Rose Ors: Who are the thinkers and leaders outside the legal industry that have influenced you in your work?

Nicole Morris: My biggest influences outside the legal industry are the writers whose work appears in the Harvard Business Review. It is not any individual contributor per se, but rather the range of subjects discussed that I find stimulating and meaningful. I also appreciate that each piece is sharp, forward-thinking, and consumable in a single read.

One of the numerous articles that have stayed with me is “Silence the Critical Voices in Your Head” by Sabina Nawaz, in which Nawaz lays out a number of strategies to help overcome self-limiting behavior like the negative voices we play in our heads. One such strategy is to focus on amplifying our strengths by doing things we love and do well.

We continue our monthly column,听Curious Minds, created by Rose Ors to tap into the minds of legal innovators, disrupters, and out-of-the-box thinkers to learn what influences and inspires their work.

Another memorable article is “What Having a ‘Growth Mindset’ Actually Means” by Carol Dweck, the psychologist best known for her work on mindset and human motivation. In this article she corrects some misconceptions on mindset and underscores the benefits for individuals and organizations in adopting a growth mindset, which is the belief that talent can be developed, as she explains, “through hard work, good strategies, and input from others.” As an educator, I carry the lessons from Nawaz and Dweck into my classroom.

Rose Ors: Who outside HBR has influenced you?

Nicole Morris: Scott Galloway, a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, has a podcast I find entertaining and enlightening, The Prof G Show. He has big, bold ideas that he expresses very forcefully and is not apologetic about. I, too, have reached a point in my life where I have become unapologetic about things that are of importance to me. And like Galloway, I realize that not everyone will agree with me, and I am okay with that.

Rose Ors: What ideas of Prof. Galloway鈥檚 have you found thought-provoking?

Nicole Morris: One that particularly hooked me is that the pandemic shift to virtual learning has laid the groundwork to permanently disrupt the higher education business model. He thinks large tech companies will partner with elite universities to expand enrollments dramatically by offering hybrid online-offline degrees. Economies of scale will make the education offered by the premier schools far more affordable and allow them to enroll the many high-caliber candidates they now must reject due to physical capacity constraints.

As these changes filter through the ranks, colleges that are lower down the quality ladder will go out of business because prospective students will gravitate toward the better schools. As a somewhat elite university, Emory should survive; but I am curious to see how university leadership responds to such potential changes.

Rose Ors: Emory has shown a willingness to experiment with change with its . Could you explain how it works?

Nicole Morris: TI:GER, which stands for Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results, teams two Emory Law students with a Georgia Tech MBA student and a Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate in science or engineering. The team works to commercialize the Ph.D. candidate’s research project into an economically viable startup venture. Each team is paired with a business mentor, an attorney mentor, and professors from the two schools. Between 12 to 18 Emory Law students participate each year.

Rose Ors: That sounds like some meaningful hands-on experience.

Nicole Morris: It allows our students to directly apply what they have learned in areas like business contracts, intellectual property, and patent law. The students get a taste of what it is like to be a legal advisor. Equally important, they get to learn about things not offered in a traditional law school curriculum, such as working on a team or project management. Dealing with uncertainty is another big piece of the program because there are no precedents to guide them in answering the questions that arise. They just have to use their best judgment.

Rose Ors: What books have most influenced you?

Nicole Morris: Books that have been influential for me have a spiritual focus and discuss human interaction or relationships. Often, they address issues that I am trying to work on within myself. One such book is Dr. Wayne Dwyer’s Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling. Dwyer helps us understand that we are spiritual beings here on earth to find and follow our “purpose.” Reading Dr. Dwyer’s book shortly after my son was born was both grounding and inspirational.

I was similarly moved by Bren茅 Brown’s The Gifts Of Imperfection, which is about the power of our vulnerabilities. Brown shares why embracing our imperfections is an act of courage and self-compassion, an act that connects us to others more than our veneer of perfection.

Rose Ors: What fuels your creative thinking?

Nicole Morris: I would never describe myself as creative in an artistic way, but there is a creative component to my work. I find that when I am on a run and am just letting my thoughts go, I’ll have an aha! moment or a breakthrough on something I have been stuck on.

Rose Ors: Now for the final question: What is a big picture question that鈥檚 facing legal education?

Nicole Morris: What can we do to increase the value proposition of legal education? How creative will the American Bar Association allow law schools to be in re-imagining legal education? Many restrictions must be reexamined. For example, which required courses are essential? How many classes can the school provide online and remain accredited?

The legal industry is questioning why non-lawyers can’t own a law firm or what tasks can be performed by non-lawyers without violating rules governing the unauthorized practice of law. We need a similar re-examination of legal education.

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

Rose Ors:听Who are the business thinkers and leaders outside of the legal industry who have influenced you and your work?

Jim Delkousis:听I have to admit that until I was in my mid-40s there was little that influenced me beyond a single-minded desire to succeed. I did not possess a 鈥渃urious mind.鈥�

As a son of immigrants, initially all that mattered to me was that I would never have to work in the factory floor conditions that my parents did for all of their working lives. My priority then became what career path to follow 鈥� I chose law. Upon joining a prestigious law firm in Australia, my energy was devoted to fighting my imposture syndrome. I decided to work twice as hard as everyone else just so I wouldn鈥檛 be found out!

Rose Ors: What changed?

Jim Delkousis:听In 2007, I left the firm in Australia where I was a partner to open an office for DLA Piper in the Middle East. There were no clients, I did not know the language, and I did not know the law. When I left seven years later, I realized just how satisfying it was for me to create something from nothing, build a team, and have an impact.

In reflecting upon the satisfaction I had experienced at DLA Piper, I also realized that much of my reading for pleasure was the biographies of successful entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates.

I was drawn to the adventure of creating something real and lasting from an idea. The pull was so strong that I began to ask myself: “Can I, too, experience the entrepreneur’s journey? Can I build something sustainable from nothing but an idea?” These questions began my search for the idea that became PERSUIT.

Rose Ors:听That鈥檚 an apt name for your quest. What gave you the idea to start PERSUIT?

Jim Delkousis:听I saw how the business world was becoming digitized at an increasingly fast rate and how it brought about a far more democratized and automated world for the consumer of products and services. The trend got me interested in exploring how technology could be used to automate and democratize the buying of legal services.

PERSUIT was born out of a deep-seated desire to be an entrepreneur and then following Norman Vincent Peale’s famous adage for success: “Find a need and fill it.”

Rose Ors: In addition to biographies, what other books have influenced or guided you?

Jim Delkousis: More than 20 years ago, I read The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. The book had a profound impact on me. The book’s first line is one I go back to often when I am overwhelmed: “Life is difficult.” I also share the line when I advise others who are struggling.

For me, beginning with the premise that life is difficult for everyone helps me frame the challenges I face.

Another great book is The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis. The book delves into the work and friendship of the two men who invented the field of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Lewis details how their Nobel Prize-winning theory gave us a new understanding of what influences and drives people to make decisions. Reading the book gave me a deeper understanding of how people make buying decisions.

We continue our monthly column,听, created by Rose Ors to tap into the minds of legal innovators, disrupters, and out-of-the-box thinkers to learn what influences and inspires their work.

One must-read book for every entrepreneur is by Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing about Hard Things. Horowitz is the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capital firms.

I came upon the book two years into launching PERSUIT, and I appreciated how Horowitz is straight about how hard it is to start and build a new software business. His candor 鈥� like Peck’s 鈥� grounds me in the knowledge that what I have experienced is not unique to me. Horowitz鈥檚 single page 鈥淎bout the Struggle鈥� quoting from Karl Marx鈥檚 鈥淟ife is struggle鈥� is the most powerful page I think I have ever read.

As I was reading the book, I found myself saying 鈥� sometimes out loud 鈥� 鈥淭hat is a problem I’m facing right now鈥� or 鈥淭hat has happened to me.鈥�

Rose Ors: What fuels your creativity?

Jim Delkousis: If you ask my kids if I am creative, they will keel over with laughter. I am the least creative person in the world. What I am is a grinder. I have always worked extremely hard at everything that matters to me. But creative, I am not.

Rose Ors: I will push back a little on this, because I know firsthand that launching a business requires creativity. Not creative in the way an artist is creative, but creative or innovative in how you think through problems and harvest opportunities. The process requires creative thinking, doesn鈥檛 it?

Jim Delkousis: Thinking in those terms, I studied the broader market trend, analyzed it, and applied it to the market I knew 鈥� with a twist. That was the creative process that led to the idea of PERSUIT. I guess you can call it creative copying.

Rose Ors: Now for the final question: What is a big-picture question facing the legal industry?

Jim Delkousis: For corporate law departments, a critical question centers around digital innovation. These departments acknowledge how fast their companies are changing under the banner of digital transformation. The question that looms largest for most legal teams is, “What does that mean for us?鈥�

One way law departments are answering the question is by looking at technology-based solutions. But there are so many tech providers that the legal team is getting bombarded with options. All these options 鈥� some of which have not been battle-tested 鈥� leave the legal team confused about what tech they need and how that tech will integrate with the rest of the business.

Another broader question is: What will automation and artificial intelligence mean for lawyers’ role in society in the next 10, 20, or 30 years? Similarly, how will the legal industry 鈥� law schools, the courts, law firms, corporate law departments, and legal service companies 鈥� respond?

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

We continue our monthly column, , created by Rose Ors to tap into the minds of legal innovators, disrupters, and out-of-the-box thinkers to learn what influences and inspires their work.

In this column, Rose speaks with Shruti Ajitsaria, the head of听, Allen & Overy鈥檚 tech innovation space, which opened in September 2017.听Ajitsaria discusses bringing technology to clients, moving away from the standard of perfection, and the value of startup schools.

Rose Ors: Who are the thinkers outside of the legal industry that have influenced your work?

Shruti Ajitsaria: The single most transformative experience was participating in Campus for Moms, a Google-run startup school. There I met the startup founders who showed me a completely different way of thinking, behaving, and pushing myself.

I entered the program with the idea of developing a travel app for children. Halfway through the program, I decided to pivot. I went to the program head and said I wanted to use the remaining time to develop a framework for building a tech incubator at Allen & Overy. That is when the idea for Fuse took root.

Rose Ors: What propelled you to attend a startup school?

Shruti Ajitsaria: I had been encouraging my two primary school daughters to try new things that would take them out of their comfort zone. When I went on maternity leave with my third child, my daughters asked if I was going to follow my own advice. So, I did.

Rose Ors: How novel was the idea for Fuse in 2017?

Shruti Ajitsaria: It was novel. At the culmination of startup school, each participant pitched her idea to a room of venture capitalists (VCs) who provided feedback on the proposal’s viability. At the end of my pitch, one VC told me, “That’s a great idea, Shruti, but no law firm is ever actually going to go for that.” I invited that VC to Fuse’s formal opening to show her what we’d done in such a short time. Sharing our achievement with her was a wonderful moment 鈥� one I will always remember fondly.

Rose Ors: What made your idea appealing to Allen & Overy?

Shruti Ajitsaria: I think there was a feeling that clients were becoming better informed, that they were starting to understand technology and ask questions about the positive impact it can have in streamlining how work gets done and by whom.

Rose Ors: What has surprised you about how your partners have embraced Fuse?

Shruti Ajitsaria: I have been wonderfully surprised at their willingness to try and use new technology. An even bigger surprise is how amazing they have been at introducing their clients to us. It is gratifying that so many partners trust and believe in the value of Fuse.

Rose Ors: Allen & Overy rarely invests in any of the Fuse cohort companies. Why?

Shruti Ajitsaria: Our focus is purely to provide our clients with the opportunity to test-drive emerging technologies we believe can significantly help them. I want to be able to look our clients in the eye and say, “This is our tech cohort. I want you to consider them because it may benefit you, not our firm.”

Rose Ors: What books have influenced you?

Shruti Ajitsaria: Three books have significantly influenced me. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries was one I read when I was in Google’s Startup School. One of the most important lessons of the book is that “perfection” is not the goal. And this was the first time I had ever thought about doing something in business without striving for perfection. Perfection was the standard of excellence at Allen & Overy. No one at the firm would ever share anything unless it was polished.

Moving from a standard of perfection to one of experimentation was a dramatic leap for me. I learned from Ries’s book that to be truly innovative, you need to understand that experimentation and failure are part of the process. I had to become comfortable with this new way of thinking. It was both scary and freeing to learn to say while building Fuse, “We gave it a go. It didn’t work. Let’s move on.”

Another book I loved and want to read again is Measure What Matters by John Doerr, which teaches essential lessons about establishing concrete, action-oriented objectives and using measurable and verifiable objectives and key results (OKRs) to monitor if a goal is being met. I could benefit from the discipline of using OKRs in my daily life.

The third book may be a slightly odd choice, Fair Play by Eve Rodsky, which discusses all the unseen work women with families do and offers ways for couples to share household responsibilities more equitably. I am one of those women who feels that everything is on my shoulders. The book helped me explain to my husband all of the things that are happening in my head. I’ve been saying to him for years, “This isn’t fair,” but it took him reading the book for the message to sink in. I guess he needed to hear it from somebody who wasn’t yelling at him.

Rose Ors: What fuels your creative thinking?

Shruti Ajitsaria: Stepping outside my comfort zone to interact with people doing completely different things. My husband and I used to be angel investors. Every Sunday night for two to three years, we would invite a startup group to our house to discuss their idea over pizza and a bottle of wine. It was an opportunity to learn about a wide range of things I knew nothing about. It broadened my horizons to discover how things get done in another industry or sector, and it makes you rethink the what and the how of what you are doing.

Another terrific learning experience for me is serving on two boards. The information presented by management at board meetings is mostly positive. So, as a board member, I鈥檝e realized that my greatest weapon is asking questions that elicit honest and helpful answers about challenges facing the organization. That said, I鈥檝e also learned that governance requires that you not overstep 鈥� you must know where your role ends and where somebody else’s begins.

Rose Ors: What is a big picture question facing the legal industry?

Shruti Ajitsaria: Law firms have to ask, “What is our piece of the pie?” Today, more than ever, there are many potential growth opportunities. The hardest thing for any law firm is to be clear about its place in the marketplace.

There is a tendency to say, “I want to eat the whole pie.” However, if you try to do that, you’ll get indigestion. You may try to do something you don’t do well, or worse, be viewed as placing your interests above those of your clients.

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

Rose Ors: Who are the thinkers and leaders outside of the legal industry who influenced how you approach your work?

John Pierre: I am inspired by leaders whose legacy involves galvanizing a movement or a community to end injustices. Leaders like Mother Teresa, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and Rev. Dr. William Barber.

Mother Teresa, a nun and missionary, devoted her life to improving the lives of the poor, the sick, and the dying in India. She gave them dignity. Her work continues around the world through the Catholic order she founded and countless other groups she inspired.

Dr. King’s vision and advocacy for Blacks in America gave voice to the voiceless and prompted sweeping civil rights legislation. He was a person who understood the moment and, even knowing he might die for his advocacy, he kept going.

Rev. Barber continues the work of Dr. King. His political activism, including his leadership in the Poor People’s Campaign, helps the working poor fight systemic racism and inequality, including mass incarceration and lack of affordable healthcare.

Rose Ors: Is there a business leader that inspires you?

John Pierre: Elon Musk. He is the genius behind two of the most innovative and industry-disrupting companies: Tesla and SpaceX. He thinks differently 鈥� few match his ability to get to the root of a problem. In several published interviews, he describes how he works out innovative solutions to problems by using “first principles.”

Musk defines first principles as a physics way of looking at the world by boiling “things down to the most fundamental truths鈥� and then reason up from there鈥� .” It sounds so simple. Still, it takes someone as gifted as Musk to apply this way of thinking to extraordinarily tricky problems.

Rose Ors: How have these leaders influenced how you lead?

John Pierre: Mother Teresa, Dr. King, and Rev. Barber exemplify how to be a servant leader. Their compassion for others and their resilience and grit in the face of significant challenges inspire me to do the same as the chancellor of a law school with a high percentage of low-income and first-generation students. Ours is a school born out of a 1946 lawsuit by Charles J. Hatfield, a Black man who was denied admission to Louisiana State University鈥檚 law school simply because of his skin color.

As chancellor, I ask myself, “How can I make things better for the students who come to this institution because they believe their lives can be transformed by it? This transformation is the dream our students bring with them. It is the dream I have committed to help make a reality. How? By helping them find their voice, their power, their value. In coming up with ways to affect these outcomes, I attempt to get 鈥� as Musk does 鈥� at the root causes that have held our students back. Root causes such as financial hardship, lack of role models, systemic bias, and racism.

Rose Ors: How do you communicate to each student how you and the law school believe in and support them?

John Pierre: The message begins in the recruitment process. In this phase, my role resembles that of a college football coach recruiting a winning team. Each time we reach out to a student, our goal is to make them feel that they are a valuable part of our community. We reinforce our commitment to their success by offering our 1L students several summer bridge programs to prepare them for the academic rigor they will face once school starts. But we go beyond helping them excel academically. For example, for the students who need financial help, we help them throughout the entire process.

Rose Ors: What books have influenced you?

John Pierre: James Baldwin’s books 鈥� such as The Fire Next Time and Another Country 鈥� are written with such passion and rage and always with the idea that barriers have to be broken in America for a Black man to reach his full potential. Then there is Dr. King’s Strength of Love and Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? In addition to his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, these books confirmed for me how much of a rebel he was despite his non-violent approach to change. Here was a man who took on racism by staring it in the face and saying, “We will not bow down to institutions or practices that are unjust.”

Another book that had a profound influence on me is The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The book recounts how Malcolm X transforms his life from a man in prison to a deep thinker and activist. In this most candid autobiography, Malcolm X shares how his conversion to Islam helped him confront the rage that caused him to call himself “the angriest Black man in America,” to someone who believed in forgiveness and reconciliation as the way to proffer lasting change.

Rose Ors: What fuels your creative thinking?

John Pierre: What fuels my creative thinking is my desire to be a visionary. Some of it is the fear of becoming irrelevant. But mostly, it is a deep-seated desire always to be learning. There are few things I enjoy more than having scintillating conversations with brilliant minds. I love and welcome conversations whose depth and breadth leave me thinking and exhilarated.

Rose Ors: What is a big picture issue facing law schools today?

John Pierre: I think law schools must ask themselves, “How do we rethink legal education so that it equips our law students to be 21st-century lawyers? Technologically savvy lawyers who understand the business of law. Lawyers who enter the workforce with an understanding of business basics, data analytics, and project management. Lawyers who know how to work in teams.鈥�

All these skills are essential to succeed in today’s legal marketplace. Law schools must align what they teach to what students need today, not decades past.

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

We continue our monthly column, 鈥�鈥�, created by Rose Ors to tap into the minds of legal innovators, disrupters, and out-of-the-box thinkers to learn what influences and inspires their work.

In this column, Rose speaks with Wei Chen, Senior Vice President & Associate General Counsel at Salesforce; and founder of , about tenacity and grit, integrating data analytics into the legal process, and the value of multi-tasking.

Rose Ors: Who are the thinkers outside of the legal industry that have influenced how you approach your work?

Wei Chen: The individuals who most inspire me are Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Both are courageous enough to tackle the world鈥檚 most difficult problems and disrupt industries that are captive to a lot of conventional thinking. While the world has turned away from nuclear power after the Fukushima accident, Gates-backed TerraPower faced the safety challenge head-on by redesigning a molten salt reactor that increases safety and reduces waste.

For years, NASA had been the only name associated with rocket science. Yet under Elon Musk鈥檚 leadership, SpaceX created Falcon 9 at one-quarter of the cost spent by NASA by manufacturing the rocket parts itself rather than using the subcontractor model that鈥檚 well-established in the aerospace industry.

Rose Ors: As the founder of The Atticus Project, you aim to increase the accuracy and speed of contract reviews using artificial intelligence (AI). How have Gates and Musk influenced how you are approaching your goal?

Wei Chen: The Atticus Project is definitely not nuclear innovation or rocket-science. However, I was inspired by Musk and Gates to not back away from a difficult problem, but to be a part of the solution. Because AI tools are only as good as the training data used to develop them, the AI industry needs experienced lawyers to develop the training data. Instead of waiting for the AI scientists to solve my problem, I鈥檝e decided to tackle the problem.

After a few months of trial and error, the volunteers of The Atticus Project released the first-ever open-sourced labeled dataset for legal contract review. The Atticus Open Contract dataset is a collection of 5,000 full or partial clauses from 200 Edgar commercial contracts. The 5,000 clauses encompass 40 types of provisions, including names of the parties, expiration dates, and uncapped liabilities. We are on track to release the next version with 10,000 clauses in the coming months.

The lack of high-quality training data has been a bottleneck for Legal AI development. We hope this dataset will be a catalyst for legal AI innovations and move the industry forward for all.

Rose Ors: What are the books that have influenced you as a first-time founder?

Wei Chen: There are three books that have had a profound impact on my journey as the founder of The Atticus Project. The first two, Shoe Dog by Phil Knight and Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly, are memoirs that showed the years of grit and tenacity it takes to find success in a given field.

For Phil Knight, the founder, previous chairman and CEO of Nike, it was his tenacity and grit that turned his once-struggling startup Blue Ribbon Sports into Nike, one of the world’s most iconic global brands. For Scott Kelly 鈥� the first person to spend a year aboard the International Space Station 鈥� it was his grit and tenacity that helped him become an astronaut. His book chronicles the many hurdles he had to overcome, including training his nearsighted eyes to become 20/20.

The third book is The Alchemist by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. The book is a fable about following your dreams. The line in the book that deeply resonates with me is, “When you want something, all of the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” I believe that if you are truly persistent, the universe will reward your persistence.

These three books have offered me invaluable lessons on what it takes to turn an idea or goal into reality.

Rose Ors: What fuels your creative thinking?

Wei Chen: My creative ideas always come when I’m multi-tasking. It is when my mind is most active. For example, The Atticus Project’s idea came about when I was working on several large deals at Salesforce that required extensive due diligence. It made me begin to ask the question, can an AI tool help with due diligence?

Rose Ors: What is a big-picture issue facing the legal industry?

Wei Chen: How will the legal industry integrate data analytics 鈥� the science of drawing insights from data 鈥� into legal research and practice? We are in an age where our recommendations and decisions are increasingly expected to be backed by data. At Salesforce, we use data to make decisions throughout the company, including in the legal department. We have found time and again that data analytics supports better decision-making in both the practice and business of law. I believe this is also true for many large companies and their legal departments.

The role of data analytics in law is a growing trend. I believe it will become an important differentiator for law firms who employ it to help their clients make informed business decisions. I would pay a premium for advice supported by analytical thinking and risk assessment based on reliable data.

Rose Ors: What will it take for law firms to realize the importance of using data to run their firms and offer clients state-of-the-art advice?

Wei Chen: Law firms need to adopt a 21^st century mindset. Law firms can no longer offer advice based solely on the professional experience of their most senior lawyers, advice buttressed by research done by junior lawyers, and all billed by the hour.

The modern law firm must harness the power of AI and other powerful technologies to spot trends, patterns, and other drivers to give truly informed advice.

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

In this column, Rose speaks with Rohan Pavuluri, founder and CEO of , an online tool to help individuals file for bankruptcy, about the valuable lessons of start-ups, the motivating power of anger, and why we need a new civil right in America.

Rose Ors: Who are the business thinkers and practitioners outside of the legal industry that have influenced you in your work?

Rohan Pavuluri: My biggest influence is (YC), one of the largest and most prominent startup accelerators in Silicon Valley, and its founder, Paul Graham. I first read Graham’s essays on startups and their impact on society when I was a freshman in college. Those essays had a profound effect on me. They made me excited about launching a startup that had impact.

When my co-founder and I got the idea for Upsolve, we applied to YC. In fact, we applied and were rejected multiple times before being accepted into their three-month start-up school in 2019.

The three months we spent at Y Combinator dramatically changed the direction of Upsolve. They helped us focus on creating educational content. During the three-month period at YC we wrote a series of articles on bankruptcy, including the primer, . Today, thanks to YC, we think of ourselves as an education non-profit 鈥� not just an online app.

Rose Ors: What finally got you accepted at Y Combinator?

Rohan Pavuluri: I think a large part of a startup’s success is learning fast and adjusting course. Each time we were rejected by Y Combinator, we took their feedback and applied it. For example, they were concerned about our ability to achieve scale. We took their concern to heart and found how we could reach consumers at scale: create content that would appear prominently in Google search results. We then went back to Y Combinator, made our pitch, and got in.

Rose Ors: Are there others who have influenced you?

Rohan Pavuluri: Yes, Hannah Calhoon of Blue Ridge Labs, which is a New York-based incubator that provides space and funding for startups that are working on tech-enabled solutions to mitigate economic inequality in New York.

Hannah, who was then the Managing Director of Blue Ridge Labs, was the first person to take a bet on me. When I was in my sophomore year at Harvard, I sent her an email asking for a free desk at the Lab during the summer. I explained that I wanted to spend the time figuring out how to tackle an area of poverty law with technology. That鈥檚 all I had, and she still gave me the desk.

From Hannah I learned about user research 鈥� the importance of talking with users to deeply understand them and their core problems. My co-founder, a bankruptcy attorney, and I took her advice. In our first year in business we operated as a traditional legal services non-profit where people came into our office and we helped them through the process of filing for bankruptcy. We even went to bankruptcy court with them. Taking each step of the bankruptcy process with our clients gave us the user research we needed to feel confident about building a tech solution.

Rose Ors: What books have influenced you in your work?

Rohan Pavuluri: There are two books. The first is Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. While reading Stevenson’s book, two things stood out to me. First, I was moved by how Stevenson found his calling, to which he has dedicated more than 30 years of his life. His steadfast commitment is something I deeply admire. Second, I was inspired by how Stevenson transformed the Equal Justice Initiative into an organization that offers not only direct services, but also advocacy.

The other book is Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. This book is a classic and anybody who is thinking about starting a company should read it. It helped me understand why starting my own organization is one of the highest leverage ways that a young person can take to make a positive impact on the world.

Rose Ors: What motivated you to start Upsolve?

Rohan Pavuluri: Anger. An anger born after spending a summer interacting with low-income people who could not afford a lawyer to help them with their bankruptcies. Nor could they afford the legal fees 鈥� I call them poll taxes 鈥� which were required to pay to access their basic rights. I saw how these people suffered in this system of 鈥渏ustice.鈥�

My summer experience brought me a moral clarity that the way that our legal system has developed fails to provide a way for low-income people to fight for their rights in court. It’s an incredible injustice. At Upsolve, the unique lens we have is bringing technology to address this civil rights injustice. The result is that we’ve grown into the largest non-profit in America for bankruptcy.

Rose Ors: Where did you get your most creative ideas? 听

Rohan Pavuluri: Our Upsolve users. Every Tuesday from 5 to 7 pm, I hold virtual office hours and talk to a handful of users. I have conversations in 15-minute increments with anybody who signs up to chat. From time to time I also do customer service emails as another way to stay close to users. Finally, we have a Facebook group of a few thousand users that we recently launched to better keep in touch with users and get new ideas.

Rose Ors: What’s a key, big picture question facing the legal industry?

Rohan Pavuluri: The legal industry must recognize that people 肠补苍鈥檛 afford lawyers for poverty law areas. If you’re evicted from your home, if you are sued because you have too much consumer debt, if you need to file for bankruptcy, it is a grave mistake to assume that low-income people can pay for a lawyer. The statistics prove it 鈥� more than 4-in-5 low-income families 肠补苍鈥檛 access their basic civil legal rights because then 肠补苍鈥檛 get the legal help they need.

We need to empower these families. We need a new civil right in America 鈥� the right of individuals to safely solve their legal problems without a lawyer.

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

In this column, Rose speaks with Betsi Roach, Executive Director the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC),听about those individuals who have influenced her work process, the creative value of travel, and how best to prepare the legal industry for continued disruption.

Rose Ors: Who are the individuals that have most influenced how you approach your work?

Betsi Roach: There have been several people who have shaped me and my career in various ways, starting with my mother. She graduated from college early, married my father who was in medical school, and together they raised our family. After having six children, my mother went back to school to earn the nursing degree she always planned to pursue.

It was incredibly empowering for me as a young girl to watch her dedicate her time and talents to her family and her studies in pursuit of her professional goal. Throughout my life, I have drawn strength and inspiration from how my mother forged her own professional path. In all my professional roles, I have aimed to emulate her focus, resilience, and drive.

My high school swim coach was another significant influence. It is easy for a swimmer to focus on the success she has in her individual races. Our coach stressed that the points we scored individually were important primarily because they accrued to the team and therefore the team鈥檚 success. I approach my work with the same mindset as my swim coach. I choose talented individuals and, as needed, coach them into becoming excellent team members. I think it is why I like to work with associations. Associations thrive when they successfully unite their members and staff into a team or community that is working for a united goal.

Another influencer is Maria Enright. I worked for Maria when I was at the American Bar Association. Like me, Maria does not have a law degree; and, as we all know, the legal industry can be a tough place to have your voice heard if you 肠补苍鈥檛 put Esq. after your name. Yet, I witnessed how Maria used her voice with confidence and with results.

In fact, one of the main skills I learned from Maria was around patience and ensuring that different perspectives can be heard. She is naturally inquisitive and has an incredible ability to ask thoughtful, probing questions that advance the conversation. Her ability to ensure collaboration at all levels provided excellent lessons for me.

Rose Ors: How have you developed and honed your leadership skills?

Betsi Roach: I give a lot of credit to Henry Givray, my leadership mentor and sponsor. Henry is the former CEO of SmithBucklin, a top association management company, and his counsel has always been invaluable to me. Also, I attended a year-long leadership course offered by SmithBucklin, their Leadership Learning Forum, that Henry developed and leads.

Henry鈥檚 programs and mentoring have taught me about leadership 鈥� and specifically, what it looks like in action. I came to see how leadership is about setting a vision, and then enabling people to get from here to there.

Rose Ors: What books have influenced how you think about business?

Betsi Roach: The book that has had the biggest influence on me is The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch ’em Kick Butt by Hal Rosenbluth and Diane McFerrin Peters. The premise is that concentrating on properly hiring, motivating, and managing your employees will translate into great customer service and business success. I read this book early in my career, and it reinforced the team orientation I have long held.

Another excellent book is the change management bible, Leading Change by John Kotter. The book outlines the eight key steps to implementing significant organizational change and the importance of leadership in making change happen. I particularly like his approach to constantly communicating the vision.

Change is hard, and it makes people uncomfortable. By speaking to the hearts and the minds of those involved, however, it gets them to believe that change is desirable and that the envisioned state has benefits for the organization and for themselves.

Rose Ors: Where do you get your creative ideas?

Betsi Roach: I am a lifelong learner who actively seeks out ideas. I look to my colleagues at associations and organizations that are outside the legal space to give me inspiration and learn about new ways of doing things that have impact.

I am also an avid reader. My current read is a book recommended by one of CLOC鈥檚 board members 鈥� War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. It basically argues that business-functional teams 鈥� such as sales or marketing and IT 鈥� must replace their antagonistic behavior with collaboration. A shared mission helps get technologists and business people on the same team to advance the overall organization.

Another source of new ideas and insights is travel. Growing up, our parents brought the world to us by regularly hosting foreign exchange students. All my siblings and I studied abroad. I earned an international MBA. So, I grew up with a deep appreciation and interest in learning from and being inspired by new places and different perspectives. I look forward to a time when we can travel again.

Rose Ors: What is a big picture question facing the legal industry today?

Betsi Roach: What are we doing to equip the next generation of lawyers with the tools they will need to succeed? Law schools do a fine job of teaching students to be lawyers. However, few schools address essential components of success, such as marketing and business development, legal operations, or the technology and innovation that clients are demanding.

How do we prepare the industry for the disruption it will continue to encounter?

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

In this column, Rose speaks with David Lat, the founder of legal news site and Managing Director at Lateral Link,听about his key influencers, the value of reading Tom Wolfe, and why the legal industry is so status-obsessed.

Rose Ors: Who are the thinkers and influencers outside of the legal industry that have impacted your work?

David Lat: One thread that runs through my writing about the legal profession is transparency, pulling back the curtain on institutions and the people who lead them. In this regard, I was influenced by my former boss, Nick Denton, the founder of the Gawker Media network of sites. I worked with Nick at Wonkette, an online political gossip magazine.

With Gawker, Nick was trying to shed light on the world of New York media and later, on celebrities. He was a pioneer in putting in print conversations only insiders were having 鈥� water cooler conversations outsiders were not privy to. Above the Law tries to do that for the legal industry by delving into the culture and other types of insider conversations that are important to know and 肠补苍鈥檛 be found in a book.

Interestingly, I have found that many first-generation lawyers read Above the Law because they can find out about the nitty-gritty of law firm life that second- and third-generation lawyers already have learned from family dinner conversations.

Rose Ors: Who else has influenced you?

David Lat: I also include as influencers, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google. From inception, they described the mission of Google as organizing the world’s information and making it accessible to all. Similarly, the founders of social networks, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, Jack Dorsey at Twitter, and Reid Hoffman at LinkedIn, all have contributed to vastly expanding the availability and exchange of information.

I feel that prior to the advent of Google and social media, information was currency among insiders alone 鈥� now it definitely has been democratized.

Rose Ors: What books have influenced your thinking and your work?

David Lat: Another theme in my work is the role status plays in the legal profession and in life. A fantastic book on the subject of status is the philosopher Alain de Botton’s, Status Anxiety. Botton dissects the origins of status and why we are obsessed by it. He looks at its consequences, the good and the negative. He also offers ways to not let the pursuit of status unduly control your life.

Botton’s book helped me understand lawyers’ obsession with status, including mine. As a profession, we are status obsessed. We are obsessed by where our law schools place in US News and World Report annual rankings. The same holds true for the Chambers, Vault, and other legal industry rankings.

On the fiction side, the novels of the late Tom Wolfe have been an influence. He was the great chronicler of status and prestige and hierarchy in American society. He examined those themes among the New York elite in Bonfire of the Vanities, and amongst college students in I Am Charlotte Simmons.

Reading Tom Wolfe influenced me to explore status in my novel, Supreme Ambitions. The book is about a young lawyer who desperately wants to be a Supreme Court clerk; and her boss, a lower court federal judge, who desperately wants to be a Supreme Court Justice. Although the story centers on their relationship as mentor and mentee, it is also about ambition and what ambition can do to a person.

Rose Ors: Where do you get your most creative ideas?

David Lat: Many of my ideas come from taking things that are already out there and applying them to a new realm. Often those ideas come from magazines. My head is like a Pinterest board where I pin up features from magazines and think, “That’s an interesting idea. I wonder if I can tweak it and apply it to the legal realm?”

Rose Ors: What are some examples?

David Lat: Underneath Their Robes, my first blog, was taking a People Magazine sensibility and applying it to federal judges. A lot of the features of Above The Law also are derived from magazines. For example, Architectural Digest, like other interior design magazines, have features that take you inside the homes of famous people. In Above The Law, we have a feature, Lawyerly Lairs, where we look inside the homes of prominent members of the legal community.

Rose Ors: What is a big picture question facing the legal industry?

David Lat: Will the ethics rules continue to protect the legal industry from disruption, or will these rules be revised to allow for a freer market for legal services?

I think one reason the legal industry has not changed as quickly as other sectors is because it is highly regulated. You have a number of rules aimed at restricting who may be owners in a law firm. These rules were designed to protect consumers and to protect the ethics of the profession. But, let鈥檚 be honest, some of these rules also protect the legal industry in a very cartel- like way.

These rules raise the prices for legal services by prohibiting more people from entering the field or by prohibiting certain types of innovations. I just wonder how long this can go on until we reach a point where consumers, regulators, and others say, “You know what, it’s time for us to loosen these things up a little bit so we can have some greater innovation.”

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

Rose Ors: Who are the leaders and thinkers outside the legal industry that have most influenced you and your work?

Petra van Hilst: The people who have most influenced me in my work are the engineers I am surrounded by in my personal life.

Engineers have a systems-based approach to solving problems. They take a complex problem and separate it into its essential elements. They are both curious and methodical because one of their fundamental roles is to find better ways to do things. Engineers also know how to effectively collaborate because a necessary part of their process includes experimentation and iteration.

So, my world of engineers has offered me a master class on how to think more objectively and methodically. This in turn has influenced how I think and how I approach innovation in the legal industry.

Rose Ors: Are there other influencers?

Petra van Hilst: I try to follow the advice of Marva Collins, the American-born educator who counseled, “Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.”

I think women more than men listen to and follow the advice of other people. While it is always important to be open to the opinions of others, it is equally important to listen to one鈥檚 inner voice. I seek input from others; but, especially on personal matters, I ultimately think independently and make up my own mind about things.

Rose Ors: As a leader, what books have influenced how you think about leadership?

Petra van Hilst: One of my favorite books is Charismatic Leadership by Kevin Murray. Most people think charisma is some special magnetism that only a chosen few are born with. Murray maintains that charisma is a learnable skill 鈥� the result of developing specific behaviors. In reading his book and hearing him speak, I identified two behaviors that all charismatic leaders possess: they are empathetic, and they are great listeners. 听听听

Rose Ors: What is a source of your creativity?

Petra van Hilst: I was born and raised in the Netherlands, but I have also lived and worked in the U.S. and Brazil. Experiencing three different cultures has stimulated my right-brain thinking and hence my creativity. Living abroad and working for international companies also cemented my long-held belief in the value of diversity in its broadest sense.

Rose Ors: Is this one reason you launched EQUAL in LEGAL?

Petra van Hilst: Yes. I believe we must galvanize the international legal ecosystem to share best practices and experiment with new approaches that get us closer to achieving equality around the globe.

We launched EQUAL in LEGAL because we need to find solutions to pressing issues such as diversity and inclusion, access to justice, and sustainability. I believed others were as passionate as I about these social impact topics, and I was correct.

Since launching EQUAL in LEGAL this past February, more than 100 general counsel, law firms, and others have joined the cause. By joining, they鈥檝e committed to sharing ideas, stories, and practices on what has worked and what can be done better.

Rose Ors: In 2009, you also launched the General Counsel Netherlands network. What need did you fill with GCN?

Petra van Hilst: Ten years ago, there was no platform for general counsel in the Netherlands to gather, exchange ideas, and offer mutual support. I was a GC at the time, as was the GCN co-founder, Michiel van Straaten. We started GCN as a way to learn from other GCs what was working for them.

While the initial emphasis was on sharing best practices, the organization blossomed into a way to develop personal connections and professional friendships. These personal ties foster an environment that allows us to push people out of their comfort zones and think about how to do things very differently.

Rose Ors: What’s a big-picture question facing the legal industry?

Petra van Hilst: What will the legal industry do to be part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? As the next logical step to the digital revolution 鈥� the Third Revolution 鈥� the Fourth Industrial Revolution is about setting the stage for businesses to develop exponentially, transforming entire systems of production, management, and governance.

As I noted before, the number of technological breakthroughs and the speed in which they are being deployed in this latest revolution have no historical precedent. The impact is being felt in almost every industry and in almost every country.

Yet the legal industry has been slow to recognize and adapt to the changes that the breakthroughs mandate. To thrive, the legal space must change 鈥渉ow things are done.鈥� It is no longer efficient or cost effective to use centuries-old processes.

Rose Ors: Who should drive the change?

Petra van Hilst: I believe that it is the general counsel who is uniquely positioned to drive the necessary changes. They bear the ultimate responsibility for managing their department鈥檚 budget, and, therefore, they have the greatest incentive to modernize not only the legal department but the industry.

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.

In this column, Rose speaks with听Liam Brown, Chairman & CEO of legal industry consultancy ,听about leading by exerting influence instead of authority, managing through structural change, and how his company is handling the current crisis.

Rose Ors: Who are the leaders and thinkers outside the legal industry who have influenced your approach to business?

Liam Brown: My mentor, Lord Bob Gavron, the founder and CEO of St. Ives [now Kin + Carta], one of the largest printing and publishing companies in the UK, was unquestionably the most significant influence on me. He hired me 鈥� even though I had no relevant business experience 鈥� to a management-training position, starting at entry-level, but with gradually increasing responsibilities as he moved me around the company. Along the way he offered me an up-close and personal master class on how to lead a large enterprise.

Rose Ors: What are some of the lessons he taught you?

Liam Brown: Of the many lessons I learned from him, two stick out for me. First, he stressed the importance of understanding the system of activities within a company to better be able to diagnose and address the underlying causes of a problem rather than merely treating the symptoms. This appealed to my medical background.

Second, he never missed an opportunity to emphasize that effective leadership flowed through exerting influence, rather than authority. I learned that the hard way during one assignment as the new, young head of a 500-person, unionized department. Nobody was going to do anything simply because I told them to! I had to develop a whole new set of influencing skills. So I have some sympathy for law firm managing partners.

Rose Ors: Leading by influence versus authority certainly applies to law firms.

Liam Brown: Absolutely. Any leader of a law firm partnership will tell you of the importance of influence. That said, influence is necessary for any leader in any organization. It applies to me as the largest shareholder of Elevate. I have a lot of control, but I can’t get anyone to do anything merely by me telling them to. A command-and-control approach doesn鈥檛 work in professional businesses made up of smart, motivated, energetic people who seek purpose, autonomy, and mastery.

Rose Ors: What other lessons did you learn from Bob?

Liam Brown: He taught me by example how to manage a business through significant structural change. Our company was under significant financial pressure in the late 1980s, and the only way to stay in business was to dramatically change the way we worked. In order to take advantage of emerging, more efficient technology, we needed to transform our work processes and change the skills and make up of our workforce. This required we de-unionize, lay off many, and radically retrain those people that remained. We had to communicate the necessity and urgency of these changes in a way that would bring employees along.

Bob coached me on how to talk to not only the minds, but also to the hearts of the people going on this journey. It was a massive undertaking, and I learned how to do it from the best.

Rose Ors: Did his approach mirror author ?

Liam Brown: Yes. For example, one of Kotter鈥檚 steps is to identify and remove obstacles to change. You must speak to employees one-to-one as people in order to find out who is resistant and why.

People who resist usually do so out of fear. You must address those fears by straightforwardly and honestly explaining why the future will be better than today 鈥� and how to get there 鈥� to have any hope of support. I seem to have spent my whole career speaking to a lot of resisters.

Rose Ors: What books have influenced you, Liam?

Liam Brown: Principles by Ray Dalio is an excellent book for building a company based on a system of activities. It is infamous for . While I don鈥檛 agree with the extent to which Ray employs it, I hope that people would say a hallmark of my management and business style is speaking with candor and openness.

Deep Work by Cal Newport is a guide on how to be intensely focused to be effective. It teaches you how to set boundaries and politely say no to things that are not a priority.

Superfast: Lead at Speed by Sophie Devonshire discusses how to manage your energy, which for me, as the leader of a fast-moving company, is critical.

Rose Ors: What is a big picture question facing the legal industry?

Liam Brown: Improving diversity will benefit customers and the people who work in the legal sector. To me this requires us to include different points of view, different voices, and different experiences.

I imagine a legal sector in the future that includes professionals with multiple disciplines from varied backgrounds. I hope that lawyers and legal professionals will contribute to this diversity, whether they work at a law department, a law firm, or a law company.

Rose Ors: Moving on to a top-of-mind issue. How is Elevate dealing with the COVID-19 crisis?

Liam Brown: We prepared in advance and we acted early. Working from home is a normal option we offer, whenever customers allow. We have Business Continuity Planning, even Pandemic Response Planning, documented and periodically tested. We launched our Pandemic Response to COVID-19 at the end of January. Before lockdowns were imposed, our entire company began working from home, without any interruption in customer service.

More importantly, beyond systems and methods, we recognize the stress and anxiety our people may be feeling. Our People team sends out a daily COVID-19 communication, and our managers have been coached to start daily meetings by briefly checking in to see how everyone is feeling, then focus on getting on with business.

I have hosted video conference townhalls and regularly send videos and emails giving my assessment of the crisis because I believe it鈥檚 important for employees to know what I think will happen, and what this will mean for our company and for them.

This interview has been edited and condensed by Rose Ors.