Momentum London 2025: Inside the Transformation of Legal Operations

The business of law is undergoing a structural shift — one driven less by sudden disruption and more by a steady, deliberate recalibration of how work gets done. That shift was on full display at Momentum London 2025 as legal professionals from across the EMEA region convened in London.

While the event featured product updates, implementation stories, and insightful conversation around modernization, the underlying theme was evident: firms are beginning to treat operational technology not as a collection of tools but as an interconnected system that shapes the economics, rhythm, and even culture of legal work.

Over the two days, a clear picture emerged of how firms are navigating this shift — where automation naturally fits, how data reshapes everyday decisions, and what it takes to build operational resilience in a profession still grounded in high-complexity, high-touch work.

Automation Shifts from Theory to Everyday Practice

One of the clearest indicators of change came from discussions about the work-to-cash lifecycle. For years, billing, compliance, and financial workflows were areas slowed down by tedious tasks and fragmented systems. What is different now is the scale of automation being introduced — and the appetite from firms to adopt it.

Aderant leaders outlined advances in Expert Sierra, the Stridyn platform, and autonomous processes designed to minimize the number of human touchpoints in routine workflows. That shift — toward fewer manual interventions, fewer delays, and fewer exceptions — is increasingly reflected across the industry.

Yet the conversations at Momentum London 2025 made clear that the drive toward autonomy isn’t about sidelining human expertise. It’s about giving it room to do more and supercharging the human capabilities of all the legal professionals that power law firms around the world.

Automation, in this context, becomes not a sudden leap forward, but a redesign of how work flows across the firm.

Client Stories Reveal the Real Work of Modernization

If the broad trends described the direction of the legal industry, the award recipients illustrated the real work required to get there — often more complex, collaborative, and people-centric than appears on the surface.

Newcomer of the Year – Hengeler Mueller

Aderant has been steadily expanding its client footprint in Europe, and so has Hengeler Mueller, a commercial law firm headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. Hengeler selected Aderant Expert as their on-premise practice management system (PMS) to bolster the firm’s growth plans, remove inefficiencies, and introduce processes to reduce both risk and time. The firm collaborated closely with Aderant on the Expert deployment to overcome layers of complexity, resolve challenges, and identify best practices to be deployed and embraced through a change management program. More than 100 people worked on this implementation to carry it successfully across the finish line, and German language customizations were added to the standard English language settings to make Aderant more intuitive and useful.

Innovator of the Year – Horwich Farrelly

Based in England, Horwich Farrelly embodies a forward-thinking, innovative approach focused on clients’ needs, which helps them realize their potential for sustained growth. Their journey with Aderant and Expert Sierra began in 2021, following a robust selection process to pursue a best-of-breed PMS. What followed was a series of projects to modernize and integrate systems, processes, and user experiences for all employees in the firm. The firm embraced cloud-based tech to achieve ambitious goals and eliminate challenges of customizations, workarounds, and lack of scale. Expert Sierra now provides the firm’s core tech engine, allowing the business to operate effectively.

Firm of the Year – Freeths

Freeths first implemented Aderant Expert in 2018 and has expanded its capabilities ever since — adding core functionality, integrating BillBlast and iTimekeep, and recently completing a full migration to Expert Sierra. The goal has been consistent: build greater efficiency into the firm’s operations and automate routine processes so partners, fee earners, and business teams can concentrate on higher-value work and client service.

Now one of the UK’s largest full-service firms, Freeths operates 13 offices and employs more than 1,200 people. The firm received the Legal Business Awards’ Firm of the Year in 2024 and has played a role in several prominent cases, including one that later became the basis for a television drama.

Better Together – Simkins

Simkins has been an Aderant client since 2022 and has consistently demonstrated what strong collaboration looks like. When the firm selected Expert Sierra as its cloud-based PMS, the rollout was planned and executed with precision — timelines and budgets were met, and disruption to the business, fee earners, and clients was minimal. More recently, Simkins deployed both iTimekeep and Cloud Conflicts with the same disciplined approach to delivery and cost management.

Aderant’s Professional Services team often notes how open, honest, and light-hearted the Simkins IT team remains — even during the pressures of go-live periods. Their way of working mirrors the approach they bring to their clients across media, entertainment, music, talent management, and influencer representation.

AI’s Expanding Role in Legal Business Operations

AI was present in nearly every conversation at Momentum London 2025. The tone among attendees was pragmatic rather than speculative. AI’s value is increasingly understood not as a standalone capability but as an embedded function within broader systems — forecasting time capture, predicting billing delays, suggesting workload allocation, or preemptively identifying compliance risks. Firms are interested in AI as pattern recognition at scale, not as an autonomous actor.

The real frontier, as several sessions pointed out, lies in integrating these capabilities into workflows naturally, so technology informs action without demanding attention.

A Community Defining the Next Phase of Legal Tech

If Momentum London 2025 revealed anything about the future, it’s the way law firms are beginning to reshape their operations — weaving together connected systems, richer data, and expanding automation, all while keeping human expertise at the center. The firms making the most progress are treating technology as an enduring foundation, not a collection of standalone tools.

That conversation will broaden at Momentum Global 2026 in Fort Lauderdale next May, when impactful conversations shaping legal tech, automation, data strategy, AI, and the legal tech community will take center stage.

What London made unmistakably clear is that the transformation of legal operations is already underway — shaped not by sudden disruption but by measured, intentional progress. And at its core is a legal community that views technology not as the end goal, but as the infrastructure enabling what comes next.