Building Community and Finding Connection with Dylan Gibbs

Welcome to studying law around the world I'm Claudio Claus in each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in. Real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises. And the decisions. That shaped their paths. Whether? You're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world? This podcast is for you. Whether you're studying law in Mumbai or practicing in Manhattan, Rev can help you transcribe and analyze all your case materials with verifiablecitations.learnmore@rev.com. Should they have the opportunity to be interviewing Dylan Gibbs? He's a former litigator turned into our community builder, and he's now building the top community for our Canadian lawyers. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dylan. And to start us off today, could you please introduce yourself and share a little bit about yourself to your audience here? Yeah, sure. So I went to law school at U of A in Edmonton. I grew up in Calgary, AB boy clerked after law school. So I finished law school 28 to the Alberta Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court of Canada here in Ottawa, which is where I now live. Litigated for a bit, did some big law commercial litigation that Bennett Jones blog in Ottawa and then went to the Ottawa County Attorney's Office and was prosecuting for for a bit there a couple of years ago. Decided to leave the practice of law behind and see if I could make some changes to the profession through entrepreneurship. And so that's what I've been focusing on. I started writing a newsletter in 2023. I guess it would have been kind of just a lighthearted take on legal news, a little bit of humor, bring some levity to the profession and saw from my audience and readership that there was a real need for community and a desire for the people reading the newsletter to connect with one another. And I've used that to launch in Laws, which is a community for Canadian lawyers, connecting them through online discussion, some more casual down to earth in person events, online events and CPD. And that's that's the focus there. I've been working on that. We just launched officially last week, but that's been my focus for for the last few months is getting that off the ground. In the meantime, the newsletters on pause, but it'll it'll come back as soon as the community is up and rolling. No, that's amazing. That's so exciting. So you, you mentioned about this need for community, but I also read that you, you wrote a lot and spoke about how lonely the profession can feel in, in lots of different ways. So I'd love to hear a little more on that. What moments, maybe even in your own career, that made that reality be clear to you? Yeah, I have. I mean, I finished law school, like I said, 2018, most of my years practicing were post COVID. But I do have a snapshot of what practicing was like in a pre COVID world. And I think there's a very big shift there. And talking to lawyers have been who've been doing this a lot longer than I have, they've noticed that shift in a in an even more pronounced way. It's much more obvious for them. And so those are some of the moments. You know, I don't know about specific moments, but when I talk to lawyers who have been out this longer than I am, the they tell me the profession used to feel much more collaborative, much more, you know, we're in this together kind of softer. And there's, there's much more of an edge to it now. I think in part that comes from more Zoom communication, less seeing each other in person. It's easier to have a bit of a bit more of an edge to the way you treat people when you're not seeing them as much face to face. And you don't have to, you know, it takes a lot of the human element out of it. And I certainly found that when I was practicing, you know, up until at least being in the Crown Attorney's office where you're in court virtually every day and, and there is a lot of in person stuff, everything was, you know, more remote. And that human connection element was, was removed. And I didn't like that as much as, you know, the moments I had pre COVID practicing where from was in the office, you know, you're walking down the hall, seeing each other, popping in, in, in doorways and just in general working with on another to help each other get the job done. And so I think that's been a big shift. And that's that's been one of the biggest drivers of people feeling like the profession is is a bit more lonely. There's just a major cultural shift that's happened since COVID. And some of it's coming back with people working in person and returned in person events, But it's very, very slow. And it takes making a very deliberate effort to bring that human connection. Back perfect that that makes so much sense and you know, it even got me thinking you're all of these, you know, sharp edge and all of that have also to do with with the world as a hoe. I feel like if we could look into pre COVID post COVID I feel like overall the feeling of polarization has also like. Overall. Feels like it, it maybe got a little more polarized or not, but I wonder if that also creeped into the legal profession and maybe that's part of all of that It it's definitely something very interesting to you to think of. Yeah, I mean that very well could be It's hard. I don't think I'm the best sort of person to think about things in such a meta way. It's easy for me to just, you know, get focused on on my day-to-day and and not the bigger picture, but I think that's probably right. I think a big part of it too, Claudio is, is just my personality. I'm a first generation lawyer, first generation, you know, undergraduate degree. It's I'm a very casual and down to earth kind of person. And so a lot of the formality and buttoned up stuffiness that comes with practicing law or that's associated with practicing law is very foreign to me. And so I think that alone made me feel isolated in the profession. And what I've found, you know, I started writing hearsay, my newsletter and grew that to I think it's just over 6700 subscribers now. And that made me realize these people are out there. There's people who want to be a little bit more casual, you know, let let a bit of humor into the profession, talk to each other in a much more human and friend like way without that edge and level of stuffiness that tends to come with law talk in the legal profession. And now through launching in laws, I've seen that even more so, right? There's a community of these people coming together and it's amazing. I mean, when I e-mail lawyers, I'm always self-conscious of using hey as a greeting because I know how I viewed that. And in a professional practice, you know, you're not emailing opposing counsel and saying, Hey, how's it going? Since launching in laws, though, the just the tone of the discussion in our online space is just so much more casual and friendly, right? You're seeing the haze, you're seeing people let their guard down a bit and open up and just be more genuine. And that's really nice that that makes me feel good. And that for me is a big piece of what was lacking when I was practicing. Is I crazy here? Am I the only one who doesn't like this overly polished, perfect, perfectly presented stuffiness that we all tend to be doing here? And it turns out, no, I'm I'm not alone in that. But you have to seek out the people who are interested in doing things differently. And like I say, make a very intentional effort so that it doesn't feel quite so isolating. That's amazing. So you mentioned a lot of a lot of the needs and in a lot of the downsides to what we had today mentioned a little bit about what what you're planning to build. So can you tell me a little more about how in laws than is different from what we have already? So you mentioned, you know, the aspects of being a little more informal and having that really spirit of a community, but I'd, I'd love to hear more on that. Yeah, there's a few things that set it apart. And you know, I don't think that there's any great comparators. I don't want to set it up as, say, a competitor to the CBA or your Canadian Bar Association membership, right? The those sorts of organizations have very different purposes. There's an advocacy component that is just looking to, to reform the law and advocate for the interests of lawyers. So what sets in laws apart, I think #1 is it's not an advocacy organization, right? It's, it's 100% devoted to bringing lawyers together, connecting them and making their practice better by sharing collective knowledge, making things feel a bit more human so that we can enjoy practicing and really treat it like a team approach with people who aren't just in your firm but are practicing across the country. The online discussion space that we have is comparable to what exists in pockets and other areas. So there's maybe Facebook groups for Ontario Wills and Estates lawyers or a list serve mailing list for BC family law lawyers. And what we're doing is bringing that all together in one modern online platform that connects lawyers across the country and across different practice areas. So it's supposed to imagining if you had, I mean, right now we have 50 members that I don't know that we would ever even want to be at the scale that something like the CBA is. But being able to fire off a question to hundreds of different lawyers from different practice areas. Hey, does does anyone have an expert who has dealt with this particular issue? Does anyone know a lawyer or does anyone, do any of you practice family law in this small town in wherever? It just gives you an opportunity to kind of balance those questions off and connect with people. A lot of the discussion we've had has been related to kind of law firm management from solo and small practitioners. So what are people doing about their client intake process? How are you automating that? How are you making that more efficient? You know, how are you going about recovering fees when clients don't pay you? Like, I've never really done this before. I just write it off. How are people approaching that? So those sorts of discussions where it doesn't really lend itself well to social media, people are reluctant about what they're putting out there. But if you know, this is a community of your peers and you're comfortable with them, it's, it's easier to have those discussions and really get into the issues. Those are some of the things that set us apart. I think one other major thing is the pricing model. Frankly, a lot of organizations that exist right now, you pay an annual membership and then you pay per event and members of the association as well as non members are invited to those events. And I'll, I'll be completely candid, I don't understand it. I don't understand that model. And So what we're doing is, is an annual membership. Our members are the people who come to our events and everything is included in their annual membership. They can attend virtual CPD sessions, in person dinners. We do some of our in person events just a little more structured so that there's some networking and people are comfortable meeting new people as opposed to awkwardly standing around just talking to the people they already know, Intimate dinners, just different formats that allow that to happen. And all of that is included in the annual membership. So those are some of the things that we're doing a little bit differently. I think really focusing on on a structured networking format that allows people to build those connections, pricing things a little bit differently and just building the infrastructure to connect layers across the country from different practices. Amazing. Are there some things that that came up in those groups? You just mentioned a few things about, for example, dealing with collections and all that are some other things that you've learned from those small groups that also have surprised you in in any. Way, I mean, it's early days. So we launched last week. I think the most surprising thing for me has just been seeing the level of engagement and that there's answers coming into people's questions, right. When you launch something like a, a new discussion space or a new community, there's a level of commitment that's required from, you know, the person in my position to be in there prompting the discussion and trying to answer questions when I can. And it's to see that I'll go in to answer a question or to give my thoughts on it. And I see that someone else has already chimed in and, and given an answer and is sharing what's worked for them, what's not worked for them. And so that's been surprising in that sense. One surprising thing I saw was that there's an automation platform, Zapier, which I use in my work. It just triggers some, if you have one piece of software like your Google Drive or whatever, maybe you want to automatically send an e-mail every time you put a file in a certain folder. And my wife is in tech and I have a bit of a tech background. So I use Zapier in my work. She uses Zapier in her work. And we're very familiar with that. But I didn't expect many lawyers to be using Zapier. And we've already had someone in our group explaining how they automate and approach their client intake process using Zapier to help out with that. So that was just yesterday that caught me off guard. I was really impressed to see that. And I'm excited to have them share some of that knowledge with the rest of the group because I think there's a lot that can be done when someone who's who's a bit more tech forward is able to share that knowledge with the broader audience. 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I think that's a really cool thing about having a more of a peer group because when you're in a larger setting, you just becomes really hard to explain, you know, the details of the practice or, or if you go in a very specific tool that people might not be very familiar with. It's much easier to speak in a small environment. And, and I guess that will go probably for AI and for all kinds of different things, but that's really exciting to hear. And you also mentioned a little bit about about hearsay, the newsletter. And that's so exciting that big community you built there to we've we've went on talking about, you know, maybe there's more and more people than we could have taught that are excited not to be in in such a button up environment that once you hear things, a little bit of overlap, sense of humor and all of that. But I was wondering what are what are some things that motivated you to to continue with this project? And also, why do you think lawyers are are more drawn to that kind of content more than ever? Yeah, so I'll start with the last piece. I don't know that More than Ever is accurate. I think that we're just a very tradition based profession and reluctant to change. It's one of the reasons I I say that more than ever isn't accurate is when I started writing this newsletter, I had a theory in my mind that the people who would like it and sign up for it would be millennials. That's are right with the millennial tone. I'm a millennial myself. Kind of the sense that it's a generational thing, that we want more lighthearted communication that that there was an element of that. But what I've seen is it resonates with people of all ages. There's many judges signed up who read the newsletter and enjoyed. Some of my most engaged readers are on the cusp of retirement. And so that hypothesis about it being an age thing really proved to not be accurate. One thing, I suppose, is that the volume of information that's out there is there's just so much and decisions have court decisions have gotten longer and there's just so much, but you can't keep up. And so I think anyone, if there was any truth to them, more than ever, I suppose it's now harder to keep up than ever before and all the more reason to appreciate something that's light, easy to read. And unlike a lot of legal reading, doesn't make you exhausted after you've read 1500 words of something, which I find is the typical writing style of, of lawyers is just what we're used to and we put up with it. But a lot of it truly is a chore to read. And so it's refreshing. That's what I think anyway. That's what I've heard from my readers. It's refreshing to have something that doesn't feel like a chore to read. And at the end of it, you have more energy to go on with your day instead of less. You asked what what kind of had me continuing it. It was truly just the reception by the audience and, and the growth of it when I started it. I mean, there was a, a model in my mind of if you know, growing an audience of people and having attention, there would be some way to build a business from that in one way or another. And so it would, it worked. I mean, from day one, people were enjoying it. Word of mouth spread very organically. It reached people that were very far removed from me. And I was pleasantly surprised with, you know, hear stories of someone goes into a courtroom and they're sitting behind someone who has hearsay open on their laptop. Like just the stories that would come back to me were very encouraging and all of the reader feedback was very good. And so it's relatively easy to keep going with something like that when everyone is enjoying it. And I've for the most part enjoy writing it, right. It the model is I'm going to go out, I'm going to read a bunch of stuff and whatever is interesting to me, I'm going to just put it down on the page and send it out. And that's a fairly easy thing to do, as long as you're interested in the subject matter. If the marker for what goes in is just stuff that catches your attention, it makes it pleasant to do and an enjoyable direction. That's fantastic. It it also proves you're really good curator of content and what you see maybe call attention of other people too. So that's super cool. And coming from you who've seen the legal world from lots of different angles, being big firms, government, public service, entrepreneurship. If I may ask you, what kind of thing do you see these days that you know, be law schools or our workplaces should get wrong when it comes to preparing lawyers for the real world, especially for us early career professionals? Or lost students finishing up school. What are some things that that come to your mind when I say that? I think there's several things. A big one is just that there's a large business component that comes with practicing law. It is a business maybe not for one to three years associates working in a larger firm, but as soon as you are in a stage where you need to be growing your own brand, marketing yourself, running a firm, there's, there's a lot that comes with that. And when I talk to the people who are gravitating towards joining in laws, that's one of the biggest things that they mention whether they're a partner in a larger firm and they're saying I now am leading A-Team. I've never really trained their leadership skills. There's a lot of things that would like to bounce off my peers. How do you do this? How do you delegate work? How are you managing, building your book of business with all of the responsibilities that come from managing A-Team? And then you've got small and solo operators. Same thing. So much of your day-to-day becomes administrative work and running a business, marketing. We don't go to school for any of those things. And I suppose it would be difficult for law schools to prepare you for that, but that's the reality. You're thrown into something where, yes, you need to know the law and that's what you've learned to do in in law school is learn the law and figure out how to apply the law to certain situations. But there's a whole other piece that comes with practicing law that we're completely unequipped to deal with. Another thing that's maybe a bit more specific to to practice is writing. I still think we're there's legal writing in every university, but I don't legal writing is bad. It's bad in Canada. It's especially bad. We should be looking at the way the judges on the US Supreme Court, right, that we should be looking at that with admiration and our own judges, especially the the Supreme Court of Canada, judges should be looking at that writing style and reflecting on what they are doing with their own writing because it doesn't need to be as complicated and as difficult to read as it is. And I think we're still doing a very poor job at getting our writing to the place it needs to be, not just to, you know, when people talk about this, they talk about the bar of communicating legal information to the public. And, you know, our writing is so difficult to understand that the public doesn't understand what's going on. And that's, that's great. I think that should be the ultimate goal. You're writing decisions that the public should understand. But we're failing at even communicating the law to lawyers, right? There's so much out there and our decisions are becoming so hard to read. You get a 300 paragraph decision from the Supreme Court of Canada. What practitioner? In in an era where there's a mental health crisis in the legal profession, we're swamped with work, people are burning out. How many practitioners have time to sit down and read that decision top to bottom? It's not practical, It's not good writing. It's not what we should be doing. And what what I find is because it is a precedent based profession and the way people learn to write is by looking at examples, modeling it in their own writing. You know, you have judges writing like this, Then you have students looking at those decisions as, OK, that's what legal writing looks like. And and it just perpetuates itself. And so at some point we need to kind of overhaul what we're doing with legal writing and how we're making it simpler. I think a big part of that starts with the bench. But, you know, law schools could be doing that. I I think there's room for improvement there. Amazing. Well, thank you for sharing that that opinion moving forward to your almost at the end of our episode today. You've spoken about neurodiversity in law recently and I'd love to hear a few of of your points on that. You if you could share a little. Bit with our listeners, yeah, it's not something that I've thought about in any sort of overarching or I don't know, provement based way. I'm not the sort of person who's thought about like, how do we make this better? But I know for me, I've struggled with anxiety and ADHD and it's made me, it's made lots of things about practicing law difficult for me. And so I, you know, there's a lot of work to be done. I think on that there's much more qualified than people than me to talk about how to, how to go about changing out. I think the biggest message I would have for people is that they're, there are things you can do to make your own life better. And there are environments out there, there are firms and places where you can go that are, are more supportive of different ways of, of thinking and the way the brain operates. And you should seek those environments out if you feel like, you know, a model isn't working for you. And, and that might mean starting your own firm, right? Finding your own way to carve out a practice that suits your life and how you structure things. I found, you know, as someone with a tech background going into a lot of the environments that I worked in big law firm setting and of the infrastructure of the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. The the technology just feels so archaic. And it feels like there's so much monotony and pain that comes from the tech choices that large organizations are making. And that the way my brain works was really frustrating and made parts of my day more difficult than it needed to be. And so I gave a lot of thought starting my own firm. Ultimately, I landed on entrepreneurship instead that just I gravitated towards that. But now I'm able to set up my day and use the technology I want. And just if something is inefficient and not working for me, instead of having to grit my teeth and just grind my way through it, I can structure things. I can go and pay for a textual to do to solve the things that frustrate me, right. And so that freedom is really nice. I think it suits how I think and view the world much better than being in, in a large organization that has set ways for doing things. And, you know, sometimes it's, it doesn't make maybe the most objective sense why things need to be done in a certain way. And so that's, that's, I guess specific questions you want to ask me about neurodiversity and the legal profession. I'd be happy to take a crack at it, but that's my general thoughts. I really appreciate you sharing those true to wrap up today's episode, just what did you ask your own, you know, looking ahead, what's your vision for how this legal communities like in laws can really shape and improve the the future of practice in Canada? I think my number one goal for in laws is to help as many people as I can not feel the same way I did about practicing to return. I don't know if return is appropriate. I say return because I've talked to people like I say we've been doing this longer than I am who seem to think that we're on a decline in that human and connected element of law is going away from, you know, the time I practice, I never felt like it was really there in the 1st place. And so I really just want to make law feel more human and connected. There's, you know, I'm not saying everyone should be saying hey, judge so and so or writing demand letters in the same way as they they talk to other people. But I think there's a lot of room to treat your peers as friends in addition to colleagues, and to connect with them on a level of how do we make each other better as lawyers? How do we improve the profession? How do we work together to do that? And I think a lot of benefits flow from that, not just knowledge, but also well-being. And that's that's really the goal is to help people be the best lawyers they can be, make them feel good doing it by connecting them with one another. Once again, really appreciate you taking the time to be in the podcast today and she answered this questions. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Claudio. I appreciate. You being here, well, thank you all for tuning in and we'll see you all in the next episode.