Ted Theodoropoulos has spent close to 20 years in legal tech. He's worked with more than half the AmLaw, runs InfoDash (used by about one in four AmLaw firms), and hosts the Legal Innovation Spotlight podcast. He sees what firms are actually buying, where tools actually break, and which firms are actually moving.

We get into vibe coding (what it's good for, where it falls apart), why law firms still spend only 2.4% of revenue on technology, what separates the firms adapting from the firms stalling, and why empathy might be the most undervalued lawyer skill of the next five years.

If you care about AI adoption inside professional services, or you're trying to figure out what to build, buy, or ignore, this one's for you.

Notable quotes

Timestamps

• 00:00 Vibe coding: what it is, where it works, where it breaks
• 09:12 Enterprise disruption and the collaboration model that actually works
• 15:20 Why law firms spend 2.4% on tech (and why it's not enough)
• 22:59 Which firms are moving fast and what they're doing differently
• 27:34 From bespoke services to SaaS: InfoDash's transformation story
• 33:24 Forward-deployed engineers, high-touch delivery, and the future of collaboration tools
• 40:07 Measuring AI success and the soft skills lawyers need to build

Thanks to our guests, Kelli Raker, Eli Makus, and Leigh Zeiser.

Watch the video version here.

Takeaways

• RAILS launched to address the ethical use of AI in legal services.
• The initiative aims to bridge gaps in AI understanding among legal professionals.
• Working groups focus on client engagement, direct-to-consumer resources, and corporate legal teams.
• AI presents both opportunities and risks that need careful management.
• Access to AI should be equitable across different legal sectors.
• The risk management framework provides guidance for corporate legal teams.
• Use cases developed by RAILS help illustrate practical applications of AI.
• AI literacy is essential for legal professionals and their clients.
• The conversation emphasizes collaboration and sharing of resources.
• Future developments will continue to evolve as AI technology advances.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Rails and Responsible AI
01:57 Understanding Rails: Origins and Objectives
05:55 Working Groups: Focus Areas and Contributions
09:54 The Importance of Responsible AI in Legal Services
13:46 Outputs and Resources from Rails
17:56 Use Cases: Development and Significance
22:04 Future Directions for Rails and AI Literacy

The conversation delves into their backgrounds, the inspiration behind their book, and its key themes. We discuss the importance of a broad business education for legal professionals, the integration of legal technology, and the practical applications of the knowledge shared in their book.  
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 
00:29 Background of the Authors 
01:05 Journey to Writing the Legal MBA 
05:03 The Concept and Content of the Legal MBA 
14:29 Target Audience for the Legal MBA 
21:52 Technology in Law Firms 
26:42 Challenges and Adoption of Legal Tech 
34:22 The Legal MBA Academy and Conclusion

Read the episode takeaways at: https://www.fringelegal.com/balancing-technology-and-human-connection-in-legal-services-with-joey-seeber

Steven discusses the problem Ayora is solving in the legal industry and the role of lawyers as revenue managers. He explains that fee earners often have to make revenue management decisions throughout a matter's lifecycle, but they may not have the necessary skills or focus on revenue management. Ayora's smart lockup assistant helps fee earners by scanning a firm's data related to matters and providing recommendations on monitoring scope, estimates, budgets, resourcing, outside counsel guidelines, and billing. The assistant pre-drafts emails and provides relevant information to make the decision-making process easier and more efficient. Steven also addresses the challenge of balancing AI and machine learning with human control and building trust in the recommendations made. He emphasizes that Ayora prioritizes transparency and user consent and never takes any action without the attorney's knowledge.

Key takeaways:

• Fee earners in law firms, such as attorneys and lawyers, often need to make revenue management decisions throughout a matter's lifecycle but may not have the necessary skills or focus on revenue management.
• Ayora's smart lockup assistant helps fee earners monitor scope, estimates, budgets, resourcing, outside counsel guidelines, and billing, providing recommendations and pre-drafting emails to make decision-making easier and more efficient.
• Ayora prioritizes transparency and user consent, ensuring that attorneys have control over the recommendations made by the system.

Uncommon learning
The legal industry may be missing out on billions of dollars of additional value due to suboptimal revenue management decisions.

Podcast show notes

00:02 Introduction to the Fringe Legal Podcast

00:29 Guest Introduction: Stefan Ciesla, Co-founder and CEO of Ayora

00:58 Steven's Background and Ayora's Founding Team

02:07 The Unique Blend of Ayora's Founding Team

02:55 Understanding Ayora's Mission and Purpose

04:24 The Role of Lawyers as Revenue Managers

04:43 The Impact of Decision-Making on Revenue Management

08:28 Introducing Ayora's Smart Lockup Assistant

20:20 The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Decision-Making

27:05 The Impact of Fixed Fee Work on Revenue Management

30:12 Conclusion and Contact Information

Conan emphasizes the need for building trust with lawyers and finding those who are curious and open to tech-enabled solutions. He suggests starting small with bite-sized engagements to build trust over time. He also discusses the value of creating a foundation for tech adoption and balancing short-term impact with long-term goals.

The conversation delves into the role of vendors in adoption, with Conan highlighting the need for a strong partnership and a transparent framework for success. He stresses the importance of vendors having a real adoption strategy and sharing learnings from what has worked in the past.

Ab and Conan also discuss the challenge of incentives and tracking adoption. They explore the idea of integrating technology training into legal training to emphasize the value and importance of tech skills for lawyers. Ultimately, the key to successful adoption and building a tech-enabled culture in law firms lies in trust, continuous communication, and demonstrating the value of technology.

Key takeaways:

• Building a tech-enabled culture requires understanding the role of legal technology and the psychology and behavior of users.
• Trust is essential for successful adoption. Lawyers need to believe that tech solutions can help them.
• Adoption plans should be simplified and tailored to individual users.
• Integration of technology training into legal training can help emphasize the value of tech skills for lawyers.
• Vendors should have a strong adoption strategy and share learnings from past successes.

Uncommon learning:

Tech adoption requires a partnership between law firms and vendors, with a focus on transparency and continuous communication.

Abdi Shayesteh, founder and CEO of the legal training platform AltaClaro, is on a mission to close this practical skills gap. Frustrated by the inefficiencies he experienced firsthand as a junior lawyer, Abdi has reinvented legal education and training. AltaClaro leverages experiential learning techniques rooted in education science to provide associates with hands-on practice on simulated legal matters.

Show Notes

• [00:01:14] Abdi's early entrepreneurial experiences managing a cafe and starting a t-shirt business in college
• [00:08:02] Why Abdi decided to start another company after previous exits
• [00:10:25] Overview of what AltaClaro does
• [00:17:38] Issues with the traditional law firm training model
• [00:23:00] Explanation of the learning science principles AltaClaro leverages
• [00:34:59] Training trends Abdi sees law firms requesting for 2023

Show notes:

Show Notes:

[00:02:19] Getting early access to GPT-4

[00:08:00] How are the Uplevel Ops team grew adoption internally

[00:11:53] People don't care about AI
[00:14:51] Why to document prompts
[00:18:06] How are legal teams reacting to the changing landscape

[00:28:38] GenAI as a workflow tool
[00:31:03] What's the future?

[00:34:16] Will my role be displaced?

[00:38:47] What one thing can organizations do to see immediate value from GenAI?

Topics covered:

• Navigating the legal AI hype cycle
• AI’s potential to enhance legal workflows
• Growing law firm interest and hands-on exploration
• Avoiding the “trough of disillusionment”
• Real-world benefits driving adoption over hype

Key Takeaways:

• Definely creates software plugins to simplify drafting, reviewing, and analyzing legal contracts in Microsoft Word using AI/ML.
• The idea originated from Feargus' need as a blind lawyer to access information in documents more easily.
• They validated demand with a scrappy prototype and early pilots despite its flaws.
• After leaving law firm jobs, their mission-driven approach focuses on access, efficiency, and transparency.
• Their blueprint for innovation includes launching an MVP, inclusive design thinking, gathering user feedback, and carefully leveraging AI.
• Maintaining ethics and reputation is central, not rushing new technology to market.
• When solving problems for underserved groups, solutions often benefit everyone.
• A framework for evaluating AI: accuracy and understanding real-world impacts.

Connect with Nnamdi Emelifeonwu

Connect with Feargus MacDaeid

Learn more about Definely

Yet myths and misconceptions persist around what ESG is and how best to approach it. This leads many legal teams to view ESG as an amorphous compliance exercise rather than a strategic priority.

Recently on the Fringe Legal podcast, Abhijat Saraswat interviewed ESG expert Kai Gray, CEO of advisory firm Motiv, to demystify ESG and offer practical guidance for legal professionals. In this episode, learn what ESG means and how legal teams can pragmatically prioritize it. Get clarity on ESG frameworks, strategic rollout, and avoiding common pitfalls.

In this insightful episode of Fringe Legal, host Abhijat Saraswat has an in-depth discussion with India Preston, Director of Platform Solutions at legal tech startup Lupl. They delve into India's winding journey into legal project management, tactical approaches to driving adoption, and how to effectively challenge established processes.

India shares learnings and advice drawn from her diverse experiences - from helping build out Linklaters' LPM function from the ground up to make the leap to an early-stage legal tech startup. She provides a rare longitudinal view of how legal project management has evolved from a little-known concept in 2013 to a widely recognized, if still poorly understood, discipline today.

Key Takeaways:

• While LPM has gone from barely existing in 2013 to being commonly known today, there is still substantial room for education on how to apply it effectively. LPM principles empower lawyers to run matters like projects, but specialized LPM roles create incremental value on complex matters.
• Project management qualifications alone don't cut it for legal project managers to be successful. Soft skills to integrate smoothly with lawyers and legal teams are just as important, if not more so. Technical skills can be learned on the job.
• Identifying concrete problems that need solving is absolutely crucial before adopting any new solution or technology. Without an anchor in specific pain points, adoption will struggle no matter how exciting the new solution seems at first glance.
• Rollouts of new technology or processes should start small and be targeted before expanding more widely across a firm. The tendency may be to go big with a splashy firmwide launch, but this rarely succeeds.
• Resources like use case guides, template libraries, and informal user communities help drive adoption by making the novel feel familiar. However, these need to be grounded in solving real firm problems.
• Process mapping workshops - with the help of an unbiased external facilitator - can challenge status quo thinking and processes in extremely constructive ways. Just asking "why" repeatedly can unearth entrenched inefficiencies.

Actionable Takeaway: Start Small Before Going Wide

Explore in detail at Fringe Legal.

They delve into the key challenges and trends shaping the legal industry, touching upon innovation, technology, client expectations, and the future of legal service delivery. Tune in to explore the data and analysis from the report, as these experts share their perspectives on the current state and future of legal operations.

Key discussion points:

• [00:02:16] The current state of law firm investments in innovation and technology
• [00:10:45] Contradictions between client expectations and rewarded behaviors
• [00:18:50] Challenges faced by law firm and legal department executives in adopting process and collaboration improvements
• [00:27:12] The real threat to law firm success and how to address it
• [00:34:23] The impact of economic downturns on the legal industry and the potential for future transformation

Don't miss this in-depth conversation that offers valuable insights for legal professionals interested in legal tech, legal project management, and legal service delivery.

A more in-depth commentary is available on FringeLegal.com

As part of our startup series, we speak with William Dougherty, Co-Founder of Capcity, a legal tech tool that looks to improve the allocation of work.

In the episode, we'll discuss (numbers are time markers):

• What is Capacity → 1.48
• How is work allocated → 3.09
• Issues with the current approach to work allocation → 4.24
• What if nothing changes → 5.48
• Capacity management vs. work allocation → 12.31
• Getting buy-in to effect change → 17.02
• The business impact of attrition → 21.46

Priori works with in-house legal teams to connect legal departments with the right outside counsel for projects globally, saving them time and money. 

We discuss Legal Tech trends, their origin story, raising funds a Women Founders, and the secret sauce for successful legal teams.

Uplevel Ops are offering a complimentary 30-minute consultation, you can find more here.  

In the episode, we discuss:

• (03:12) Why should you care about legal operations (LegalOps)?
• (04:21) Law school vs. practice
• (08:12) Enabling fail-fast thinking in legal teams
• (11:11) It's not just about technology 
• (16:32) Embedded in the organization
• (21:25) Creating space for creativity and ideas
• (28:38) Celebrating success
• (30:49) Gaining trust
• (34:25) Shifts in legal operations

Article referenced

Striving for Imperfection: The Complicated Relationship of Lawyers and Project Management by Sumi Trombley & Liz Lugones

Key quotes

(edited for a better reading experience)

About the guests

Elizabeth "Liz" Lugones, COO/Senior Advisor, UpLevel Ops

Liz has built and managed Legal Operations teams in various industries in both public and private companies over her 20+ year career. She excels in global project management and business reengineering, with particular expertise in process improvement, change management, cross-functional collaboration and team building, but her true passion is helping others find their own strengths and talents and harness them for the value of all.

Before joining UpLevel, Liz served as the Senior Director of Legal Operations at WeWork. Prior to WeWork, Liz served as Director of Legal Operations at a diverse range of companies, including UnitedLex, DXC Technology, Becton Dickinson, and MetLife. She also worked at Citigroup as Manager, Strategy and M&A.

Liz holds a BA in Political Science and Journalism from Rutgers University, is certified in Lean Six Sigma and fluent in Spanish. She is based in New Jersey.

Sumi Trombley, Senior Advisor, UpLevel Ops

Sumi Trombley practiced in law firms and in-house legal departments for more than a decade before coming to UpLevel Ops. Sumi previously served as Director, Legal at enterprise legal services provider Marshall Denning, LLC, where she managed and trained a team of junior and senior attorneys and developed and implemented resource optimizing processes for RFPs and pre-litigation disputes. She is known for her ability to provide strategic guidance and cost-effective solutions.

Prior to joining Marshall Denning, Sumi was Legal Counsel at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, serving as a de facto general counsel to top enterprise IT outsourcing accounts. She started her legal career at the law firms of Paul Hastings LLP in New York and Latham & Watkins LLP in DC, practicing corporate finance and securities law.

Sumi holds a JD from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and a BA in Political Economy from Georgetown University. She is based in Maryland.

During the conversation, we discuss:

• How firms are using no-code tools
• Leveraging no-code tools as a competitive advantage
• Focusing on the customer journey and adoption for long-term success
• No-code challenges
• Future of no-code

You can read the full No-code report at www.fringelegal.com/no-code-report/

In the episode we cover (min.seconds):

• Introduction -> 0.20
• Enthusiasm vs adoption of technology -> 1.56
• Founding the think thank -> 3.24
• Facilitating cross collaboration -> 5.06
• Distributing projects equitably -> 6.04
• Designing the future -> 10.14
• Mental wellbeing -> 13.52
• Skills for future lawyers -> 21.54
• Being embedded with customers -> 27.12

Highlights from the episode 

What is Liquid Legal Institute

Lack of collaboration in the legal market

Struggling with digital transformation

About Liquid Legal Institue

The Liquid Legal Institute is an open and interdisciplinary platform for promoting a new way of thinking in the legal sector. Digitalization, new business models and technological innovations are currently changing all major industries worldwide. However, the legal sector has not yet benefited sufficiently from these trends. The Liquid Legal Institute was founded by seven experts from legal and business practice, design thinking, and computer science to close this gap.

The hourly billing model focuses on the amount of time spent on a matter, project, or case. This can often lead to inefficiencies and frustration for the lawyer and the client. Value based pricing is an alternative that takes into account the value of the service being provided rather than simply the time spent. It means that lawyers and firms are paid based on the results they achieve for their clients.

The incentive becomes focused on getting better results. Value-based pricing can also help build trust and improve communication between lawyers and clients.

However, that doesn't make pricing or pricing conversations any easier. In this episode, we go into the rabbit hole of pricing. 

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher

Special thanks to Paul Stroka of LexFusion for making the introduction to Keith.

Episode content

• Introduction and summary ➡ 1.24
• Power of buyer ➡ 4.30
• Power of supplier ➡ 7.34
• Elastic economic market ➡ 9.42
• Price discrimination ➡ 13.14
• Client sophistication ➡ 17.08
• Inflation and pricing for specialized services ➡ 23.46
• The next service delivery model ➡ 31.04

Here are some of our favorite takeaways from the episode (edited to be reading-friendly).

Value of work

Price discrimination

Client sophistication - apply the scalpel, not the hatchet

The conversation with the client depends on the level of sophistication:

Different sides of the table, same challenges:

Next service delivery model

Resources mentioned

• Off The Clock Podcast
• Porter's Five Forces and a deeper look at Buyer Power
• 🎧 Janet Stanton – Benefits of a Strategic Client Management Program
• 🎧 Rasmeet Charya – Using technology to maximize the value of legal services
• Smart collaboration for lawyers and law firms with Dr. Heidi Gardner

About Keith Maziarek

Keith Maziarek has been building and leading legal services pricing/legal project management/profitability functions since 2009. He is currently Director of Pricing and Legal Project Management

Yet, that is exactly the challenge that faced Alex Tsepko, CEO of Lawrina - a website that provides useful content and productivity tools for lawyers. The entire team for Lawrina was in Ukraine, and things changed overnight as the country was invaded. 

Lawrina CEO, Alex Tsepko, speaks about his experience leading a newly formed team through a sudden crisis - the invasion of Ukraine - and finding growth through a shared vision. 

In this episode, we cover (timestamps in parenthesis):

• Introduction (0:20)
• Ukraine as a hub for IT innovation (1:38)
• Experiencing unexpected crisis as a young organization (3:22)
• Leading through a crisis (6:08)
• Finding growth through a shared vision (11:57)

Recognizing that it wasn't possible to continue doing anything the old way, Alex ensured that his team was safe and pivoted to continue working to execute their vision. The business went from a domestic play to having an international group with traffic growing 35%+ each month.

As Alex shares, "it was not easy," but the team came together during a time when they felt fragile to build something they believed in.

Alex Tsepko is the CEO of Lawrina.com. You can connect with Alex on LinkedIn.

If you like the show, then I know you'll love the Fringe Legal newsletter which is full of interviews, articles, and reports to help Legal innovators like yourself learn how to put ideas into practice and find success. You can sign up for free at FringeLegal.com. 

In this episode, we cover:

• The role of creativity in law firms
• The increased focus on pricing
• Why firms are struggling with being client-centric
• What will make future firms successful
• Marketing as an underutilized superpower

Read the Fringe Legal newsletter which includes additional commentary on each of the topics.

About Dale Miller

Dale Miller is a Business Development and Marketing strategist with 20 years of experience and expertise in professional services firms, the advertising industry, and technology startups.
 
She has held Director of Marketing and Business Development positions at regional and international firms, in the legal and financial industries, leading strategy, content, business development, and strategic partnerships. Dale is currently a Practice Development Manager at Holland & Knight.
 
Prior to her work in legal, Dale founded and ran businesses, including a marketing consultancy and her talent agency, Miller Creative Partners, which represented photographers and directors, and worked with national ad agencies and their blue-chip clients.
 
She has served on the Board of Lawyers for the Creative Arts, and is an active member of Northwestern University’s Law and Technology Initiative. 

Episode content

• The future of work ➡ 03.34
• How would work be delivered in the future ➡ 04.52
• Legal matters as projects ➡ 05.51
• (Alternative) career paths for lawyers ➡ 07.36
• The role of technology in the delivery of legal service ➡ 09.27
• Why change now? ➡ 12.17
• Disrupt the status quo ➡ 14.46
• Are you profitable? Pricing analytics at law firms ➡ 15.59
• Experience Management, BD, and contract analytics ➡ 17.41
• Learning from adjacent industries ➡ 20.24
• Making inclusion work in a hybrid world ➡ 32.13

Resources mentioned

• The Human Cloud Book
• Human Cloud Podcast
• Joyce Tong Oelrich on law firms as a subscription business

Subscribe to Fringe Legal for deeper insights from each episode

It's harder still when tracking and working with emerging technology, where there may not yet be a baseline for success. We tackle those points and so much more in the episode today.

Episode content

• What is IncuBaker  ➡ 2.46
• Watching the market ➡ 4.04
• Client needs ➡ 5.03
• Tracking 500+ legal tech companies ➡  6.17
• Tying tech to business objectives ➡ 7.29
• A process-driven approach to technology selection ➡ 11.30
• Working with Vendors ➡ 16.22
• Working with emerging technologies ➡ 20.31
• Validating ideas ➡ 23.46
• Market trends ➡ 32.31

For more detailed notes visit www.fringelegal.com

This episode is a special segment to the article "How Legal Tech Innovation Can Drive Success in Your Firm" which was published in the Singapore Law Gazette in October 2021.

Prior to the launch of her practice, Joyce was an in-house attorney at Facebook and Microsoft Corporation for nearly a decade, focusing on government contract compliance.

In this episode, we explore why Joyce left to start her own firm, and how she, together with her Partner, created a firm with a difference. 

Resource mentioned

Paul Graham on 'do things that don't scale'

We've spoken with technologists and innovators during previous podcast episodes, and this week we talk to a practitioner. In the show, we cover:

• what does a day in the life of Adolfo look like
• the impact of virtualization on the arbitration world
• benefits of multiple perspectives and how it can help stay updated
• thinking long term, and staying client centric

Find out more at the Holland & Knight website and on LinkedIn. 

Starting out at a major Australian law firm, she has spent the majority of her legal career in-house working in the banking, automotive, and cosmetics industries. In 2021, Anna has donned her entrepreneurial shoes and launched her own Advisory service, on a mission to help law and business adapt to the digital age. She is consulting in the areas of social media content creation, strategy & partnerships, legal ops/optimisation, change management, as well as coaching and general counsel freelancing.  

She believes that innovation is invigorating, change is energising and efficiency will never go out of fashion.  

In addition, she is an Advisory Board Member to Mys Tyler (a fashion tech startup), She Breaks The Law (a global female innovator network), and sits on the CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) Australia Chapter.  

Described as a change agent, Anna is a sought-after commentator, mindset coach and consultant both domestically and internationally – seeking to shift the dialogue in order to propel the corporate world forward. 

You are invited to join Anna’s online communities @legallyinnovative and LinkedInas well as @annaloz on Clubhouse. You can also download a variety of products, and read Anna’s blog here: https://annalozynski.com/  

This was a fascinating chat, and much of the ideas we discussed could very easily be extrapolated for firms, in-house teams, indeed any business.

Here are three things I took away:

1. Planning for obsolescence and avoiding in-action
2. Balancing decision making and privacy
3. Fostering innovation is simple

Other resources mentioned during the episode

• Samcara circular design lab
• San-Q consultancy
• Professor Matthew Waldman on LinkedIn 
• Ruben Vela on LinkedIn
• Laying the foundation for Smart Cities
• What's fueling the smart city backlash?
• Carlos Moreno talks about the 15-minute city
• Beyond Tech - The True Meaning of a Smart City

Peter Dombkins is a national leader in legal transformation, legal operations, and the project management of legal professional services. He has received awards from the Financial Times and AIPM for change and legal practice management. Peter is Australia's first Adjunct Associate Professor in Legal Transformation, at the University of NSW Faculty of Law. Peter is also the Director for New Law at PwC Australia.

During the episode, we discuss:

• Is there a revolution coming to the legal profession?
• A brief history of changes in how professional legal services are offered from 1950 to - present day. Including the trend of appending “legal” in front of many things. 
• What is Legal Project Management, and how most lawyers are are already putting it into practice?
• What is transformation, and the difference between simple and complex transformation?

This episode is a treasure trove of resources. Here are various things that were mentioned or discussed:

• Peter on LinkedIn
• Legal Project Management: Projectifying the Legal Profession
• What's wrong with your transformation initiative? (ILTA Whitepaper)
• Cognitive Bias Codex
• Expectancy Theory
• Yerkes-Dodson Law
• A reflection on Thomas Kuhn's - The Structure of Scientific Revolution

Avinash Pillay is the COO and Chief Legal Engineer at Mouthpiece Law.

You can find out more about Litigaze at and connect with Len Hickey on LinkedIn. 

Topics

• What is MDR Lab (1:55)
• Three different arms of MDR lab (2:33)
• Build vs buy - which gives you the biggest return on your investment (3:54)
• How does MDR decide which companies to have in the accelerator? (5:12)
• How the Launch program works (8:13)
• What is MDR Lab's strategy when it comes to investment (13:50)
• The MDR Lab Venture Studio (16:05)
• The long term strategy for MDR Lab (16:38)
• Emerging tech (19:56)
• How Elani keeps up with what's going on (23:38)
• Building a community around MDR Lab (25:30)

Full transcript of the episode can be found at FringeLegal.com

Resources mentioned

• The Lawyer - Horizon Newsletter
• Y Combinator
• MDR Lab
• Strictly VC
• Nate's news
• Elani on Twitter

They actually go onto a site, they register, they log in and then they get you to try our algorithms against any of their contracts that they actually see. And our proof of value is very instantaneous and assess that as soon as they actually find ways to navigate their own contracts, to try it on their own contracts and be able to gain value from it when things that they actually might've missed come up very much in an instant.

And when you talk to you about time to value for AI solutions, you really want to make sure that they get to the aha moment where they say, ‘Oh, I miss something’. And that light bulb goes on. And that basically means that the AI has helped them to find something that they have missed before and that's a huge moment for us.”

You can subscribe to the newsletter for free at FringeLegal.com/newsletter.

Show notes

• Jim’s background and introduction to My Legal Einstein (01:33)
• How is My Legal Einstein different from other AI contract review tools (04:18)
• The challenges with delivery value, and how Jim approaches it (09:30)
• Algorithmic differentiation (12:08)
• Why focus on third party document (15:03)
• Future plans (18:28)

The full transcript for the episode is included below. If it is cut by your podcast player, you can find it at www.FringeLegal.com

“So performance optimization means that you're delivering at a high level of performance, but you're not, it's not coming at the expense of exhaustion burnout, a lot of these things that we see quite prevalent within the legal sector.”

“So we're just focusing on the technical skills and the technical knowledge and forgetting really about: when greatness shines, greatness comes from the inside, from each individual. So yes, you've got the common skills, the common knowledge of the law, and really clients expect that as standard.

It's not that you get any bonus points for knowing the law, right? Your clients expect that, and technical knowledge and technical skills are expected as standard. That level of excellence is expected as standard. 

Once you've got your job and you're in the legal sector, you have to ask yourself: I’ve got myself in the room; how am I now going to shine in the room.”

You can subscribe to the newsletter for free at FringeLegal.com/newsletter.

Show notes

• Introduction to the podcast (01:02)
• Defining performance and performance optimization (02:43)
• The importance of training - similarities between lawyers and elite athletes (08:31)
• Technician vs a leader (13:06)
• Issues with progression paths (17:02)
• Designing immersive and impactful training programs (25:09)

You can connect with Parul on LinkedIn or via Fuel and Move.

Matthew Golab is the Director of Legal Informatics and R+D at Gilbert + Tobin. He leads a specialized in-house multidisciplinary legal informatics team that utilizes a variety of data analytics and eDiscovery, and other AI technology tools. Matthew has more than 20 years of experience in the legal technology industry, including two of Australia’s preeminent law firms.

If you've been in the legal profession for any amount of time, then I'm sure at some point, someone will have told you that there are nuance problems, it's very different, and things are difficult to change. What are you buy into that across the entire legal tech ecosystem, looking at problem-solving in legal when it comes to AI, there are some unique challenges. And I'm excited about this episode because we explore some of those challenges today. Before we get started, do note that during the conversation with Matthew, we jumped straight into the deep end, right at the beginning of the conversation. 

However, both Matthew and I make a concentrated effort to de-mystify as much of the jargon as we go through. And during the episode, we really do tackle why are artificial intelligence problems so difficult to solve when it comes to Legal use cases? Why don't we have better-performing models? Why don't we have models that actually work on any number of different data types or different types of documents or languages? Especially if you look at things like what's happening in the consumer world, or if you look at even other business verticals where things just seem to be much much further ahead. Why does it feel that the legal profession is still a long way behind?

We tackled that and a lot more. I don't promise that we have all of the answers, but certainly, we have a healthy discussion into why things are the way they are and what needs to happen to bring about change in the future. 

Before we dive in, if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter, please do so. As part of the newsletter, I actually provided some additional commentary to supplement this episode, specifically discussing how things like synthetic AI are being used in other industries where there are similar challenges in the form of small data sets with little variations.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for free at FringeLegal.com/newsletter.

Show notes:

• Introduction to the podcast (0:28)
• The deliberate use of language in legal vs. general language training sets (4:51)
• NLP, NLG, and NLU (7:08)
• Overview of the AI development process (9:49)
• The deliberate balance to be achieved when introducing technology to lawyers (13:22)
• High-risk tolerance as a barrier to continuous learning (15:09)
• The general sentiment about AI and the future (17:08)
• The challenge of working with different jurisdictions and languages (22:34)
• Training a specialist system vs a general-purpose system (26:37)
• The biggest improvement in tech within law firms (29:17)

You can connect with Matthew on LinkedIn, or find him on the G+T website. 

Algo Legal is a new law firm, established in 2019, and the firm has started with a strong foundation in technology. 

As they got started the leadership wanted to create a new brand of legal services, driven by technology and innovation, and utilizing a process-driven approach to deliver a unique experience for their clients. 

During my chat we explore how:

• How to apply a process-driven approach to your practice
• Different ways in which Algo Legal has been involved in the community via law schools and supporting startups
• How the Algo team pitches their process-driven approach, embedded with technology to clients

You can connect with Rasmeet on LinkedIn, and find out more about Algo Legal on their website.

The full transcript is included below. If it’s truncated by your podcast player, you can find it in full at www.fringelegal.com

Transcript

Ab: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fringe Legal I'm delighted today to have Rasmeet Charya, as my guest Rasmeet  is the chief innovation officer at Algo Legal based in India. Rasmeet brings a strong passion for transforming how law firms and lawyers work with clients and think about innovation from understanding problems, curating ideas, and facilitating the innovation process.

[00:01:27] Rasmeet leads a team that focuses on analyzing how technology can be used by the firm to enhance transparency, increased access, create efficiencies, and offer a new brand of service. Rasmeet so nice to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me.

[00:01:43] Rasmeet Charya: [00:01:43] Thanks. Abhijat thanks for having me on the show.

[00:01:45]Ab: [00:01:45] I'm excited for this conversation because Algo Legal is a newish law firm. So in the last two years or so and that means that there's a lot of exciting things that you are doing and that you're able to really start from scratch. So I'm quite I'm looking forward to digging into that.

[00:02:04] Rasmeet Charya: [00:02:04] Yeah, sure. Algo Legal started in August, 2019, And as you would see on our website Algo Legal is a firm where  we started with a niche practice of picking up of VC and PE by VC. The venture capital Lando equity related transactions, deal management.

[00:02:26] And from there, we also definitely went into advisory and  the entire ecosystem related to that kind of practice.  Algo Legal  name  gets its inspiration from the word algorithms. So primarily we definitely believe that the practice of law is in a way , very similar to when an algorithm wherein, you can actually define a lot of steps processes, and that's what leads to a very solution oriented approach.

[00:02:57] So that's how we came up with the Algo Legal as a name. And definitely it was coined by Sandeep, who is the founder and the managing partner of Algo Legal. And Sandeep  himself is a thought leader in Legal tech industry. He's a very innovative and an excellent business lawyer. And definitely he wanted to create a new brand of legal services, which is very much driven by technology, innovation, and so that, we can provide a very unique experience and create some value for our clients. So that was the entire I would say the background, the mission, vision of Algo Legal and definitely expertise is one of the key area. We have a whole lot of sport lawyers, I would say, are really industry experts in the practice areas.

[00:03:49] But at the same time, we would like to leverage technology as the, as innovation so that we can create a very different kind of value for it.

[00:03:58] Ab: [00:03:58] Yeah. And I think what I found really interesting as I spoke to you in the past and as a research, the firm is the makeup of the core team, right?

[00:04:09] There's of course the practitioners, like Sandeep  that you mentioned, but also there's business leaders and specialists. So if you look at, Drhuv who came from an investment banking background, if you look at Tripti, who is a legal process and design manager and others. So I think it's quite refreshing to see how, you're already from the very foundations of the firms starting to think about legal process we need to build in things like design and design thinking, approaches into the offering. And I guess that's one of the big advantages when you start afresh, when you are able to do that. And I know from  your background as a practitioner, but also a lot of the things that you take an interest in and are outspoken about.

[00:04:49] There is a strong foundation in client service and design and focus on the process. How does that reflect with the broader market view of where India is today?

[00:04:58] Rasmeet Charya: [00:04:58] Absolutely. I think we definitely have an advantage that we started very recently. And we are actually in a time when we feel there is a lot of requirement of leveraging technology and why not? We see that technology is being leveraged across all industries and why Legal industry cannot take it up.

[00:05:19] And of course, innovation is something which is  a very wider scope. That includes your practice innovation that includes looking at your business models. That includes literally things like defining your processes. And definitely once you are able to define your process, Or you can translate that into technology.

[00:05:37] So I feel we are in a very good phase of a Legal industry, I would say at the time and yes India, while it is at a very nascent stage in terms of Legal tech, which is being developed in India. But I don't see that we are very far behind because I'm in once the lawyers start adopting, accepting technology, I don't see why they can't focus and then actually hone  the entire service offering that you're doing.

[00:06:12] So therefore, from the India's perspective, also, we are having some very. Excellent. Legal tech solutions, which are coming up and also, I think , it is evolving at every level. So whether it is in terms of the law firms, leveraging technology or changing their practices whether it's in terms of law schools, what actually opening up now to, except this Legal innovation or tech skillsets as a very important part.

[00:06:40] Of the legal education for our future lawyers, I think. And even if you look at the in-house legal teams, they are also the corporates they have been using, but today they want to S look at the cost, and they definitely want better efficient systems that they can manage on their own.

[00:07:01] So therefore I think the entire ecosystem is today ready for this kind of a ...

Giles left practice a year ago to join the world of legal technology, and during this conversation we discuss:

1. How the culture has shifted from his days in practice vs what he hears today
2. The challenge of collaboration and different approaches firms are taking
3. Pertinent skills/thoughts for future and newly qualified lawyers, and when to challenge the status quo

We covered a number of other topics as well such as the importance of mentors, the increasing levels of interest in innovation-type functions, and more. 

You can connect with Giles LinkedIn, and find out more about the Avvoka Academy here.

The full transcript is included below. If it’s truncated by your podcast player, you can find it in full at www.fringelegal.com

Transcript

Ab: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome again to Fringe Legal. Today I'm excited to have Giles Thompson on the show. Before we dive in, I thought I would do something slightly different and give his life narrative in a chronological order. Giles is the son of a farmer, which naturally turned into him becoming a foodie, he went and did political science , which led to going into law school and actually practicing as a lawyer. He was formerly at Kirkland and Ellis, and then at HSF Herbert Smith Freehills.

[00:01:29] And now he is a tech investor and an entrepreneur. And the head of growth at Avvoka based in the UK. Charles, thanks for joining me. Welcome.

[00:01:39]Giles Thompson: [00:01:39] Thank you. The pleasure is mine. I thank you very much for having me.

[00:01:42]Ab: [00:01:42] I guess a good place to start would be you practice as a lawyer and now your work for a legal tech company.

[00:01:49] As you speak to law firms that you speak to it in house councils and corporate, what are you seeing from a culture point of view from your days in practice to now? Are the other trainees associates, partners, leaders, are they asking for different types of things to when you were in practice or is the conversations still the same?

[00:02:11]Of course there's no one size fit all, but  what's that spectrum look like from your conversations?

[00:02:15]Giles Thompson: [00:02:15] I'd always say be interested in your perspective in a moment as well as to what's changed and actually whether you disagree or agree with me, but Yeah, certainly I do see some differences.

[00:02:25]I've not been long out of law. So even in the kind of that short intervening period, actually a lot has that has changed as a result of the pandemic. The main thing I've really seen in actually and this quite a granular answer, but is an increasing desire for collaborative tools.

[00:02:43] That is a result of the sort of physical collaboration and interface between lawyers being pulled away actually. So the, I certainly remember when I was particularly when I was a trainee, because I was the one carrying the physical bit of paper, but actually the process of, having a physically printed out document and then marking that up and maybe three or four people at layering on their amendments on, onto a markup.

[00:03:04] And actually, the biggest trend that I've seen since I've left is people wanting to use tools that are akin to something like a Google docs and everybody being able to chip in on a document and work on it together rather than working on divergent drafts. And I do genuinely think that a good degree of that is because of that physical process being pulled away.

[00:03:23] I think the other thing, and maybe it hasn't really changed since I left, but maybe I just didn't realize quite the extent of the interests that lawyers and probably lawyers who are more senior than me when I was in practice who wants to have one foot in that camp of innovation.

[00:03:42] And so I think that there's definitely even in the last sort of 18 months, there's been a huge proliferation of innovations secondments  within law firms. So senior lawyers seeing it as a potentially, even as a stepping stone towards partnership, actually spending some time in that innovation part of the business.

[00:03:57] And then maybe specializing in that area full-time or taking their skills back and actually then improving the revenue of wherever they came from initially. So I'm meeting a lot of those people and really enjoy meeting those people. But I think that they seem to be proliferating and I constantly see job ads for peoples in those kinds of divisions. But they're not asking for technologists all the time. Now that they're specifically asking for the lawyers of all the time.

[00:04:20]Yeah. What's your experience.

[00:04:21] Ab: [00:04:21] Yeah. I think I'd agree with most of that. Probably the distinction I would make is absolutely  the collaboration point of view is true.

[00:04:30] The meaning of the word seems to differ greatly, right? From firm to firm or individual to individual. I'm not sure if the vast majority of, and I'll speak from the law firm perspective, that's the conversations I have the most think of it as working together with their clients. I think what I hear a lot now, and especially since COVID 19 last year, how can we replicate the environment where we could all sit in a room and work on a draft together to doing so digitally.

[00:05:02] And there's nothing wrong with that. And it's the, the approach of taking a offline practice online. That's one angle to that. The other side is. How do I collaborate better with clients? How do I give them more transparency and actually for what its worth,  it's the clients are asking more for that, right?

[00:05:19] They don't want to keep emailing or calling just to get an understanding of, Hey, where's my matter at? Who owns what, are we on target and other things. So those are probably the two things.

[00:05:31] The innovation point is. Yeah, absolutely. There's a huge proliferation of that. I do catch myself sometimes because the view from inside the bubble, and I think both of us certainly are inside the bubble is very different because when you go and speak to probably 90% of the firms they're not thinking in that way. And you talked about innovations to continents, and I know some of your previous firms do absolutely do that.

[00:05:54]In my view, and I'm happy to be wrong, I don't think that's the norm. I don't think most firms have innovation secondaments. Very few do. I do think that there is a higher level of desire to go into innovation or something else, that's not just practice. And that as a pathway to both partnership, and also as a lot of the practitioners think about want to stay in Legal, but maybe I don't want to practice, all the time.

[00:06:20]And in the past one common route was maybe I'll become a PSL and that's not the only route, of course. But now it's, while I could be a technologist, I could be a innovation manager.

[00:06:30] I could be X. I could go in-house ...

We discuss how Jan worked through that decision, what were some assumptions that he made, and some of the challenges. 

We also explore how Jan and the business look at the innovation function - through five objective criteria:

1. Create efficiency at scale
2. Flexible working
3. Create value from information the firm holds
4. Generate revenue
5. Address risk

We also explore when and how Jan gets involved with client-facing projects (including pitches). Just a note, this episode originally aired as part of the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit in 2020, and much of what we discuss are still relevant today, but it’s important to have the time context. 

You can connect with Jan Hard via the JWS website or on LinkedIn.

The full transcript is included below. If it's truncated by your podcast player, you can find it in full at www.fringelegal.com

Transcript

Ab: [00:00:00] I am delighted to be joined today by Jan Hards, who is the Director of Legal Innovation at Johnson, Winter and Slattery based out of Australia. Jan thank you for joining me today.

[00:01:15] Jan Hards: [00:01:15] No, it's a great pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me.

[00:01:19]Ab: [00:01:19] This is going to be a great conversation. So today we're talking about your journey from being a lawyer to an innovator. And of course, both of these things can exist in parallel, but you took a very deliberate step  from one to the other and, we'll hopefully cover quite a lot, but focus around what are some of the things that you learned, what some assumptions you had, which of those came true? Which of them maybe you had to challenge and what you learned from that.

[00:01:46] Before we dig into all of that, just to set the stage for our audience here, would you mind just describing what sort of started this journey for you? What did you do before you were the director of legal innovation?

[00:02:00] Jan Hards: [00:02:00] Sure. No, that's fine. So I'm originally a solicitor a Corporate M&A lawyer , and I started my career in the UK, although I'm originally from Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. So people wondering about the strange accent hopefully that will explain it.

[00:02:18]I became a solicitor in the UK worked for many years at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer became a corporate M&A lawyer there working on transactions, moved to Australia about nine years ago now and joined Johnson, Winter and Slattery soon thereafter as a Corporate M&A lawyer . We're working in the Australian market and are based in Sydney. I've always been one of the lawyers in the firms that I've been in who's been interested in using or leveraging technology to assist me in my practice as a lawyer.

[00:02:50] So even back in my Freshfields days I was probably one of those lawyers who would be commonly contacting the IT team, suggesting new ways of doing things, new applications and, over the more recent years this has picked up a lot just simply as I've been seeing, witnessing the quite transformative changes in technology , particularly consumer technology to which we have access to.

[00:03:17] And I've really enjoyed thinking of ways that we could use this technology to better drive efficiency and quality of service as solicitors.  Over many years, I've been bugging my IT and my management colleagues to make certain changes or suggesting certain applications or certain ways that we could change applications we currently use.

[00:03:39]About two years ago the management of JWS turned around and said why don't you help us in this area more broadly, not just in your corporate practice and appointed me director of legal innovation at JWS.

[00:03:53] Ab: [00:03:53] That's awesome. And now hopefully you have many other colleagues that come to you and bug you with ideas and projects and so on as well now. So you know what it feels like on the other side. 

[00:04:04] Jan Hards: [00:04:04] I do, yes.  It has been very interesting and I'm not only the transformation from being one of those people that was just constantly suggesting to being the person who is really responsible now for receiving those suggestions, and considering whether or not they should be implemented. That has been quite eyeopening for me.

[00:04:25] Yeah, it's  been interesting to understand, particularly now you're in the hot seat, it's not quite so simple. Particularly if you're working in a law firm, we'll come to that in the moment, but it's not quite so simple to take a seemingly great idea and actually put it into practice - implement it in the firms. So yeah, it's been very interesting journey over the last two years.

[00:04:47] Ab: [00:04:47] We'll certainly dig into that. We were talking about how I've made certain assumptions about putting this summit together and things I thought were going to be simple just because you think they're going to be simple, that never ends up being the case.

[00:04:59]Before we do talk about some of the points around your journey and really dig deep into some of the nitty-gritty of things. What are some of the aims of the legal innovation function at the firm at JWS? So give us the sort of broad line picture of,  what are some of the, maybe the boundaries or that the objectives they're assigned or you've assigned in working with the management team there on what you want to accomplish.

[00:05:23] Jan Hards: [00:05:23] Yeah. So we have a wide number of objectives but we really distill it down into five areas. That's trying to use innovation and technology as part of that, but not just technology, but use it to create efficiency at scale.  It isn't just sufficient to introduce a new way of doing things atop a particular small practice area.

[00:05:43] Now, of course, we will do that If that's something that is compelling for that for that practice area. But what we really want to do in this first objective is to try and create efficiency at scale. So look at ways in which it can be applied across the firm and indeed to for our clients.

[00:06:00] Flexible working is a second objective, which is particularly pertinent in our current environment, but certainly something that we were thinking  about very carefully long before COVID-19 was something that anyone knew anything about. It's increasingly important for many of my colleagues and their clients that my colleagues can work flexibly. That's not only just being able to travel and and still work efficiently, but also a work-life balance and be able to work efficiently from home.

[00:06:32]The next area was really one of the areas that's really interesting to me, is to  create value from the information that we hold<...

Floor Blindenbach is the founder of Organizing4Innovation. Trigged by a recent whitepaper, I speak with Floor to discuss her views on innovation management for law firms. We spoke about:

• the importance of treating innovation as a process
• definition for innovation'
• the role of culture in driving innovative efforts
• Innovation as a way to develop talent
• the problem of tracking/measuring innovation efforts in law firms
• best practices for innovation teams

You can find the whitepaper here: https://www.organizing4innovation.com/managing-innovation-law-firms/

Transcript below (if cut off it can be found on FringeLegal.com)

About Floor

Driven to help innovators succeed, Floor Blindenbach-Driessen, founded Organizing4innovation. She developed the T4 online training for innovators that also serves as an innovation management platform, so organizations with limited innovation infrastructure can easily manage and oversee their innovation activities. She has a Ph.D. in management from the Erasmus University in the Netherlands and has 20+ years of research and practical experience with innovating in the professional services. She has written dozens of publications, assisted hundreds of innovators, with creating thousands of awesome solutions, leading to millions of dollars in new revenues.

You can find Floor on LinkedIn

Transcript

Ab: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to Fringe Legal. I'm so excited today to have Floor on the episode. Floor is driven to help innovators succeed, and because of this need, she founded Organization4Innovation. She developed the T4 online training for innovators that also serves as a innovation management platform, so organizations with limited innovation infrastructure can easily manage and oversee the innovation activities. She has a PhD in management from Erasmus university in the Netherlands and 20 plus years of research and practical experience with innovating in professional services. She has assisted hundreds of innovators with creating thousands of awesome solutions, leading to millions of dollars in new revenue, all fantastic achievements.

[00:01:51] And we will dig into the wealth of the knowledge that is in her brain today. So Floor, thank you so much for joining me. 

[00:01:58] Floor Blindenbach: [00:01:58] Thank you for having 

[00:01:59]Ab: [00:01:59] Yeah, I came across your work, as part of the a talk you did at the skills workshop, a presentation in January, 2021.

[00:02:08] And that was all around innovation management in law firms. As a setup to this conversation, because that's certainly tickled my interest. Would you mind just giving a  synopsis around that work, that report, and I'll certainly link to that for everyone listening/watching this so they can read it in full because it is worth reading.

[00:02:29] Floor Blindenbach: [00:02:29] Absolutely.  Let me start to say our focus is on firms that innovate and that, that aren't the Googles of this world that have billions to spend. So that's like a starting point and describes the type of teams that we work with.

[00:02:43] We have a platform for that, and we have earned a research grant to see if he could add predictive analytics to our online training platform.    We started the research out to see if we could basically vet teams better if it's like a Fitbit for innovation teams. And if we know better about teams do, can we then also provide better support?

[00:03:06] And we were so ignorant to think that we could even vet teams for law firms. We practice what we preach, and went out to do customer discovery and ask so would that'd be of benefit? So it's predictive analytics. The resounding answer that we got was no, we know which teams we want to support. So okay we have a research grant and a problem that no one wants to us to solve. Well it was a little more nuanced, but in those conversations, we also learned some things that I could not write. On the one hand, there was this where if you ask people for success later, like they were all saying, Oh, we're super successful.

[00:03:46] And also during ILTAON, we did a little poll and law firms indicated they had success rates of 80% or higher. That's very uncommon. So that would mean that in the law profession, they knew something that no one else knew, but this is like a venture capitalist have like success rates of one to 10 and even like the Procter and Gamble and Unilevers of this world, they need eight ideas for one success. So that was one thing. At the same time. If you talk with senior leadership, they were complaining, they were very skeptic about all these new technologies, because they saw so many failures. So this was really like a little bit of an indication, like something is not aligned here and last but not least I was talking to many people and then I got like an email two months, three months later which said: "Oh, I'm so sorry. I left the firm or I quit". And so I saw a huge turnover in innovation manager. So it was like, something is not, does not ryhme here. And so we're like, okay, let's use then our customer discovery and stick, step back and look into how is innovation actually managed in law firms. So that's when we started the new and talked with about 35, 36 people and did an in-depth analysis of 22 law firms to really learn how do they go about managing innovative ideas. So that's, what's like the long story to this report. 

[00:05:18] Ab: [00:05:18] Yeah. And that's really helpful context.

[00:05:20] Having that success rate of, 80, 90% for innovation efforts is remarkable if it was true. And really, as you, as you were talking, it's obviously there's a disconnect between those that are maybe doing the project, plus maybe those that are funding the project or the projects are being reported to, and it's a measurement problem as I'm sure we'll get into it a little bit time. 

[00:05:45]Innovation as a process [00:05:45]

[00:05:45]What I really liked from the report was the framing of innovation as a process. In that. Yes, of course, every firm, every business, maybe every vertical will approach it in a slightly different way, but it is not this black box that you can't put certain project type milestones in place for. It is something that's repeatable.  

[00:06:09] Do you mind expanding on that a little bit more and what you found, especially as you spoke to these these 35, 36 people  what were some of the things that started triggering in your mind around the process approach to this?

[00:06:21]

[00:06:21] Floor Blindenbach: [00:06:21] I've always seen innovation as a process, to be honest. And there's also a great Harvard Business Review article that also explains it. It's not only a process, it's even like a value chain, which starts with idea generation, then development and then implementation, and then scale. You need to be good at it, all these steps in orde...

Alice founded Stephenson Law in 2017 to create a law firm that does things differently. Tackling each stereotype head-on, she is on a mission to build a forward-thinking, innovative law firm that puts people at the heart of everything it does. 

Alice's goal is to inspire young women to challenge the perceived barriers to success and see that anything is possible.

In this episode we discuss:

07:23 - Problem-solving
11:00 - Self-reflection and being comfortable with mistakes
13:57 - Client experience
18:27 - Measuring lawyer value outside of billable targets
22:44 - Breaking down barriers

Full Transcript on FringeLegal.com

Alice Stephenson - Breaking down barriers

Ab: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. And welcome to the Fringe Legal podcast. I am thrilled to have Alice Stephenson as my guest today. Alice is the founder and a tech lawyer driving inclusion and innovation in law and promoting individuality within the legal profession. Alice founded Stevenson law in 2017 to create a law firm that does things differently.

Alice's goal is to inspire young women, to challenge the perceived barriers, to succeed and see that anything's possible. We'll dig into much of that today, but before we get started, I thought it'd be helpful to give a little bit of a background of Alice's story if you haven't come across it already. 

So Alice is probably not the person you would imagine when you think of a lawyer and a law firm owner.

She had her first child at 18, and despite conventional wisdom qualified as a lawyer nine months after having her second child and the theme of nine months continues, because nine months after having her third child, she founded Stevenson Law and the firm is doing wonderfully. They won,  Botique Law Firm of the Year 2020 .

And yeah, I'm really thrilled to have Alice on the show because I came across her on LinkedIn through one of her posts where she talks about all of the different barriers. She had to break down to enter the legal profession. And I know plenty of people for whom that actually becomes a hurdle.

They haven't been able to overcome for many reasons. So I thought it was important to have a discussion around that. Alice, thank you so much for coming on the show. 

Alice Stephenson: [00:02:27] Hi, thank you for having me. 

Ab: [00:02:29] Yeah. And I know you're based on the other side of the world. You have a very English accent, but you're in Amsterdam.

So hopefully the canals and the cycling and everything else is treating you nicely. 

Alice Stephenson: [00:02:39] Yes. Yes. Thank you. 

Ab: [00:02:42] So there's really three things I wanted to try and cover today. We'll start with something that relates to your story. You talk a lot about breaking down barriers. And as I mentioned in the prelude, that's how I came across you.

You've been, let's call it outspoken on LinkedIn and rightly so around how to make the profession less gray and more individual and helping people to bring about their personality. We talked about tattoos and you've talked about tattoos in the past and I have a whole back full of tattoos so I certainly admire that.

And you've talked about how being a woman or having kids at an early stage, and basically how all the challenges you had to overcome to get to where you are. Talk to me where you are today with that and how that shaped your journey into the legal profession. 

Tackling challenges [00:03:29] Alice Stephenson: [00:03:29] Sure. I think we all have so many challenges and obstacles that we come up against whatever path we choose.

But I guess we all have slightly different ways of dealing with them and approaching them. I think they're my biggest obstacle has always been having a child at such a young age.  I was only 18 when I had Lydia. And that was obviously a massive obstacle to starting a career, to getting to getting my first degree.

Obviously, having her has been one of the most wonderful things in my life, but there's no doubt that it's certainly made some things a lot harder particularly cause I didn't have a lot of support at the time. So I think I launched into adulthood with a pretty big problem that I needed to deal with like how was I going to support myself and support my child and make something of myself . And I had to get on with it really. I just, I tackled it a bit, like just a problem.  If I want to get a job, that's gonna pay me a decent salary, then, convention dictates that the best way of doing that is to get a degree, to get education.

So I was followed a process really, and figured out the best way that I was going to be able to do it, which university I went to, which course I went to, how I was going to pay for that, all of the different parts of the puzzle, and then fitted them all together. And I've applied that logic to all of the problems that I've encountered ever since then.

So when I applied to getting a training contract I had a problem because I didn't get very good A-levels because when I take my A-levels, I was seven months pregnant and obviously lots of law firms still take A-levels into account. That made things a lot harder and I had to find this way around that.

And then starting my own firm. So many people told me that I wasn't going to be able to do it. They were going to be, there were so many reasons insurance was going to be too expensive or I wasn't even going to be able to get insurance. I wasn't going to be able to get authorization from the SRA.

I wasn't going to be able to find any clients. I wasn't going to have to find anyone to work for me. I wasn't gonna be able to make any money, honestly the list was endless and I could have quite easily have just thought, Oh, do you know what this sounds like far too much effort required -  I'm not going to bother. 

But I think it, that's not really the way that my brain works. I look at each part of it as an individual problem and try and solve that problem and break it down into small chunks. And what happens is when you do that, actually it does so fall into place and you move along one small step at a time. But when you look back, you actually realize how much you've achieved just by doing it like that.

Ab: [00:06:26] There's so many things that you're saying, some of which I can definitely relate to because just getting into law school, getting into university. It's a challenge and you have to keep going.  Sometimes you do have to problem solve. 

And the law firm point is so interesting because I know so many  tech company founders, and generally the message that they get, across the board, is not that, Oh, don't do it right? It's almost a Silicon Valley culture of you should do it, just jump in it's okay. It will be difficult, no one argues that it's going to be difficult, but you can figure it out. But for law and FinTech and a lot of these kinds of quite heavily regulated professions it's almost as a hindrance for new entrance. And then we have this conversation, Oh, the profession is not changing things. Aren't changing. They're the same. And there is a very real link to you keep dis...

Ab: [00:00:00] Innovation and transformation perspectives from around the world 

There is tremendous variability in how the legal industry approaches innovation and technology initiatives, and the range is greater still when you expand the scope to different jurisdictions and regions worldwide. 

Through a series of interviews with innovation leaders and a review of published materials. I explored some of the factors that influence innovation levels across different regions. Namely, we focused on the UK., a number of African nations, Australia, and India. 

What I've found is that many interrelated  factors are at play: regional regulations, the maturity of the legal services industry, competitive pressures, and willingness to make financial investments in innovation and technology initiatives. Of course, there are also significant variations across firms within the same region, mostly influenced by the business culture. 

 Before we consider those factors in depth. We must define what we mean by innovation and evaluate the goals underlying innovative actions. 

The spectrum of innovation 

Innovation is not a monolith. It runs along a spectrum from the minuscule to the majestic and encompasses technology process or both. 

At one end are incremental changes to existing method or processes. These efficiency drivers are often small initially, yet over time they could produce marked results. On the other side of the spectrum are seismic disruptions, which may involve doing something in an entirely novel way or something that no one has done before. The disruption reinvents how a firm completes a task or follows a process. 

Innovation is, therefore, a process of both incremental changes and seismic shifts. It may affect technology and processes as each will have different primary challenges. With technological innovation adoption is often the biggest challenge. How do you get users engaged and active with  technology so the business yields a positive return on investment. 

Process changes on the other hand may or may not involve technology. In these instances often change management is the obstacle to overcome. How do you introduce the change and convinced legal professionals to embrace it? This begs another question. Why innovate at all? 

What's the purpose behind innovation? 

Before a firm embarks on a transformation journey, the business needs to establish what it's looking to accomplish? There are  regional factors that introduce a difference in approach, but also common ground to be found. I spoke with Caryn Sandler, Partner & Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer at the leading Australian from Gilbert and Tobin, who explains. 

And I quote. 

There is a large variation within and between geographies. with some firms engaging and pushing the boundaries of what can be done in this space, and others only starting the transformation journey. There is now a general recognition in legal of the imperative for innovation and transformation globally, and we're seeing different ways of achieving that goal play out within law firms and in-house. 

End quote. 

 These regional variations impact the type of initiative that a firm may undertake. In new and emerging legal markets, it's harder to justify spending money on technology where the business needs have yet to be proven. Instead, we find that these areas may readily embrace new processes-  as they don't have the inertia of established methods to overcome. 

On the other hand, in mature and highly competitive legal markets, law firm and legal service providers can I add value for the client by making incremental efficiency improvements. Those firm's are likely focused on adopting technology, getting it off the shelf and into their practitioner's hand as quickly and as smoothly as possible. 

Lastly, some firms are looking to bring the client along on the transformation journey. They can do so by including the clients into technology and innovation design process. These firms often find value in adding a consultancy arm that can provide dedicated innovation services and digital transformation assistance. In all kinds of markets, firms are also exploring how they can pivot perhaps by setting up technology incubators, or otherwise investing in legal technology, startups. 

 Factors driving innovation, UK, Australia, African nations, and India

While there are numerous forces influencing innovation around the world, I have roughly classified them into four broad categories. 

Number one, the legal system and regulatory structure. Number two, the maturity of the legal profession. Number three, the level of competition in the region. And lastly, number four, the sensitivity to spending on technology or innovation efforts. 

Let's consider each of these in turn. 

The legal and regulatory system. 

Regulations can constrain innovation, and so can the flexibility and makeup or the legal system. There may be more opportunity and less constraint in emerging markets with less regulation and fewer established firms. These open markets can present considerable gaps in service, creating opportunities for firms to innovate and quickly move the needle on providing services. 

In more heavily regulated market. The amount of work required to bring about substansive changes is significant and fewer players will attempt to do so. Without a complex web of regulation, law firms have free reign to innovate. 

I spoke with Cathy Truter, Head of Knowledge Management at Bowmans a top African firm with offices in seven African countries. And here's a excerpt from our discussion: 

Cathy Truter: [00:06:36] There are pockets of extreme innovation and I think it's driven by opportunity in the sense that Africa is not necessarily as regulated as some of the offshore countries as I would call them.

And as a result, there is an opportunity to innovate in pockets. Where in other jurisdictions you might be held back by what is the current, and have you go through regulators to get certain approvals and the like   It's in pockets. Innovation has really been fast moving. 

So I think that innovative a legal practices correlate quite closely with how innovative the legal sector that they service is. What's the appetite? So in some pockets, Extremely innovative.   

Ab: [00:07:29] Where regulations established cultural differences can still drive an appreciation for innovation. For example, many European countries enjoy a data centric culture that embraces AI data and analytics as elementary parts of their future successes. See notes for a link to a great article discussing this. This attitude is spilling over into the legal profession as well. 

Maturity and general culture of the legal industry 

 The flip side of the regulatory structure is generally the maturity of the legal industry. In largely unregulated areas, the legal sector is nascent...

Key quotes

Quotes have been extracted from the live conversation and have been edited for grammar and minor corrections.

Resources mentioned

Contracting Mistakes series

• #1: Accepting no time for the "important, not urgent"
• #2: Assuming change requires big bangs
• #3: Legal should stick to the legals
• #4: One more lawyer
• #5: "Robust" terms
• #6: Deals are different

Alex Hamilton (LinkedIn / Twitter)  is the CEO and founder of Radiant Law, the UK-based award-winning NewLaw firm. Alex is focused on improving the contracting process for clients, leading product and tech development. He also regularly talks and writes on improving contracting, LawTech and the changing legal industry. He has led a number of projects that have been recognised by the FT’s Innovative Lawyer Awards. Before founding Radiant Law, he was a Partner at Latham & Watkins and co-Chair of Latham & Watkins’ global Technology Transactions Group.

In this episode we discuss: 

• Why good marketing and a strong personal brand has never been more important
• How to implement a marketing transformation strategy 
  • how corporate content vs individual content is consumedsource: dlaignite.com
• How you can reduce your recruitment costs with a good marketing strategy
• How to leverage LinkedIn to build your brand
  • what can you different to strengthen your profile
  • How to optimize your profile for search and storytelling
  • How your brand makes you a more obvious choice in competitive pitches

During our conversation, Alex also recommended the following book: Technology vs. Humanity: The coming clash between man and machine

You can find Alex on LinkedIn.

I reached out to Janet after having read her article on the importance of strategic client management. We discuss the topic in detail including what it means, the benefits for individuals and the firm, implementation advice, and pitfalls to avoid.

Janet is an accomplished business person who brings her experience from diverse industries and professional service organizations to bear on issues currently facing Law Land. 

• Prior to Adam Smith, Esq., Janet was Director, Client Relationships Program at Orrick. 
• Previously, she served as Executive Vice President at a global communications agency where she led several large, global client relationships for organizations such as Pfizer and the US Department of Defense.  She also served as President of a national communications agency.
• She was personally awarded a Certificate of Appreciation by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Janet is a graduate of Vassar College, which she attended as a Regents Scholar.  She is based in New York City.

You can read Janet’s article on the Adam Smith Esq. website, and find her on LinkedIn.

Innovation has as many definitions as the number of people you ask to define it. Regardless of what you think of as "innovative," the execution needs to permeate the business. Abhijat Saraswat speaks with Allister Spencer on how to make innovation everyone's business.

In this episode, we’ll go over:

1. Review the state of the union
   • earlier this year firms put their hand brakes on; some thrived, some fell apart. What drove this? 
   • What were the differences between segments (law firm sizes, law firms vs. in-house legal, etc.)?
2. General hygiene across the profession
   • How firms can improve their operational excellence so they can 
     • make clients stickier
     • get more clients
     • Increasing profits
   • How do we establish a baseline
     • discovery
     • benchmark
     • improvement
3. How Alt-V approaches the above
   • legal meth lab
   • Taylor Wessing workshop

Quotes have been extracted from the live conversation and have been edited for grammar and minor corrections. What follows is a commentary based on the discussion from the episode.

Handbrake

Earlier this year, the handbrake was pulled hard, and we saw a massive slow down across both legal and in-house counsel:

Businesses now realize that the programs that they had put on hold have to come back online, and things need to restart - the work must march on.

Factors affecting the adaptability 

Smaller firms with multi-jurisdictional teams fared better because they were better geared up to working remotely, as, in effect, many were already had a remote workforce. 

Many of the mid-tied single office firms, or those with a dated view that ‘bums on seats equals productivity,’ struggled to adjust quickly.

Some of the bigger firms that are spread jurisdictionally also had issues. Several factors contributed to this, and one of those was the rapid lateral hiring approach. This resulted in the firms having disparate systems, and when you bring everything back together, those systems sometimes don’t talk to each other. 

How did the law firms compare to in-house legal?

What are the next priorities? 

There’s a big push for ERP systems (document management, practice management, Exchange, and other basic systems that firms rely on so heavily) - some firms that have fallen behind are now rapidly coming back on board. However, it’s a cautionary tale:

The most common foible is taking an assumption-based implementation approach. Each firm has specific requirements, and without teasing those requirements out effectively, you're not going to get them the system they want.

The business of law

To achieve this, you need a mindset of future state thinking - those individuals that understand that what may have been working for the last 10, 20, 50, or 100 years may not work the same in the future because there is a changing tide coming and it’ll be disruptive. And the funny thing about disruption is it hits you in the face; as soon as you turn the corner, you don't get a warning. 

Operational excellence

This feeds into running a successful law firm - from a reporting perspective, you have operational excellence and strategic excellence. One can think of one as the dashboard and the other as the table - you have to marry those two up.

Firms, with all the best intentions, often miss the mark because they fall to the exclusion of the inclusion, i.e., they focus on improving things that happened, but not to convert those opportunities that may have slipped through the cracks. 

There are each uniquely impressive, but all have one thing in common. They met (as well as 14 others) through a Linkedin networking group at the beginning of the pandemic. This one act led to the writing of an anthology of their struggles, experiments, and triumphs.

Ab speaks with Winter Wheeler, Shari E. Belitz, Esq., Lisa Lang, Laura M. Gregory, Esq., Deb Feder, and Christon Halkiotis.

Their stories are endearing; they show authenticity, talk about insecurities, confidence, and about what can happen when you show up.

Here is a peek into their stories:

Takeaway 1: How Shari E. Belitz, Esq. shed the label of ‘side hustle’ and became “founder and CEO… No side. Lots of hustle.”

Takeaway 2: How Laura M. Gregory, Esq., CPCU made insurance coverage interesting to the masses and grew her following from 1k to 6k in just six months! LauraHasItCovered

Takeaway 3: How Christon Halkiotis lesson about riding a motorcycle through curves in a road (acceleration helps give you the traction necessary for a change) would apply equally to her move from a prosecutor to a private defense attorney.

Takeaway 4: How Winter Wheeler struggled with going for her passion career (“my goal was right on the horizon, I was crippled by the notion that because I had worked so hard for my litigation career”) until she had no choice. And, how she found success through a careful and planned approach (even when sometimes didn’t know how!)

Takeaway 5: How Deb Feder created the same kitchen table environment in a virtual world, the same kind of environment she had seen her parents create to bring communities together. Also, her recipe for corn dip sounds delicious!

Takeaway 6: How Lisa Lang overcame her fear of networking (“I remember my first post—not the content, but the feeling I had when I hit the “post” button. It was sheer panic. I immediately logged out of LinkedIn.”) in three months to go from lurker to contributor to creator.

You can find #Networked: How 20 Women Lawyers Overcame the Confines of COVID-19 Social Distancing to Create Connections, Cultivate Community, & Build Businesses in the Midst of a Global Pandemic on Amazon

• Deloitte buys Kemp Little: Deloitte UK has bought the law firm Kemp Litte, which adds 86 lawyers (inc. 29 partners) to the legal roster for the company. We've been through this before, throughout the 1990s the Big Five accounting firms (as they were at the time)—Arthur Andersen, KPMG, Ernst & Young (EY), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and Deloitte—made a concerted effort to enter the legal services market. It was relatively successful but was shut down following a wave of accounting scandals that saw the fall of Arthur Andersen, and new regulation introduced that restricted the ability of the Big 4 to offer non-auditing services to audit clients.
• ILTA Tech Survey: the annual ILTA tech survey was published recently, which collected responses from 470 firms, 103k+ lawyers, and 208k+ users. Overall, there was a much higher focus on the Cloud ( lots of o365, exchange online, cloud with next upgrade), distributed workplaces (how will firms' IT teams support home offices), and change management continues to be the top of mind issue. 
• How to Stop Phishing: we talked around this Reddit post which discussed a simple change that reduced a simple hack that reduced the number of people that fell for a phishing count to zero.

AI narrator 1: This is the audio version of an article, read by your friendly neighborhood artificial intelligence.

AI narrator 2: Solving the Last Mile Problem for the Utilisation of Legal Technology

  The last mile is a concept that specifically focuses on the movement of goods or services from the distribution centre to the destination – this final aspect of the supply chain is often the most difficult and expensive than any other part of the supply chain.

This article considers the last mile problem framed as the utilisation of technology at law firms, and how solving it could provide significant business benefits.

The Multi-faceted Approach of Considering the Last Mile Problem

  The idea of the last mile was originally conceptualised around the delivery of telecommunications and electricity; since then it has been extended to many other verticals, and is commonly referenced with regards to logistics and transportation.

The question we consider here is what is the last mile affecting the legal profession, and how should we start to solve it?

The last mile is partly a matter of perspective – when considering the legal eco-system the problem to be solved depends on which part of the legal supply chain is considered – the delivery of legal service, the utilisation of technology, or one of the many other end points.

The Promise of Significant Business Gains

  Regardless of which part of the value chain is considered from the perspective of a legal technology leader, the mandate should be to help the lawyer (the end user) finish their work quickly and with a high degree of competency.

In this article we will demonstrate the value of solving the challenge of the last mile problem by focusing primarily on the utilisation of technology at law firms. My hope is that in working through this a mental framework can be constructed which can also be applied to other forums.

Below we will define the problem, consider the benefits, and review some considerations for IT leaders and knowledge professionals.

  Delivery and Utilisation of Legal Technology

  There has been a boom in the number of technologies being offered to and implemented within law firms. This is particularly the case in large legal markets such as the USA and the UK. The same observation can be made of emerging legal tech markets such as Singapore, where initiatives promoted by the government and other agencies are ensuring a healthy appetite for law firms to obtain legal technology.

Law firms are complex businesses with many moving parts, but they all want the same thing: to realise the full potential of their investment. For this to be accomplished there must be a smooth delivery from end-to-end. This is done by maximising the bandwidth so that workflows can be created that put the right tools in the user’s hands at the right time, and in the right way.

Often the last mile is the least efficient part of the delivery process. When implementing technology this is often translated as complexities with implementation itself, troubleshooting and training to maximise adoption.

Most firms have a fragmented eco-system of legal technology. The annual publication by Litera Microsystems – The Changing Lawyer – reported that almost half of firms are working with over 10 legal technology suppliers, and 68 per cent of firms say that their tech tools overlap in functionality.

The problem with this approach is that the users are perpetually confused by which technology to use, and there is a dizzying array of training that must be attended and remembered each time a simple task needs to be accomplished. In solving these issues, we must work towards a simplified system which encompasses a large workflow that is frequently followed by lawyers.

  Benefits

  Before considering how to solve the problem, let’s consider the benefits of doing so.

If we return to our earlier example of transportation, it is easy to see the business paybacks to be gained by solving the problem.

In the last five years, within the transportation vertical, companies such as Bird, and Lime have become some of the fastest growing – Bird became the fastest Unicorn in the US (company valued at over one billion USD) – by focusing on solving the last mile problem through the use of scooters. In doing so, the company considers what is the easiest and the most cost effective way of getting an individual across that last mile: from the hub (eg a train station) to their home.

Solving for the last mile with regards to delivery of technology means saving time and effort. For lawyers the result is to have more time available to think and, to provide greater value to their clients. This has the secondary benefit of minimising the mundane, inevitably increasing morale and job satisfaction.

For a business, the benefits include reducing errors in delivery of the work product, having the ability to service more clients, and generally increasing revenue.

What must be considered is that most customers expect quick delivery but are not willing to pay the high premiums. Therefore, to accomplish the task productivity tools for a lawyer that improve workflow, efficiency is needed.

  Better Technology and More Integration

  When thinking about how to achieve said benefits, it may be tempting to opt for even more technology. However, I would argue that this is not the right approach – as it further fragments an already fragmented eco-system. Instead firms should aim for better technology, more conversations, elegant delivery mechanisms, and more integration.

Systems that are put in place should provide an integrated approach to the workflow – this means integrating with relevant systems (for example, a Document Management System (DMS)) so that as many of the necessary actions can be accomplished from within the application where the lawyer spends most of their time (such as Microsoft Word).

  Is Your System Being Used as Intended?

  If we consider this from the perspective of an IT leader or the business unit, it is important to pay attention during the implementation stage to ensure that the delivery being received is as intended.

Are your users able to go through workflows (eg creating, checking, and collaborating on a document) in a cohesive manner without significant cognitive burden?

Companies like Litera Microsystems have formed around this specific narrative and as a result their suite – the Litera Desktop – can be delivered as a single, lawyer focused ribbon. The advantage of this is that it provides all the necessary tools for the entire workflow which all look and feel the same, allowing the lawyer to focus on the task at hand instead of jumping from tab-to-tab and ribbon-to-ribbon.

  Integrating – In and Out...

In this episode you'll learn about:

• What is contract lifecycle management?
• The benefits of no-code technology - from an implementation, design, and adoption perspective
• From the legal ops perspective why you should consider all software instead of just legal tech solutions
• What Agiloft plans to do with their $45M investment 
• Eric’s experience as a new CEO - his onboarding experience and his leadership focus for the next few months

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

You can find Eric on LinkedIn and find out more about Agiloft here. 

Agiloft Secures $45 Million Growth Equity Investment from FTV Capital  

Names Accomplished Legal Tech Executive Eric Laughlin as CEO to Accelerate Growth in No-Code Contract and Commerce Lifecycle Management Software Company

Redwood City, Calif., August 17, 2020 – Agiloft, the global standard in no-code contract and commerce lifecycle management, today announced a $45 million growth equity investment from FTV Capital, a sector-focused investor in innovative companies in enterprise technology and services, financial services, and payments and transaction processing. Bootstrapped since its inception and profitable, Agiloft’s investment from FTV is the company’s first round of external funding and will be used to build on its leadership position in the rapidly growing enterprise contract and commerce lifecycle management (CCLM) space as it accelerates its AI-based product development and expands its vertical and geographic market presence. Agiloft’s no-code platform drives industry-leading configurability and automates complex enterprise workflows through an iterative design process at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional software.

In conjunction with the transaction, Agiloft appointed Eric Laughlin to the role of CEO, effective immediately. Laughlin most recently served as global leader of legal managed services at Ernst & Young, LLP, where he managed the Pangea3 and Riverview Law teams and provided clients with technology and service solutions in the contracts, e-discovery, and compliance domains globally. Founder and former CEO of Agiloft, Colin Earl, will remain with the company as chief technology officer, overseeing product development, engineering, security and technology infrastructure and providing strategic guidance to the company.   

“Colin and his team at Agiloft have built a unique company, emphasizing customer-focused execution and a culture of trust and transparency — all built on a foundation of technical excellence,” said Laughlin. “The result has been steadily accelerating growth and consistent profitability. I’m honored to have been chosen to lead Agiloft in the next chapter of its development. A big part of my role will be to grow the company while maintaining the elements that have made it so successful.”  

"Eric not only has a track record of success, growing and leading large global organizations, he has the vision, domain expertise and integrity to lead Agiloft in its next phase of growth and product innovation. The search took over a year–and it was well worth it to find the right individual.” said Earl.

Named a leader by Gartner in its 2020 Magic Quadrant for Contract Lifecycle Management, Agiloft has reported 134% growth in new sales thus far this year, an implementation success rate of 99.6% and has a loyal customer base of more than 600 customers, including Honeywell, CDW and Roche. Its adaptable contracting software is built on a no-code platform, allowing organizations to customize complex contract and commerce workflows without writing a single line of code. A robust AI engine simplifies the intake and organization of existing contracts and also identifies the level of risk in documents and clauses. The result is cost discipline in procurement, quantifiable reductions in revenue leakage in sales, and visibility into contractual risk and regulatory compliance for legal departments. The platform is easily extensible to the commercial processes adjacent to contracts such as spend management and integrates with enterprise systems. 

“Agiloft has established itself as a trailblazer in the fast-growing market for contract and commerce lifecycle management software,” said Alex Mason, partner at FTV Capital. “To develop a no-code product that customers love, while prioritizing profitable growth without external investment, is a remarkable achievement. We are proud to be a collaborative partner to the Agiloft team and look forward the exciting journey ahead.”   

“With digital transformation moving at the speed it is today, contract management solutions that are well-scoped and executable are mission critical,” said Abhay Puskoor, principal at FTV Capital. “As businesses continue to find new efficiencies and ways to reduce costs, contract management will play a significant role in adoption of automation, and Agiloft’s highly configurable no-code platform will enable automation at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional software. We welcome the opportunity to connect Agiloft to the enterprises in our Global Partner Network who will value ...

And that was part of the beauty of what we've done; people don't really have to change their practices all that much, it unifies everything into one place and they get the information they need, but they don't have to learn a new piece of software in order to do it.

In this episode we discuss:

• Technology adoption and innovation: the difference in enthusiasm & sophistication between in-house legal teams and AM Law 200 firms
• Cloud: the dichotomy between legal tech ecosystem moving to the cloud, and requirements by IT teams to keep things on-prem for security reasons
• In-house/outside counsel: the dynamics of this relationship and how the bleed from consumer tech into the professional world is affecting it. 

You can learn more about DiscoveryMaster here, and connect with Ray on LinkedIn. 

The panel will bring together a world view as we'll be joined by Thao and Priti is the US (New York and Chicago respectively), Barbara in Brazil, and Terri in Australia.

On the panel were: Priti Saraswat, Bárbara Gondim da Rocha, Terri Mottershead, and Thao Tran

This was recorded as a video and you can watch the video version at https://summit.fringelegal.com/talks/km-viewpoint-from-practitioner-to-enabler/

You can watch the video version of the recording here: https://www.fringelegal.com/august-chatter-with-vincent-michetti/

You can Vincent Michetti on LinkedIn. 

Mick is a recognized international leader in the field of legal innovation and transformation, having won numerous international legal innovation awards and with his work the subject of a case study for Harvard Law School.  

Mick founded and chaired the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium Australia, an industry body established to share best practice legal operations and innovation knowledge.  Mick is a director of Fitzroy Legal Service, a member of the advisory board to Swinburne University Law School, has an extensive commercial and M&A background, and before PwC spent 14 years at Telstra where he was General Counsel.

In the episode today we'll talk through:

• The research project completed by PwC NewLaw team to identify key decisions that legal departments make every day
• Three waves of legal operations
  1. Vendor management: manage panels and understand where the money is being spent
  2. Productivity: how we manage our workflows, and getting the high volume but simpler processes done better
  3. Insights: this is where we are moving to, and provides a way to get us to look at data and focus on measurement

• Deciding what to measure and then what data to capture
• Why often legal departments aren't even part of the conversation around spend and business measurements. How measurement drives internal funding and support, and how to set baselines (even if you're the first/only one doing something) 
•  A deep dive into three functional examples - what to measure, how and why:
  • Business strategy
  • Technology & innovation
  • Knowledge management
• The importance of data-driven decision making

You can find out more about the report and download the PDF here.

You can find Mick on PwC's website or on LinkedIn

If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the Fringe Legal Newsletter to get 3-5 interesting ideas delivered every Sunday. Join 530+ people. It's free. Join at www.fringelegal.com/newsletter

• Summary
  • Why every legal professional needs to know about digital transformation
  • What does Innovation mean to Andrea
    • many people mix up innovation with the change, or they mix up innovation with creativity and creativity is certainly necessary for innovation, but it's not enough. It's not the same... Many innovation projects include changing behaviors, adopting new working methods, adopting technology, but change is not equal to innovation... innovation and entrepreneurship is a key success factor for every single company, every single business, also for the legal, it's important that it creates value. It has an economic, positive impact
    • In reality, innovation is hard work. It's a very structured and focused process. You know the words 'fail fast', so you monitor the process and stop it. You have to create value. You have to have an innovation strategy that is aligned with the overall business strategy. So it is a science and it is something which is a serious and very impactful part of business management.
  • How to create a culture supporting innovation and transformation
  • What's the impact of Covid-19 on innovation strategy, and how it will lead to the great unmasking of the "innovation theatre"
    • Some people say that in the next 10 years, the amount of change will be equal to the previous hundred years. And, that's why I say that in the short term, you might have to state safe as a business; in the midterm, you will have to stay hungry; and, in the long term, you have to stay foolish.
    • For those moonshots or long term ideas, you need an innovation strategy. Research shows that in corporate innovation if you have a reactive approach and you just wait for people, you encourage them and incentivize them, but you wait that they come up with ideas most of the ideas will be incremental changes, mostly process changes. I would say that's nice - valuable. But more importantly, these days especially is to have a strategic view and formulate to people the direction we would like to get new ideas on, or which are the problems that are a priority for our firm.
  • Using gamification to drive technology adoption, and how Andrea used this successfully at her previous firm
  • Connecting pieces of the legal supply chain - what is the connection between strategy, innovation, technology and business development.

Find Andrea on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Alma has been researching the prevalence of knowledge management and innovation roles across the Am Law 200 firms. 

In this episode:

• we go through her findings which were frankly shocking to the both of us
• we look at firms that are doing well in functionally and practically serving the KM and Innovation function
• what's missing, the myth of km and innovation being widespread across the profession
• the cost of not having these roles filled at your firm
• how Alma plans to use the information

This episode is presented a little differently. Alma and I were having such a great conversation that I just hit record. So we'll start mid-flow and the conversation should feel raw but full of useful insights.

Just one more thing, if you haven't head over to FringeLegal.com and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. I share 3-5 interesting finds each week as well as bonus content, such as episode transcripts and more. Over 500 people receive it each week, come join us.

You can find Alma on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Mike has worked in logistics, solo law practice, and legal media. He teaches about the overlaps between those activities and what they mean for attorneys and the companies that aim to serve them.

Through his speaking, consulting, and writing, Mike aims to improve the lives of solo attorneys. The legal industry has many well-documented struggles. If we can harness the minds and compassion of solos—roughly half of the profession—we can have real impact on an array of social issues, including access to justice. That is Mike’s mission.

Mike lives with his wife, four children, dog, two geckos, four cats, two birds, and hedgehog in the Kansas City area. (He needs a nap). Mike is also the host of the Lawyer Forward Podcast.

In this episode you'll learn about:

• Mike’s journey from logistics to law to being an author 
• The importance of systems-level thinking in the legal profession
• Why law schools need to re-evaluate how to teach and prepare students for the practice and business of law
• What is the legal supply chain and why it’s important to understand
• Background to the Churn model created in law

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

You can get a copy of Mike’s book - Lawyer Forward on Amazon. Find out more about Mike on his website, and connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

In this episode you'll learn about:

• Allan’s interest in neuroscience, ethics and the law
• What advantage humans may or may not have over artificial intelligent agents in the workplace of the future
• Impact of neuroscientific evidence in sentencing. Could the presence of certain protein markers (e.g, MAOA) lead to a plea for mitigation in sentencing? 
• What is the Australian Neurolaw Database 
• What are brain-computer interfaces (BCI) 
• The possibility of people committing offenses by way of BCI
  • We talk through some hypotheticals - how BCI offenses challenge the core of criminal law
• How might human consciousness impact the future of work, against the future of algorithmic machines that will soon surpass us in decision making

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

You can find out more about Allan on his website. Connect with him on LinkedIn, and Twitter.

You can explore Allan’s books below:

• Free Will and the Law
• Neurointerventions and the Law
  
  

In this episode you'll learn about:

• Chrissie’s interesting path to law, including homeschooling
• Going from bad A-levels, pivoting from studying biology to law
• How Chrissie saw a need for content to be delivered in a specific way (YouTube/video) and just dove right in. The thought process behind it, and how she was able to grow her channel to over 3k subscribers
• Skills important now and those that may need to be honed by future lawyers
• The link between lawtech and client retention
• Finding a balance between work and other interest

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher

You can find Chrissie on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and on her YouTube channel, Law and Broader.

Then there was a lot of planning. The next thing is really being quite studious, really detail-oriented about planning, and planning some more; having a communication strategy, thinking about how you talk to different lawyers. If people email them, if you have weekly standups and, I learned quite early on, for example, that sending emails every day, just didn't cut through. 

Because the lawyer never read them. So using different channels to communicate the change that's coming is very important and being quite sensitive to the audience. And that's my next point: thinking about the audience because you're going to have change champions in your audience, you're going to have people that are very reluctant and then you can have everybody in between. 

We recorded this conversation in Feb 2020, and Katrina then also spoke at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit. During that session, she expanded much further into the knowledge-based way of working. It’s well worth a watch, and Katrina answers the following thesis: what do you do to capture and share the lawyers’ knowledge, both for the current team and for the future? Do you have a strategic plan to capture that knowledge and a culture aimed at making this a priority?

In this episode you'll learn about:

1. Katrina’s journey from private practice to inhouse to leading a transformation initiative
2. One simply thing private practice lawyers can do to add value to their clients 
3. Build up a knowledge-based way of working - what it means and how to do it
4. How Katrina and her team measure the success and effectiveness of internal initiatives
5. Utilizing technology as a catalyst for innovation and managing the change project that comes with it
6. Practical suggestions for in-house legal teams as they tackle internal projects, including if you have a large, medium, or a small team.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

And I'd say, I fixed this problem now, or I've let everybody know we're making this change to our system because so-and-so saw that this was a great idea or gapping the technology that we had. Where that gets you to is I think somewhere where the team actually owns the technology and they really are thinking about it's theirs.

How do they continue to maximize it? It's got a very open dialogue about continuous improvement. Everybody knows that it's never going to be a hundred percent perfect, technology never is, but everybody's got a very, forward-looking approach to how we're gonna use it. And, keeping on, that continuous improvement cycle.

Connect with Katrina on LinkedIn.

We recorded this conversation in Feb 2020, and of course, the world changed dramatically since then. As an accompaniment, I would recommend watching Karina’s talk at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit, where she shares how to run successful SaaS implementation projects.

And that is true in a market, and it's also true within an individual organization where if you don't have that culture of trying failing, then it's much harder to learn from mistakes and it is much harder to finally get to a solution that works.

In this episode you'll learn about:

• Karina’s journey to becoming a chess master
• Going from chess to legal tech to reg tech to founding her own agency
• What is reg tech, and the importance of compliance 
• The three pillars of KV Labs and why they matter: design, build and launch
• Importance of UI/UX in product design
• The concept of challenger law firms, and how they might disrupt the legal profession

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

You can learn more about KV Labs here, and find Karina on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

We recorded this conversation in Nov 2019, and of course, the world changed dramatically since then. As an accompaniment, I would recommend watching Sam’s talk at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit, which was recorded in May 2020. It provides great juxtaposition for how his role has evolved in just a few months. And, interestingly, how many of the future skills are needed today. 

In this episode you'll learn about:

• Sam’s path to becoming an Innovation Manager 
• What does the Scottish Legal Technologist Accreditation mean
• The transition from a legal technologist to an innovation manager
• How having an in-house perspective adds tremendous value to the clients
• Skills for future lawyers 
  • Basic IT skills
  • Understanding of data analytics (example: how it might apply to pricing)
  • Better familiarity with remote working - this goes without saying now but we recorded this in November 2019, and it was great foresight. You can learn more about how Sam’s role has been impacted in the post-COVID19 world from his talk at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit. 
  • Being aware of data and cybersecurity issues

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

You can find Sam on LinkedIn and Twitter

Shannon is a successful outsourced solution professional with 25 years of law firm experience.  Shannon has been with Canon 21 years originally serving as the Midwest Operations Manager for 10 years where she and her service team implemented and managed some of our largest and most innovative law firm accounts.  Having been a Facility & Services Manager for a national law firm prior to joining Canon, Shannon has the unique ability to understand law firm requirements from a client and provider perspective.

In this episode you'll learn about:

• How long firms are planning for the return to work
• Where are some areas of change that Shannon and her colleagues are seeing
• Some practical, and low-tech approaches that firms will need to implement to make people feel comfortable as they return to work
• What are some differences between leadership in corporate vs law firms

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

You can find Shannon on LinkedIn

Maz will also be speaking at the 2020 Fringe Legal Virtual Summit, where he will expand on many of these items. Register at www.fringelegal.com/summit

In this episode you'll learn about:

• The wide spectrum of innovation found within law firms and legal practices
• The ask to make complicated disciples more simple so it can be spread to different types of lawyers
• How to practically approach innovation conversation with lawyers
• How to practically approach innovation conversation with clients and in-house teams
• How to identify the intervention points that can have a significant impact on the delivery of quality work

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Or they have to say no to people. And, then you try and work out, well, what are the intervention points that are most likely going to help them achieve that.

You can find Maziar on LinkedIn and Twitter

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

During the episode we discuss:

• How Torsten went from project management coordinator for the M&A team to head of legal tech innovation
• What does this specialist role of legal tech coordinator entail
• How Torsten’s role is entangled with what the CIO does as well as the head of business development
• How the firm manages a pipeline of ideas and uses this to plan against a 6, 12 and 36-month technology strategy
• Why Bech Brunn bought dot legal
• An example of a project that was on the firms’ development/idea pipeline and brought to fruition
• What are the benefits of the key accounts management program that the firms’ clients get from them 

Find Torsten on Bech-Bruun, LinkedIn, and Twitter

And then we have a selection process where we actually take these ideas, cultivate them, and figure out: is it a viable product? Can we make it work? Can we put it into operation and actually sell it to the clients? Can we, conceptualize it? Can we make, revenue?. from this offering? And this is really in close collaboration with our head of business development and also our CIO.

Because I can only take part of it, and when it goes to sales and marketing and into operations, it's really important for me to have the head of business development and his team pitch in with all the knowledge they have regarding conceptualizing and also putting it into operation.

In the episode today we cover:

• How Love Legal got their start 
• How making improvements to the design can help people to love the legal process
• What are some of the considerations when thinking about the consumer point of view, especially for B2C or B2B2C businesses
• We do also specifically talk about (and speculate) on what might be the future of Will writing, estates law, and execution using instruments such as smart contracts

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

More information 

LoveLegal.com

Seb Shakh 

Caroline Ragan

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

We talk about:

• What clients are asking for from lawyers
• How GCs and Corporates feel about the service being received by their lawyers
• The call for service transformation 
• Change management: lawyers are not so resistant to change
• How the lawyer's skills delta has changed since its inception 18 months ago

Find out more

MOVELΔW
Law Without Walls
Michele's on social: LinkedIn and Twitter
Michele's books: Legal Upheaval and New Suits

Jan currently focuses on innovation and change management within the firm. In 2019, Adhemar.law was one of the 4 nominees for the 2019 Belgian Legal awards for the most innovative law firms. In addition, Jan is an expert in environmental law, expropriation law, and general public law. He advises private and public clients on the realization of infrastructure projects, area development, and other public and private industries, commercial and residential projects.

Outside of his law practice, he founded a non-profit that helps youth learn important problem-solving skills and build resilience through extracurricular activities.   

In the episode today, we discuss:

• The truth about change management; it’s hard even when people are open and accepting of it
• Challenges around running a law firm remotely
• How Jan’s firm created a “bottom-up” culture and instilled an environment where everyone is open to learning from each other. The most experienced lawyer learns something from the trainee and vice versa. 
• Learning through experiments and having buy-in to get people to own what they do
• How knowledge management is making money for the firm, and provide a strong return on their investment to tools from companies like Litera

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Whereas there are other people who are really good at thinking,  contemplating, and doing deep legal work -  writing complex advice. So we put these two people together and let them handle one person to handle most of the clients and the other one most of the file.

Whereas in a traditional firm, you would have one person doing everything and then that one person would either not be very social, or not have a very good relationship with the clients. 

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

Kim is a UK qualified lawyer and consultant in the Legal Service Innovation team at G+T. She designs solutions for lawyers, working closely with deal teams to project manage and streamline large-scale projects, creating efficiencies and quality outputs for clients.

Kim specialises in implementing artificial intelligence tools and has experience in legal technology design and roll-out and change management. She also advises and trains lawyers to use the full spectrum of efficiency tools available at Gilbert + Tobin.

Kim brings a range of practical legal experience to her role, having worked in the UK as an M+A lawyer at a large Magic Circle firm and in-house.

Show notes

The initial idea for this episode was simple - I wanted to speak to Kim about how she explains complex technical topics to non-technical audiences (such as lawyers).

But like with all great things, it evolved quickly. Ultimately, we speak about:

• legal transformation - the state of play today, and speculating what might change in the future;
• The client journey, specifically we discuss what should be considered during the delivery of legal work; and,
• Kim explains the concept of machine learning and computer modeling using art as an analogy

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

You know, maybe they're not going for the food at a good restaurant - a good service personnel will recognize that and then tailor the experience for them. You're also not going to love going back to a restaurant if it cost you an arm and a leg and you weren't satisfied with that experience. So the expectation and the price has a huge impact on the type of service that we should be looking to deliver as a waiter or as a lawyer... 

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

Show notes

Isabella has a great breadth of knowledge, and we explore a number of topics in our chat today. 

• How Isabella path was driven by wanting to do things differently
• How shifting your perspective can spark the start of an innovation journey - in Isabella’s case being seconded to the client’s business opened her eyes to how to communicate in a way that empowers her clients to make the best business decision
• How in-house lawyers are the cornerstone of transformation in the legal industry, pushing forward change in so many ways
• How markets such as LATAM are embracing technology to solve business problems
• What is top of mind for students, clients, and practitioners when it comes to looking at technology and innovation?

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

So in that sense, I see a lot of international movement towards solving these global issues. And that's super interesting. And I think it's kind of like the first time it's happening in the legal industry as opposed to any other industries where the incorporation of feedback and technologies and business impact from other parts of the world had been there for a longer time.

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

In this episode, we speak with Jackson Liu on Neota Logic to get a primer on no-code application development. 

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Amongst other items, we cover:

• What is a no-code platform
• How these products can be used for rapid prototyping/development
  • Create MVP quickly, so it can be made available to early adopters; allow for iterative development through user feedback
• How no-code platforms are being used by firms; three use case we explore are:
  • Internal efficiency purposes to address the ‘more for less’ challenge
  • Develop revenue-generating solutions 
  • To win client RFPs: using the rapid prototype process to respond to RFPs with an actually built application
• How Neota, using the right adoption resources & strategies, gets lawyers to become no-code “architects” 
• A2J: how do you prepare students (lawyers of tomorrow) through partnerships with universities/colleges/law schools

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

He's previously worked for the likes of Phoenix Business Solutions in the UK and APAC, served as the Head of Client Services APAC for HighQ, and most recently was the Director of Legal Technology for KPMG Australia.

Stew was at KPMG when we recorded this conversation in 2019 - all views are his own and not those of his employers.

Just a quick note to say that Stew recorded this during a particularly busy afternoon so the audio is a little unclear at times. Please bear with it.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

We pack quite a lot in a small amount of time. Some highlights include:

• the changing landscape of the Australian Legal Tech Market - bearing in mind it's distant proximity to other large markets
• how different cultures sometimes produce different use cases
• first-mover advantages, or lack thereof, in the legal profession
• the upcoming wave of consolidation, especially within the productized segment of legal
• extendibility of software via APIs and vendor partnerships

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

Prior to joining Al Tamimi, Allison worked for over a decade for a magic circle law firm as a senior knowledge and learning manager working in their London, New York and Dubai offices. She is a qualified lawyer and has worked and practised in several jurisdictions including Chile, the USA and India. Allison has a university teaching qualification, is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and spent four years teaching at Nottingham Law School on their postgraduate law courses.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Just some of the items we cover in the episode:

• Working through the question - what is knowledge management? A way of helping organizations leverage the knowledge that the institution has, in a planned & structured manner, to achieve business benefits.
• Knowledge Management as way of working through the past, present and future
• Difference between explicit and tacit knowledge
  • Using trust as a vehicle to allow easier sharing of tacit knowledge  
• Building a culture of knowledge sharing in a time of extreme change change 
• How KM should is relevant, just in time and emergent
• Difference between setting up a KM function is a young market vs. improvements made to an existing function in an established market
• What kinds are requests are lawyers/users going to KM with?

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

Nina Gratrick An experienced Service Delivery Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the legal industry at a global level. She's a skilled resource manager capable of crossing the divide between technology and people; facilitating engagement at all levels. A coach, a mentor, an agent for change within organisations, supporting people, process and technology transformation to reshape the vision of IT services and support.

We talk about how the evolution of IT service delivery, and how by being customer centric, it's possible to push the boundries of change at your firm.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Some takeaways from the episode include:

• Nina's role as a customer advocate within the IT department 
• The real investment doesn't always come in the short term, it comes at a cultural shift level
• The difference in the learning curve between when Nina first got her start in the legal profession vs. now; one of the main difference is the increase of integration between different systems
• How do you think about measuring the value of success to the business. Can you provide solutions that show value to 80% of the business quickly, and then cater for the more nuanced use cases from there?
• On being flexible: do you want to be a tanker in the ocean, where you've decided on your direction, on your journey, and that's the way you're going. In order to move/change it requires a lot of work; Or, do you want to be a fleet, where you can move as a large unit really quickly, but you can also change direction just as quickly.
• There shouldn't be more complexity at work, compared to how things work within people's person lives
• We're constantly fixing the same thing - there needs to be a transformation, where we get people to think about technology in a different way
• How do you cross-sell your products/services as the law firm, leveraging the brand and data
• As a tech vendor or a firm-based incubator it gives you access to a wide spectrum of use cases
• The importance of change management within firm, and how customer success teams provided by tech vendors help drive this cultural shift at the firm
• Fail fast, fail smart. Push the boundaries of change. 

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

Laura Collins Scott began working with Clifford Chance in 2017 when she was initially engaged to define the strategy and business plan for Clifford Chance Applied Solutions.Laura founded BB Consulting in 2016 to help incumbent companies and start-ups design and build innovative products for their customers.   

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

The three take away from the episode:

1. Laura’s meandering journey to her role today. From training as a lawyer to starting her own consultancy and finally landing at Clifford Chance. 
2. Why the Create+65 program was created - how it was influenced by clients, internal stakeholders, and keeping in mind the competitive landscape.
3. Approaching the first anniversary of running the lab, what did Laura and her team have learned that can benefit other firms and individuals. 

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com 

• Art (culture and perception) and science (data and engineering supporting the argument) of product design
• Multi-teaming: people working on multiple projects simultaneously, which has many benefits as well as many risks. How does this affects knowledge professionals
• Who’s feeling the pain from constant context switching
  • Multi-teaming is more prominent with seniority
• How to structure teams to minimize destructive conflict
• Measuring productivity = output as a function of input 
  • Jamie Teevan’s research looking into micro-productivity as a way to leverage micro-moments throughout one’s day
• It takes almost 25 mins to reach full productivity, but you’re interrupted every 3 minutes
• Twitter: @backofthenapkin 
• LinkedIn: Peter Buck 

Reading list 

Article: https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-overcommitted-organization

Resource: Dr. Jamie Teevan information and publication

Resource: Marc Weiser vision for ubiquitous computing

Book: Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos

The core theme of the episode is all around innovation;  we cover three broad categories:

1. The 3 different pillars of NextLaw labs, and how innovation can take the robot out of the lawyer
2. How do you catalyze innovation? What that means, and the importance of becoming the connective tissue across the firm/business
3. Impact of legal tech on access to justice 

Thanks to Maya for taking the time, and also to Isabella Galeno (who’s featured later in the season) for introducing me to Maya.

---------

About Maya

Head of product for Nextlaw Labs, Maya Markovich is an innovation leader with roots in change management, behavioral science, law, VC and tech. She delivers next-generation technology, process, and business growth services for Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, and its clients, including acceleration of the legal tech startups in the Nextlaw Ventures portfolio. Her background enables her to encourage, design and implement the future of the legal profession around the globe.

Maya also serves on the boards of Legal Access Alameda, LexLab, OneJustice, and The Technolawgist, and as mentor for LegalGeek’s Women in LawTech and the University of Arizona TechLaw Fellows program, supporting legal tech initiatives to improve access to justice, gender equity and the future of legal education.  She speaks and writes frequently on legal tech and innovation/design, and is deeply committed to leveraging tech for good, especially to increase diversity and access to justice. Find her on LinkedIn and Twitter @MarkovichMaya.

Clarissa is based in Brisbane, Australia is a speaker, author, and hosts the popular podcast “Happy Lawyer, Happy Life”.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Some of the items we cover in the episode include (numbers are time codes):

• How Clarissa went from studying marine biology, to interior design to a practicing lawyer
• How to provide a delight experience to clients even (or perhaps especially) when they are going through difficult situations -> 8.04
• Developing a client centric practice to deliver law in a different way -> 9.14
• Why empathy is so powerful in the practice of law. What is the difference between sympathy and empathy, and how the latter can elevate your practice -> 10.48
• The origins of the “Happy Lawyer” -> 15.06
• How to avoid/manage burnout & stress as a lawyer or any other professional -> 18.30
• How to identify things in your life that cultivate happiness -> 23.28
• The science behind gratitude -> 25.50
• Failure is ok, and learning from failure; restarting -> 31.15 

Thao has a unusual route into knowledge management, and in exploring how she got there, we learn ways that can help break into a new role, crowdsource ideas and separate the signal from the noise.

At the end of the episode, I was left with a few pages of notes (and Thao even suggested a job for me after I retire :p)!.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Some of the highlights include: (numbers are time codes)

• Thao's journey into knowledge management driven by work-life balance, and a nudge from a partner → 2.50
• Thinking through the expansion of the KM function from just one practice area to various → 5.00
• Importance of mentorship and sponsorship (and the differences between the two at a law firm) → 6.00
• Why casting a "wider net" when searching for mentors is so importance, and how it helped shape Thao's career → 8.00
• A primer on knowledge management, what does it mean to Thao and to law firms → 16.24
• Being that bridge between lawyers, technology and management → 19.48
• How to discover where the inefficiencies are, and the benefits of starting small → 25.18
• Separating the signal from the noise, and having a genuine desire to learn from each conversation → 31.01
• What's on the horizon for the remainder of 2019 → 36.30

The episode is available now here (https://www.fringelegal.com/s1-e9-thao-tran-on-crowdsourcing-ideas-the-importance-of-mentorship-and-embracing-the-km-role), on iTunes, Spotify, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.

Nicola has worked in the legal services industry for over 15 years in three different jurisdictions. Nicola is passionate about finding innovative solutions to existing problems, building a culture of innovation within law firms, and instilling an empathic approach to design.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Some of the items we cover in the episode include: 

• How Nikki got to NYC - her story of working in three countries
• Nikki’s move to KM - Nikki’s view of KM, and why she thinks it’s such an exciting role to be in
• What she sees as the key components of a KM role
• What are some of the items that will help lawyers actually want to continue to practice law
• The shift in technology, processes, and the way law is practiced
• What is design thinking
• What components make up design thinking
• What are the steps of design thinking  
  • Empathy
  • Define
  • Ideate
  • Prototype
  • Test
  • Execute
• Why empathy is one of the key components of any problem solving exercise
• How Nikki was first exposed to Design Thinking
• How her firm explored the concept of design thinking
• How to promote the concept to lawyers and have them be engaged
• What is one key stage, after which, the lawyers will be hooked
• What is range of time investment required for a design thinking workshop
• Some amazing tips to help you out if you’re trying this out for the first time
• Some key takeaways for Nikki after having put design thinking into
• How design thinking can help tap into the “big brains” of lawyers

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher

In this episode I speak to the brilliant Angela Dowd. We really focus the conversation on how to develop a innovator's mindset, and lessons learnt as Director of Practice Innovation at Burns & Levinson LLP, and as the President of the Board of Directors at ILTA.

Some of the highlights include: (numbers are time codes) 

• Angela's "organic, rambling path" into legal: going from chemical engineering, HR, training, applications and innovation → 1.20
• Symptomatic problem solving vs business problem solving → 4.17
• Instead of suggesting solutions, focus on learning about the problem the user is trying to solve → 5.40
• The challenges and benefits of working in a "firm of laterals" → 7.20
• "Cross fertilization of innovative ideas" → 10.45
• Make gain where you can, and tying innovation initiatives to business problems → 12.32
• Resistance to change vs desire to change → 13.48
• Reverse mentoring on as a tool to challenge your assumptions → 25.00
• What's on the horizon for the legal profession → 30.00

The episode is available now here (https://www.fringelegal.com/s1-e7-angela-dowd-on-developing-an-innovators-mindset), on iTunes, Spotify, and everywhere else you get your podcasts. 

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Paul is such a font of knowledge, and has so many great stories which distill some of his learnings. I segmented our conversation in exploring Pauls’ past (being a CIO), his present (President at Litera Microsystems), and the future (what are some items a knowledge worker should be thinking about). 

Full disclosure, I work with Paul at Litera Microsystems. 

SHOW NOTES

We cover the following in this episode:

• PAST: Pauls’ move from financial services to the legal profession, and how the technology needs differ between law firms and professional service organisations.
• Why Freshfields deliberately hired a CIO (and others) from outside of legal – and why this might be more common in the future.
• Lessons learnt from being a CIO (listening, learning the law firm mechanics, and growing as a leader)
• The role of IT leaders as representatives of change in an organisation
• PRESENT: how running a different kind of procurement organisation at Freshfields led to Paul moving to Litera
• Growing a company from a customer centric view point (grow so you can better serve your client base)
• The formation of Litera Microsystems, and vision behind the creation of a platform company
• FUTURE: true disruption comes when someone does something so drastic with current technology it changes the game
• How technology can have a meaningful impact on people’s life and what role innovation plays into this
• Trends for the knowledge worker – the idea of augmentating technology to your current role
• AI becoming an ubiquitous piece of technology. AI is successful when you don’t know it’s around you.
• Advantage of a first mover vs being a fast follower

You can find out more information about at Litera Microsystems on their website. 

Full show notes can be found at https://www.fringelegal.com/s1-e6-paul-domnick-on-the-changing-landscape-of-the-legal-profession

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

This was an interesting conversation, speaking with someone who has had quick a varied background starting with working as part of Apple's sales team, going on to study computer science, practicing law and then founding his own company.

We cover the following in this episode:

• Tom's winding journey into legal profession and becoming an entrepreneur
• When creating product, the importance of solving a real business problem (especially when it can also uncover principal opportunities at your firm)
• The importance of creating elegant software, but focusing on the small things and augmenting the users current workflow
• Tom's rule of positioning software - show an expected 6X return on investment. This will help mitigate the risk associated with adoption, change management, and implementation
• How one call from a $700M business changed Tom's life
• How a product with $0 revenue can still have the most potential and promise
• What is WiseTime and what does autonomous privacy focused time keeping mean?
• Value in automating/eliminating low level tasks
• The three pillars of timekeeping software 
  • Privacy
  • Elegance
  • Integration
• When it comes to privacy - the starting point should be that the data belongs to the individual. And why this privacy first principle has made the difference between firms adopting the technology, and not.

You can find out more information about at WiseTime.io, including a quick video and more.

Full show notes can be found at https://www.fringelegal.com/s1-e5-thomas-haines-on-autonomous-privacy-first-timekeeping

Andrea Markstrom serves as Blank Rome’s Chief Information Officer, responsible for leading Firm-wide technology and security initiatives across all of Blank Rome’s practices and geographies. Andrea also started the Women Leaders Networking Group in New York, and would welcome any questions and provide more information anyone interested. 

Meredith Lonner is the Administrator at Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, P.C. a leading boutique law firm based in New York City specializing in entertainment law. 

 SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 
 

Andrea and Meredith are from very different firms, not just in the type of law they practice, but also more obviously, the size. There were plenty of contrasts between how Meredith and Andrea approach similar topics, such as looking at technology, working with the partnership, and even how they found themselves to be in legal. However, (and perhaps surprisingly) there were similarities also and I walked away from the conversation with plenty of learnings. 

We cover the following in this episode: 

• Their very different journey into legal (from Target Corp vs from working in a law firm as a paralegal)
• How to work with internal stakeholders (listening to 700 vs 16 business owners)
• What does an Administrator do at a small firm
• What Andrea considers to be the role of a CIO and how it affects her outlook on innovation
• The importance of security
• How Andrea & Meredith consider the purchase of technology and new initiatives
• How Blockchain might be relevant for the entertainment industry
• The pressures of competition across both their businesses
• Women in tech

Andrea also started the Women Leaders Networking Group in New York, and would welcome any questions and provide more information anyone interested. 

Full show notes can be found at http://fringelegal.com/s1-e4-andrea-markstom-and-meredith-lonner-on-being-women-leaders 

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

Stevie wears a number of hats, and most recently he published the viral book Blockchain for Lawyers. Rather than talking about the ins-and-outs of blockchain technology, instead we focus on what learning about matters and the impact it will have on the legal profession.

We cover the following in this episode:

• Stevie's journey into legal technology
• How and why Legaler founded
• The issue of access to justice, and how Legaler Aid aims to create a more accountable & transparent solution to this problem
• What is the blockchain and why does it matter
• The biggest change in trust, and how this will disrupt the nature of legal work
• Thinking about the speed of transactions on the blockchain, and the upcoming public network Legaler is working on
• The idea of global ID based on the blockchain
• Australia as the hotbed of legal technology

Full show notes can be found at http://fringelegal.com/s1-e3-stevie-ghiassi-on-blockchain-disrupting-legal.

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com

Resources

• Legaler
• Blockchain for Lawyers
• ALTA
• Satoshi Nakamoto white paper and walkthrough

• Kate’s move from being a consultant to law firms, to working in a law firm.
• The concept of ikigai, and the venn diagram of Kate’s viewpoints
  1. people
  2. law
  3. tech
• What does KM mean to Kate, and how she segments her projects into four buckets:
  1. Research & development (innovations)
  2. Precedents and playbook
  3. Training
  4. Practice innovation (process + pricing)
• Entrepreneurship and Intrepreneurship at Bennett Jones
• The importance of being curious and listening
• Kate’s advice to embrace ambiguity, and taking calculated risks

Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

SPECIAL GUEST: KATE SIMPSON

Kate is responsible for developing the firm’s knowledge management strategy and initiatives, and leads a team of KM specialists in delivering practice tools and resources that leverage the firm’s intellectual capital.

Prior to Bennett Jones, Kate was a consultant to many Canadian, UK and global law firms advising them in the design and implementation of useful, usable and engaging KM solutions that benefited both the lawyers and their clients.

Connect with Kate on LinkedIn or Twitter. 

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbSwith #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

In this this inaugural episode of the podcast, we speak with Joy about her views on the changing legal landscape. Amongst other items, we discuss testing assumptions she had about the ILTA community, trends she's seeing in the legal profession, and what firm leaders can put into action immediately to make a noticeable difference. 

SHOW NOTES

Some of the items we cover in the episode include:

• The value of listening, and the learning about the deep love & passion for the ILTA organisation
• The four key learning about the ILTA community Joy learnt about as she became CEO
  1. A need for more diversity
  2. People have too many ideas, and they don't know what to do with them
  3. The need for greater transparency
  4. The want from the community to volunteer more
• We also cover some trends & patterns Joy observed across the wider industry
  1. Innovation is overhyped
  2. The lack of understanding around emerging topics/technologies
  3. How the law firm business landscape is changing
  4. The prevalence of "the cloud"
• The importance of data driven performance tracking
• Increasing competition from the Big 4 
• How law schools are stepping up and becoming more engaged
• What action can law firm leaders take today to make an impact

Full episode show notes, and relevant links can be found here. Please subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode help me by leaving a review.

If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on ab@fringelegal.com