Blog
Welcome to the Checklist Legal blog, your comprehensive hub for transforming your legal challenges into strategic opportunities. As a B Corp certified law firm, we blend our commitment to commercial law, contract simplification, and legal innovation with a passion for creating a fair and equitable business environment.
Join us as we create ripples of change in the world of contracts and business.
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Ep3 Maximise Meeting Productivity: Tips and Tricks for Legal Professionals
This video provides practical tips for making in-house meetings more productive and less draining. From giving meetings fun names to setting clear agendas, the speaker emphasises maintaining energy and team alignment.
Key steps include planning meetings with a five-step structure: top-of-mind topics, progress, problems, plans, and actions. Additionally, tips for efficient scheduling, such as starting meetings five minutes past the hour, are shared.
The speaker also highlights the importance of pleasantries and suggests following up with structured after-meeting emails to capture decisions and actions.
Ep2 From Solo Lawyer to Head Legal Beagle: Building a Tech-Savvy Legal Team with Kate Sherburn
What does it really take to go from solo legal counsel to Head of Legal at a fast-growing B Corp?
In this episode of Legal Lightbulbs, we chat with Kate Sherburn, Head Legal Beagle at Who Gives a Crap, about building confidence, leading with purpose, and scaling a legal function with strategy and values.
Kate shares the lessons she’s learned from private practice to in-house, how she used tech and contract simplification to scale legal impact (not headcount), and why emotional intelligence is the superpower lawyers need most in the age of AI.
You'll hear how her small team handles legal ops, budget requests, contract design, and stakeholder education… all while staying aligned with the company’s bold sustainability mission.
Ep1 Legal Ops Starter Pack for Small Legal Teams with Katrina Gowans from CLOC
If you’re a solo legal counsel or leading a small team, and Legal Ops feels overwhelming… this episode is your shortcut. We’re unpacking the starter pack with Katrina Gowans, Head of CLOC Australia and seasoned Legal Ops leader.
Upcoming Event Webinar: Unfair Contract Terms Changes: Are You Ready?
Are you ready for the upcoming Unfair Contract Terms Changes? Our upcoming webinar, 'Unfair Contract Terms Changes: Are You Ready?' on October 10, 2023, is your opportunity to gain essential insights.
Join Verity White, a leading force in contract design and automation, as she delves into the practical intricacies of these new laws and their implications on businesses of all sizes and industries.
Discover how to create contracts that not only comply with the latest regulations but also foster transparency and trust.
Upcoming Event: Legaltech Confab - How I built a 10 minute chatbot
On Thursday 21st September 2023, Verity will join Fiona McLay, Principal Lawyer & Consultant at McLay Legal and author of the Tech Enabled Lawyer to discuss “How I built a 10 minute chatbot”. Hosted by Centre for Legal Innovation.
Verity will discuss her experience in building an AI chatbot called Magenta, a tool she uses to show clients how to improve their contracts. You'll be taken through a step by step breakdown of how this was done and how you can do it too!
Contract Design Workshop - Fair Terms Special (Melbourne)
A special 'fair terms' contract design workshop
What to expect:
🔸 A fun, hands-on workshop that equips you with the skills to make your contracts easy-to-read and understand
🔸 Insights into the updated Unfair Contract Terms laws and how contract design can help
🔸 CPD Points (1 x Practice Management and 1 x Professional Skills)
Upcoming Event: Women's Small Business Summit
One Roof, in partnership with Pin Payments and City of Melbourne are so excited to bring you this two day Women's Small Business Summit.
Over two days we will be creating both an in-person and virtual space for women business owners to connect, learn & gain inspiration. The focus for this Summit is on the topic of digitisation. With loads of speakers and experts we will be discussing how to successfully automate and scale your business.
Upcoming Event: Contract Design Roundtable (Auckland)
Look out Auckland, it’s time for Legal Design!
What to expect:
🔸 Small group discussion with some of the best creative minds in contracting
🔸 Insights into comic contracting, large scale contract design projects, and using AI for contracting
🔸 Lots of fun and new legal design friends!
More details: https://checklistlegal.typeform.com/events
Event Details
📅 Date: Wednesday, 31 May 202
⏰ Time: TBC
📍 Location: TBC
Upcoming Event: Contract Design Roundtable (Wellington)
Look out Wellington, it’s time for Legal Design!
What to expect:
🔸 Small group discussion with some of the best creative minds in contracting
🔸 Insights into comic contracting, large scale contract design projects, and using AI for contracting
🔸 Lots of fun and new legal design friends!
More details: https://checklistlegal.typeform.com/events
Event Details
📅 Date: Tuesday, 30 May 202
⏰ Time: TBC
📍 Location: TBC
Upcoming Event: Contract Design Workshop: Fair Terms Special (Sydney)
A special *fair terms* edition of our popular hands-on contract design workshop.... Excited to deliver this one in real life in Sydney!
📅 Date: Wed, 3 May 2023
⏰ Time: 6pm for 6.10pm start
📍 Location: The Commons, George Street, Sydney
What to expect:
🔸 A fun, hands-on workshop that equips you with the skills to make your contracts easy-to-read and understand
🔸 Insights into the updated Unfair Contract Terms laws and how contract design can help
🔸 CPD Points (1 x Practice Management and 1 x Professional Skills)
Upcoming Event: Contract Design Roundtable (Perth)
Look out Western Australia, it’s time for Legal Design!
What to expect:
🔸 Small group discussion with some of the best creative minds in contracting
🔸 Insights into comic contracting, large scale contract design projects, and using AI for contracting
🔸 Lots of fun and new legal design friends!
More details: https://checklistlegal.typeform.com/events
Event Details
📅 Date: Thu, 20 April 2023
⏰ Time: TBC
📍 Location: TBC
Upcoming Event: Tech Enabled Lawyer: Real Talk (Melbourne)
Coming up on Tuesday 21st of March 2023, Verity will join Fiona McLay, Principal Lawyer & Consultant at McLay Legal and author of the Tech Enabled Lawyer for a FREE in-person informative and practical session on everything legal business and tech.
This session is hosted by Centre of Legal Innovation. Verity will also be joined by Emma Maxwell, Director and Family Lawyer, Anchored Family Law and Laura Vickers, Director + Principal Lawyer, Nest Legal.
Mira Claudia Client Case Study
Mira had invested in professionals to design her website and write her copy, but her contracts had been lower on her priority list. After two successful years in business, she knew it was time to level up her contracts to reflect her professionalism. Mira’s challenge to Verity was to design contracts that would flex with her business reinvention and reflect her unique way of ‘doing business’ with clients.
Building the Fair Term Checker App Part 4
Welcome to episode 4 of Checklist Legal’s series on building a fair terms checker using document assembly technology and chatbots created with the legal tech platform Josef. In this episode, we’ll discuss how to build a well styled, automated document.
Building the Fair Term Checker App Part 3
In part 3 of the Fair Terms Checker video series, Verity White from Checklist Legal discusses the process of building automation and document assembly apps. She recommends using an automation mapper to keep track of the overarching details of the app, such as what documents are involved, what the output is like, and why you would use it.
Building the Fair Term Checker App Part 2
In this second part of the video series, Verity dives into the background of how she built the Fair Term Checker, which assists in-house lawyers in complying with the unfair contract terms laws set to be implemented in Australia in 2023. She explains how she planned out the app using mind mapping tool Coggle and why having a visual flowchart is essential to building a chatbot app.
Who Gives a Crap Case Study
Insights from Kate Sherburn, Legal Beagle (aka head of legal) at Who Gives a Crap
How Checklist Legal co-created Who Gives a Crap’s contracts, and personalised them with their playful DNA.
Innovation Services
At Checklist Legal, we love seeing the smiles and nods and happiness of our clients when we create amazing legal experiences!
We are passionate about re-designing legal services to decrease stress for legal teams and improve outcomes for users. After years of trial and error, we’ve developed some specialised packages to help businesses, legal teams, compliance teams and all legal professionals improve their legal services.
Clause Play Episode 02: My Legal Service Conditions Old v New Walkthrough
In episode two of Clause Play Verity takes you through her own award winning Service Conditions and compares her 2020 and 2022 documents.
What does a designer think about contracts?
In this article, Bronwyn Smith shares what it's been like joining the team at Checklist Legal and becoming the new Creative Projects and Design Manager. Find out what Bronwyn thinks about contracts... As a creative business owner and definitely not a lawyer.