Luisa Sofie Faßbender
Luisa Faßbender sat down with Jens to learn more about him and what brought him to TYPO3.
The interview took place on 25 May 2021 via Google Meet.
Good morning Jens, nice to meet you! Who are you and what are you doing today?
Good morning Luisa! I’m doing pretty well—both personally and also in relation to business.
My name is Jens Liesegang, I’m 49 years old, married, have two kids, and I own a law firm in beautiful Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Our clients are primarily small to medium-sized businesses needing assistance in the broader field of commercial law. Daily business includes everything from corporate law, investor counseling, intellectual property (trademarks and patents) to contract design and assertion of royalty claims in software settings.
Is your law firm coping well under the current circumstances?
Thankfully, yes. The Corona pandemic forced many companies to think more digitally and to prioritize online communication channels. And that’s where we come in.
You are working pro-bono for the TYPO3 Association. What exactly are you doing for us?
Most of the time it’s just giving legal advice in trademark and patent related questions.
What led you to become involved with us?
Olivier Dobberkau!
Wow, the TYPO3 Association president! I hear you got to know each other during university. Do you have any other connections to TYPO3?
I do. Our law firm’s website is based on TYPO3 and it’s running version is 10.4. I actually set up my first website based on TYPO3 back in 1998, during my clerkship. I used it to market the firm I was at and to sell online model contracts.
And you ended up choosing TYPO3 for that? How come?
I was looking for a stable, modular, easily customizable CMS—and after evaluating a variety of CMSs, TYPO3 was the one.
You set up the website all by yourself? Do you have a background in web development?
Indeed, I did set it up myself. And, no, I am not a developer. But I am really interested in the field of web development. I have been expanding my knowledge during the last 20 years. For the initial setup, I only knew some basic PHP.
With a little bit of time, effort and interest—everyone can set up a TYPO3 installation.
As a legal professional, would you say that TYPO3 is a CMS people and companies can trust?
TYPO3 has a long development history and it is backed by a huge community. Everything related to TYPO3 and its setup is communicated clearly and transparently, so there isn’t much room for foul play. Additionally, the community-driven aspect ensures that everything that goes into the system has been reviewed by several people and no secret code or backdoors are implemented.
To answer your question: Yes, all in all I would say TYPO3 is trustworthy.
Is there anything else you would like to mention or tell the readers?
First of all I would like to thank the entire community! TYPO3 is an awesome project. It is astonishing to see it running on for so many years and staying strong even during rough times. Keep up the great work!
A small suggestion I’d like to give: Try not to forget smaller companies who do not have an agency behind them and who would like to administer their own sites. The frequency and nature of the updates can quickly become overwhelming for small-scale installations of 20–100 pages. Especially updates that create incompatibilities can be quite a task.
A lot of small websites are migrating from TYPO3 to Wordpress, because they do not need to worry about doing the updates. Losing users to another CMS is not what we want. Those smaller companies should be able to maintain their TYPO3-installations by themselves. Especially German medium-sized businesses are valuable, good customers, so we shouldn’t forget them.
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me Jens and—on behalf of the entire community—thank you for your work!
Special thanks to Olivier Dobberkau for introducing us!
