LegalTechTalk Uncovered 2025 – Madeline Oldfield – E13

You can hear Rob and madeline discussing:

Connect with Madeline here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/madelineoldfield/?originalSubdomain=au

Transcript

00:00

Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, Legal Tech Talk Uncovered mini-series 2025, sponsored by Clio.

00:07

We’re back with our red mic for a behind-the-scenes series all about legal innovation at Europe’s largest legal tech event.

00:15

So we’re granted access to meet some of the greatest speakers, sponsors, brands in the whole legal tech world.

00:22

We’ve got 300 speakers with over 70 sessions, with over 4,000 attendees from all across the globe, hittingus here over the next two days at Legal Tech Talk live in London.

00:33

From AI to access to justice to smart compliance, you name it, we’re covering it all.

00:38

This isn’t just another conversation or another conference, it’s a blueprint for community and transformation.

00:45

So buckle up, we’re speaking with some incredible people about policy change, change makers, legal innovation and so much more over and out.

00:55

Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast recording live here at Legal Tech Talk.

01:00

I am joined by name, title and organization.

01:03

Hello, I’m Madeline or Maddie Oldfield.

01:06

I work for Google and I’m the head of data measurement and analytics.

01:09

Love it.

01:10

Tell us about your role.

01:11

So this role is a bit unusual to be in a legal talk, but I have a real passion for civil justice and access to justice.

01:19

So prior to my work at Google, I’d been doing a lot of things for the courts in Australia.

01:23

So Victorian Excellent administrative tribunal.

01:27

I was the head of group governance legal ops for one of the major banks in Australia.

01:30

And it’s just generally really cool stuff.

01:32

So I’ve been kind of hanging out trying to be a legal tech geek for a while.

01:35

Yeah, absolutely.

01:35

And I love the Australian legal tech scene as well.

01:38

We’ve had lots of friends actually come on to the show.

01:40

We’ve had Anna Lesinski, we’ve had Mel who has her own podcast doing lots of great stuff in the in-house community.

01:45

In one sentence, if you can, what’s one problem you’re trying to solve in the world of legal?

01:51

do you know what it is for me right now?

01:52

It’s understanding the difference between unmet need and unmet demand.

01:58

I have a real passion and belief that with the way in which technology is evolving, whether that’s on the infrastructure side from a cloud perspective, data analytics or an AI kind of governance perspective, we have to do more to look at unmet, untapped need that’s out there in the community.

02:13

And I genuinely think if we’re not applying tech to do that, we’re in worlds of hurt moving forward.

02:18

So what would be like a couple of things you would suggest to people todo that in terms of some strategies, tactics, things that you’re kind of thinking about?

02:24

Oh, look, this is probably one of those gnarly problems, right?

02:27

Like this is not one that’s going to be solved easily.

02:30

But if you were to do anything, if you were to wake up tomorrow, just have a bit of an interest in it.

02:34

Actually care about civil justice enough to go, this is important.

02:36

Just like the environment’s important.

02:38

Just like, you know, doing a million other things is really important for me.

02:42

Like the kind of fabric of society and making sure that we’re in a place that we all love, that values diversity, equity and inclusion really requires us to care about civil justice.

02:49

So hopefullyYou can just wake up, listen to this podcast.

02:52

How does that sound as a nice little plug for us?

02:54

Absolutely.

02:55

Yeah, There we go.

02:56

Definitely want to check out for sure.

02:58

And look, you’ve traveled all the way here.

03:00

It’s not around the corner.

03:01

Yes.

03:02

What has been your most surprising moment of the conference?

03:07

Oh my gosh.

03:08

I don’t know if anyone has seen this conference.

03:10

It’s next level.

03:12

Yeah.

03:14

I mean, when we have a conference in Australia, there’s a couple of people milling around, we have a cup of coffee and a muffin.

03:18

This is next level.

03:19

This is like a party meets like kind of trade show, great speakers.

03:24

The hardest thing though is knowing where to go.

03:26

I have like ADHD in this place.

03:28

I just want to like bounce from thing to thing to thing.

03:30

Yeah, it’s difficult, isn’t it?

03:32

Because there’s so much going on.

03:32

There’s lots of different things.

03:33

But it’s great in the same breath because there’s a breadth of content.

03:36

You meet different people, you network and it’s just great energy attached to it.

03:38

Completely, yeah.

03:39

And I feel like Europe has really kind of advanced in some of the more sophisticated thinking around legal tech.

03:44

And so it’s the place to be for me because you’ve got the regulation elements happening, which are really critical and important, coupled with really great, strong, robust tech product.

03:53

And I think that’s a really unique perspective.

03:55

Perhaps different to Asia-Pacific, where I’m from, and then maybe the US, which is taking a slightly different path as well.

04:00

Yeah, absolutely.

04:01

Okay, this year’s themes have ranged everything from access to justice to tech to compliance.

04:05

Is there one particular theme of those six themes that have been highlighted here that you’re most passionate about?

04:10

Yeah, can I be geek and say the same thing again?

04:12

I know, like, yeah, no, you can.

04:14

prayer, but I would definitely say the access to justice bit and trying to really rethink what that looks like in our society with the tools that we’ve got today.

04:22

Okay, before I let you go, five years time, where do you hope legal services will be at with the advent of obviously legal technology coming in thick and fast?

04:28

I would hope, and I see it, being as easy and seamless to use as a Netflix account or helping my kids out with, you know, YouTube Kids or something like that, as literally as seamless and easy, so none of us are afraid of conflict resolution anymore.

04:44

That would be my dream.

04:45

Love that.

04:45

What a great way to describe it.

04:47

This has been an absolute blast having you on.

04:49

Thank you.

04:50

Thank you for the random.

04:51

I really only came for the stickers.

04:52

So here we go.

04:53

There we go.

04:53

And if people want to know more about you or maybe they haven’t heard of Google, where can they go?

05:00

There we go.

05:01

Of course, because I’m Australian.

05:04

But yeah, please look me up on LinkedIn.

05:05

Madeleine Oldfield on LinkedIn.

05:07

There we go.

05:07

Perfect.

05:08

Well, from all of us here live at Legal Tech Talk over and out.

05:11

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode.

05:13

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05:23

Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join us.

05:30

Our community there.

05:31

Over and out.