Denise Farmer describes her career path as "a happy accident"
Denise Farmer was a Modern Languages major who “never considered” that she’d ever work in the legal profession. But it seemed that fate had other plans when it was her background in international publishing that brought her in contact with a legaltech firm, changing her career forever.
In this interview, Farmer talks about the various personalities she has encountered in her work with lawyers and her experience leading Clio in APAC for the past year.
How did you get started with a career in law, and what led you to focus on legaltech in particular?
I studied Modern Languages (German and Spanish) at Cambridge and never considered a career in tech or in the legal industry, so where my career has landed is something of a happy accident. My languages took me into international publishing and events, and it was this publishing background which led me to LexisNexis Australia here in Sydney in 2005 after I finished my MBA. The field of academic and legal publishing appealed to me on an intellectual level as did the prospect of working with lawyers and being part of the broader legal community. LexisNexis at that time was a predominantly print business – I remember walking past boxes of loose-leafs to get to my interview! So I thought I was taking a publishing job, but what I actually got was a box seat in an incredible digital transformation journey – both within LexisNexis as a business and the legal industry itself.
The pivotal moment came in 2016 when I took a role in the LexisNexis Legal Software Solutions team looking after their legal practice management solutions, PC Law and Lawbase, and working with the Lexis Firm Manager team in the US to develop cloud solutions for small law firms. Up until then I’d been predominantly working with legal research products and sometimes feeling at a disadvantage for not having a legal background – there were so many talented folks at LexisNexis with legal qualifications or who had worked as lawyers – but I was helping small business owners find ways to manage their businesses more effectively. It just really resonated with me, one business person to another. And these were the lawyers I go to – when I’ve bought or sold property, when I needed to do my will – I just found it really relatable. I really grasped that cloud technologies would be the great leveller – and for small law firms in particular – providing access to a new generation of technology solutions versus the legacy, on-prem options they’d had up to then. I found my niche and I never really looked back.
What’s your favourite part about working in legaltech?
Without question, it’s our customers, the legal practitioners I get to work with. It’s immensely satisfying knowing your solutions are helping them grow their firms, restoring work-life balance, and providing better client experiences. I love the personalities and the variety too, particularly among the smaller firms – they are as varied as the people who run them. I do F45 fitness training in my spare time – I never forget that one of the lawyers in our Small Law Advisory Group at Lexis, during COVID, his sideline was distributing the Y-Bells you get at F45 studios! That sort of thing, it just never gets boring.
And then there’s the legaltech community in Australia. It’s a vibrant community of smart people doing great things with tech. In some ways, I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of it. I’m connecting and learning all the time, and incredibly grateful to be a part of it.
You’ve been APAC GM at Clio for over a year now – what has the experience been like?
It’s been 18 months and I cannot believe how fast it’s gone! It’s that unique combination of being a part of a startup within a larger organisation that I’m really loving. The reception Clio has received since we launched the APAC team has been overwhelmingly positive, from sole practitioners right through to much bigger firms. We’ve doubled the size of the team across product, sales, marketing, and customer success. The Australian legal practice management market is mature and sophisticated, it’s been enormously gratifying to feed this knowledge and experience back into the broader Clio organisation.
We’ve accomplished important milestones – trust accounting certification by the Law Society of NSW, for example. We hosted our Founder and CEO Jack Newton, and my boss, our COO Ronnie Gurion in Sydney last year. It was great to have them spend time with customers, partners, and the movers and shakers in our local legaltech scene. Best of all, we’ve exceeded all the targets we set for ourselves. I truly believe we are the future of legal practice management software. With Clio’s unique cloud-based and client-centred solutions servicing the full spectrum of law firms, from small to mid-tier, we are transforming the legal experience for all, globally.
What is your proudest achievement thus far in this role?
Without a doubt, I am most proud of the team we’re building. We have such amazing talent in the team and we are having a blast together. In such a short time we have achieved so much, and I am excited to see what the future holds!
