#93 - The Kodak Moment Coming for Big Law

A year ago, Bjarne Tellmann walked away from three decades as a lawyer, including 17 years as General Counsel at companies like Haleon and Pearson. Today, he's a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, running FjordStream Advisors, finishing his second book on AI's impact on law, sitting on boards, and advising large companies. He didn't retire to do less, he retired to do only what gives him energy. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman explores what triggered Bjarne's shift: recognizing when work that once gave him energy started taking it away. Instead of pushing through, he rebuilt his professional life around teaching, writing, and advising on legal disruption. Drawing on Clayton Christensen's innovation theory, Bjarne explains why dominant law firms face their Kodak moment, not from weakness, but from the very success of legacy models that blind them to change. Law firms charging by the billable hour may discover what Kodak and Nokia learned too late: by the time you realize the game has changed, it's already over. The conversation moves between disruption theory and creative practice. Bjarne reveals how he uses ChatGPT for brainstorming and editing while preserving his voice, why he obsesses over the first minute of every presentation, and how he transformed an 82-page law review article into a podcast using Google's NotebookLM. His reading list spans The Rational Optimist to How Will You Measure Your Life, showing how curiosity across domains fuels innovation. For lawyers contemplating personal, professional, or organizational transitions, Bjarne offers this: focus on the "why" of change before the "what" and "how." Transformation is an emotional journey, not just a rational decision.