Episode 10

Sarah: [00:00] Hello and welcome to this Multidisciplinary Life. Today‘s guest is Elena Tsalanidis. She‘s the co-founder of Deeligence, a legal tech startup helping corporate lawyers streamline due diligence with AI.

She‘s a former lawyer in Australia and the UK and a legal process expert. In addition to her commercial nous and legal expertise, Elena is a strong advocate for women in legal tech and is the current vice president of the Australasian Legal Tech Association.

Today‘s conversation is a special one. Going from practicing lawyer in someone else‘s firm to building your own company is no mean feat. It takes guts resilience and an enduring self-belief that must shine through even when times feel bleak or uncertain. If you‘re not prepared to put in the work to sustain an endurance mindset, starting and running a company can be tough.

In today‘s conversation, we cover questions such as, what‘s it like to be in someone else‘s business? And then take the leap to start your own. How do you develop skills that help you increase your [01:00] risk appetite? What is it actually like to mentor and coach people in other disciplines? And if you are going to start your own company today.

What are some lessons you could take from Elena‘s experience that would help you on your journey? This conversation elaborates on all these ideas and more. So let‘s get into it and chat through this multidisciplinary life with Elena Tsalanidis.

Elena. Hi. I‘m so excited we‘re having this conversation today. We have quite a bit to talk about, quite a few questions to work through, and I‘m confident we are gonna head off on many tangents. My first question for you though, is what brought you to the law?

Elena: Sure. So I was always interested in being a lawyer from very young.

I think I probably have quite a strong sense of justice and had just always envisaged myself, being someone that could help people. It probably didn‘t hurt. I was [02:00] pretty good at. Arguing as well. So with two younger siblings, I was that eldest daughter energy and I, yeah, frankly just worked hard.

I didn‘t necessarily consider myself like a particularly smart person, but I was someone who when they set their mind on a goal, just worked hard. And interestingly, I think. Persistence is such a virtue because maybe you might not feel have the raw talent, but if you work hard at anything, you can pretty much get there.

So I tapped on that and worked my way in and got into law school.

Sarah: Amazing. You mentioned that justice is really important to you. Where do you think that comes from?

Elena: I think there are certain characteristics that are just innate in all of us, and I‘m someone that despises like intolerance.

I think things can be really unfair and I get a bit worked up about them. So for other people, things might just roll off their back, but I was always that kid who was like why is that like that? Or when I [03:00] got a job in a law firm. I would find myself saying, why do we do it that way? And the answer that would enrage me was, oh, that‘s the way we‘ve always done it.

And what I found really interesting looking back at my career is I would say it doesn‘t have to be that way at all. A bit rogue by me, but realizing that things didn‘t have to be the way that people told you they were. And I think a line that has followed me through my career is, okay, that might be the process that someone else has done.

Build a different process, or we could be more efficient if we did X, Y, Z. And so I think pretty soon. Being in a law firm for me was a relatively positive experience. I worked with some lovely people, but I found the environment perhaps not innovative. Or entrepreneurial enough. I don‘t know if that was my sense of justice or just someone who questions and asks "why" and then says "why not something else?"

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. With that mindset, how did you find law school?

Elena: I loved [04:00] uni. So I did an arts degree as like alongside a law degree. Yeah. And I majored in French and politics. I always loved languages and I thought the balance of law and arts was great because like law is obviously relatively demanding and lots of reading and in arts it just felt like it was easy and straightforward and yeah.

Still challenging in its own way, but it was a good balance. So I really liked uni. Uni is not necessarily representative of what it‘s like to be a lawyer, I would say. So you learn the academic side of the law in this safe and collegiate environment, and then you get into a law firm and you have to throw out everything you learned because it‘s not actually practical, real life experience.

It‘s something else. It‘s not, I‘m not here to argue whether it‘s good or bad, but I dunno if law school does a good job of preparing you for being a lawyer, to be frank. I think it‘s a testament to [05:00] having stuck out something and achieved marks and having proven that you can do that.

But being a lawyer is very different. Being a lawyer is commercial learning how to write for clients. At uni you are told. Plagiarism is bad. Don‘t copy anything. Reinvent the wheel, come up with fresh ideas and that has value. You get into a law firm and it‘s use our precedent bank. Don‘t try not to think of anything new.

We‘ve done it before. Find a template, build from it. So I just think they‘re completely different skills, which is why it can take law firms two to three years to get ROI back on their junior team members. ‘cause they‘re training them from scratch.

Sarah: Yeah it‘s an interesting insight and even hearing you talk about the other areas that you majored in with French and politics, you are very much taught the law in law school as a framework and a system and a structure and a language as such.

And so learning that language, but then applying that language is [06:00] two different ways. Like two, two different things essentially learning the language at. Uni is very different to then being, to speaking it. Totally agree. And using it same as French, learning the language and learning how to write French and speak French is very different to then trying to have a conversation with someone in French as well.

Elena: Yeah. The, There‘s this. I think that people that work in law firms, if you spend a couple years in a law firm, I think it‘s one of the best training grounds to be a functioning professional. So even in my business now we love hiring lawyers because what does lawyer equal? What it equals is exceptional client service.

Someone that‘s. Got to be focused on attention to detail. Someone who, by all accounts, tries to meet a deadline and if they can‘t meet a deadline, they are communicating like, Hey Sarah, I wanted to get you this thing by Friday. It looks like it‘s gonna be Monday. So [07:00] these things that we take for granted in other, work environments, essentially. So I think it‘s a superpower. The flip side is being a good black letter lawyer doesn‘t necessarily mean you have startup fit or you wanna be in an entrepreneurial environment because you might just like delivering great academic legal advice. But I think the great lawyers.

Across those two camps of being exceptional, what they do in delivering legal advice, but also, if you‘re a senior associate or a partner, understanding cultural dynamics at a firm how winning work. Going out and hunting for work and finding clients like that is a skill that you need to upskill on.

Yeah. If you‘re at a law firm.

Sarah: Yeah. All those skills around influence. Yeah. And learning people and reading people. There‘s no. Real textbook for that, or there‘s no subject at uni to take while you‘re at law school.

Elena: Totally. I think it‘s probably about half the job. If Sarah says something‘s urgent and [08:00] you‘ve gotta do the work for her but actually she says that all the time.

Sarah: So what does that mean?

Elena: What does that mean? Yeah, like that‘s half like finding the lay of the land. That‘s half the battle, I think.

Sarah: Absolutely. I wanna switch direction a little bit because I‘m conscious you went from practicing lawyer to. Owning your own company and starting your own company, and there‘s this real shift where someone goes from being effectively an employee to running their own business and being responsible for the bank account and everything that goes with that.

What was that moment like for you? Take me through it. What went through your mind?

Elena: Do you mean opening the business or now having the business and looking back and noticing the change.

Sarah: Let‘s start with opening the business. And then we‘ll get to now.

Elena: If I‘m honest, I found the starting pretty easy.

I occasionally felt like law was a little slow moving. As a junior [09:00] lawyer, you are a cog in a bigger. System. And so you don‘t always have a lot of client contact or there‘s such a strict hierarchy that you are reporting to a senior associate who‘s reporting to a partner who‘s having the relationship meeting where you actually want to be.

And you wanna have a seat at the table. So those things like frustrated me to be perfectly frank. And so starting a business, while without a doubt, presenting many challenges, it just happened. With these small little steps that together now looking back you‘re like, wow, we really, we‘ve really moved.

We‘ve really achieved a lot of things. But at the time, the way it started, and I‘m happy to share, was. Me and my co-founder thought there was a problem we‘re solving. And so we spent months doing interviews with different lawyers of different levels of seniority across different jurisdictions to try and understand if there was a problem we‘re solving.

So we, we asked lots of questions. We felt like we had validated there was a [10:00] problem, and then from there it was, okay, let‘s incorporate a company. Let‘s build some designs. Let‘s hire some developers. That entire trajectory was always speaking to people to make sure we were delivering value. And so that bit didn‘t feel hard and probably I‘m the sort of person that‘s rather predisposed to being interested in running their own company.

Like I think that has always been me. I‘ve always been entrepreneurial, so I think I‘ve found where I was meant to be. I can be a lawyer. I‘ve been a lawyer, I think I was Okay. But I think I‘m really great at what I‘m doing now. So now that I look back at that journey, probably I‘ve just found the right home.

Like building a team, working stuff out, learning things on the job, asking mentors and advisors thoughts where you don‘t necessarily have the skills that I‘m really good at. I love that. And so I think that served me well. So looking back. I think I‘m in the job, the [11:00] profession that completely sets me on fire.

I love it in a way that probably that was not me at a law firm.

Even though I could do the role functionally.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned there were some challenges starting your own thing.

Elena: Oh yeah.

Sarah: What were some of them?

Elena: Oh my gosh. I saw this thing on the internet and it was, it said what are the most unhinged things you‘ve ever done as a founder. I was like, oh, so many. There are a lot of challenges in serving law firms. Lawyers, understandably are highly skeptical, time poor people. So capturing their attention and selling them a solution that will save them time and better their lives. You‘re fighting for attention and they‘re in the business of delivering exceptional client advice.

Not chatting to people who can maybe help them with the tech solution. So yeah, for sure. Selling software. AI solutions to lawyers is challenging. But some of the unhinged things that we‘ve done, we went to an early conference with a prototype of [12:00] our solution that did some things but didn‘t do a lot of things, and we demoed it like it was a fully firmed product fully formed product, rather.

Love that. And yeah, you‘ve just gotta, you‘ve just got a scrap or someone will say, do you have this in early days? Mind you, we have these now. But someone would say, what‘s your. Cyber policy that relates to X, Y, Z, and then you think we better get one of those. And so you have to write one to say that you have one to pass through a firm‘s InfoSec procedures.

So there‘s just like a million versions of that along the way.

Sarah: That is brilliant. I love the the scrappiness of making sure that the business is running and and building.

Elena: And probably something to add there. One thing that me and my co-founder talk about that being lawyers makes us exceptional in a lot of ways, and I think makes us great founders across many different skills that we need in our roles.

But the negative is that we too are. Perfectionist and risk averse. And even the way we talk about our [13:00] business, we are reasonable and we‘re level headed and we‘re not probably embodying some characteristics that people think of when they think of brash tech founders. It‘s something that I think we could get better at.

But also it means that when we say something like we‘re gonna deliver. We have to achieve it because that‘s just our training. So I think it‘s like a double-edged sword.

Sarah: Yeah. How do you push past those moments where you‘re thinking, oh, lawyer brain is really kicking in here?

Or risk averse brain is really kicking in here, but we know we have to do this.

Elena: Running a startup, you are constantly putting out fires and deciding with between competing priorities. And so you have to make calls that align calls all the time. With imperfect information. That‘s something I really struggle with.

We had a similar. Conversation with my co-founder and tech lead the other day around two options. Something that can unlock all this commercial value or something that will improve things for our customers, [14:00] both urgent. Which one do you deliver first? It‘s it‘s a really hard decision.

Yeah. And so we try and say things now. In the vein of we‘ve made this decision, it was a very tight call. We‘ve made it on the best info that we can, we have to move forward. We might have made the wrong decision. But we‘ve gotta move forward and until we have more information, we‘ve gotta just keep going.

So it‘s disagree and commit is one of our values, but in terms of like the show personship of it all, we just have to be our authentic selves, but also take feedback. So some of our investors say to us, you guys have the vision, we see it. Maybe focus on that a bit more and talk it up.

And I think that‘s really great advice. And you have to think to yourself, I‘m going to have weaknesses. We all do. How do I make sure that I am presenting my business, my company, for my team in the best way possible. So you‘ve gotta take, you‘ve gotta take criticism and improve.

You don‘t take it all. ‘cause sometimes some of it [15:00] doesn‘t feel authentic or, doesn‘t work for you and that‘s okay.

Sarah: I heard a quote a while ago about business owners. And this idea that owning a business is not about how rich you become or how much money you earn, but it‘s about freedom and it‘s one of the driving factors that is maybe not talked about as much among business ownership, and I wondered what your perspective is on that.

Elena: Controversial, hot take here.

Sarah: Love that.

Elena: I can‘t say I feel particularly free running a business. Because we serve our customers first and foremost. We have an amazing team we have to always be on.

So one of the hardest bits of being a founder, to be perfectly frank, is that you might think that you can work from the beach or clock off when you want, but I‘ve probably never worked harder. I would say it‘s a different challenge to being a lawyer. I worked really hard as a lawyer [16:00] and the challenges there felt intellectual.

Like I was stretching my brain every day and working through hard problems. This isn‘t that, but this is like a never ending barrage of fires to put out and problems to solve, and responses to give like your our biggest constraint is time. You are trying to do something with a relatively lean team and prove your worth, and prove your value in a compressed timeframe.

I‘m not sure that I feel free. Maybe with more mature businesses, people might feel that way. Personally, I feel probably overwhelmed. But having said that, I‘m living for it. I feel so professionally satisfied that the things that you sacrifice to deliver value and have a customer tell you, you‘ve made my life a million times better.

That‘s what we‘re living for and driving towards rather than me thinking. Cool. I‘ll take multiple days off a week and do [17:00] whatever. I don‘t have time to get my hair cut, i‘m like, when would I literally do that? Am I gonna deduct time from my weekend where, occasionally you dip into a bit of work or you‘ve got friends and family and just being, a functional member of society, or is it during my work days, like I don‘t, maybe I need to take my laptop to get my hair cut, but, so I can‘t say it‘s freedom per se for me right now, might change.

Sarah: That‘s such an honest look into business ownership.

Elena: Yeah. Like it‘s bloody hard. And probably, I‘m not here to discourage anyone. If you wanna start a business, you absolutely should.

But it‘s way harder than anyone thinks. It‘s there‘s a quote that I like which is, it‘s. Two times more expensive, five times longer, 10 times harder, but 20 times more rewarding. Yeah. And that is so true. There‘s the highs are high and the lows are low, and if you love it, do it, but it‘s hard.

It‘s brutal out there. You‘re fighting for survival on every front. You‘re like, do we go with this vendor? Do we do this, do we do that? It‘s just a [18:00] myriad of choice.

Sarah: I wanna talk about service in a slightly different context. Service in the context of your team, because I‘m conscious you work with developers and designers and there is a multidisciplinary approach to how you are building that team.

Can you take me through what is it like to. First of all, consider the different disciplines that you might need to hire for. And then start to lead those people. What‘s that been like for you?

Elena: Really hard. It‘s interesting because in a law firm environment, the people that are the domain experts are the partners.

And so when they‘re hiring, they know the role inside out and so they can interview and ask questions that are relevant and they can judge performance relevantly.

Sarah: Exactly.

Elena: Because they‘re close to it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Elena: So that‘s really different in a tech company because I don‘t code, so how do I judge the qualities of, my software engineers essentially like I can‘t. So how do we [19:00] build structures to be able to do that? So for a little while when our company was a bit younger, we had a CTO who would ensure that code quality was adequate and appropriate, and also sit with us during a hiring process and making sure that we‘re giving the right tasks and asking the right questions.

What‘s really interesting. Is that I do think you have a feel for someone about their intellect, about the way they work, about the person that they are. Which is a whole heap of the employment process. Outside of core competencies. But what we have to upskill on as a non-technical co-founding duo is making sure that we do have someone assess the technical competencies.

So for us. I actually think we‘ve done a pretty good job. We had one hire where I would say firstly he was wonderful, but he was quite a bit more senior, so maybe better for a larger business. And he said to us like, I‘m not what you need at [20:00] this point in time. And we said, you know what? We think you‘re right.

You‘re amazing. But probably we would need double the size of the team for it to be in your sweet spot. Yeah. And so what we did is you pivot, you go. Okay. Someone of that level of seniority isn‘t what we need. We need someone who fits this smaller team better. That‘s the piece of the puzzle. And then let‘s hire for that.

But that, that dynamic is true when you‘re hiring people in areas that, I, I‘ve not done so like I am not a UX designer. How do we find exceptional talent? My, my secret and my unlock here is word of mouth. We have had other entrepreneurs or investors or people in our broader network say, you need to meet Sarah.

She‘s an amazing UX designer, and that totally counts. So we are fortunate, I think if you. Pay forward and you put out good vibes, it comes back and people are like, oh, you should work with the Deeligence crew. They‘re [21:00] awesome. So we found a lot of folks that way.

Sarah: Really useful. Really useful. Can you take me through a day to day?

What does it, what‘s it like for you? What does it look like?

Elena: My day to day? So I focus on the commercial side of the business. So my co-founder works with the developers and makes sure that our feedback from customers is then embedded in the product. I make sure that I‘m meeting all the relevant corporate lawyers, folks that do M&A and due diligence and run deals and seeing if we‘re a potential fit, as well as making sure that our customers that are using the platform are using it to their full potential. So partly customer success, which is for our licensed customers, partly sales. I would say that‘s my split, so making sure that we win more work. And front of mind.

So sometimes that‘s going to conferences. Sometimes that‘s having coffee chats with junior lawyers, senior lawyers partners.

And understanding their business. And seeing if we [22:00] can assist.

Sarah: You mentioned fit before in the context of team members and hiring and getting to know people. And obviously the more people you interview for your team, the better read you get on people as well in the client context.

What does a good client look like for you?

Elena: If I had to, if I had like a paintbrush and a easel of who my ideal customer was. Typically, they‘re someone who‘s an early adopter or interested in tech. So we are not going to win over every single partner at a law firm. Some, and there‘s unfortunately a bit of a misaligned incentive because partners.

That can be approaching the age where they want to retire. Don‘t necessarily want to invest a lot of resources in tech that will propel the law firm forward for the next 10, 15 years. That‘s just a funny dynamic around law firms. But not always. So I love meeting. Partners and senior associates [23:00] who when you say to them, I can help you move through a diligence in half the time, sit up and go, great, because that process stinks and we shouldn‘t keep doing it the old way.

It makes absolutely no sense. So I would say someone who‘s quite innovative. Isn‘t necessarily like a younger or more mature divide, but I do find that younger-ish partners are just closer to having done the grind of that work before. Yeah. So when we talk about how the work is delivered, they say to me, oh yeah I remember doing that.

So they‘re in the weeds. And then, yeah, I think someone who. He‘s okay with trying things. So sometimes to onboard a new tech solution, it can feel like we‘re taking a step back, but you‘re taking a step back to then speed up, right? I don‘t think our onboarding is particularly complicated, but we do need to train team members on using a new tool and a new platform, and that we train in 20 minutes, half an hour, so it‘s not too burdensome.

The first [24:00] time you use something is gonna feel like it‘s got the most friction. And then every other time it will feel super seamless and second nature. So there‘s a little bit of a hill to climb there. But yeah, I guess innovative forward-thinking folks typically. Our customers are in two buckets of large national firms.

So four or 500 lawyers. Multiple offices in different states. Yeah. Or top tier lawyers that have started their own transaction practices. So lean team, but they do lots of deals and they care about slightly different things to the large national firms. Both yet really great quick moving customers.

Sarah: How do you bridge the gap between the team members that you have, so the designers and developers in your team and your customers who are obviously legal experts and there is somewhat of a gap between discipline and understanding and even empathy [25:00] to an extent. How does that bridge close for you?

How does that gap close?

Elena: So when we have new team members start, who aren‘t lawyers? So the commercial side of the business, everyone is an ex-lawyer. We think it‘s important.

Sarah: Why do you think it‘s important?

Elena: I think it‘s important because they understand the pain of our customers really viscerally.

And they can speak to it because they‘ve done the work before. Like we‘ve all done diligence. We know it stinks. We can help. So I think it‘s important. It‘s not like unachievable if you‘re not a lawyer. I just think it. You just have felt the pain before.

Sarah: You‘ve walked in those shoes.

Elena: Totally. Yeah, totally. I think that counts. So sorry. The question was how do I think about bridging the gap between the team and understanding our customer? It‘s a really good question. For those team members that are non-lawyers. We actually, as part of onboarding, I run a session called like 1 0 1 of law firms. Law Firm 1 0 1.

And so what we talk about is we talk about the archetype [26:00] of lawyers. And I say this with lots of love and affection because I am also this, but it is, perfectionists, detail oriented all these things that are necessary skill sets of being a lawyer, sometimes risk averse, people that like to identify problems.

And we give training on it. So we say, this is our customer, this is how they work, this is how they do the job. This is the structure of a law firm. Here are the things you need to think about. We also bring technical team members along to customer feedback sessions. So that they hear it and they understand why we‘re getting feedback.

I think we do quite a good job of this because I‘ll hear the team say, oh, the lawyer‘s not gonna that because of blah, blah, blah. Yeah, true. Love it. So understanding the customer for the tech team is so vital because that‘s who they‘re building for.

Sarah: Exactly. I love when you said that the team come along to customer feedback sessions and so they hear that feedback firsthand. In the customer‘s own language or phrasing or however they [27:00] describe those pain points or the wonderful things that have made their lives better. Have you had any feedback from the team on what that‘s been like for them being in those sessions?

Elena: Ooh, I think we‘ve heard that it‘s, I‘m sure it‘s useful. My co-founder and I, we are the conduit to sharing that info. So I heard this on a meeting. Someone asked me for that. Let‘s try and deliver it. It‘s always nice to hear it from the horse‘s mouth. But also to understand the pressures that for us, corporate lawyers are working under. Oh, I wish it did this ‘cause this would save me time. Or I really wanna see this next time I use the platform. That stuff‘s gold dust. And so we have to capture that. And what‘s cool and what I love about our customers, one of the many things is like they‘re harsh, but that, that way that they identify Hey, I want this, or I‘m spotting a problem here in your platform because I wanna see more. Is awesome because it feeds directly into our roadmap. So I actually love it ‘cause they‘re harsh, but I honestly think that the feedback that we get is so useful.

Just [28:00] equips us to know precisely where we‘re going next.

Sarah: It also means you can respond to the feedback. And show that you‘re responding to it because it‘s going into the roadmap. And then when they see something delivered or in production, they know great. They‘re listening to me. I‘m not just giving this feedback and nothing‘s happening with it.

That‘s so valuable.

Elena: Totally. Yeah. It‘s, yeah, it‘s gold dust. It‘s amazing.

Sarah: Elle, I want to move to a different area. Different tangent. I wanna talk about risk appetite and we‘ve talked a little bit about risk and lawyers being risk averse. I‘m really interested to know. Based on everything we‘ve talked about in terms of moving from being a practicing lawyer into running your own business, there is a sense of increasing your risk appetite that you have had to overcome and still overcome it sounds like in many ways. How do you coach someone to increase their risk appetite? What would that be [29:00] like?

Elena: Ooh.

I‘m honestly not sure I would know how to coach someone with their risk appetite. I think I have a high risk appetite. Obviously. I don‘t know. I actually think these, this might be one of the things that you have it or you don‘t. I‘m sure. I‘m sure coaching in certain facets of people‘s personalities is like gonna make a difference, right?

I‘m not saying it‘s not coachable. I just think if you don‘t like risk, then starting a business is probably not for you. You can de-risk things. So there‘s ways to do it. So for us, probably because we were a little risk averse, we did those interviews before we wrote a line of code.

We actually the first person that we. Employed was a designer to create a prototype for us to share with lawyers, to get feedback again, to de-risk. Then we thought, okay, it would be great if we had the validation of an accelerator. Let‘s try get [30:00] into the Southern Hemisphere‘s best legal tech accelerator, and we did.

And so then we could say, Hey, we are working with this amazing accelerator and law firm, Lander and Rogers. So there are ways to de-risk, but I think if you‘re in a space of being like. Should I do this? Will it work? I dunno if that‘s the best frame of mind. I think the question and the way you wanna approach it is this is going to work and let me show you how.

I think it requires a bit of suspending of disbelief to make the jump and to make the call. And that‘s not to say that you have to go all in. ‘cause I feel like the classic founder story is two guys in a garage, they dropped out of uni and they‘re working on this thing that‘s gonna be the next Meta.

I think there‘s a whole bunch of other ways where you can do something on the side part-time until it scales up and then you scale down your full-time employment. There‘s a million ways to get to your objective. For us, we felt like we had such a high degree of [31:00] confidence, we just did make that jump and we did do it full-time.

So I‘m not sure how you coach that. Maybe it‘s, you do it in a more staggered approach. But. I think I have a high risk tolerance and I think I should have a higher risk tolerance. It might be one of my limiting beliefs. Like I watched, what‘s it, the WeWork documentary. And they follow, Adam Newman, a fictional Adam Newman.

And I watched that and I thought I could have more hustle. I don‘t think you wanna overcook it too much and not be founded in any sort of reality. A la Theranos. But I do think there is a measure, and something that I have in spades is that I‘m probably like a little bit nuts to start a business and leave a stable work environment because I see a version of the future where I think I can drastically change the way that this work is delivered.

And I see it and I feel it. And I know it‘s there. And so I‘m like, I‘m gonna do that. That requires a very high risk tolerance.

Sarah: Has [32:00] that always been with you, that high risk tolerance? That high risk appetite?

Elena: I think, yes.

Sarah: Where do you think it came from?

Elena: Like I‘m the child of immigrants, right?

So I‘m not afraid of hard work. I always saw my parents working and building their own businesses, so I think part of it is. In my own funny way, I was surrounded by a microcosm of entrepreneurs, both my mum and my dad.

Sarah: It was normal.

Elena: It was normal. And I think we‘ve gotta talk about privilege here.

My parents are self-made, but fundamentally, me starting a business, if it doesn‘t work out, which I don‘t think will be the case, I‘m not going to not have a roof and food, like I‘ll move back in with my parents. That‘s not my life ambition. But I think if you‘re starting from that base, and that‘s probably something we don‘t talk about enough.

I don‘t think entrepreneurs are necessarily the people out there in the world with the best ideas. It‘s the people that can take a career break and run hundreds of [33:00] interviews, validate a problem, and then build a solution. And that‘s not fair. This is my sense of justice again.

That‘s not fair. That‘s not right. That‘s the way of the world. Like the dream is that we have entrepreneurs who have access to capital that, can build their amazing, audacious ideas. But I think right now the entrepreneurs we have are people that can take a risk or have built something that is sustaining itself incrementally to then take a bigger jump.

Yes, I think I always had the risk tolerance and I don‘t think I think of failure in the way other people think of failure.

Sarah: How did you think of failure?

Elena: I think some people think, oh like if I start my own company, what if it doesn‘t work? I think that‘s a normal thought.

I don‘t think I see it that way. Firstly, I think we‘re killing it and we‘re, we are nailing it and we will deliver. But I think a better way of looking at it is, this may be, and this is my life‘s goal. But I‘m awesome. I‘m gonna do many awesome things. This is just a [34:00] part of my story too.

Sometimes I probably don‘t lean into that philosophical side of it. I lean more into this is my life‘s goal, like I‘m gonna achieve, which I think you do need to be single-minded, but having a risk appetite and saying. Failure is learning and growing. And if you don‘t learn from a mistake you made, that‘s true failure.

If you muck something up, which I think all of us do daily, but if you learn from it you‘re improving and you‘re doing better, and you‘re not gonna make that mistake again. So we‘ve built this into. Like our values and beliefs in our business, which is when we have our all hands meeting. The last slide is called Stumbles of the Week, and so firstly we do shout outs like Elle or Sarah did a great job on blah, and then we say, who had a stumble? Let‘s talk about it. And the whole idea there is a psychological safety building, a culture of owning up to the inevitable mistakes we have. The question we often ask once someone shares their [35:00] stumble, and by the way, like we share them too. Is what did you learn from it? It‘s okay, there was a stumble. Let‘s try not do it again, and let‘s make sure we‘re better. And that‘s. That‘s why I think I, I look at failure through a slightly different lens. We are all going to make mistakes as a business owner. I have to make as few mistakes as humanly possible, but that‘s unrealistic to think I would make none.

Sarah: None. Yeah.

Elena: So what I have to do is make sure I learn from them. I‘m like, we‘ve made mistakes. I probably make mistakes all the time. You just have to learn and grow. And do better next time. That‘s it. There‘s no room to make the mistake again and again. That‘s dumb. Yeah. Gotta keep moving forward and doing better.

Sarah: In the conversations that you are having with lawyers and even talking about and meeting younger lawyers coming through, do you see this type of risk appetite in them? Do you see those skills coming through? Is there a different, I guess what I‘m asking is there a different attitude in younger lawyers that you are noticing?

Elena: I‘ve heard anecdotally from [36:00] friends that are teachers that kids at school these days wanna be two things, which is one, an influencer or two an entrepreneur. Versus maybe the traditional I wanna be a lawyer or whatever. Yeah. So I think probably being an entrepreneur is in fashion at the moment.

And that‘s cool. Like love that. Am I noticing it in lawyers? When we went out to hire for a role not so long ago, we were looking for someone who had, a legal background and we were inundated with lawyers trying to transition out of being lawyers. And this is something like, this is a pain that I‘ve felt personally before because I wanted to not be a practicing lawyer and I wanted to move into something a bit more entrepreneurial when I was living in London.

So I totally get it. And it‘s quite hard to make that transition. So I have personally encountered a bunch of lawyers trying to move out of law and do something different. But I also think that, there‘s a bunch of people that [37:00] love practicing and that‘s their jam. And that‘s cool too.

So probably. If I look at my uni, like my law school friendship group, a lot of people are no longer lawyers. But I think that‘s quite common, that attrition rate, isn‘t it? At law firms, one in 10 go from grad all the way to partner, like it‘s, there‘s a bit of a drop off. Yeah. All lateral hires, right?

So I am not sure I can add much wisdom there other than yeah, I do see those people. But also there‘s a bunch that are happy. In practice or going in house or whatever it may be.

Sarah: Last question for you. You have a magic wand and you can change the legal industry. You get three wishes.

What are they?

Elena: Great question. Three wishes for the evolving, changing legal industry. Give me a sec here. Number one. I think it should better reflect a pluralistic diverse society. [38:00] So I think having representation both through genders and diverse groups of people, I think would only benefit an industry that serves people of all walks of life.

So I would want it to really reflect the society we have. I‘m not sure that it does that quite yet. Or where we have, more women than men are lawyers right now, I think it‘s 51%. It is quite high, isn‘t it? It‘s not necessarily representative in senior leadership. So I want that to change.

Number two, every corporate lawyer or deal professional would use Deeligence selfishly. And number three. Again, you can see my sense of justice here. I wish that the court system was not who could afford to progress something through litigation, but was more meritorious. I worked for a judge for a while and you can see how the system is not set up necessarily for like [39:00] in a criminal or context.

People who suffer atrocious crimes super well to relive the trauma. But also sometimes the people that can afford the litigation are the ones that have the staying power, not necessarily those with the best claim. And so I think that feels unfair. I don‘t have a very wise solution to that.

I‘m just calling out the problem that I would like to be solved. It‘s like better access to justice for folks.

Sarah: It‘s a big problem. It‘s a big challenge.

Elena: Yeah. It‘s true.

Sarah: Your first wish around a more pluralistic and diverse legal profession and seeing more women in leadership in the legal profession.

Talk to me about what that would change. There are some obvious changes. But talk to me about what you would see that change as.

Elena: Through the female senior leadership lens. I think we would have a much smaller gender pay gap for one, we know that women in the same role as their male counterparts at law firms [40:00] have gender pay gap.

And the data out of WGEA says that it‘s pretty stark in the legal industry. It‘s like it‘s bad. It‘s really good that law firms now are being asked to disclose that data, but as of last year, they weren‘t disclosing partner pay packages. And I would say that disparity is actually going to grow because we know that at most firms there are more male partners than female partners.

So I actually think the reality of the situation is worse than we know. And then there‘s also divide in senior leadership of salaried partners and equity partners, and that‘s also something I‘d wanna dive a bit deeper on. Who is in senior leadership I think it should reflect the fact that in our society we are half men and half women, and making sure that we are capturing the fact that women physically often need to take a break if they‘re having children.

And so capturing how we deal with that a bit better. So what I think it would change is probably pay parity. I think it would mean that [41:00] we have leadership understanding different challenges for different sexes. So it‘s not just about things that directly impact women, but things like dad‘s going on pat leave, right?

So just being more representative I think would be great. And I think the flow on effects would be, the flow on effects would be untold. I‘m not sure what would happen, but I think it would be a good thing.

Sarah: Elena, this has been. Insightful. Probably raw at times, which I think has been super refreshing.

Thank you so much for sharing your story, your insights all about going from practicing lawyer to business owner and co-founder. Fascinating journey and I‘m really excited to speak again soon. Thank you.

Elena: Thanks so much for having me.

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 [42:00] 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.

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.