The Law Boutique – Electra Japonas – S2E2

Rob Hanna (00:00):

Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast powered by Kissoon Carr. I’m your host, Rob Hanna. This week, I’m delighted to be joined by Electra Japonas, the founder of The Law Boutique. So welcome.

Electra Japonas (00:12):

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Rob Hanna (00:13):

Pleasure. You may be aware, I was just saying off air that we still have in Season 2 our customary question. On the scale of one to 10, 10 being very real. How real do you rate the TV series Suits?

Electra Japonas (00:29):

A 1.5.

Rob Hanna (00:31):

Okay. Why?

Electra Japonas (00:32):

Because that’s definitely not real life at all. And I think everyone’s got a drinking problem as well because who drinks so much whiskey at about 10:00 AM.

Rob Hanna (00:41):

Good point. Good point. Yeah. So I think based on that, maybe even just one.

Electra Japonas (00:45):

Maybe just a one.

Rob Hanna (00:47):

Let’s just round it down to one. Okay. so you’ve got such an impressive journey, as I mentioned at the top, the founder of The Law Boutique, but let’s go back a step, but tell us a bit more about your background.

Electra Japonas (00:59):

Okay. So I was born and raised in Cyprus.

Rob Hanna (01:01):

Okay.

Electra Japonas (01:02):

British mum, hence the accent. And then I studied in the UK. I went back to Cyprus, I did my bar exam and then I decided that Cyprus was a little bit too small for me. So I came back and I did a master’s in international business law. And while I was doing that, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I didn’t really want to have a traditional kind of legal trajectory because I always, I always wanted to do something a bit different. So I was really lucky to get a job at the European Space Agency in Holland. And then I went and I did a graduate program with them followed by a stint in Germany. And then after I’d moved around a little bit, I decided to settle in London.

Electra Japonas (01:41):

And throughout my career, I was always working in a tech environment. So I was always, always really conscious about the fact that as a lawyer, you need to be speaking the language of the engineer or the tech person that you’re talking to. And they’re very structured in the way that they operate or they have been in the, in the companies that I worked for. So then when I started working with law firms, as I moved into different companies and started pursuing more commercial roles, when I started working with law firms, I realized that there was a disparity between the way lawyers worked and the way the business operated and that, that meant that you always needed to have someone who was translating. So I thought, why is it like that? Why can’t lawyers, why don’t lawyers work in a way that’s conducive to the rest of the business and what can I do to change that? And I started The Law Boutique to do just that.

Rob Hanna (02:31):

Okau. And we are definitely be talk lots about The Law Boutique, but I guess going back, Cyprus, whereabouts, I mean, I’ve only been on holiday –

Electra Japonas (02:38):

Limasol.

Rob Hanna (02:38):

Okay. So is that where you fly to Larnaca or you fly into Pathos?

Electra Japonas (02:42):

You can, well, Cypress is so tiny that you can fly to either of those cause Limasol is equidistant from both of them, but yes.

Rob Hanna (02:50):

Okay. Yeah. Would you recommend it for holidays?

Electra Japonas (02:53):

Definitely. It’s beautiful. It’s small. And if you rent a car, it’s one of the holiday destinations, or even though I’m biased, I do think.

Rob Hanna (03:02):

Yeah. Okay. And you mentioned that you thought about wanting you sort of found a gap with regards to The Law Boutique, but what really fueled your passion for wanting to start it?

Electra Japonas (03:14):

If I’m honest, it was probably frustration at the way that it was almost impossible to get the type of support that I needed as an in house lawyer from the law firms I worked with.

Rob Hanna (03:24):

Yeah. You want to give a flavor of some of those organizations you’re working with just for context for people?

Electra Japonas (03:28):

Yeah. So I worked with in my last stint, I worked with a big tobacco company and I worked in the it department we were basically delivering this project, which was worth a lot of money and to negotiate the contract that we were negotiating, It took four months in a law firm and we were working really late nights. And at the end of that process, I thought, what, what was the real value add here? And my conclusion was the fact that the real value add was the insurance policy that the law firm had. Because even though we were in a room with really bright lawyers, they didn’t really understand the business, which meant that whatever they gave us, we needed to translate as the in house team needed to translate it into the operational side, which is often really difficult. So wegot to the point where we’re just letting stuff go through and then we thought, Oh, we’ll just change it, change requests. And I thought, I’m sure the lawyers don’t want to be those people.

Rob Hanna (04:26):

Yeah.

Electra Japonas (04:26):

So that’s what, that’s what fueled it a real vision for a gap in the market. And also, I feel like law should be more fun.

Rob Hanna (04:34):

I agree. Hence why this podcast, people are always saying, do you know, that’s really interesting, you’ve had lots of people from partners to associates to business owners, you know, it’s not all stuffy, right?

Electra Japonas (04:43):

Yeah. It’s not, it’s not. And also, if you look at a legal document, now it’s written by lawyers for lawyers, but what if we made it more engaging, prettier, something that people want to read really? Wouldn’t that make lawyers more popular as well? And also, the very topic, a bit more fun.

Rob Hanna (05:03):

I think one thing you’ve touched on there as well as before simplifying things, I think with language and legal language and people get really kind of caught up in it. Do you want to talk about that and sort of how The Law Boutique sort of fits into all of that solution as well?

Electra Japonas (05:17):

Yeah. I mean, if you look at, if you look at any fast growth organization, we work predominantly with fast-growth hyper-growth organizations, they need to do business really quickly and deal speed as an advantage. But if you give someone in the business, say a sales person and NDA there’s written in archaic English with really small writing written over two columns, this is a trick that lawyers use. If you write a document in two columns, you usually get less red lines back. But if you didn’t do that and you simplify the language and the way that it was written and the way that it looks, wouldn’t that salesperson want to engage with that document. If they want to engage with it more than they’re happier to pick it up and use it and get the other party to sign it, rather than getting the third party to give them their NDA, which then creates more work for the legal team. It’s really important that we apply what we call design thinking to law, because that basically makes our life easier. It makes people look at us in a more human light.

Rob Hanna (06:18):

Yeah, no, well said, completely agree. And for you then what have been some of the, so how long has The Law Boutique been going for?

Electra Japonas (06:25):

We are going into our third year?

Rob Hanna (06:27):

Okay. I think a lot of people find it quite humbling and tons of learning people’s journeys. So it’s still relatively new.

Electra Japonas (06:33):

Yeah.

Rob Hanna (06:33):

Obviously you’re doing massively successful now, and it’s great to see, but what have been some of the challenges for you sort of going on those initial three years?

Electra Japonas (06:41):

From a business perspective, rather than from the topic that we’re trying to get people to understand a bit more, at the beginning of any business, I think you do whatever works given to you so that you can pay the bills and any work that comes your way, you might view as validation. So you just pick up that work, but actually ends up taking you away from what you really want to be doing or what you’re really good at. So I think in the first year, that was our biggest challenge, trying to stay afloat whilst doing this stuff. That wasn’t necessarily what we, we really wanted to do.

Rob Hanna (07:16):

So I think definitely in terms of maybe inspiring others, self-discipline, focus, trying to kind of stay in that lane as much as you can whilst balancing it from a finance perspective is probably the advice you would say to others.

Electra Japonas (07:28):

I’m not sure if I would advise anyone, anything, because it’s really difficult to start your own thing. And so if you need to do certain things to, to, to survive and do those things, but know that there’ll come a point where you say, actually, I don’t need to be doing these website T’s and C’s because I want to work on this huge legal ops project. Maybe not huge, but big legal ops project, that’s going to help add this type of value, which is what I really want to be doing. Yeah.

Rob Hanna (07:56):

Yeah. For you guys, in terms of how do you try to differentiate yourself? Because I think what you’re doing is very innovative –

Electra Japonas (08:01):

Thanks.

Rob Hanna (08:01):

And I know you’re a sort of tech enthusiast and think you’re doing great stuff, but what do you think makes you guys stand out from, from the crowd?

Electra Japonas (08:08):

We’re not your standard lawyer. We realized the value of law and legal services, of course, but I think that in order to keep up with the way the rest of the world is going, we need to deliver law differently and we help lawyers do just that.

Rob Hanna (08:26):

You’ve touched on that. So you cut cost through legal design, but do you want to maybe kind of unpack that a little bit more for people listening in are quite new to this concept?

Electra Japonas (08:33):

Sure. Yeah. So I think, I think that we talk about legal design, but I’d like to remove the word legal from that phrase, but I think generally people need to start thinking about design thinking rather than legal design, because legal design is just it’s just the same as design thinking. So you would take a human centric approach to everything that you do, which means that before you design, let’s take a privacy policy, a an example before you design your privacy policy, I think the first thing to think about isn’t necessarily is this document legally compliant. Because as a lawyer you’ll know how to do that, but the first thing is who’s going to read this, who is this content being written for? And does that person really want to read this? And if not, is it important that they read it? And if so, how do you make it more readable? How do you make it more engaging, more entertaining? How do you get people to to pay attention to this thing that you’re going to spend a long time creating? And then after that, of course you think about the law as well, but the law can slot into a, an overarching framework that you can think about. But of course we’re not trained like that. So lawyers are trained to be more risk averse. They’re trained to make sure that everything’s in there to think about every possible scenario. And it it’s, it’s great because it makes you, it makes you very robust and, and whatever you do is really thought through, but there’s another element that I think needs to people need to start considering.

Rob Hanna (10:01):

Yeah. I think he put that really, really well. And I think from, from just sort of analyzing that, it’s a case of, you know, you have got all this complex stuff, you have got all these chunky documents, you can provide a solution, which basically simplifies all that. So stakeholders within the organization can read it, understand it, and it builds their confidence up, which in turn then saves time. Right?

Electra Japonas (10:19):

Exactly. Yeah.

Rob Hanna (10:20):

I think that’s really smart. And I think that’s you know, credit to what you guys are doing at the moment. And so on that we’re in 2020, I think I got fed up last year of asking people what their vision 2020 is. So but you know, for this year and the next decade, although technically someone said to me the other day that this is not a new decade.

Electra Japonas (10:38):

Really?

Rob Hanna (10:38):

It’s 2021 is officially a new decade, but I don’t know. So let’s just say we’re in a new decade. But for this year, what are you, what plans have you got on what’s lined up?

Electra Japonas (10:46):

I think our plan is to get really good at what we’re doing in terms of messaging it, because what we’re doing is quite innovative and I’d like to communicate it better. And I think that takes time. It takes a lot of time to work out exactly what your messaging should be. And also we’d like to continue working with the really core clients that we’re working with at the moment, and really making a difference to the way that they operate and their internal branding, if you like.

Rob Hanna (11:15):

Yeah.

Electra Japonas (11:15):

So we, instead of saying, I’ve got all these plans to do all these new things, I actually want to get, I want to nail what we’re doing now.

Rob Hanna (11:23):

Yeah. No, and that’s, that’s very modest of you as well. You mentioned clients. How did you initially win clients, cause now I know it’s probably, you know, it’s a lot of repeat business, there’s a lot of referrals. It’s, you know, it’s your network you’re established, but from the outset, how did you, how did you go about that and how have you gone about fostering those relationships as well?

Electra Japonas (11:40):

So the first client I got was from a start-up group on Facebook. So I just went on to this Facebook group and I said, hi, I’m thinking of leaving my job and doing this thing. If anyone needs support. And I got two clients on the first day, and then since then it’s been, it’s been word of mouth. It’s been relationships from previous jobs and it’s quite a small ecosystem. So word gets around and I think that’s, that’s how we’ve done. It. LinkedIn’s been really helpful as well, actually.

Rob Hanna (12:09):

Yeah. LinkedIn is so powerful. It’s only going to go from strength to strength for everyone. I mean, they’re even advertising on national TV now.

Electra Japonas (12:15):

Really?

Rob Hanna (12:15):

So they’re going places. Okay. So for you, in terms of your business, slightly different question, but what do you think makes a great lawyer for your business in terms of engaging? What would be a good lawyer in your opinion?

Electra Japonas (12:29):

I think a good lawyer is, is someone who is creative. I don’t, I don’t think that the word creative and law go hand in hand, always in people’s minds, but I think you have to be a creative person to be a lawyer because what we, we’re wordsmiths aren’t we, we like to take something and phrase it in a certain way so that it has a certain meanings of words matter. And that’s a creative process that you engage your, engage the creative part of your brain, the rest you can look up. And so I think a good lawyer is a creative lawyer and that’s the same with us. Someone who’s ready to think differently about the way that we do our jobs.

Rob Hanna (13:09):

Yeah, no, well said. And you, as an extension of that, you are a GDPR practitioner that came into force in May, 2018, even a long time before that. But people start thinking about it in May, 2018, but for you, what are still some of the common misconceptions about GDPR and what you see from people? Generally,

Electra Japonas (13:30):

A lot of things, a lot of things about GDPR misconceptions, I think the whole saga with the emails, filling your inbox to get your consent was a bit mad. I’m sure that people were just sick of seeing those emails in their inbox. But I think the common misconceptions are that GDPR is just a pain actually being really ethical about your data practices will foster trust. It will get you more clients in the long term and people now expect it. So since GDPR people’s perspective around their rights and what they can and can’t do, or exercise, has increased. So I think companies have started to realise that.

Rob Hanna (14:11):

Okay. And for you, as, as, as a business owner, a successful business owner, people are always keen to hear about networking. It’s this massive thing online and offline now, but how do you go about doing your networking and particularly within the legal sector?

Electra Japonas (14:26):

I mean I can’t think of anything worse than being forced into a room with a, you know, a glass of wine and having to start conversations with other people. I don’t think that’s a great image in anyone’s head.

Rob Hanna (14:37):

No.

Electra Japonas (14:37):

So I think networking, I just think relationships, if you spend time with your relationships, then that person’s gonna tell another person. And yeah, I haven’t really deliberately networked if that makes sense.

Rob Hanna (14:51):

Yeah. I think the key is when I say to people network, like you said, that glass of wine, that scenario that’s so 20 years ago, and no one even liked it 20 years ago, and now there’s so many resources and technically, we’re talking with a tech enthusiast and someone who’s trying to streamline process, you know, being quite savvy, using a lot of online tools and networking and things like that I find is massively beneficial these days. Okay. And in terms of accolades, you know, you’re on your third year now, you’re doing very, very well. Is there a particular accolade you would like to win or you’ve got in your sight for The Law Boutique, or as you said, just before you just want to kind of take this year as it comes.

Electra Japonas (15:29):

So we’ve just been, we’ve just been shortlisted for the Modern Law Awards 2020.

Rob Hanna (15:31):

Congratulations!

Electra Japonas (15:31):

Thank you, that would be amazing.

Rob Hanna (15:31):

When do we hear about this?

Electra Japonas (15:31):

I think it’s Q2 of this year, so I’m not sure exactly when, but that would be amazing cause that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re modernizing law.

Rob Hanna (15:46):

Yeah, exactly. And for all you, Legally Speaking listeners, you definitely get behind these guys for that as well and stay tuned. What have you seen as some of the greatest trend changes since being connected to the law and what do you foresee as well in the legal sector happening?

Electra Japonas (16:02):

I think I’ve seen some great trend changes. I think people are talking about tech, they’re talking about legal operations. I think there’s still some misunderstanding about what legal ops actually means. I think people think that it’s tech, but it’s actually a more holistic way of working, but people are thinking about it. And I look at these innovative companies and they hire a lawyer, they hire a GC as a sole counsel and then that lawyer, their first hire will be a legal ops person, which I think is super smart because if you can’t set up your function in a scalable way, how are you going to scale with the rest of the business?

Rob Hanna (16:37):

Yeah. No, definitely. And so for you, what do you think makes a good legal ops person?

Electra Japonas (16:41):

I think legal ops. I think it is the understanding, but legal operations means understanding what the business strategy is, what your objectives need to be as a legal team and then creating a target operating model that’s going to support that.

Rob Hanna (16:53):

Yeah. Okay. And you know, big theme again for this, this year is about people having mentors or wanting to upskill themselves, particularly regarding tech and the legal space. Have you got your own mentors? How would you advise people maybe going about getting mentors if they want to kind of immerse themselves and upskill themselves, particularly in these sort of areas?

Electra Japonas (17:13):

Yeah, I think to your point earlier, doing it digitally is, is great because you can see the people that are talking about the topics that you’re interested in. I use Twitter, I use LinkedIn. And then if you reach out to people, it’s amazing how much people are happy to help you. But people are quite generous with their time when you’re giving them a platform to talk about the thing that they’re passionate about. So keeping that in mind and making an effort to connect with these people has been invaluable and also talking to other people that have started a business, even if it’s in a completely different field and understanding how, how do their processes work who are you using for this piece of work? Just, connecting.

Rob Hanna (17:55):

Yeah. And one question I wanted to ask you because I’m a bit of a big kid. But you did work for Walt Disney. So how did you find your time there and did you get loads of free stuff?

Electra Japonas (18:04):

Got loads of free stuff. Yeah.

Rob Hanna (18:06):

So Christmas presents sorted?

Electra Japonas (18:07):

Sorted. And if you have any kids in the family, that’s a perfect place to work. Yeah, no, it was amazing to see how a large organization that’s so powerful in terms of brand, works.

Rob Hanna (18:19):

Yeah. And that’s really interesting about your career. You’ve kind of worked for the, as I say, the likes of Walt Disney, then you’ve worked for a leading sort of professional services firm, but I mean work within a large sort of multi, multi, multibillion probably tobacco business. So you’ve got all this knowledge and then you’ve kind of just plugged that into the more boutique and you’ve just flown with it. Right?

Electra Japonas (18:36):

Yeah.

Rob Hanna (18:36):

So that’s the way I see it. But is it as simple as that, it’s probably I’m making it sound like it’s just a straightforward thing, but it has it been that easy for you in terms of kind of making everything happen or have you had lots of sort of setbacks along the way?

Electra Japonas (18:50):

Starting a business is, is, is one of the hardest things that you can do. It’s definitely been my biggest challenge. I haven’t had kids yet, but that could, you know, and I feel like it’s on par in a way, because it is so difficult to keep yourself motivated. The biggest challenge for me was actually not having any feedback because when you’ve got a boss, you can ask your boss, how was that?

Rob Hanna (19:12):

Yeah.

Electra Japonas (19:12):

And then they’ll say it was, it was really, it was crap or it was really good. And so if you don’t have that, trying to, trying to be level headed about what you’re doing and whether that makes sense is really challenging.

Rob Hanna (19:24):

Yeah. And you touched on it there when you’re not working on the business, what do you try to do for downtime? Because you do some, it is important to sort of rest or take a break. I know it’s on your mind, 24/7, but do you have anything that you kind of go to as your sort of downtime?

Electra Japonas (19:38):

I like lifting heavy weights in the gym.

Rob Hanna (19:41):

Okay.

Electra Japonas (19:41):

I really like that. I like to go to food markets. London’s amazing. I think for that, food capital.

Rob Hanna (19:50):

Favourite one?

Electra Japonas (19:50):

Well, I live right on top of one called Maltby Street market, which is amazing.

Rob Hanna (19:54):

That’s one I haven’t done.

Electra Japonas (19:55):

Oh, you’ve got to do it. It’s great.

Rob Hanna (19:58):

Is it every day or?

Electra Japonas (19:59):

Only weekends but it’s really good. Yeah.

Rob Hanna (20:00):

Try that out people! Okay. Team is a big thing as well within any organization. How have you found sort of, you know, building a business, but also building a team and, you know, what’s, that then produce for your clients in terms of, you know, you’ve built, you’ve built your business, but have you found that in terms of building your own team and then kind of plugging that team into sort of developing and offering solutions for your clients?

Electra Japonas (20:24):

Yeah. I think team is probably the most important part of any business. And when you first start, you might think that you can do a lot of stuff yourself, you can’t, and you don’t, even, if you can, even if you’ve got the capability, you don’t have the head space and it’s best that you focus on a few things rather than everything. So building a team, just to be honest, a lot of it has been trial and error. So some people came into the business having a different concept of what it would be like, which is fair enough because what we do is, is quite new. But then the team that we currently have is fantastic. And since we’ve, since we’ve had a team of we’ve got three people in the core team, but seven more widely, since we’ve had this team, it’s just been so much easier. Cause you can give people something and they can run with it and then you can do what you need to be doing.

Rob Hanna (21:15):

Yeah, exactly. And in terms of other things you’re involved in, do you do anything else with the regards to sort of adding value to the legal community or anything else you’re particularly passionate in?

Electra Japonas (21:25):

I’m really passionate about getting the Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority to realize that, that we need a bit of support when it comes to truly innovating and, and passing on the, the message that certain things would benefit from a bit of innovation.

Rob Hanna (21:45):

Do you think that’s quite a hard challenge to make that happen?

Electra Japonas (21:48):

It’s hard, but they’re, but they’re listening and there are teams that are set up within these these organizations to do just that. So I’m hopeful.

Rob Hanna (21:58):

Okay, great. And is there within your clients, is there a particular sector or area you most enjoy in terms of providing solutions or are you quite agnostic?

Electra Japonas (22:08):

So we, we work predominantly with fintechs, which I really enjoy because it’s quite a complex regulatory landscape, but also they are really open to new ways of working and they need it. They, they need support with making stuff work better. So I’m really enjoying working with that sector. Although having said that we could apply the way that we work to other sectors as well, but mainly we work with technology companies.

Rob Hanna (22:33):

Yeah. Well, I’m a tech enthusiast as well. What’s been the coolest bit of tech you’ve seen this year or what are you most excited about? That’s in the wings? Yeah.

Electra Japonas (22:41):

Coolest tech… I think what’s cool is using AI for things that are really mundane and time consuming.

Rob Hanna (22:54):

So legal operations. Let’s talk about that. Give us your sort of, you know, definitive definition of what it’s all about.

Electra Japonas (23:01):

Yeah. So legal operations is a buzzword at the moment. People are talking about it. They’re hiring people that are called legal operations specialists and people are, fast growth organizations are thinking about this. Legal operations is something that people think means just tech. It doesn’t. In fact, it’s something much more holistic than that. It’s looking at the way that you work, seeing where inefficiencies might lie and then updating the way that you work or changing it up. Also embedding automation and tech at this point to make sure that you’re working in the most efficient way possible. Because if you think about it, if you’re a small organization or even a larger one, you’ve only got a finite amount of legal resources and legal resources are expensive. And what we do is, is sometimes very high risk. So we need to make sure that the resources that we have are not being used for things that aren’t necessary. So if you can automate a process, then do that. If you can pass on a process to another part of the business, then we should be thinking about how to do that. There is absolutely no reason for the legal team to review every single NDA, because it’s a simple document with maybe 13 or 14 main points that someone in the sales team with the right training and the right type of document, can do for you. And that might make some lawyers feel anxious, but really there isn’t a reason for that to be the case. So legal operations is a, is a way to make your team work more efficiently and more in line with the rest of the business.

Rob Hanna (24:31):

Okay. And what do you think some of the challenges with that or difficulties, or you mentioned obviously it’s with some of the sales people picking up, but from your experience, what have you seen go wrong? And yeah, just talk about some of the headaches with that as well with that shift to legal ops.

Electra Japonas (24:44):

That’s a good question. I think that the main issue is quite a deep one. And I think that’s the fact that as a lawyer, you train to always know the answer.

Rob Hanna (24:53):

Yeah.

Electra Japonas (24:53):

You train to not be wrong, cause the stakes are high. So what happens is that you sort of lose, you lose touch with your ability to be vulnerable in the workplace. And when you’re not vulnerable in the workplace, you don’t ask questions. And this is not, this does not apply to all lawyers at all, but I think it’s one of the main themes that I’ve seen. When you’re not comfortable with being vulnerable in the workplace and saying, I don’t know, how do you think I should be doing this better? You, you stop yourself from being able to apply design thinking, which is effectively putting the user in the middle, in the center of everything that you do. So there’s almost a mindset shift that I think is, is required and we’re human. And we often don’t know, and we’re not trained to be doing legal operations and we’re not trained to be thinking in terms of scalability, the way the rest of the business is.

Rob Hanna (25:51):

Yeah.

Electra Japonas (25:51):

And that’s fine.

Rob Hanna (25:52):

Yeah. Yeah. And you touched on it there, but legal design as well. Let’s sort of dig deeper into that. Tell us, tell us more about that.

Electra Japonas (25:59):

So legal design is a very simple concept. It stems from just general design thinking, which has been used for decades and effectively. It’s a way of making sure that everything that you’re creating is suitable for the end user. So we recently did a design thinking workshop, which was just a general one and they said, design your ideal wallet. So I designed my ideal wallet, which was this beautiful bracelet with jewels on it. And each of the jewels was a button that you pressed. And when you press that button, you would activate different cards and then you would use it as a like a a wireless payment cardless payment. But then the person that I interviewed was quite old school and he loved his leather wallet. He just wanted to have his leather wallet. He just didn’t like the fact that it, it broke so often. So, you know, you need to make sure that you’re designing for the right person. Cause if I designed that wallet, that person wouldn’t want to use it.

Rob Hanna (26:59):

Yeah. No, that’s well said. And again, challenges with that then, because that’s completely different type of individuals isn’t it. More the old school versus the new school. So how do people go about, what should they be thinking about, trying to marry the suit to find the right solution.

Electra Japonas (27:10):

Yeah. I think it also is important not to think so much about your personal preferences in the way that you operate. So if you’re a lawyer in a business and you don’t like using technology and you don’t like pivot tables in Excel, if the rest of the business is using that and you don’t have time or appetite to upskill, then bring in support, hire a legal ops person or a legal ops company to help you put those things in place. Always keeping yourself in mind as the end user, of course, as well as the rest of the business, because if you can’t use it, then what’s the point.

Rob Hanna (27:44):

Yeah.

Electra Japonas (27:44):

So, so just thinking about the fact that your own needs are important, but so are the businesses.

Rob Hanna (27:50):

Yeah, very, very well put. And lastly, I know we’ve kind of touched on it throughout, but this is going to be a big year for The Law Boutique. Is there any sort of final message you want to say to people listening in, in terms of keeping in touch or kind of seeing what you guys are up to? Is there any sort of takeaway message people should take with regards to The Law Boutique/

Electra Japonas (28:06):

So we are holding an event on the 5th of March and that will be called Legal Operations: What is it and how do you do it? So I would encourage anyone who wants to find out more to come to our event, more details. We’ll go on social media and LinkedIn. And if you if you want to find out more, just contact me.

Rob Hanna (28:23):

Perfect. Well, I’ve been thoroughly entertained and I think it has been really interesting and really insightful in terms of how forward thinking you are, your business are and where you are and where you’re going. So from my side, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Thanks so much for sharing all your sort of insights.

Electra Japonas (28:36):

Thank you.

Rob Hanna (28:36):

I’m excited to see the future. And from my side, over and out.

Electra Japonas (28:41):

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s been great.