Episode 11

[00:00] Sarah: Hello and welcome to this Multidisciplinary Life. Today‘s guest is Amanda Gerin. She‘s head of Digital Change Australia for the Digital Legal Delivery Practice Group at HSF Kramer. You may also know her from her work on the board of Alta, the Australasian Legal Technology Alliance. And as the chair of Walter, the Women of Altar, she‘s also part of the Access to Justice committee.

[00:22] Amanda has more than 20 years experience in legal technology and consulting roles. She‘s passionate about helping lawyers solve business problems using data and technology. Today‘s conversation has some great insights and lessons for leaders of multidisciplinary teams. And those working at the intersection of law and tech or law and something else, we cover questions such as, how do you build influence across different disciplines within an organization to drive change?

[00:51] What are the skills that you can‘t help but pick up on the job to be a better communicator? Why using structured data in your law firm could change your life for the better? And where do multidisciplinary teams in law face challenges that we don‘t always talk about? This conversation elaborates on all of these ideas and more.

[01:11] So let‘s get into it and chat through this multidisciplinary life with Amanda Fajerman from HSF Crane.

[01:22] Hello Amanda.

[01:22] Amanda: Hi Sarah.

[01:24] Sarah: Thank you so much for being part of this conversation today. I am so excited.

[01:28] Amanda: Thanks for having me.

[01:29] Sarah: All good. So we have some wonderful things to talk through today, and I cannot wait to get into lots of detail about computer science and the law and your experience. But my first question for you is what brought you to the law?

[01:44] Amanda: It‘s an interesting question and I was reflecting on it. And I actually don‘t know a hundred percent what the answer is. Oh, wow. I do remember thinking though, that if I did a computer science and law degree, I felt like I was comparing the best of both worlds and winning and leaving my doors open to whatever I wanted to do.

[02:02] I think I was, I had both skills at both the analytical mathematical side as well as the humanity side. Yep. It was a choice and it was decision that, look, if I did both and I had a science law degree I‘d really be able to exercise both those skills and see where it takes me.

[02:18] Sarah: That‘s really interesting. ‘cause computer science and law, you could say they are two very different parts of our brains as well, and sos it‘s really interesting that you knew you had that awareness that you already wanted that mix. Yeah. In some ways. Yeah, that‘s right. What made you take on computer science?

[02:36] Amanda: I will credit my three unit computer science teacher at school. I love that. Yes. Who actually went on to be featured in, I think it was. The Financial Times is having taught students, setting it up to found Afterpay, for example, and, or a couple of incredible companies.

[02:54] Sarah: Wow. And so that interest was sparked pretty early on.

[02:58] Do you code?

[02:59] Amanda: Now not. Yep. But I have used a lot of these no-code platforms throughout my legal career. So while I‘m not a developer I think some of the skills of understanding how data is formed and the relationship between data is become quite critical to the skills that I use day to day.

[03:17] Sarah: Yep, yep. Absolutely. I wanna come back to the question around data ‘cause I have I‘m really curious to know more about structured data and I know that‘s something that we‘re keen to talk about in this conversation, and especially how it can benefit lawyers. I wanna move just briefly though, to a bit more about your experience.

[03:36] ‘cause I‘m conscious you‘ve been a practicing lawyer for a number of years, but now you have a new role, which is head of Digital Change Australia for HSF Kramer. What does that mean to be head of digital change? What does that look like?

[03:51] Amanda: Good question and I probably describe my role very much as being a conduit between the practice groups and the lawyers and the technology.

[04:02] And I think that‘s probably something that I‘ve always been very passionate about doing and always very passionate about helping bridge that gap between the lawyers, the law, the legal SMEs, and how that can be, how those people can use technology to make their lives easier, more efficient, more effective.

[04:21] So whether that is helping those lawyers with. New technology, how they can maybe they‘re involved in designing and building a product. Maybe they‘re, maybe they need to use it for their day-to-day life, for e-discovery or for due diligence. A lot of it is trying to understand what the legal problem that they have, what their pain points are, and how that can be solved using technology.

[04:44] And a lot of that is because, it‘s hard for. The two teams, the lawyers and it to talk. I sit in the middle.

[04:53] Sarah: Yeah. And so you help bring those different disciplines together. That‘s right. That‘s right. It‘s so fascinating because there are so many other skills within sitting in that middle piece.

[05:06] That you need to be able to bring those different people together. But having that educational background as a foundation would be so important because you understand the foundations of the law as well as technology and how technology is built and why certain technology is important over others.

[05:23] Just as much as understanding what it means to have a legal problem. And how that might need to be solved in a particular way.

[05:31] Amanda: Yeah. It really is a bit of an orchestrator because you‘re trying to take the problem, you‘re trying to understand how, is this a problem worth solving?

[05:38] If it is what might the solution look like? Is there an existing piece of technology that might solve that problem? Or do we need to go out to the market and assess new technology? And so as part of that assessment, you‘re try, you need to understand what the evaluation criteria is for testing and selecting new technology.

[05:53] And that often ties back to what is it the problem that you‘re trying to solve? So nothing is in isolation. Everything is connected.

[06:00] Sarah: And then in terms of the different types of people and disciplines that you‘re working with day to day. Obviously there‘s lawyers at HSF Kramer. Are there also digital specialists and developers and technology specialists as well that you‘re working with?

[06:14] Or are they outside the firm and they come in as consultants? How does that typically look for you?

[06:19] Amanda: Look, it‘s a bit of both but mostly in-house. So yes, we do have a big digital team. So it‘s a global team. We sit. And work very much together and then bring in all the other disciplines as needed.

[06:31] We have a bit of a think tank that includes people from IT, enterprise architects the IT trainers who need to then be involved in training on the tools, learning and development. So there‘s a lot of disciplines that come together. To understand. The problem and how we‘re gonna solve it.

[06:45] Sarah: Amanda, I‘m gonna move back to our area of structured data and the importance of data Sure. That we were talking about just before. Can you talk me through what structured data means? Because I really wanna understand it from the perspective of why it could benefit lawyers and why it does benefit some lawyers who are using it really well. In the first instance, what is it?

[07:06] Amanda: Look, it‘s any sort of data that can be, that‘s quantifiable. So your unstructured data, maybe the flip side is unstructured data is free text, images, videos, anything that, long form narratives.

[07:18] And when we‘re talking to teams around. Measuring anything, and it could be as simple as, time recording. If you think about what‘s time recording, you are assigning time, so a measure to a matter code or a phase code. Those phase codes and those matter codes are a form of structured data in the sense that they are, a set of options that you select from.

[07:39] So it‘s anything from bull fields, yes, no to, select from A, B, C, D, or E so that you can then use that data for analytics and reporting. And so when we are talking to teams about how they‘re either, measuring the criteria for a tool I did a lot of this when I was doing better management and contract lifecycle management.

[08:00] And you need to actually say, what are the questions that you wanna ask your clients when they‘re submitting a request for an intake question? What does this matter relate to? And so therefore you can understand. Where, who‘s asking the question, what type of questions are being asked, and therefore do both historical analysis on the data, what has happened in the past as well as more predictive analysis on the data.

[08:22] What do we think is likely to happen in the future? And therefore you can actually go to the next step, which is what do you wanna do about it? And so it‘s everything and anything from when you‘re asking a question in an intake form, for example, how can you ask that question in a format that can be captured in structured data.

[08:41] So what are your options? A, B, C, or D. And you‘ve also gotta think about, okay, I need, do I need an E here that is covers the fields, or do I need an other? So you‘ve gotta be able to give those people the options to be able to say, yes, my answer is gonna fall into one of these few categories.

[08:54] And it becomes really critical for reporting, as I said. Especially I think in today‘s day and age when there is just such an eye on data when gen AI is actually changing the way we think about data.

[09:04] Sarah: Yeah.

[09:05] Amanda: Because it is an interesting question now with the ability to interact with data using natural language, then perhaps.

[09:12] Some of what I‘ve just said actually is discounted ‘cause you can actually get some of those insights just by saying, for example, hey, chat GPT, it wouldn‘t be chat GPT, but tell me how much time I‘m spending on on due diligence. And it can actually just scrape.

[09:27] Sarah: Give you that info.

[09:28] And probably in a fraction of the time as well.

[09:30] Amanda: That‘s right.

[09:30] Sarah: Yeah. As you were talking about the intake form example, I was wondering whether structured data in this way actually helps you work out whether you are asking a good question. So the strength of a question based on being able to then test it multiple times and test the answers and report on the answers that you‘re getting and the quality of answers.

[09:53] Not just looking at the analysis on the responses, but thinking about, is this a good question? Do we get good information from asking this question as well?

[10:02] Amanda: That‘s right.

[10:02] It really makes you think, am I asking the right ques questions of the right people at the right time? Or is this a piece of data that we need to capture later on in the process?

[10:11] Yeah, and so a lot of that does have to do with a bit of process mapping to make sure that you‘re thinking about who knows the answer to this question. Are there any follow up questions perhaps? And so without structured data, you can‘t do any of that conditional logic. You can‘t say, if they‘ve answered a then ask this follow up question.

[10:27] If it‘s not being captured in, in structured data. So it really does lend itself to a lot of that, I‘m of I think quite visually. And so a lot of those intake forms, for example, I imagine very much in the form of a Visio diagram where there‘s a star point. Your triangles that, lead to yes/nos into follow up questions.

[10:47] Sarah: And so this is probably an obvious question. Why is this good for lawyers to be thinking about and implementing and even changing their work slightly to account for structured data or use structured data?

[11:03] Amanda: So I have two answers to that and one is a bit better. I think a lot of what lawyers, and especially front-end lawyers who are drafting contracts do actually has an element of coding in it, right? When they‘re looking at a drafting a contract, the contract has definitions. And often those definitions refer to other terms that are themselves defined.

[11:26] And, in drafting a contract they‘ll go through and they‘ll think, oh, actually I‘m referring to this. Concept or this word, I need to define it because I‘m gonna wanna refer to it multiple times. That‘s quite similar to what a coder does when they‘re need, when they, are coding and they go, ah, I need to repeat this process.

[11:44] I‘m gonna create a sub-process that I can then define and call. So there‘s actually quite a lot of similarities in drafting a contract to the way a coder might design a piece of code. But it all comes back down to that concept of how you can define something, make it repeatable. And structured data is essentially an extra with a table that lists columns and has multiple rows.

[12:10] Again, that‘s fairly similar to the way a coda might have a, a term that has. Multiple loops or a one to many relationship between two different sections of a piece of code. So there‘s, so there are some similarities and lawyers probably use those skills without even realizing.

[12:28] Sarah: Yeah.

[12:29] Amanda: I guess the other thing is, in this day and age, everything comes back to data.

[12:33] Lawyers are always time recording. Even in-house lawyers now need to report on what they‘re doing in order to demonstrate value. And there really is no other way to do that other than measuring what they‘re doing using structured data.

[12:48] Sarah: Yeah. And just thinking about repeatable activities and even repeatable documents or documents that are used, multiple times for multiple matters or different types of clients.

[13:01] And then being able to personalize those documents when you need to. But really being able to use structured data and the thinking around structured data in a way that makes that process faster and more efficient for lawyers would open up so many new possibilities for them as well.

[13:19] Amanda: Yes. And the whole world of knowledge and knowledge management is on the cusp of changing quite significantly now with gen ai.

[13:28] Sarah: Yeah.

[13:29] Amanda: Because previously everyone had a precedent system, with some sort of automation tool that spat out the documents at the other end.

[13:36] Sarah: Yeah.

[13:37] Amanda: And how gen AI is gonna impact the way those documents are generated and the way we source our knowledge and extract nuggets of gold from the firm‘s knowledge, knowledge bank is a really interesting place to be.

[13:51] Sarah: Absolutely. Absolutely. And even the analysis on that is going to be so different to what it was before. That‘s right. So much more rich analysis. Opportunity. That‘s a lot in that, there‘s a lot in that. That‘s really exciting. Do you think it‘s, are you seeing this embraced more and more by lawyers or are you noticing that there‘s.

[14:14] There‘s cohorts that are very open to working this way and changing how they, and evolving how they work, but there‘s also a very, more traditional path that some lawyers prefer to, to stay within. What‘s your experience been like?

[14:30] Amanda: I think it, look, it‘s definitely a mix of both.

[14:32] I‘ve been at HSF Kramer now for just under six months, and there is a, I‘ve seen a whole, there‘s a whole range of people that are motivated, that are excited, that are really thinking and asking the hard questions about how is this gonna change the way we as a practice, deliver work?

[14:50] We as a practice price our work. We as a practice and as an firm, are going to deliver work. And that has so many elements from the talent team to how we gonna re to retrain, retain, and attract talent, the learning and development team, how we‘re going to actually educate our lawyers and make it an ongoing program.

[15:07] The IT team, how are we gonna make sure that we‘ve got the best tools at our lawyers fingertips so that they can actually use those tools to deliver work more effectively? And of course, the practice groups who are actually, at the forefront of being, of needing to deliver the service and use technology in order to do that.

[15:24] Sarah: As you were, as you‘ve been talking about data and the power of data, but also that real strong understanding of the legal foundations. I‘ve been thinking about this idea that you can be the greatest specialist in the world in something, but if you can‘t talk about it and explain it simply it‘s really hard to influence and bring others on the journey with you and especially try and get them to collaborate with other disciplines as well. Can we talk about some of the skills that you have acquired throughout your career that are more than the technical skills around computer science knowledge and legal knowledge? Because I think there‘s a whole array of skills sitting in the middle around communication and influence that I don‘t think you‘re always taught at university. And I think can also be really hard to talk about if you don‘t know that you need to learn them as well. I think some, sometimes it‘s, there‘s an assumption that you‘ll just have them.

[16:28] Amanda: Yeah, you‘re right. I think I view my role very much as a bit of an orchestrator.

[16:31] It‘s as if everyone is staring into a room and they, all the different disciplines, all the different roles, all the different departments are looking through different stained glass windows or beveled windows. But they‘re all looking at the same thing, but they‘re looking at it with a slightly different lens, slightly different focus or perhaps slightly different coloring.

[16:51] And my role is to be able to look at what they‘re focusing on and focus two teams on a Venn diagram that overlaps. For example, and this is the connection between what you are doing and what you are doing. Let‘s try and align it together. We‘re all trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together.

[17:11] If you imagine a puzzle, everyone‘s got different pieces and sometimes it‘s hard to see what someone else, what you can‘t see, but someone else can see on that table. And it does require a lot of skills, like active listening.

[17:23] Empathy. That open-mindedness and curiosity to try and put yourself in someone else‘s shoes and say what is it that is affecting you?

[17:30] What are your pain points? What are you seeing that perhaps I can‘t see through my window, but I can understand, might be on the same table, that you can see through yours. I actually do think back to a course that I did about 10 years ago, which was a mediation course. And I think some of those skills are so universally applicable in life in general.

[17:49] But also, especially in the role that I do today, and often they‘re things as simple and, I remember doing the course and thinking this isn‘t brain science, but sometimes, unless someone actually says to you, listen, to understand, not to respond. Reflect back and ask a question, so am I understanding that what you‘re saying is X, Y, Z?

[18:13] And I think at the time I remember thinking, but what if you get it wrong? What if you say to them something and you misunderstood what they‘re gonna say? And actually it was quite liberating to say when the mediator instructors said, that‘s perfect, then they‘ll say, no, you‘re wrong. If you say so, am I understanding you were quite angry when you know person A did B.

[18:35] And I was like, but what if I get that wrong? And the mediator said, but no, that‘s perfect because if they say, no, I wasn‘t angry, I was frustrated. You‘ve actually given them the ability to put a name or a label to the emotion or the experience and it‘s okay that you didn‘t, you got it wrong in the first place.

[18:51] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. That power of correction can actually be really empowering for someone.

[18:58] Amanda: And so I think, as the role of a mediator is often to not solve the problem and not come up with a solution.

[19:04] Sarah: Yeah.

[19:04] Amanda: But to ask the questions and find areas of alignment between two parties. And that‘s often what I‘m doing now.

[19:11] I‘m taking the lawyers and the it, I‘m trying to find points of alignment or points of consensus between. Both those groups in order to solve a problem, come up with a solution help them see things from a different perspective, whether that‘s managing expectations on timing of delivery of a project, or helping, either reverse the IT team, understand the complexity of a legal problem and bring them together.

[19:37] Sarah: It‘s interesting in coaching we talk about this idea of there‘s the headlines, there‘s the story. The headline story, but what you wanna get to is the stuff underneath, and that can be really difficult if you haven‘t built rapport with someone. You haven‘t built those relationships. I can imagine in your role you would hear a lot of headlines or top line story that would be easy to, misconstrue for the actual story, but how do you break that down with people? What, how do you build on that and peel back those layers?

[20:11] Amanda: Peel back the onions of the layers? Yeah. Asking why questions? Five why‘s. Just keep asking why until you get to the core of the problem.

[20:20] Sarah: Yeah.

[20:20] Amanda: I think demonstrating that. As a person you‘ve gotta have those relationship skills and show curiosity, show open-mindedness, show vulnerability so that the person feels safe to answer those why questions. ‘cause sometimes they‘re quite confronting. Sometimes the answer to the why is not something that they‘ve verbalized before or something that they‘ve actually realized themselves until you‘ve dug a little further.

[20:43] Sarah: That can be, yeah, that can bring you some really vulnerable moments with people as well. No doubt. And I see what you mean around being that orchestrator, but also as you say, that mediator, and it sounds like even just the way you describe the work, that you hold that conversation lightly so that the rest of the team can be doing the thinking.

[21:09] Quite deep thinking. Yes. And coming up with solutions and answers. But you are very much nudging along the path without necessarily having to drag them or propose the solution, but very much guiding them towards collaboration. And as you say, listening, active listening is essential.

[21:28] We often talk about this idea of common purpose and common language in multidisciplinary teams. Has that have those ideas come up for you in the teams that you‘ve worked within? And is it, has it been something that you‘ve needed to foster across the different teams that you‘ve worked in throughout your career?

[21:47] Amanda: I think all, when I‘ve worked across a lot of in-house legal teams and now obviously in a law firm, I think often it is driven from a mission and a vision statement.

[21:57] Sarah: Yep.

[21:58] Amanda: Whether that is in the form of a strategic goal. That then cascades down throughout the different teams and then to the individuals and then to personal objectives, or whether that is through some other project work that you‘re trying to achieve, an outcome that you‘re trying to achieve.

[22:18] Always linking back to what is the North Star here? Yeah. What is our purpose? What is our mission?

[22:22] Sarah: Yeah.

[22:23] Amanda: And I think if you‘ve got that clearly set out and clearly known amongst the team that any decision that you need to make, you can link back to that mission, vision, purpose and say, that should actually answer that question.

[22:36] In practice that‘s probably harder to actually implement than theory. Yeah. But when you have a team of people who are all working towards a common goal, then things are. Much easier to achieve.

[22:47] Sarah: Yeah. I can imagine also that the question around is someone listening to understand or listening to respond, you can use those anchors of common purpose and vision to, to drive that active listening and those better listening qualities when you know that there is a common goal that people are working towards as well.

[23:09] Amanda: That‘s right. And there‘s, the incidental qualities of a team that a functional team that is a high performing team yeah. Are often things like that. Collaboration, the collegiality, the support, knowing that your managers have your back, knowing that you can be honest and open, and that there‘s underlying trust in the team, that there‘s psychological safety, that if you do need to em, admit an error or something that‘s gone wrong, you feel safe, that you can actually voice it.

[23:37] The idea of failure is a big thing. Lawyers don‘t like to fail. Yeah. And we all know now that it‘s important to be able to try Belfast Pivot. And so there‘s a whole different world of, mindsets and skills. That teams, I think, are now more so than 10 years ago are implementing.

[23:57] Sarah: A lot of those qualities are really positive aspects of being in a multidisciplinary team.

[24:04] What are some of the common challenges you‘ve noticed that occur within multidisciplinary teams?

[24:10] Amanda: Look, I think everyone comes to it from a different perspective. Everyone has their training and their discipline. Sometimes it‘s hard to bridge the gap between two different individuals, two different teams, and two different ways of thinking.

[24:22] Sarah: Yeah. If there was a leader of a multidisciplinary team that you were coaching. In how to help bring their team together better and more effectively. What would you suggest as your top number one, your first thing. Don‘t do anything else. Just do this first. What would you suggest.

[24:40] Amanda: Do a team building activity?

[24:41] Sarah: Like what? What would you recommend?

[24:44] Amanda: Get people to sit around a room, do an icebreaker, get people to share a personal story, a personal event, something that‘s happened in their personal life. I think when you‘ve got connections between people and there‘s people can develop relationships. To me the relationships and connection is the top priority.

[25:04] Sarah: Yeah. ‘

[25:06] Amanda: cause then people work well together, they want to perform well because they want to do well for the team around them.

[25:13] Sarah: Yeah. It‘s I‘m not surprised you said that, but I‘m also very much heartened that you said that because I think that human connection comes up so much and you can‘t really, you can‘t really shortcut it.

[25:29] Like you just, you have to spend time with people. That‘s right. And you need to be able to build that rapport and that connection with people in order to be able to break down barriers. There‘s really no substitute.

[25:40] Amanda: No, because it‘s the first thing you do in the morning. How is your weekend?

[25:43] Get to know, get them on, get to know them on a personal level. Understand, what‘s going on behind that wall of the work life. ‘Cause when people care, they often can be so much more. That the care of people and the support of people‘s individual lives that their careers even can drive so much more collaboration.

[26:02] Sarah: And that would be really important for leaders as well, because you need good leaders to maintain those really strong connections with their team. Especially a multidisciplinary team where everyone is very different and has their own perspective and their own disciplines that they come with. But a leader that is very connected to their team and understands their team as people is going to be able to work with them more effectively than someone who isn‘t, doesn‘t have that influence.

[26:30] Doesn‘t have that rapport.

[26:31] Amanda: That‘s right.

[26:32] Sarah: Amanda. I have one last question for you and I‘m super excited to ask you this ‘cause I have no idea where you‘re gonna go with it, but I‘m very curious. So imagine you have a magic wand for a day and you can change the legal industry however you like.

[26:50] And this magic wand gives you three wishes. What would you change?

[26:54] Amanda: That‘s a very good question. It‘s a hard question. I think there‘s definitely a mindset piece. I wish that the legal industry could be more open and honest. Now the translation for that is imagine a world where when you‘re doing a contract negotiation.

[27:16] There wasn‘t that sense of, I‘ll send you the document in track changes and in draft so that you can see exactly what changes that I‘ve made. Or a world where, there was a, some sort of, a negotiation platform where you could actually, you don‘t need to, validate that people.

[27:33] May or may not have done the right thing. That may not work in law because at the end of the day, you are often, you‘ve gotta act in the best interest of your client and there‘s often two different, needs, wants perspectives that you need to come together. But if you could imagine a world let‘s wipe away all that.

[27:51] Potential self-doubt that someone has sent you a documented final and has made a change that, you know shouldn‘t have been made. So that‘s one. Two would probably be the adoption of technology. The adoption of ai and then the subset of that is look gen ai. So we dunno where we‘re gonna be in 10 years time.

[28:10] It is a bit of a crystal ball, but if I could wave that wand, it would be do what we need to do now so that wherever we end up in 10 years time is the right place. So that bit of technology adoption and probably that‘s gonna happen naturally with, the next generation of lawyers that are coming out of university, going into our law firms, expecting that those firms have the tools and using them day to day, that‘s gonna translate to a generation of lawyers that are digital natives. As we all know.

[28:39] Sarah: Yeah.

[28:39] Amanda: And then finally it is that it is a bit of a mindset shift, I think. Legal in the legal training as a discipline is often that very much focused on perfection.

[28:51] Very much that fear of failure, bit of imposter syndrome, some of those typical perspectives that can be quite harmful to lawyers.

[29:03] We all know that mental health is a big issue. And unfortunately some of those issues do stem from the pressure that lawyers face in law firms. And so I think if we, again, had the environment where people felt safe to say, I don‘t know the answer. Or I‘m giving you this, it‘s in draft, I know it‘s not perfect, but I don‘t, I wanna give you where I‘m, just let you know where I‘m up to.

[29:26] Without feeling the need to spend hours and hours to get it perfect before they can send it to the partner. To be, to have that sort of open and curious mindset, to be able to think outside the boxes. What else could help you? What else do should I need to know? They‘re all that T-shaped lawyer type.

[29:41] Sarah: Yeah.

[29:42] Amanda: Personalities, perspectives and skills that it‘d be great to see being more deeply embedded in our future lawyers.

[29:50] Sarah: All those wishes seem to have a common thread of mindset change, which I think is. Really interesting to explore just for a minute. Because it almost sounds like particularly your first wish and your third wish around almost lifting the pressure of identity of being a lawyer and really changing.

[30:15] The first one when you were talking about honesty, and I couldn‘t help but think about this adversarial principle that sits at the core of practicing law. And although it‘s not as adversarial as say the us, there is still a, there‘s still that principle that sits there of you have opposing council, and that‘s right.

[30:37] You have opposition sitting across from you. But as you say, being able to be more collaborative and open and not have that expectation that has this person changed something and not told me. That‘s, that would be a huge mindset shift. And building that trust across the profession as well as on your third wish of building trust in others, that they want to do a good job and they will do a good job.

[31:07] And failure is okay, and mistakes are expected and we all learn from them as well. It would relieve a lot of pressure.

[31:17] Amanda: And look, to be honest, that‘s potentially why i‘ve still got my practicing certificate, but I‘m not a practicing lawyer anymore. And it was potentially why slowly throughout the course of my career, I transitioned away from the things that I didn‘t feel as much affinity to, or the things that I didn‘t feel as close to and moved towards those areas that I enjoyed more, that I found myself thriving in.

[31:44] Yep. ‘cause it was more the consulting, the legal operations thinking the process improvement piece, the, those are the skills that really resonated with me more. And so yeah, now I‘m coming back and saying of the things that I‘ve now developed and of the skills that I‘ve now developed, how can I embed that into legal practice and help people with their careers develop those skills rather than having to leave the law entirely.

[32:12] Sarah: Yep. And connection sounds like it‘s a really big piece for you as even just that career path that you‘ve come back around to. I have really pushing connection and pushing human connection as a such a priority into drive.

[32:28] Being able to drive change.

[32:29] Amanda: That‘s right. A lot of it is. The core of change management is that connections with people. And it‘s probably something which is on the top of my both strengths as a person, but also on top of my wishlist. Maintaining connections between people.

[32:43] Sarah: Yep.

[32:44] It‘s funny how the technology and even the legal foundation then support everything that comes after connection.

[32:51] Amanda: That‘s right.

[32:51] Sarah: As well. It just makes it. It makes it easier. To work out decisions together And ask different questions, or ask tougher questions because you‘ve built that connection.

[33:01] Amanda, this has been a wonderful conversation. We‘ve gone in so many different areas.

[33:06] Amanda: I know. Didn‘t expect it, didn‘t we?

[33:09] Sarah: It‘s probably the best kind. Thank you so much for being a part of this. I‘ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Can‘t wait to have you back.

[33:14] Amanda: Thanks so much. All the best.

[33:23] Sarah: That wraps up our episode of This Multidisciplinary Life. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a thumbs up, a like you know the drill and subscribe for more episodes. And if you‘re interested in being a guest on the show to share your multidisciplinary life, you can get in touch with us through the links in the show notes.

[33:39] This podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri Land and brought to you by Sarah El-Atm, researcher, consultant, and speaker on multidisciplinary teams. It is created in collaboration with balloon tree productions and marketing expertise from August. This multidisciplinary life wouldn‘t be possible without the support from the wonderful guests who share their stories and perspectives, as well as the brilliant multidisciplinary team who helped me bring these important stories to life.