Unleashing the law
What a difference 3 months make: We all have been locked down. Most of us working in the context of law probably were in the home office. Many people working in jobs of systemic importance were not: nurses and doctors kept our hospitals running, employees of IT and telco providers enabled our videoconferences, workers in utilities made sure we were not running out of water and electricity. Shop employees, logistics companies and farmers kept our food supplies going, and, yes, they also made sure we had toilet paper, at least most of the time. But what about the law? Isn’t the law, or, more specifically, the rule of law as essential? Surely, first of all we need to drink and eat and require basic sanitation. But for all people living together in close proximity, the rule of law must be upheld, rights and interests must be balanced, conflicts must be resolved. We all happily noticed that courts were still working when we heard about decisions regarding demonstrations, some upholding, and some rejecting executive orders. However, courts only could work partially, showing that there is a need to modernize the delivery of judicial services in order to ensure that, when the next pandemic or natural disaster strikes, courts can continue to function and to uphold the rule of law which so crucial for our civilization.
And that’s where the work of the LLI comes in: Jointly, we can make the law more accessible. For businesses, for lawyers, and, in the end, for everybody!
Roger, Bernhard and Baltasar
|
|
In this issue
|
|
New members
Tatiana Caldas-Löttiger, Ingrid Thoma (STP Informationstechnologie AG), Lutz Zimmer, Franz Kummer (Weblaw AG), Uwe Bandey (PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH WPG), Marius Behrendt, Gezeiten Haus Gruppe GmbH (Fritjof Nelting), Alexander Steinbrecher (Bombardier Transportation), Norbert Kaliwe (Merck AG & Co KG aA), ECE Projektmanagement G.m.b.H. & Co. KG (Niels Helmholz, Yves Krog), Jutta Löwe (Brenntag Holding GmbH), Michael Burkart (Implenia AG), Marco Lechner (Accenture GmbH), Dennis Jansen (CoachHub GmbH), René Beulen (ReneBeulen.com), Unterschied & Macher GmbH (Heike Rehm), Anna Engers
|
|
Projects
LLI goes Diversity!
Diverse teams are more creative and innovative and usually create better commercial outcomes. That's no news. LLI is well aware of the opportunities offered by diversity and has already addressed this issue in the past.
However, now we have Anna Engers on board! Together with her as a diversity expert, LLI is currently developing a “Diversity Framework” to incorporate diversity standards into the LLI framework. Some groundwork is necessary, because implementing a meaningful diversity standard is the fabric with which we can build more. We are considering which structures, rules and ideas are needed to make an association as diverse as possible. On the one hand, we try to reduce the homogeneity and dominance of white and German men. On the other hand, we look at how we can make the best use of the diverse thoughts and working methods of each person.
The framework is intended to ensure that the potential within the LLI is fully utilized. It will support networking so that the diverse ideas on legal issues can flow “smoothly”. It will enable each member to contribute her or his knowledge and qualification and to make best use of them to advance the idea of the LLI.
To achieve this, we need a core structure ensuring that LLI is open and attractive to women, people of other origins, LGBTI, etc. We expect the result to be a "Code of Diversity" which guides the behaviour of each of us individuals within LLI. We would all commit to it. Such a code creates a sensitivity for a diverse attitude, it enables us to live the diversity framework and supports us to adhere to our self-set commitments.
We are getting started and are curious to see where the Diversity Challenge will take us.
Join us on this path!
Contact: Anna Engers
|
|
The Non-Disclosure Agreement
A standard NDA, usable by and suitable for more or less every situation. It consists of a set of clauses and rules and includes a wide range of meta-content. It is set up on a platform and ready for consumption. Wouldn’t that be nice—instead of the current tedious and time-consuming process?
That, indeed, is the goal of this project. Based on the NDA Standard Ken Adams kindly provided, the project is currently discussing clauses, checking for completion by business purposes, global & regional content (samples US (NY), UK, AUS, D, Brazil), alternatives and business rules. Currently, the group is collecting input for added/amended clauses and alternatives. Once completed, the group members look forward to discussing our joint input with Ken Adams and agree on the final content which we would like to use for the first test-run regarding tech implementation.
When a first version of the completed content exists, it will be essential to define business & regionalization rules as well as data fields to be imported in order to prepare implementation. This should involve target technology platforms in order to understand and match the necessary knowledge and technical architecture.
Contact: Martin Clemm
|
|
The Silent Epidemic: Projects focusing on Lawyer Well-Being
As digitalization becomes a major force of change, as traditional roles in the legal industry get questioned and as business models come under pressure, we must take a step back and keep a laser focus on what is at the heart of the law and of legal service delivery: the human being! How are we doing in maintaining our well-being, in preventing overload, burnout or worse? In many individual conversations, we heard a clear call to action that putting a spotlight on this topic is needed and long overdue. This is why the LLI has decided to break the silence, to generate a discussion and to spark research on the topic.
The Lawyer Well-Being project consists of three parts: 1) What is this topic about? Providing a basis for discussions, 2) a qualitative review, in which we asked 17 Experts about their view on the topic and 3) a professional research, aiming to get reliable data sets on the subject.
In order to promote our engagement and to secure far-reaching buy-in to this important topic, we entered into a formal Project Partnership with the BUJ (Bundesverband der Unternehmensjuristen) and EuPD, the leading Corporate Health Platform in Germany.
An interview, conducted by Dierk and our members Fritjof Nelting and Peter Schichl, will be published in the ZUJ (the printed magazine of BUJ), and our inaugural column in the next “Anwaltsspiegel”, will also highlight Lawyer Well-Being and our projects.
In conjunction with those two publications, we will make the two first work products (“Call for Action” and “First Findings”) available on our webpage for free download. Here’s the link – please use the documents to continue the conversation in the community!
Contact: Dierk Schindler
|
|
A glimpse into our office & two changed roles
A Digital Organization
Where exactly would you look to have a glimpse in our office? Well, most certainly not in a physical office, and that was true even before our current Covid situation. As from the beginning, we thought internationally and prepared for cross-border collaboration. Since end of last year, our virtual collaboration space is active, and its use is continuously growing. With great members on board, we could leverage video conferences, chats and virtual collaboration. Sure: there’s always something to do and to improve, and we are all happy to do so. But many of us are actively using it, and it’s getting ever more convenient and practical.
|
|
Project overview on agile cards
Most agile organizations try hard to avoid “split heads”, people working in more than one team or role. That should help people to fully take their role, avoid friction and the cost of switching. Evidently, this is impossible to do for an organization as ours. That being said, we cannot just apply a standard setup, even less so than corporations. A good agile setup is adapted to the needs of the organization (while keeping up with the principles).
We are adapting, tweaking and thereby improving our setup steadily. Feedback is always welcome. As one of the later activities, our agile coach Jason has set up the hierarchy of our Kanban boards. You can see the projects in the respective board in the All Members Platform’s General channel. And, when you open a project, there is usually a relatively recent update on the status. In case you want to know more, you can have a look at the project’s board within the respective channel.
|
|
Changes in the management board and supervisory board
Effective April 19, 2020, we had a change in our management board and in our supervisory board: Astrid Kohlmeier and Bernhard Waltl switched positions: Bernhard is now management board member, while Astrid took a role in the supervisory board. We thank both of them for their great work to date and are looking forward to collaborating with them in the new roles.
At the same time, and together with Bernhard joining the management board, Kai and Dierk were re-elected by the supervisory board for another two-year term.
|
|
Diversity in LLI functions
Here, you might ask yourself, haven’t they just talked about diversity? And now they have announced Bernhard joining Dierk and Kai in the management board? Right... However, let us share a little bit of background to this election. When Astrid expressed her desire to step down from the management board, we looked for female candidates. Unfortunately, the switch in roles coincided with the Covid crisis and the one female candidate we were considering had to withdraw her application. So, we had to come up with a Plan B. In various phone calls, we openly discussed the best way towards a diverse team which, at the same time, has the capacities to spend time and capabilities to immediately start supporting Kai & Dierk. Apart from the gender, we found our new management board to be balanced in terms of background (2 lawyers, 1 IT guy), age (early 30ies, mid/end 40ies), focus (data, legal, operations), behaviour (agile, academic, bold), hobbies (ice climbing, golf, running), family situations (0, 1 and 2 kids – 2 dogs) BUT very like-minded in their mindset (purpose driven, givers, team-players).
While we explain this process of finding a suitable replacement for Astrid, we encourage all female members of our fast-growing association to step up and get engaged in various ways – if you want to learn more, please reach out to Jens or Kai or any other board member. At last, please note our supervisory board has a 50/50 split between male and female; it is divers in age, geographic and field of practice and personal background.
|
|
Member Onboarding – gathering feedback
Patrick, who is currently supporting the Board, has initiated a survey regarding the experiences of new members joining our Institute.
According to this survey, the problems during the Onboarding are:
- Very different levels of prior knowledge regarding the goals of the Institute (to be related to the scope of the onboarding)
- Very different levels of prior knowledge regarding a digital work environment
- Who is the contact person for the topics I am interested in?
- Get to know other Members and Networking in Person laziness/limited time of new members (that’s what they said 😉)
Based on those findings, Patrick came up with suggestions on how to improve the onboarding.
A New Process and Guide.
The idea is to write the onboarding guide as small as possible with the option to give possibility to read more. The aim of the Onboarding Guide is that each member should have a minimum understanding of the LLI objectives and how we work together (MS Teams, agile working and contact person). The Onboarding Guide will be part of a Welcome E-Mail.
It is than up to you, our members, to decide how much time you would like to invest.
|
|
Annual general meeting – changed date and time!
Our annual general meeting is ahead, and as the times are, we had to change the date. All members should have received the email invitation including dial-in details. Be sure to mark the appointment in your calendar:
Friday, 26 June 2020
14:00-16:00 (CEST; UTC +02:00)
Members can find all material for the annual general meeting online in Annual General Meeting 2020 channel of our LLI Members area of MS Teams.
|
|
Events
We were present: LLI and the LegalTech Group within BUJ
On April 22, the LLI was invited to present itself to the LegalTech group within the BUJ. We provided more than 50 participants with an in-depth intro on our goals, the vision, the infrastructure we are using and projects we run – as an immediate effect, Jutta joined us! Welcome!
This is already the second time the LLI has been introduced to the BUJ, and more session will certainly follow – great to be able to demonstrate that we openly share and collaborate, regardless of whether or not you are already a member of the LLI. We are all in this transformation together!
Mark your calendar: Anwaltszukunftskongress and LLI (save the date!)
Liquid Legal Experience Day goes virtual! Save the date on 30 September 2020!
Our Liquid Legal Experience Day in cooperation with Anwaltszukunftskongress will be an online event due to the pandemic. Both the Anwaltszukunftskongress and we are currently working on the respective agendas. Stay tuned!
Mark your calendar and save the date:
- Liquid Legal Experience Day: 30 September 2020
- Anwaltszukunftskongress: 1 October 2020
|
|
|
|
|
