ILTACON Europe this year largely focused on talks from great speakers who are not connected with the legal tech world but have powerful messages to share.
The new one-day format called on famous broadcasters (Dr Adam Rutherford); astrophysicists (professor Kevin Fong); former pilot (Captain Emma Henderson); and Stemettes founder Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon. The legal tech exception was Zach Abramovitz, an investor and strategist in the sector, who talked about where disruption is really coming from.
If the day tells us anything, it’s perhaps that at this time of upheaval, legal tech leaders in Europe want the tools to think critically and out of the box about leadership and well-being.
Diversity and race – The data
Dr Adam Rutherford is a scientist, writer and broadcaster, who appears on Radio 4 and has written multiple books, including ‘Where are you really from’?
Rutherford, who is half Guyanese Indian and who was born in Ipswich, has devoted his career to digging into the history and fallacies of race and racism.
He argues against the misuse of bad data based on race, which, he urged the audience to realise, is a social construct, not a biological one.
Rutherford pointed to examples of global IQ data that show countries such as Africa with a low score. The data is based on “shockingly poor samples” and Rutherford urged, “always check the provenance of your data.”
The first metrics associated with racial hierarchies came from Nazi Germany. It was Charles Darwin who began to unpick white supremacist claims of superiority, arguing that the concept of race relies on essentialism – the belief that certain groups of people possess uniform characteristics. In fact, blood tests have shown that people from Ethiopia and Sudan are statistically less likely to be similar to one another than they are to the rest of the world. “Pigmentation is a poor proxy for overall genetic relatedness,” Rutherford said.
It was a fascinating talk that saw Rutherford urge the audience: “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, you have to be anti-racist.”
How to fail
Professor Kevin Fong spoke at ILTACON Europe last year, and ILTA liked his talk enough to have him back for a second year. It’s no surprise, really. Dr Fong has degrees in astrophysics, medicine and engineering. He’s worked with NASA’s human space flight programme in Houston. And somehow, along the line, he has also become a fantastic speaker.
His talk focused on how to fail and learn from our mistakes. The sub message was ‘why today feels like it does and what can we do about it?’ The answer he came to in terms of the latter question, was ‘adaptive capacity.’
Fong has been in space with NASA and to this day still flies with the Air Ambulance, having attended multiple major emergencies across London, including terrorist attacks. “Flying is the bit of my job I really enjoy”, he said. “I was never sporty at school but now I understand why people put on a sports kit and play for a team at the weekend.”
He talked about examples of companies who didn’t see the future – Kodak and Nokia – and the principle of VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – commenting: “The world has never been more uncertain that it now; we sit at the edge of chaos.”
Fong’s experience of attending a spate of terrorist attacks and bombings in London taught him many things. Amid chaos you can have order by being prepared and well drilled. When Fong attended a terrorist attack in 1999 at just one year qualified and when the senior medical team at his hospital were away on bank holiday, he describes a nurse in the back of the ambulance telling him almost robotically what he would find in the left and right pocket of his uniform. “When you have chaotic movement, what is your strategy?” he asked, adding: “You need enough agility in your team to adapt.”
Fong gave an example of Top Gun pilot and instructor John Boyd, who said that aerial combat is a science. If you understand your aircraft’s adaptive capacity – velocity, speed, drag and weight- you will not lose. His mantra was ‘he who adapts fast, survives.’ Fong said: “It’s all about systems and teamwork,” adding: “You need to have an adaptive mindset.”
You need to have a strategy for adaptability, and that may mean relying on younger members of staff, not just the most senior. Fong gave an example of the Apollo space mission, where Apollo got hit by lightning and it was a 27-year-old flight controller who suggested how to fix it. They listened to him and relayed the message to the rocket, and “that is how NASA got to the moon.”
Concluding his talk, Fong talked about the importance of creating a culture of belonging and resilience (it’s important to have fun), and psychological safety – if people in your organisation don’t feel able to speak up, your feedback loop is broken.
Grounded leadership
Up after lunch, Captain Emma Henderson spoke about her time as an EasyJet pilot, overcoming leadership challenges and turbulence, as documented in an ITV programme called ‘Inside the Cockpit’ which followed Henderson and her crew around.
Henderson became known overnight as ‘Captain Emma’, which stood her in good stead in 2020 when lockdown hit and the airline industry was grounded.
Reflecting back, she reminded the audience that while the present day feels stressful and there is a sense that we have never been through such turbulent times, we have been through recession; the rise of fascism; the Cold War; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Suez crisis; 9/11; Covid, and the list goes on. New technology is not a new thing, Henderson said. “At one time people probably thought cars were voodoo,” she said.
As a pilot, coping with turbulence revolves around using charts and mathematical predictions so there are as few as possible surprises. The charts show bad weather so that you can decide if you need extra fuel. There are checklists that have to be followed. And you can strap people in to keep them safe – “Looking after your people has to be your number one priority,” Henderson said.
Building relationships as a pilot is critical and during busy EasyJet flight schedules, Henderson had seconds to do that before a flight. “We all bring our own microclimate,” she said. “Think about the atmosphere you create. You can have conversations with people without being awful.”
Henderson also talked about psychological safety and the principle of “ODOR” – observe, decide, orientate, react. Also, she said, just don’t be a dick.
During Covid, Henderson founded charity Project Wingman, under which thousands of air stewards and stewardesses helped the NHS. It earned her an MBE. However, she reflected on the time that she took her Captain test and failed, observing that she learned more from that than anything else, and that “failure is a stepping stone and how we grow.”
AI and ROI
Speaking after Captain Emma was Zach Abramovitz, a former practicing attorney, investor, and founder of Killer Whale Strategies, who talked about how we are headed for an AI revolution, in which individuals will begin to realise exactly what they are capable of – and act on it -when armed with AI.
One of the most important recent AI deals, Abramovitz said, was the sale of Base44, a zero-code app that enables anyone to build a website. It was sold for $80m, which in the scale of recent investments is “not that big of an amount” but what’s unique is its fast-growth story and what it says about AI’s potential.
Base44 came about after its founder was on a plane with his girlfriend, who was going to build a website. “He said, ‘how about we create a tool for ordinary people to build their own applications?’” Within a short period of time, the company was worth $1.5m ARR and still bootstrapped. With very few employees, each of them made $3m when the company was acquired by Wix.com. “This is a new game and there is a new way to build,” Abramovitz said.
The message behind his talk was, essentially, to start thinking in an altogether new way and understand that if you’re not, your staff are. Whether you ban it or not, people will be using ChatGPT at home. “The more lawyers use AI, the more they love it,” he said. “This isn’t like old technology, and none of that old resistance exists.”
ROI is a topic that we return to in the industry continuously, but Ambramavitz said: “ROI just needs to measured by asking your attorneys – if it doesn’t improve morale and retention, it’s failing.”
Abramovitz’ view – from speaking with private equity investors who are ready to put their money where their mouth is – is that attorneys will begin breaking away from the traditional law firm model in their droves, delivering AI powered legal services.
“Law firms are going to have to figure out how to keep their lawyers,” he observed.
The future of work – Robots are taking your jobs
Last but not least was child-prodigy Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, co-founder of award-winning social enterprise Stemettes, which helps girls enter STEM roles. She was also – many will be interested to hear – on multiple episodes of Countdown in charge of the numbers and letters, another of her many accomplishments.
Imafidon was naturally curious as a child and describes taking apart the family VCR. She ran the Stemettes for around 12 years, encouraging girls aged five to 25 into STEM subjects, asking the audience to think about what the girls of five would be going in 50 years’ time.
When we were younger, Knight Rider seemed completely futuristic. Now, we talk to our cars, even if we don’t usually fight crime with them. What will exist in the future that we can’t conceive of now? Imafidon asked. “Imagine being able to codify tastes and smells?” she asked, or create a digital crime scene that you can step through.
There’s much to think about given the fast progress of technology, and here we came full circle to diversity and inclusion. When seatbelt and airbags were invented, women and children were – and still are – much more likely to be killed. Technology understands nothing about women’s health. Image recognition technology is blatantly and outrageously racist. “When we don’t do the right thing at the base, we can’t build something we’re proud of,” she said, adding, “Those things will start turning up in real life.”
Imafidon is Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work and said that the organisation had used AI for help with job adverts, hiring and management. After six months, the cracks started to show, the pay gap widened, and the hiring policy contravened the organisation’s values. “It’s important as we deploy technology and bring in new tools that we reflect on the realities,” she said.
Conclusion
It can be a challenge to create content that is ‘a bit leftfield’ and for it to hit home. The quality of the speakers here was key. They were engaging and kept everyone’s attention for the entire day, which is no mean feat, particularly during conference season. Well done to the organisers, and roll on next year.
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