Change maker Jana Blount is our guest on this episode of Automates. Jana reflects on the opportunity she was given to embed a culture of radical change at DLA Piper, and how she has taken that forward into her own consulting business. 

The podcast covers:

• The concept of radical change vs the more commonly used term 'innovation'
• The definition of design thinking
• The aha moment of using design thinking to shift how people in a law firm thought about problems
• Jana's distaste for the word 'just' when it comes to 'just' a line item in a budget!
• The importance of allowing tech tools access to your 'good', to allow them to generate the 'great'
• The belief that AI and technology should be used to drive meaningful change in the legal profession, not just to make more money

This episode, Ben chats to Litera's Matt Miller. In this vendor to vendor discussion, they cover:

• The difference between working for a scale up versus a large tech company when it comes to product development
• The trend towards law firms hiring 'thinkers' to put technology to good use
• The challenges the pace of change presents to tech vendors looking to lock in long term deals
• Finding someone who's equally fascinated with technology advancements and keeping your finger on the pulse!

In our first podcast of 2025, Ben is joined by Jon Bartman, Co-Founder of the Law Tech Consultancy. Together they discuss: 

• The increasingly common journey from lawyer to tech founder
• The fact that implementing tech is not just a big law play
• The challenges and opportunities brought by a crowded legal tech market
• The importance of legal tech founders having a realistic understanding of their market
• The unique characteristics required of lawyers

Plus their mutual experience of The Legal Tech Fund (TLTF) Summit and Jon being a proud board member of the European Legal Tech Association (ELTA)

This episode of Automates features values-driven Caitlin McFee, Head of Growth at Capacity. Caitlin explains: 

• Her reasons for getting behind the mission of Capacity and how it helps firms operate as better businesses
• That firms must look beyond 'wellbeing days' to truly transforming the experience of working in a law firm
• Using work allocation as a lever to affect change
• The inherent challenges in attempting to fundamentally change the way the legal industry works
• Balancing the needs of the firm and the associates with the desire of the partner to have control
• The cultural differences between the UK and US in adopting tech
• Creating an open and flexible startup culture

Plus, here's a link to the referenced must sign up newsletter about everything the legal industry cares about https://legaldigest.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Our guest this episode is Greg Lambert, Chief Knowledge Services Officer at Jackson Walker, co-creator of 3 Geeks and a Law Blog and one half of The Geek in Review podcast, a true OG in the online legal sphere. Some standout points covered:

• The ease of information sharing within an industry as nuanced as the legal industry
• The merits of an emerging technologies committee
• How listening to and understanding the business is the starting point for pinpointing the right solutions to their challenges, and the answer is not always technology!
• How the AI buzz can spark valuable conversations within the business that otherwise would not have come to be
• The importance of delving beyond pouring data into LLMs but thinking about how to make use of that data and extract value 
• The tough fact that using Generative AI to handle legal research is one of the hardest things you could do with Generative AI!

Plus a two minute summary of changes in the macro environment over the last 20 years. And - he *only* received two sales emails from vendors pitching tech during the one hour recording of this session!