Tag: technology

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

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.

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 31: Developing the Brazilian Legal System by Design with José Faleiros

José Faleiros Jr.

The Brazilian legal system is facing many challenges and undergoing major changes due to application of new technologies. As we know, law itself changes slowly but legal design can assist in this change and bring out the positive. This week we talk to José Faleiros Jr., a Brazilian lawyer and the co-editor and co-author of the book “Legal Design: Teoria e Prática”.

We can’t deny that there are very complex problems to be solved. A solid judicial system is crucial for democracy. To be solid, it needs to be efficient and it needs to be trustworthy. Legal Design helps to create efficiency, and as a consequence, trust.

José tells about the Brazilian legal system and its challenges. For example, in 2020 the Brazilian judicial system had 75 million legal processes lacking a solution. A solid judicial system is also crucial for democracy. And to be solid, the system needs to be efficient and trustworthy and this is where legal design can help.

José Faleiros Jr. is a Brazilian lawyer and a Ph.D Candidate in Civil Law at the University of São Paulo and also a Ph.D Candidate in Law, Technology and Innovation at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. José has focused his professional work and his academic research on cyberlaw, especially on themes such as Internet regulation, personal data protection, AI impacts, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and tort law. José has long been interested in how design might have impacts on law and has dedicated himself to studying such impacts by investing in design as a hobby. Among other publications, he is the co-editor and co-author of the book “Legal Design: Teoria e Prática”, published in Brazil by Editora Foco, in April 2021.

Episode 19: Will AI Cause Lawyer Extinction, Jim Chiang?

Jim Chiang.

We kick off the second season with Jim Chiang, the CEO and Founder of My Legal Einstein.After having a relaxing summer break and resting our brains we are back with a bang!

Artificial Intelligence is such a hot potato in the legal industry it deserves an episode of its own. And there certainly can’t be value adding AI without design thinking behind it. We are joined by Jim Chiang who is a pioneer when it comes to AI and is now leading My Legal Einstein on its journey to help lawyers find better ways of working.

We lawyers are known for our not so functional ways of working. Most of our processes are based on manual work and we still do a lot of copy-pasting. A few years back there was a lot of discussion about whether or not the robots are going to take over the legal work but we are still at the place where we lack imagination of how to add AI to our work. But this is where Jim can help us lawyers. His examples are so practical that AI actually makes sense, finally. 

The  systems at the moment don’t include high-level reasoning or thought and computers can only do what us humans have taught them to do. One of the goals for Legal Design is to find better ways for lawyers to work so that we can focus on actual legal work and problem solving  instead of wasting our time copy-pasting. But how do we make sure that we don’t teach AI our bad processes and up with AI that just knows how to copy-paste? 

After talking to Jim, we can safely encourage you to set your alarm clocks for tomorrow morning, there is still a need for human lawyers and legal designers. But with the help of AI the future might be a little brighter for lawyers and other professionals working in the legal industry because AI can enhance our ability to perform our tasks and optimize our practices. Tune in to our discussion with Jim to learn what you can expect from AI.

Jim Chiang, CEO and Founder, My Legal Einstein – Before starting My Legal Einstein, Jim led the AI engineering teams at Conga and Icertis, the two market leaders in the CLM (contract lifecycle management) product space.  Jim has served multiple executive roles leading product and engineering organizations.  Jim has over 20 years of experience in big data analytics and AI algorithm development.  Jim holds a Bachelors of Engineering from MIT.