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Liquid Legal Institute

Solve your problems together with the LLI members - join us!

The Liquid Legal Institute is an open and interdisciplinary platform for promoting a new way of thinking in the legal sector. Digitalization, new business models and technological innovations are currently changing all major industries worldwide. However, the legal sector has not yet benefited sufficiently from these trends. The Liquid Legal Institute was founded by seven experts from legal and business practice, design thinking and computer science to close this gap.

International. Diverse. Curious.

Since the inception, the Institute grew in membership and geographical reach, with well over 800 members in over 20 countries. Each member of the interdisciplinary group contributes a valuable aspect to the promotion of Liquid Legal.

The Liquid Legal institute is a neutral and non-profit platform for discussion, exchange, and cooperation. We identify and promote new thinking in the legal sector together with our partners and affiliates, and the growing membership. Our projects put findings into action, gather knowledge, create methodology kits, set standards and more—all available to our members to quickly apply those resources in their daily practice.

Collaboration is key.

We believe in the power of collaboration, co-innovation and simplification. We base or work on actual needs and invite all stakeholders to bring in their perspectives and set the bar for tomorrow’s legal! Join us!

Vision

The Liquid Legal Institute is a platform for leading professionals offering new perspectives on the accelerating transformation in legal. It all started with an interdisciplinary and open-minded group of experts that identified factors for a successful digital transformation. They have collected their knowledge and made it publicly available to the community. Since then, we are continuously working on the idea of establishing a Common Legal Platform following the main principles of the Liquid Legal Institute: the 10 drops of liquid legal.

In our projects we are addressing relevant topics that advance the new way of thinking in the legal industry. Within these projects, we cooperate with leading companies and institutions and share our knowledge and insights with the community. We are a non-profit, technology-affine and open collaboration platform for legal departments, law firms, technology providers, government, legislation, academic institutions, and universities. To follow our strategy, we focus on five complementary areas, namely Digitalization, Standardization, Education, Methodologies and Legislation & Material Law.

10 Drops

1

Collaborative

We believe in collaboration as a means to liberate the creative potential of individuals and to achieve more together

2

Technology-Affine

We leverage technology wherever possible to reduce manual efforts and free the human mind

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Co-Innovative

We leverage our combined insights to question the status-quo and pave the way for innovations

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Standards

We set standards to facilitate exchange and increase the efficiency of cooperation

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Design-Thinking

We use the human-centric techniques of Design-Thinking to reflect a large variety of different perspectives and unveil the true nature of complex challenges

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Global

We think globally and view different cultures and traditions as an enrichment and not as a threat to national identities

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Enthusiasm

We are enthusiastic about what we do and use our enthusiasm to excite others

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Inter­disciplinary

We combine the unique strengths of different disciplines to find holistic and sustainable solutions to problems

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Non-profit

We are non-profit – because we feel helping others is a reward in itself

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Sharing

We share the results of our collaborative efforts with all interested parties

The founders

Dr. Dierk Schindler, M.I.L. (LUND)

Lawyer & Agile Legal Business Leader at Robert BOSCH GmbH

Dierk serves as Vice President & Head of Corporate Legal Services, Mobility, Supply Chain & Logistics at Robert BOSCH GmbH. With his team & the BOSCH Legal Leadership Team he drives a people-centric and business-oriented innovation agenda, applying a digital-first approach.

Beyond his day job, Dierk has served as the Vice Chair Europe & Officer on the Board of Directors of IACCM until October 2018. Dierk regularly speaks, lectures & publishes on digitization, transformation & innovation in the legal ecosystem.

Traditional boundaries in our ecosystem collapse. Digitization disrupts WHAT lawyers do, HOW they do it – and it also demands a new answer to: ‘WHY are we needed?’ The quest to determine the unique value that we, as lawyers, bring to the table in a digitized world is both, challenging and exciting! – Let’s go!

Astrid Kohlmeier

Lawyer and Consultant, Legal Design & Legal Tech

Astrid is both, an educated lawyer and a mediadesigner. She combines the disciplines law and design for over a decade and is now a so called „legal designer“. She is a pioneer in developing design thinking methods for the legal industry.

She worked for more than 10 years as head of Marketing & Communications in the legal service industry at ERGO Insurance Group, a subsidiary of Munich Re and is engaged as a consultant for legal transformation and development of new legal services.

Astrid has a long-standing experience in marketing, design, consulting and leadership based on a background in law, media design, strategy consulting and design thinking.

As a pionieer in legal design I transfer design thinking methods to the challenges of the legal market. My goal ist to establish new methods for co-innovation and co-creation to jointly develop a humancentered legal ecosystem in the context of digitalisation. I believe in radical interdisciplinarity as a keydriver to make law easier to access and to develop meaningful, usercentric solutions.

Kai Jacob

Partner at KPMG Law

Once you experienced the power of tribes, you will never return to your old habits. We should all stop the lonely uphill battle that focusses on ‘optimization in isolation’. Instead we should invest in collaboration and co-innovation, with trust becoming the ultimate key success factors of our times!

Kai, a lawyer by education, joined Deloitte in 2019 as partner with focus on Legal Management Consulting (LMC). Before, Kai worked for SAP in various roles. From 2011 – 2019 he led the Global Contract Management Services team and in 2015, he was promoted to Global VP, assuming additional responsibility for Legal Information Management, aiming to support the digital transformation of the legal function.

Together with his team, he led the development of SAP’s Enterprise Contract Management and Assembly Solution in S4/HANA. He joined the IACCM (International Association of Contract and Commercial Management) in 2004, became a member of its Board of Directors in 2012, and in 2018 serving as Chairman of the Board. 

Kai is a regular speaker at conferences and engaged in various round-tables, boards and initiatives in support of his vision of LIQUID LEGAL.

Dr. Bernhard Waltl

Legal Operations Officer | BMW Group

Bernhard is a computer scientist and interested in technology, and how technology changes the business of law. He designs, develops, and evaluates technology and methods transforming the future of law. 

In 2017 he was an invited researcher at Stanford University Law School (CodeX: Center for Legal Informatics) where he conducted research on text mining and artificial intelligence in the legal domain. He is part of an international network of leading researchers from computer science, and legal informatics. 

Accurate Algorithms, Digital Data, and Powerful Infrastructures will transform the 21st century. Collaboration is the key to a successful transformation.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Wegerich

Deutscher AnwaltSpiegel / German Law Publishers

portrait photo of Dr. Thomas Wegerich

Thomas has long held various management positions in leading legal publishing houses. He is the founder of the publishing house German Law Publishers, which operates numerous top-class journalistic projects, networks, and event formats as part of a joint venture with F.A.Z.-Fachverlag.

In addition, Thomas is a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of the Bundesverband der Wirtschaftskanzleien in Deutschland (BWD). He also serves as a member of the Legal Committee of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Frankfurt.

The legal market is undergoing fundamental change. With the Liquid Legal Institute we would like to accompany and advance this process – together with the relevant players from all areas.

Dr. Roger Strathausen

Digitalization Leader

Roger is a business consultant, author and lecturer focusing on organizational transformation in knowledge-intensive industries.

An ex-Accenture executive and SAP employee , he is co-editor of the „Liquid Legal“ compendium (Springer 2017), author of “Leading When You Are Not the Boss“ (Apress 2015), and a speaker on topics of leadership and learning. Roger earned his PhD from Stanford University while on Fulbright and Stanford Dissertation Fellowships, and his MA from the University of Tübingen.

The legal industry is shifting from a paradigm of security to one of opportunity.

Dr. Jens Wagner

Counsel at Allen & Overy

Portrait photo of Dr. Jens Wagner

Jens is a Counsel at Allen & Overy’s Corporate department and based in the Munich office.

As German Rechtsanwalt he advises on corporate governance, corporate actions and group-internal reorganisations, having an industry-focus on telecommunications, media and technology. He published widely on German and European company law. Recently he has also published on legal tech. Jens is a member of Allen & Overy’s legal tech group.

The legal transformation brings completely new dimensions into the legal practice

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LLI Members

Feel free to explore selected members by taking a look at our LLI Member Page.

Governance

The Liquid Legal Institute is a registered association (eingetragener Verein – e.V.) incorporated under the laws of Germany and registered with the local court of Munich under the number VR 207699.

The purpose of the association can be short-cutted as: “5 + 1”. As an association, we identified 5 focus areas/topics ranging from new thinking to new technologies and other innovations in the “legal ecosystem”. The 5 focus areas are represented as workings groups, each lead by a working group leader.

Our ultimate goal is the realization of the so called Common Legal Platform. So, 5 working groups towards 1 goal — or “5 + 1”!

The complete articles of association (Satzung) is online available: DE, EN

The board (Vorstand) with approval of the general meeting (Mitgliederversammlung) has adopted internal compliance rules (Compliance-Richtlinie). The compliance rules can be found here.

Our Story

Following the liquid mindset we started small with a big potential. We are proud to see the LLI growing.

The first edition of Liquid Legal Book appears
The Liquid-Legal-Institute e. V. was founded and goes live
The LLI keeps growing and becomes an interesting place for Legal Innovation
First two project officially published: The LegalTech Digitalization Guide and the Legal Design Challenge with the HPI
The second edition of Liquid Legal Book (The Common Legal Platform) is published
2016
2017
2018
2018
2019
2019
2019
2020
2020
2020
Industry-wide requests for a neutral platform, the LLI
The LLI presents itself at the Inhouse Matters in Frankfurt
LLI migrates to MS Teams fostering collaboration and pursuing open communication
The Common Legal Platform Principles are published.
The Common Legal Platform Ecosystem goes live: https://www.common-legal-platform.org