Lawyers on Fire Podcast

Lawyers on Fire chat with Terri Mottershead today.

Terri ist the Executive Director at Centre for Legal Innovation in Brisbane, Australia. She has worked with the world's largest law firm associations and law firms for more than 20 years to support and develop their best talent.

Her aim is to guide lawyers and law firms in transitioning their practices to the "new normal" legal services market. Because people innovate and firms do not, advising on change management, talent management and legal innovation for lawyers and law firms form the cornerstones of Terri's Consulting work. Terri's thought leadership in legal innovation was recognised with her appointment in 2016 as the founding Director of the newly created Centre for Legal Innovation at the College of Law (Australia, New Zealand and Asia). Her work at the Centre includes collaborating with all interested stakeholders to create an information hub and incubator for new ideas on identifying and applying practical solutions to the most challenging issues faced by the legal industry today.

Listen to Lawyers on Fire going down, at least under...

Michele DeStefano is a professor of law at the University of Miami, Guest Faculty in Harvard Law School, Executive Education, and the founder of LawWithoutWalls, an international think-tank aimed at honing new skillsets and mindsets and creating innovations at the intersection of law, business, and technology. As a professor of law, DeStefano researches and writes about the growing intersections between law, business, and legal innovation. Her book Legal Upheaval: A Guide to Creativity, Collaboration, and Innovation in Law leverages over 100 interviews of general counsels of large international corporations and heads of innovation at law firms.

Lawyers-on-Fire has spoken with Michele about her new book, her advice to students and young professionals and her view on today's and tomorrow's legal world. Listen and get inspired:

1. Why? What was your motivation to write this book?
2. What's happening? You describe technology, shifts in socio-economics and globalization as the main forces impacting the law market today. What do these trends mean for future lawyers?
3. Most wanted persona? Your book takes into account more than hundred interviews you conducted with partners of law firms, GC and other legal professionals. If you summarize their expectations, what would be the ideal persona of a lawyer they would like to hire?
4. And what is the reality? You talk about the Lawyer Skills Delta…
5. Why innovate? Many lawyers, particularly in BigLaw, don't see any reason to change or innovate. Business is going well, changing working system is risky and innovation may even jeopardize the status quo. Yet you argue that there is a need for change because of a New Value Equation in law. What is this new equation about?
6. After the whys let's talk about the how. Your advice is to create a culture of creativity, collaboration and innovation by having an open mind, an open heart and an open door. This reminds me to a concept of leadership I once learnt at university: a good leader has a cool head, busy hands and a warm heart. What are these three rules of engagement? Do you want to give examples?
7. Finally, you identified three groups you believe will be the front runners leading the change and shaping the future legal marketplace. Who are they and what can they do?

Caitlin "Cat" Moon is Director of Innovation Design for the Program in Law and Innovation (PoLI) at the Vanderbilt University Law School and an entrepreneur, creating Ledger.Law, a consultancy from blockchain related advice to regulation, policy, and legal structure.

Professor Moon also is a co-organizer of the Music City Legal Hackathon, sponsored by PoLI and part of the global Legal Hackers community, which brings together legal professionals, technologists, designers and other professionals to create technology solutions serving access to justice and legal services.

Lawyers on Fire spoke with Cat at design.legal, Europe's coziest conference on legal design, tech and innovation.

Ralf Winter is Chief Legal Officer - Europe of Toshiba and one of the challengers at the design.legal conference. He brings a real-life topic to the event to challenge the participants to come with a solution within the two days available in sunny Munich.

Lawyers of Fire spoke with Ralf right before the conference started to find out what he expects from it.

Kai Ebert is the president of Munich Legal Tech or MLTech in short. The association was founded just last year and its participants are attending design.legal.

Lawyers on Fire talked to him to find out how law student can create together with other disciplines

Manfred Schick is General Counsel of ING-Diba in Germany. He is one of the GCs challenging the teams at design.legal.

We've asked him what he expects from the conference and what he hopes to take back.

"Together we shape the experience. Together we determine the outcome. Together we create!"

That's what Sascha Theissen, co-host of design.legal says about the conference - and the future of the legal profession. Sascha is a repeat guest at Lawyers on Fire with multiple interests: He has a doctorate degree in computer engineering from KIT, an MBA in International Management from ESB Business School, is a fully qualified lawyer and a specialist IP lawyer.

Not surprisingly, Sascha aims high when co-hosting design.legal.

The first conference of its kind, design.legal is being held on 21-22 June at allynet Work Loft in Munich. Design.legal radically breaks with the traditional conference line-up of talking heads that are supposed to inspire otherwise passive attendees. Instead, design.legal will gather a mix of lawyers, coders and designers to offer them a uniquely creative and collaborative experience.

Lawyers on Fire chat with co-organizer Carsten Reimann minutes before the event starts.

Professor Dr. Ralph Alexander Lorz, LL.M. (Harvard) is Minister in Hesse, now holding the portfolio of public schools and church-state relations for the State Government formed by the Christian Democratic Union and the Green Party. He is also professor of German and Foreign Public Law, European Law and Public International Law at Heinrich Heine University of Duesseldorf. Professor Lorz delivered the keynote "Who Owns the Legal Future?" at the legal ® evolution conference in Frankfurt. Lawyers.on-Fire spoke with him about legal tech and the future of the legal market.

Dr. Jochen Brandhoff ist Rechtsanwalt und Veranstalter der LEGAL ®EVOLUTION Expo & Congress, die zum ersten Mal im Oktober 2017 in Frankfurt stattfand. Lawyers-on-Fire waren dort und sprachen mit ihm über sein Fazit nach dem ersten Veranstaltungstag.