Wilson Sonsini Wins Financial Times Award for Innovation in Digital Legal Practice
On December 9, 2021, the Financial Times held its North American Innovative Lawyers Awards ceremony, where Wilson Sonsini won the award for "Innovation in Digital Legal Practice." The publication acknowledges the firm's newly merged platform for managing start-up employee stock holdings with investment bank Morgan Stanley’s version of this technology, called Shareworks. The partnership gives the bank access to more clients and gives the law firm proprietary access to Shareworks, also allowing Wilson Sonsini to integrate Neuron, its legal process and automation system, with the platform.
Individually, the firm's managing partner Doug Clark was shortlisted for the "Most Innovative Law Firm Leader" award, and was featured in the Financial Times' special report on people-focused law firm leaders. As managing partner since 2012, Doug has led investments in new technologies and in developing tech-enabled legal services, viewing them as essential to the firm’s growth. Doug came up with the idea for SixFifty, a subsidiary launched in 2019 to provide automated legal services to clients, including start-ups and small businesses.
Additionally, David Wang was shortlisted for "Most Innovative Change Maker" and featured in the publication's special report on five law firm professionals driving radical change. David, who took on the role of chief innovation officer in early 2020, leads the firm's efforts to digitize, automate, and apply artificial intelligence and data analytics to the practice of law. He created Neuron, a software service to automate legal processes for start-ups. Through a strategic partnership, Neuron integrates with bank Morgan Stanley’s Shareworks software to help start-up companies manage their shares and other securities. David also played a leading role in founding the Open Cap Table Coalition — an industry group formed by law firms, software companies and Morgan Stanley — to standardize and improve the transparency of capitalization table data, which shows who owns a company’s securities.
For more information, see the Financial Times’ event page and full list of award winners.