Karla Schlaepfer MA is a German-American author. She has been writing since 2014 – in German and English – about innovation in companies and law firms, co-creation with design change processes and coaching topics.

Here is a selection of informative blog articles related to the legal sector.

Lawyer Wellbeing

Lawyer Well-being - The Silent Epidemic - A Liquid Legal Booklet to be published by Editions Weblaw in 2021 The following text is an excerpt from my contribution to the publication. It is an exploration with practical examples of using human-centered approaches like Design Thinking in legal business. Becoming Human Centric: How to Promote Wellbeing in Business Practices It’s never been more important to safeguard mental health in the legal workplace.

New Legal Work Webinar mit einer Mural Demonstration

New Legal Work ist nicht nur ein Hype, es ist eine post-pandemische Realität und eine Folge der Digitalisierung der Arbeit 🌍 Sind Sie bereit? 😅 Laut dem Top-Anwalt Mark Cohen wird die Mentalität des lebenslangen Lernens zum Standard für zukünftige Anwälte, unabhängig von ihrem Karriereweg. Wir wissen, dass sich unsere Welt verändert hat.

What if you could design legal contracts

👉🏼The good news is you can, and it might be more tangible than you think!👈🏼 Our 3. webinar will highlight the benefits of using synergies of both LPM and design thinking frameworks. Together with our guests lawyers Harald Evers and DirkTauber, we will discuss “why” the combination is the key. Plus how these synergies add value and systematic to approaching legal project work ⚖.

Keeping my fingers crossed 🤞🏼

Super excited and happy for my legal tech start-up team Amicus! The team will join the other 10 top finalists in pitching their AI legal service “Amicus” to a panel of investor judges. Probably a little like “Shark Tank” or “Höhle der Löwe” in Germany but not so glamorous 😉

Legal New Work Empowering Women to make a change

“Sistas are doin’ it for themselves …” “She breaks the Law” is a monthly webinar inviting us to tune into transformative 💥 stories by innovative legal disruptors. Nathalie’s change story took us around the world. Now she is legal director at a large corporate pharmaceutical firm. Nathalie Maccow-IJtsma narrated her professional “learning by doing” by using an agile ability to jump from one sector of the law to another and keep the balls 🤹‍♂️ in the air with a “helicopter” 💫perspective.

⚡Embracing the power of Design Thinking 💥

What a ride it’s been! 🐱‍🏍🎢 12 weeks of facilitation using core design thinking tools to nurture the product idea “Amicus” into a testable wireframe! 🤓 Developing understanding for the power of design thinking and overcoming the unusual time 🕑restrictions between two continents (4.5 hours??), the takeaway of my engagement with the legal tech entrepreneurial team was overwhelmingly positive.

Make Time for Small Talk in Your Virtual Meetings – 3 Easy Ways

Virtual meetings can present many big challenges for managers. “Water cooler moments” or small talk are those informal conversations that occur naturally and spontaneously between people because we humans crave connection. Allowing time for these unplanned moments is important. Science shows how “informal chatting” can help promote strong bonds between team members, and the absence of such personal exchange can be truly demotivating.

Legal Tech Und Digital Law Convent

Sämtliche Branchen befinden sich im Auf- und Umbruch, gerade im letzten Jahr wurden Prozesse und alltägliche Arbeitsweisen mehr denn je in Frage gestellt. Dabei macht die Digitalisierungswelle auch vor dem Rechtsmarkt keinen Halt – der Wandel erfasst Arbeitsprozesse, Strukturen und Geschäftsmodelle. In den Rechtsabteilungen sind Sie nun gefordert, neue Chancen und Strategien zu gestalten.

Glimpse of our Miro Workshop board 23.03.21

“Thank you very much for the valuable insight into this exciting topic” 🙌🏼 Feedback from our premiere session today at #LegalLive! Thanks to our participants for their active engagement and bold contributions 🤩 Our 1. Agile Legal Work Hacks: mini-workshop title: ➡“Enable a Growth Mindset with Design Thinking”

Remote Innovation Workshops Offers

Are you interested in remote innovation workshops and virtual design thinking? Find out more about individual formats with different lengths and contents in the pdf below. This PDF gives you technical information that you’ll need for the Agile Legal Work Hacks Together with @Nils Schekorr I’m hosting four virtual workshops from March 23 to 25 at LEGAL LIVE.

How Agile Design Thinking Helps Lawyers Surf the Digital Waves

The following article outlines how to utilize the problem-solving framework of human-centered design to create meaningful new interventions that increase collaboration and help lawyers integrate a human-centered approach effectively into their legal work. Read the entire article on the Legal Evolutionary

Efficiency in Remote Legal Working is an Important Topic!

This article published in “Legal Business World” shows how those who are open to change can use digital offerings and collaboration to enable human-centered team working in the legal sector. It outlines the benefits, eventual risks and clear steps to developing better performing legal teams. Included are info-graphics and a guideline for more resources.

February fresh insights on how to accelerate 🚀 your learning curve

Hi friends of Design Change! We’re starting to see some glimmers of hope ✨on the horizon. Vaccines are here, even if they’re not yet widely available. Our world is still hurting, and laughter 😎 can help. Did you know ““The average four-year-old laughs as many as three hundred times per day while the average forty-year-old, by comparison, laughs three hundred times every two and a half months.

Design Thinking User-Research at the Liquid Legal Experience 2020

How can lawyers use Design Thinking? Our session at the Liquid Legal Experience provided hands-on answers! In partnership with the Anwaltszukunftskongress (AZK), the 30 international Liquid Legal Experience attendees (from Australia to California) had the opportunity to collaborate and win a new book on innovative legal services. The event was kicked off with a keynote by Alexander Britz, Head of Legal and AI at Microsoft.

Music to our ears; talking with users

I’m involved in a pro-bono user research project. This means my partner (Baltasar Cevc) and I are setting up and carrying out interviews with interested and open lawyers. They are our target audience. We want to dig deeper and validate (or not!) our presented hypotheses in the recent essay we wrote for the Liquid Legal Insititute e.

➡ Collaboration is key.

Do you have 30-minutes to contribute to the future of remote legal working?✨ The unexpected drives us on. We’re curious and would like to talk with you in a short interview about your EXPERIENCES WITH REMOTE TEAM WORK IN THE FIELD OF LAW. In our white paper, we present 5 hypotheses about what this change involves.

ReMeP 2020 – Research Meets Practice

Legal Informatics Conference in Vienna, Austria 8, 9, 16 and 23 June 2020 😃 ich freue mich über die Einladung zur Podiumsdiskussion! 🤩 Mein Teil beschäftigt sich mit der Entwicklung von agilen Werkzeugen+Mentalität (lasst es uns ausprobieren und dann messen), die zentrale Bedeutung von menschenzentrierten Daten aus dem realen Leben und der Kundenforschung.

Is it true that lawyers in particular have a hard time accepting change?

Maybe one of my last live events for a while! FGS Legal Tech meet-up in Bonn. Interactive lecture: entitled: Change in the Legal Industry with Design Thinking. A short report: Is it true that lawyers in particular have a hard time embracing change? According to Dr. Larry Richard (LawyerBrain), lawyers are risk averse and even not very sociable.

Wege zur agilen Transformation

Veränderungen innerhalb eines Unternehmens sind immer auch mit Skepsis und Angst vor der Zukunft verbunden. Neues auszuprobieren bedeutet auch immer ein Risiko einzugehen. Menschen reagieren unterschiedlich auf Neuerungen und es ist wichtig, die einzelnen Typen von Menschen zu kennen und auf deren Persönlichkeit einzugehen. Es gibt vier unterschiedliche Typen von Menschen im Transformationsprozess Wir unterscheiden grundsätzliche vier verschieden Typen.

RA Dr. Martin Lücke interviewt Design Thinker Karla Schlaepfer M.A.

Das Interview fand statt im Rahmen von Dr. Lückes Doktorarbeit Legal Design Thinking über die Anwendung von Design Thinking als juristischer Berufsträger (2019) Martin: Welche Anwendungsbeispiele siehst du für Design Thinking im Rechtswesen? Karla: Digitale Software und Automatisierung können den Zugang zum Rechtssystem für beide, Rechtsanwälte und Mandanten, enorm erleichtern. Sie bieten viele Möglichkeiten der Prozessoptimierung und Kostenersparnis.

Press release on the 5th NRW Legal Tech Meet-Up sponsored by Wolters Kluwer

Professionals interested in Legal Tech from all over NRW met for the 5. Legal Tech Meetup at Headquarters Downtown in Cologne. It was clear right from the start that there was a strong desire to network and talk, the evening moderator Johannes Klostermann, (Head of Innovation Legal at co-host Wolters Kluwer Germany), had some trouble getting the 75 guests to stop networking so that the program could start.

Zukunft der Rechtsberatung

Erschienen in: Infobrief Spezial MkG, Ausgabe 05, Oktober 2017  Die Digitalisierung hat es möglich gemacht, Menschen schneller und effizienter zu ihrem Recht zu verhelfen. Das Schlagwort hierfür heißt: Legal Tech. Innovationen wie Smartlaw, Flightright.de oder Geblitzt.de zeigen, wie solche softwarebasierten Geschäftsmodelle funktionieren. Wer sich als Anwalt zurücklehnt und glaubt, er könne seine Dienstleistungen unverändert anbieten, der läuft Gefahr, dieser rasanten Entwicklung als erster zum Opfer zu fallen.