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.