Michele DeStefano

Professor, author, speaker, consultant, and facilitator on innovation and technology, culture creation, teaming, and cross-practice, cross-border initiatives.

Recognized by the ABA as a Legal Rebel and by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers (North America) as one of the top 20 most innovative lawyers, Michele is a professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law, affiliated faculty at Harvard Law School, Executive Education and IE University, and the founder of LawWithoutWalls, a multi-disciplinary, international, intergenerational think-tank of over 2,000 lawyers, business professionals, entrepreneurs, and law and business students who collaborate to hone new skillsets and mindsets and create innovations at the intersection of law, business, and technology. She is also the co-curator of the Compliance Elliance Journal, an international e-journal of articles on compliance and ethics from around the world.

As a professor of law, Michele researches and writes about the growing intersections between law, business, and legal innovation. Recently, Michele helped co-create and spearhead the development of the Digital Legal Exchange, a non-profit designed to inspire general counsel and their teams to become digital leaders in their businesses to drive commercial value. To date, Her work has been published in leading law journals and featured in a range of media including Time Magazine, the Financial Times (UK), Forbes Women, ABA Journal, National Law Journal, American Lawyer, Harvard Law Today, The National Jurist, Legal Futures (UK), Inside Counsel Magazine, Harvard Law The Practice, and Bloomberg News. In addition to many articles, she has published two books. Her book Legal Upheaval: A Guide to Creativity, Collaboration, and Innovation in Law leverages over 100 interviews of General Counsels of large international corporations and Heads of Innovation at law firms. Her other book, New Suits: Appetite for Disruption in the Legal World (co-curated with Dr. Guenther Dobrauz) includes chapters by experts in law, innovation, and technology to provide a global perspective on the future of our diverse legal service delivery ecosystem.
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, Dentons, McDermott, Arnold Porter Kaye Scholer, Proskauer Rose, White & Case, Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth, IE Business School, University of St. Gallen, and Fordham. 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. Michele also regularly consults on ethics, attorney-client privilege and work product issues, and organizational strategy.

Finally, Michele is especially proud to be the mother of three wonderful teenagers.