Lawyers on Fire Podcast

Nikolai Vokuhl, General Counsel von HUGOBOSS, berichtet über die Herausforderungen bei der Einführung von Legal Tech im Konzern. Lawyers on Fire besprechen woran die (schnelle) praktische Umsetzung scheitert, wovon Nikolai Vokuhl sich bei Legal Tech mehr erwartet hätte und was er sich vom Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz im juristischen Bereich verspricht.

Joanna Goodman is a journalist, keynote speaker, writer and author. She is the IT columnist for the Law Society Gazette and writes regular features for The Guardian about cutting-edge technology, brands, and media. Joanna wrote Robots in Law back in 2016 and is working on a second book on artificial intelligence and law. In this year’s Christmas episode, Lawyers on Fire speak with Joanna about BI, AI, robots, impact on the legal profession, COVID, lockdowns – looking back on 2020 and ahead into 2021.

Inwiefern sind Deutschland und Europa Freilichtmuseum der USA und China? Warum steht es 4:1 zur Halbzeit? Wieso verkennt die SPD beim Thema Künstliche Intelligenz die Interessen derjenigen, die sie eigentlich vertreten will? Fabian J. G. Westerheide spricht mit Lawyers on Fire über künstliche Intelligenz, Asgard.VC und den Riseof.AI Summit am 17. und 18. November. Fabian ist nicht nur CEO von AI for Humans, sondern als internationaler Experte für Strategien der Künstlichen Intelligenz  Unternehmer und Risikokapitalgeber. Er berät Regierungsinstitutionen wie die Europäische Kommission, die Europäische Weltraumorganisation, das deutsche Parlament, das chinesische Technologieministerium und Abteilungen wie den Verteidigungsminister und das Außenministerium sowie Fortune-500-Unternehmen, Think-Tanks und Start-ups. Darüber hinaus ist Fabian Managing Partner bei Asgard - Human VC for AI.

Diesmal sprechen Lawyers on Fire miteinander: Carsten unterhält sich mit Jochen über die Innovationsförderung, die sein Unternehmen Privacy Solutions für die Datenschutzsoftware Privacy Suite erhalten hat. In den nächsten zwei Jahren wird das Projekt dazu beitragen, Datenschutzrisiken mit Hilfe von künstlicher Intelligenz besser zu erkennen und zu bewerten. Hören Sie zu für eine neue Perspektive auf den Datenschutz - und warum richtig verstandener Datenschutz für den langfristigen Erfolg von Unternehmen wichtig ist.

In dieser Folge der vierten Staffel zu Automatisierung & KI sprechen Lawyers on Fire mit Martin Ebers, Professor für IT-Recht an der Universität Tartu (Estland) und als Privatdozent Mitglied der Juristischen Fakultät der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Er ist Mitgründer und Vorstandsvorsitzender der RAILS – Robotics & AI Law Society. Professor Ebers beleuchtet zentrale Themen der Regulierung von KI und Robotik und gibt einen Ausblick auf seine in Kürze erscheinenden Bücher Algorithms & Law und Rechtshandbuch Künstliche Intelligenz und Robotik. Für unsere jüngeren Hörerinnen und Hörer: es gibt hier eine spannende Projektstelle in diesem Bereich.

Lawyers on Fire are happy to start its fourth season which will focus on Automation & AI! Big innovation is happening in Australia. Our second guest from there is Tom Dreyfus who is the CEO and co-founder of Josef, a legal automation platform that makes bot-building, workflow and document automation accessible to every legal professional. We asked Tom why his legal tech company is called Josef and what journey they are on. Before Josef, Tom was a corporate litigator, a lecturer and a clerk at the High Court of Australia. He speaks and writes regularly on legal technology and innovation, and holds an LLM from Columbia Law School focusing on legal data analytics.

Lawyers-on-Fire complete their Estonian legal tech talks with Mariana Hagström who is the Founder & CEO at Avokaado, a contract workflow automation platform. As an attorney-at-law and a managing partner of a law firm, she launched Avokaado as a spin-off in 2016. Today she is fully dedicated to helping legal teams with operational efficiency and establishing new business models. Mariana has helped hundreds of legal teams in the Baltics and Nordics to cut down their contract-related costs and launch client-facing legal services by using contract workflow automation.

Today’s episode is the last of three interviews we did during our tour to Estonia at the end of last year. This now seems like another world with free air travel and moving around easily. We are very grateful to Risto Hübner, founder of Nordx Legal, who met with us and shared his inside knowledge about the Estonian legal tech scene and also allowed us to share his start-up map with our listeners. Risto is a business-minded technology, data privacy & IP attorney with more than 15 years of professional experience in law and extensive sector-specific knowledge of the ICT industry. Risto has worked as the general counsel at Nortal, one of the largest tech companies in the Baltics, carrying out operations globally. He is especially passionate about startups, data protection, privacy law, cybersecurity and new technologies. Risto is also a visiting lecturer in IT Law at the University of Tartu, mentor to startups at Startup Wise Guys accelerator and the founder and organizer of the Estonian chapter of Legal Hackers.

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.

Lawyers on Fire spoke with Kaspar Korjus in Tallinn/Estonia, a truly inspiring and thriving startup hub. Inspiring indeed was the discussion with Kaspar as well which is why we split it into two parts. Kaspar has been the most citied Estonian by global press in 2017 and 2018. He is listed by Forbes Estonia `30 under 30´ people as #1 in Technology and Finance and was elected by US CTO Megan Smith as one of the 20 global digital leaders. In 2019 Kaspar was nominated as JCI 10 Most Outstanding Young Persons of the World. Furthermore, Kaspar was awarded the Order of Orange-Nassau by the King of the Netherlands, His Majesty Willem-Alexander, in recognition of his notable contributions for the betterment of societies worldwide, making him one of the youngest knights you could ever encounter. If that’s not enough, he has recently co-founded Pactum. Pactum helps companies to improve every contract they have ever signed by automatically negotiating contracts on a massive scale. The system learns to understand the value of different contract terms and uses AI to perform high-quality and considerate negotiations that reach a win-win outcome. The second part of the interview is about Kaspar’s role in transforming both the public and private sector globally. As founding Managing Director of Estonian e-Residency (2014-2019), Kaspar is helping governments worldwide to become truly digital and borderless.

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: 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?

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.

Lawyers on Fire chat with Marianne Saarikko Janson who has been the founder of Fondia Oyi, the first publicly listed law firm of the Nordics. And Fonida is not just another law firm but has rather disrupted the legal market in Finland. Lawyers on Fire explore the story of Fondia and what Marianne has in store for the future.

Lawyers on Fire have spoken with MAX BLOCK, CEO and Founder of Advocado (advocado.de). Advocado lowers the threshold for clients to interact with lawyers and at the same time makes the work for the lawyer more efficient. Max talked to us as part of our German Legal Tech Talk Series (in Northern German) and this is an English summary of our discussion.

Advocado ist eine Online-Plattform aus Deutschland, die Verbrauchern Rechtsberatung zum Festpreis anbietet. Lawyers-on-Fire sprachen mit Gründer Maximilian Block über die bisherigen Erfahrungen und weiteren Pläne von Advocado.

Mitchell Kowalski is a Visiting Professor in Legal Innovation at the University of Calgary, the legal innovation columnist for the National Post, a Global Legal Innovator and the author of Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century. He was formerly a partner at one of the world’s largest law firms and has also served as in-house legal counsel. Lawyers on Fire spoke with him about his new book The Great Legal Reformation which he published in late 2017, 500 years after Martin Luther started the first great reformation.

Sebastiaan Bos is one of the key artificial intelligence experts in Legal Tech. His expertise extends beyond his role as Director of Solution EMEA at HighQ and Lawyers on Fire had a chance to speak with Sebastiaan on his view of the legal tech market and what he thinks law firms and young lawyers should do now.

Xenion führte in den letzten Wochen die "Legal Design Challenge" durch. Lawyers on Fire unterhalten sich über den Hintergrund, die Teilnehmerbeiträge und die Gewinnerauswahl. Außerdem gibt es einen Ausblick auf künftige Veranstaltungen.

Jochen Brandhoff is the organizer of the Legal Expo - The European LegalTech Expo & Congress in Frankfurt on 23 and 24 October, 2017. LOF spoke with ihm in the German Legal Tech Talks series and this podcast summarizes the German discussion with him for our English listeners.

Was macht ein typischer Jurastudent in seinen letzten Semestern? – Richtig, er geht ins Rep. So auch Dr. Jochen Brandhoff, der erste Gast unserer German Legal Tech Talks Reihe. Allerdings ist er aus einem anderen Grund ins Rep gegangen – er hat es mit einem Partner gekauft, um die Inhalte onlinefähig zu machen. Jus2Click hieß das vermutlich erste rein webbasierte juristische Repetitorium. Das war aber nicht die letzte Berührung des heutigen Gesprächspartners mit Disruption und Innovation: Jochen Brandhoff veranstaltet die Kongressmesse LEGAL ®EVOLUTION – The European LegalTech Expo & Congress. Der Anspruch ist nicht gering: LEGAL ®EVOLUTION soll zur jährlichen Leitveranstaltung der digitalen Transformation des Rechts in Europa werden. Und das Beste: spontan hat Jochen Brandhoff noch ein besonderes Angebot für Lawyers on Fire im Gespräch gemacht. Anhören lohnt sich also! Hier die Fragen an Jochen Brandhoff: Sie sind Rechtsanwalt und haben schon zu Referendarzeiten ein Legal Tech Unternehmen im E-Learning Bereich gegründet und erfolgreich verkauft. Woher kommt Ihre Begeisterung für Legal Tech? Mit der Legal Evolution starten Sie dieses Jahr in Frankfurt die erste Legal Tech Messe in Deutschland. Warum sollten Legal Tech Interessierte dorthin gehen und nicht auf einen der zahlreichen anderen Kongresse und Veranstaltungen zu dem Thema, die in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz angeboten werden? Wie sehen Sie den Stand von Legal Tech in Deutschland? Welche Arten von Technik nehmen Kanzleien und Unternehmen heute schon an und nutzen sie? Welche Grenzen sehen Sie auf dem deutschen Rechtsmarkt, noch mehr technische Lösungen anzuwenden, etwa im Bereich der künstlichen Intelligenz? Welche Länder sehen Sie in Europa im Bereich LegalTech als führend an? Wie kann Europa gegenüber Vorreitern wie den USA aufholen? Sie möchten die innovativsten Köpfe der juristischen Welt auf der Legal Evolution Messe versammelt sehen. Wir sprechen mit Lawyers on Fire genau diese Gruppe an. Können Sie unseren Hörern den Messebesuch besonders schmackhaft machen, vielleicht durch VIP Eintrittskarten? Gibt es Bücher, die Sie im Bereich Legal Tech empfehlen? Besondere Tools, die Sie gerne nutzen?

You are a designer, not a lawyer. Why did you become interested in legal contracts? You just defended your dissertation on Friday! How did it go? How would you summarize the three key findings of your dissertation? What do you think of Blockchain contracts? You also founded Legal Design Jam. What is this? What is your message to lawyers wanting to get ready for tomorrow’s digital world? Are there any favourite books you recommend? Any tools?

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. The discussion is in German and an English will be available.

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 spoke to him after his speech at Legal Tech Westcoast in San Francisco.

Michael 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.

Dr. Cornelia Nett ist General Counsel für GE Capital in Deutschland. Seit ihrem Start bei GE in 2006 hatte sie verschiedene Positionen in der Rechtsabteilung inne und verantwortet nun den gesamten Bereich Legal von GE Capital Deutschland. Vor GE war sie sechs Jahre lang für die Kanzlei Shearman & Sterling LLP in Frankfurt tätig, spezialisiert auf Leveraged Finance Transaktionen. Neben Ihrer Arbeit als General Counsel hat Frau Nett einen Verein gegründet – „X˛ - Power of Two” (http://www.poweroftwo.de), der Karrierewege von Frauen z.B. beim Einstieg oder Wiedereinstieg in das Berufsleben unterstützen und gleichzeitig den steigenden Fachkräftemangel reduzieren will. Gemeinsam mit anderen erfolgreichen Professionals sieht sie das enorme Potenzial gut qualifizierter Frauen, das heute oft nicht voll ausgeschöpft wird. Frau Nett traf Lawyers-on-Fire in Frankfurt und berichtet über Ihre Motivation und Arbeit.

US-based Ron Friedmann has spent over two decades improving law practice and legal business operations with technology, knowledge management, and alternative resourcing. Today he is one of the world’s leading experts and bloggers on legal tech. Meeting Carsten in Nürnberg, Ron shares his views on the legal marketplace, current trends and opportunities for the next generation of lawyers.  

Dr. Sascha Theißen ist seit 2013 Senior Vice President Legal/ General Counsel einer führenden internationalen Verlagsgruppe. Er begann seine Karriere als Anwalt und war zunächst sechs Jahre für zahlreiche Unternehmensmandanten tätig. Dabei spezialisierte er sich aufs IT Recht und wurde Fachanwalt für Gewerblichen Rechtsschutz (IP). Zugleich erwarb er einen Dr.-Ing. in Informatik. Als GC hat Herr Theißen erfolgreich Kanban und agile Managementmethoden eingeführt und die strategische und operative Unterstützung aller Geschäftsaktivitäten durch die Rechtsabteilung massiv ausgebaut. Er ist umfangreich interessiert und engagiert. Vor allem beschäftigen ihn Medien und Geschäftstrends, Innovationsmanagement, digitale Geschäftsmodelle, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, BWL und Politik. Lawyers on Fire sprach mit Herrn Theißen in Stuttgart.

US-based Ron Friedmann has spent over two decades improving law practice and legal business operations with technology, knowledge management, and alternative resourcing. Today he is one of the world’s leading experts and bloggers on legal tech. Meeting Carsten in Nürnberg, Ron shares his views on the legal marketplace, current trends and opportunities for the next generation of lawyers.