Fringe Legal Presents Bots @ Work

In 2015, Torsten joined the M&A Corporate department of the international law firm of Bech-Bruun as a project coordinator. Not long afterward, Torsten got involved in the development of Bech-Bruun’s legal tech projects and, for the past few years, has been one of the driving forces behind the implementation of AI and document automation software across the organisation. In January 2019, Bech-Bruun launched its 2022 Strategy and this involved Torsten being appointed Head of Legal Tech Innovation and in charge of developing and implementing new innovative services and products in collaboration with clients and the rest of Bech-Bruun's organisation.

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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

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More information 

LoveLegal.com

Seb Shakh 

Caroline Ragan

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If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on [email protected] 

We kick off the third season of the podcast with the fantastic Michele DeStefano. The basis of this episode is exploring some of the ideas behind Michele's book - Legal Upheaval.

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

In 2012, Jan Roggen founded Adhemar.law, a Belgian environmental and real estate boutique law firm, recognized by clients, peers and legal 500. In 2015, he started exploring new service, delivery models. While doing so, he learned that he did not have the required business skills to effectively drive and lead innovation in the firm. So he took the leap and moved to Canada with his family to study innovation management at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario while managing the firm remotely. During his stay in Canada, he saw the Raptors win the NBA Championship and obtained additional certifications in Legal Project Management, Lean Six Sigma, Design Sprint Facilitation, and Wilderness and Remote First Aid.

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

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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. 

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If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on [email protected] 

Kim Lewis is the Legal Transformation Manager at Gilbert + Tobin. 

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

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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... 

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If you have questions, comments, or feedback then please tweet to me @WhoIsAbS with #FringeLegal or email me on [email protected] 

Isabella Galeano is the founder of The Technolawgist. She is head of legal at Abertis Mobility Services, legal tech and legal innovation consultant and Director of the Legal Tech Programme at Esade Law School. 
 
Her mission is to contribute to the transformation of the legal industry and to inspire lawyers around the world.

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?

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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 [email protected] 

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of no-code application development platforms being available. Specifically, there has been an uptick in the adoption of these platforms within the legal profession.

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

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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 [email protected] 

On the show today, we have Stewart Rasmussen. Stew is a friend, a technologist, and someone who is extremely knowledgeable about the Australian market, especially the legal segment.

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.

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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 [email protected] 

Allison Hosking is the Head of Knowledge Management at Al Tamimi & Co where she oversees a team responsible for all aspects of the firm’s knowledge management strategy across their 17 offices. 

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.

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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 [email protected] 

Nina Gratrick is the Head of IT Services at the global law firm of Watson Farley & Williams.

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.

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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 [email protected]