MOVELΔW

Michele DeStefano is a highly innovative legal professional with a passion for creative problem-solving, collaboration, culture change, and innovation in professional services. As a professor at the University of Miami who teaches design thinking at the law and engineering schools and a Faculty Chair in Harvard Law School’s Executive Education Program, Michele is an internationally recognized thought leader who has been named a Legal Rebel by the ABA and one of the top 20 most innovative lawyers in North America by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers.

 

Michele is the founder of LawWithoutWalls, a community of over 2,000 lawyers, business professionals, entrepreneurs, and students who collaborate to create innovations in the business of law and develop new mindsets and skill sets. She is also the co-creator of the Digital Legal Exchange, a non-profit that aims to inspire general counsel and their teams to become digital leaders in their businesses to drive commercial value.

 

With her extensive research and writing on topics such as client-centricity, collaboration, and innovation in law, Michele has authored multiple books, including Leader Upheaval: A Guide to Client-Centricity, Culture Creation and Collaboration and Legal Upheaval: A Guide to Creativity, Collaboration, and Innovation in Law. She has also published a design thinking guide: The Leader Upheaval Handbook, which guides facilitators on how to lead innovation journeys among multidisciplinary teams using The 3-4-5 Method(tm) that she created and has tested on over 230 teams. Her other recent scholarship includes: Chicken or Egg: Diversity and Innovation in the Corporate Legal Marketplace, 91 Fordham L. Review 1209 (2023) and Don't Let the Digital Tail Wag the Transformation Dog: A Digital Transformation Roadmap for Corporate Counsel, 17 J. Bus. & Tech. L. 183 (2022), and New Suits: Appetite for Disruption in the Legal World (co-curated with Dr. Guenther Dobrauz) Additionally, she has written articles and chapters in books about innovation and entrepreneurship, collaboration and culture creation, diversity in the legal profession, millennial lawyers, compliance and ethics, litigation funding, the role of the general counsel and the court of public opinion, legal education, technology and law, the work product doctrine and the attorney client privilege.

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Michele has been invited to speak about her areas of expertise at a number of law conferences, leading law firms, and law schools including Linklaters, Holland & Knight, KPMG, Dentons, McDermott, Arnold Porter Kaye Scholer, Proskauer Rose, White & Case, Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth, IE Business School, University of St. Gallen, and Fordham. And she has also delivered keynotes to legal departments within corporations and legal organizations such as Microsoft, DXC, Thomson Reuters, Blackstone, Spotify, ABA, AALS, and NAFSA.  (Click here for a recent review).

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Michele creates and facilitates bespoke experiential learning programs on client-centricity, culture-creation, innovation, collaboration, teaming, and problem solving for professional service firms and legal departments like Microsoft. Michele also regularly consults about law firm and corporate legal department strategy and operations ethics.

 

Michele earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and a J.D. degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Michele is a visionary who is dedicated to leading the way in transforming the professional services industry. She frequently speaks and runs workshops on  Creative problem solving, collaboration, client-centricity, culture change, strategic influence, personal branding, and innovation for professional service providers.

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