Norton Rose Fulbright’s IBOR transition work named ‘Technology Venture of the Year’ at British Legal Technology Awards

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has been awarded ‘Technology Venture of the Year’ at the British Legal Technology Awards 2021. The event, hosted at the Old Billingsgate venue in London, seeks to recognise successes in leadership, innovation and technology by presenting accolades to legal service providers who are transforming the future of the industry.

In receiving the award for ‘Technology Venture of the Year’, Norton Rose Fulbright was recognised for its work in developing an end-to-end solution to support financial institutions in preparing for the transition away from IBOR rates, navigating the process of transitioning hundreds of thousands of banking agreements away from IBOR. 

In partnership with the firm’s dedicated innovation and efficiency initiative, NRF Transform, Norton Rose Fulbright built a fully-integrated transition team of banking, finance, disputes and regulatory lawyers, compliance professionals, legal technologists, legal process architects, project managers and innovation specialists. They developed a solution that used innovative technological tools with a strong and effective application of AI and machine learning, which led to crucial gains in time efficiency and comprehensively resolved a huge part of the challenge for banks by minimising the need for a far more time-consuming manual review process.

Norton Rose Fulbright’s award-winning solution utilised multiple integrated software platforms including machine learning-enabled contract data extraction, workflow and task management, online contract negotiation, e-signatures and powerful data visualisation, all connected to a central data repository to provide structure to the client data and deliver accurate reporting on progress to client stakeholders. It successfully sorted, reviewed and amended hundreds of thousands of documents with significant, measurable efficiency.

David Carter, chief product officer and global NRF Transform lead, commented:

“It’s fantastic to have been recognised for the technological innovation of our work at the British Legal Technology Awards, and we see this as a clear indicator of the importance of providing world-class, highly innovative technological solutions. Through the work of NRF Transform, we are committed to building further on our offering of technology-based services and look forward to continuing to provide our clients with market-leading solutions.”

Davide Barzilai, head of the firm’s global IBOR Transition team, added:

“We are proud to have worked with the LIBOR transition project teams at many financial institutions to devise and deliver the best possible solution for their specific needs, in line with their business objectives. This award is testament to the quality and dedication of our market-leading teams in banking, technology, innovation, project management and financial services.”