Ep 011 Interview with Alice Armitage, Chief Executive Professor of the LaxLab at UC Hastings College of Law

Episode 11 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- An Interview with Alice Armitage, Chief Executive Professor of the LexLab at UC Hastings College of Law

Episode 11 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) finds your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviewing Alice Armitage, a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law who heads the LexLab at the law school.

Charlie delves into Alice's professional background, and learns from Alice that, after law school, she practiced law at a law firm, from there founded two startups (outside of the legal tech area) and moved next to the College of Law at UC Hasting to helm, first, the school's Legal Startup Garage and, now, its LexLab. Alice describes the core of the LexLab as involving classroom instruction in legal innovation topics, an accelerator program for legal tech startups and the staging of events that focus on matters ranging from law practice regulatory changes to legal ops. Alice also describes the unique startup-practice-clinic mission of the Legal Startup Garage at the law school.

Charlie and Alice move on to discuss (i) how the private law firm business model can impede adoption of legal tech, (ii) the absence of client pressure on law firms to promote innovation and practice efficiencies, (iii) what many law schools are doing, and also failing to do, when it comes to teaching subjects relevant to legal practice innovations, (iv) how LexLab introduces legal tech startups to law students for interning and beta-testing purposes, (v) whether law schools should include coding and design thinking into their curricula and (vi) how Alice reads the collapse of the Atrium law firm/legal tech company from her vantage point on the West Coast.