Fringe Legal Presents Bots @ Work

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. 

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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 

Stevie Ghiassi is CEO of Legaler, a secure online communication and collaboration tool for lawyers, CEO of Legaler Aid, a blockchain-based legal aid service that promotes access to justice, as well as President of the Australian Legal Technology Association.

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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 [email protected]

Resources

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

Some of the items we cover in the episode include:

• 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

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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 [email protected]

Joy Heath Rush is the CEO of International Legal Technology Association, and a industry veteran.

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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 [email protected]