Life After Law School | Episode 8 | Tales from Google and Project Kaboom
Meet Madeline Oldfield from Google. For two decades her award-winning human-centred and service design projects have made major impacts at some of Australia’s biggest businesses and government organisations. Today you'll get priceless insights from Madeline’s experiences at the forefront of getting organisations to rethink the way they think. Google' Privacy Sandbox www.privacysandbox.com Project Kaboom www.good-design.org/projects/nab-kaboom Oldfield, M. (2020). (Re-)Imagining Civil Justice Using ODR and Service Design. MIT Computational Law Report www.law.mit.edu/pub/reimaginingciviljusticeusingodrandservicedesign Disclaimer: the views expressed in this podcast episode represent the interviewee’s own opinions.
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Transcript | Life After Law School | Episode 8 | Tales from Google and Project Kaboom
[00:00:00] Madeline Oldfield: There, uh, was a project that we set up called Project Kaboom. Literally that was the name of the project, right? And, um, the idea here is that we wanted to blow up the terms and conditions for NAB credit cards and try and create something that's gonna be of value to customers that the bankers can explain, um, that our teams understand.
[00:00:22] Our guest today is Madeline Oldfield. Over 20 years, Madeline's career path has taken her from. It to management consulting, digital transformation to a JD law degree, and now in a way back to where it all began.
[00:00:37] James Pattison: Madeline is now at Google where she heads up partnerships for Google Chrome browser, web platform, and privacy Sandbox across Australia and New Zealand.
[00:00:46] She's worked with some major Australian businesses, government organizations, and not-for-profits. We can't name many of them for confidentiality reasons, but we can say that there are some of our major banks, telcos, and plenty more among them.
[00:01:00] Isabel Melles Taverner: Today we are going to hear some of Madeline's stories from years at the forefront of getting organizations to rethink the way they think.
[00:01:09] I'm Isabel Malis Tabner.
[00:01:11] James Pattison: I'm James Patterson. This is Life after Law School.
[00:01:24] Isabel Melles Taverner: So I've mentioned some of the positions you hold, but I wanna start by asking, how would you describe what you do and who you are?
[00:01:32] Madeline Oldfield: Thank you Isabel. Um, now as many of us will probably know, we get asked this question quite often in interviews. And if you see with my career, uh, jumps, I've probably had had my fair share.
[00:01:43] So I usually tell people I'm a bit of a cross between Mary Poppins and MacGyver. Right. So
[00:01:49] James Pattison: that's amazing. Always.
[00:01:50] Madeline Oldfield: I know, right? You can imagine. You can imagine. And so the mi Poppins bit of what I do in my career is kind of. They look after the old problem child, whether it's a difficult stakeholder or, um, you know, a challenging kind of problem to, to solve for.
[00:02:03] And then the MacGyver bit is I often get called in to help with remediation. So people often hand me a stick of gum and a paperclip and, you know, expect something pretty amazing. So, um, you know, colloquially that's, I guess what I do, the. But you know, the title itself being, um, head of Partnerships for, um, privacy Chrome and Web in Australia, and also looking after the privacy sandboxes, my current adventure that I'm working on at Google.
[00:02:28] Isabel Melles Taverner: Awesome. Um, your path to law is a bit different from some of our previous guests. Mm-hmm. So you had a career for around 15 years before you came to law. What brought you
[00:02:40] Madeline Oldfield: to law school? Oh my gosh. This is, this is hilarious. So my, the official start was when, um, I wanted to study law when I left high school, but my parents somehow managed to get in my head and say, no one wants to be a lawyer.
[00:02:54] What you wanna do is study it. And I always wanted to do business, so I ended up. For whatever reason, for the first time, probably in my life at 18, listening to my parents and, uh, doing a, a, a business in an IT undergrad. Um, and then I finished and I always had that pang of regret and I'd thought about it and I was working at the time with Department of Justice and we got some exorbitant bill from the lawyers, you know, several hundred thousand dollars.
[00:03:17] And I was just, uh, again, working on sort of major procurement and contracting projects. And I thought to myself as the sort of. Program manager, there's gotta be a cheaper, better way to do this. So I somehow managed to write the business case to the powers that be, um, to sort of encourage them to fund, you know, some of my law degree.
[00:03:35] And that's basically how I started kind of frustration at getting a legal bill and just go and kind of stubbornness of if it's, you know, if they can do it, I can do it. And that. What start of you on the path.
[00:03:47] James Pattison: There's nothing like, so we boil it down and it was spite
[00:03:50] Madeline Oldfield: pretty much. There's, yes, spite is a powerful force to make it good motivator.
[00:03:55] Like that kept me going for a good 18 months. Every time I got that bill, I'd tell you. And then, and then it wore off and, and then it wore off because, and, and my role changed. And then I started to think, actually some of this content is really helpful all of a sudden by telling people I was studying this law degree.
[00:04:14] Folks were interested. You know, I was working. Then I moved on to working at one of the banks and they were rolling out a major regulation project around anti-money laundering, um, customer due diligence or A-M-L-C-D-D compliance. And all of a sudden I had this law degree where I could do statutory interpretation, not well, let's.
[00:04:30] Be honest about that part of my skillset, but well enough that I could actually read through the legislation. Uh, I think I was also studying trust law at the time, and I kind of identify this pretty big gap in how we were thinking about things. Um, and I was as surprised as anybody because I didn't think anything in trust law would stick, but lo and behold it does.
[00:04:50] And so yeah, managed to rethink kind of what that would mean in the context. Of a bank and have to explain it to folks who had absolutely no idea what it meant. So it was kind of my power moment, and all of a sudden those little motivators just kept me going about the application of what I was studying in a real world context.
[00:05:06] And I was like, oh, this is good. This law degree is paying for itself. I liked it. It was good. Amazing. I do love
[00:05:12] Isabel Melles Taverner: asking our guests, you've named a few subjects in there.
[00:05:15] Madeline Oldfield: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:15] Isabel Melles Taverner: You know, favorite subjects, favorite lecturers. Yep. You know? Yep. Do you have any that you still think about or
[00:05:21] Madeline Oldfield: you still kind of reflect on?
[00:05:23] Uh, look, if anyone has thought about doing the mediation a, mediation B, to this day, without question, the best thing I did, not just even at law school, but probably in terms of professional development that I've ever done, I'm actually annoyed at myself for not following through and getting my mediation certificate because those negotiation skills, arbitration skills, conflict resolution.
[00:05:46] Genius. And as someone who isn't always perhaps the calmest in those situations, learning those techniques, honest to goodness, is like one of the best things. In fact, um, I often put it, uh, if I'm running a change management program, um, doing leadership development type work and consulting work, I actually put that in as a piece of advice, um, that leaders actually need to be trained in, in some of those skills.
[00:06:08] So, yeah. Awesome. Uh, and my surprise subject, believe it or not. Property law, how really loved it. Really couldn't, couldn't stop. Now I don't know if it's just because secretly I wish I was a property mogul. James is looking at me. Very, uh, interestingly, audience, there's a
[00:06:27] James Pattison: backstory to this because in our previous episode, that was one of our guests, pet Hates No and, and oh, and she failed it.
[00:06:36] I also was like, that was mine because I failed at it as well. So now we have someone who balances the top of the glass. We got bottom of the car. You go talk to me. Why? I
[00:06:45] Madeline Oldfield: think it was because I thought I was going to fail it, which is why I just, yeah, I just, I did, but I loved it. I loved every, like I got in there, I rolled my eyes, I sat in the back of the class.
[00:06:56] I had my arms folded, my phone in front of my face, and then I started listening and paying attention. I was like, this is. Great stuff. All of those like easements and covenants and rules and common law. And then there's the statute and I just made my head explode. And then I think I'm, I think we may have been buying a, a house at around about that time.
[00:07:15] And I actually paid attention to the contract, 130 odd pages, and I was right in there. So, um, I don't know why that was the. One of the favorites, but it was really useful. On the flip side, the, the subject that I thought I would not only excel but be congratulated for my brilliance. I barely scraped by and I dunno if I should admit this.
[00:07:36] Okay. Yeah, go for. Contract. Oh, A interesting. And B, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I was, my job was procurement and contracts, and here I was really struggling
[00:07:48] with
[00:07:48] contracts.
[00:07:48] Isabel Melles Taverner: I think that, I think that kind of illuminates the gap sometimes between what we learn Yes. And what we put into practice. Absolutely. Um,
[00:07:56] Madeline Oldfield: I think that's absolutely it, because I wanted to break all the rules, right?
[00:07:59] Yeah. Like, that was, that was one of the reasons I took that subject. I wanted to learn it so I could bend. Bend the rules, maybe not break them, but certainly bend them. And I always had this theory about agile ways of working, which is something we do a lot in consulting. And any of these large organizations are changing their kind of internal ways of working to orientate towards more agile ways.
[00:08:18] So more. You know, faster cycles, different ways of thinking about how to produce, um, value for customers. And one of the drawbacks, um, in practical sense is, is the way in which we structure legal contracts because they're usually framed over a much longer period of time, particularly in, you know, the early days of tech, multi-year, multimillion dollar.
[00:08:38] Large contracts where you don't see a lot of value in the early stages. You sort of wait till the end years. And then we, what we found kind of in a, um, in sort of an industry perspective is that just wasn't working as an approach. So hence the Agile sort of grew in popularity as a way of working. But the contracting mechanisms haven't kept pace.
[00:08:57] And so this has been a really interesting thing to explore. And certainly in Victoria, we're looking at, um, you know, different ways of using agile thinking to embed it into ways of structuring contracts for, you know, large scale transformations and IT projects.
[00:09:11] James Pattison: And how does that, how does that work in a practical sense?
[00:09:13] So can you run us through a project that you've worked on?
[00:09:17] Madeline Oldfield: Yeah, actually something we did for, um, one of the projects. That was one of the award-winning projects with, um, court services and VCA if, if anyone knows about the online dispute resolution pilot. Um, because what we wanted to do is bring in, as I said, those agile contracting me methods and mechanisms.
[00:09:33] And so, um, it requires a lot of, uh. Customer-centric empathy. It requires, um, working in partnerships. There's, um, some agile principles and mindsets. Things like, for example, we favor collaboration over, you know, processes and, and contracting. Um, and so it required us to rethink the relationship we had with historically folks.
[00:09:54] We would call vendors or suppliers to become partners and. As, as lawyers, I guess sometimes there's that slightly antagonistic approach to a contract. I wanna win on my side, I wanna advocate for my client. Um, and it sort of tends to be very inwardly focused. I think that what we were trying to do on that project in particular was really, um, look at ways of partnering better where there's a win-win for both sides.
[00:10:17] So, um, again. Certainly, I know Victorian government has actually looked at agile contracting and agile procurement as part of some of its, um, initiatives to reduce red tape, um, be able to get, you know, greater value for both the, the government side, but also their potential partners. Um, so one thing we did in very pragmatic terms was actually look at the terms and conditions in the contract.
[00:10:40] Um, we actually embedded. Agile principles and ways of working into the contract. Um, which sounds like a very simple thing to do, but usually it's much more antagonistic. The language is antagonistic. Um, but in this sort of way of working, it was trying to be much more inclusive. So again, just little things and, you know, a shout out to the team.
[00:10:58] We had some pretty amazing, um, lawyers, uh, Sharine, if you're listening, you know, that was, was something that, you know. They, um, Reen and RAs, who was our procurement lead, worked really hard on trying to establish, so, and when
[00:11:09] James Pattison: you say that you embed mm-hmm. Um, agile ways of working Agile. Principles into the terms and conditions.
[00:11:16] Yes. Yep. How does that manifest itself? Do you see it in the way that it is written? Is it an approach Ah, that guides I'm, you know, what's actually included? This is someone who has no background in writing terms and conditions or contracts. So
[00:11:28] Madeline Oldfield: I think, I think it's, I'm probably gonna get in trouble a little bit for saying this, but one of the things I found just as a bit of a pattern, as much as.
[00:11:35] You know, the legal minds in the room would love everyone to stick to contracts we never do in practice. Um, a lot of my background has been in program delivery and project execution. It's all about relationships. Mm. Frankly, like without, you know, great partners supporting you, it doesn't actually matter what's written in the terms and conditions.
[00:11:54] Until something goes wrong. Yeah. And so I think realistically, if you start that negotiation process with, you know, really good intentions and with that partnership empathetic mindset that you want your partner to win as much as you want to win, it totally changes the dynamic of the relationship. Um, there's an element of fairness that was.
[00:12:14] That's there. And, um, an element of collaboration perhaps that we haven't seen before. So I think as much as, you know, I would love to say, yeah, we always go back to the contract. I don't know, some, sometimes I don't even know. It takes us a while to sort of dig it out and dust off. But, um, I think it's the, the process of forming that in a collaborative way as opposed to just handing someone a piece of paper, letting the lawyers look after it.
[00:12:36] I try and get the actual teams involved to embed and put in the content in, um, you know, the, the schedules in the contract, for example. So they're shaping the plan together. So we reduce the legalese. We try and use language that the teams can understand, um, so that they're actually engaged with the, with the content and the information.
[00:12:55] And it certainly helped like many, many times when, um, I guess people aren't quite sure what to do, they, they can kind of refer to something that they worked on together and kind of go from there. Lawyers.
[00:13:05] James Pattison: Don't have a reputation for a real love of risk. And, and, uh, I don't know if that's a product of the sort of person who comes out of law school or the sort of person who's attracted to law school.
[00:13:19] Like a chicken and an egg kind of thing. Yeah. And both. And
[00:13:21] Madeline Oldfield: both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
[00:13:22] James Pattison: so how, how would you go, or do you have any examples of approaching a legal team and saying, we're gonna actually completely. Turn the way that we write contracts or terms and conditions on its head, come along for the ride.
[00:13:36] Like, can you run us through an example of when you've had, how you've gone about doing that?
[00:13:41] Madeline Oldfield: Yeah. Um, James, you're gonna love this one. And Isabelle, you may have heard this story, but, um, I was actually, I was really fortunate, uh, I got a chance to be the head of legal ops, um, group governance and legal ops for, for nab.
[00:13:52] So, um, I can talk about this one. It's a great story. Um, some really cool. Sort of public facing stuff that we did. And, um, there, uh, was a project that we set up called Project Kaboom. Literally, that was the name of the project, right? That's right. Isn't it? Awesome. And, um, the idea here is that we wanted to blow up the terms and conditions for, for nab um, credit cards.
[00:14:14] And interestingly because what we found, you know, listening to, um, bankers and our customers at the time, they, no one understood it. Right. It was just a whole bunch of legalese 60 pages. Has any, have you looked at the terms and conditions of your credit card? Never. Let's be honest. No, exactly. And, and I guess that was the thing.
[00:14:30] It was just like, it was just this kind of, you know, it was, it was very expensive paperweight at the time and, you know, often sort of very paper format, et cetera, et cetera, because that's part of the regulation. Um, and we just. Really sort of rethought about, you know, what are the ways we can literally blow up the terms and conditions and, and try and create something that's gonna be of value to customers that the bankers can explain, um, that our teams understand.
[00:14:54] And, um, on that particular initiative, we pulled together and. This is where the exciting bit happens. So we obviously had the internal lawyers who are incredible folks with, um, a background in consumer credit and law, but also folks with different backgrounds because lawyers are great thinkers. And I know perhaps, um, when you're very deep in your content such as consumer law, it can be really hard to break away.
[00:15:16] And to take those risks, hence why it helps having others in the room to sort of bounce ideas off. Um, we also had an external, um, firm who were really, really incredible. So we had, um, HSF as our, as our partner in that they have a fantastic legal team and they had a really fantastic, um, sort of financial services team.
[00:15:34] Um, thank you Martin McDonald, if you're listening. Uh, and Julia. So, um, the, the folks that were involved had this understanding of trying to make things better. They wanted to improve financial literacy for folks who might be. Sort of perceived as vulnerable Australians. Um, again, this is all really important because I think it's about changing the mindset of what's possible when we put the consumer, um, or the customer at the center of what we're doing.
[00:15:56] And then we got a really exciting opportunity to work with our product teams at NAB and marketing teams and technology teams. Um, and we put all of these folks into a room, process, experts, you name it. And we applied a pro, um, a construct called, um, human centered design. Uh, and it was this really.
[00:16:14] Interesting approach to, um, relooking at what a contract was, how it is that we might, um, effectively write a contract from the perspective of the customer, not the bank. Right. So that was really, that as a, as and, and I guess part of that brainchild come from, from having done my law degree and looking at it and saying, okay, well if this is a.
[00:16:36] Contract. Who, who are the parties and how do we orientate the language? And, and so that was our focus. If we were, you know, how might we, which is one of the questions you ask in service design and human centered design, how might we write a contract from the perspective of a customer? And, you know, to their credit, our chief general counsel and others, you know, um, head of, uh, consumer product was like, yeah, let's try this.
[00:16:59] Let's see where we can go. The, the legal firms were into it. Um, all of us. Sort of, um, we used obviously incredible experienced designers. We did, um, you know, customer research, which is part of the method. Um, and we did lots of external research, seeing what else was out there around terms and conditions.
[00:17:16] And in the end, you know, we went from something that was, you know, 60 plus pages of really. Dense text heavy information into something that was, I think about half the size, but with pictures and diagrams and better language and clearer headings and things. That was basically the idea there was to make it more accessible.
[00:17:34] And I think we, you know, did a very. Uh, good job and obviously objectively. Um, probably one thing I can share is that it's actually been nominated for a, um, design award, which is really exciting. Amazing, like really amazing in service design. Um, who, who would've thunk it? You know, you can get legal teams and, and service designers and tech folks and product teams sitting in a room together, really rethinking, um, the way in which we, you know, present legal information to make it more accessible and more engaging.
[00:18:05] For people, and I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm a credit card holder, so I want it to be easily accessible. Right. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:10] Isabel Melles Taverner: I think you've mentioned a couple of like key phrases there. One is about change management, which we'll come back to, but human-centered design is a really interesting one.
[00:18:21] Yes. And you are not. Our only alumni who's sort of gone on and, and and expressed that sometimes as lawyers we can forget who's on the other end of what we're doing. Yes, yes. Um, and so that seems to be part of that, but maybe you could just explain really simply what is human centered design and maybe how all of us can kind of, you know, apply that framework Absolutely.
[00:18:43] With students.
[00:18:43] Madeline Oldfield: Yeah. And it's such a great. Great construct that you can apply for, for really anything you do in life, right? Whether it's law or any other discipline. But the, the premise of it is about empathy. It human, for me, this is, this is how I explain it. So, human-centered design for me is about empathy.
[00:18:59] It's about putting humans, people at the center of everything that you do and think about as your first priority. So not the technology, not the cost, not the risk. People. And you ask yourself the question, what do people want? What's desirable? So that's the first kind of lens that you look through. Um, the second question you learn, um, often we ask in human-centered design is, um, you know, what are we, you know, what can we afford for what level of risk?
[00:19:24] So that's the viability lens. And the third lens is what they call a feasibility lens. Um, traditionally it's largely been about technology. You know, what can the technology do? Um, because. You know, tech can't do everything, can't solve for every problem. Often we think it's the silver bullet, but it's not.
[00:19:39] Um, um, over the years I've actually started to amend that. And my new method is actually when I ask the feasibility question, ask about capability. So capability being people, process, and tech, right? So skills that you might need, processes you might need to implement, and then the technology that.
[00:19:55] Platforms that underpin it. Um, and I guess those three things, desirability, viability, feasibility, it's about finding the balance of all of those three things, having empathy for the humans and human actors in a particular context so that you can hopefully get to. A win-win for everyone by balancing those three elements.
[00:20:14] Isabel Melles Taverner: Yeah. We, we have this unfortunate assumption that empathy is kind of a soft or vulnerable emotion. No, no. Instead of it being this really productive way to work better with other people. A hundred percent. And.
[00:20:27] Madeline Oldfield: Ultimately, we have to remember that the law is there to better people, to make our lives better, to make it fairer for others, to ensure that we, you know, as a society can function with, you know, rules and frameworks that make sense and can be as fair as possible to everyone.
[00:20:44] So why, why wouldn't we look at frameworks to make that kind of legal practices fair and, and, you know, um, human centric as. Possible. Again, you know, we might get caught up in a piece of legislation, we might get caught up in legal process, and that is important, but it's not the only thing. And I would be encouraging folks who are looking at the problem space that they're, they're in at the moment to just try it.
[00:21:07] Try and put people. At the heart and at the center. Mm. Put the people questions first. Start with humans and just see, see if you get a different result. See if you can ask different questions That lead to a slightly different outcome. I think, um, yeah, it's, it's important to do that so that we don't lose focus, we don't lose perspective about what's important.
[00:21:24] Yeah.
[00:21:25] James Pattison: There may be people listening who have been working in a particular field. It could be law or otherwise, 5, 10, 15 years, and they're thinking. Well, I already do this. I already put my clients first, or I put my colleagues first, or whoever it is. Mm-hmm. And they might be struggling to go, well, what else do I need to consider?
[00:21:43] I'm already considering them.
[00:21:44] Madeline Oldfield: Mm. Yeah.
[00:21:44] James Pattison: Can you tell me how you might come in to put a different lens on the work that they do?
[00:21:50] Madeline Oldfield: Yep.
[00:21:50] James Pattison: Why they do it and what the impact is on sort of the, the end user or the client. Yeah.
[00:21:55] Madeline Oldfield: Yep. So the idea here is that it's not just your client who's the only human actor, and hopefully that language sort of makes sense that the, the human participant in a particular process or whatever.
[00:22:06] Um, and so when you, again, this has a whole discipline around it, by the way, I'm, I'm probably. Doing service design, full justice. But the idea is that you understand, um, an ecosystem and all the players in the ecosystem, all the stakeholder groups, and so what you wanna understand is not just, you know, what's a win for your client and pushing as hard as possible, but also in same ways you might do interest based negotiation.
[00:22:27] Right? What is also important for the other stakeholders? Where is their. Tension. Where is their contention tension? Where are their similarities? Um, where are there mutual pain points that everyone, you know, wants to try and solve together? And by sort of mapping out those different perspectives, I think what it can do is not only build.
[00:22:48] Understanding and empathy for, you know, the other party. But it can also help your c your client get what they want, right? So if you can address the needs of the other party and what's important to them, then hopefully that will help to uplift. And again, I think, you know, really good lawyers do that. Well, we talk about understanding all of those things, but often we do it in a way that is perhaps, um, a little bit more antagonistic to try and, you know, do something that is going to.
[00:23:11] Sort of benefit, maybe one party over the other. But keeping in mind that if, if it's not something that is, you know, particularly important to your client, maybe there is a way to, to to, for, for more parties to walk out of it with more benefit. And that's not a bad thing because again, even though the lawyer's duty might be to the courts, um, it's also a duty of, you know, ensuring a fair and equitable process.
[00:23:32] And so there is real, um, you know, equity, I think and procedural fairness in making sure for your client. There's a great outcome and also for the practice of law and the reason we do this and for people to trust it, right? We wanna make sure that lawyers have those ethical duties that ensure that they are thinking about all parties.
[00:23:52] And I'm not saying to give things away, but I am saying to be aware of what is important to the other parties so that hopefully together you can get a better outcome,
[00:24:01] James Pattison: uh, the way that you describe human-centered design. Um. Is actually something that we framed it in terms of from the perspective of a lawyer.
[00:24:10] Madeline Oldfield: Yeah.
[00:24:11] James Pattison: But in fact, this is so broad. Oh, totally. Across every single industry and perhaps even interpersonally as well.
[00:24:17] Madeline Oldfield: Absolutely.
[00:24:18] Absolutely. Do you,
[00:24:19] James Pattison: do you ever find yourself bringing human centered design into your Oh, private life?
[00:24:22] Madeline Oldfield: Yeah, big time. And I and I, I guess I do it only because it's such a great fast method and way of thinking about it.
[00:24:29] Right? Those three questions. What's desirable for humans? What can I afford for what level of risk? And like, can the tech do it or can the feasibility process do it? Um, I'm struggling to think of a good kind of personal example, but um, certainly whenever I walk into a business, it's the first, it's the first three questions I ask myself when I'm trying to scope a problem.
[00:24:48] Um, and you know, and we talk about it from lawyers perspectives, thinking, you know, maybe they're working for large law firms or in-house, but also policy makers, right? So for those who might be interested in taking that sort of government and policy path. What an awesome way to understand the policy landscape.
[00:25:04] What an awesome way to really understand the needs and balance the needs of all of the parties. Um, you know, certainly something I'd, you know, with the work that I'm doing at the moment, we are really interested in what the ecosystem looks like because in order for us to be successful, um, particularly with Privacy Sandbox, and we'll talk about.
[00:25:23] Deprecating third party cookies, which is a really big deal. Um, in order for us to be successful, we need our entire, all the partners to be successful. Um, not only sort of one for all or for one type kind of thing, but it, it, it is, um, as much of a cliche as that, that is, I, I really firmly believe that with this kind of more connected way that we work today.
[00:25:42] Exist today. Live today, we wanna have, um, principles of sustainability. It doesn't help if one party gets everything and, and there's nothing for the rest of the ecosystem. Um, so some of these design principles are really important. And again, I've applied it in a context of something as boring as reporting and information to legal design.
[00:26:01] Um, uh, technology design, obviously that's sort of it's comfort space and home, home space, but it can be applied pretty much in every context. So.
[00:26:10] James Pattison: About half of the graduates from law school don't go on to practice law. Um, aren't
[00:26:15] Madeline Oldfield: we smart?
[00:26:18] James Pattison: That's right. So there's, and that is I guess, uh, what is behind this podcast that there's a lot of people who are either at law school, considering.
[00:26:26] A either a non-legal career Yep. Or a career that isn't focused on working with the big commercial firm. Yep.
[00:26:33] Madeline Oldfield: Yep. And
[00:26:33] James Pattison: there's also people who do go through a career change, um, like all of us Yes. Will have major career changes. Yeah. So being able to apply that way of thinking to. Every industry, you know, every environment you find yourself in is really important.
[00:26:47] Madeline Oldfield: Absolutely. Yeah. And, and this is the thing, and, and many people talk about this in terms of their own career and professional development. Um, it really is up to you as much as I would love to say that companies kind of encourage you to do it. Uh, not in my experience, and I've always, every year I set aside, um, a personal budget to make sure that I'm.
[00:27:04] Funding more and more professional development. I'm really fortunate. I work for a company that does obviously fund it. Um, some of that, but I also invest in myself. So that's one step. If you can afford to do that a really great way. Um, there's lots of really good free resources and free courses. Um, I know that ideo.org, um, have a fantastic free field guide.
[00:27:24] I call it my bible of human center design. Right? 150 pages of pure. Gold information. Love it. Really, really useful. Um, they'll take you through some case studies of, of how they've applied human-centered design for really gnarly, really gnarly problems, you know, um, sustainability problems or, um, drought problems.
[00:27:43] It could be sort of everything and anything. Um, and you know, also. Um, there's some great courses in in Melbourne for those who are based here in, in Victoria, like I know General assembly run really, um, cool courses on, um, you know, design thinking and human centered design, um, for sort of professionals.
[00:28:00] And so again. I would encourage everyone to, to at least try these things, branch out a little bit, because it is absolutely applicable. And what's more important is I think you'll get a lot more enjoyment about, certainly I did and the people I worked with by doing what you do, but in a fun way. So we used to have this commitment for the project teams that I've worked on is I want everyone to come in work to have some fun.
[00:28:22] Why not? We spend so long there, right? Yeah. And, and again, by doing different courses and being involved in, you know. Um, different professional development opportunities. Just gives you a chance to, I don't know, try different things, get outside your comfort zone. Again, another cliche, but. Make it okay that you can do that.
[00:28:40] And even if you are sort of in a, in a big firm, they, they're doing really great things around innovation. If you're in-house, um, go and talk to teams outside the legal team, right? Go and talk to the project teams. We love talking project teams. We love. So come and talk to us about Agile. Come and talk to us about design.
[00:28:56] Um, and then for those who are thinking of. You know, non-practicing lawyers, I guess it's really only non-practicing to the piece of paper. It's only non-practicing. In my experience, for the people who understand what it means to be a practicing lawyer mm-hmm. The rest of the world, they just know that you have a law degree.
[00:29:12] They don't, they don't care. They don't, they don't, it's kind of irrelevant. Um, I sort of laugh even often today I'm introduced as a lawyer. I'm like, I, I'm not a lawyer. And then they just shut me down like, you've got a lawyer. I was like, technically you're a lawyer. And so you kind of have to wear that.
[00:29:27] Badge with pride. And the cool thing is you never switch it off. I never, I can't switch off the information, the knowledge that I know. Yeah. Having done a law degree. Right. This,
[00:29:37] Isabel Melles Taverner: this is exactly what I wanted to ask you. Um, you know, for those students who are listening to this and sort of, you know, hearing.
[00:29:45] Your amazing journey of being in awe like us. Um, what's your advice for them? What's your advice for current students who are thinking, I don't know how I would get to where Madeline is. My other question is, you're mentioning a lot these, what we'd call human skills or some people of call soft skills mm-hmm.
[00:30:03] That you've, that you've learned. In your law degree and taken forward. So I think it's important to, to note that even though you're not a practicing lawyer, your law degree equipped you with all these skills Yes. That
[00:30:14] Madeline Oldfield: you've taken forward with you. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, okay, to the question on advice, the first thing I would say is, you probably don't want my path.
[00:30:23] It's exhausting and it's confused and it, I run around a lot. Um, what you probably want is your own path. And so, um, you know, a lot of people would, would say, you know, in terms of the. The, the sort of questions to ask yourself is what do you value in life? What's important? What interests you? Right. And my other piece, I guess of personal advice is I, I always say yes and work it out later.
[00:30:46] I tell people I, I suffer from overconfidence, which is basically what's led me to be able to do a lot of these things. I don't actually know what I'm doing at the time, but guess what you learn. And so, you know, having that skill of overconfidence is really useful because if you're confident, yeah, you might be a bit arrogant or, or what have you, but if you're overconfident, well you're beyond that.
[00:31:07] You just have full commitment to your own abilities and it. Doesn't matter what's thrown your way.
[00:31:12] Isabel Melles Taverner: I love, I love the idea of saying yes and working it out later. Yeah. Because I think that applies to personal life. To, to your career. Exactly. If you wait until you're ready Yeah. You are not gonna say, say yes.
[00:31:23] You are not gonna be ready for, in some cases, I'm not ready for absolutely any
[00:31:27] Madeline Oldfield: of
[00:31:27] Isabel Melles Taverner: the projects I've ever
[00:31:28] Madeline Oldfield: done. Love it. Still not ready for that. Yeah. Yep. I, I, I understand that, right? Absolutely. It's, it's important. I would say this though. I think saying yes, but also trusting your gut. Yeah. And I think that's the thing I've learned as I'm getting a bit older is, is really trusting my gut to say, you know, are these people I wanna work with?
[00:31:44] This is a leader that I'm actually gonna trust. Um, if something like, you know, loyalty is important to me, so I make sure that, that people that I'm working with. Share that sort of value system. So again, really sit down, ask yourself what you value, what's important, um, make that decision. Talk to your gut, not just all head decision, but bit of heart decision and see where it takes you.
[00:32:03] Yeah, some pretty interesting places, no doubt. So the
[00:32:05] Isabel Melles Taverner: other, the other word that you've used a few times is change management. Mm-hmm. Um, and that may be familiar to some of our listeners, but some people might not quite understand that. We don't really have time to, to delve into the massive topic of change management.
[00:32:19] I know, but I wanna touch on it and touch on how we can have better attitudes to change, particularly over the last couple of years. And particularly working somewhere like Google where you are leading change.
[00:32:29] Madeline Oldfield: Yes.
[00:32:29] Isabel Melles Taverner: Um, can you tell us about how we can sort of reframe change as a positive thing?
[00:32:33] Madeline Oldfield: Oh, yeah.
[00:32:34] And such a great question because I think anyone who's about to step out into the workforce or is already in the workforce will know. Ugh, another cliche, but here we go. Change is a constant, it's the only constant, um, among death and taxes, right? So I think, um, and, and just sort of, uh, picking up on points earlier about some cool resources that folks might wanna follow up on.
[00:32:54] There's this great industry, um, framework around change management. It's called the model, um, developed by Prosci. And again, if, if folks are interested, there's, there are some methods and there's some, some, some methods behind the madness around change. And I think from my experience, um, with. You know, helping to support the right mindset shift is, and particularly for lawyers, because all lawyers do all the time, is change management.
[00:33:19] I, I, I, it floors me that we think that we don't do it. We absolutely do. Legislation changes all the time. Regulations change all the time. Policy changes all the time, and everyone seems kind of okay with that. It's like, oh yeah, that's just part of the job. But when it comes to maybe sort of weathering the storm of a personal change or a professional change sort of outside of a.
[00:33:39] A legal change. I see different mindsets, you know, it's a new IT system that's going in or, you know, um, you know, there's a leadership change or something. I think if, um, you know, lawyers in my and I, this is gonna be a bit controversial. I also think lawyers are great at managing risk. They, they, you know, it's embedded in the DNA in the sense that.
[00:33:57] You're able to look at, we're able to look at something and weigh up pros and cons, um, trying to get to the best, best path forward. Change is a bit like that. I think there's a recognition and understanding that, you know, we are wired as human beings. Change again is also about human beings, right? First and foremost.
[00:34:14] Before methods and processes, it's always gonna be about humans and ensuring that we have. Empathy for people who might be at their kind of cap of, of things that are changing. For example, it's not just the change that's happening in the workplace, um, you know, with a leadership change or a new system or new legislation change.
[00:34:34] It's also the fact that someone might be moving house. They might have, um, you know, uh, reaching a milestone or they might have had, you know, a bereavement in the family. And it's all of these personal things that sort of form together to make the person as an individual. Respond in certain ways to change.
[00:34:51] Um, in fact, we had a, had a wonderful colleague of mine, Dave, at Google, who recently, um, you know, gave, gave me this reminder about changes that we need to take the whole person into consideration. So my encouraging sort of words of wisdom for any lawyer that's trying to, you know, affect change in their own organization or understand change is really to make sure that you recognize that if you're sort of affecting change and, and, um, understanding the perspectives of those who you are, you.
[00:35:17] Um, working with to have that empathy that they might be going through more than just the change that you are putting on their plates. And then vice versa, have the confidence to articulate if you are at your capacity for change, look for help, look for resources, look for support. And that's okay. That's a good thing.
[00:35:32] If anything, it'll make. Life a heck of a lot easier for the folks who are trying to roll out the change, right? Yeah. So acknowledge that, be aware of it, be honest about it. And I think, you know, with, with that honesty comes new opportunity for appreciating and, and, and really embracing whatever uncertainty and ambiguities is coming our way.
[00:35:51] James Pattison: Madeline, I'm really excited about the fact that we have someone from Google here.
[00:35:56] Madeline Oldfield: Um,
[00:35:56] James Pattison: so, so we have to ask the question. Yeah. Yeah. Google is obviously. I mean, for, for so many years ahead of the game on everything. Mm-hmm. What are you seeing from your perspective in terms of legal changes on the horizon?
[00:36:11] Madeline Oldfield: Absolutely. There are some really, like now is such a fascinating time to be, and I say Google, but really anything that's related to digital tech. Um. I don't know if folks are aware of this, but there is a huge, huge review going on around the privacy Act and the privacy reform. That is a massive thing at the federal level, right?
[00:36:30] So, but of course, federal, it'll have impacts for state and vice versa, right? I know this because I have a law degree. Um, and I guess, um, you know, I'm, I'm really fascinated in how we are going to be defining what is privacy, because we all know we don't have a right to privacy in Australia or in Victoria.
[00:36:47] It doesn't exist. And so, um, the future of privacy. And data and defining data and what it means. Defining what is personally identifiable information and all of these concepts that are wrapped up with, um, how we interact in the digital realm is really interesting and scary. We don't have the answers to a lot of these things and you know, for example, what I'm working on at the moment, privacy Sandbox is a really.
[00:37:15] Incredible initiative. And so, you know, it started as a lot of these things do, um, overseas. So the, the UK regulator, um, brought to Google's attention that it wasn't doing, and not just Google, right? All, all of the folks in, in, um, the digital, you know, big tech providers and platforms were not doing a great job with privacy.
[00:37:32] Right? And that's really well publicized. And so, um, Google made some commitments to. Uh, remove a, a technology that has been in place pretty much since the birth of the internet, right? So 25 years we've all used it. This little thing called cookies. Dunno if people know not the chocolate chip variety, the tech variety.
[00:37:50] It's delicious as the chocolate chip variety are. Um, but the, the idea here is that for the first time ever. We're going to be removing some of the technology that sits behind tracking people with cookies across browsers. Now, again, for those who may or may not know when you get ads that pop up on your browser that are hopefully, hopefully accurate to what you know your interest would be, it's because some of the technologies are using, um, ads.
[00:38:13] Technologies are using cookies. Now imagine what could happen if we switch that off tomorrow, which of course. Is the reason why Google is taking a very different approach in how it wants to, to look at this because, um, here we've got a technology again that we've been using since pretty much the early days of the internet.
[00:38:31] We are looking for other ways to introduce privacy, preserving tech that will also, and, and meet all of those new privacy obligations and hopefully go a bit beyond that, right? We wanna kind of do more because it's the right thing for consumers. Again, we want the ecosystem as a whole to do, to do better and do more.
[00:38:50] And so this is our opportunity. Um, and this is why I like the Sandbox Initiative. So what Google has done is set up, um, almost like a, a testing realm. It's all public. Anyone and everyone can participate, whether you're a policy mine, whether you're a developer, um, and I hope there are some developers on, on this call, um, whether you're in, you know, a digital marketing space, whether you're in the legal team, who, you know, works closely with the digital marketing team, right now is the time to shape the design work about how we want to shape the internet, um, in a cookie list world, as we like to say.
[00:39:23] Now, I don't know about everyone else, but this is like. I've never been a part of anything as big as this. That is not
[00:39:28] James Pattison: small. No,
[00:39:30] Madeline Oldfield: absolutely massive. Yeah. And so, and and not only is it big, it's also really scary because Google's not the only player. There's an entire ecosystem. Whatever we change is going to impact others.
[00:39:42] Mm. And vice versa. And so we wanna make sure that we have a channels and for everyone's voice to be heard. Like the W three C, which is the Worldwide Web Consortium. Which is like the international standards body for sort of internet technology and internet standards, um, is also looking at this really closely.
[00:39:58] So again, I don't know if folks are interested in digital technology and regulating in the digital. World. But if you are, and that's for me, I think a real growth area for obvious reasons, post COVID, it's kind of accelerated the need for some of this stuff. Now is the time to really start exploring how an ecosystem of players need to come together in order to shape.
[00:40:21] Not just regulation, but also technology design. Fascinating space. Really interesting.
[00:40:26] Isabel Melles Taverner: And so full of potential. So full, full of potential
[00:40:29] Madeline Oldfield: and, and I, I actually had a colleague of mine at Google who said something that completely changed the way I thought about privacy. So I'm. Don't tell Google this, but I'm, I'm one of those weird kind of Luddites who really are about tech, right?
[00:40:43] My phone's, you know, forever, years old and, and so on and so forth. Uh, which is ironic considering I do digital transformation and change management, but a story for another day. Um, but, but, and, and so I take quite a conservative view to privacy, right? I, I try and craft a digital identity of Maddy Oldfield that is quite different to perhaps some of my, um, physical sort of information.
[00:41:02] Whereas I have a colleague who said, Maddy, I just wanna. I just take it all, they can have all my data because the more data they have, the more accurate the ads will be. I'm actually gonna get things in return that I want. Um, take it. I've got, I don't, I don't really care about it. And I had never heard anyone voice that perspective.
[00:41:17] And so for me, I was like, oh, wow, this is a real. Journey here where, you know, and maybe that is where we become as a society over time. I don't know, maybe we become more conservative, but I think what it's about right now is getting those voices heard, coming through the public forums and the public channels to shape a future that we actually want to participate in.
[00:41:38] That is going to balance, win, win hopefully the needs of, of. Of, you know, all the key stakeholders in and, and players in the ecosystem. So all of you, I would encourage you to Yeah, go, go explore. I'm, you know, happy to send some links out and Yeah. You know, have a look at Privacy Sandbox, some cool little videos.
[00:41:55] Get, get your tech geek on and see what you think.
[00:41:57] James Pattison: Well, we'll definitely get, um, some resources that we can add to the show notes for Awesome. This episode. Awesome. Awesome. Um, there's, there's so much more to explore with you. Um, I feel like we could do multiple episodes and maybe we need to Yeah, I, that's a
[00:42:09] Isabel Melles Taverner: two-parter
[00:42:09] Madeline Oldfield: coming.
[00:42:10] I know Absolutely no commitments. Spot. That's how I feel at this stage. I know we didn't even get a chance to talk about ODR, which I still think is one of the coolest things we've ever done in the legal context.
[00:42:19] James Pattison: Well, I think you're gonna have to come back and do another episode on that, perhaps. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:42:22] Yeah, yeah. Um, Madeline, I know you value your privacy, uh, but if there is any way. Um, that people can look up more information about you or find some projects you've worked on. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, whereabouts can people find you?
[00:42:35] Madeline Oldfield: Absolutely. So, um, uh, I do, I have a, um, a public presence on LinkedIn, so that's obviously a, um, you know, if anyone's in the workforce, they've probably heard about it.
[00:42:42] But yes, feel free to look me up on LinkedIn if you've got questions. Um, I've, you. Put up a few, um, thing, you know, projects I've worked on, for example, um, if you're interested in learning more about Human-Centered Design Service Blueprint, um, I was, we were really fortunate. Uh, we won an award, uh, in 2019 for the VCAT ODR pilot and I had an opportunity to also submit a, um, journal article for the MIT Computational Law Report, which is pretty cool, right?
[00:43:08] Amazing. MIT, um, we also got a chance. To speak at Harvard on this topic as well at Harvard Law Schools. I mean, it's no Monash, but you know, it was, it was, it was good. That I hear there far. Yeah, they're okay. They're okay. But again, it's just, you know, the places that you know, these, these types of experiences can take you as sort of endless.
[00:43:25] It's just honestly, you know. Get curious, start exploring, start finding things, start going down the Alice in Wonderland Rabbit hole and see where it takes you.
[00:43:34] James Pattison: Bayland afield. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for joining Laugh After Law School.
[00:43:38] Madeline Oldfield: Thank you for having me. And, um, to all the listeners out there, thanks for having to deal with the last 45 minutes, but, uh, hopefully, hopefully there's some good nuggets that um, that will kind of yeah, inspire you to think of life after law school a little bit differently.
[00:43:51] 'cause I know I have.
[00:43:57] Isabel Melles Taverner: A big thanks to Madeline Oldfield from Google Life After Law School comes to you from the faculty of law at Monash University for law courses. To partner with us or more opportunities, head to monash.edu. Slash law.