The Innovators: Renee Newman Knake
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The Innovators: Renee Newman Knake
Birthplace: Springfield, Mo.
Location: East Lansing, Mich.
Work: Co-founder/co-director of Reinvent Law Laboratory, a legal think tank, development and training center created last year at the Michigan State University College of Law with funding by theKauffman Foundation. The lab’s focus is on technology, legal deregulation, reinvention of legal education, and the creation of new legal delivery systems. Knake (pronounced “kah-NAH-kee”) is also a Michigan State associate professor of law, and co-founder/co-director of the Kelley Institute of Ethics and the Legal Profession, and the 21st Century Law Practice summer program in London. Teaches class in entrepreneurial law. Before heading to Michigan State in 2006, she worked as assistant city attorney for Charlottesville, Va. between 2001-05, and was an associate for two firms in commercial litigation, telecommunications and labor/employment law: Hunton & Williams in Richmond during 2001 and at Mayer Brown from 1999-2000.
Education: University of Chicago Law School, J.D., 1999. North Park College, B.A., economics and communications arts, 1996.
Path to Reinvent Law: Knake spent the better part of her law school education “struck by how incredibly inefficient the practice of law was.” She kept that point of view through her first few legal jobs and eventually came to Michigan State to teach law — and examine the potential for structural change in the legal industry. “In particular, I became very interested in regulation against non-lawyer ownership and investment in law firms, and how that stifles innovation,” she explains. The organization hosted its first Reinvent Law conferences this year in Silicon Valley, London, and Dubai, and will host its first New York meeting in November.
Knake preaches that technology and deregulation of the field will create more affordable legal services on a mass scale for the middle and lower classes, but she knows it’s an uphill battle. “Student reaction is mixed because providing legal services in a mass commercial way is not the vision they had for themselves,” she says. But she’s convinced that regulatory change is inevitable, and her team is carefully monitoring the progress of legal deregulation in England and Wales for lessons to apply in the United States (and beyond).
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