Filter: Legal innovation

Michael Callier is an attorney with 13 years of experience in private and in-house practice. His time directing operations and providing legal counsel to a process improvement firm in China led to his experience in process improvement, project management, and change management. Michael works with internal and external clients to design and improve legal processes and to lead deployments of attorneys, process and technology for strategic initiatives. With a focus on systems, innovation and process performance effectiveness, Michael helps deliver legal solutions that reduce costs to clients, increase value, create deeper client satisfaction, and produce results. Lawyers on Fire met Michael after his speech at this year’s Legal Tech West Coast conference in San Francisco.

Leila Banijamali is a tech licensing lawyer, entrepreneur, and investor based in San Francisco, California. She has founded businesses in the legal-tech and fine arts industries and acts as outside general legal counsel to emerging growth companies. Lawyers on Fire met Leila at the Legal Tech Show in San Francisco where she was a speaker.If you are interested in more background on this founder's story, you might also want to read this interview in Womenalia.

Dr Zev J. Eigen is a data scientist focused on cutting edge applications in HR, labor and employment law, and legal services. A former professor at Northwestern, and visiting professor at Yale and NYU, Dr Eigen was honored as one of "40 Under 40 Rising Legal Stars" by the National Law Journal, and is frequently quoted in the media as an expert on big data and predictive analytics. He is a nationally recognized expert in these fields appearing in the media frequently (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, NPR, Bloomberg News, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, NBC, CBS, FOX, etc.). Zev is a frequent speaker on matters pertaining to workplace data analytics. Lawyers on Fire met him after his speech at the Legal Tech West Coast in San Francisco.If you want to learn more about Dr Eigen and his work, please have a look at his webpage.

Carsten and Jochen talk about the interviews they conducted in 2016 and share their most interesting moments and findings. They then go on to take a look at what is ahead in 2017.

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 spoke 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:Why? What was your motivation to write this book?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?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?And what is the reality? You talk about the Lawyer Skills Delta…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?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?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?

In the second part of our interview with Kaspar he shares some behind-the-scenes insights and learnings from his journey of e-Residency, which may well be one of the most important government experiments in the 21st century. The program started nearly 20 years ago after Estonia decided to become a fully digital society and to issue a digital identity to every resident. From there, it went on to welcome foreign citizens to Estonia’s digital global village.Kaspar Korjus was the Managing Director of e-Residency in the Government of Estonia. Kaspar started to run the program at the age of 26 years and today moved on to his next venture Pactum which we discussed with him in the recent LOF podcast. Kaspar is also listed as #1 on the Forbes Estonia’s 30 Under 30 in Technology and Finance list. Kaspar is fascinated by the idea of disrupting the governments to become service providers like any other company. He rarely gives interviews so we are absolutely grateful he took time to meet us.