Monthly Musings Edition #3

Hello everyone,?

For my third ‘Monthly Musings’ edition, I’d like to talk about the future of the legal industry for law students and law graduates.

On the 6th June I was invited to be on a panel at Leo Cussen’s panel at their ‘Future of Law’ seminar for the PLT students.

Together with Kate Sherburn (Head of Legal at Who Gives a Crap) and Grace Cue (from Law Squared), and moderated by Liz Chase, it was fantastic to be able to share my thoughts and insights into the future of the legal profession with the PLT students.

Here are some of the questions and answers I shared, and some of the content I prepared for the session too -?

Tell us about your experience with ALTA – what does it do, what is happening in the Australian legal tech space?

ALTA was formed by a couple of Aussie legal tech founders that wanted to get together at a pub and talk about the difficulties of building and scaling legal tech companies. Skip forward 6 years, and ALTA is leading the way globally in terms of legal tech per capita, we are the driving force behind the Global Legal Tech Report and we are the only association that has a women’s focused sub-Association, called WALTA.

Tell us also about why you became the chair of WALTA – what do you hope to achieve in this role?

The ALTA commissioned report ‘Diversity in Legal Tech - It’s time for Action’ was published in 2021 with our research partner Alpha Creates and sponsor PEXA.?This report was a defining moment for the women of ALTA.?We knew the data was not going to be favourable, but seeing it in black and white was confronting.?Comments from LegalTech stakeholders gathered in our Report were even worse.?Comments such as ‘I struggle to name even 3 female founders in legal tech’?and 'the majority of my interactions have been with male founders and salespeople’, provided us with the motivation that we needed to create real action in this area. ?

Since the Report, we have now formally launched WALTA as a sub-Association under the umbrella of ALTA.?Through a series of ‘think tanks’ with our members, and with the support of our annual partner, PEXA, WALTA has now created 3 project initiatives, which focus on creating real action around access to funding and to the right investors for women in legal tech, a resources hub where we can share information and learn from each other, and a directory with a difference that actually showcases the women behind the legal tech.

What has been the impact of tech on legal practice?

Here is just a summary of the impact legal tech has had on legal practice, for both clients and lawyer.

For clients, it has been phenomenal -

• It has opened up access to legal services for the missing middle by making it more convenient, easy, and simple.?Clients no longer have to travel to see their lawyer and the increased use of video platforms and electronic signing technology has made huge inroads into more people accessing lawyers and legal services than ever before.
• signing of electronic documents during the Covid lockdowns, eventually changed the law in Victoria with the implementation of the Electronic Witnessing of Wills legislation (EWOW was played a huge part in this happening!)

For lawyers, the impact has been transformational -?

• Lawyers can be geographically agnostic by working remotely and delivering legal services virtually.
• For a lot of lawyers, legal technology enables them to spend more time on the ‘legal work’ and building trusted relationships with their clients and less on the repetitive, menial tasks.
• Many lawyers have seen an increase in a better work/life balance?
• The use of LegalTech has made some lawyers really have to think about what their value is to clients?and what they are delivering - clients don’t want their time, they want their legal?output, expertise and a lawyer who enables them to sleep better at night.?

What does legal innovation look like for you??

• I love this quote from Art Wilson as it really sums up for me what legal innovation is all about - ‘legal innovation is a change made to a legal practice that results in the lawyers delivering better value to their clients’ (you can read more of Art's insights on this in his article on LinkedIn here.
• For me, legal innovation doesn’t just mean implementing legal tech solutions.?The true test of legal innovation is whether it is client centric and results in a client benefit.
• Legal innovation should lower costs for clients, increase their benefits, and improve their experience of the legal service delivery

What skills do you think are required to thrive in a ‘disrupted’ legal profession?

• An adaptable and agile mindset?
• An ability to fail fast, and patience to succeed slow
• An innate curiosity and ability to think outside of the box
• A desire to be proactive, not reactive
• Have essential human (soft) skills, including how to listen without jumping straight to a legal solution, how to be empathetic without being a ‘counsellor’, how to communicate in plain, non-legal terms, how to pick up body language and signs of when a client isn’t saying something, to name just a few.

Thank you for reading my ‘Monthly Musings’ for July!?I look forward to sharing more of my insights and learnings about legal technology and the progressive legal industry with you all next month. ?