meisterline analytics
Dr Peter Macmillan is Meisterline’s Founder and Chief Science Officer. He is
also one of the world’s foremost authorities on the cognitive development of
professional expertise. Dr Macmillan began his legal career in 1992 as a
competition law specialist, and went on to work for major corporate law firms
and government authorities in Australia and Hong Kong. During the course of his
work, he found himself becoming more and more interested in how lawyers solved
the most challenging legal problems. “When you spend a career working with
brilliant lawyers, you realise they have a different way of thinking through
issues than average lawyers do, and I was always fascinated by that,” says Dr
Macmillan. In 2006, Dr Macmillan resigned as Head of Competition Law at an
international law firm to complete a PhD in cognitive science. His doctoral
research pioneered a new area of scholarship focusing on the cognitive
development of specialist legal expertise. With his doctorate completed, Dr.
Macmillan published a book about his research in 2015 titled, Unlocking the
Secrets of Legal Genius: Measuring Specialist Legal Expertise Through
Think-Aloud Verbal Protocol Analysis.