Legal Unicorns

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In this episode of the Unicorns podcast, we interview legal tech lawyer and AI expert Deshni Govender. We cover her upbringing, her life and her thoughts on the challenges facing AI in law in the coming years.

0:00 Intro
4:49 What shaped my journey in Law
5:40 Why things are the way they are
7:12 What is fair?
8:49 Journey moving to Johannesburg
12:00 The value of networking
15:59 The value of having a professional circle
18:48 Getting recruited in the Big 5
24:51 Areas that affect people
27:40 Law Firm Culture vs. Law Firm Life
33:54 Your Purpose as a Legal
37:40 Knowing your business
42:11 Starting my Journey in Technology
46:11 Proving yourself from the start
51:59 Good Advice for your career
1:02:14 Empowering Younger Generation
1:07:22 Forward Thinking
1:14:41 Working in the Gender Space
1:20:07 The Benchmark of the norm
1:25:36 Inclusivity and Equality

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Thank you to our Sponsors Umbiie, www.umbiie.com and Stiint-IT, www.stiint-it.com

Forensics expert Tendai Jangara, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tendai-ba...

Tendai has always been brave, believed in herself, had the confidence to try new things in her career, but at the same time, has always been considered and controlled in her career choices (some may say, almost forensic about her choices!!)

https://www.cliffedekkerhofmeyr.com/n...

00:00 Intro
01:00 Growing up in Harare to Malawian parents
04:30 Taking control, seeking help
09:00 Struggling at times
11:30 Taking on too much at University nearly derailed it all
15:00 Resilience in abundance
18:00 Met my husband and passed it all!!
21:00 Dad's career influenced me
24:00 Reading is a passion, I want to get into banking
26:00 Teba Bank gave me a chance
34:00 I want Deloitte!
37:30 Stepping out on my own, becoming a parent and working for myself
39:00 Being a working parent is really tough
43:00 What I want next, and how do I get there?
46:00 Some people should stay where they are, but are the firms helping?
48:00 Talk to your people before they start asking "what's out there?"
52:00 Law firms need to embrace change
01:00:00 The Technical Legal professional is coming back!!
01:01:00 Don't stand still
01:02:00 What do you know now, that you wished you'd known then?

Fantastic life and career lessons from Tendai

If

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See the great work CILPA (Center for International Law & Policy) is doing https://cilpa.org/

Clea and Rob share their passion for geopolitics and Africa's development, Clea is utterly fascinating and South Africa's loss was America's gain when she moved there. Connect with her here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/clea-stry...

Interested in joining the South African Branch of the International Law Association: email [email protected] Interested in CILPA's work or becoming an intern: email Clea at [email protected]

00:00 Intro
03:45 Who is Clea?
05:30 From a Chef to an Attorney
08:30 Moving to China
11:00 Meeting a husband, Covid in China
12:40 What's it like to move to the US?
15:00 Coming into the US from Trump's "Shithole countries"
18:00 The 90-Day Fiance
24:00 Autonomous AI Weapon Systems in War
30:00 The threat of AI is real and it is now!
32:00 Billionaires are full of BS
34:00 Every country has its problems
34:30 Women's rights
43:00 CILPA, International policies brought to Africa
48:00 Africa should deal with Africa's issues
52:00 The Courts of First Instance and the ICC
54:00 Breaking ground in African law
55:00 Universal jurisdiction
58:20 Intern jobs for African law grads...get in touch with Clea
1:02:00 Reparations for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
1:07:00 Meatball Ron
1:09:15 History is vi

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Firstly, if there is anyone out there that can give Rob isiXhosa lessons, please message him at [email protected] - he has to improve his language skills!!!

Secondly, thank you so much to the incredible Xhanti Mtulu. Listen to his life, his story, his management style, his tips for young lawyers and much more.

His YouTube channels are @SuperXhanti and @themtulus

Please subscribe, watch and like his content.

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Head to https://legalunicorns.locals.com for additional Supporter questions and more footage.

Please support the Legal Unicorns Podcast for $3+ and get the chance to watch the shows AD FREE. Click here, https://legalunicorns.buzzsprout.com

Additionally, get behind-the-scenes footage from the Legal Unicorns Podcast, ask your questions to all our guests and see exclusive footage. Sign up here: https://legalunicorns.locals.com  

Please leave us a review on Apple/Spotify/Google Podcasts.

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In this episode of the Unicorns pod, we interview HR guru, Lynn Roux, we cover her upbringing, her life and her thoughts on the challenges facing HR in the coming years.

Follow her via https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnroux/ 
Email at [email protected]  

Lynn's passion for people and process improvement is unrivalled.

Lynn was born and raised in Johannesburg. Her father was an artisan, and her mother was a schoolteacher. She has a sister who is 18 months older. She has two boys and they all live with her dad. She used to ride a motorbike and has now replaced this with a 4X4 so that she can do the trails with her boys.

She started working part-time after completing secondary school and whilst she was studying, she worked as a teller at one of the big banks. She was permanently employed when she started her honours part-time and was fortunate enough to be transferred to the employee relations team to gain work experience in her field of study. 

She moved from the bank to one of the Big 4 accounting and audit firms and stayed there for 15 years. During her tenure, they kept her interested by creating opportunities and giving me exposure to different aspects of HR. She started out with responsibility for policies and procedures and employee relations. This morphed into being a functional owner of HR systems, setting up an HR centre of expertise and shared service centre. 

By popular vote of the team, she was appointed to lead the HR generalist team, the HR shared service centre and centres of expertise for reward, employee relations, HR systems and HR projects.

In September 2015 she joined the first law firm as the Head of HR. She spent seven years in the legal industry with two of the big law firms in South Africa. Coming from a professional services environment she expected this to be an easy transition – how different can it be? Both charge for their time. She was in for a BIG surprise. 

Partners leaving with teams, egos and arrogance, entrenched hierarchy, fear at junior levels, credibility and relevance determined by how successful you are as a lawyer and the divide between lawyers and business services staff were an eye opener. Could law firms really be 8–10 years behind professional services in terms of culture and soft skills development?

Towards the end of 2022, she decided to leave corporate and started her own HR consulting business. This was the birth of LAnderson Management Consulting (Pty) Ltd. 

Her focus areas include creating a culture of belonging and inclusion; employee wellness, considering the ISO standard that has been published for wellness and optimising HR systems and business processes.

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Karien is the Co-CEO of agritech start-up, AgriRevolution. She is also an experienced legal and commercial advisor.

I wanted her on the Legal Unicorns pod because she epitomises what we are looking for across Africa, lawyers who are brave, lawyers who are doing things differently - to inspire the next generation.

After completing B.Comm and LLB degrees at the University of Stellenbosch, Karien moved to London and started her career working for tech start-ups TotallyLegal.com and later EnergyQuote.

She returned to South Africa in 2006 to start her articles at Intellectual Property firm, Kisch in Sandton. After qualifying as a trade mark practitioner, Karien moved to Deneys Reitz (now Norton Rose) before joining FNB as IP Legal Advisor.

She was then drawn to the world of start-ups again and joined Clickatell as a group legal advisor in 2010 where she obtained invaluable global experience in technology, communications and commercial law. 

This experience stood her in good stead when she joined UK start-up, Radiant Law, and later martech consultancy (and another South African start-up success story) Acceleration. 

Acceleration was subsequently acquired by advertising behemoth WPP. Karien spent
more than 7 years at WPP where she was promoted to Assistant General Counsel for the international marketing communications agency, Wunderman Thompson before moving into the WPP Group’s central legal team. 

Karien is passionate about helping start-ups scale and feels privileged to
have played a role in the journey of multiple start-ups, including a few that have successfully navigated their way from “3 guys in a garage” to global enterprise.

For the past 3 years, she has moonlighted as a strategic advisor for AgriRevolution and was appointed Co-CEO in April. She is thrilled that she has the opportunity to use her experience to contribute to the growth and success of AgriRevolution.

https://www.agrirevolution.africa/

Meet the Earthworm - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep43xm-Ox8I 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karienholtzkampf/

Remember to: -

Like, subscribe and share all the episodes of Legal Unicorns
Visit us on Twitter @globallawcareer and @legalunicorns
Subscribe to GRM's newsletter at globallegalmarket.substack.com 

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Part 2 of our chat with the incredible Leah Molatseli, African Advisor to the Global Legal Tech Hub, Head of BD for Legal Interact, and LegalTech futurist across the African continent.

00:00 Welcome back after Load Shedding!
02:05 Leah joins Legal Interact
06:00 Congratulations to Legal Interact on their hiring policy!
06:40 Get the audience excited about the Tech, Umbiie.com
08:10 BIG Legal Tech Launches ahead
09:30 SA's first AI Robot Lawyer
12:00 Legal Tech brings law for all
13:13 Its about IMPACT, not control
14:57 Leah becomes African Advisor to the Global Legal Tech Hub
23:25 When you go into new markets, ask questions
25:00 That's why we launched Umbiie.com
26:25 Level the playing field through tech
28:00 Generative AI will change the legal market forever
29:00 Alternative careers

Reach her on 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahmolatseli/
Twitter - @leahmolatseli 

Thank you, Leah.

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Leah Molatseli is a lawyer, published legal tech author, speaker, and Legal Tech and Innovation Specialist who currently holds the role of Head of Business Development at Legal Interact. She focuses on the intersection between law, innovation, and technology, using her expertise to educate and empower the legal market. She is a Guest Lecturer at the University of Cape Town where she develops and teaches legal tech and innovation-related courses to the broader legal industry. She is a Mandela Washington Fellow, a University of Notre Dame alum who enjoys everything that speaks to using technology and innovative processes to empower lawyers in whatever roles they find themselves in, from practicing lawyers to in-house legal teams.

She sits as a Council Member of the University of the Free State, where she is a member of the ICT Committee, is Chairperson of the Naming Committee and Vice-Chairperson of the Disciplinary Committee, is part of the Advisory Board for the Global Legal Tech Hub and Women in Tech South African Chapter, a country member for the Global Legal Tech Consortium and is one of 2022’s International Legal Technology Association’s Most Influential Women in Legal Tech and American Bar Association’s 2022 Women of Legal Tech Honouree. She recently was awarded the Schmidt Futures International Strategy Forum (ISF) 2023 Fellowship, from Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative, which was founded by Wendy and Eric Schmidt, which brings talented people together in networks to test their ideas and solve complex problems in science and society. She is a 2023 Justitia Awards Nominee and Institute for African Women inLaw- 2023 Women to Watch.

Leah is a University of the Free State LLB alum she thenarticled at the UFS Law Clinic she became admitted as an Attorney of the High Court, in the Free State in 2012. She worked in private practice before founding a legal tech startup and publishing a legal technology book with Juta.

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Sponsored by Umbiie.com - the future of your legal career

This interview is for all the lawyers, across the world, who are contemplating moving out of employment and to work for themselves.

Research shows that by 2035, 70% of legal professionals will work in the gig economy (work for themselves)....Freida will show you how.

Frieda is an ICF-accredited coach specialising in Whole Person Coaching and Enneagram Coaching.

She’s a practising British lawyer and has been for nearly 20 years.

She was an Associate at a law firm, moved to Partner, in-house counsel, back to practice and now runs her own consultancy - she shows us how she did it.

Her coaching focuses on helping people to create real balance in their lives so they can shift from feeling lost, stuck and overwhelmed to leading a happier, healthier and more fulfilling life, both professionally and personally.

Rob and Frieda chat about the future landscape of the legal profession.

Legal Unicorns is a podcast available on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7k40Zkd...

Powered by The GRM Group, creatively servicing the global legal market.

grmsearch.com for all Legal Career Opportunities

Legal career advice from Rob Green via https://www.patreon.com/globallegalca...


Umbiie.com has been built on the Stiint-It.com platform 

Follow Frieda on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/frieda-levycky/
https://bravingboundaries.com/
https://lawyerlifeexperiment.buzzsprout.com/

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In this episode, Rob chats to Rori - a thought leader within the legal profession.

Rob and Rori delve into the difficulties of being a young lawyer in South Africa, unapologetically up-skilling oneself and the importance of mentorship for young lawyers.

Rori completed her undergraduate at Rhodes University receiving a Bachelor of Arts and LLB. She then went on to complete her LLM from Wits University. As she completed her legal training, she jump started her career at top law firms such as Bowmans and Norton Rose Fulbright. She currently works as a Senior Property Finance Attorney at Nedbank.  Along with these fantastic strides in her career, she started a passion project called MoLAWoo which is a mentorship project
for young lawyers.

Get in touch with Rori here:
LinkedIn – Rorisang Mzozoyana
Facebook – Rorisang Mzozoyana
Instagram – @rori_legalcounsel
Tik Tok – @rori_legalcounsel

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