As we build towards celebrating International Women's Day, we are shining a light on some of the amazing women who are associated with WorldCC Foundation, such as Elizabeth de Stadler, from Cape Town, South Africa, who is a legal designer and professional speaker. With previous roles as a litigator, corporate lawyer, and privacy and data protection specialist she is passionate about on topics such as risk management, compliance, and plain language.
Check out our interview with her, that features in our Book of Inspiring Women, 2024.
WorldCC: Describe your professional background and story
Elizabeth: I often ask people "Why did you become a lawyer?" but only recently answered the question myself! I was born in Stellenbosch, South Africa as the daughter of two linguists. My father was one of the first academics in South Africa to specialize in information design and they both write dictionaries! So, I always loved reading and writing and wanted to become a journalist. When I was coming out of the closet in the late 90s one of the only other lesbians I knew about was Judge Satchwell. She was in the news a lot at the time, because she was suing the Department of Justice to obtain equal rights for her life-partner. Luckily journalism was a postgraduate degree, so I closed my eyes, conjured Kathy Satchwell, and picked law! I fell in love with contract law and never studied journalism.
After graduating I joined the biggest commercial law firm in South Africa at the time working in insurance litigation. I was fascinated by unfair contract terms and consumer protection. When the Consumer Protection Act was passed in 2008, it required consumer-facing contracts to be in plain language. All of a sudden lawyers with a love for linguistics and visualization were in high demand. I left the firm to obtain a Master of Laws degree (LLM) in consumer law and behavioral economics and started my own practice.
I founded a legal consultancy called Novation Consulting in 2013. We apply legal design to contracts, policies, terms and conditions, legal advice and any legal or compliance documentation imaginable. We also founded Hey Plain Jane, a plain language agency. We specialize in legal, financial, health and educational information. The more technical the information, the happier we are. We practice something that we call #funlaw and one of my proudest moments was when we got a levity pattern included in the WorldCC Foundation Contract Design Pattern Library along with Novation's Service Level Agreement (SLA)! Sounds like a blast, doesn't it? The reality was that by the time I left the firm in 2009 I was, unbeknown to me, suffering from major depression. I was extremely reluctant to admit it to myself, but my body forced me to my knees and by 2011 I had been in chronic pain for a year with no explanation. I was self-medicating with alarming amounts of alcohol and a series of disastrous online dating incidents.
BUT I was about to meet Peter (my psychiatrist) and Shelly (my therapist) who would spend the better part of a decade convincing me that the physical pain is a symptom of major depression. I now know that this is a very typical story for lawyers.
I am now on a mission to help lawyers do better, feel better and live better! My team and I recently started Rehabilitated Lawyer – to achieve this aim we organize talks, workshops, one-on-one mentoring and make lots noise and #funlaw on social media and at conferences. I am also working on a book about my ongoing recovery (provisionally) called Less Wrong Than Before. I firmly believe that living the legal design lifestyle and applying it to legal services is the key to our recovery as an industry.
WorldCC: Tell us about two personal achievements and contributions through your career
Elizabeth: I am deeply uncomfortable selecting them, because I don't do anything I do, alone. In South Africa we believe that a person is a person through other people ('umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu' or the philosophy of ubuntu). I have four co-founders who all deserve this award! Not to mention all the other people I have read and met along the way. Jorges Luis Borges once said that "I am not sure that I exist. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited". But an award is an award, so here goes…
I believe that our three companies excel in:
- Inspiring and influencing others
- Innovating in how we apply legal design to all facets of law
- Showing bravery and moral courage by talking about mental health out in the open
I also support diversity and inclusion through my work in the transport sector and working as Student Ambassador for Swinburne University encouraging people from refugee backgrounds to pursue higher education.
WorldCC: How have you encouraged long-term resilience within your organization or beyond?
Elizabeth: When it comes to resilience, I subscribe to the wise words of the inimitable Dolly Parton: "Find out who you are and do it on purpose". We believe that the secret to long-term resilience is unflinching authenticity. During a recent talk at the Legal Innovation & Tech Fest I translated this into the following call to action for leaders in law: "Embrace individuality, freedom of expression, diversity of thought and vibe, tattoos, dress codes for tomboys and saying fuck in presentations. Drop the clients, never each other. I call that #funprofessional!"
Find out more about WorldCC Foundation's incredible cohort of Inspiring Women in our 2024 Book.