctors to reverse fatality rates by 50 percent, increasing survival rates in an early form of heart disease and surgery simply by providing the capability to use Skype. A hospital was provided with Surface Books and Azure Services to track information, using transformative solutions on healthcare that Microsoft as developed. We’ve helped governments transform. In Sao Paulo, they have 99 million open litigation cases, unable to provide on time justice by being crushed under the weight of the documentary evidence they were taking in for each case. Microsoft helped them move their files and their filing systems onto an electronic cloud-based system; helping
them cut down operational costs of the judiciary as well as the time to getting justice delivered.
I think that’s just a small sample of how we’re trying to make our technology available to help transform society.
So, this is a question I have been addressing quite often. Since May 25th 2018, Microsoft and many of its partners have been GDPR compliant. That’s the law and that’s the way it has been. But this essentially is not just about compliance.
I think there are companies in India that do a lot of business process outsourcing. For them, the concern is not just the regulatory implications for themselves, but also for their customers in case of non-compliance and hence their responsibility and accountability towards their customers. But it’s wrong to look at it from the negative, there’s a positive. Given the massive business process outsourcing India has been doing, there is a huge opportunity if there is a GDPR compliant solution available. So, this is actually a business opportunity for the Indian market. I also think Taiwan is another market which is going to be a big player in the Internet of Things and the production of devices. It is the opportunity for markets in Asia to actually turn this into a competitive advantage for the rest of the world.
And I think, now is the time for partners in India to get really focused on this before it becomes a compliance issue. We got on board with GDPR because we saw it as a massive business opportunity. We think customers and consumers are comfortable with how their data is being used. It
actually means they’re going to use more of the services and making sure that there’s a regulator keeping companies honest. I think it actually makes customers rely more on the services. We see too many people characterizing this as a compliance issue. We think it’s a business opportunity and it has actually been proven to be that.
I think it’s probably the same (with its own local flavours) as I see around the world. The first is regulatory uncertainty. Here are some of the questions that come up – Will I be able to use these services in a compliant way? Second, is the sheer cost. I see an inertia that sets in when it comes to investing in a certain technology solution and now you’re presented with an opportunity to move to this advanced technology. What’s the cost of transfer, what’s the cost of learning, what’s the cost of upkeep? What’s the next thing I’m going to have to get if this technology evolves? I think the last one is the environment in which one uses these services, i.e. cybersecurity. You have to use these services but they’re moving so fast and there seems to be so much danger. Every day in the US there’s another company announcing a data breach and they have not even been on the cloud yet. So, there’s a trust issue that goes with using the technology that we broadly refer to as breaches to cybersecurity. Can one trust these providers to do the right thing? I think these are the biggest challenges you see, not just in this market, but also around the world.
Well, sometimes a particular customer in a particular jurisdiction will come to us and wonder if they’re missing something on attaining cybersecurity compliance. They may feel that they’re behind. However, I would say, India is no further behind on this than any other jurisdiction.
Cybersecurity is bedeviling. You see the effect of lack of cybersecurity policy, or a failure in its implementation, in the US or UK or in Europe as a whole. It’s a very significant challenge. I think it is true for every jurisdiction, including India. There’s an opportunity at this early stage to define a course of action that can set you up for success. Microsoft makes enormous investments in cybersecurity. We focus our efforts on going after people (cybercriminals) who would go after our customers. We are doing a lot. What happens at our Redmond office, our Cyber Defense Operations and Cyber Crime Centers is unreal. It literally looks like mission control from outer space. And the reason is, we can’t have enough real-time telemetry to protect the environment. There are constant data attacks going on, almost everywhere. Most of the companies that haven’t made the shift are yet to realize that security is a full-time job. They are under a constant risk of an attacks and can very possibly not fend them off on their own. We can because we are spending billions on that front. That’s where this is going. You cannot over-invest in protecting. You just have to do it in a very smart and considered way and that’s what we think we’ve done.
Well, I’d say right now Microsoft and other companies feel like we’re caught in a crossfire. There’s a series of geopolitical moves developing and the whole reason that the Geneva Conventions were put in place in the first place was to put in place rules of war and engagement – nation state engagement around civilians. The Digital Geneva Convention should do the same in the digital world. I read an article that suggested that this is as dangerous as the Cold War without any of the rules. And that’s what we need – a set of rules or norms so that we can pull ourselves back from these places that feel like we’re on the brink of a digital war. Cyberspace seems to be highly unregulated right now. People carry this misconception that if it happens in cyberspace, it’s not as damaging. However, if you can imagine a scenario where you could bring down a country’s infrastructure system, that would be devastating. Or imagine if you could somehow infiltrate a country’s voting system – that would be disastrous. So, I think these are areas where we ought to invest enough in. While businesses are caught in the crossfire we have chosen to speak up for ourselves and for our customers and that’s why we’ve invested in the Digital Geneva Convention.
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