LIVE Wednesday 3rd June 2026
14:00 – 15:00 BST
Despite longer days and growing teams, most law firms are leaving significant billable capacity untapped. The issue isn’t lawyer effort — it’s how work actually flows through the firm. In this candid roundtable, senior legal leaders will confront where billable hours are quietly lost to friction, risk management, and outdated ways of working. The discussion will focus on how leading firms are redesigning workflows, automating intelligently, and modernising client engagement to unlock real capacity — without increasing headcount. This session is for leaders who want measurable productivity gains, stronger client trust, and sustainable growth, not just more technology.
Speakers
Derek Southall
Founder & CEO
Hyperscale Group
Derek Southall, is a high profile figure in the legal technology, innovation, knowledge management and digital marketplaces Derek has spent nearly 25 years in a range of leading strategic roles for a top 50 global law firm, for most of this time as a Partner and Head of Strategic Development and subsequently as Head of Digital and Innovation. During this period Derek helped drive growth from £27 mil TO to in excess of £425 mil TO as well as driving and supporting numerous mergers and international expansion to 18 offices in 10 countries.
Derek is the CEO of www.hyperscalegroup.com which is an advisory and implementation business helping clients develop strategies for and overcome challenges with technology, digital, knowledge management and innovation. Hyperscale Group works for a range of large global businesses, legal and compliance departments, professional services firms, venture capitalists, litigation funders and start-ups in a range of jurisdictions around the globe. Derek also serves on the advisory board of the Institute of Global Innovation, a multidisciplinary group of around 350-400 academics who are working to solve the world’s biggest problems as well as a number of start-ups and is a non-executive director of www.fliplet.com. Derek is also a co-founder of an operational excellence e learning platform called www.theprofessionalalternative.com
Derek chairs the Legal IT Innovators Group (www.litig.org) which has 85 or so of the top 100 firms as members (representing 90000 users and £20bn of turnover).
Linzi Penman
Partner
DLA Piper
Linzi Penman heads up DLA Piper’s Technology sector group in the UK.
Linzi is a technology, data and AI lawyer who advises international private and public companies on matters relating to IT, commercial and compliance issues, with a particular focus on the Financial Services, Consumer Goods, Retail, Media and Entertainment sectors.
Linzi has assisted in several significant outsourcing and complex technology transactions; this work has involved business critical projects some of which have been valued in the hundreds of millions of pounds. Having gained considerable experience across a variety of matters, Linzi has invaluable insight and understanding of her clients’ needs and uses Design Thinking and Lean Six Sigma processes to find the right solution for each transaction.
Sponsor
Progress (Nasdaq: PRGS) provides software that enables organizations to develop and deploy their mission-critical applications and experiences, as well as effectively manage their data platforms, cloud and IT infrastructure. As an experienced, trusted provider, we make the lives of technology professionals easier. Over 4 million developers and technologists at hundreds of thousands of enterprises depend on Progress.