The prestigious awards highlight law firms, in-house teams and outstanding individuals for their innovation in law and the business of law.

MinterEllison won the 'Innovation in New Business and Service Delivery Models' category for the firm's Legal Operations Model.

MinterEllison's new Legal Operations Model embeds process improvement and analytics with the firm's legal service offering, leading to estimated client savings of 30,000 billable hours.

"We trained 14 senior staff in Lean Six Sigma to help us identify efficiencies and digital solutions, and importantly have empowered them with various management techniques and freedoms to drive those efficiencies," said Gary Adler, MinterEllison's Chief Digital Officer.

"The investment and rigour we are putting into digital transformation is setting our firm up for the future and saving our clients' time and money. A year into our new Legal Operations Model, we've saved more than 30,000 billable hours."

Gareth Jolly, MinterEllison Partner, was named as one of the Top 10 innovators for the Asia Pacific Region. The tool he developed, Definition Checker, was also runner up in the Innovation in the Business of Law: Technology award and highly commended. Definition Checker is a drafting add-on in Microsoft Word that saves lawyers time and helps reduce errors in final drafts and executed documents.

MinterEllison was also named in the Top 10 Most Innovative Law Firms 2019 headquartered in the Asia-Pacific, placing fourth.

“How our legal teams and staff work with our clients' and add value is going to look very different in the future, and we are going to need the broad expertise and technologies to take us forward… we need much more than the best lawyers," said Annette Kimmitt, MinterEllison CEO and Managing Partner. "To see us succeed in the future our firm will need knowledge in artificial intelligence, coding, cross-disciplinary project management and design thinking."

"The recognition we received yesterday from the Financial Times shows that we are on the right track to developing the skillsets and teams we need to continue providing outstanding service to our client base," Ms Kimmitt said.

The FT Innovative Lawyers programme was established in Europe in 2006, launched in the US and North America in 2010, and in Asia-Pacific in 2014. Over the past 12 years it has covered legal industry innovation in 50 countries from more than 400 law firms and more than 465 company in-house legal departments.