Counsel Culture: The Business of Law Podcast Byfield

This week Meg is joined by Senior Consultant Dina Hudson for the third instalment of our Counsel Culture Disputes & Investigations Monthly series. They discuss the reputational risks of the FCA's "name and shame" proposal, the internal and external communications considerations and challenges for the BBC in the wake of Huw Edwards’ resignation and the importance of having a robust PR strategy in place when launching group action claims, as illustrated with the Grindr claim launched this week. 

In today’s episode, Meg and Senior Consultant Dina Hudson are joined by Mary Inman, Partner at Whistleblower Partners LLP. They discussed Whistleblower Partners LLP and the work they're doing worldwide, as well as the legal, reputational and psychosocial risks faced by whistleblowers. They also spoke about what regulators and employers can do to ensure whistleblowers are taken seriously and remain safe when raising concerns, the SFO's decision to compensate whistleblowers for coming forward and details of the DOJ's new proposed whistleblower program. 

This week, Meg welcomes Tony Williams, retired Principal at Jomati Consultants, to the show. They discussed Tony’s plan post-retirement from Jomati as well as the various milestones through Tony’s career including his biggest challenges, most rewarding moments and lessons learned. He also shared some thoughts on how the legal industry has changed and some predictions for the future. 

This week Meg is joined by Ana Carolina Salomão, CIO and Partner at Pogust Goodhead. They spoke about the firm's compensation case against BHP over a collapsed dam in Brazil; seeing ESG as a business opportunity; group actions and collective redress trends across Europe and the Litigation Funding Agreement (Enforceability) Bill 2024.

This week, we have the privilege of welcoming a very special guest, Camille Vasquez, a Partner and Co-Chair of the Brand & Reputation Management Group at Brown Rudnick. Camille, who has worked with a number of high-profile clients, gained global recognition for her successful representation of Johnny Depp in a televised defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard two years ago.
The team drew on Camille's experience to discuss the importance of litigation teams seeing themselves as storytellers for their clients, how they can help rebuild a client’s image during and after a trial, the main differences between UK/US defamation trials and litigation funding regimes, whether the latter should be regulated, among other topics.

This week Meg is joined by Stefan Ciesla, Co-founder of Ayora, a company that provides AI for legal revenue management. They discuss Ayora's report called "Addressing the $36bn value gap in law firms: a primer for innovative law firms" which claims that the legal industry is losing up to $36 billion a year due to sub-optimal revenue and working capital management. They also speak about how AI can help reduce that figure and its wider use in the legal industry.