Fringe Legal

Matt Coatney is a seasoned C-level product and technology executive, entrepreneur, advisor, author, and speaker with 25 years of experience helping businesses and technology work better together. He has led divisions and portfolios for large global corporations, co-founded three companies and advised several others, been an early-stage employee of two successful tech startups, advised dozens of business and technology professionals across all stages of company formation and growth, and launched over a dozen successful products.Episode contentThe future of work ➡ 03.34How would work be delivered in the future ➡ 04.52Legal matters as projects ➡ 05.51(Alternative) career paths for lawyers ➡ 07.36The role of technology in the delivery of legal service ➡ 09.27Why change now? ➡ 12.17Disrupt the status quo ➡ 14.46Are you profitable? Pricing analytics at law firms ➡ 15.59Experience Management, BD, and contract analytics ➡ 17.41Learning from adjacent industries ➡ 20.24Making inclusion work in a hybrid world ➡ 32.13Res

Technology is a frequent topic of conversation. It comes up almost every single episode. And while it's fun to talk about amazing new tools or features, ultimately, you have to tie the tech back to the business strategy. Easy to say, difficult to execute.It's harder still when tracking and working with emerging technology, where there may not yet be a baseline for success. We tackle those points and so much more in the episode today.Episode contentWhat is IncuBaker  ➡ 2.46Watching the market ➡ 4.04Client needs ➡ 5.03Tracking 500+ legal tech companies ➡  6.17Tying tech to business objectives ➡ 7.29A process-driven approach to technology selection ➡ 11.30Working with Vendors ➡ 16.22Working with emerging technologies ➡ 20.31Validating ideas ➡ 23.46Market trends ➡ 32.31For more detailed notes visit www.fringelegal.com

On the podcast this week, I speak to Quddus Pourshafie, co-founder of antiCPD a new training business looking to flip the necessary evil of CPD on its head. They have a bold vision:Essentially, we want it to be the most AntiCPD CPD training you've ever seen. CPD is one of the least favorite activities of any lawyer, right? It's something that must be done, but no one particularly enjoys that period of time. Or if it's spread throughout the year most people tick it off. It's a checkbox item. And now that it's virtual and prerecorded people can freely fall asleep... So that's one aspect that we wanted to completely blow out the water.

In this episode, Ab speaks with Azman Jaafar, Managing Partner and one of the founding members of RHTLaw Asia on how legal technology can drive success in a law firm.This episode is a special segment to the article "How Legal Tech Innovation Can Drive Success in Your Firm" which was published in the Singapore Law Gazette in October 2021.

I don't think we thought that it was going to be as tough of a sell because most of our clients that we have worked with and that we know very well and know how they sell, how they operate, they're all SaaS companies. So they all sell, software as a service, which is a subscription model. And we thought this would be something that, of course, they would understand the benefits of it because they're saying to their customers, here's the benefit of a subscription. It's really hard,  for the legal field to turn that corner because law traditionally has already been 10 steps behind in terms of technology. Compared to even the largest, corporate companies. So law firms are already lagging in that way. And to throw this at in-house counsel,  we were overly optimistic to think that they would swarm to adopt this idea.Joyce Tong Oelrich is the co-founder of the recently launched boutique, Tong Tejani PLLC, specializing in government contracting.Prior to the launch of her practice, Joyce was an in-house attorney at F

Julia Salasky is the CEO of Legl, a digital workflow tool for law firms. "Solving problems that are fundamental to the way lawyers work enables lawyers to focus on the work that highly skilled professionals that they are can do best. I don't have a view as to whether in five years or ten years or 25 years, you can train AI to do those jobs, but the work that lawyers do is so varied, so technical, and so human-centric that enabling them to do that work in a way that allows them to focus on the highest value piece of that is where there's a real opportunity in this space."

Adolfo E. Jiménez is a Miami litigation attorney whose practice focuses on international disputes. Mr. Jiménez leads Holland & Knight's South Florida Litigation Practice Group, which consists of more than 80 attorneys, and also leads the firm's International Arbitration and Litigation Team. He is Board Certified in International Litigation and Arbitration by The Florida Bar. He handles general commercial litigation matters in federal and state courts. His international experience, language abilities and management skills provide innovative and comprehensive representation to clients involved in complex cases.We've spoken with technologists and innovators during previous podcast episodes, and this week we talk to a practitioner. In the show, we cover:what does a day in the life of Adolfo look likethe impact of virtualization on the arbitration worldbenefits of multiple perspectives and how it can help stay updatedthinking long term, and staying client centricFind out more at the Holland & Knight websit

Anna Lozynski is an award winning executive general counsel & author, turned Change Agent, Advisor and Influencer.   Starting out at a major Australian law firm, she has spent the majority of her legal career in-house working in the banking, automotive, and cosmetics industries. In 2021, Anna has donned her entrepreneurial shoes and launched her own Advisory service, on a mission to help law and business adapt to the digital age. She is consulting in the areas of social media content creation, strategy & partnerships, legal ops/optimisation, change management, as well as coaching and general counsel freelancing.  She believes that innovation is invigorating, change is energising and efficiency will never go out of fashion.   In addition, she is an Advisory Board Member to Mys Tyler (a fashion tech startup), She Breaks The Law (a global female innovator network), and sits on the CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) Australia Chapter.     Described as a change agent, Anna is a sought-after comme

I spoke with Matthew Waldman (Founder, San-Q, and Professor Keio Graduate School of Design) and Ruben Fernandez Vela (Senior Researcher, Samcara research lab) on transformation and innovation lessons from designing next-gen cities.This was a fascinating chat, and much of the ideas we discussed could very easily be extrapolated for firms, in-house teams, indeed any business.Here are three things I took away:Planning for obsolescence and avoiding in-actionBalancing decision making and privacyFostering innovation is simpleOther resources mentioned during the episodeSamcara circular design labSan-Q consultancyProfessor Matthew Waldman on LinkedIn Ruben Vela on LinkedInLaying the foundation for Smart CitiesWhat's fueling the smart city backlash?Carlos Moreno talks about the 15-minute cityBeyond Tech - The True Meaning of a Smart City

So Legal is coming late to the party on some of this, but at least it arrived very well dressed because we get to now pick and choose some of the best parts of project management, change management transformation, continuous improvement.Peter Dombkins is a national leader in legal transformation, legal operations, and the project management of legal professional services. He has received awards from the Financial Times and AIPM for change and legal practice management. Peter is Australia's first Adjunct Associate Professor in Legal Transformation, at the University of NSW Faculty of Law. Peter is also the Director for New Law at PwC Australia.During the episode, we discuss:Is there a revolution coming to the legal profession?A brief history of changes in how professional legal services are offered from 1950 to - present day. Including the trend of appending “legal” in front of many things. What is Legal Project Management, and how most lawyers are are already putting it into practice?What is transformation, a

Mouthpiece Law is a student-run not-for-profit. As the world’s first legal education & technology platform, they connect and empower law students and legal professionals to form a legal aid task force and address legal needs through low-cost legal services.Avinash Pillay is the COO and Chief Legal Engineer at Mouthpiece Law.

Len Hickey is an IP lawyer and founder of Litigaze a case evaluation tool for modern legal teams that enables the evaluation of complex cases using intuitive visual planning.You can find out more about Litigaze at and connect with Len Hickey on LinkedIn. 

Elani is a leader in building high-growth startups through streamlined operations. After earning her master's from King's College, London, and serving more than two years at the Peace Corp. Elani spent almost a decade helping emerging tech companies develop, optimize and scale their operations marketing, and people processes. Elani is now the venture program manager at MDR Lab.TopicsWhat is MDR Lab (1:55)Three different arms of MDR lab (2:33)Build vs buy - which gives you the biggest return on your investment (3:54)How does MDR decide which companies to have in the accelerator? (5:12)How the Launch program works (8:13)What is MDR Lab's strategy when it comes to investment (13:50)The MDR Lab Venture Studio (16:05)The long term strategy for MDR Lab (16:38)Emerging tech (19:56)How Elani keeps up with what's going on (23:38)Building a community around MDR Lab (25:30)Full transcript of the episode can be found at FringeLegal.comResources mentionedThe Lawyer - Horizon NewsletterY CombinatorMDR LabStrictly VCNate's

Jim Chiang is the founder of My Legal Einstein, an AI-powered legal contract review tool. “So when you think about a time the value of that to actually have that much of a limiting factor in terms of getting to some point of value, you could have done a stand why Legal AI hasn't really gained a huge amount of adoption. So My Legal Einstein really is intended to have a user who never actually has heard of My Legal Einstein.They actually go onto a site, they register, they log in and then they get you to try our algorithms against any of their contracts that they actually see. And our proof of value is very instantaneous and assess that as soon as they actually find ways to navigate their own contracts, to try it on their own contracts and be able to gain value from it when things that they actually might've missed come up very much in an instant.And when you talk to you about time to value for AI solutions, you really want to make sure that they get to the aha moment where they say, ‘Oh, I miss something’. And

Parul Patel is the founder of Fuel and Move, a consultancy that helps Partners of law firms and General Counsels develop their teams and lawyers for performance optimization. “So performance optimization means that you're delivering at a high level of performance, but you're not, it's not coming at the expense of exhaustion burnout, a lot of these things that we see quite prevalent within the legal sector.”“So we're just focusing on the technical skills and the technical knowledge and forgetting really about: when greatness shines, greatness comes from the inside, from each individual. So yes, you've got the common skills, the common knowledge of the law, and really clients expect that as standard.It's not that you get any bonus points for knowing the law, right? Your clients expect that, and technical knowledge and technical skills are expected as standard. That level of excellence is expected as standard. Once you've got your job and you're in the legal sector, you have to ask yourself: I’ve got myself in t

Why successfully introducing artificial intelligence in legal tech is a challengeMatthew Golab is the Director of Legal Informatics and R+D at Gilbert + Tobin. He leads a specialized in-house multidisciplinary legal informatics team that utilizes a variety of data analytics and eDiscovery, and other AI technology tools. Matthew has more than 20 years of experience in the legal technology industry, including two of Australia’s preeminent law firms.If you've been in the legal profession for any amount of time, then I'm sure at some point, someone will have told you that there are nuance problems, it's very different, and things are difficult to change. What are you buy into that across the entire legal tech ecosystem, looking at problem-solving in legal when it comes to AI, there are some unique challenges. And I'm excited about this episode because we explore some of those challenges today. Before we get started, do note that during the conversation with Matthew, we jumped straight into the deep end, right at

Rasmeet Charya is the Chief Innovation Officer at Algo Legal. As Chief Innovation Officer, Rasmeet brings a strong passion for transforming how law firms and lawyers work with clients and think about innovation. From understanding problems, curating ideas, and facilitating innovation processes, Rasmeet leads a team that focuses on analyzing how technology can be used by the firm to enhance transparency, increase access, create efficiencies, and offer a new brand of service.Algo Legal is a new law firm, established in 2019, and the firm has started with a strong foundation in technology. As they got started the leadership wanted to create a new brand of legal services, driven by technology and innovation, and utilizing a process-driven approach to deliver a unique experience for their clients. During my chat we explore how:How to apply a process-driven approach to your practiceDifferent ways in which Algo Legal has been involved in the community via law schools and supporting startupsHow the Algo team pitches

Giles Thompson is the Head of Growth @ Avvoka

Jan Hards is the Director of Legal Innovation at Johnson Winter & Slattery. After years of practicing as a Corporate M&A Lawyer at Freshfields in the UK, and then later at Johnson Winter & Slattery, he made a deliberate move to become the firm’s Director of Legal Innovation. We discuss how Jan worked through that decision, what were some assumptions that he made, and some of the challenges. We also explore how Jan and the business look at the innovation function - through five objective criteria:Create efficiency at scaleFlexible workingCreate value from information the firm holdsGenerate revenueAddress riskWe also explore when and how Jan gets involved with client-facing projects (including pitches). Just a note, this episode originally aired as part of the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit in 2020, and much of what we discuss are still relevant today, but it’s important to have the time context. You can connect with Jan Hard via the JWS website or on LinkedIn.The full transcript is included below. If

Innovation management helps to optimize the innovation process, identify bottlenecks and increase the productivity of innovation, investment, and resources.Floor Blindenbach is the founder of Organizing4Innovation. Trigged by a recent whitepaper, I speak with Floor to discuss her views on innovation management for law firms. We spoke about:the importance of treating innovation as a processdefinition for innovation'the role of culture in driving innovative effortsInnovation as a way to develop talentthe problem of tracking/measuring innovation efforts in law firmsbest practices for innovation teamsYou can find the whitepaper here: https://www.organizing4innovation.com/managing-innovation-law-firms/Transcript below (if cut off it can be found on FringeLegal.com)About FloorDriven to help innovators succeed, Floor Blindenbach-Driessen, founded Organizing4innovation. She developed the T4 online training for innovators that also serves as an innovation management platform, so organizations with limited innovation i