Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network

From implementing bespoke, customised AI tools to offering market-leading remuneration packages, BlackBay Lawyers and its managing partner have created a recipe for success.
In this episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, host Jerome Doraisamy speaks with BlackBay Lawyers managing partner Victoria-Jane Otavski about winning the Boutique Firm of the Year category at the recent Australian Law Awards, the firm's rapid growth in recent years, market challenges being faced by boutiques and how her firm is navigating them, the need for customised AI tools, providing greater incentives for staff, a greater focus on professional development, prioritising staff needs, lessons from BlackBay's success, and what excites her about the future of boutique practices Down Under.


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In this special episode of LawTech Talks, produced in partnership with iManage, we discuss ways to continually master knowledge management and how teams can leverage internal knowledge assets to prepare for the next generation of legal services amid the AI and digital transformation revolutions.

Host Jerome Doraisamy welcomes back legal industry expert in APAC Madeleine Porter and global product director for knowledge and AI Alex Smith to discuss collections and vaults as "curation bubbles", MCP, governance, and defensibility in the agentic era, workflows and skills as first-class knowledge assets, where the control plane sits in the "open versus closed" debate, and rot and disposition as a knowledge strategy.
To learn more about iManage, click here.

Daniel Rod sees his role as having three core elements: legal specialist, software developer, and trusted adviser. Combining those elements ensures that tech use goes beyond mere capability – it guarantees that human outcomes are at the forefront.

In this episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, host Jerome Doraisamy welcomes back Daniel Rod, a special counsel at Chamberlains and finalist for the Innovator of the Year category at the 2026 Australian Law Awards, to discuss thinking like both a lawyer and a developer, improving workflows in practice, successful case studies from his experience, his practical framework for practitioners, making client service more personal through tech use and being more empathetic, and creating more fulfilling experiences both for one's self and one's clients.

The recent dismissal of a Melbourne-based junior lawyer by her employer, for refusing to delete a viral TikTok video in which she alleged poor working conditions at her law firm, doesn't just give rise to questions about the extent to which employees can air grievances on social media; it has also highlighted differences of opinion between generations about workplace culture in law.

In this episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, host Jerome Doraisamy welcomes back Swaab partner Michael Byrnes to discuss the recent sacking of a junior lawyer by her firm over her TikTok commentary about her employer and apparent refusal to delete the post in question, how and why her employer was able to terminate her, the extent to which grievances can be aired publicly or not, how to navigate different social media platforms, the exposure of different generational attitudes to law's perceived "culture of silence", the need for well-drafted social media policies, and how employers can and must navigate generational differences in attitude.

In the face of evolving candidate attitudes to broader market trends, boutique firms increasingly have to look beyond traditional recruitment approaches in order to get ahead.
In this episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, host Jerome Doraisamy speaks with Lazarus Legal director Mark Lazarus about the many hats he's worn as a lawyer and how it informs his sense of service as a practitioner, the myriad challenges facing firm leaders looking to hire right now, and why certain trends have emerged, the need to look broader afield, including with outsourcing, understanding reasons for turnover, consideration of incentives, how to think about AI in the context of future recruitment, and his guidance to fellow firm owners about how to approach talent attraction moving forward.