On today’s Legally Speaking Podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Roch Glowacki. Roch is a Partner in the Digital, Commerce and Creative Team at Lewis Silkin. He specialises in AI, emerging technologies, software solutions, digital media and e-commerce issues. Recognised as Key Lawyer in Legal 500 in AI, Commercial Contracts and TMT, Roch is passionate about the evolving regulatory landscape of big data and AI.

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Roch discussing:

– Strategic Career Moves and Long-Term Vision

– Validation Through Calculated Professional Decisions

– Transition from Individual Success to Team Leadership

– A Passion for AI, Technology and Multidisciplinary Collaboration

– Partnership Requiring Purpose Beyond Status, Ego or Money

Connect with Roch Glowacki here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/roch-glowacki

Transcript

The junior work is going. There’s a lot of people that go into the profession that say I want the status, want ego, I want money or whatever and these are not unfortunately the right reasons. It’s only when I joined Lewis Silkin thinking this is potential in the cards but I wasn’t entirely sure that I want to make partner and I really spent time thinking why. There are challenges with the USAI and that’s where you get to the impact for a lot of specifically

Obviously this area has now become almost a standalone area of practice, right? I don’t think two, three, four years ago, even when TGPD came out, you would think it’s so multidisciplinary that you end up needing to work with your employment colleagues, data protection colleagues, commercial teams, all in tandem. That’s where the real value is. today’s Legally Speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Roch Glowacki. Roch is a partner in the digital commerce creative team at Lewis Silkin.

He specializes in AI, emerging technology, software solutions, digital media, and e-commerce issues. Recognized as a key lawyer in the legal 500 in AI, commercial contracts, and TMT, is passionate about the evolving regulatory landscape of big data and AI. So a very big warm welcome to the show, Roch. Thanks very much, Rob. I mean, I know we’ve spoken about this for a number of years now. So it’s really, and we’ve been observing each other’s journey for a while. So.

I am, yeah, I’m delighted to be here. Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure to finally have you on the show. And yes, all good things come to those who wait. And you’ve had an incredible career up to date, which we’re to talk all about today. But before we do that, a couple of ice-breaker questions. What’s your favorite beverage and your preferred choice of footwear on a typical work day? I’ll have to go back to my Polish roots and promote Poland tangentially. So there’s this cocktail that’s called apple pie. And the reason why I think, I think, well,

One is super good because it’s based, have Żubrówka, which is famous Polish vodka, with apple juice on ice and you put a bit of cinnamon on top of it. And a fun fact, I’ve introduced the DJ from Rudimental to this drink once, it’s a long story, but anyway, and he posted about it on his Instagram, so that’s a tiny little funny fun fact, but it’s a really nice drink, I recommend the cocktail, very simple to make and very lovely. Shoes, I am going to…

Reveal another bias I have, I said reveal the Polish bias. If you have any dancer friends, I love Puma Suede shoes. And that’s because I used to dance in them all the time, so I wear them a lot. yeah, dancers are very particular about the shoes. So yeah, that’s probably my favorite one. And you’ll probably see me the office in those as well.

Two P’s, Polish booze and pumas. We’re with you. I’m with you. Okay. That’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing, but we must talk about you. So to begin with, Rob, would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey? Yeah. So, ⁓ as I’ve sort of alluded to it, I, I, ⁓ came from Poland. I grew up in Poland. I did my international baccalaureate there and applied for universities abroad. And I got into King’s college, ⁓ to study law with a exchange program in the Netherlands and Leiden.

And during that exchange, sort of was applying for all these different training contracts, got into Reed Smith, a US firm, and I qualified there into ⁓ entertainment and media practice. And that’s really where I think, you know, sort of key milestones of my career started because I ended up doing quite a lot of secondment. I was at Bauer Media, which to those sort of listening, but not necessarily knowing the brand, it’s a company, was a group that owns Absolute Radio Kiss Magic.

a bunch of magazines across, across Europe, Grazia Empire. So it’s a very big media group. So was there. I was at ITV, which is super fun. And then I ended up at Amazon Web Services, which really was the sort of key turning point in my career, because at the time that this is now sort of eight and eight and a half years ago, I was on second one there and you had lots of companies putting data in the cloud and saying, look,

AWS and other cloud providers, we’re putting data into cloud, we don’t know what to do with it. Can you give us your data scientists and software engineers to figure out patterns in that data? And I was the lawyer dealing with these sort of professional services contracts, where you essentially, the client was providing all these data scientists, software engineers and detecting patterns in the data. And that was really early, early, AI has been for a while, but that was for me, that was my first ⁓ inroad into

working on these machine-related, machine learning-related projects. And my first contact with AI when actually in the legal profession, not many people had any sort of, any points of intersection with this area. So that really puts me on a much more sort of tech-focused journey. was like, this is really cool. There’s something happening here. ⁓ And I decided I went to, the pandemic, I ended up going to LingLayter’s TMT practice because I thought I really want to pivot towards technology

do complex technology transactions, skill technically. So Lynx came up and I sort of took that role and then moved from Lynx to find my sort of sweet home at Lewis Silkin, which was really about, as JetGPG came out and sort of it sparked everyone’s imagination what AI could do. I was like, I need to move to be somewhere where I can both support startups, both support big companies. At the beginning, companies are gonna be dipping their toes in AI. Unfortunately,

as great Lynx was in lot of respects, it’s not going to do some of the sort of ⁓ cutting edge AI work coming from startups, scale ups. So I thought I need to move and Lewis Silkin was a great blend for me to build on that entertainment and sort of creative industry practice, but also combine it with that very technical, typical TMT skill sets. So sort of that’s how I ended up at Lewis Silkin. And such a well thought out.

career journey and hugely successful and strategic in all of your moves. Hence, you know, all the success that you’ve had. So let’s stick with the current day then, because you’ve recently made partner at the firm. Huge, huge congratulations. You Lewis Silkin only has equity partnerships, so it’s a big deal, because I know all the partners get to vote on it. So could you tell us how that actually felt being made partner? So it’s…

it’s it’s it’s still sinking in you know i was speaking to another part of the other day and he was to tell me that it took him half a year until he went for like a weekend strategy sort of uh… you’re strategy weekend without a partner’s that he was i’ll go to the park so things that take time to sink in so you’ll get from this lightly unfiltered and fresh uh… reaction hopefully uh… so this this two-figure one as you say on it doesn’t know this is a sort of degree of

I feel validated in a way because my career choices and the way I went about them, as you’ve actually pointed out, there was a strategy in it. when optically for some people, my choices seemed a bit strange. I started with Reed Smith, which didn’t have the biggest brand in the UK. It’s a big US firm, amazing and same in media practice. my colleagues were like, have offers from the other places and I had other offers. But I went with Reed Smith because I was like, they have focus on secondment, they have small training intake, and they have the MA program.

So they were one of the very few law firms at the time that had the legal practice with business course So that was purely about growth and sort of pursuing these opportunities link leaders again people were like why are you moving from Reed Smith to link leaders? This is very moving from media to like these big M &A transactions big outsourcing deals. What’s going on here? So I felt validated because all these choice these these career moves were very strategic on my part But optically they seemed weird for people and even when I moved to the Silkin I had comments from partners saying

from sort of previous lives, so to speak, saying, well, why are you moving to Lewis silk? And I thought you’re always gonna be at this big, big, big city law firm like links or Reed Smith. So felt validated. The other thing that is, think, interesting or sort of my thinking, it’s interesting to observe my own thinking over the past nine months and or year really, more than that. When you start thinking about partnership and you start preparing for it, and now when you’re a partner,

You’re thinking very much switches from me as an individual to me as a team, me as the firm. For me, it was quite an interesting sort of process and it takes a time. The whole process obviously takes time that, you know, when you’re an associate, you’re thinking about your billable target and you’re like, how do I hit my target? What do I do? And it’s me, me, me, unfortunately, but that’s just the nature of it. You’ve to your targets or you sort of aim to hit your targets. As you start thinking about your business plan and how do you fit within the team,

how you’re to build the practice, does this fit with the broader firm strategy? You start thinking, gosh, what do I need to do within the team? How do I retain the talent within the team? How do I attract? How am I good example that people want to work with me? What are the different business levers within the firm to pull that my business case and the abilities that I bring? How can I ⁓ influence that? So you start thinking much broadly and I…

I must say it takes a while and I think rightly almost the partnership process takes a while because over that course of that process, my thinking was evolving and now I started thinking about the firm ⁓ as a firm, not just me being like I need to hit my targets or whatever. I’m thinking how do I make my colleagues, ⁓ juniors and other partners sort of perform as well? So it’s a… ⁓

It’s an interesting, I think it requires quite a shift in your mindset and that shift takes a bit of time, takes a bit of thinking, but I’m really excited about it because as I say, there’s other levers in the business to pull and so the partnership opens that for opportunity. Absolutely and huge congratulations once again and separately not directly linked to your partnership, but around the same time, you also received a gift, didn’t you, from the Vice Minister of Finance in the Lithuanian government. So tell us about that quick story. I think we all are

listeners probably a little bit of context or explaining. Yeah, absolutely. Because what happened basically the day after I got the call from the partner saying the voters come through you’re be made up. The day after we at the Polish City Club were hosting Fat Thursday which is a sort of traditional celebration as the last Thursday before Lent and people have lots of donors and eat compulsively lots of food.

And we have our ex board member Janusz Kizniewicz, who’s Lithuanian-Polish. He got poached by the sort of recruited by the Lithuanian government last year to be the vice minister of finance, which is just an incredible story within the Polish community. But he’s also an incredible advocate for the club. And he always, even in his busy governmental role, he came over to the dinner and to sort of be with us and support the community.

and he gave me a little gift which was just really sort of nice and it’s tie with the polis eagle on it and it’s just, Poland and Lithuania have a very sort of historical bond, it used to be a union, Poles and Lithuanians are very very close culturally and it’s just amazing, he’s one of those individuals that he’s hugely personable, hugely the intellectual rigor and the effort he puts into the community is just incredible so it was

And it was just coincidence that the event was the next day and they were the only, the board of the PolyCity Club were the first ones to find out actually that I’m being made up. it was a nice, yeah, it was unrelated, but related in a way. And I sent, took a picture of this and I send it to you. there we go. Yeah, absolutely. That’s what I wanted to, and our listeners to know. I thought it was a beautiful story and yeah, links very nicely to all the success and all the great things that you have achieved and indeed deserve. So.

You’ve talked about your story. People are going to be like, how have you done it? So what tips could you give to lawyers? Because you’ve had rapid career progression to partnership. What tips would you give to lawyers looking to make partner from your experience reflecting on your recent success? It’s funny because I, when I started, as I remember doing my LPC, during my training contract, there was a lot of people around me that sort of went into their legal career and they seemed to be very clear they want to make partner. And the reality is not many people actually proportionately.

There’s not that many people that can make partner. not the, that’s the, the, just doesn’t work that way for lots of different reasons. Right. But I didn’t, I didn’t really think that way. mean, I, I was just happy. mean, coming from Poland for me, trainee salaries, when I looked at them, I was like, this is incredible. This is, this is crazy money. That’s how I felt. Right. I mean, obviously when you think about the cost of living and everything else, it’s not as crazy, but anyway, coming from Poland, I, I didn’t really think that far and

I just wanted to be good at what I did. So my choices were driven by ⁓ personal growth ⁓ goals and the idea that I just want to be better and I want to be better at what I do or the best at what I do and have an interesting career. So ⁓ when people think, how did you do it? I want to be a partner as well. I think the first thing they got to ask themselves is why? Because there’s lots of people that go into the profession

And that’s the reason why they didn’t leave because they go into the profession and say, I want the status, I want ego, I want money or whatever. And these are not, unfortunately, the right reasons. And I had to be honest, I is only when I joined Lewis Silkin, I joined thinking this is potentially on the cards, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I want to make part and I really spent time thinking why. And when I got my answer that’s when I really sort of pushed for it and sort of applied and went through the process.

And my why was that actually there is a ceiling to what I can do in my role and there’s a ceiling to my growth and actually going and coming into the partnership, becoming a co-owner in the business, it actually puts me on a different platform that look, my thinking has already shifted. This just the process itself had an impact on my sort of outlook on how I look at the firm. But I’m super excited about being able to pull the different levers within the business on what we do.

We’ve rolled out a SaaS product last year on the employment side. We’ve adopted ⁓ Harvey as the first big national UK firm. We’re the first one to adopt Harvey and roll it out. So there’s ways that I’m involved in terms of rolling out things within the firm and how do we make the most use. So I thought actually in terms of my growth, how do I manage a team, how do I supervise people.

I thought this is going to be another layer of growth for me and that’s why I wanted to do it. Not the other reasons that I’ve mentioned which I think are sometimes the wrong drivers ⁓ for people. ⁓ then the other, guess the other, so the why is think the first thing. Why do you want to be a partner? Because if you want to be for money, ego, status, I think you might want to look at other careers actually. Probably going to make more money at some other places. So that’s one thing. The other thing is I think

just invest in yourself. felt, it came up in my partnership ⁓ interview with the board, ⁓ that the feel of my business case and the feel of the skills that I’ve built is like I’m this startup that has been in stealth mode for a while and I’m now sort of ⁓ going to IPO or something like that. That’s the sort of analogy that someone drew because I’ve always looked at my career holistically.

and trying to invest and doing the hard things, the things that didn’t quite seem right for people around me, but sort of people were like, why are you doing that? It doesn’t make sense to them. But I was like, let me lean into this. No one really wants to do it. To be honest, I don’t think many sane people would necessarily want to go from Reed Smith to Ling latest because it was a very different work profile and it was hard. I didn’t do big &A transactions. There was quite a difference between the firms in terms of… ⁓

in terms of the work profile, but I was like, I really need to put myself outside of the comfort zone. And I did that consistently. And I think if you invest in yourself and pursue your passions, although we can get to passion separately, ⁓ I think you cannot go wrong with that, If you keep investing in yourself. Because there are, yeah, there are sort of, way I look at it is there are three types of capital, social, intellectual, and financial.

And the financial can go up and down. might make a lot of money, you might lose. The social also changes depending who sort of interacts, but the intellectual capital always stays. Like what the skills that you’ve built, they are there. So that’s why I’ve sort of put a lot of my eggs in one basket in that way. Yeah. And it’s paid off. And I love that you talk about

comfort zones, you know, the comfort zone is great, but nothing ever grows there. Right. And you’ve been particularly strategic. You’ve, you know, chose the hard as well, know, which I think is great. You know, when certain people have an opinion, it’s know your own race and run it at your own pace and actually lean into things. And, know, as a result of that, you know, you’ve hit huge success very quickly within your legal career. So thanks for sharing so many nuggets. And I like that analogy you just pulled there as well around the sort of social, intellectual and financial capital side of things. Okay. Let’s lean a little bit deeper because you’ve had a very intentional career, which is what I love.

⁓ and you now specialize at legal, legal, ⁓ sorry, Lewis Silkin in several areas, know, AI, commercial tech, IP media, and entertainment. You talked about your career journey and building up that skill stack along the way as well. ⁓ what type of work are you typically involved in? Give us a bit of a day in the life. am predominantly, predominantly a technology lawyer, ⁓ with focus on AI and my, ⁓ and there’s because of my background from entertainment and media practice, there are interesting areas where the sort of inter and, ⁓

creative industry ⁓ interplays with technology. You might have a music startup that is procuring sound recordings to train their algorithm to detect what emotions this music, for example, triggers. So there’s this interesting interplay between the areas. But my work ⁓ falls within probably four buckets, I’d say. There are probably four dimensions to it. There’s a lot of contractual work, and that might be software agreements, licensing of IPs, joint ventures, and IT outsourcing.

So there’s a contractual element. There is a regulatory advisory element. So I might be advising on the EU’s AI Act, classification, what is high risk, what isn’t. ⁓ It might be advising on IP issues. So just the other day I had queries about data scraping and sort of how it interplays with all the different IP rights and data scraping has been sort of a known ⁓ activity to build a lot of different ⁓ tools and has been going on for a

for decades really for a long, long time. ⁓ And it often involves infringing IP rights, but the risk profile of data scraping has really changed in the previous years, partly with generalize of sparking the imagination, right? If all the data is scraped, you can build all these things. So there’s an advisory element to it. There’s also a ⁓ &A context where, you know, our client might be investing or buying a technology company and you’re speaking about like, there’s a…

Probably I’ll be supervising juniors on the due diligence and advising on the strategic risks in buying this particular company or maybe where the value of the IP is. And there’s a final, I think the fourth bucket is probably this broader AI governance, ⁓ which in the absence of the fully crystallized AI regulatory landscape, you’re in a situation where clients are thinking, well, actually ⁓ fine, the legal landscape is still taking shape, but we still need to be a responsible actor in this AI environment.

So how do we do that? And then you get into the AI governance policies and a whole lot of sort of ancillary pieces of advice, which sort of border some of the legal considerations and ethical considerations. It’s fair to say varied, interesting and very, very exciting. And you’re very much at the cutting edge of trends and AI and where things are going. It’s not been easy though, I can imagine.

You know, you mentioned, you know, you’ve come from Poland, you’ve had that journey abroad, you know, coming over here. What have been some of the challenges you’ve faced breaking into the legal industry and how have you been able to overcome them? I expect my thoughts on this. Well, some of it is, it’s not going to be unique to, you know, coming from, from abroad and being a non-native speaker. I expect some of the, some of the non-native English speakers or those coming from abroad will resonate with some of the

points I might make. ⁓ But breaking the legal profession, whether you’re coming from abroad or not, there are often, there’s the sort of socioeconomic ⁓ elements, right? mean, so my parents, my family in Poland, my dad is an IT engineer, my mom is an artist, so I didn’t have the legal background. And I never was in London, I didn’t have the legal background nor was I ever…

to London before coming here for university. So that’s one challenge, that’s quite common for a lot of people, right? If you don’t know anyone in the legal profession, it becomes slightly confusing and harder to know what to do. Although I must say, I actually feel very privileged that I did my law in the UK, because I think actually the connections that I would have needed in Poland would have been probably even more important and not having them would have been a bigger, bigger blocker. I felt that coming to London,

I based on my competencies, actually was able if I was good, I perform. there was those that there’s a financial component. think that’s probably again, that might be that’s going to be a similar for a lot of people potentially exaggerated when you’re coming from abroad. know, my I’m hugely grateful to my parents, but they’ve they’ve they’ve mortgage our flats back in Poland. So I could go to university and stay in London. I came still before.

before the tuition fees got tripled or quadrupled. So I still had a pretty decent deal, but it required that my parents had to mortgage our place and I wanted to get into a job afterwards that I could help them repay that. So that was an important thing. There’s a culture and then there’s that thing that’s what non-natives will particularly feel this. There’s this cultural sort of linguistic element to it. And look, I did international baccalaureate. I could read in English.

I could speak but I never really practiced it with natives, not much practicing. So you come to the UK and you get into these conversations where they’re like, oh, you’re law student. And I was at the time, so you’re Polish and you’re law student. you, oh, and your English is so good. And you start sort of doubting yourself in a lot of ways because you have these, came to the UK where the stereotype was you had Poles working on construction sites, working at school.

planners. And so it did feel confusing for some people that you have someone who’s doing law and they speak really good English or my English improved sort of exponentially as I was practicing it. And you get into this weird situation sometimes where, you know, I remember I was working with a senior lawyer and she sort of picked on something in the, in this document on this MNA deal. And she said, ⁓ I know that you’re, I know that you’re not a native English speaker.

but this I think should be spelled differently. And the funny thing was that it wasn’t me who misspelled it or wrote it in a weird way. was a native English speaker who was the head of the M &A team at the client and they did this and I felt I’m too junior to make this change. But you run into these things and there’s this thing that happens that when you get picked up on, your English is so good, or you keep getting reminded,

there’s this psychological phenomena which I’m hugely into psychology so that’s why I sort of mentioned it. I think it’s called stereotype threat or stereotype fretting where you hear the stereotype and it reminds you and it almost makes you, if you hear like, your English is so good, will start, your English will deteriorate because you’re going to become very self-conscious about this and that has happened a number of times in my career. So you feel like when you combine these factors you feel like gosh, I’m not in the legal profession.

I don’t have the same money, cannot like, when I came to the UK I remember all these different societies and I like I cannot pay membership for like the wine society, the bar society and the law society because I cannot afford this. So I feel worse financially, I shouldn’t be here and then you have these cultural barriers. ⁓ Barriers are sort of friction points, maybe barriers are the wrong word. So you feel worse, I think that’s what I, when I’m mentoring, when I speak to colleagues, non-natives particularly.

and my colleagues who have built professional careers over the past years and we’re that generation of Poles that came here and built careers in medicine, finance, law, consulting, entrepreneurship. A lot of us felt at the time that we’re just wars, that we’re secondary in that way. And I think that’s, I’d love to say that there’s an easy answer to it. sort of ⁓ looking in retrospect, because I don’t know whether I did it consciously back then.

All these factors I’ve mentioned are sort of external variables, call them. For me, because I’ve just, throughout my childhood, teenage years, I’ve sort of been primed or primed myself to look at personal growth and wanting to have these holistic, to building these skill sets to being, you’re good at school, you’re perceived as a nerd, but I wanted to be good at sports, to counterbalance that. I am actually, traditionally I’m…

quite an introverted person, but I’ve pushed myself to be outside of those confusions. So when I focus on these internal skills and when I focus on doing all these activities outside of my ⁓ school, university, I started focusing on my internal, call them internal variables, internal factors, skill sets, that…

They don’t fully resolve the external factors, but they act as a counterbalance that you have something else to focus on. Because it’s very easy. And look, the first couple of years, particularly, think, at university, I felt I don’t have the right enough money. I don’t have the contacts. And I feel like an outsider. Even in a very international university, I feel a bit outsider that, an outsider along all the other international students in a way back then, I feel like, how am I going to crack this?

And it really, all the other things I was doing in my life that sort of kept me going and helped me build on all these different skillsets that are now actually super ⁓ useful as a partner, I’d like to think. But I cannot say that I’ve done it always consciously. I think there was an element of lack or maybe self-preservation or a bit of some consciousness that was like, you’ve got to do these things because you cannot do the other things. ⁓ So that’s sort of my thoughts on it.

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resilient as well. And I think you’ve also overcome the challenges, as you say, you have been incredibly driven. I get that because I’ve known you for many, many years, but like you say, it’s not always easy. actually sometimes coming on a podcast and reflecting on some of those things, it is subconscious, a lot of those things that you’ve done, but I think it’s in your nature and who you are that you’ve gone on to have the successes and, you know, coming from humble beginnings. I think it’s inspiring. So thank you for, sharing that. We must talk about AI because you know, a thing or two about that and it’s moving.

incredibly fast. And from your perspective, what are the legal and regulatory risks law firms should be thinking about when adopting AI solutions? Always happy to chat about AI. think when you think, when I think about adoption of AI and when I think about the issues, there’s obviously, there’s the purely regulatory, you know, do not put your client’s confidential information into the free version of chat GPT, for example, right? There’s the confidentiality and regulatory issues. But what I

Purely because of my ⁓ involvement in this space, I obviously advise clients, but we’ve deployed Harvey ⁓ as a firm. We’ve rolled it out last year, January, to the whole firm. And before that, the year before, I’ve been involved in number of pilots across the firm to deploy the technology, choose which vendor we’re to work with, and test what actually works for us. And so my reflections, which I think the key for the adoption challenges that law firms face,

fall into these sort of free buckets. There’s the technical, behavioral, and organizational. And I’m really, ⁓ I’m speaking to those because this is just sort of my first-hand experience and that’s how I sort of structure my thinking around them. But you have the technical issues where you have a lot of data in an unstructured way sitting in the partner’s head, sitting in document management systems, sitting in all these different places on email and attachments where law firms have, and traditionally, yes, we have different

management, case management systems, but they ⁓ don’t always interact in the way you’d want them to, and may not interoperate. And just the processes, there’s a lot of data accumulated in law firms over decades, but it’s not particularly well structured, labeled, ⁓ and there’s big technical challenge.

two hundred page outsourcing agreement i doubt ⁓ the judge if you please or harvey’s or jim and i know this world are trained on any of those documents because they’re not really in the public domain the but they are sitting locked away in the sort of fortresses of of law firms but it’s a technical challenge to to to get access to that data ⁓ there’s a there’s a ⁓ behavioral challenge which i find fascinating gets a my my obsession with psychology in a way where these the role of these tools means that at the moment

putting aside ⁓ a big technological leap into AGI and so on. At the moment, the way these tools work is our jobs as lawyers consists of tasks A to Z, let’s call it that way. And the tool is really good at doing tasks C, F and Y in that sequencing, which means you have to do A and B in your normal way, do C with the tool, and then go back into your normal workflow and continue from then onwards, which is really challenging because it means you have to change people’s habits.

Right? changing people’s habits is super hard. So that’s something that preoccupies ⁓ my mind a lot in terms of changing my own habits, but those of my colleagues. And that leads into the organizational challenge where it’s all very well to say, now we have Harvey or the equivalent or within the firm, use it. That’s all very well, but there’s this organizational challenge. How do you collect the best use cases? How do you…

and disseminate them and how do you keep people engaged using the tool on a continuing basis. So these are challenges that in a way I’m excited that as a partner I’m hoping to sort of grapple with that a bit more and play around with these issues. But I actually think, you know, the regulators and it will vary between jurisdictions and it will vary, you know, with often between sectors as well.

The tools are here, we’re going to be using them. But the challenge for me are these sort of free buckets, technical, behavioral and organizational. And the fact that innovation doesn’t equal adoption, The capabilities are incredible now, but actually the adoption is super slow, super challenging. And I see that across also, I’m speaking about the law firm, but I see that more broadly when I advise clients, I do a lot of contracts which deal with procurement, for example, of AI tools.

You know, there’s one narrative that’s in the press about all these tools doing all these agentic things. And then I see the hard reality of what the client is actually buying under the contract and what is the service scope of this tool and you know, how, they’re actually procuring. And you know, there’s quite a bit of a disconnect because the adoption is slow and it takes time. Yeah, that’s what that’s sort of my thoughts on the adoption challenges. But it’s a fun, it’s certainly a fun and interesting space to be in and being able to play with that internally within the business.

love how you put that into the three buckets there. And you’re right, because nothing changes if nothing changes, but actually getting people on the bus, educating them, seeing the value in it. I always say, what’s everyone’s favorite radio station, WIFM, in terms of what’s in it for me. I think the understanding actually, if you were to adopt this technology, it’s going to save you this time where it’s going to make this X, Y, and Z. So it’s a challenge, but I think it’s very exciting. And you’re touching on there.

I just want to go a little bit deeper in terms of just, you know, your future thoughts on the role of AI and automation playing in the future of legal services and how that might change. Well, there’s one thing that goes without saying, and I’m sure a lot of people speak about that, is that the junior walk is going. There’s no doubt that the, you know, the stuff that I was delegated when I was a trainee, partner printing out an email and redlining it and me making these changes, that has gone.

the trainee profiting an email that’s gone, a trainee doing initial research, that’s gone. lot of the time, know, I remember sitting down, getting a task from a partner who was doing a presentation. I would spend, you know, an entire day researching what he’s going to say in that presentation or preparing, helping him prepare for the call. I’m not, the reality is I probably for these tasks, I do research through, you know, deep research functions on how your equivalent.

where I can prepare for a call quicker and yes, it doesn’t do the job perfectly but it is quicker and I can skim through for the things that are relevant to me in the same way as I would if a trainee collated that together. That’s happening, that’s very, very clear. Now there is a debate, I think, ⁓ what does it mean for the model of the firms in the future because traditionally we think about this sort of traditional pyramid, lots of juniors and it starts getting a bit narrower.

as you get to the top and you get to the partners. And think there’s two schools of thought around it. One is the hourglass, right? So you have still a reasonable amount of juniors and they get, they very quickly, very few people in the middle, maybe sort of some solution architects, engineers that help you sort of deal with the technology, actually, you know, code and do software engineering around the tools. But these juniors actually can get very quickly by augmentation, with the augmentation of technology, they move from the

bottom of the hourglass to the top of the hourglass and is basically quite even but they get, juniors get quite senior quite quickly because they are augmented by the technology and they can make the judgments much easier, much quicker. So that’s one view that I’m sure some of the listeners have heard. The other view is, and I think there’s still a debate about it, is actually that you have ⁓ a diamond shape style of a law firm. So actually you still need a few people at the top.

very senior that can have an, give you an overall direction and steer and they have probably more experience than the AI still will have even if it’s been trained on all these different things because they understand the nuances of the particular case a bit more. They don’t average it out in the same way as AI might. So you have a few people at the top. You have very few people, junior people at the ⁓ sort of entry level because very quickly they move to the middle bits.

which is again augmented by AI. But I think the debate on how it exactly looks like, I think is a little bit open. ⁓ How that shape is definitely not gonna be a pyramid. I think that shape is definitely changing. But whether it’s an hourglass or a diamond shaped structure, I think that’s open for debate. The thing that is definitely happening, ⁓ and we’ve been part of it at Lewis Silkin, is ⁓ law firms becoming builders of products as well.

⁓ So we have rolled out and that’s a trend that we’re going to see in the next couple of years for sure. As a firm, have last year we’ve built a tool called Delphius, which draws on our expertise in the employment law space and the expertise of our partner firms from the Uselaborries Network, which is a network of law firms globally, the best sort of employment law firms across the world. And it’s basically a tool where if you’re an

HR professional or an employment lawyer, you go in and you say, well, I want to, don’t know, fire five people in the Czech Republic. And it gives you an initial sort of sense check and answer. And then it plugs you in with sort of, if you want to speak to our partner firm in Czech Republic, then you can do that. It’s a software product. And so it’s interesting to see a law firm rolling out a SaaS solution, right? Because you suddenly, we’re used to advice on a project by project basis. Now you suddenly,

have to do product management, not project management, but product management. This product will now need to keep being updated. There’s a subscription revenue that comes from it. it’s a very different, actually it’s a very different journey for a law firm to be rolling these things out. And I’m sure other firms will do similar things in different spaces. So that’s definitely happening because there is a limit at the moment to what those generic legal tech providers can do. So law firms,

going back to that technical challenge that we spoke about, know, that all that data being locked out, locked in within law firms, ⁓ that’s one way to leverage it, right? And distinguish yourself ⁓ in the competitive landscape. So that’s what is definitely happening, has happened and will continue happening in the market.

I think you’re right. it’s, you know, it’s new revenue stream as well, like you say, in terms of, you know, the markets change. So, you know, law firms meeting clients where they’re at and innovating and becoming more innovative. You know, I think it’s exciting. And I think the firms that you work for that are really keen and proactive for that, such as Lewis-Silkins, are probably the exciting places to be. Sticking with AI before we move on, the AI Act is a European regulation on AI, the first comprehensive regulation on AI by any major

regulator. So what impact has the EU AI Act had on businesses like law firms? So there’s quite a lot to unpack and I love the EU, I don’t want to say I love the EU’s AI Act, it’s a great, there’s so much to unpack about it. maybe I’ll start before I jump sort of on the impact, move to the impact, but one thing I sort of, I feel maybe worth touching on it, and because I get this in the conversations a lot is the

there’s a few misconceptions about the EU’s AI Act where people are like, it aims to regulate everything, where did it come from, like why is the EU regulating AI? And ⁓ I sort of start with prefacing some of these conversations with trying to dissolve those misconceptions because I think it’s important. And so there’s a couple of points before I get to the impact. One is ⁓ the EU’s AI Act, ⁓

the really the genesis of it is days back to 2018 or 2019 where there was this group of experts that developed these draft ethics guidelines for trust for AI. Now, when we think about law and law regulating technology, we often think that the law is quite behind. But actually, when you think that this work started in 2018, 19, when lots of people, there wasn’t, we didn’t have generative AI back then, you think, well, that was quite…

quite forward looking to start thinking about what it means to have trustworthy AI. And this is really the EUS AI Act, it was a sort of a natural progression from these draft ethics. The other thing that is important is the act, we speak about AI legislation, but actually the EUS AI Act is a product safety piece of legislation. It’s the idea behind it is that things that we put on the market are safe.

that we can trust them and that they do not prejudice our fundamental rights. So seems like fairly sensible principles, right? We all sort of in Europe, we stand behind them. And so it has some quirks from product legislation perspective where it speaks about conformity assessments and risk assessments that a lot of people in the AI space, then it’s a not natural thing to deal with because if you’re a commercial contracts lawyer or if you’re a data protection lawyer, you don’t necessarily think about conformity assessments.

that the genesis as a product safety tool that actually what we put in the market is safe, that’s quite important. And then you get into the idea of like, no, we overregulated, we’re trying to regulate the whole of AI. And actually the act is really focused on these things that are really harmful to us. That’s the idea, right? The practice is a different story we can get to that. But the idea is that we’re going to ⁓ regulate the things that are really high risk, that really can pressure this our rights.

if you have a HR recruitment tool that decides whether you’re to get it going to be put for the interviewing process. If that is deciding on your career decisions, career choices, career access to your career, that’s a huge, huge decision. So you should be able to have some guidelines in place. So the European Commission, based on sort of statistics, they assume that actually 80 % probably, think, you know, ⁓ roughly that that’s sort of stat

I’ve seen it being thrown around, that 80 % of the tools on the market will actually not be caught by the act because they’re not high risk enough. It’s really about these 20%, maybe a bit more, ⁓ of tools that are high risk because they’re used for safety components or I don’t know, decides whether an ambulance, an AI tool decides whether an ambulance is gonna be sent to pick you up. These are huge things. You’d want to have some guidelines in place. So that’s why I like to put it, whenever I speak about the use of AI, contextualize it because people sort of,

get very hung up about, no, EU is regulating AI and it’s gonna kill the industry. There are challenges with the EU’s AI and that’s where you get to the impact. For law firms, for law firms specifically, obviously this area has now become almost a standalone area of practice, right? I don’t think two, three, four years ago, would, even when TGPD came out, ⁓ yeah, AI is gonna be this sort of standalone area of practice. It is and it isn’t, as in there is a lot of work in AI and a lot of my work revolves now around advising on the variety of

issues in the different backers I’ve mentioned. And it requires the challenge of the act and the impact of the act on a business like a law firm is it’s so multidisciplinary that you end up needing to work with your employment colleagues, data protection colleagues, commercial teams, all in tandem. And that’s where the real value is of having a firm where you

I haven’t really joined when you really joined up and it’s not it’s not it’s not it’s not easy. I’ve been partly lucky. ⁓ Partly you know I moved when I when I moved from Reed Smith to Ling Laeders I wanted to learn data protection because I thought I need to know I need to have a common language with the data protection team if I want to speak about AI. And so I’ve been I’ve been quite ⁓ lucky in the sense that actually now having done.

IP at Reed Smith having done data protection, link layers and big technology transactions and &A. I am now in the middle of all of this at Lewis Silkin where I both have a common language of the corporate team about AI, common language of the data team in the, about AI, common language of the IP litigators about AI. So this has been, this is for me has been obviously brilliant. ⁓ But there’s a broader impact. So that’s an impact of, I think of these sort of legislative proposal, legislative ⁓ instruments. There isn’t

The impact on the business is, think, a bit more challenging because where we are with the Act is there’s proposals to delay certain provisions. There’s a digital omnibus proposal to delay some of the coming into force of the main provisions around high risk and transparency obligations, obligations relating to high risk systems and then separately for systems that carry transparency risks. And the reason for that is because you have a piece of legislation that is in force

But there’s plenty of standards that haven’t been yet developed. There is plenty of guidance that hasn’t been developed. are constantly delays in getting codes of practice done, which leads to a lot of business uncertainty. And so the impact of the act on the businesses, I’d say, has been limited in a way because a lot of these provisions are not actually quite enforced. Yes, companies are gearing to comply with a lot of this, but it’s not yet enforced. And it leads to a situation where you have a lot of clients

looking more broadly at AI and looking at all the different things that are going wrong. You ⁓ you had a airline chatbot in Canada ⁓ promise discounts to a customer, right? You have ⁓ tools that are just being, just going off the rails and saying things they shouldn’t be saying. So you have all these PR risks and other issues and security vulnerabilities that actually rolling out these AI tools, putting aside the regulatory environment.

you’re thinking, actually, how does responsible AI, how does this trustworthy AI look like? And it boils down to all these different principles that we speak about, explainability, accountability, redress mechanisms. And so it has an indirect effect. think that the indirect effect right now is actually really big, where companies are thinking, how does responsible AI governance look like? Because we don’t want to have a PR disaster where, you know, our customer support that is driven by AI starts chatting nonsense to our customers and damaging our brand.

So this is, think, where there is an interesting indirect impact of the act where people are looking at the act. They don’t necessarily fall within the scope of the act, but they think, right, how do I go about implementing these responsible AI governance principles in my business? Because I don’t really want to be on the hook ⁓ when the AI system goes rogue. Yeah, no. And thank you for, you know, such a comprehensive overview of that and sharing context. Cause like you say, with everything, it’s super important. So.

people can grasp it and sticking well, guess, moving from Europe to international, many of your clients operate internationally, don’t they? So what are some of the legal challenges tech businesses face when actually scaling across borders? Yeah, so I think it does build on just what I said. think the biggest, I think the biggest, there are two challenges. I think one of them is legal is the uncertainty. I think uncertainty and a degree of fragmentation. ⁓ So.

The USA act is an example of this that at the moment you have so much uncertainty with the missing sort of that there’s plenty of delegated acts that need to be coming to force guidance code of practice that uncertainty when you have deadlines high risk applications August this year and you and the commission is now thinking, yeah, let’s maybe delay it for up to 16 months. gives you a flavor how uncertain this environment is, you know, the the consultation in the UK about AI and

copyright again we’ve sort of we’ve gone around in circles and we should get a final report ⁓ by mid ⁓ mid-March from the government but again we’ve been we’ve been going in circles around this so the uncertainties when I speak to businesses the uncertainty as I think ⁓ the biggest the biggest problem because you’d rather you’d rather if you know how you have to do certain things at least you can get on with it if you don’t know how to do the things you end up going to one lawyer or another lawyer and that they will unfortunately give you

sort of a slightly caveated answer because the lawyer might not be able to opine on what actually is the law. ⁓ And you end up going in circles and you don’t really know what to tell your business of how are you supposed to be building. And you risk going down an avenue, which then you might have to backtrack, or you have to tell the business to build all these potential guardrails that may or may not be required, or maybe put on hold a certain project because we don’t know how it’s gonna play out. So this uncertainty is not helpful. That’s a challenge. Now,

The other thing that I think commonly comes up is that, ⁓ but as I sort of like to sort of try to challenge that narrative, is that narrative about over regulation, the narrative around over regulation in Europe ⁓ is often I think oversimplified because I think the legal barriers often cited is, there’s too much laws in the EU and that’s a big challenge for business.

But I think it’s often used, there are some areas, don’t get me wrong, there are areas where simplification would be welcome. But there, I think it’s often used, too often used as a smoke screen for the broader challenges in access to capital and the actual fragmentation in the markets between the UK, Europe. ⁓ That you’re in a situation where actually Europe has been trying to get a digital single market for a long time.

But in reality, we don’t have a single market. Unlike the US where it is a much more homogenous market when it comes to, yes, there are federal laws in the different states and the US will tell you our culture is very different. And yes, there are differences between how New Yorkers or people in Texas like their foods and dress and whatever, there are cultural differences. Fine. But ⁓ in Europe, I think the difference between culturally

between ⁓ south of Spain or Italy and the Nordics is actually probably slightly bigger. ⁓ So you get a language differences, cultural differences, then you get into the problem that actually you have directives at the EU level, but they have to be implemented by member states. So the member states will implement them. And there are cultural flavors to these implementations, right? Because certain governments will…

want to protect certain industries a bit more. And so suddenly you have a market which is not a single market. We think of EU as a single market, but it’s not in a lot of ways. ⁓ So that’s the challenge. And a lot of it is being put on the lawyers. get a lot of blame and find that there is, well maybe not the lawyers, the legislators, right? Because I’m not there sitting in the, unfortunately I’m not there sitting in the parliament and deciding on these AI laws. But I think there’s this,

There’s this misconception that the fragmentation only comes from the law, where in fact, I the cultural differences and the access to capital, right? If you’re raising money in the US, you’re often thinking about raising almost from the whole of the US. ⁓ mean, obviously, a lot of money goes into ⁓ California and you might go there and raise your capital. But in Europe, when you’re raising money, if I’m speaking to Polish startup,

They’re thinking of raising money in Poland, right? If you’re speaking to UK startup, they might be raising money in the UK. Maybe, you know, there are obviously funds that operate on a broader Central Eastern European basis or continental European. But you have this problem with capital as well, which leads to the fragmentation of the market because you’re thinking of building a national champion, not a European champion in the first place, right? I think when you go to the US, you’re thinking, I’m building either an American champion.

or a global champion. And that’s the big difference. the law is a friction point, I agree, but I don’t think it’s the biggest challenge when ⁓ I speak to the businesses ⁓ is often the cultural differences, is the access to capital to scale these businesses and the uncertainty which I mentioned at the top. Yeah, and again, thank you for giving such a great overview there and some comparisons so people can kind of…

get more of an understanding of some of this going deeper than just what they probably read on headlines. So there’s some more context attached to it. Okay. Let’s talk about IP now before we wrap up with a couple of quick fire questions. Whether acquiring or developing IP assets, what mistakes do companies generally make when they underestimate the value of IP? Yeah, no, it’s a great question because it comes up all the time. And I think the biggest mistake is just not really understanding where the value of what you’re developing or acquiring.

where the real value is and I’ll give you, walked on this transaction, this acquisition where ⁓ the client came to us and said, I need to know where the secret sauce of this company is. And the company claimed to have some AI. And what we found out, we said, we’re like, okay, well, we’re not the technical advisors, but fine, we’re gonna look at the inbound licenses outbound, we’re gonna figure out where the data is coming from, we can do this. The client didn’t really have

⁓ particularly sophisticated technical advisors on this. So we’re trying to sort of piece together the contractual matrix of where the different IP was coming from. And what we found, there was no AI in the business. There was a simple algorithm that was sort of sifting through the data. But what we found was quite interesting was the data that the business had was an accumulation of at least a couple of decades of individuals, of the employees of that company.

going out to bodies like sort of councils or public administration bodies and digitizing records which were not being digitized back then. It was like, this goes back 20, 30 years or something like that, as in the accumulation of data. So you had a company that has gone out and collated this data and digitized it and it accumulated over a long, long period of time. So the secret sauce was not in the algorithm that then sort of

provided some insights that was pretty simple off the shelf algorithm. But the accumulation of the data, because in order to replicate this, you’d have to, some of it might be digitized now, but you have to go out and send people and actually the labor and collating this and sort of annotating and cleaning it up was a lot of effort. So that was an interesting one because the client came in saying, I want to know the secret sauce, there’s some AI here. And we’re like, there’s no AI here, sorry to break it to you. But that’s the bad news. The good news, there is actually some value because this data is actually

It’s a data set that’s very difficult to get to. So that’s one. That’s one where the value might not think that the value is in the data, which it often is. The other one, is ⁓ often overlooked is ultimately a lot of businesses depend on people, right? Until we get to AI doing everything, ⁓ we are the people that are actually executing on these different tasks, ⁓ taking the judgment of what to execute on, which ideas are better.

And so you have seen, and this is a sort of a good example, you would have seen, there’s a reason why some ultimate Mark Zuckerberg are going after all these data scientists, software engineers and paying them an incredible amounts of money to join their organizations because the value is often in the people doing the work. They are the ones that have the ideas, the know how they know how to stitch together the algorithms. They know how to work with particular types of data sets or particular technology.

So sometimes you have these deals which are just called, they’re called acqui-hires, where you’re not really interested in the IP of the company. You’re interested in what’s in the head of those individuals. And that’s another one. mean, a lot of businesses depend on the people actually executing, right? When I work on technology, other types of technology transactions, where it often falls, by part is because they are not the right people, not on the right project, and they’re not doing the right work. So this is one where again, it’s worth thinking when

when working on these transactions that actually, know, we get very hung up about AI and the algorithm and this model, but there is an effort from humans that needs to decide what meta prompts to put, what guardrails, do you fine tune that model? How do you work with the data? Where is the data coming from? So there’s a lot of other pieces actually that may be more valuable, depending on the context. And it’s one of those basic questions.

we’re like, where is the value? Like we end up having these conversations with clients, which is fun because you get to sort of look under the bonnet of these companies and ⁓ troll through a bunch of documents and trying to piece it together. And that kind of reminds me of a mentor that said to me many, years ago, Rob, I want to empty my head before I’m dead. And it’s that wisdom in that head, you know, that actually is the true value, you know, and it’s very kind of them wanting to give back. And we’ll talk briefly about your mentorship before we…

before we close as well, but I love that point. yeah, again, so many people underestimate these things. So thanks for highlighting that. Okay. Switching lanes now sport, you know, you’re passionate. You touched on that at beginning, a bit about dancing, but you’re passionate about fencing, break dancing. You also did archery very competitively as well. Tell us a bit about your experience playing sports whilst being at the high level of law. Yeah, it’s, people get, um, and I used to hide these hobbies a bit more. sort of, as I grew a bit older and maybe wiser, I sort of lean into them more and I find more.

against comfort and learnings from what I did. ⁓ But people get confused about my hobbies because yes, did archery competitively in Poland. I ⁓ got some medals at national championships and international competitions and that was a huge, hugely important sport for me. And it really instilled the discipline and the attention to detail and it was a really boring sport. I tried to watch it on the Olympics and I couldn’t. ⁓

But it did give me the skills that when I look back, I’m like the patience that I have and the sort of attention to detail because you could in archery, like the way you put your thumb on the string of the bow ⁓ when you drew it, like the tiny details and the positioning of the thumb mattered. ⁓ So that was like this one thing. And then I switched directions. I went from archery to breakdancing, which my parents thought I’d lost my mind, but I was looking for something that was going to give me freedom.

I was doing a lot of competitions, a lot of training, was quite getting a bit hectic and I was fed up with the coach at the time. And I was like, I want to be free in a way. So I went with breakdancing and I found much more than that because it was a way of, it was a creative outlet. Breakdancing is a lot about freedom, it’s about depending on your musicality, physicality, depending on your acrobatic maybe skills, you can adapt your abilities to the dance.

And it was a community. Archie was a very individualistic sport. Breakdancing was all about the community. You saw someone doing this really cool headspin and you were like, teach me that. Can you teach me that? And my best friends are these like lots of people that I stayed in touch are from that dancing community from university, which is, we have weddings. We’ve been to a wedding of one of our best friends in Thailand. We got everyone together dancing at the wedding reception, rehearsing three days before.

So his incredible ability has given me a community and confidence. I was very, very, very introverted and sort of not confident in the public spaces in the way I am now. And breakdancing forced me to be like, you need to perform, you’re still in your own world when you’re dancing. But that was a huge, and I look back and I’m like, these were the most important contributing factors to what I do. then the fencing is more recent. I was just looking for a more sustainable sport.

I found a this is going to be a more sustainable sport. I want to compete again. I want to get good again at a sport that I can compete. But what fencing gave me actually, you know, it’s quite a confrontational ⁓ sport, right? You’re sort of trying to stab someone. You’re in a mask and the suit. But I realized that it made me ⁓ more comfortable with confrontation. There’s a psychological and I think probably people who do martial arts will

will get into that as well, that because you’re confronted in this situation, there’s a psychological element, there’s a strategy element, that you become more comfortable with confrontation and how you tackle it. If someone is running towards you and trying to stab you, you start learning how to deal with that. So I’ve realized that in negotiations, I found it easier to navigate, actually, if someone is very confrontational and very stubborn or

or difficult, ⁓ I found that I think because of fencing I’ve become more accustomed to it or sort of I deal with it better or easier in a way. There’s obviously probably seniority and all that stuff, but that’s why as all these sports have been hugely important to me and also have been important for me because I sort of believe in this sort of decentralized identity is like a psychological, think, psychology. ⁓

I might be slightly twisting it, but the idea being that you don’t attach your identity to one thing. And I think as a lawyer, it’s very easy to put, if the partner has marked up my email and you feel it’s a reflection on you if your work has been torn into shreds. But maybe that happens on Monday, but on Tuesday, if you have a fencing training and you did really well and you kicked someone’s ass, then you’re like, yes, I am good at something.

And so it’s been a thing, a feature of my life to try to have this decentralized identity, not to sort of lose myself. And in the process, it has given me some very valuable, incredible skills. Yeah. It’s such a great point, isn’t it? That there’s, know, you’re the human and you’ve got these different aspects of your life as well, shape you are. And actually some things might not be going so well that week, but these other things are, and it kind of helps you probably in terms of look at some of the positives. Cause going through a, you know,

Successful career like you have you are gonna have challenges you are gonna have setbacks you are gonna think about having these outlets where you’re also acquiring skills communities all the great things that you said as well is a great way of keeping you motivated and going okay, just before we close a couple of final questions you also find the time to guest lecturer on AI at King’s College London So what do you enjoy most about sharing your knowledge with the next generation? I go back to King’s my old University and I do these guest lectures about how advising on AI looks like in private practice and I

I did it for two reasons, really. One was because I kind of wanted to go back and give back to my old university and sort of be hopefully that example of a non-native English speaker that’s sort of been able to navigate the industry, come back to this very international university and give them an example of like, you can have an interesting legal career. You can come from wherever you want, wherever you come from and build your career. So I wanted to be that example. Because I didn’t have those examples, right? When I came here, I…

I didn’t know, I didn’t have anyone to look up to, so I had to figure out my way. And the second reason was, I mean, quite selfish in a way. I just wanted to learn how to do public speaking. And my university was the sort of great practice ground for that. My grandfather ⁓ used to lecture at university. He lectured about sort medicine, pharmacology.

And I hugely respected that and sort of stuck in my head. And I thought there was sort of intellectual rigor that goes into articulating your thoughts and lecturing and structuring it. So I think partly inspired by my grandfather who did it until until very late in his life. I sort of wanted to, I think, maybe honor him in that way in a way. But but there was a selfish reason to sort of practice public speaking and it seemed like a natural starting point. Yeah. And you obviously, you know,

loving giving back because as an extension of that, you are also responsible for launching the first nationwide mentoring scheme for Polish students in the UK. So how did you go about launching that scheme? Yeah. So we’ve almost gone in a full circle because we spoke about the Polar City Club briefly at the beginning of this conversation. I am on the board of the Polar City Club and as a network of Polish professionals walking across a range of disciplines.

And the idea came during the pandemic where we thought actually, the students are really finding it difficult to look at what they’re going to do during the pandemic, after the pandemic, how is the market going to look like? And originally the idea of the mentoring scheme was to support students in London, but then we thought, well, everyone has moved online, let’s do it nationwide. So we got applications from Manchester, Aberdeen, Cardiff. It was brilliant. so we have mentors who have done amazing.

things across professions, law, architecture, medicine, entrepreneurship, finance in the club. ⁓ So we match the mentees with the mentors and we’ve done it on a nationwide basis. then we’re just about to, by the time this podcast has probably gone out, we would have launched the fourth edition and we have expanded the reach to support ⁓ students from Central Eastern Europe. We’ve done it in the previous year.

where we had some students from Romania apply to the scheme. And they’ve gone on doing amazing things, working for the European Commission, being assistants at an MIT, going through top law firms. It’s not a huge amount of people that have gone for the program, probably 20 to 30, but they’ve done really amazing things. it’s the next generation of people that will run the Polish City Club. Hopefully we’re an organization that is over 20 years old. I’m not going to be around forever as well.

⁓ So it’s a nice way to give back, to see this talent ⁓ grow and the next generation of Polish and Eastern European professionals coming through the ranks at all these different organizations. Yeah, the next Rochs coming through and lighting up the legal industry and so much more. This has been a wonderful conversation. Just finally, Roch, what advice would you give to young lawyers? What’s one piece of advice you’d give to lawyers who want to specialize in tech, AI and IP?

This is going to be bit broader than just IP tech in a lot, but this is one of the most important things I’ve sort of taken from the past two, three years. And it’s how I actually chose to do a Silkin as a firm that I ended up going to and making partner. When I was thinking of switching firms,

I listened to this psychology podcast. was about how do you you make life decisions? ⁓ And at first there was the psychologist saying, you should think about your principles and, know, you should align with your principles. And at first I found it very, very fluffy. was like, what is this all about? This is too fluffy for me. Left the sort of the podcast came to the actual decisions and I had a bunch of offers on the table and very different, very, different financially, location wise, very, different office.

And I was pretty stressed as it was pretty difficult decision. And I listened back to that podcast about these principles. And I was like, let me try it again. And I listened to that podcast and I jotted down the principles I wanted to live by in my career. wanted to pursue in my career going forward. ⁓ And it was being entrepreneurial, being creative, maximizing autonomy, being able to develop my intellectual abilities in a way I want to. So AI has been a huge

It’s been a niche originally, that’s an ancillary piece of advice, that find your niche. My niche eight years ago was AI. ⁓ So I wanted to be entrepreneurial. I wanted to pursue my intellectual development and have a holistic look at the career. And when I looked at all these principles or values that really are important to me at this stage in my career, I was like, there’s only one firm I can actually do this to the fullest extent possible.

And when I put it in those terms, was the easiest choice I made and I don’t regret it any day. But it’s very difficult because it’s often, you know, you may be swayed ⁓ by junior lawyers, maybe swayed or people going into the career swayed by the money, swayed by the status, swayed by the brand. And these are tangible things you can put your finger to. When you write down your principles and how do you want to feel in your job and how do you want to go about what sort of people you want to interact, it’s a little bit difficult.

more difficult to capture. But actually, I’ve done this across the board. I reflected on it and I’ve done this without listening to that podcast back in the day. I was like, when I was going through link letters, I was like, I want to learn about data protection. I want to work with the best technical minds I can in this industry. And they were absolutely brilliant lawyers. So I had these principles, every single move, I had these principles. And sometimes I’ve jotted them down, but sometimes didn’t. But they guided me and they made sure that I made ⁓

principles change as well, right? So if you want to get into, ⁓ maybe somebody’s very interested in, I don’t know, manufacturing or pharmaceuticals, but I want to get into IP or AI, so that’s an interest, so that’s one niche, right? You might be doing AI for manufacturing logistics company, or for pharma companies, or maybe you really like finance, but you also like AI. Again, you’re going to get these different ⁓ sort of niches. ⁓

And then once you’ve found your niche, think about those principles of values because that will inform where and what sort of working environment you’re actually going to be able to maximize your skillset in that niche. So that’s a long-winded answer. I cannot emphasize how valuable this random thought was when I was making one of the biggest decisions.

in my life, where am I going to go next and where do I want to make partner potentially, right? So leave with that. Hopefully that’s useful. Absolutely useful. know, niches, you know, we talk a lot about specific is terrific on the show and then also sort of professionals driven by principles. I think there’s something for that in terms of having those careers. I like that. I might even call you my own phrase there. And this has been great.

Rob really, really enjoyed today’s discussion. If our listeners want to learn more about you, your career or indeed Lewis Silkin, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to share any websites, any of your social media handles. We’ll also share them this episode for you. think, yeah, LinkedIn is where I live the most. So that’s probably the easiest avenue to reach me with career advice as well in that regard and building on the previous question. But yeah, no, Rob, thank you has been.

Absolute pleasure and has made me reflect on the journey of the past few years. So really, really excited to be able to share it with you and your audience. Well, thank you, Roch, so much for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure hosting you on the Liggy Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio. Wishing you lots of continued success with your intentional career and indeed future pursuits and sports and hobbies. But now from all of us, 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 of the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord. Go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There’s a link to join our community there. Over and out.