What is Legal Design? – Sarah Ouis – S5E5

 00:01 Rob Hanna:

Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast. I’m your host Rob Hanna. Today, I’m delighted to be joined by Sarah Ouis. Sarah is a French national working in the UK. And is the founder of ‘Law but How?’ a legal design and content agency, she’s also employed in the legal tech space as a legal design manager at ContractpodAI. Where, as she says in her own words, will be cross collaborating with different functions to make the legal stuff better. Sarah is also known as a legal blogger, and on her very own platform, very lawyer problems, she shares plenty of legal related problems, but in a fun and accessible way. Before this, Sarah previously worked as a legal in-house counsel for MD group in which he advised on commercial-related matters. So a very, very warm welcome, Sarah.

00:53 Sarah Ouis:

Hey Rob, thank you so much for having me.

00:55 Rob Hanna:

It is an absolute pleasure. Delighted to have you on the show. So, before we dive into all your amazing achievements and legal experiences to date, we must start with our customary opening question here on the Legally Speaking Podcast. Which is, on the scale of one to 10, 10 being very real, what would you rate the hit series Suits, in terms of its reality?

01:17 Sarah Ouis:

Oh my goodness, I would probably go for… two or three, especially because of my in-house legal background.

1.31 Rob Hanna:

Yes. I think that’s a fair answer, two or three. I was expecting you to give It definitely below five. So we will move swiftly on. So, let’s start a little bit about you, so tell us a little bit your family background and upbringing?

01:44 Sarah Ouis:

Yeah yeah, absolutely. So, I was born and raised in France, and I guess you can tell with my accent as well. I have a North African background, so my parents came from Algeria. So I am, I like to say that I am a pure product of two cultures and now three, because I have been living in the UK for the past 7 years. But, yeah so obviously, born and raised in France, I qualified, and went to Law school in France. I qualified as French lawyer, and then moved to the UK. And I am also the eldest of an eight children family. Fun fact!

2.21 Rob Hanna:

Wow. Okay. Wow, so what is the age difference between you and the youngest?

2.29 Sarah Ouis:

So, there’s seventeen years.

2.31 Rob Hanna:

Wow, wow there we go! But does everyone know you’re the boss? Top of eight.

2.35 Sarah Ouis:

Yeah, they have too. I mean, you know, I’m their wallet.

2.41 Rob Hanna:

Good stuff, good stuff. Exactly, so, as I mentioned in the introduction, you previously worked as in-house legal counsel and moved over to the UK to do this. So, tell us a bit about what this was like, and was that an easy thing for you to do?

02:55 Sarah Ouis:

Wow, erm okay so, I mean I’ve had challenges, but I guess as any junior lawyers trying to get into the legal market. I couldn’t find a job in France, so I had to move to the UK, and that’s pretty much where I started my career. I was unemployed for like a good year and a half. I had to come to the UK for what was initially meant to be an internship and ended up being a scam. But I decided to stay regardless because I wanted to improve my English. So, my first I guess trip to the UK was back in 2015. I graduated in 2014. I came to the UK in 2015 for legal internship that didn’t exist. I worked my way in a coffee shop to learn the language. I went back to Paris and started off you know, my legal experience in-house. Over there, it was only like 6-month contract, and then back to unemployment again. Then I went back to the UK, and that’s when I guessed London. I finally ended up opening some doors in the legal market and I worked on smart focus. So, for a year and a half in the tech industry I was part of the legal team. And then, so I stayed there a year and a half then I went into an energy group in 2017. As the sole counsel and that’s where I have pretty much you know it was a scale up environment, so I had to be the jack of all trades and most of the time, the master of none. And I had to hire people,

I’ve been through, you know what it’s like to be sole counsel, but also, you know, the head of a department that is growing rapidly and has to keep up with the business.

4.42 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I love everything that you, you do and following your journey and you mentioned challenges. So, I want to dive a bit deeper on that. What has been the most challenging thing in your legal career to date, you would have said?

4.57 Sarah Ouis:

Oh wow. So if I look back at my in house legal career, I think that my most challenging experience was definitely at the MD because I was still fairly Junior so I was two years PQE I when I got the job and I was kind of thrown in the deep end. I mean, I was quite fortunate that the company gave me a chance because I was trying to Junior but I didn’t know I guess they maybe saw some potential that didn’t see at the time, I didn’t see at the time and having to keep up with a company that is growing massively and rapidly at the same time. And so, you have to get the day-to-day job done. And you also have to kind of start to think about the future and when you start hiring you also have to manage people and empower them to get on with things. You also have to you know, as you scale. Think differently about the way the legal department should be run in order to keep on meeting the demands, at no extra resources as well. So I think having to figure it out all by myself was definitely the most challenging part of my in house legal role at the MD, but equally it kind of gave me I think it has given me a very good picture of what it was like to be an in-house lawyer. Both as you know, as a team member in a normal, I would say legal department, at Smartfocus, but also being the sole counsel and then you know, becoming the head of the of the 14 legal team as well. So it was great overall.

6.41 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, and it’s it’s inspiring as well, and you know, it’s amazing what you have achieved and what you’ve done is great that you can articulate those challenges and sort of how you you’ve got through them as well. And you recently moved from your in-house role to focus on other projects. So what was the reason for that decision?

6.59 Sarah Ouis:

That’s a great question, Rob. So I think probably because of the type of experiences that I’ve had in house, I kind of felt that I have seen a lot so I mean, obviously there is always more that you can learn. And areas where you can develop as an in-house lawyer, but I think I had seen quite a wide spectrum of things. And when I started to build content and social media in 2018 it kind of opened up a new avenue for me without even realizing. Initially, I just wanted to share some tips and tips because I struggled to find a job I was a baby lawyer and had no network, I had nothing when doing that I kind of understood the power of social media and contents to build relationships to grow a network. And I use that power to convey more legal related thoughts and that’s where obviously, you know, all of my design work has come up and that’s where I then started to the Tic toc videos, etc, etc. and I think what I’ve realised during this exercise is that I’m passionate by solving problems in the legal industry as opposed to practicing the law itself. And that’s pretty much what has triggered you know, my my new journey the law and tech but how also because they both have something in common, which is the ability to make better in the legal space. And both through technology, design. And I think that’s really what I discovered that I was passionate about.

8.40 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, definitely. I love all of your, your social media content and what you do on tic toc and your videos are brilliant. You mentioned legal designers, and I just want to focus in some more on the app and for those who don’t know what legal design is, what actually is the legal design in your words?

8.56 Sarah Ouis:

So, to me, it is a mindset. It is a framework of support, and much more user centric way of delivering legal services, designing legal products, designing processes, and also conveying legal information. So that’s kind of a mindset where you think about the end user you think about okay, who am I, you know, solving a problems for? who are my end users? and then you go backwards. I’m talking to talking to entrepreneurs, im talking businesses, I am talking to the general public, they don’t have any background, etc, etc. So what are the things that I can do to facilitate and deliver for them in order to meet them at where they are. And that’s very much what legal design is for me. I am focused on information design. I love the idea of simplifying legal and not only simplifying legal information but also make it much more fun and accessible and innovative, but that’s probably a reflection on my personality in the industry because I’m definitely not traditional. But I guess that’s probably one of the frustrations I had in law school you know, that’s just boring, why are we using law and latin. You know, why is it everything we do so dull and so long winded you know, is there any better way we can do this?

10.20 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, and I love that I love that core value about you, it has been different. It’s something I live and breathe by. And you know, who would have thought legal recruiters for doing legal podcasts? But it’s all about that? And I think you embrace that. So so well, you know, the content you produce, particularly through making it fun, informative, is just fantastic. And as we mentioned earlier, we both touched on you are the proud founder of Law but How, tell us a bit more about that company?

10.33 Sarah Ouis:

So, Law but How was very much, I think it’s the business form of what I produce in social media, it’s kind of I have a genuine passion for making legal information, more engaging and user friendly. And even more than that, entertaining. And I think so law but how much, very much aims at conveying law but differently, you know, how can you do things in such a way that is that’s gonna have its impacts the end user, you know, you don’t want them to kind of look at a legal document they like, you know, what now and you really want them to engage with it. And one way of doing that is by revisiting information itself and revisiting the experience. And that’s really what I do with law but how, I revisit legal training, legal materials, and I give them like a new, completely new look really. So that’s pretty much how I would describe it. Yeah, I transform the experience through information design. I guess, yeah. My approach on social media concepts as well.

11.59 Rob Hanna:

And he done some really good examples of this. So, if I say Domino’s Pizza, can you tell us what this is all about?

12.04 Sarah Ouis:

Yes. So, I wanted to I mean, I loved using concrete examples to showcase what I mean by Legal design and, and one of the things that I’ve done was with the brand Domino’s so I went on their website and I was like, it is such an iconic brand, and these guys are selling pizzas. So, what can we do on their privacy policy to make it not only, you know more engaging, but also leverage what they’re all about in the pizzas and also their brandings, so that the colours and all of that so I’ve took it. And I took some parts of the privacy policy and made it as a pizza that has various toppings. So, if you look at my designs, you actually have a pizza, that is a privacy policy or policy that is a pizza with various toppings. And the toppings do represent some sections of the privacy policy, the data retention, so how long they will keep in the data for, what, what is the legal reason for using the data and each section to represent a topic.

13.15 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, I love it. I think one of the best piece of life of edu-taining content, and it was just brilliant.

14.15 Rob Hanna:

Sticking with the world of entrepreneurship, I can tell it was always perhaps in your your blood from the way you’ve just sort of communicated your story and you know what you’ve been up to, but what really inspired you to start your own company?

14.28 Sarah Ouis:

I got, I mean, it definitely wasn’t natural. Because I was doing it out of passion for the discipline, really, I mean, you can be such a nerd and spend so many hours of your life, you know, designing pizzas, you know, and sanitizers and all sorts of things in to convey live information without being passionate about this, right. So I never really had envisaged to start my own journey. But I think with entrepreneurship, but when I saw the reaction of the legal community, and when I saw you know, that the ever growing interest for the discipline, and in House lawyers or even lawyers in private practice, being either interested in learning how to do it themselves, or, you know, actually reaching out to me and be like, okay, you know, I want to revisit my policies or I want to revisit my contracts or whatever. And I thought, I mean, if there’s a need, there is a potential business opportunity, right in front of you. And it turns out that you love what you’re doing as well, so how about, you know, coming up with an offering and see if people buy, and I was very surprised. So yeah, I mean, people reach out to me all the time.

15.49 Rob Hanna:

Yeah, and that segways very nicely actually because you know what would your advice be to any of our listeners who are interested in starting their own company?

15.57 Sarah Ouis:

I would say that, I mean, trying to monetize something that you genuinely care about, that you are genuinely passionate about any issue, and if find yourself in the situation a bit like me where, you know, you could just cant stop, you feel that, you know, that’s just something that you could do all day long, then obviously, you have to make sure that there is a market for it, but sometimes you have to, to create it as well. So try to think of ways where you could monetize either your knowledge, expertise, think about online courses, there are various ways you can monetize your, your insights, and, and go for it. And I think entrepreneurship is also about action and iteration, you know, certain things will work, certain things wont work at all, but for whatever reason the market decides, but there is really no harm in just you know, get started. If you have something in your gut that says go for it and try something. Yeah. Then definitely pursue that passion or that path because if anything, you will learn from it.

17.11 Rob Hanna:

I love that and it’s such great advice you know firstly you’re saying just start, and you know, and so many people have experience with an idea or, you know, they just don’t take action and start, you know, perfect inaction is better than no action. So strongly encourage that. And you’re also talking a lot about what you’re passionate about in terms of focusing. And there’s the famous Bruce, Bruce Lee quote, you know, I fear that I do not fear the man who’s practised 10,000 kicks, I fear the man who’s practised the same kick 10,000 times. And that’s really, really important when it comes to focusing and doubling down on what you’re passionate about. And identifying that solution and what you’re offering is very crystal clear what your business does. And it’s fun. It’s entertaining, and it’s definitely one for the future. And I’m super excited to see where Law but How goes, and on that note, you also get yourself out there, you run lots of webinars, and you recently want to run one, I believe, on how to write better legal content. Can you tell our listeners more about these and how they can get involved if they’re interested?

18.04 Sarah Ouis:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I love content, because that’s very much what has been purely my legal career to date, especially in the last few years, I mean, it got me to create Law but How. And it got me a job in legal tech ContractPodAI as well. And my manager offered me the job because he was following what I was doing on social media. So, I’m a true believer of content creation, whether you know, to grow a business, to develop your career, to grow your network, I mean, it only has benefits, you know, you all It takes really is to to start. And I really encourage legal professionals to really put themselves out there and to share valuable content. So irrespective of the medium, it could be a podcast, it could be visual contents, it could be blog posts, or articles, it doesn’t really matter. But no body is going to know who you are you know, if you don’t make yourself visible, and content is, is a great way of achieving that. And with social media, you can reach 1000s of views instantly, I mean, no physical events will ever allow you to do that. So, I would definitely encourage anybody who obviously wants to know more about how to create legal content to check this this webinar, obviously, and generally speaking, I guess, you know, follow the legal content creators, like yourself, Rob, I mean, you know, that the power of content yourself, and the amazing podcast youre running is a primary example of that. And, yeah, I think it’s time for, you know, legal professionals to be more than legal professionals.

19.43 Rob Hanna:

I Couldn’t agree more, and thank you for your kind words, but we need wonderful guests like to educate and entertain our, our audience and listeners. So thank you, and you recently completed your career shift by joining ContractPodAI, have you always been interested in legal tech?

19.58 Sarah Ouis:

So, the short answer is no. But, purely because legal tech is new. So I was, I didn’t come out of law school in 2014 thinking, oh, you know, I’m interested in legal tech, legal tech was not a thing in 2014. So, it’s a fairly new thing in the market. However, what I was interested in when I was working at MD is okay, how can I, you know, scale? How can I scale the activities of my legal departments without additional resources? And that’s really where I started to think about processes, but also technology, what are the, what are the tools that I can use, that will improve the way we do things or remove the mundane tasks and admin tasks that we get buried with right? So that’s really, I think, that’s really where I started to have a, I guess, a greater interest in technology in general. And then I came across legal tech perhaps in the three years ago and I started slowly getting into okay, you know, what are the products out there and what problems are they solving? But I think what I love about technology or legal tech now, in the after a couple of years of realisations is that it can really solve a problem that in-house lawyers or lawyers in general face. So, I think I’m maybe more passionate about the outcome that legal tech is offering, as opposed to the tool itself. I’m not a tech nerd.

21.41 Rob Hanna:

But I love the fact that you’re focused on solutions and helping and providing something valuable that is going to have a real lasting impact on the legal community. And I think that thing that’s great. And you know, we’ve touched on this throughout your, your, your episode, but you are known for fun ways of legal blogging and creating the content on Instagram, Tik Tok, you’ve got your infamous eyebrow game, for example, on some of your videos, which is brilliant, if people haven’t checked it out, please do go check it out on tic tock. So what inspired you to begin doing this, you know, and tell our listeners about you know a bit more about some of that content and how you come up with your own ideas?

22.16 Sarah Ouis:

So I think my journey to content creation, I mean, initially, I shared career insights. And I think that, and then I moved to legal design, tic toc videos, and I guess my content will keep on and all being you know, as I embrace legal technology as well. The common denominator was to help people. I think I had genuine desire to kind of, you know, help people in the legal industry, whether it was to find a job, or whether it was to, you know, navigate their in-house legal life through tic tok videos, or whether it was really inspiring in-house lawyers, or lawyers in general, to come up with more innovative ways of conveying information in a creative manner. So, I think I’ve always wanted to kind of help people inspire and drive the change forward as well, I think it was also frustration, I was kind of frustrated with, you know, like the black box. So, the cost centre label, I couldn’t, I didn’t go to law school to be labelled as a cost centre for an organisation. I mean, when you go to law school, you want to solve problems, you want to help a business doing business, you know, and but it’s, it’s important for in House lawyers or, because that’s my background, or even lawyers in general to, to understand the power that they’ve got, and to communicate about the things that they can do with this power. So yeah, I guess that’s probably what got me started in willingness to help. A bit of frustration is where I’m and having my own voice and industry. Drive the change forward.

24.00 Rob Hanna:

That’s it, that’s all about driving the change. And you definitely are a pioneer for change. And you are also a big user of LinkedIn. And your profile is particularly honest and open about your experiences in career history. You know, what was your decision behind doing that?

24.15 Sarah Ouis:

I think it’s, it’s the same decision on my even social media contents, generally speaking. I’m a big believer of being transparent and authentic, whether through your contents or your through your profile on LinkedIn. And I just wanted to show to people that, you know, I mean, my career has never been an easy ride and I wasn’t born with a lot of privileges. I come from a working-class background. I’m now in the UK. I’m not a native English speaker. And it comes with its own challenges as well. And, and same for my career. You know, I didn’t I mean, the market wasn’t waiting for you when I graduated from law school and I think all of those things are important because it’s this experiences in life and its these experiences which make you who you are as an individual.  You know, I didn’t I mean, the market wasn’t waiting for you when I graduated from law school when I think all of those things are important because it’s this experiences in mind for bringing make you who you are as an individual and nothing. I just want to normalise the conversation, it’s okay to struggle and sort of paid to have challenges. And these things and setbacks shouldn’t stop you from, you know, believing the process and, and aspiring to have a very successful career. So that’s really the message behind it.

25.33 Rob Hanna:

Love that. Love those words. And before we look to wrap up, you know, what advice would you give to people who are looking to get more educated on legal tech or legal design? You know, what, where would you point them in which direction? How can they get more informed?

25.52 Sarah Ouis:

You probably know the answer social media. Social media, I mean, follow the legal content creators, I mean, there are tonnes of them, you know, I mean a ton, I think we will see more and more of them coming up, as time passes by, but I think social media is a great mine of knowledge, not only to learn about legal tech and legal design, but also you know, follow the conversations and see what’s going on in the industry. And network with people as well. You know, people are a great source of knowledge. And something else I would say is, you know, don’t limit yourself to like legal related talks and topics. I’ve learned the power, I think I’ve understood the power of content through Gary B, that you and I are both following on social media, and he is in the digital marketing field. So, I think we can learn a lot from people outside of our discipline as well. And I think it’s important to keep an open mind when it comes to developing knowledge because we can from anywhere, anywhere, anyone really

26.52 Rob Hanna:

So true, always be open to learning. Absolutely love that. Well, Sarah, you would have inspired a lot of people, a lot of our listeners with your episode today. And if people want to get in touch with you about anything we’ve discussed today, what’s the best way for them to do that? Feel free to shout out any web links or social media handles, also share them with this episode for you as well.

27.13 Sarah Ouis:

Thank you so much Rob. So, people can reach out to me on LinkedIn Sarah Ouis, on Instagram at very lawyer problems and on twitter at Law but How.

27.25 Rob Hanna:

There we go. There we have it. Thanks an absolute million Sarah for coming on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you look every minute a bit, wishing you lots of continued success with your entrepreneurial pursuits, your career, and everything else on the horizons but from all of us on the Legally Speaking Podcast over and out.