Beyond Billables

This week on the show I had the absolute privilege of interviewing Matthew Karakoulakis, founder of AMK Law in Melbourne. As well as being the founder of AMK, a proud indigenous man who serves his community and an outstanding lawyer, Matthew and I are Brazilian Jiu Jitsu brothers! We had a great chat about Matthew's journey in all facets of his life, his drive to help his community and how his journey in martial arts has made him a better lawyer.

Matthew shared about the ups and downs very honestly and I am sure many people will get a lot out of this interview. Personally I love his drive and the practical ways he goes about empowering Aboriginal business owners and trying to be an example for others. His learnings from his Jiu Jitsu journey are very similar to mine and I really love the way he has reflected on the ups and downs of BJJ and how that has helped in his career.

Before starting AMK Law, Matthew worked in major firms and organisations including Clayton Utz, HWL Ebsworth, and ASIC. As a result, he is very well-equipped to deal with matters of any size and complexity, working with a broad range of clients, from small and medium enterprises through to large Australian corporations, including Indigenous organisations and Government bodies.

https://amklaw.com.au/

This week on the bite sized Beyond Billables Insight:

• Mike goes back to the archive and pulls out a cracking quote from Janelle Kerrisk on using technology in legal businesses.
• We highlight one of our favourite podcasts, the Joe Rogan Experience, and a recent episode on the catastrophic war on drugs and the realities of addiction.
• Finally we cover Facebook ads and why your firm probably has no idea how and why they can work for you.

That's it! Have an awesome law life this week!

This week we're proud to launch our brand new Beyond Billables "insight" show. Every fortnight we'll bring an upbeat 10 minute show to the lawyers of the world to give you inspiration to lead a better law life. On the show today Mike highlights the growth in legal technology investment, does a review of Matthew Walkers "Why we sleep" (for all those sleep deprived lawyers out there!), and recaps a recent show with Sam Flynn of Josef on how to approach using different technological solutions in your practice. We had great fun putting this new show together and hope it brings some inspiration to your law life! www.beyondbillables.com

Today on the show we had the absolute privilege of sitting down with Angus Murray. Angus is a partner at law firm Irish Bentley Lawyers, Vice President of the Queensland Council of Civil Liberties, the Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia's Policy and Research Committee and Co-Founder of the Legal Forecast! We spoke in depth about his journey in law, how he became a partner and what he has learned along the way. Angus is a leading voice on cyber security in Australia and we had a thoroughly enjoyable discussion around the development of privacy laws and what the future holds for online security and privacy. As well as his considerable achievements in practice Angus was a Co-Founder and remains and active part of the Legal Forecast. The Legal Forecast is a not–for–profit run by early–career professionals who are passionate about disruptive thinking and access to justice. Starting out in Australia they now impact students and the profession around the world and it was fascinating to chat about why they started and the teams mission. https://www.irishbentley.com.au/staff/angus-murray/ https://thelegalforecast.com/

This week on the show Mike sat down with Kim Wiegand, Director of Business Development and Marketing at McCullough Robertson lawyers in Brisbane. Kim has experience working in Australia and in the UK with some of the largest law firms in the world and in a variety of BD and Marketing roles. We had a fabulous in depth discussion about how lawyers and law firms can improve their BD, get their brand messaging right, and stand out from their competition. We also discussed how law firms can attract the best other professionals and how as a profession we can more positively promote the opportunities that exist for non-lawyers. This is a great episode for anyone who wants to refocus their BD efforts, understand the differences between business development, brand and marketing, and ultimately standout as a trusted expert where it matters (with clients!). http://www.mccullough.com.au/

On the show today we had the great pleasure of interviewing the amazing Dr George Beaton. George is the Founder of Beaton, the pre-eminent ratings and review consultancy for professionals around the world. George has had a long and distinguished career in academia as well earning MBBCh, MBA and PhD degrees. George is a senior fellow in the Law School at the University of Melbourne and taught at the Melbourne Business School for decades. With a long career in academia and business George brings incredible insight to our discussions which covered client service, value based pricing and the future of practice.

George is presently Chair of the College of Law's new Masters of Legal Business which is welcoming it's first students in February. This is a world first program designed from the ground up to equip professionals with the skills in business to spearhead great organisations. We discussed why this program is so important, what the College is trying to achieve, and what legal and non legal professionals can expect.

We covered everything from client experience to branding, valued based pricing to the role of technology. Enjoy the show!

Check out the details on the Masters of Legal Business - https://www.collaw.edu.au/news/2018/09/25/master-of-legal-business-degree

Beaton - https://www.beatonglobal.com/

George Beaton - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgerbeaton/

On the first show of 2019 we sat down with Co-Founder of Josef and legal technology expert Sam Flynn! Josef is a legal technology business that was created to empower access to justice and help legal service providers build tools to better serve clients.

In their own words "With Josef's automation platform, your organisation can create legal chatbots, streamline processes, eliminate repetitive tasks and access new revenue streams."

On the show we discussed Sam's journey, the businesses he's launched and the way technology can help bridge the access to justice gap. We dove into the present reality of AI in Law, the types of new solutions firms are using to solve clients problems and how platforms like Josef will help shape the future of legal services.

James Edwards is the founder of Edwards + Co Legal, a boutique commercial law firm in Sydney providing quality, value-added legal solutions for modern business. The firm specialises in corporate and commercial work for media and digital industry clients, from household names to emerging start ups.

The firm began in 2012, after James returned from 7 years working across Asia for one of the world's largest media companies, and was founded on rethinking paradigms of the traditional large law firm approach, being agile, innovative, communicative and taking steps to truly understand client goals. Edwards + Co seeks to capitalise on James' 20 years of experience in large law and in-house corporate environments, and trends in disruptive technologies and work-life balance, to help redefine the role of today's legal service providers.

Claudia Conley is the head of Talent Acquisition for Media Stable and manages their Melbourne office. She loves all things communications and has a passion for hearing great yarns and meeting diverse Subject Matter Experts. Media Stable's main purpose is to pitch said SME's and their content to the media, so Claudia's finger is always on the pulse of the latest breaks and happenings in the news cycle.

We love to talk new law models on the BB podcast and this week we sat down with the Founder of another great Australian success story. Legally Yours is a lawyer matching platform that help connect clients with connect with lawyers on a fixed fee basis. It's another innovative model that seeks to increase access to legal services and also bring transparency to the way we all engage with legal services.

Most importantly Legally Yours offer another flexible platform for lawyers to work from in a far more flexible and nimble way. We had a great chat with Karen about her journey with Legally Yours, the future of distributed lawyer models and how new ways of delivering legal services is freeing up lawyers to work in a more flexible way and also be in control of their work flow.

Karen also brings an amazing career story to the table covering law, recruitment and now running a business like Legally Yours. She has a very unique skill-stack that she has developed and we talk a lot on the show about how this has helped her in her career to date.

We also do a deep dive into understanding what the future of practice might look like and also what the skill set of the future might look like for legal professionals.

Links:

https://www.legallyyours.com.au/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-finch-1b1568124/