Another great interview about the change coming to law and yes, even in Australia where young doers and thinkers like are hampered by the protectors of the past…
Movement towards NewLaw thinking will be ‘a wonderful thing’
Demetrio Zema started his law firm with a laptop and a phone. An appetite for risk, and willingness to try new things, have served him and other NewLaw leaders well during the pandemic.
At the age of 28, Mr Zema – who up until that point of his life had worked primarily in litigation – decided that there “had to be a better way for legal services to be practiced”.
Four years later, he leads a team of 20 professionals across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, practising in commercial, corporate, litigation and employment law.
“My risk appetite is pretty high. I’d started a number of businesses before that – I had sold a technology business in 2015 – so I had risk understanding and I had sold a business and been through that process that many lawyers hadn’t been through before,” he said.
“It was absolutely a scary experience and some days you still kind of question that. But I think what we’ve seen over the last four years is definitely a willingness and an ability for, particularly younger people, to thrive in this space.”
The scariness of taking that plunge, he reflected, was exacerbated by becoming, he said, the youngest person to be issued with the principal practising certificate in Victoria at that time and starting up his NewLaw firm, Law Squared, with a laptop and phone.
