This story first appeared in the November/December Orange Rag
National Grid’s global head of legal operations Mo Ajaz has launched an opensource network for heads of legal and the wider legal ecosystem to share learning on the business of law, which he describes as the Mumsnet for lawyers.
LexOpenSource.com is a not for profit platform that prohibits sales and encourages shared learning for the mutual benefit of the profession.
Not restricted to the in-house community, LexOpenSource is, Ajaz tells us, his way of giving his learning back to the profession. “When I do a workshop or a session on HighQ that output will be published,” he says. “This is a place where GCs can find know how and law firms can see what their clients want.”
He adds: “The reason I’m doing it is to connect all the people I speak to. People don’t want to pay to subscribe and as we get more mature in this space people are starting to collaborate. We’re doing something with DWF and Radiant Law and Wavelength looking at the contract lifecycle and running a workshop with 50 organisations from multiple countries. This next step is a forum where people can take material or share their own – it’s a way of raising your own profile and giving tools back. There’s no selling.”
The website is already live and in order to up or download knowledge you have to be a subscriber. Ajaz says: “That’s so we can establish some house rules.” Vendors can join but will be excluded if they break those house rules.
In-house teams already signed up include BT and Lloyds. Ajaz says: “It’s a business of law tool-kit including ways of working and lessons learned. Maybe a template of how you write a strategy document. It’s all around the business rather than the practice of law.”
After loading up their learning GCs will be able to add and improve their contribution as their knowledge grows or changes. Shortly to go up on the site is a report around the legal considerations for AI.
Perhaps most usefully, eventually users will rate articles and the most popular will rise to the top. Ajaz says: “There will be rating and tagging. Rating isn’t there yet but we want to do that.
This article was originally in the November/December issue of the Orange Rag.