legal technology – Legal Design Podcast

Episode 60: Contract Lifecycle Management with Isabelle Engelhard and Elisa Ensmenger

Time for our season finale dear listeners!

We are joined by Isabelle Engelhard and Elisa Ensmenger to talk about how to design technology-led future proof legal department. Isabelle and and Elisa both work at We Are Era, a media company and they have recently started their legal transformation journey with implementing a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) System.

Are you tired of drowning in a sea of contracts, struggling to keep track of important deadlines and obligations? Do you find yourself lost in a maze of paperwork, wasting valuable time and resources? Join us as we explore the benefits of implementing a CLM system with Isabelle and Elisa and discover how it can revolutionize the way you manage your contracts. You will gain valuable insights from their experiences, lessons learned, and best practices. Get inspired by their journey and learn how to unlock the full potential of your own CLM system. Whether you’re a contract manager, legal professional, or business owner, this podcast episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to revolutionize their contract management practices.

In addition, we also talk about starting law careers after law school and give tips to recent graduates. Isabelle and Elisa share their stories and experiences working as a lawyer in creative spaces with artists, social media influencers and their agents.

Isabelle Engelhard is a German qualified lawyer working in-house as a Legal Counsel at We Are Era since 2020. Alongside her traditional law studies to become admitted to the German bar, she also holds a LL.B. degree focusing on in-house counseling from the University of Mannheim, Germany and a LL.M. degree in Intellectual Property Law from Cardozo Law School in New York City, USA. As Legal Counsel at We Are Era she advises all non-legal departments as well as management in all legal matters arising from the company’s business units, including the legal areas of Contract Law, IP and Copyright Law as well as Data Privacy Law, Employment Law and Corporate Law. In the past 2 years she has also focused on the topics of Legal Tech and Legal Design and together with her colleague Elisa just recently implemented the company’s first CLM System to improve the internal workflows and to make the interdisciplinary work between the legal and non-legal departments even more efficient and legally secure, all in favor of the company’s big portfolio of clients.

Elisa Ensmenger is a German jurist working in-house alongside Isabelle as a Legal/Contract Manager at We Are Era. She holds a LL.B. degree with a focus on Intellectual Property Law from Humboldt-University Berlin and a LL.M. degree with a concentration in Arts, Sports and Entertainment Law from Penn State Law at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. She has joined Isabelle in 2022 and this is actually Elisa’s first job out of law school. We Are Era caught her eye because Penn State’s motto is “We Are!”, so when she saw the job ad from We Are Era, she felt like this was the perfect job match for a Penn State alum – and she was right! Besides the various exciting topics that they cover on a day to day basis, one of the most exciting ones is implementing the company’s first CLM System.

This episode was made in collaboration with Presicely the user-friendly platform for enterprise contract management. Check out their offer for our listeners: Free contracting assessment – Precisely (preciselycontracts.com)

Episode 59: AI Enhanced Justice Tech with Maya Markovich

May 12, 2023 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

This week we team up with the energetic legal tech guru Maya Markovich who is now focusing on Justice Tech. Justice Tech is innovative technology designed to improve access to one’s legal rights, improve outcomes for justice-involved individuals, or more equitably administer a legal system.

Maya has extensive experience in legal tech and now she’s working as an excutive director for Justice Tech Association supporting companies and programs that create technology solutions helping people navigate legal matters to foster hope, independence, and self-empowerment to contribute to a fairer legal system. We talk about justice tech having an impact on access to justice but since access to justice is not a technology, but a systemic problem, we also concentrate on what else could we do as a society.

We also discuss AI and legal tech in general. Just recently Henna met with some law students and learned that the generation we believed was born to use technology is really questioning whether or not there will be entry level legal jobs in the future (Yes, there will!). We asked Maya’s opinion about this and discussed the future of legal.

Maya also shares her experience in participating the “90 day Finn Program” and how to survive the Helsinki November with all the seasons in just one month.

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With her unique background spanning VC, law, behavioral science, and change design, Maya Markovich delivers technology, process, and business growth services worldwide. For nearly 6 years she launched and scaled industry-first Nextlaw Labs/Nextlaw Ventures at Dentons, the world’s largest firm, delivering next-generation technology, process client and business growth services across the globe. Maya is currently justice tech executive in residence at Village Capital and executive director at the nonprofit Justice Technology Association. She also advises multiple high-growth startups, investor and venture funds, and consults on legal department and law firm innovation and transformation initiatives, building future-proof methodologies and tech to advance the legal industry, its clients and consumers via achievable, sustainable and scalable design and implementation.

In 2020 Maya was named one of five “Influential Women of Legal Tech” by ILTA, a “Woman Leading Legal Tech” by The Technolawgist in 2019, and an ABA Legal Technology Resource Center “Woman of Legal Tech 2018” for her work in designing, promoting, and driving the future of the legal industry around the globe.

Episode 56: Empowering Consumers with Access to Legal Information with Inna Ptitsyna

March 15, 2023 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

In this episode, we meet with Inna Ptitsyna from Kyiv, Ukraine. Inna Ptitsyna is Product Communications Manager at Lawrina. With Inna, we explore the importance of access to legal information. Legal information is essential for individuals to understand their rights and obligations under the law, but not everyone has equal access to this information.

We begin by discussing the challenges that people face in accessing legal information, including the cost of legal services and the complexity of legal language. We also examine the impact that this lack of access can have on individuals. We continue exploring how different technological solutions can help Access the Law, also beyond different jurisdictions and Inna tells us the story of Lawrina and how it all began for their team. Lawrina is really ambitious in content creation and Inna explains what kind of processes they have developed to keep updated and how the members of the lawyer directory can participate in the work.

Since Lawrina’s story began in Ukraine and Inna and some of her team members work from Kyiv, we also talk about the Russia’s massive assault against independent Ukraine. We examine if legal design and legal tech can play a role in the reconstruction and healing of Ukrainian society. And since many of us are looking for ways to help Ukraine and Ukrainian people, we ask Inna what would be the best ways to do this.

Inna Ptitsyna is Product Communications Manager at Lawrina. She has a law degree and great expertise in legal innovations. Along with the work for Lawrina, Inna is a part of the international community of Legal Hackers, where she gives presentations about the importance of PR and marketing for lawyers.

At Lawrina, Inna is responsible for setting out a strategic and comprehensive communications plan, delivering it, and ensuring that a coherent message runs through all product communications, including marketing activities.

How to help Ukraine?

Inna has kindly provided us with the following information. Please, check it out and help in any way you can!

https://lawrina.com/blog/how-can-you-help-ukraine-during-the-russian-invasion/
https://helpukraine.center/
https://supportukrainenow.org/

Episode 53: Creating Start-Up Culture for the Legal Industry with Nils-Erik Jansson

February 1, 2023 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

This episode starts our season 5! What a ride it has been so far and the good times will continue as we have planned a tremendous fifth season for you, dear listeners.

In this episode, we meet with a serial entrepreneur and a lawyer Nils-Erik Jansson to talk about start-up culture in the legal industry. Nils-Erik has a vast experience of entrepreneurship in the legal industry. Currently, he’s changing legal industryt at Precisely, the user-friendly platform for enterprise contract management. He founded the company in 2014 and with his team, is on a mission to set a new standard for digital contracting.

Quite often lawyers are risk aversive and not that many wants a career outside of the traditional way of lawyering. Nils-Erik, however, has made career choices and has been changing the legal industry since 2009. There’s a lot of peer support for those of us, who (against their parents’ wishes) decided to become legal tech managers instead of respectable judges. So if you are struggling with your career choices, this one is definitely for you!

Nils-Erik tells the story behind Precisely, and his experiences from start-up life in the legal sector. We all know that living a start-up life isn’t about fancy beanbag chairs, pingpong games and microbrewery ales but it’s very hard work and tolerating the unknown. And as Nils-Erik has lived the legal start-up life for quite a few times, who would be better than him to share some thoughts on building a company and leading a legal career outside the traditional law. We also talk about what does it take to grow a legal business from start-up phase into the growth phase and beyond and why there should be more lawyers as entrepreneurs.

Such an inspiring episode to start the new season with, we do hope that you enjoy this as much as us!

Nils-Erik Jansson is a lawyer and serial entrepreneur from Gothenburg, Sweden, who founded Jansson & Norin, Sweden’s first NewLaw firm, which was exited to Fondia Oy in 2017. With 15 years of experience practicing business and contract law, he saw his industry peers struggling with the repetitive admin work associated with contracts thus founded Precisely in 2014. For the last six years, with the Precisely team, he has been on a mission to set a new standard for digital contracting.

This episode is sponsored by Precisely – the user-friendly platform for enterprise contract management. Precisely has a special offer for our listeners! Check it out: Free contracting assessment – Precisely (preciselycontracts.com)

Episode 39: Technology Empowered Global Immigration with Octavian Tantu and Karita Niemelä

March 30, 2022 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

Octavian Tantu and Karita Niemelä from KPMG Finland.

Business opportunities can emerge anywhere in the world and many corporations operate globally. This creates a huge demand for relocation and there are companies who send employees almost daily to different countries. Keeping up with immigration rules and regulations can be a huge task for any HR department and immigration professional, let alone for those who send employees to various different countries. In this episode, we talk to Octavian Tantu and Karita Niemelä from KPMG Finland about their work developing technology to streamline the immigrations processes at firms.

Octavian and Karita share their insights and experience on working with legal tech projects in multidisciplinary teams. We concentrate on one of their joint projects, Immigration Expert. The Immigration Expert tool helps people moving from one country to another to assess imigration requirements. Octavian and Karita tell us about the developing process and what were the initial problems (or the most common problems) in the immigration process the tool now solves.

We also discuss how technology plays an inevitable role in creating better working practices and how Octavian and Karita see the role of tech in improving the performance of legal professionals. And because we love future predictions in this podcast, we also ask Octavian and Karita how do they see their work changing in the future and will technology play a more major role.

Octavian (Tavi) Tantu is currently the Head of Tax & Legal Technology for KPMG Finland. His background is in Tax and Legal Technology and he has also worked as a tax and global mobility consultant. Throughout his career he has worked in various technology projects ranging from global mobility, immigration to tax preparation and global compliance applications in several different countries. As part of these projects he has fulfilled the roles of business analyst, product owner and service manager and has also helped implement and optimize the software development processes and technology teams. As a technology enthusiast, Tavi is always looking for new opportunities to help teams and businesses find the right balance of technology and process optimizations whilst constantly exploring new ways of collaborating and developing technology.

Karita Niemelä works as a senior consultant within KPMG Finland’s People & Change department with strategic, change and project management consulting. Previously, Karita has worked within the Tax and Legal department with global mobility advisory. She has worked with various different client engagements and projects including organizational development and project management for clients from different sectors. Karita has also been part of the global technology project KPMG Global Immigration Expert and worked in daily collaboration with different stakeholders of the project and been part of the development and execution of the tool. As a consultant, her way of working is founded on organizational and process development with technology and people oriented mindset. Karita has studied business administration with strategic business development as her major and her thesis was about change management of digital servitization.

Episode 35: Value of legal design for in-house counsels with Sarah Ouis

February 2, 2022 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

New season premiere! We kick We start the season off with the wonderful Sarah Ouis who’s the founder of Law But How? and Legal Design Manager at ContractpodAI to talk about the role and value of legal design for in-house legal teams. Sarah also tells us the inspiring career change she made when converting from successful in-house counsel into a thriving legal designer.

Without my in-house experience I would have never come across Legal Design so I’m grateful for those years. But I belong to the legal design space now. I feel more purpose.

This episode is dedicated for in-house legal teams as we concetrate on how could legal design help the work and work load for in-house teams. Quite often, in-house legal departments have divided their operations into compliance and litigation units. Legal design, as a proactive method to prevent legal risks, may be something that is easier to connect with compliance practices, but it can be help in traditional legal problem solving too.

Nowadays, the in-house legal departments are being brought closer to the business and legal KPIs are playing a vital role when measuring the success of legal departments. The importance of design is often understood only after seeing what impact it has. For lawyers, it might be hard to think of the ways to measure the impact of legal design. That’s why we asked Sarah for ideas about the KPIs with which the impact of legal design projects could be measured.

Sarah Ouis is the founder of Law But How? A legal design agency focused on simplifying legal information through visualization and helping legal teams and legal service providers create more engaging legal content. She also works as a Legal Design Manager at ContractpodAi. Before diving fully into the legal design world, she’s been developing a career as an in-house lawyer whilst significantly growing her visibility on social media for her work in legal design.

Episode 32: Demystifying Legal Tech with Colin Levy

December 1, 2021 legaldesignpodcast Comments Off

Legal Tech is one of the popular buzzwords you can’t help hearing when talking about the future of law these days. But what exactly is legal tech? That is what we’re going to cover in this episode with Colin Levy.

I see legal tech as sort of cultural movement to embrace technology, and some of the concepts that underly technologies in the practice of law and delivery of legal services. My goal, as I see it, is try to bring more and more people into the community and make it more broader and diverse.

Colin explains how legal tech is different from legal design and what kind of common misunderstanding people may have about legal technology. Colin also tells us what to consider when buying legal tech solutions or when designing technology for lawyers and their clients.

In addition, Colin also talks about how he sees legal tech as a cultural movement to embrace technology, and some of the concepts that underly technologies in the practice of law and delivery of legal services.

Colin S. Levy is Director of Legal and Evangelist for Malbek, a leading CLM company as well as a seasoned lawyer and legal tech speaker.

Throughout his career, Colin has seen technology as a key driver in improving how legal services are performed. Because his career has spanned industries, he witnessed myriad issues, from a systemic lack of interest in technology to the high cost of legal services barring entry to consumers. Now, his mission is to bridge the gap between the tech world and the legal world, advocating for the ways technology can be a useful tool for the lawyer’s toolbelt rather than a fear-inducing obstacle to effective legal work. Colin has also been driven to effectively empower, inform, and inspire others not only regarding the law and legal services, but also tech, interdisciplinary collaboration, and process improvement.

Tag: legal technology