Inspiration
When I first graduated law school, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. I was confused, I had gone to great schools and even had crossborder experience, but somehow I didn’t know what I needed to know. I Aced my contracts course and took negotiations at a well-known institution, but how come I didn’t know how to draft a contract from scratch or negotiate a deal?
I was hungry though, I did what it took to become good at my trade, no, great! I foraged for information be it through endless conversations with the commercial and sales teams, reading hundreds and hundreds of old contracts or just trying to mimic other attorneys when I saw that what they were doing, actually made sense. I had my own style, though. I would often hear that I wasn’t like other attorneys, because I was approachable and I made relationships, I didn’t perform redline overload when it didn’t benefit anyone, I would evaluate risk using legal and commercial sense. It wasn’t though until after years of practicing law that I realized that it wasn’t just me who had lacked these skills out of law school, it was law school curriculums around the world that didn’t best prepare attorneys to thrive in the legal industry. I saw a gap. So I sought out to provide practical skills for fresh law school graduates, to fill the void between law school and the practicing world! That was a couple of years ago, creating these upskilling and very practical courses in contract drafting and privacy law and data protection. These were no easy courses to put together, with about two and a half hours of instruction and around 60 pages of text with sample clauses and major tidbits and tricks, these courses were intended to walk one through the contract drafting or privacy policy implementation process from A to Z. They were created in a way where I would have appreciated the information, had I had it when I needed it.
FUN FACT: I filmed my first course reading from a teleprompter in a hotel in Bogota, Columbia. The staff at the hotel were super cool about me filming in their grand entrance, I just meet the best people all over the world.
From reading off a teleprompter fast forward to impromptu questions in very organic conversations with professionals and attorneys from all over the world, DigiCounsel is much more than just upskilling. DigiCounsel is now about bringing business and legal professionals together. Lawyers, collaborating. Collaborating on topics and issues that matter. Whether they are the actual upskilling courses around mergers or they are conversations on simple steps to get healthy, both mind and body, DigiCounsel is disruptive.
You see, I was always bothered by the idea that attorneys have a reputation for being adversarial towards one another. Because it’s actually not true, and the DigiCounsel story and countless other stories are a testament to that. When lawyers come together, great things happen. I was also bothered by some of the materials out there, where it seemed that even courses on topics I wanted to or needed to know about, were leaving me hanging. It was information hoarding in a way. Something that needed to change. The DigiCounsel platform is intended to be a place where an attorney, or business professional, could level up their knowledge no matter what stage in their careers. It is a place where collaborators don’t hold back, they actually WANT to provide value and that value, one way or another, would be a win- win for everyone. This should be a place where one would come and learn about the latest technologies that can propel legal departments to the next level, to make systems and processes more effective and efficient and explained in such a manner where it wouldn’t be difficult to grasp….or boring at that.
These are not just courses, these are very genuine conversations, I can tell you that both on and off camera, there were times where I had wiped some tears. Whether it was about falling down, or not fitting the mold, or putting our children first, these conversations are raw.I don’t want to lose sight of some of the work I have done around social justice from an early age, and because of that, I do want these resources to be decently prices and accessible to more people around the world. One of the things I do, is provide discounts to the platform depending on the part of the world one is tuning in from. We also address very difficult topics around diversity and inclusion and you will see, that I have actively sought out to raise the voices of minorities and women. The legal industry is vast, it is diverse and perspectives need to be vast and diverse as well.
Thank you for trusting me, and trusting us, as your one-stop legal resources provider. Be patient with us, as we work out some of the issues startups may face and I promise you, we will never be dull.