Law firm disruption won't start with technology. It starts with the client. Bjarne Tellmann spent 25 years as general counsel at Coca-Cola, Pearson, and GSK. His book "Law in the Era of AI" maps how the changes inside corporations will force the legal industry to adapt or vanish.

Firms are posting record profits. But 100% of GCs in a recent Axiom survey regret their law firm engagements. 89% no longer consider them adequate. Bjarne draws on Nokia, Kodak, and Clayton Christensen's disruption theory to show why the most profitable incumbents are the most exposed to law firm disruption.

He also offers paths forward. ClearyX funded its own disruption. The gazelle elephant model shows GCs how to rebuild their teams. And a warning: agentic AI is already making autonomous decisions inside corporations. If general counsels don't step into governance now, they'll be cleaning up the mess later.

You'll learn

• why law firm disruption always starts with the client, not technology
• what the milkshake analogy teaches about law firm blind spots
• why no law firm has ever gone under while still profitable
• how ClearyX funded its own disruption on purpose
• what the gazelle elephant model means for legal team design

Powered by Zeno

This episode is powered by Zeno. Zeno is an AI native legal workspace built for Dutch and EU law.

Its AI navigates law like a human legal professional. Secure, transparent and grounded in authoritative sources.

Visit zeno.law and make deep thinking your competitive edge.

00:00 Introduction

02:15 Why innovation needs ideas from unexpected places

08:50 Record profits but law firm disruption is coming

12:20 The AI factory driving law firm disruption

17:10 The profession with zero curiosity about its clients

23:00 Jobs to be done: what clients actually hire lawyers for

32:00 Why law firm disruption is structurally impossible

38:20 What if tech companies answer legal questions

42:15 Kodak invented digital photography and still failed

46:30 ClearyX: a firm that funded its own disruption

53:10 The gazelle elephant model for legal teams

57:30 Agentic AI and why governance cannot wait

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A banking lawyer at one of the world's largest law firms teaches herself Python on weekends. She builds an AI-powered billing tool in a Jupyter notebook. Months later, that tool is rolled out across the entire firm.

Tanya Sadoughi is Linklaters' AI and Innovation Lead Lawyer for Global Banking. When ChatGPT launched one month into her innovation secondment, she saw the opportunity before most others did. She talked to every lawyer in the banking practice, mapped every pain point, and built a working prototype herself.

That prototype became the WIP Summariser, now deployed firmwide. Today she leads a team of five AI lawyers inside a global network of twenty.

Vibe coding is changing how lawyers work. Not by replacing them, but by turning them into builders. Tanya explains what that looks like inside a major international law firm. From hackathons that spark curiosity to agentic systems that solve problems at scale.

You'll learn

• Why the AI lawyer role should always be filled internally
• How a weekend prototype became an enterprise tool at Linklaters
• What vibecoding means for the legal profession
• Why hackathons are the best way to spark AI curiosity at law firms
• How Linklaters scaled from one to twenty AI lawyers
• What lawyers and engineers can learn from each other

Powered by Zeno

This episode is powered by Zeno. Zeno is an AI native legal workspace built for Dutch and EU law.

Its AI navigates law like a human legal professional. Secure, transparent and grounded in authoritative sources.

Visit zeno.law and make deep thinking your competitive edge.

0:00 Introduction

2:04 Will lawyers become builders

4:53 Growing up in a pizza shop in South Yorkshire

9:17 A viral YouTube channel at 15

11:16 Why she chose law

13:29 Becoming a banking lawyer at Linklaters

15:42 The itch for something different

17:35 ChatGPT launches one month into her innovation role

19:28 First experiments with large language models

23:18 The billing problem nobody could solve

27:26 Learning Python on weekends

31:31 The moment the prototype worked

35:31 Hackathons and sparking curiosity at law firms

40:23 From one AI lawyer to twenty

43:47 Vibecoding five apps in one week

46:31 What engineers and lawyers can learn from each other

51:23 Why every law firm needs an AI lawyer

53:01 More builders not more tools

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawyers are architects of society. But what happens when AI changes how law is accessed, practiced and understood?

In this episode of Legal AI Lab, Soledad Atienza, Dean of IE Law School, explains why legal education must move beyond national systems and embrace a global legal mindset.

AI makes legal knowledge more accessible than ever. That means law schools must shift their focus. From memorising content to developing critical thinking. From national silos to comparative principles. From narrow specialisation to multidisciplinary awareness.

We discuss:

• Why law schools should not ban AI but guide its use

• How assessments must change in an AI world

• Why students must learn to question AI outputs

• Why demand for legal services is growing, not shrinking

• The importance of human skills such as empathy, negotiation and teamwork

Powered by Zeno

This episode is powered by Zeno. Zeno is an AI native legal workspace built for Dutch and EU law.

Its AI navigates law like a human legal professional. Secure, transparent and grounded in authoritative sources.

Visit zeno.law and make deep thinking your competitive edge.

00:00 Lawyers as architects of society

02:47 National regulation vs global practice

06:18 From systems to principles

09:42 Knowledge vs judgment in the AI era

14:11 Growing demand for legal services

17:36 Embedding AI across the curriculum

22:04 Teaching students to question AI

26:53 Rethinking assessment in an AI world

32:27 Generalists and multidisciplinary thinking

37:12 Human skills in a tech driven profession

41:05 Experiential learning and VR

44:38 Habits future lawyers must build

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.