This Next Normal Leadership series podcast features Elevate's Chairman and CEO, Liam Brown, talking with Esther Cho, Shareholder and Chair of the Executive Committee at Keesal, Young & Logan.  KYL is doing innovative work in financial services, maritime, environmental, employment, and complex business litigation.

Esther took on her role as the Chair of the Executive Committee at KYL immediately before COVID and the need for a WFH directive.  Esther has engaged in several firm initiatives in the ten months following while continuing to practice law. KY Labs, diversity and inclusion, and the Community of Legal Innovators, to name a few.  

‘We've done a lot of great work in our diversity and inclusion space. Clients are asking us to do better, which I love because when clients ask us to do better, then we stop everything and we figure out how to do it better.’

– Esther Cho

‘I believe that many clients, they're looking for evidence, tangible evidence of what are you doing about improving all of our organization's participation and representation of the societies and the communities that we're part of.’ 

- Liam Brown

Episode highlights include:

1.   [01:15] - Esther’s KYL journey

2.   [03:42] - Let’s make it official… a new leadership for the firm

3.   [05:49] - KP Labs – an innovation experiment

4.   [07:04] - Lawyers as innovators

5.   [09:50] - An important and distinct firm culture

6.   [15:38] - The real diversity problem - retention

7.   [17:43] - Planting trees for diversity and inclusion, ‘putting in the hard yards’

8.   [18:46] - Taking real action with the Community of Legal Innovators

9.   [21:00] - Leadership in tough times requires …

10. [22:13] - A culture of support during an important personal time