This week, Adrian is joined by the insightful and irrepressibly forward-thinking Electra Japonas, founder of TLB, creator of the OneNDA initiative and now Chief Legal Officer at Law Insider. Electra shares her journey from aerospace contracts to legal entrepreneurship, revealing how she carved out a new kind of legal career by trusting her instincts and refusing to settle for outdated ways of working.

This conversation dives into Electra’s cross-border, cross-discipline legal career and explores some bold and exciting ideas shaping the future of law:

• How Electra's early years in the European Space Agency and Airbus exposed her to process design, supplier complexity, and the (often painful) interface between law and innovation;
• Why she stepped away from traditional practice to found The Law Boutique (TLB) and what she learned from bootstrapping a legal ops consultancy with no funding and two pregnancies;
• The origin of OneNDA, how a single viral LinkedIn post turned into a global standard and why its eventual acquisition by Law Insider gave her “relief, not euphoria”;
• Why Electra believes AI is already reshaping the legal profession and that “prompt engineering is the new drafting”, meaning lawyers must systematize their judgment, not just repeat it; and
• How legal professionals can future-proof themselves by becoming architects, not executors, of knowledge, and why curiosity, collaboration and codified instinct are the new superpowers.

💬 Note: This episode is overflowing with optimism, tech reality checks and one clear message: the future of law isn’t coming, it’s already here.

This week, Adrian is joined by the brilliant Dr. Anna Willetts, partner at Gunnercooke LLP, environmental criminal defence lawyer and, in her former life, a geologist with a PhD in landfill clay permeability.

Together, they unpack Anna’s refreshingly non-traditional route into law and explore how science, waste and Wellington boots led to a courtroom career that’s anything but conventional.

This conversation explores Anna’s dual-life career journey and some fascinating themes along the way:

• How a childhood fascination with rocks (and a quartz geode from her dad) sparked a love of geology and ultimately led to a PhD in landfill engineering;
• Why Anna left a successful career as an environmental consultant to retrain as a lawyer and how she still gets to keep her boots muddy;
• What it’s really like defending businesses accused of environmental crimes and how she balances legal precision with scientific expertise;
• How the waste industry has evolved from “holes in the ground” to complex, highly regulated systems and what that means for clients today; and
• Why the UK’s environmental law hasn’t changed as much as you might think, but the case law, interpretations and sentencing have moved rapidly.

And finally, stay tuned to hear why Anna believes good environmental lawyering starts with understanding the science and how clay, crime scenes and courtroom drama all come together in the world of waste.

This week, Adrian is joined by the inimitable James Quarmby, partner at Stephenson Harwood, private client tax specialist and one of the UK’s most outspoken voices on tax policy and reform. Known for his no-nonsense commentary and deep economic insight, James brings clarity (and a few provocations) to the world of tax.

This conversation unpacks James’ unconventional route into law and economics and covers some intellectually rich, and yes, occasionally political, ground along the way:

• How growing up in Essex, working at British Telecom and running a department at 21 gave James a commercial edge long before he ever studied law;
• Why he believes a good tax lawyer must understand economics, business incentives and the real-world impact of policy (not just theory);
• His admiration for the Singapore model of taxation and why he thinks the UK could learn from its simplicity, low rates, and innovation-first ethos;
• What his new podcast with Dan Neidle, Inside Tax, will bring to the debate - from sharp disagreement to surprising consensus; and
• Why he thinks the UK tax system is too complex, too political, and needs radical simplification — even if nobody in power is brave enough to do it.

🎙️ (Light-hearted) Disclaimer: While Talk To My Lawyer usually steers clear of politics, James and Adrian do occasionally fall off that wagon in this episode, but only in the name of good tax policy, of course.