3 Geeks and a Law Blog

The Geek in Review Ep. 89 – The Boston Legal Design Challenge with Jeff Marple, Robert ...

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 10:35:55 GMT

A few years ago, Robert Taylor and Jeff Marple of Liberty Mutual Insurance, along with Suffolk Law School’s Gabriel Teninbaum sat down at Back Bay Harry’s and hatched a genius plan over some truffle fries and sandwiches. The idea was to leverage Suffolk’s law school technology training for students along with Liberty’s desire for the law schools to help students actually learn how to address the issue of design thinking and how it applied to real-world legal issues they were facing. And while the truffle fries were still hot, the Boston Legal Design Challenge was born. On November 13th, 2020, the 4th Annual Challenge takes place, this time in a virtual setting.

Fifty participants, making up 10 teams of five students from around the country will learn more about Design Thinking, identify an issue within the legal industry which needs addressing, and at the end of the day, pitch that idea to a blue-ribbon panel made up of Cat Moon, Bob Ambrogi, and Jason Barnwell. The winning team walks away with a few thousand dollars, and all of the participants end up with significant new skills to differentiate themselves from their fellow students. The competition is not just limited to law students, or to those people within Boston. Bob, Jeff, and Gabe are looking for diverse teams made up of different schools, disciplines, and geographical regions.

Enrollment is open now, so go to LMI.co/BLDC to sign up.

Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Spotify

Information Inspirations

Sometimes efficiency comes from small improvements in processes. One basic efficiency for word processing is to keep your hands on the keyboard, and away from the mouse. Deborah Savadra at Legal Office Guru has a short 7 1/2 minute video showing how you can use shortcuts and macros to reduce the use of your mouse, and just be a better user of MS Word.

We’re all concerned about data privacy whether it is the type of browser, search engine, or messaging app we use.

Microaggressions are not small problems. They are the equivalent to death by a thousand cuts and can lead to an unbearable work environment for those who are the recipients of these acts. For Black attorneys, microaggressions are a constant issue. American Lawyer brought together five attorneys to have a roundtable discussion on the issue, and the result is an absolute must-watch for anyone who truly cares about improving themselves and wanting to learn how to identify when their own actions constitute microaggressions.

We all watch the news. Most of us saw that debate. We know misinformation is rampant in our daily lives. The Knight Foundation and a few other prominent organizations are working to help us learn how to identify this misinformation.

Listen, Subscribe, Comment

Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Transcript

[0:22]

Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to the Geek in Review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. Well, welcome to October Marlene, or as I’ve been calling it, the eighth month of March this year. True.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah

Greg Lambert: Well at least we’re closer to the end of 2020 and I think most of us will be glad to get get this year in our rearview mirror.

Marlene Gebauer: Well, you know, it’s actually been very cool here and by that I mean 80 degrees.

Greg Lambert: Houston cool.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, Houston cool, which, which I’ve been enjoying and you know, in the 60s in the morning, now. Northerners will get a kick out of this, that I have seen men in turtlenecks already.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, but I was just testing that out.

Marlene Gebauer: It was just a look. Look.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, it Oh, it’s a look. Oh, well. This week’s guests are, I think a perfect follow up from last week’s episode with Olga Mack and her reference to transferring your individual skills as you progress through your career. So we have Jeff Marple and Bob Taylor from Liberty Mutual along with Gabe Tenenbaum from Suffolk law school. And they join us to talk about the upcoming Boston Legal Design Challenge which is happening on November 13.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, we really are suckers for design and innovation challenges, aren’t we?

Greg Lambert: Hey, you know, they’re interesting.

Marlene Gebauer: they really are.

Greg Lambert: We have a great conversation with Jeff, Bob and Gabe. So stick around for that. But first, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s information inspirations.

[1:56]

Greg Lambert: Sometimes Marlene, you just want to get back to the basics. And this week, I wanted to start off with a great video tutorial on Microsoft Word shortcut keys and macros from Deborah Savadra at Legal Office Guru, and it was posted on the Attorney at Work website. So for anyone whether you the only shortcut you may know is Ctrl C and Ctrl V.

Marlene Gebauer: I know those.

Greg Lambert: Or you’re, you know, you’re super experienced with creating macros, kind of kind of like I am. This is just a seven and a half minute long video, and it has something for everyone. So as much time as we spend in our word processing documents, the more we can create efficiencies and the better off we’re just going to be. And one of the biggest ways to create efficiencies, as many of us know, is to keep your hands on the keyboard and off of the mouse. So shortcuts and macros are the best ways to keep those fingers moving. Go check out Deborah’s instructional video. And I bet that even the most experienced of you will learn a few things.

Marlene Gebauer: Privacy articles were at the top of my feed this week. So I combined three of them for this inspiration. So which browsers protect privacy more than others? Well, Safari, Brave, and Firefox all seem to have a better privacy profile than, say, Chrome, which is pretty terrible in this regard. Despite building a privacy sandbox. Trackers embedded in websites really highlight the privacy issue. Google is the worst with trackers installed on 75% of the top million websites. Facebook is second at 25%. And Twitter comes in third at 10%. There are ways to protect your privacy even with the worst of browsers like turning off password and search engine autofills and disabling location tracking. Or you can use my favorite browser extension DuckDuckGo. And shifting a bit to apps. Signal, which is an end to end encrypted message app has become the go to for organizing protests.

Greg Lambert: How soon before that one’s banned?

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah. Well, signal works similarly to WhatsApp. But it is owned and operated by a nonprofit, not a corporation. And it has more security. Edward Snowden is actually quoted in this article as stating that he uses it all the time. And it seems now that regular people are to.

Unknown Speaker

Okay, well, we definitely know it’s going to be banned.

Marlene Gebauer: Snowden.

Greg Lambert: Great, great.

Marlene Gebauer: I know it’s like Wonderful.

Greg Lambert: Well, my second one is and I watched this actually today, there’s this fantastic video of a roundtable discussion on the issues of microaggressions directed at Black attorneys. You know, this is a really difficult issue to cover. And the panel of Loreal Arscott, Moy Ogilvie, Catherine Smith, and Trelvis Randolph, along with moderator Gordon Weekes, they discuss their own personal experiences of being a Black lawyer in America and the issues that they have faced. It was just fascinating to listen to it. You know, the term microaggression may make people think that the that the issues that they’re facing are minor or small or insignificant, but it’s like the old death by a thousand cuts. issue. This is an issue that my friend and fellow former WCW president Ron Wheeler has covered for a number of years. This was just a great discussion, and I highly suggest that everyone take the time to watch this roundtable discussion.

Marlene Gebauer: Since the first presidential debate was last night and there are a couple more coming up, I thought this inspiration would be timely and useful. The link that I am sharing is a nice starting point to several articles from NPR, 538, AARP, the Conversation, The Verge, and one on Vox written by a misinformation superhero librarian that highlight how to spot fake news, and how some sorts of fact checking are more effective than others. It also links out to articles that cover why we are susceptible to misinformation, and how misinformation spread in the 2016 election. And this is a very cool graphical site by the Knight Foundation. I encourage everyone to take a look. There are also links to fact checker.org PolitiFact and Verified, stay informed folks.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, although I hear debate number two is just going to be a knife fight out in the parking lot.

Marlene Gebauer: Just like Jersey,

Greg Lambert: I think it is in Jersey.

Marlene Gebauer: And that wraps up this week’s information inspirations.

[6:54]

Marlene Gebauer: The fourth annual legal design challenge brings together a collaboration between Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and Suffolk law school in Boston to give law and other graduate students the opportunity to learn design thinking skills and a real hands on way to rapidly develop and pitch big ideas within the legal industry. We asked three masterminds behind the challenge to talk with us and tell us more.

Greg Lambert: We’re joined by a trio of innovators out of Boston today. Returning to the Geek in Review is Jeff Marple, Innovation Director at Liberty Mutual. Gabe Teninbaum

, Assistant Dean of innovation at Suffolk University Law School. And Bob Taylor, Vice President and Senior Corporate Counsel at Liberty Mutual. We tried to also get the Liberty Mutual spokesperson Doug and the LiMu Emo out. But apparently they were busy shooting that commercial in that beautiful 1971 Dodge Duster that they they drive around.

Marlene Gebauer: Well, welcome everyone. The three of you are collaborating on the Boston Legal Design Challenge. Jeff, would you mind telling us a little bit more about what the design challenge is?

Jeff Marple: Sure thing Marlene. The design challenge was an event that the three of us sort of conceived over lunch probably about five years ago, in Boston. It’s a hybrid event between both a competition and an educational event. We spend the day doing a little bit of lecture, but also a tremendous amount of exercises, hands on exercises, to law students. And it’s like a hackathon. But instead of developing code, law students are trying to come up with ideas around the next great legal service or legal product. We organize a series of exercises for the different teams, those exercises sort of channel, the the participants ideas towards a presentation at the end of the day, and they have a very short time period to present at the end of the day. Very pithy, sort of quick, rapid fire presentation. And the winning team gets a cash prize. We also have

Marlene Gebauer: Nothing wrong with cash.

Greg Lambert: How much cash are we talking about?

Marlene Gebauer: Like, is it rude to ask how much cash we’re talking about?

Jeff Marple: It’s not rude ask. We’re not prepared to release the amounts just yet. I can tell you though, that it will probably be larger than last year, I believe last year’s first prize was $3,000 for the first prize team. So we we hope we’re hoping to exceed that.

Greg Lambert: Hey, for a law student as that’s not chump change.

Jeff Marple: No, that’s not bad for a day’s work.

Marlene Gebauer: For me. That’s not chump change.

Jeff Marple: Yeah. We have. And for those Iron Chef fans out there, we have a hint of Iron Chef in there. We give them a secret ingredient at the beginning of the day, either a type of technology or a domain that they need to work in. And they don’t they’re unaware that until they get there. So we don’t want teams necessarily working ahead. We want everyone sort of starting from the same spot. At the end of the day, I talked about the their pitches. We’re extremely proud of the our judging panel this year, we have I think what five time participant on this podcast, Cat Moon, from Vanderbilt, will be on the panel, as well as Bob Ambrogi, who if you follow legal tech at all, you know who Bob is. And then we have Jason Barnwell from Microsoft to give us a corporate perspective. We’re really excited about it. We’ll, we’ll have about 10 teams of five people per team. So if you’re out there, and you’re listening, we want you to register soon. And you can do that by going to lmi.co/bldc. So LMI stands for Liberty Mutual Insurance company. Dot co slash bldc. Boston Legal Design Challenge.

Marlene Gebauer: We’ll put that up on the on the site too.

Jeff Marple: That would be fantastic.

Marlene Gebauer: So that people can do that. Yeah, that sounds like an incredible program and an incredible panel. I’m very excited to see where this goes.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, and Bob Ambrogi is like my third favorite podcaster so…

Marlene Gebauer: Are you starting something? Why are you starting something?

Greg Lambert: Bob says I’m his third favorite podcaster too. So we’re on equal terms here. So Bob Taylor, you know, why do this why does a P&C insurance carrier host a design challenge with a with the law school?

[11:18]

Bob Taylor: Yeah. So when we were at Back Bay Harry’s, you know, which no longer exists. And we were having some sandwiches and truffle fries, my co conspirators here, we’re talking about that, like, what is the really reason why we would want to do this? And, you know, first, it’s not easy making insurance seemed cool. I know, that may seem as a shock to you. But you know, no one really ever ends up in insurance on purpose. I mean, certainly I didn’t. But one of the things we wanted to do was give law students an understanding of what it might be like to work within the confines of a Fortune 100 legal department. And then also to understand that working within you know, an insurance law department can be a very rich and varied and diverse experience as opposed to just dealing with auto matters all day long. Right. So you know, one is to give the students an interesting perspective on on what it’s like. The other is and why we also connected with Gabe and Suffolk University and their innovative approach to legal education, is to make sure that we are communicating with educational institutes out there about what kind of pipeline we’re looking for in terms of new talent, and within our legal department. And many people have this conception that all we do is hire six, seven year lateral partners or, you know, associates into our law department. And, quite frankly, we’re looking for students that have T-Shaped skills and that have the kind of diversity of thought and and design thinking skills that are going to help us solve problems, not just the way that law is being practiced today, but the way it’s going to be practiced tomorrow. And so this is a nice way for us to, to do that. And also, quite frankly, it helps us scratch a little bit of an itch. I mean, you know, Jeff and I, and I know Gabe loves this, too. We’re big devotees of design thinking and trying to solve difficult problems in unique ways. And, you know, if you want to learn something well and become good at it, try teaching it to 50 people at once. Right? So it’s, it’s a fun event for us, we really enjoy it. Quite frankly, I think I can speak for the other people involved. When you’re interacting with the students, you get a tremendous amount of energy and the excitement that they have and getting involved in this. So it’s not a one way street, we get a lot out of this as well.

Greg Lambert: Well, I can tell you if if two people can make insurance calls is definitely Bob and Jeff, right.

Jeff Marple: No tall order.

Marlene Gebauer: So you know, we we’ve heard the the the corporate side of the story here from Bob and Jeff, and what the benefits are. So Gabe, what’s the benefit that Suffolk gets by working with Liberty Mutual?

[14:01]

Gabriel Teninbaum: Well, you know, at the end of the day, we’re in the education business. And traditionally, in law schools, that meant being in the classroom, and then over the years that got extended to things like experiential courses and clinics. But the reality is, is that this sort of opportunity is exactly what we do. We’re in the business of educating our students and giving them really amazing experiences. And this is truly one of those really amazing experiences, that is really hard to attain in any other way.

Marlene Gebauer: And it seems to be pretty unique, too. I mean, you know, I don’t know of any other programs like this.

Gabriel Teninbaum: It’s about the only show in town. And you know, when you can get folks like the people from Liberty Mutual, who are so deeply engrossed in this sort of content to come and spend some time with students, it leads to these really remarkable things. And the other thing that’s cool about it is that we’ve extended, of course, beyond just being Suffolk law students. And having attended for the last several years, one of the real pleasures is watching students from different law schools, or from different programs outside of the law school work together and team problem solve using the things that they’re learning about in school with mentors from Liberty and other places who really have experienced this in practice. And then the third reason is, it’s just fun, and it’s joyful. And the reality is, is that there is not a lot of joy in law school unless you’re…

Greg Lambert: What? No…

Gabriel Teninbaum: I’m sorry. Look, there’s no

Marlene Gebauer: You didn’t enjoy law school, Greg?

Greg Lambert: Oh man

Gabriel Teninbaum: People do not want to leave this thing by the end of the day. And you know, this is a long day. And it’s the longest day is for Bob and Jeff and their team. And you know, they’re they’re in there when the sun comes up, setting up the event and the students rolling at breakfast time. And it goes all day with you know, appropriate breaks and, and they do a great job of setting up in a way that it doesn’t feel like work, but they’re really working all day. At the end of the day. Students don’t want to leave the room and they want to just grab more of it. And some of it is they want to spend time with Bob and Jeff and the other people involved because they they want to gather more knowledge from but it’s just like a joyful experience. It’s fun to do. So that’s what’s in it for us. And I you know, I’m so glad we’re able to do this with with Liberty Mutual. It’s just wonderful.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, well, and enough about the what’s in it for the three of you, what are the students getting out of it? And and I would also like to know, other than joy. But, you know, what are they getting out of it? And one other thing is you mentioned that there are students who may not be in law school, what other types of students show up for this, this sort of event?

Gabriel Teninbaum: Well, in the past, we’ve had MBA students, we’ve had students from other law schools, which we certainly hope to have this year.

Greg Lambert: Are there other law schools in Boston?

Gabriel Teninbaum: I’ve heard about a couple but I don’t know.

Jeff Marple: I think there’s one across the river.

Greg Lambert: I think one out of every five residences in law school in Boston.

Gabriel Teninbaum: There’s no doubt about that. But listen, you know, the students, the students at Suffolk law get this and I expect that we’ll have a lot of Suffolk law students you know, we have a long history and legal innovation and technology. We launched our program way back in the dark ages of 2013, which made us pretty much the first program if not the first program in the country. You know, we’ve been ranked number one by National Jurists, so we’re starting to get some positive attention to momentum. And we have a really good groundswell among our students, a student body that wants to think about design thinking and other sort of non traditional bits of legal work. One of the ways that we advertise this event among our student bodies with our legal innovation and tech Student Association, which has about 250 members, so our legal tech Student Association is larger than like a quarter or a third of law schools in the United States, you know, the students are fired up about this. And what they see is that this is an opportunity to learn a real skill to try a thing and to be able to create a product, but also to be able to go out to future employers and say, Hey, I have some experience, or I have some interest in design thinking. And to try to parlay that into some of their work or for it to become their job,

[18:12]

Bob Taylor: I would just add on if I could to look at the saying about what the students get out of it. I want to make something you know, maybe known to anybody who might be thinking about registering for this event, that people that have participated in this event, we’ve had three different summer law clerks come through and interview and qualify and be accepted into our competitive summer law program at Liberty Mutual, and one of the main impetus is for them applying for the program. And one of the ways that they were able to get in was their participation in the design challenge. So it was three or four?

Jeff Marple: I think it was I think it’s actually four Bob.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, four, yes, four. And even one of those students also now is in our attorney development program, and graduated from the law clerk program into the attorney development program. So there’s no guarantee obviously, of, you know, getting into the department that way, but I will tell you that it does help you differentiate yourself with employers. And that’s proven out by the fact that they’ve been able to get hired into our program. So I guess I’d like to say that only because we don’t just talk the talk, we we try to walk the walk in and put people in a position to succeed in their professional lives as well.

Jeff Marple: And I can tell you that all four of those law clerks are coming back to help us be facilitators this for this year event, which is fantastic. So happy.

Marlene Gebauer: That’s very cool. And I mean, that differentiation, I mean, I think that’s, that’s really key right now, where, you know, jobs are scarce. And and, you know, people really have to showcase themselves, you know, and, you know, highlight how they’re different than than the rest of the of the pack, if you will,

Greg Lambert: Yeah, before we get to the next question, Marlene. Yeah. Last on our last episode we had Olga Mack on and one of the things that she said that stuck with me that I think is relevant here is that you’re giving the students here a skill set that they’ll take with them. And that’s something that, you know, they’ll always have, and she had mentioned that no matter what job you have, you take your skill set with you. And the more skills that you have, the more viable you’ll be to to land that next job. So legal design thinking is not easy. And anything you can do to help them kind of understand the concepts and build on that is, is good for them.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, you know, you say something that’s really critical that we talk about all the time at Liberty Mutual, which is skills over knowledge. In that knowledge is a commodity, but skills are durable. So when you talk about delivering a skill to someone, we think a lot about that, and and our own development programs for our own lawyers within Liberty Mutual as well. So point well taken.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, so since we’re speaking about viability, you know, how viable are the ideas that that the student teams come up with during the challenge?

Bob Taylor: Yeah, so in fairness, I think a lot of the students lack context for what it is that they’re working on. And that’s not their fault, they just haven’t had the experience yet. So the reality is that, very few of the concepts or ideas there end up kind of emerging out of the design challenge itself. Oftentimes, those ideas are very similar to existing products. But maybe that’s only to validate that they’re good ideas in the first place, right, and that somebody has taken that idea and advanced it. But the truth of the matter is, you know, Marlene, we don’t go into this with the expectation of getting the next great idea out of it. Now, if something comes out, and the students want to continue to evolve it and pursue it, we encourage that. Or if it’s something that is interesting to us, we might pull the string on that a little bit. But it we really don’t go into it with that expectation. And I would encourage anybody who runs these events, and I think it’s true for people that run standard hackathon events, that if you go into it with that expectation, I think you’re you’re oftentimes let down the idea with this particular event that it’s experiential, right? And that you’re going to have an experience and that’s really what you’re taking from this and anything else beyond that really is kind of the cherry on top.

Jeff Marple: Just add on, you know, design product is like exercising the muscle. A lot of times this is their first time out, doing exactly that. So you can’t expect to deadlift a million pounds, your first time out. You got to Go to the gym a lot. Right? So this is this is like intro to the gym?

Greg Lambert: Yeah, so they’re going to be sore the next day, right?

Jeff Marple: That’s right,

Greg Lambert: Their brains gonna be sore. Well, Jeff, normally this type of event, you would bring everyone together in one location, but it’s 2020. So nothing is normal anymore.

Jeff Marple: Understatement of the year there Yeah.

Greg Lambert: Since this is going to be virtual, what are what are some of the challenges that you’re you’re going to run into with an all virtual event?

[22:51]

Jeff Marple: So traditionally, as you said, this was an in person event. And right out of the gate, we had some real sort of tactical challenges to figure out. We did a tremendous amount of work with sticky notes and dry erase boards and paper and pens, and physical tactile experiences. So obviously, that’s not going to work. So we started to look around at different solutions in this area that could help us get us that same, that same feeling, and then that same result, but to try to do it virtually. And as it turns out, there are some products out there. We’re going to use a product called mural.co, which is fantastic. It’s a fantastic product, it allows folks to have a big whiteboard that they’re posting stickies to. And you can all work at the same time, which is really a nice refreshing change. If any of you that have been on a Zoom call, like this one, or one person can talk at a time only one person contribute at a time. You know, I find so often now that we’re on these calls, and we’re so often leaning back and listening, this event promises to get people leaning forward and working together. And that platform helps facilitate that. So that was one of the things that we had to think about, we had to solve for that. We’re thinking a lot about Zoom fatigue, and you know, video conferencing, fatigue. So we’ll be doing a lot of breaks. And again, not a lot of listening this, there’s going to be a very small amount of lecture. And the exercises themselves will be designed to teach where in the past, we might have talked a little bit more about why this is important, or what we’re going to do here, the exercises should be pretty self explanatory about what folks will be doing. And then the other thing is, and I’m sure you guys have both felt this, it sometimes it feels like, you know, if you’re working in the same room with someone, you have a very strong connection with them. Because they’re right there, you can see the body language, you can see the room, you can see their faces, you can feel the energy in the room. When you’re working with someone virtually It feels like you’re sort of like, you know, that’s like a little string, that’s a delicate string that’s connecting you and that string can be cut very easily, or people can sort of get distracted, that kind of thing. So we’re we’re really looking to put these exercises on rails to really guide the participants through the different exercises. So there’s, it’s very easy and easy to understand what they have to do next. And that should drive their product design towards the end towards their pitch. Now, those are all the challenges. The positives of this, right? You know, when this all hit, Bob and I were talking and he’s like, Hey, you know, we wouldn’t really be innovators if we just let you know, the fact that we’re going virtual stop us from doing this event, we can’t cancel the event. So we had to figure out a way to do it. So we did. And we’re trying to make some lemonade where there’s lemons. So before we were very geographically restricted, right, folks had to travel to come to Suffolk in order to participate. Well, you don’t have to travel anymore. So we are really pushing this out nationally, we hope to have national representation. And by national representation, I’m hoping, you know, a team from every time zone would be fantastic. And so that’s kind of the good side of this. Is that really able to open this up to many more people?

Bob Taylor: Yeah, I mean, we don’t want to call anybody out, you know, directly on this podcast, you know, around the country for registering teams, but Margaret Hagen better get a team in from Stanford or there’s gonna be an issue, I think. But no, we love Margaret.

Greg Lambert: Not to name names, Margaret, but…

Bob Taylor: Not to name any names. No, I don’t know. Gabe, did you want to call anybody out on this?

Gabriel Teninbaum: You’re You’re nicer than me. I’ve been calling people out for weeks on Twitter.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, if you haven’t seen those tweets, if you haven’t seen those tweets, you should take a look. They’re there. They’re pretty good. I have to say,

Marlene Gebauer: Alright, so I’m gonna go check that out. And I will tell you that I have used Mural before for a design sprint, and it works incredibly well. And we were all over the place. And you know, we were able to sort of break out into rooms for our different groups. You know, once we, we chose, you know, the ideas. I think it’ll I think it’ll be great for you guys.

Jeff Marple: Right? I’m glad to hear that.

Marlene Gebauer: It does work. It can work.

Jeff Marple: Well, we run a few internals smaller much smaller events and had great experience on it. So Good, good. You know.

[26:57]

Marlene Gebauer: so this all sounds absolutely fantastic. So you know, not to put you on the spot Bob. But you know, do you actually do anything this interesting and exciting externally at Liberty Mutual?

Bob Taylor: Well, we do.

Marlene Gebauer: Very good

Bob Taylor: Because insurance is cool.

Marlene Gebauer: We know it is now.

Bob Taylor: For those of you that didn’t know, insurance is cool. We Do do stuff like this internally, we do a number of cultural type events during the year that help people think differently and bring together diversity of thought. And people with different disciplines to help solve thorny problems. And so we do this event internally. Internally, it’s a day and a half event, it’s a little more immersive. And also, it gives people the legal department that come from all over an opportunity to pitch in front of senior leaders and legal firm, including our chief legal officer. And, and I do want to mention that Jim Kelleher, our chief legal officer is insanely supportive of what I call legal R&D, he understands that there’s a need to invest in this kind of thing and prepare our folks for the way that law is going to be practiced and keep our practice groups modern, and moving forward. And so it’s been a great experience. We’ve been oversubscribed, every year, we’ve run it internally, we have to limit the total number of people. So it is competitive, actually, to get into it. It’s competitive to get the T shirt that we hand out internally. So it’s really been fun to run this event internally. One of the nicest things about the internal event is that people comment, not only do they love the experience and have a new skill leaving it, but they often are paired up in groups of people that they have usually interacted with, or didn’t get a chance to interact with normally.

Marlene Gebauer: I was going to ask.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, and so you might have a lawyer from London, interacting with a lawyer from Seattle, with a paralegal in Boston and a compliance person out of Plano, Texas, and that kind of conductivity, like that connective tissue that you create at the event tends to be sustainable after and it makes us a better organization. So it’s it’s kind of fun to see what happens with those.

Greg Lambert: Just out of curiosity, have you ever thought about doing something like this for your outside counsel, bringing them in?

Bob Taylor: You know, we’ve we’ve given it some thought we haven’t run an event exactly like this, we do run events for our outside counsel, that helped them understand about the culture of Liberty Mutual, so we’ll bring them in. And we’ve given some talks about innovation. And we’ve actually featured several of our law firms, in front of their peers and about the innovative things that they’ve done in their practices, in a way to create maybe a little FOMO, with the firms that maybe aren’t participating, right, and to spur a little action. But we are definitely trying to push culturally into our law firms. This type of behavior.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, yeah, firms don’t like to miss out on things. So

Bob Taylor: No.

Greg Lambert: Gabe, you know, there’s a, there’s a few of these innovation tournaments and things like that going on in different law schools across the country. Now, what makes this challenge different than then some of the other challenges that are out there?

[30:16]

Gabriel Teninbaum: Well, this one’s wonderful in a few different ways. One of the things that’s really cool about it is, of course, that we’re doing with Liberty Mutual, and they’re a great company, and they’re a great team. But the thing that’s really special is they actually come in and they share their experiences with students, and help them get trained up to think about the process that we teach them, the way that they’ve actually done in the wild and had been successful. So that’s, that’s a really wonderful thing. Next is its design thinking based. So there are a number of innovation related activities that are going on at law schools, including competitions nowadays. But it’s really hard to run a design thinking event, simply because it’s a hard set of skills to teach. And it is hard to gather people together in a format where it makes sense. I mean, this is an intensive, long, but enjoyable day. And we’re able to do that using the design thinking template. And then third, and finally, it’s not just a competition, it’s not like a moot court competition, where you walk in the door and you compete. And the judges, you know, maybe give you some feedback after. This is actually instructional we have a design thinking course. But most of the students in the competition haven’t taken the course. So when they show up, you know, they’ve read some of the materials, they have a broad sense about what’s going to happen. But they’re not only competing, they’re learning. So that’s a real special thing, because it becomes sort of a self contained day where you show up, you have some fun, you learn some skills that are transferable down the road, and then you actually compete it to practice those skills.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, I would just add to what Gabe is saying in that it’s very much experiential, and you kind of come into it not really knowing what to expect, and you kind of stretch yourself a little bit. You see, we see it every year where you know, there’s all this energy right at the beginning. And then you see this major dip where the students are doubting themselves, they don’t really know and they get confused and frustrated, and they may be arguing and then all of a sudden, right out of all of that difficulty, confusion and frustration with a little bit of guidance, then they start to coalesce and come together and then the pitches are typically fantastic. And so that kind of journey that the students go through I think makes this event you unique and I think we’re gonna do our best to recreate that in this virtual environment.

Greg Lambert: Sounds like a microcosm of law school.

Bob Taylor: Right? Yeah. 1L to 3L right, and everything in between?

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, well, I mean, I like the fact that you have this along with sort of a design, you know, thinking class. And this is just this is just another way to get more students familiar with the concepts and teach and teach them the skills. I’d like everyone to chime in on this one. But we’ll start with Jeff, is there a message that you’re trying to send to students or to the industry?

Jeff Marple: Yeah, the thing that I always come back to is this, it’s kind of like the reason I do it, right, which is, I always can try to figure out and this is probably arrogance, mostly. But I always try to think about like, a better way to do something like, Is there a better way to do X or a better way to do Y, you know, like, like, what are the issues with this? And is there a better way to do that? And can we just maybe not even do this anymore, like, let’s just skip that and go on to the next thing and, and sort of evolve us? All right, the work that we do. And, like spoiler, I usually end the day talking about this precisely. And the reason I like to do that is just because it’s fun. It’s really fun. And like, there’s a tremendous amount of fun to be had in doing this kind of work. That’s kind of the message that I’m sending out there, like, dare to be different. Dare to think about things differently, dare to shake things up and change things up. Because you know what, you might have a lot of fun along the way. And you know, job satisfaction, it’s an important thing. That’s kind of the message that I’m personally trying to send through this event.

Marlene Gebauer: And I’ll pitch it over to Bob.

Bob Taylor: So this may come as a little bit of a challenge to Gabe and his colleagues. Though Gabe has already taken up this challenge. I think one of the messages that we’re trying to send to the marketplace, especially to law schools, is the type of talent that we value or the type of skills that we value from graduates. We’re really trying to get law schools to think differently about their training. If you had said to me 10 years ago that law school students need to take statistics courses, I might be like, Yeah, I don’t know. But today, I’m absolutely convinced that they need to be taken crossover courses, and how to consume statistics and practice data driven law. Right. And that goes along with some of the innovation and technology thing. So what we’re trying to do is signal to the legal marketplace, what it is that we value as a Fortune 100 company. And I think what other Fortune 100, and Fortune 500, you know, large law departments appreciate in the talent, the kind of talent that we need. And the other is, you know, to signal to people that are out there that are interested in potentially working with Liberty Mutual, it’s a signal to, you know, people that are thinking about in house, they’re not really sure whether or not that’s a career path for them. And that we want them to think of Liberty Mutual as an employer of choice. And that, you know, we do more than just look at insurance policies all day long. We look at autonomous vehicles, you know, we insure drones, you know, there’s all kinds of different we have a, you know, amazing partnership with MIT and looking at AI and that all of those things need legal support, and that you can have a very rich and interesting career and very career with Liberty Mutual. So that’s the other signal I think we’re trying to send.

Marlene Gebauer: Okay, and I’m sending it to you Gabe.

[35:47]

Gabriel Teninbaum: You know, law students get traditional law, job exposure, starting on day one of law school, they’re pressed to do OCI and apply for summer internships and clerkships at traditional law firms. And I see my job in large part as getting law students to recognize all of the other opportunities out there beyond the traditional roles. And doing events like this legal design challenge is fundamentally what we want to do. We want to get students understanding that there’s so many opportunities out there beyond the traditional, and this is one way in a single day to get students involved. And for many of them, it’ll be the start of a really cool journey. For others, that will be a one day thing, where they just say, now I have some more exposure to what else can be done, and a different way to problem solve. And it’s just always been a win. Because even when students just view it as a one day experience, they carry on that experience with them after.

Greg Lambert: So what are you guys doing to make sure that you’re pulling from a diverse group of students for this event?

Jeff Marple: So I’ll go back to one of the things we talked about earlier. In the past, we’ve been extremely limited by geography. And I would say that, you know, New England probably has maybe one of the less diverse populations in the United States. With the ability for us to go virtual, again, we are opening this up to schools that may not have had the ability to compete in the past. So that is just one of the ways that we’re thinking about ensuring that diverse participation.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, and I would also say the most successful teams that I’ve seen In this event as we’ve been running it, both internally and externally, tend to be teams that are filled with people that have diversity of thought. And that diversity of thought often comes from diversity of backgrounds and culture and all of that, and, and diversity of their professional experience. And so, you know, one of the years, I think it was Northeastern, Jeff, that one and they had a really nice balance of law students and MBA students that were able to bring different perspectives. So I think it’s in the team’s interest that registered to have, you know, kind of that diversity of thought and and and we encourage it, because we think that sometimes the best creativity and the best outcomes come from teams that are assembled that way, and we believe that also within our own work at Liberty Mutual and we are very intentional about staffing up our teams, you know, within Liberty Mutual, that with people that have diversity of thoughts, that they can be more creative in their problem solving.

Greg Lambert: All right, well, Gabe Teninbaum from Suffolk, and Jeff Marple and Bob Taylor from Liberty Mutual, I want to thank you all three of you for taking the time to talk about the Boston Legal Design Challenge. Jeff, what day is this going to be on?

Jeff Marple: Sure it’s November 13. And if you want to sign up, you’re going to go to LMI.co/BLDC. I encourage you to sign up soon. Space is limited. We’re limiting to 50 participants and 10 teams this year. So go ahead and sign up. We’ll put the I’m going to ask Greg and Marlene hopefully to put the link in the show notes. And we hope to see you on the 13th

Greg Lambert: All right. Thanks, guys.

Marlene Gebauer: Thank you very much.

Jeff Marple: Thank you.

Gabriel Teninbaum: I apprecate it all.

Bob Taylor: Thank you.

[39:03]

Greg Lambert: Marlene, I can’t wait to hear how this thing goes. You know, I like the theme that consistently came across in the way that Bob, Jeff, and Gabe described the challenge as intensive, thought provoking, challenging, and fun. So you know that every one of them mentioned how much fun that they’ve had, and the competitors have had as well during this competition.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I really look forward to hearing the lessons of how this actually works virtually because this could really be a model for the future.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, I think you’re right. So I don’t know about you. But the whole time I was talking to Jeff and Bob. All I wanted to say was liberty.

Marlene Gebauer: Liberty. You know, we had to get that in. We knew we had to get that in.

Greg Lambert: We had to get it in there sometime. All right. Well, thanks again to Jeff Marple and Bob Taylor from Liberty Mutual and Gabe Teninbaum from Suffolk law school for coming on the show today and good luck to them and the competitors in this year’s Boston Legal design challenge.

Marlene Gebauer: Yep, good luck, everybody. Before we go, we want to remind listeners to take the time to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Rate and Review us as well. If you have comments about today’s show or suggestions for a future show, you can reach us on Twitter at @gebauerm or @glambert, you can call the Geek In Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 or email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DiCicca.

Greg Lambert: All right. Thanks, Jerry. Okay, I’ll talk to you later Marlene.

Marlene Gebauer: Alright, bye, Greg.

The Geek in Review Ep. 88 – Olga Mack on Valuing Your Skills, Reputation, and Determination

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 11:01:49 GMT

No matter what happens during this economic, political, health, and social crisis, Olga Mack reminds us that our skills are ours to keep. Olga is the CEO of Parley Pro, and brings her wisdom to the podcast on what lawyers and other legal professionals need to do to take care of themselves and thrive through the good times and the bad. Olga is the CEO of Parley Pro, a company that developed an innovative contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool, but she is so much more than that. A prolific speaker, a thought leader in the legal industry, a litigator, a transactional attorney, an in-house, as well as BigLaw attorney alumni. If you can name it, she’s probably mastered it. We sit down with Olga to talk about a range of topics and share in her wisdom and experiences. Come along for the ride.

Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Spotify

Information Inspirations

Artificial Lawyer and Legal Examiner both covered stories about a unique type of litigation funding company called LawAsYouGo. While they tout their ability to enhance Access to Justice (A2J) issues, there are a number of issues that we’d like to see addressed with how they actually create a positive influence on the A2J movement.

Our friends at Legal Innovators produced a White Paper called “Restoring Lost Hope: How to finally achieve meaningful diversity and inclusion in the legal industry.” Bryan Parker and Jon Greenblatt cover the issues of current and historic racial discrimination in the legal industry and suggestions on how to move forward. One major issue that we worry about is the fatigue that seems to be setting in on certain segments of the population. Now is not the time to rest, or think we’ve learned enough. Sharing this paper with the powers that be at your organization might be one way to help power through and look for meaningful ways to encourage diversity, inclusion, and equality.

In a recent Lindsey, Africa, and Major survey, women partners are paid an average of $332,000 less than their male counterparts. Business Insider looks at this report and explains how one of the best options for female partners to increase their pay and their happiness, is to leave and go to somewhere else.

Listen, Subscribe, Comment

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to the geek and review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene gay, Bauer. And I’m Greg Lambert. So Marlene, we are finally out of beta.

Greg Lambert: Yes, thankfully, in and by that I’m I mean, the tropical storm, not like we’re some software that’s coming out of.

Marlene Gebauer: I know what you mean. my backyard knows what you mean. Yeah.

Greg Lambert: Well, I don’t know about you. But I could use a little sunshine. You know, to be honest, I would much rather have the inconvenience of being just a little bit soggy then from the tropical storm than having those wildfires that they’re having out west. So, you know, we’ll, I’ll take the rain and best best luck to the people out west or in during those wildfires? Absolutely. All right. Well, let’s jump right into this week’s information inspirations. Marlene, we’ve talked about major litigation funding before on the podcast with the likes of Scott mazursky. And recently with legal value network webinar that I attended on the subject really interesting. But I saw two stories this week about a new funding company called law as you go, which claims to help fill the access to justice gap by creating a line of credit to individuals needing legal assistance. Oh, boy. Yeah. Now I’m going to come right out and say that my initial reaction to the story, which ran both in the artificial lawyer and the legal examiner, the past couple of days is that, you know, there’s a sea of red flags that are going on here. You know, it has this feel of a cross between a payday loan company and a bail bonds operation. You know, and those are perfectly legal businesses. But you know, we all know that, that they have some serious issues, which, you know, tend to create a lot of residual issues, you know, for people who are financially vulnerable. Exactly, yeah. So we know that we have an access to justice problem in the United States, there’s just no doubt about that. That you know, and the issue is that people just can’t afford the high cost of justice, you know, and that’s a big obstacle in the legal system. So being able to finance that costs could be a reasonable approach on helping people obtain justice. This type of operation, however, you know, seems to come with a lot of questions that I would like to see answered before I would view it as a reasonable approach to an atj issue.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I have to agree. I mean, there would have to be a lot more transparency as to how this works and how it’s explained to those who are going to use this the service. And and you know, what their liabilities are for it? Well, Greg, our friends, Brian Parker and john green Blatt at legal innovators have come out with a white paper, and it’s highlighting how to achieve meaningful diversity and inclusion in the legal industry. They start out with highlighting the state of the legal industry, and you can cue up the sad music. Yeah,

Greg Lambert: I can kind of envision what the state of the legal industry is, right?

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, so not surprisingly, the industry has been slow to embrace diversity. And the 2008 recession, disproportionately impacted attorneys of color. So it’s set levels back, and it’s taken a decade to recover that ground. The report also notes that there’s higher attrition rates by females and racially and ethnically diverse lawyers from law firms. And if you just get on to Twitter, you can hear all of the reasons why people left.

Greg Lambert: Twitter’s a good place to find out all the reasons.

Marlene Gebauer: It’s like the after dark, you know, it’s like the after dark. So many in 2020 are worried that they’re going to see a repeat of diversity inclusion goals receding. And so what they’re talking about is is what’s the business case for it? So they know the McKinsey report finds a solid business case for increasing diversity. But you know, what we’ve seen is turning aspirational talk into action has remained a problem. And the issue of diversity fatigue, which I did not know was a thing until I read this is real. You know, there’s real burnout about how to recruit and retain, racially and ethnically diverse and female talent. So they talk about how do we move this needle, and they go a little bit into the history of it. So you know, the ABA has made recommendations for reforms, including areas of planning, culture, assessment and accountability. So Sherman and Sterling way back in 1997, had a partnership with the n double A CP, to attract aspiring candidates that were unlikely to go into corporate law, but firms still have not succeeded in making a model where diversity is sustained. The paper suggests that a practical way to sustain diversity and inclusion efforts is to make it a business imperative and to consistently measure and report results, culture needs to be addressed. So talent feels included and valued. Good culture also has to concern itself with the lifecycle of talent management. So the hiring, development promotion. So the white paper is great. A lot of research has gone into this and legal innovators lays out their model and you know how it supports the case for helping law firms. And in addition to deep content, it has really easily digestible infographics. So take a look forward to your HR or talent management recruitment or DNI teams.

Greg Lambert: Yeah, yeah, one of the things you mentioned there is the, you know, worry and you see it in some of the current federal government educational programs and some of the rules Now, is this backlash against the DNI training. So that type of what did you call it? fatigue? diversity, fatigue, diversity? fatigue? Yes, yeah, is real. So we have to be very careful, because this is not something that we need to be fatigued about. Alright, so I have a quick one to wrap it up. So Business Insider had this article that caught my attention, and it caught my attention because it was a little click Beatty in the title. So first of all, I want to read the wording of the link that I saw in safe it grabs your attention to so here’s the link, female partners and big law make $332,000 less than male partners on average. But one change has been shown to increase women’s salaries by more than 40% and boost their happiness as well. Did that graveyard, I want to know what that one change is?

Marlene Gebauer: That’s good. I gotta say, it’s like, I want to click

Greg Lambert: I know, I know. Well, there’s some really good information that’s been gathered by the recruiting firm of Lindsay Africa and major in their salary survey. And I think they do this every other year. The one thing that boosts pay and happiness for female partners, I’ll go ahead and jump in that. And so you don’t have to click on row. So the one thing is kind of good and bad, and that is that they need to move to another firm.

Marlene Gebauer: Bingo. So what did I just talk about? Like, oh, yeah, people leave? Why do they leave to go

Greg Lambert: play cells go someplace else? So again, while it may not be a shocker to many of us, you know, in a way it is it’s very sad that law firms can’t do better at finding ways of keeping talent and appropriately paying the talent, especially if that talent is historically underpaid, and underappreciated. So

Marlene Gebauer: yeah, you know, it’s interesting because I you know, when I’m on Twitter, I see some of these people talking about why they’ve left firms and and a lot of them just go out and start their own because you know, how they feel that the culture is so sort of unaccepting and unwelcoming. Yeah. And that wraps up this week’s information inspirations. Olga Mack is the CEO of parley pro and next gen contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. If you haven’t seen her LinkedIn posts, you absolutely should. Let’s hit the interview.

Marlene Gebauer: Today we have a very special guest, Olga Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next gen contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. She’s presented at TEDx on how smart contracts will change the world, and several webinars and podcasts on why corporations need women on their boards. In 2019, she received the Agents of Change Award from Diablo magazine. In 2020, the women of influence award from the San Francisco Business Journal. And most recently she was inducted into the Fastcase 50. This year, Olga, thank you very much for being on the show.

Olga Mack: Marlene, it’s fantastic and exciting to be here. Thank you for inviting and Greg, it’s great to be with you again.

Greg Lambert: Well, it’s good to have you here. So, Olga. I mean, you’ve got a, you know, an arm’s length of awards that you’ve done, but can you give us a little bit about your journey to where you are professionally?

Olga Mack: Yeah, I’m what you would describe as a tech lawyer by design. I immigrated to the United States when I was 13. And in the middle of Silicon Valley, and have observed my family change and transform through technology, through the opportunity that has provided. Both of my parents engineers, and I just had a little bit of pressure to become one. And I became completely apparent that I cannot spend my entire day in front of the computer, I decided to go to law school. I wanted to be on the corner product knowledge, I wanted to shape policy, and I wanted to have people and companies to really be on this digital journey. And when I went to law school, I basically studied intellectual property security and privacy. A sort of very classic training for a tackler. I after law school, I joined Wilson Sonsini as a patent security privacy litigator, and that at some point I went in house, my first in house job was at Visa Inc, the fortune 500 company. And that’s when my traditional career ended, and I ran away with the circus coke startups. And I joined Zoosk, which is online dating company as the number two lawyer. And I was there, trying to help the company to go public. I was then recruited to be the General Counsel of ClearSlide, which is online and sales engagement platform. And my job was to help the company be acquired and I helped on the journey for about three years. After that, I joined as VP of strategy of a Y Combinator company called Quantstamp, and my job was to help to build products, protocols and partnerships. And that’s when Parley Pro came into my life. Parley Pro has approached me to join as a CEO because of their former general counsel, because I’ve been on the cutting edge of technology. And because I deeply care about the future of law, especially as it relates to the in house community. I’ve had numerous conversations with the in house community, through my writing through my webinars, through my speaking about technology aspects of the future of law. Skills aspects of the future of law, and, frankly, emotional preparedness. As we’re seeing the future of law, the way it’s practiced in house and other areas change right in front of our eyes.

Greg Lambert: What a shame that you’ve had such a boring career.

Marlene Gebauer: I was gonna say,

Olga Mack: I really like to be predictable.

Marlene Gebauer: Well, Olga, I know you have your fingers in many pots, though, there’s a lot of things that we could talk about. But what we’re going to focus on for the podcast today is the importance of attorneys taking care of themselves. And you’ve recently been posting a lot about the importance of this. So things like you know, mentioning, you know, lack of sleep is not an act of heroism. And thinking about the stress from having to act in a way that’s expected rather than being genuine being chained to a desk. And I think that’s particularly stressful now, you know, if people have to go back to the office. Eating poorly, not exercising, you know, the list, the list goes on. How the heck did we get to this place? And what do we need to do to reverse course?

Olga Mack: That’s a very good question. You know, back to law school, Somebody once told me that being aware is 1000 year old path and to be successful, you have to keep going on it. And otherwise, you’re sort of on your own, and the wolves and the sharks will eat you. I’ve been told that basically the beginning of law school. And it’s sort of fueled the desire to change law from the day one, the way we practice it, the way we consume it, the relationship we have, both as professionals and as recipients of that advice. One of the things that we accept for granted, is how much we push lawyers to the limits, how much we don’t train them to be, you know, good humans first good, take care of themselves, and how we really worship on a pedestal a lot. But I think law cannot be divorced from humanity. When we talk about concepts of justice and doing the right things, and law is very related. Doing justice to yourself, is important. And unlike business schools, where you spent two years, in law school was spent three. That’s a lot of time, we have plenty of time to teach future lawyers how to be human first, how to take care of themselves, how to contribute to society, and frankly, how to be a good lawyer. So law school is long enough, and somehow we fail to teach 80% of what’s important. And it shows in a lot of anxiety, numerous folks have written spoken about it, and how many lawyers exit this profession, and just general dissatisfaction. You know, what I in my transition to on the business side, which actually was not all that intential, I was a very, very happy lawyer, I really enjoyed practice of law, I just sort of happened. What what struck me as a very remarkable is when folks have told me that I’m a “recovering lawyer.” And that does not sound good. It made it sounds like law somehow was a bad choice, or it was just an indiscretion, or some sort of addiction. And I assure you, it was none of those things, I was a very happy lawyer. But a lot of people feel this way. There’s a reason why we use words of addiction to describe practice a law. And that has to change.

Greg Lambert: So you’ve posted recently, and and I think maybe somewhat controversially, that lawyers are not as risk averse, as everyone seems to claim that they are. What about this particular topic, especially like with self care? Do you think they are that they’re risk adverse on on this issue?

Olga Mack: I think self care, I think an education will go a long way. I don’t think it’s a question of risk so much. Really. I think it is the baseline expectation and education and giving tools to take care of yourself.

Greg Lambert: Well, let me let me follow up on that. What kind of if you could be the the leader of a of a law school and you had, you know, 1L, 2L, or 3L, what would you inject into the system that would help?

Olga Mack: Oh, so many things?

Marlene Gebauer: Where do I start?

Olga Mack: So many things. I mean, in fact, I taught at Berkeley law, and none of them were traditional subjects. I was teaching financial statements, leadership and design thinking. I think it was a great addition. But specifically to taking care of yourself. I really break clause that I sat through once, was will is by the author of Anxious Lawyer, Jeena Cho. And she lead, you know, very hardcore litigators through the meditation exercise. She asked everyone to close their eyes. That is not a common ask for lawyers. And then very calmly, in her soft voice, proceeded to a very different conversation. And then she asked everyone to open their eyes, and I saw how they looked at the world differently, like right in front of my eyes. That is something would be useful to teach the law students. You know, when you see this really hardcore lawyers, who argue all day long and on top of their licenses, know case law, first law, the idea of closing their eyes right in the middle of the day in the big round table? And then just you can tell how they enjoyed life so much better after that exercise. It was so visible, it was unforgettable. It’s things like that. And I think if you show. Lawyers are some of the smartest people I know, if you show them a better way, if you show them technology, if you show them skills, if you show them tools, they’ll use them.

Marlene Gebauer: So I want to get back to the the expectations comment that you you made a little bit earlier. So you know I think on a certain level, legal organizations and maybe more specifically big law You know, they want their practitioners to be healthy and happy, you know, they don’t want them to be miserable. But, you know, at the same time, leadership is faced with an economic issue. That revenue has to keep coming in to keep the lights on. So how do they facilitate this health conscious working environment, and still keep a focus on the bottom line?

Olga Mack: I think I’m gonna say something that may be a little controversial.

Marlene Gebauer: Um, please do.

Olga Mack: I’m gonna inject some drama. you know, look, you know, in a big law, I was in big law. And actually, I was in big law right at the time of last recession. And a couple of things, you know, some long as you tie your profits to hours, your intentions may be good in terms of helping you lawyers to thrive, but I think if you tie profits to hours, your business model has to depend on overworking people.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, that’s what I was wondering like, since we’re all still married to the billable hour, how do we get around that?

Olga Mack: Hey look, there are many ways to get around it. And sometimes it is the easier way to go. But a lot of times, it’s not necessary. There are ways to structure legal services. You know, my, my plumber doesn’t charge me by the hour. My gardener does not charge by the hour. They could, but and that incentivizes them to look for efficient ways to add value to my household.

Marlene Gebauer: And, and they have a sense of what it costs, like they have a sense of how long it’s going to take. And so they can price accordingly. You know, based on that, that’s right.

Olga Mack: But they’re also incentivized to look for efficient ways to to add value to my household. To work with me and be open minded. So um, you know, I do think that maybe in some circumstances, our win rate may be easier. But not every time, you really don’t have to charge hourly to add a lot of value to your clients. I think if we change this model largely or completely, that will force us to buy, look for efficiencies, I think acknowledge is going to be a big chunk of look for ways to measure volume, as opposed to hours. That’s a very crude way. I used to joke at a law firm, me telling you how many hours I work makes me feel a little bit objectified, it’s a little bit like describing older in pounds and height, but it just whole lot more to older than how much a weight and how tall I am. So I do think that we can and we should find the value of legal services. And I think changing the focus from hours to value will really demonstrate how much volume most lawyers give to businesses to humans. And I think that will change the reputation of lawyers.

Greg Lambert: Now, you know, we talked about how how we take care of ourselves, but with this profession, you know, it’s it’s very confrontational. And so a lot of times we we don’t necessarily treat each other very well. And I was thinking of you had shared an amazing story about how you were working as a prosecutor in court while being almost nine months pregnant. And the judge asking you in front of the court, how you plan to handle your cases.

Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I’m gonna jump in, like your response here was was brilliant. So I hope you share it for the listeners, you know, the judge may have not met anything by this but you know, it was viewed as Okay, and it’s not okay. You know, bad behaviors notoriously tolerated in law firms, you know, big stakes, high pressure. How do we do better?

Olga Mack: Yeah, very interesting. Um, yeah, I was fortunate enough to be part of justice program where I spent half a year in San Francisco DS office under Kamilah to prosecute cases. And that’s where I had an experience of doing 30 trials. And they were not trials of the century. Many of them were possessions and he lies. But for a young ambitious lawyer, seeing the courtroom was a really big deal. And I learned so much, and doing everything from arraignments to various motion practices do doing trials, and I grew up in San Francisco. I know San Francisco very well. I immigrated when I was 13. And I even had to be Ida for someone who I knew growing up. And so I really understand the problems of the of the city, a big city, and how some people get lost in this world. And I, my very first case, I was, I was very excited about it was a case of stolen goods from a store in downtown. And I was over preparing just like every little bit of work for a trial. And I might have been a little nervous, but I was super excited. And I was also visibly pregnant. I was nine months pregnant, like they gave birth the day after we got a birthday. So I was pretty big. And then the judge was looking at him with a lot of curiosity. And then at some point, he’s a well respected judge, she said, madam da, I always wanted to ask you how you’re being pregnant affects your ability to prosecute the case. You know, I didn’t really think about it, I just sort of said, Hey, you know, my stomach grows, but my brain stays the same. I really wish it were the other way around. I wasn’t trying to be brushed, I just I did not know how to answer that question. That’s the first thing that came to my mind. I’m also pretty honest and truthful. You know, if you want to know how I’m doing, I’m going to tell you exactly how I’m doing. And so, you know, I think it kind of led to a pregnant pause in the middle of a courtroom. And that would just serve proceeded as if nothing happened. But you know, I, I do believe he did not necessarily come from a bad place. I think he was probably curious, being, you know, my, the public defender was a male, the judge being a male, you know, being a young pregnant woman. And as that in front of the jury, where you probably don’t necessarily want to be seen as weak as a prosecutor, you know, yes, I was a little stripy. And maybe that’s why I was a little brush. But yeah, I often look back on that comment and question. I don’t really he meant it in a bad way. I do believe that. You did that the question didn’t make me comfortable. But I think we could educate sensitivity. That’s another thing you can teach in law school. I’m here you can even to judges go through a lot of training judges through training.

Marlene Gebauer: So it’s good. We’re like, we’re putting together all new classes for for law schools, just in this podcast. So that’s good.

Greg Lambert: I have to say, I really enjoyed that. Olga, injected pregnant pause into that. Yes.

Olga Mack: I was actually sometimes more powerful than my words. Yes. You know, sometimes when people say funny things, it’s this extra few seconds of stare, that will set a very strong message.

Marlene Gebauer: Like the sensitivity training is, is, you know, a great idea. Because, you know, you’re dealing with many kind of Type A folks who, you know, perhaps that’s sort of not their first focus in terms of, you know, working, it’s really kind of getting things done and getting the project done and being successful. But being trained to kind of stop and think about what kind of impact that you’re having on, you know, the community around you, I think would would be very valuable.

Olga Mack: Yeah. You know, but, you know, in house behavior that is rewarded is actually much less confrontational. interest, I spend most of my career in house. And I would say, you can try in house in most in house positions. On the legal side, if you don’t prioritize collaboration, I definitely think that my ability to collaborate focus on adding value to the business to the stakeholders to the department has been ingrained and polished in my in house practice. You know, I when I when I graduated from law school, I didn’t know a whole lot about my options and war. That’s something we can educate lawyers about too. Because, you know, folks asked me what kind of lawyer I would like to be, and I’ve never been in kind of work. So it’s a really hard question to answer. And one of the things that could have been going in house and I have to say the first year in house was an eye opening after being at a big law and actually being a prosecutor for half a year. It’s a it’s a very different world, and the soft skills, the collaborative abilities are much much much more important. Your your legal skills are definitely table stakes, and you succeed in that world. both internally in your legal department and externally with your clients by being a really good team player.

Marlene Gebauer: Oh, that’s, that’s certainly, that’s good to know. And, and certainly good for the listeners to know. COVID has been stressful for all of us. And you know, but perhaps it’s given us a jumpstart on understanding that careers aren’t static. You know, maybe we’ve learned along the way, there’s a basis for a different approach, or different work or different goals. So what advice would you offer for those practitioners who want to be, you know, their more modern version like the attorney 3.0?

Olga Mack: Look, I have written a lot about her and happy to share my views. But I do think that in the end of the day has to change quite a lot. We are very rigid, we think of swim lanes, and those swim lanes and not, you know, you know how swim lanes are just kind of beads in the world. They’re concrete.

Marlene Gebauer: They’re like the ends of the pool.

Olga Mack: Yeah, you cannot jump over. It’s very granular, right? It’s the swim lanes are rigid. They’re not just rigid. In between the legal world and business world. You are up until recently, we have seen very few lawyers to go from this legal world to business world. Yet, if you look in the business world, somebody who is marketer could easily be a product person could easily become a sales professional could easily then become a customer success person. This is a much more fluid business world. In law, there is a big concrete wall that is like lane number one. But even if you look within law, you know, the number one question that I’m asked, because I’m done with what’s seen in law, as lots of fields have been a litigator, I went in house at a fortune 500 company, I went to down to a startup that I become a general, I never had the same job twice. And in law, those seamless, big pivots, because people somehow when you when I was applying in house will tell me you’re a litigator, you’ve never negotiated contracts. Well, at some point I’ve never taught. And at some point, I wasn’t a lawyer, contract negotiators. I’m not born, they’re made. When I was applying for general counsel position, people will tell me you’ve never been a general counsel, or I’ve never been a lot of things before. Right. At some point, somebody has to give me my first. And that’s it. If you talk to lawyers who go from litigation to corporate to from big law to in house to government, to General Counsel this people to heart, and a lot of it is because we think that there are different skills and you can’t learn and Yeah, that makes no sense. Some of the smartest people I know, are lawyers, you give them a learning opportunity, they will devour they spent, like their entire career jumping through hoops of increasing difficulty. And all of those hoops require learning yet somehow, when they become lawyers will pretend that they’re completely incapable of learning and tell them that if you happen to choose to be a litigator, you cannot be a corporate lawyer. That makes no sense. That absolutely makes no sense. Somebody asked me what why I became a litigator. I’ll be honest with you, I have no plans to become a litigator. I love reading, writing and arguing. But I did not like making other people’s life miserable. I did not like leaning on Discovery. And I think a lot of law cases are or one discovery. So why did I become a litigator? Very simple. I graduated from law school in 2006, as the corporate work was diminishing, and my law firm, told me quite bluntly, Olga you’re very welcome, you think you’re talented, we would love you to join the law firm as a litigator. Otherwise you’re on your own, you can practice it just not transactional on the litigation side. And I spent about three and a half years proving to myself what I already know that I did not want to do it again. Right. And then it was very writing, but after three and a half years, when I was looking for opportunities to you know, I find a way I acknowledge to myself that you know, I am done with proving to myself that I did not want to be litigator and I want to go in house. Then I got another obstacle. Olga, you cannot become a corporate lawyer because you spend three and a half years being away to get this makes no sense. This makes no sense. We wish would allow much more fluid it was in law and frankly, across disciplines. From law. I’ve seen lawyers in product roles in sales roles and customer success roles and all kinds of role and not just in, in other discipline, and they’re capable, they’re absolutely capable. And they’re interested and willing to learn. They’re capable of the smartest people I know. And they can succeed in any view. Now, you

Greg Lambert: have mentioned that you you practice during the last downturn. And I know, there’s a lot of anxiety, especially from some of the younger attorneys, and specifically amongst those who graduated this year, and are finding all these challenges, just, you know, barriers on entry into the market right now, with your experience and understanding what’s going on. Now, what would you advise for someone just starting out to kind of curtail some of that anxiety that they’re feeling right now,

Olga Mack: I can actually relate to that, if that was a very junior were at a big law firm as my class was shrinking. And the law firms of the time were not as honest about that they were shrinking. They were talking about performance. Somehow, every, all my friends mother’s had cancer, and they were no longer practicing law. And I found that the person on the right office was empty One day, the person on the web, and being a junior person and the young lawyer and just a young human, it’s a scary place, especially because, you know, in the United States, in law, we our identity is very closely tied to our trade, you know that every conversation you have a stranger will likely end up what do you do for a living in one shape or another, some people will ask you that overtly others will ask you kind of more diplomatically. But basically, that is something that everybody will ask you our identities, we are as people very much, especially in law, but frankly, just in our society, revolve around what we do day every day in providing services or, or building products. And so I think so during that recession, so number one thing in the place where you don’t know things are happening is is just very easy. Number two, I I made a lot of observation is that in that downturn, there’s number of high profile lawyers who were either laid off or, and unfortunately, there’s a number of suicides. I think it shows to you that one, about our identity, and two, that lawyers are probably not equipped to take care of themselves, especially when their identities challenged. Those are skills that need to be taught in law school, we need to know economic turbulence, environmental turbulence, are becoming normal, we need to have skills to seek help when we need it. So with respect to how, you know, what did I think works, because I definitely know I made a decision in house during the bad economy, when everybody told me that it was impossible. I think, one is that I realized that Everything I have is here. You know, there are many ways to learn. And nobody can take your skills away. You you acquire skills, and they are transferable things, and you can have them with you. Your reputation, your skills, and your determination. Those are your skills, no matter what you did before whether you had a job or not. And so I went on the mission to acquire skills. That’s how I made my transition in house. Because everybody told me I never negotiated a contract, I found a way to negotiate contracts. I sat down, I asked my friends to share 40 contracts, I compared them, I created an outline, not all that different I would create in Moscow. And when somebody told me that I had no idea what I’m talking about, you know, actually contracts are a very finite universe. Every contract has about 20 clauses, there’s about what 10 to 20 variations of every clause. And if you look at about 40 to 400 contracts, I guarantee you, you will know quite a lot. Um, and then I was on the board and later become a general counsel of a nonprofit in RSA deeply care about arts and trained artists. And I practiced that negotiation. By the time I was interviewing the visa, and they were looking at my very litigation driven resume, and trying to suggested that I’ve never seen a contract. I could have a very robust discussion about contract negotiation just through self learning and small practice. So I do think that in this chicken and egg problem where you don’t get a job because you don’t have a skill, you don’t have a skill because you don’t have a job. You know, sometimes I my advice is to sell for the skill and be very creative. You have a lot of controllers and some of the smartest people I know. They can learn, they can find very creative ways to learn self learning is absolutely the way to do it while engineering another there’s deal in other ways. I see very senior lawyers learning business through being advisory members for startups, that is absolutely the way to do it. I’ve done that many times. Again, look for opportunities to learn. look for opportunities to upskill look for opportunities to streamline your practice or technology. Nobody can take that away. It’s portable skills, you will survive and thrive in any economy. I guarantee you.

Greg Lambert: That’s some wisdom.

Marlene Gebauer: to say those are good words of wisdom. That’s that’s a good ending point, I think.

Greg Lambert: Olga Mack, we both appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk with us today. Thank you

Post-interview

Greg Lambert: Marlene, it’s always good to talk with Olga. I was glad she could make it onto the show. The you know, the one thing that my favorite takeaway from talking with her was her comment on how skills are something that you take with you, and no one can take away from you. You know, that’s just a great way of thinking about I don’t want to say your value but the you know, your skill set and that’s yours. And it doesn’t matter what path your career it takes. Yeah, and and so I mean, you can take that from job to job.

Marlene Gebauer: Of course. Absolutely. I mean, You can’t think of well, just because I’m no longer at this job doesn’t mean that I, I don’t have my skills anymore. I mean that that’s silly. Another I’ll add to yours. Another thing that that I liked is that, you know, she feels that it’s really important to be genuine and to really sort of be your genuine self and I think we’ve we’ve had that theme, you know, with with with cat moon and with Brian Parker, and you know, with numerous other guests about, you know, you got to be your real self in order to really shine at what you do. And so and Olga is definitely if she definitely embraces that, and, and so I really appreciate it. Before we go, we want to remind listeners to take the time to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts rate and review us as well. If you have comments about today’s show or suggestions for a future show, you can reach us on Twitter at at gay, Bauer M or clamber. Or you can call the geek and review hotline at 713-487-7270 or email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert: Thanks, Jerry. We’ll talk to you later Marlene.

Marlene Gebauer: All right, bye. stay dry.