LegalTechTalk Uncovered Ep 16 – Aleksandra Kowalska 

Transcript

Robert Hanna: Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast, LegalTechTalk Uncovered mini-series, powered by Clio. Please introduce yourself.

Aleksandra Kowalska: Hi, my name is Aleksandra Kowalska. You can call me Alex. Legal Council for East European Resource Centre, so we’re a London charity helping vulnerable migrants from Eastern Europe.

And I’m also the founder of Alex Legal English, where I teach legal English.

Robert Hanna: And you do not sit still. We’ve known each other quite a while now on the online world, and you do so much for the legal community. And it’s so good to see you here live at LegalTechTalk.

Can you tell me firstly, how are you finding the conference?

Aleksandra Kowalska: It’s great. It’s my first time here and I absolutely love it. So many people and so many inspiring presentations.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, it’s amazing, isn’t it? I love the energy of coming to these big conferences. We’re at the O2, Incident to Continental Hotel, love coming to London, love meeting old and new faces.

So yeah, I’m really enjoying the energy from today. You talked about your intro, the things that you do, but let’s get into that a little bit more. Can you describe a bit more of what you focus on and how you help the legal community?

Aleksandra Kowalska: So I have two things, so two main areas of activity. The first one is Legal Council for the Charity, and we do help migrants from Eastern and Central Europe. So that’s family law, domestic abuse, immigration, welfare, anything that they would need from us.

And it’s really all about access to justice because so many of our clients don’t really speak English and we do need to help them with basically communication. So that’s the first thing I do. And the other one is teaching legal English.

So I organise courses for foreign lawyers, lawyers who want to improve their English, improve their communication. I’ve organised a few courses for Ukrainian lawyers to help them gain new skills and to make it easier for them to find a job.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and it’s amazing, as I say, I don’t know how you fit it all in, everything that you’re doing. But there’s challenges. When you put yourself out there and you do all of this work, there is a lot of challenges along the way.

So what are some of the challenges you’ve identified in the legal sector and how are you going about addressing them?

Aleksandra Kowalska: So for most of my clients, it really is about access to justice. Many of them are vulnerable. They are not really digitally proficient.

So when, for example, people had to apply for the settled status, EUSS, many of our clients would have a phone, they would have a mobile device, but they wouldn’t really be able to fill out the application firstly because of the lack of digital skills, but also because they just didn’t understand what was written there. So some of them would speak English, but it would be limited English. But when it comes to legal English and actually communicating in some formal situations, that is really challenging for them.

Many of them wouldn’t really know the system because they grew up in the civil law system where everything works really differently. So it is also about the trust, the lack of trust and just finding the right way to communicate.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and you do such a fabulous job of bridging that access to justice gap in the work that you do. And Clio, who sponsored our show, and myself obviously with the show, we’re very passionate about that as well. And I’m a big believer in technology can be for good to actually reduce that access to justice gap.

What’s been a standout moment for you thus far at LegalTechTalk? I know we spoke offline about an AI and also the billable hour, but has there been a particular standout moment for you thus far?

Aleksandra Kowalska: Well, so I’ve only been to two or three presentations, so I’m really looking forward to attending more. But so far it’s been great. I feel really inspired.

I feel like I have more energy and I really like Christina Blacklaws talking about access to justice. That was the best presentation.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and she’s also a Legally Speaking Podcast alumni, Christina, former president of Law Society of England and Wales. She’s been on the show, so folks can go and check that out. So what are some of your future plans then, Aleks?

And where can people find out more about you? Where are some websites, social media links? We’ll also share them with this episode for you too.

Aleksandra Kowalska: My future plans, more legal English courses, especially for Ukrainian lawyers and also for lawyers from other jurisdictions. You can find me on Instagram, LegalEnglishInLondon, and you can visit my website. That’s Aleks LegalEnglish.

And on LinkedIn, it’s just Aleksandra Kowalska, or you can look for Aleks.

Robert Hanna: There we have it. Aleks, it’s been a pleasure finally getting you on the show, meeting you in person at this awesome conference. Congratulations on everything you’re doing.

But from now, from all of us on the Legally Speaking Podcast, over and out.

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration hub, the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord. Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join our community there.

Over and out.