Law firm Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD) has been nominated for an award at the 2021 FT Innovative Lawyers Awards Europe, with the firm recognised for one if its technology solutions, WBD Clarity.
Shortlisted in the Practice of Law: Digital Processes category, WBD Clarity is a safe and secure online solution delivering a cost-effective response to manage data subject access requests (DSARs) and help clients manage their requests, meet legal obligations, comply with statutory deadlines and protect the privacy of customers and employees. The technology streamlines and speeds up the process of identifying and redacting personal data with optimised and automated workflows that remove the need for manual processing whilst also providing monitoring and tracking services. WBD Clarity users can also use the bespoke messaging platform to call on the knowledge and expertise of WBD's data privacy experts.
Amy Prime, associate at WBD who led on the creation and implementation of WBD Clarity, comments:
"DSARs often prove to be a challenging area of the GDPR to manage, with the increased publicity of data losses and mismanagement also driving awareness of individual data protection rights. The volume of documents containing personal data has reached an unmanageable size, and only continues to grow. We recognised that our clients were struggling to fulfil these requests, meet tight statutory deadlines, and protect the privacy of their customers and employees. We therefore created WBD Clarity to provide clear tracking of DSAR progress, effectively reduce data and provide a secure redaction service. We're thrilled to have our technology recognised by the Financial Times and look forward to the award ceremony in October."
WBD has a strong focus on innovation. Last year, the firm was recognised in the FT Innovative Lawyers report 2020 with the firm ranked in the Top 30 most innovative law firms in Europe for demonstrating innovation for clients and in how the law is practised as well as the wide range of programmes run by the firm to support talent, skills and responsible business initiatives across the UK and beyond. To name just a few, key projects include:
- WBD Accelerate, a service aimed at start-up businesses to help them navigate complex legal issues
- Leading the way in e-signatures which have become a business critical tool during the COVID-19 pandemic
- The firm's improved Knowledge Management system to offer clients quick and easy access to key insights and tailored content from across the firm
- WBD's award winning apprenticeship programmes.
