Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future – Orly Lobel – S6E7

00:08 Rob Hanna:

Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast. You are now listening to Season 6 of the show. I’m your host Rob Hanna. This week I’m delighted to be joined by Orly Lobel. Orly is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Employment and Labor Policy at the University of San Diego. This year, she has been awarded a University Professorship for outstanding contributions in teaching and research. Orly has clerked at the Israeli Supreme Court and is a former military data analyst. She has taught at Yale Law School, served as a fellow at Harvard University Center for Ethics and the professions, the Kennedy School of Government and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Orly regularly consult governments and industry professionals on law, as well as technology. She’s been featured in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Wired and The New Yorker. She’s also a member of the American Law Institute. Orly is an award-winning writer, the author of ‘You Don’t Own Me’, ‘Talent Wants to Be Free’, and her forthcoming book, ‘The Equality Machine’, so a very, very warm welcome, Orly.

01:21 Orly Lobel:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

01:22 Rob Hanna:

It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And before we dive into everything, would you mind telling us a little bit more about your background and experiences?

01:30 Orly Lobel:

Sure. So my background is a bit unusual for an American Law Professor, I am an Israeli. Now I’m a naturalised American as well. But I started my career in law in Israel after my military service. I went to Tel Aviv University. I clerked on those rows before, which was an amazing experience and then really, I wanted to expand my understanding and comparisons of legal systems. And I traveled all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a couple of degrees. And, you know, from there, the academic track was pretty much you know, more and more of the natural, you know, stages of research and teaching, and I moved to California for permanent jobs. Me and my husband, and we love it here in Southern California.

02:29 Rob Hanna:

And there’s a lot to unpack there because you mentioned obviously, you’ve studied, so you’ve studied at Tel Aviv University, and also sort of being at Harvard Law School. So what were your experiences studying at both institutions like?

02:42 Orly Lobel:

Well, both institutions are world class. And honestly, I think people that you know, you come, people at Harvard think, you know, you come to Harvard. Wow. That’s the top but I never felt like it was more challenging at Harvard, or kind of less quality education at Tel Aviv. And I’m very much in touch with both institutions, all the time. So both Harvard, the Harvard bookstore and Tel Aviv University are doing events for my new book that’s coming out in October, and I just got back from Tel Aviv University. I spend every summer there. I have a summer office. I’m very loyal to Tel Aviv University Law Faculty, even though in Israel at large, I have co-authors and colleagues that really all the universities at Toluca in Israel, because it’s a small academic community, but I’m very much a Tel Aviv person. So I have very strong love for both these institutions.

03:46 Rob Hanna:

Oh, that’s lovely to hear. And I absolutely love just hearing your story and your background. And let’s stick with Israel then because you clerked at the Israeli Supreme Court. So how did you come across that amazing opportunity? Tell us more about what your role involved as well.

03:59 Orly Lobel:

Right, no, I didn’t come across it, that sounds too casual. It’s a really, you know, when when you have the ambitions to become a presser and to go for graduate school abroad, and to not only practice but really do kind of deep thinking. I think it’s similar really everywhere, definitely here in the United States as well. You know, the place that you want to get some training is on the Supreme Court, or any court for that matter. I very much encourage all my students here at University of San Diego to look for a clerkship job. I think you get so much from being in the chambers, the judicial chambers, understanding how the adjudication or not you know, the seeing it kind of from the outside from law firms. So I was very fortunate. The part that’s kind of more casual and more fortunate and more luck than, no rains is that I applied for the, for being a clerk with the justices. And what happened that year, it was less of an organised application process than it is today, where I think you sent kind of centralised applications. And then it goes to all the justices at the same time and they decide who to interview. At that point, there was a little bit of a race between the justices and my justice, it’s hard because a male who is actually quite famous in the UK and administrative law, he wrote very significant books on admin law and common law, employment regulation as well. But just as a mere, because he’s such a sweet person, I think he felt like he was late in the game the year before me and he had not scheduled you know, kind of already. So you would think that you can get, you know, the top students in their third year of law school. You know, they’re not yet decided about what they’re going to do post law school, except that happened to be this kind of race to the bottom of let’s get them you know, best from second year and let’s maybe get the top person who finishes you know, top of her class the first year. And so he noticed that and his clerks that year told him, yeah, you gotta get in early. So he was actually the first justice that I interviewed with, I sent, I sent it also to Chief Justice Barak, Aharon Barak, whose you know, very was very prominent president of the Israeli Supreme Court, and also very well known around the world for his scholarship. But he wasn’t interviewing yet. And I came and I did just this 1 interview with Justice Amir, he offered me the clerkship and I ended up not with anybody else. And I can say that it was 1 of the best, you know, career experiences that I’ve ever had. I learned so much from him, not only from his wisdom, and you know, the thinking about law, but also just from his style of working as a team and not being very hierarchical. And I’m the authority but really letting me unusually kind of giving me more discretion, drafting decision, opinions, challenging his his take on things.

07:27 Rob Hanna:

That sounds like great leadership to me, allowing you to almost grow and have those opportunities. And again, it’s amazing what you’ve, you’ve done, because sticking with, you know, impressive things, you also spent some time teaching at Yale Law School. So can you tell us more about your time at Yale?

07:42 Orly Lobel:

Yeah, it was, I didn’t want just to have Harvard. And this has become all so common and kind of academic track. I had done my graduate doctoral studies at Harvard and before going on the tenure track, job market, what you call it, the meat market happened very soon now again, kind of happens every year in October, in DC, I decided to do, like, we call it a BAP of visiting assistant professorship or kind of a lectureship for a couple of years. It’s basically a postdoc for law, you know, academics, where you are teaching, and you’re doing your research, but you’re still deciding you know, where to go for your permanent job. I actually have a lot of thoughts in comparison, unlike with like Philippi, Pantha, Harvard, where I said, it was both, you know, so comparable and amazing experiences I have, if I knew you better, I would have horror stories for you about that move Cambridge to New Haven and, you know, some things I saw, but every institution has very, very distinct cultures. Yale is a little bit more closed, and I felt a little bit more self-referential.

08:55 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, well, it’s you know, it’s great that like you said, you’ve got both, you’ve got Yale, you’ve got Harvard and you’ve had different experiences. And you know, sticking with the sort of academic side of things, you’re now the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of Center for Employment and Labor Policy at the University of San Diego. So what do you most enjoy about the role there?

09:13 Orly Lobel:

Yeah, well, the truth is, it’s almost embarrassing, an embarrassment of riches. I love every aspect of my job as a professor I love and we wear several hats for sure. So you know, we think about it as at least as a 3 prong paths, but it’s probably more, where we have the writing and research on the one hand, and we have teaching and mentoring students and sending them off to the world to become attorneys, and then our service, which the directorship of my center is part of my institutional leadership, sort of as so all of them have a lot of synergies with 1 another. So there’s so much that I learned from my students this semester, I’m teaching a course that’s called corporate innovation and legal policy, which is a seminar that very much changes every year. It’s, it’s about how we think about tech, and innovation and how it fits with our social goals, our legal policies, our collective values, and because it’s about innovation, it’s always new, to teach this course it always changes. And my students in this smaller seminar, they all write pieces, they all write research papers under my guidance, so I learned from them about, you know, what’s the latest content moderation and blockchain and NFTs and environmental pollution regulation, and green tech, and they’re all really amazing. So I love my students. And I absolutely love writing. That’s probably what how I think about myself. My first first passion is as an author, and my my third book is now coming out in October, ‘The Equality Machine’. So it’s really pouring so much of what I learned and research into the broader audience books, it’s very much at the frontier of my work right now.

11:24 Rob Hanna:

Yeah. And it’s it’s so much the amazing what you do, because I’m sure you’re a wonderful author, and you know, your new exciting book. And you know, you’re talking my language also, when you’re talking about tech. I’m a Web3 enthusiast, I love seeing how the Metaverse is basically, you know, going to be lots of opportunities, particularly for the legal industry and all things Web3 technologies. And so talking around that you consult government and the industry on law and technology. So tell us a bit more about sort of those companies, government departments you’ve collaborated with, and, you know, share some of your experiences, because I really love that sort of, you know, innovative sort of legal meet tech side of things.

12:00 Orly Lobel:

Sure. Yeah. So my first book was, is called ‘Talent Wants to Be Free’. And I was really looking at how innovation happens in the tech industry here in Silicon Valley, in California, here in Southern California and the biotech industry, and really around the world. Also in Israel, by the way, which is innovation nation, and number 1 per capita, with start-ups and VC investment, probably second only to Silicon Valley. And, you know, we can talk also about my military experience coming out of that, you know, in a unit where a lot of start-up teams actually met, doing their military service, and then going into industry. But I was seeing a lot of this impulse of tech companies and companies at large to control innovation, and in particularly, in particular, to control human capital. So the potential for innovation, the talent, that is really at the frontier of innovation, the scientists and the programmers. And when I looked in California, and really, this is there’s also kind of this autobiographical piece in the research, where I was looking at the legal regime in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where I was teaching and then moving to California, here in California, we have this very unique stance where we do not enforce non competes, and it’s been in, it has been the law in California since the inception of the state. So it’s really this unique stance of wanting talent to be free. And you know, that’s the title of my book, ‘Talent Wants to Be Free’. But it’s not only that, you know, the the people that move between jobs are better off because they can really be selective and where their experience and skills and passions are the most.

14:07 Orly Lobel:

The best bit the most valuable, the most valued also in terms of salary, that that is part of the story. But also, it’s a win-win for industry, it means that you have much more idea and knowledge flow in these competitive markets. There is much more of an incentive to be the best employer the, you know, the hottest employer in town, to be the next Google, to be the you know, the next place that people want to work at, versus having this kind of incumbent, I’m just going to be controlling and I’m going to just have that stick rather than the carrot of you can’t leave me. And so I started doing a lot of research. I collaborate with economists, with social psychologist. I have experimental research on this and um, there’s also a, you know, a greater community of researchers that really kind of devoted now are devoting their attention to this question of competitive markets. And when I wrote ‘Talent Wants to Be Free’, it was, it wasn’t that long ago, but I felt like I was in this dearth that nobody was paying attention, people were tend to paying attention to intellectual property policy, but they weren’t paying attention to human capital policy. And all of a sudden, in 2016, just, you know, a couple of years after I published ‘Talent Wants to Be Free, I got a call from the White House from the Obama administration saying, you know, what, we really actually do want to care about these questions of labor market competition, and I was invited to the White House to present the ideas and ‘Talent Wants to Be Free’ and subsequent research for to President Obama’s policy team and I became part of the White House working group on this issue, which resulted in an executive order in October 2016, which is just before the administration, it was a new administration. And then, actually, even during the Trump administration, I continued to talk to the Federal Trade Commission about competitive markets and focusing on pack and growth and innovation and consumer welfare. And, and other parts of the administration, definitely now a divided illustration of talk to people at the Biden’s labor policy advisory and see and that press division, and in the working group, there were members from the Treasury Department. So that’s all been really fascinating and very gratifying to see these ideas from research and the evidence from empirical data really come to a meaningful, you know, practice and policy implications. So just 1 more thing that President Biden actually, so I wrote in 2021, a day 1 report, it’s called, it’s kind of this report to the new administration, calling it to act on an important issue. And I co-authored this with my friend Mark Lemley, who’s a tech and intellectual property scholar at Stanford Law School. And we again said, you know, we have to look at these competitive markets, also, from the human capital perspective among feeds and the flow of experience, not just ideas that are already reduced to practice or, you know, tangible and in that way of like, you know, talented, and a few months after that President Biden issued an executive order on competition policy, and the first thing that he says there is really channelling very much exactly what we say of, asking the FTC to look at non-competes and to curtail that spread of non-competes in the world. So that’s the, you know, that’s all been really exciting, really wonderful. I then co-authored a day 1 report on non-disclosure agreements, which is equally, very significant issue about what we can say, what we can use, what is defined as paid secret. So you can talk about that. And then now, you know, I have the new book, and very much hoping to be in conversations with the Federal Trade Commission and many other government and governments really, you know, entities where, you know, not just at the federal level, but in California and around the world, also, some Israeli agencies, about other issues on tech policy, which you can talk about, you know, I would love to hear what you’re thinking about.

18:46 Rob Hanna:

But it’s fascinating just just listening to you there and everything you’ve been involved with, and such, you know, breadth and let’s stick with that. Time for a quick break from the show. You wouldn’t leave a potential client waiting in your office for 3 days. But what about when it comes to returning potential clients, phone calls, emails, or even web inquiries. If you’re not responding rapidly to those who inquire about your firm’s services, you could be losing money, losing clients and affecting your law firm’s reputation. Thankfully, there’s a resource from our sponsor Clio that can help you, called how to grow your firm with legal client intake. It’s a free guide that will show exactly how and why you should be automating your client intake process. Download your free copy@clio dot com forward slash UK forward slash free intake guide. That’s Clio, c l i o dot com forward slash UK forward slash free intake guide. Now back to the show. Obviously you are a renowned tech policy scholar let’s maybe for people listening in, could you maybe outline 3 recent developments with regards to tech policies, also government regulations in America for us? Just give us a bit of an idea.

20:00 Orly Lobel:

Sure. Yeah. So right now I’m very much looking at questions of automation and AI. And there have been recent developments, plus a lot of proposals to regulate AI, digital platforms, automation and actually, the my book, ‘The Equality Machine’ that’s coming out in October is all about some what I see as blind spots, and falsities and fallacies on how we’re thinking about a lot of our tech policy. So I think that at the moment, what we see in terms of developments, and I don’t know, if I need to list like the top 3, or you can kind of think about it as bundles of you know, where our tunnel vision has been going. Both in the EU, EU, the European Union and the US. So definitely not just American regulation. We look a lot at kind of these safeguards after there have been a lot of fear of big tech and platforms and things going gone wrong. And ‘The Equality Machine’ is really starting from the point of yeah, okay, that we’ve had some tech fails, never denying that there are risks. So there are risks of some algorithmic bias, there are risks of some security, you know, issues with cybersecurity, with hacking, with privacy, intrusion. But overall, what we need to also acknowledge is that AI has so much potential for good and for helping social policy that I think that it’s very clear that we’ve been kind of overshadowing a lot of the potential and the constructive, prescriptive policies that we could be adopting, because of these fears, some of them are correct, and some of them are exaggerated, some of them are simply not true, some of them are not comparing to the status quo. So that’s, you know, that’s a big peeve of mine. So, where I see people, you know, I think the most intuitive example, if we look at debates about self-driving cars, or you know, autonomous vehicles, there’s been a lot of these, oh, there’s, you know, a YMO car got into an accident or an Uber car and self-driving, you know, experiment, crash. And immediately the conclusion is, you know, this is unsafe technology. And the, you know, the question is not whether there are some accidents with autonomous vehicles, the question is, comparatively, are they, and they aren’t now, they absolutely are not yet, but the question will be, quite soon, are they safer than human drivers, and a lot of times in tech policy, and in public debates, and all of the conversations and I can give this example, and so many other, you know, in my book, ‘The Equality Machine’, I go through so many different policy fields, from medicine and health to safety and online harms, hate speech and content moderation, and job hiring, and interview and pay and promotion. We can’t, you know, we have to ask these questions about automation and platforms in comparative ways. And that’s really what I’m pushing for. And that’s why I think there’s very fast implications to so much that’s happening really, as we speak, all these new proposals of like, the EU is trying to adopt the global, you know, very comprehensive AI regulation draft, or the draft is already in existence, but AI regulation will be like the GDPR comprehensive and while I think all of these efforts are really valuable, yeah, go ahead.

24:08 Rob Hanna:

I was gonna say yet because it’s so many things here with with AI and you know, how potentially can assist with the American Law enforcement, you make some good points about the drivers cause, but I was going to talk a bit more about the data privacy laws, because, you know, explaining how, you know, they work in the US, you know, particularly where you’re based and you know, getting a different perspective. So it’s probably gonna be different than maybe the UK or there’ll be some similarities. So we’d love to hear a bit more on that particularly around the data privacy laws.

24:32 Orly Lobel:

Yeah. So data privacy or privacy, as you say that, is of course important and is an aspect of our daily lives. We are living in a datafied era and we are being surveyed if you want to use the kind of more aggressive word or we’re being you know, connected and collected in terms of our personal information all the time. And privacy, again is important, I want, I don’t want that to be lost in the conversation. But my argument and in addition to the arguments that I have, and everything that I develop and have deep research and a lot of interviews that I do for ‘The Equality Machine’, I actually have a new article, I just finished a draft article that goes very deep into privacy policy. What I’ve been arguing now is that it’s privacy is 1, but 1 value that we care about in our society. And what I’m kind of alluded to before about, you know, some fears are rational and some fears are irrational. I think with privacy, there’s a lot of that there’s a lot of, oh no, you know, with government and private industry is extracting all this data about me, and that’s, you know, there’s kind of a doomsday fear that that will have negative implications. And what we be really be should be regulating this is, this is the core argument, you know, if you want to have that big takeaway right now from, you know, comparing the GDPR, and what I think is more important, but really we should be regulating is the use of data and information and channelling the knowledge that we have as a society for good rather than the extraction itself. And that’s because in general, I think we can all agree that knowing more is you know, about about our biology, about our health, about our nature, about our ecology, about our planet, about our psyche, about our communities, all of that is actually wonderful. It’s the dream of not only a researcher like me, but it’s a dream of policymakers about, it’s the dream of, you know, rational, free, competitive, truly, you know, perfect markets. And right now we have the technology, and we have it more and more, we’re gonna have it more and more that will enable that, you know, that will really bring us to these levels of more accuracy, more efficiency, and more innovation that’s really, that works in terms of our you know, not only mapping the human genome, which everybody kind of understands its significance, but really, you know, when you look at COVID vaccines and cures and you know, new proteins and thinking about, you know, these tough, wicked questions of climate change, and poverty alleviation, and hunger, all of these, there is so much potential for using AI paired with significant data collection to really tackle these problems. So the kind of default of let’s not collect, and that’s kind of the default with GDPR, where, you know, the default is that you don’t consent to data collection, unless you consent, which is in itself a real kind of fallacy of true consent, because these are all quick wrap, defaults, consumer boilerplate opt-in that is really not not a substantial and meaningful agreement. So you know, I have stuff to say about that too. But but, you know, looking more at the outputs of, you know, what we can do with information and protecting or sensitive information and there’s technology can help in that too, and really redacting and anonymising and potential privacy that doesn’t allow tracking back the end user. All of those should be our focus, at least equally to the collection process.

28:52 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, I love how you’re just giving some examples for good, you know, because I think it’s really important that you know, with the right people, with the right information, as you said, there’s a lot that can be done from a very positive perspective, with all of these, you know, things that are developing at a very fast rate. So moving away from tech a little bit, you’re also a very frequent speaker. So you’ve spoken at top research institutions, government forums, you’ve traveled to Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, pretty much everywhere. So what’s been your most memorable event, if I could pin you down to 1 or 2 that off the top of your head you most enjoyed?

29:25 Orly Lobel:

Oh, wow. And the events are coming back, right, because we had some time now with more Zoom. Like personally, I would love to come visit the UK right now. But.

29:39 Rob Hanna:

Our doors are always open to you.

29:43 Orly Lobel:

Well, yeah, another great thing about technology really connecting us in times where it’s harder, but I have to say that 1 of my most memorable visits was to Korea to Seoul, Korea, where I was invited. It was kind of a threesome, you know, invitation where in that same week that I was invited, my book ‘Talent Wants to Be Free’ was translated into Korean. So I had a Korean publisher host. And then Seoul National University hosted me for talks. And then Samsung invited me to give a talk to their executives. And that was amazing. It was an amazing and intense week where I got to talk and learn from industry and academia. And, you know, all the tastes and beauty of Korea was just, South Korea was was amazing and memorable. Such nice posting, so gracious. And you know, that’s really also very rewarding to see these translations and to learn like from Samsung that they were thinking about very similar things that we were thinking about here in California about you know, how to incentivise innovation, how to have a start-up culture, and not just, you know, a concentrated market. And they gave me I remember with, with Samsung, I was I was holding my iPhone, keep track of the time and then in the end, they gave me a gift of, you know, a Samsung Notebook. Like, okay, but I’ll switch, yeah so but I just love this. I, you know, my, my second book ‘You Don’t Owe Me’ which is a full story about the toy industry really took me to in the research to a lot of places around the world. It’s a global story about how Barbie was invented and there’s a European history there. There’s a German and Swiss history, and then there you go to California, and then you see production and first in Japan and in China. You see competition coming from various places around the world. And so yeah, I just love how there is cultural impact and on our innovation regimes, and then a lot of both differences and similarities of those very specific stories like I think about ‘You Don’t Own Me’, the Barbie Mattel innovation battles story that I wrote as a very specific to hear like the gaming industry in Southern California, but also a very personal story that has implications.

32:29 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, fascinating stuff. I’m just loving learning, you know more and more about your journey and the things that you’ve done, and you know, your books. And let’s let’s talk a little bit more about that, then, because in 2016, you’re invited to Washington, DC to present your book, ‘Talent Wants to Be Free’, which we’ve obviously mentioned, at the White House. So tell us more about that special occasion.

32:50 Orly Lobel:

Well, there’s a funny backstory there. But I was in Tel Aviv for the summer like, and I had plans to go with 1 of my closest childhood friends, Mall, a psychologist, to Berlin to see Sting at a concert, and I love Sting. So this is a little bit of a you know, sidetrack of like, what is the White House really like. But I just think it’s funny to, to remember how I got this email from the White House and I thought it was spam, so I deleted it. So then I got like, more emails and calls of like, no, you know, we really want to have this meeting in August and in DC, and can you come and it meant that I had to not go back from Berlin to Tel Aviv, and I had left all my stuff because my summer stuff, and well, not just stuff, but also my husband and and instead, I flew to DC. I was not yet an American citizen. But it was even like this experience of they didn’t realise that and so you need special clearances to get into the White House when you don’t have an American passport. And I did not have those. They just assumed, you know, a Californian professor that will go in smoothly with the name and security. So there were more wrinkles there. But eventually I got in and it was on President Obama’s birthday that day. So I saw like a cake we being wheeled into a different room and I kind of tried to follow that, but I was stopped security like now that’s not your party. So but but this meeting was wonderful. It was really members from Congress and people from the President’s policy team and somebody from the Labour Department’s, Treasury Department, I think from the antitrust division, I can’t remember exactly the the players in that conference room, but it was a broad umbrella because I think that innovation policy, and this has been a lot of kind of my research is a really broad umbrella of, you know, you have to think about effects throughout like the labour market, financial industry, environment and the creatives, and it just kind of thinking more across policy fields to see implications is, in general, very important to smart policy.

35:40 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, I just can’t believe that you had your book the same day as the birthday of Barack. I mean, that’s, that’s a cool, interesting fact and experience. And let’s stick then with with books, because we’ve touched on it throughout the conversation, obviously, your forthcoming, you know, ‘The Equality Machine’, which discusses harnessing digital technology for a brighter, more inclusive future. So would you mind telling us more just about your motivations and more about the book?

36:05 Orly Lobel:

Yeah, so the book is contrarian. The book is bold, and a little bit of sneaky, I would say, in the sense of like, it sounds very feel good. You know, we like brighter future. But it’s really a critique, to begin with, with where we are in our polarised debates. Like, there’s all these best sellers that have shaped our minds about algorithmic bias, and automating inequality and surveillance capitalism. And there’s the movie, The Social Dilemma. And, you know, there’s a lot of theory out there for kind of the outside about exclusions and harms. And then there are a lot of these bestsellers, about like, it’s all going to be this utopian, wonderful, machine, humans, synergies that will make us all like amazing, bionic, and immortal. And I come from a kind of cautiously optimistic, critically constructive tradition, both in my training and you know, my temper. And I wanted to write something that really was about all of us and how we can have skin in the game and be asking the right questions, finding the best case examples and really carving a path forward with a blueprint of you know, what we want our future to look like.

37:35 Rob Hanna:

I love that and we’re big fans of contrarian over here on the Legally Speaking Podcast, I think it’s important. And yeah, you’re a wonderful author, wonderful writer, and I would strongly encourage people to make sure they check that out in due course. And before we look to sort of conclude our discussion, which has been fascinating, learning all about your journey, and all these experience global experiences, what advice would you give to the next generation students, legal professionals that are interested in technology, data, or even privacy law? What would be your sort of words, final words of wisdom to those individuals?

38:08 Orly Lobel:

Final words of wisdom? I think that everybody should be in the conversation. I think that really talking across fields and across ideologies is the way to go not thinking about something as a better company or thinking, oh, you know, Silicon Valley is all it’s a rigged game or nonexclusive. I think, you know, we’re, things are changing as we speak. And 1 of the things that is very important in ‘The Equality Machine’ principles that I show and I interview amazing people for it like from computer scientists at MIT, who are changing medical health, medical devices and diagnostics through AI and technology and other scientists who are changing our education system through robots in the classroom. What I think is really important is to find mentors, find the things that you love and you think really can make a difference and an impact and make the world brighter as the subtitle of ‘The Equality Machine’. And and just do it really, with you know, all all your passion and experience and smarts and it will happen.

39:24 Rob Hanna:

I love that you bang on about 2 things that everyone over the last 100 and however many episodes we’ve done on this show about the importance of having mentors and also don’t over complicate it, just do it. And so I think that’s really sage advice and I’ve thoroughly as I mentioned before, enjoyed this conversation, if our listeners want to know more about your new book, what’s the best way for them to to find out more to contact yourself feel free to shout out any of your social media or website links will also share all those details with this episode for you to.

39:52 Orly Lobel:

Perfect. ‘The Equality Machine’ is coming out in October but it’s already on Amazon and everywhere you buy books for preorder on hardcover or Kindle audible and I have a burgeoning book tour already in place where I’m going to be in Philadelphia and in Boston and Los Angeles and Seattle and San Diego for bookstore events and some online events. So you can find a lot of information on my social media. So just follow me, connect with me, Orly Lobel, Twitter, LinkedIn, I love connecting with readers and people who are in the field, everybody, it’s really for a broad audience, from you know, tech to policy to equality to just anybody who has creative and innovative passions. So I connect with my readers and learn from them. So I hope everybody will enjoy it and read it and share it. Yeah, I look forward to all of it.

41:03 Rob Hanna:

Well, I’m sure people will absolutely love it. As much as I’ve loved having you on the show all it’s been an absolute pleasure hosting you today. So we’d like to wish you lots of continued success with your pursuits no doubt future books as well in the future. But for now, from all of us on the Legally Speaking Podcast over and out. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you liked 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 dot Legally Speaking Podcast dot com for the link to join our community there. Over and out.