Future Law Podcast

Fastcase is now 20 years in to its mission to transform legal publishing and access to legal information. Fastcase co-founder and CEO Ed Walters joins Mike Madison to talk about the origins of the company (beer and softball contributed, along with a research challenge from an unexpected source), the journey to date, and visions and implications of the future of law. Links: Ed Walters Fastcase See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our tour of LegalTech takes The Future Law Podcast to London and this conversation with Giles Thompson and Amy Conroy. Giles and Amy are two early-career lawyers who stepped quickly off the path to a conventional law practice career and, in very different respects, onto the team at Avvoka, which offers a document automation platform. Mike Madison talks with Giles and Amy about what Avvoka is up to, how that fits in the evolving LegalTech landscape, and how each of them came to be where they...

In this episode of the Future Law Podcast, Mike Madison talks with Marlene van Nelson, a recent law graduate who followed a classic path: she hung out a proverbial shingle and launched a solo practice. A few short but fast-paced years later, she's expanded her practice and found her niche, delivering "people law" services to small business and individual clients while nimbly blending the personal with the technological. Marlene tells her own story, from her dream of becoming a lawyer, to the...

How do you build and re-build collaborative and innovative cultures in a virtual environment? The future of law isn't all face-to-face. In this reunion episode, original Future Law Podcast host Lisa Leong returns to talk with Mike Madison about pivoting her broadcasting and consulting practices in response to COVID shutdowns, what practicing lawyers and law teachers can borrow from her experience, and about shifting mindsets from "me" to "we." Links and references: Lisa Leong at LinkedIn...

Daniel W. Linna, Jr. is Senior Lecturer and Director of Law and Technology Initiatives at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law, with an additional appointment in Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. He's also a former litigation partner in a large law firm in Detroit. He joined Mike Madison for an energetic conversation about legal system innovation and change, what law schools and law firms are doing right and wrong today, and about the need to ground...

Michele DeStefano is the founder and leader of Law Without Walls, or LWOW, a pioneering program for team- and project-based legal education that gathers students and partners from around the world. She is a full-time professor of law at the University of Miami who has also documented her methods and published research on their effectiveness. Mike Madison talks with Michele about the origins and impacts of LWOW. Michele DeStefano's biography at the University of Miami. The Law Without Walls...

Cat Moon leads the Program on Law and Innovation (PoLI) at Vanderbilt University's law school, a role that she took on after practicing law for nearly 20 years in Nashville, Tennessee. At PoLI and beyond, for the last several years she has become a passionate voice for making lawyers - and law - better. Mike Madison talks with Cat about PoLI, her vision for future lawyers, and her work helping to build and promote the Delta Model for lawyer competence. Cat Moon's biography at Vanderbilt Law....

Thomas Aertgeerts is the co-founder and CEO of a Belgium-based LegalTech startup offering tax law services today and on a mission to transform the legal industry tomorrow. He talks with Mike Madison about the legal entrepreneur's life, transitioning out of a classic law practice career, and the future of legal services. He is the author of a provocative essay in the American Bar Association (ABA) Journal in April 2020 titled, "Is my law firm preparing me for success in the next decade?" His...

Elizabeth "Lizzy" Shackelford took her law degree and followed her dream to serve internationally, eventually spending more than seven years with the US Department of State in a series of posts in Eastern Europe and in Africa. Now retired from her diplomatic service and the author of a recent book on US foreign policy and diplomacy, in this podcast she reflects with Mike Madison on what it means to be a lawyer in a rapidly-evolving world. Link to the book: Elizabeth Shackelford, The Dissent...

Dean Dan Hunter chats with Tom Dreyfus, CEO and co-founder of the Melbourne-based legal technology firm Josef. Josef gives both practitioners and law students a leg up in creating bots - automated processes for legal analysis - without expecting lawyers to know how to code and without expecting that legal experts should be cut out of the professional loop. Dan and Tom talk about Tom's path to leadership: a law degree, followed by an early career in law practice, and then the world of...

Miguel Willis caught the innovation and entrepreneurship bug early in his law school career, and he exited with a JD and leadership of an innovative program that blends technology skills, design, law, and the public interest. The Access to Justice Technology Fellows program connects law students with civil justice organizations for an immersive, 10-week, paid project-based fellowship experience, changing lives in the community and priming the students for careers as 21st century lawyers....

Duc Trang, former private practitioner, general counsel, and now Managing Director of Major, Lindsey & Africa Transform Advisory Services, talks with Mike Madison about the changing marketplace for legal services and legal professionals and what those changes mean for private firms, for legal technology development, and for legal education. Also featured in this episode: Michael Madison, The Shapes and Letters of the Modern Lawyer (August 3, 2020). See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

Eric DeChant isn't a lawyer. He's a recent graduate of the novel Master of Science in Law program at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law, which aims to give STEM professionals (like Eric) enough grounding in law to accelerate them into careers as allied legal professionals but not so much that they qualify to become licensed lawyers. Mike Madison interviews Eric to hear how he found the Northwestern program, what he thought of his time in school, and his plans for a future in...

Dan Rodriguez, formerly Dean of Northwestern Law and president of the Association of American Law Schools, gets inside the future of legal education for the benefit of legal professionals and new law graduates. The interview is hosted by Mike Madison. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mike Madison sits down with Kevin Miller, CEO of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based LegalTech firm LegalSifter. LegalSifter is powered by tech developed in Pittsburgh's AI and robotics ecology, centered on Carnegie Mellon University. A seasoned lawyer-entrepreneur, Kevin shares his thoughts about what lawyers and law firms are doing well, and what they can do better with AI-powered tools. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dan Hunter talks legal innovation and the future of law practice from the client's perspective with Carl White, founder and now Director and Chief Experience Officer with CXINLAW. CXINLAW partners with law firms in Australasia and the UK for training and education on excellence in client service. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mike Madison talks with Dean Trish White and Andrea Sinner, the chair and director of the American Bar Association Commission on the Future of Legal Education. The Commission wrapped up two years' worth of work in March 2020 and published a report that reads more like a manifesto for change than a conventionally sober reflection. Find the ABA Commission Report online here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dan Hunter chats with University of Manchester students, Cian Heeley, Mandeep Hayer and Wunmi Akanji who were lucky enough to spend two weeks working with the geniuses at DWF on a legal design/innovation project with a very well-known sporting club in Manchester. Inspiring insights into the way that this sort of program changes how students think about the possibilities of law. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Margaret Hagan, a global leader in bringing design to legal education and law practice, talks with Michael Madison about what design is and why design matters, supplying some of her own back story along the way. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this, our last episode for 2019, we finally bring you our long-promised episode on Design Thinking in Law. The terrible trio talks around some spots from three guests, Margaret Hagan, Director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford Law School; Carl White, CEO of CX in Law; and Cian Heely, a grad from Manchester University who worked with the amazing gang at DWF to solve for a client's problem. We use these spots as a jumping off point for a wider chat about what design thinking in law looks...