A TRANSFORMATIONAL ACQUISITION FOR ASHURST

Digital strategy

When Ashurst merged with Blake Dawson Waldron in 2012, it became one of the world’s largest law firms. The firm’s headcount swelled to 1,600 lawyers working from 27 offices, from Jakarta to Shanghai and Singapore.

A project was undertaken with three objectives:

Brand relaunch: to reposition the firm as a global brand and showcase its expanded expertise in energy & resources, infrastructure, and financial services.
IT infrastructure: the firm could enjoy significant operational and financial benefits by integrating disparate active directories and content management systems.
Process redesign: with content creators spread around the globe, a process needed to be designed for content creation, governance and compliance.

Optimised processes

The project required close collaboration with a multi-disciplinary and multinational team from Ashurst that was overseen by the firm’s CMO. I provided consultancy to develop a blueprint for a new content management platform that integrated a data feed from their active directory.

I led a series of workshops to define the content management approach and how a new website would be personalised for user geography as well as industry and sector relevance.

Working closely with a team of user experience designers, software engineers and business analysts, standardised templates were delivered for content delivery. Additional deliverables included: tone of voice guidelines, a governance process built into the CMS, and information architecture and taxonomy design.

Platform strategy

Client: Ashurst

Agency: Sapient Razorfish

Industry: Legal

Dale is one of the few truly skilled content strategists that I have worked with in my career. His attention to detail, thorough analysis, and expert knowledge of the various topics that would constitute a content strategy was very impressive.

He is a lovely person to work with, this was evident in the confidence that the clients and the team had in him. Throughout the project, he did not stop at any challenge with an endeavor to find solutions and to do what is best for the client and the project team. I would not hesitate to recommend him.

- Violette dos Santos, Project manager