Leveraging People, Processes, Technology & Data | Joy Saphla

Her track record of success has had a positive impact on the culture and growth at Morae, as one of the hottest Alternative Legal Service Providers in the market. This is evidenced by a number of industry awards the company has received, including recently being named an ACC Value Champion. Joy’s passion and focus on legal transformation serves as an inspiring and galvanizing influence for Morae’s many employees around the world.

Joy is the seniormost leader of Morae’s strategic advisory team and a member of the company’s senior leadership team as well. In this role, she has been an inspiration to women and other employees all across the business, including frequently serving as a mentor through the company’s People Coach program and as a vocal advocate of the company’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiative. She has also been influential internationally through her numerous speaking engagements, including with the Association of Corporate Council, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), Texas General Counsel Forum, CLO Conference, ILTA, LegalTech Conference, and CLT Super Conference. She is also a prolific writer, including contributions in Above the Law, Bloomberg BNA, Corporate Legal Times, Executive Lawyer, Inside Counsel, Corporate Counsel, the International Legal Technology Association, Bridgeway University, and CIO Review.

According to Joy, legal departments and law firms are under increasing pressure to deliver greater value to the business. Morae was founded to transform the way legal work is consumed and produced by helping its clients better understand their business objectives and accordingly better manage their cost, risk, and information to achieve the outcomes they care about most. Morae differentiates in the market by focusing on digital and business transformation enabled by its strategic advisory capabilities, global scale of its technology consulting team, and global scale of legal managed services. Clients value the 360 degree view of their budget, technology, and resourcing needs, internally and externally, and Morae’s ability to solve complex challenges that optimize across cost, risk, and information requirements. Every project is delivered with attention to ensuring a high quality client experience, including effective strategic planning and change management.

In addition, Morae’s market differentiation is expected to only increase, following its recent acquisition of Adaptive Solutions. This deal plus the company’s in depth partnerships with leading technology providers perfectly position it to drive change within the industry. Morae’s leadership team also expects the company will continue to evolve with the changing needs of its clients and even beyond the horizon of change in how it plans and shapes new solutions to ensure it can continue to deliver transformative results. What will remain unchanged is Morae’s singular focus on its clients and people globally the ‘outside in approach’ behind its OneMorae vision and culture.

As a workplace, Morae has strong virtual and hybrid working practices in place, powered by many of the same technologies the company offers its clients for the digital and business transformation of corporate legal departments, law firms, and compliance functions. Morae’s employees are trained and empowered with work from home and mobile work solutions, leveraging its long standing secure cloud based systems. Its workplaces are fully equipped for the collaboration of both in person and remote workers for any engagement. “We are innovating and driving digital and business transformation for our clients and for ourselves with a goal to operate at the highest levels of performance.”

As an example, its client Pearson was facing an unprecedented operational challenge. In 2017, the business committed to becoming a more straightforward, more efficient company, including reducing annual costs by £300 million by the end of 2019. To meet this challenge, Pearson’s Legal Department developed initiatives for how to transform its operating model. One of the most important was to create a single and flexible service delivery function to ensure the right resources deliver excellent work at the correct cost structure.

Pearson selected Morae as their managed services partner to deliver enhanced client experience, operational effectiveness, and process efficiencies. The Morae managed services team serves as an extension of the Pearson legal department. Morae works directly with their clients and counterparties and utilizes the same tools and processes implemented by Morae in partnership with Pearson. The implementation of tools and processes included a Legal Service Request (LSR) portal, Contract Management (CM) process, and an Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) and workflow automation platform to underpin and drive optimal legal service delivery. Morae was right there with the Pearson team every step of the way in transforming how legal services are consumed and delivered.

Morae recently received new funding from BlackRock. Crucial to that deal was the company’s vision, business strategy, and capability to deliver the outcomes clients care about. BlackRock believes in the journey Morae has undertaken that of a positively disruptive change agent in the industry working closely with law firms and corporations. The new funding will provide Morae with growth capital to expand its market presence and capabilities and execute additional strategic acquisitions to build even more comprehensive solutions.

Morae recently received new funding from BlackRock. Crucial to that deal was the company’s vision, business strategy, and capability to deliver the outcomes clients care about. BlackRock believes in the journey Morae has undertaken that of a positively disruptive change agent in the industry working closely with law firms and corporations. The new funding will provide Morae with growth capital to expand its market presence and capabilities and execute additional strategic acquisitions to build even more comprehensive solutions.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion is another area of increasing importance for many of the company’s clients, and likewise so at Morae. Morae’s DEI program currently includes Women’s, Black, and LGBTQA ERGs. The program’s goal is to honestly and authentically embrace inclusion by working together to shape the company’s culture to be more equitable. Not just by accepting differences but by celebrating them all the time with everyone the team engages. Morae has included clients in its DEI efforts, such as by inviting them to participate in its monthly DEI speaker series. Morae is happy to support its clients on their own DEI initiatives and work together with them on common goals. It is all part of Morae’s culture and mission to transform the legal industry.