[Ed. Note: This week marks The Geek in Review’s 4th Anniversary. We thank you all for listening, subscribing, and telling your colleagues about what you hear. We’d love to hear more from you on what your favorite episodes are or what topics you’d like us to cover. Tweet us at @gebauerm and @glambert with your thoughts. Thank You Listeners!! – GL/MG]

We all know the saying “High Risk, High Reward.” But when it comes to data security, Peter Baumann, CEO and co founder of ActiveNav, we derive the value of the data because we just can’t get through the risk. There are three things always facing businesses whenever there is data involved, and that is the protection of the business’s reputation, the costs involved in non-compliance, and then the exponential growth of data within the organization. We are so focused on reacting to these three variables, that we simply cannot do anything on the value of the data itself.

Peter talks with us about the number of existing patchwork of regulations around the world, and how it makes it too difficult for business and organizations to comply. And while most experts suggested that regulations like GDPR would only govern those with businesses or people in Europe, it’s become the de facto compliance bar for privacy and data security for many businesses. He suggests that the US Government needs to step in an set a clear regulatory path around data privacy and security so that businesses know what the rules are, and the legal industry can better advise their clients on what steps they need to take to be compliant.

We dive deep in this episode and talk about what is structured and data. And how the existence of “dark data” within a business is what brings the highest risk of all. While doing data assessments on Terabytes and even Petabytes of data is extremely expensive, data breaches are even more expensive. The goal in Peter’s mind is to get to “zero dark data” so that you can stop worrying completely on the risks, and start understanding the value within your data.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Contact Us

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer 0:00
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:23
And I’m Greg Lambert. So Marlene, we’ve got a couple of birthdays to celebrate this week. I know yours is coming up a little bit later this week. But believe it or not, I was I was just curious this morning, because I knew it was coming up. But the pod is four years old today.

Marlene Gebauer 0:42
Isn’t that amazing?

Greg Lambert 0:43
It’s just crazy.

Marlene Gebauer 0:44
I know. I know, I was just talking to somebody this morning about this and was saying that it’s just four years old. And they’re like, really? It’s really been that long. I was like, yeah, it has been and I feel like we have have really grown into this. And as I was saying in my conversation, you know, we’re going to continue to grow, we’re going to continue to look at new things and bring on new types of guests. You know, because we want to keep it fresh for the listeners.

Greg Lambert 1:07
Yep. And I know my, my budget has grown. Or, at least my output budget. So I’ve got all kinds of cool little audio tools. Now. That’s true. Remember,

Marlene Gebauer 1:17
I remember when we started like, what what did we have? We had just like mics, I think. And they weren’t, they weren’t even good mics.

Greg Lambert 1:24
Yeah, they were they were pretty bad mics for I think I bought for $23. And then we went to we really upgraded and I think we both had yetis. Yes, that’s true. While that’s true, and now we’re we’re like, semi pro. That’s right.

Marlene Gebauer 1:41
That’s right. I mean, we started with anchor as the, as the platform, and, you know, had a lot of had a lot of challenges with that. And when we tried zoom, and also had some challenges with that. And, you know, finally we decided, you know, landed on Riverside, which we’re using now. And it’s a lot of it’s a lot of trial and error, trying to figure out what you know what works for you. But it’s been it’s been fun doing that.

Greg Lambert 2:12
I would be afraid to go back and listen to some of those first,

Marlene Gebauer 2:15
you know, I really don’t like I think about it. Like it was good interviews. I mean, it’s like really good content, but I’m like, I don’t think I could do it because I don’t want to listen to

Greg Lambert 2:24
Yeah, cuz I think I grabbed some like free music off the interwebs..

Marlene Gebauer 2:27
Yes. I remember going through that. Like, you’re like, what does this sound like? I’m like, that’s terrible. And then we finally got a couple words like, yeah, that’s pretty good.

Greg Lambert 2:37
But, but I still think we have the best music with The Jerry David DeCicca is

Marlene Gebauer 2:44
no doubt we were so fortunate that Jerry let us use the music because it is it I think it really reflects us. And it’s also like, very different than anything else you’ll you’ll hear in a legal innovation podcast.

Greg Lambert 2:59
Yeah, yeah. Because it gives us a nice, Texas based podcast now it’s got it’s got a twang, even though you were in New Jersey when we started. That’s

Marlene Gebauer 3:07
that’s that’s true. But I was already a Jerry fan even then.

Greg Lambert 3:11
Well, thanks, everyone for listening. I think, you know, four years in, and we’re just getting started.

Marlene Gebauer 3:19
Yes, thank you to everyone who you know takes the time to listen to our podcasts on innovation and creativity in the legal industry. It’s really been a great ride so far. This week, we decided to dive deep into information security and how it has consumed so much of our lives, both personal and professional, as we rely so much on the internet and cloud computing and storage.

Greg Lambert 3:41
So we brought in an expert to guide us through the justice regulatory patchwork of rules across different regions of the world. And even different regions here in the States. In the US. We have a talk about who within the legal industry are really even the true experts when it comes to structured and unstructured data. And we even talked about dark data. Ooh, sounds like the start of a really good ghost story, but instead is just just us geeking out. We’d like to welcome Peter Baumann, CEO and co founder of ActiveNav. Peter, welcome to The Geek in Review. Pleased to be here. We have talked a number of times on this podcast about privacy legislation and regulations, especially, you know, we throw out those four letters of GDPR. And then we also talked about California’s version that they’ve created on data privacy. So we just thought we would go ahead and just do an entire episode and focus on what’s going on here in the US. Who knows we may or may sneak in something abroad as well.

Marlene Gebauer 4:50
So in the past couple years, the number of states enacting privacy legislation has really boomed starting with California and most recently Connecticut, Virginia, Utah. and Colorado. And now Congress is beginning to hold hearings on their own federal legislation, the American data privacy and protection act. Peter, you’ve been in the information service industry for decades. What do you make of this recent proliferation of legislation?

Peter Baumann 5:15
Well, I think personally, when somebody says For decades, it’s a bit scary that you are writing is that it is now three decades, I guess I am qualified for that path at least. And I should then also say, I’m not a lawyer, I’m not an attorney. I’m not a lawyer. So my view is very much from on the ground experience of trying to do this with practitioners in law firms and elsewhere. I think this is fascinating. I, you know, I’m an entrepreneur, in the last half of my career, I run small businesses or relatively small businesses. And the last thing we want is red tape, and more administration, more bureaucracy holding us back. But I’m all for privacy, privacy regulation. And I was just having a chat early on with Greg before before the radio cast began. And I spent the last nine years in the US as living just outside of Washington, in Virginia. And so I was a European that went over to the states, and I experienced firsthand how there was a different approach to personal identifiable information, private information about myself and my family. And it’s far more lacks in the States. And it was it was not unusual to be asked for all kinds of things that I thought were very personal, and you wouldn’t dream of being asked for generally speaking in the UK, in Europe, date of birth, social security number now, I appreciate it’s a different system. No one’s ever asked me outside of a medical situation, what my national health my social security number is in the UK or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter. And so that was a little bit of a shock. And then I think the other thing was interesting was when we had GDPR arrive on the 25th of May 2018. I had a lot of my friends, a lot of my work colleagues, our Gushue Europeans your Luna you know, lunatics why you Why do you care so much about all this, just it doesn’t matter, just share it just share, it doesn’t matter. And then of course, breach after breach after breach came through. And then there’s the OPM breach when all our all our biometric data for all our top security clearance Folk is out there somewhere with a you know, with a bad actor, probably a nation state, bad actor, people started to wake up. And so it’s time to catch up in the US. And, and therefore, I think it’s a really good thing. I think, generally, we’ve got to lean into it. And we’ve got to make sure this is this is really successful. You know, there’s there’s a lot of bad, I call them bad actors, the various individuals, people out there who are literally trying to steal your ID, my ID and organizations ID and that their personnel and their customers. Every day, we all know about it, we all read about we all live in fear of it, but it’s literally happening. And most of us have been breached through one or two of the the major consumer data breaches that have taken place. So, you know, I think it’s great that these things are coming into place. And but there’s clearly a need for a federal law, because it’s getting way too complicated for at a state level. And then with individual kind of sectorial requirements, whether it’s the legal sector, or manufacturing, or financial services, there’s just too much burden from a privacy policy perspective. And so we need to kind of raise the bar at a federal level so that it becomes easier for everybody to play on kind of an equal ground, if you like.

Greg Lambert 8:33
Is there something specific that you think? Is it just the unification of data privacy, that needs it to be on a federal level? Or is there something else that that the federal legislation or regulation can do that the 51 states and in Washington, DC can’t?

Peter Baumann 8:53
Well, I, Greg, um, I, I kind of look at it from a customer’s perspective. And if you’re a customer, and you’re trading internationally, and you’re trading with a certain sector, what on earth are you supposed to do you want, you end up going for the highest bar, and currently the highest bar is, God forbid, and EU regulation. And so you have your us, you know, global businesses seeking to comply with a GDPR. And and then largely speaking, US state regulations playing catch up. And obviously, we know that California is kind of either on equal par or very close or overtaken imparts GDPR. But we have to put us businesses on a fair footing with the rest of the world. And I think what organizations are asking for is one regulation. They can build all their internal processes, methodologies, and Tech Tech stacks to comply with and that’s why I think that that just has to happen just purely from a commercial perspective, even before you get into all the other data privacy rights and personal views on this and stuff. It’s just it’s just getting too difficult for business and organizations to comply.

Marlene Gebauer 10:08
Yeah, one regulation to rule them off?

Peter Baumann 10:12
I think so. I think so. And you know, I remember in the early days of GDPR, and I’m sure you guys do too, there was a lot of press out there that said, Oh, the US doesn’t need to comply with this. US won’t bother complying with this. Oh, it’s only if we have European citizen folk in certain places. And we’ve all seen what’s happened, everyone’s got caught. And these things, people travel, I’ve traveled and knew, what do I cover on the European? I’ve worked in the US. People have got my data, you know, what law do we need to govern? Peter Baumann on. And there’s millions and millions and millions of people like me, even before you start talking about people crossing states in the US?

Greg Lambert 10:53
Ya know, again, we don’t necessarily like regulation in the US, especially businesses. But what are the risks to companies that don’t prepare for all of these new data protection policies that hopefully are coming out?

Peter Baumann 11:10
It’s probably a multi part answer, I’m afraid to say actually, Greg, you’ve got general risks of just not being proactive with your data protection. So if those bad actors, those hackers, if you like, infiltrate your organization network, undetected via an unstructured data source, there’s nothing stopping them getting hold of confidential client data and matter files, you know, it’s all there. It’s all there for the taking. Once you’ve broken into those networks, unless those files are appropriately governed and locked down encrypted. We know that’s not always the case. And of course, when this happens, it’s going to lead to a bunch of things, you’re going to have a loss of confidentiality, trust, data protection is tantamount to the legal industry, law firms are either full of money and sensitive private information by their very nature, or they have the keys to the money and private and sensitive information. And so you just think about the kind of reputational risk around that, we impart some of our most sensitive information to law firms, and we empower them, we trust them. And if they’re breached, for sloppy, or for malpractice, or just for not having the right process in place, it’s not going to look good. So reputation is everything. Second, I think, specifically related to legislation is the monetary risk. And so these breaches, they come with great cost. And that cost is a combination of the privacy cost. And so you’re you’re in breach of whatever regulation is that you’re looking to comply with. And you’re going to be here. And we all know what the GDPR ones are. But let’s be realistic about this, it’s the US penalties that are going to be harder than GDPR. GDPR is largely focused on large organizations, it hasn’t really demonstrated its teeth yet. We know given the US it’s a far more litigious society and economy. And therefore, there’s going to be far more litigation around this. And so it’s gonna be extremely costly in terms of penalties. And then finally, you’ve got a general risk, large volumes of unstructured data, prevent organizations from just doing their job. And I know both of my colleagues here today, Greg and Marlene, your roots are in information management, knowledge management, information governance, and you can’t run a business if you’re kind of in a swamp if you can’t see the good data for the bad data. And ultimately, if you can’t derive value, we talk a lot about risk. And this, this podcast can be about risk. It’s one side of the pinwheel, the other side of the pinwheel is value. And the reason we don’t talk about value, specifically on unstructured teachers, because we can’t get through the risk. And so those three things coming at you got you got reputation, you’ve got the penalties and costs of either breach or non compliance. And then ultimately, you can’t really run your business correctly with the exponential growth of data. If you’re not do anything on value.

Marlene Gebauer 14:15
I’m glad you hit on the value because I think we’re going to touch on that a little bit later. In the podcasts are the balance between the value and compliance. But, you know, we were talking a little bit earlier about all of the various state takes on on privacy. So like How should companies specifically legal teams, you know, whether they’re their in house or outside counsel, how should they prepare to be in compliance with so many unique policies, you know, what steps should they take?

Peter Baumann 14:46
I love that. I know that’s not a setup question. I mean, I love it. And for the same reasons, we say you need to have a bar, the appropriate highest bar in terms of privacy regulation, such as GDPR today. You also need to Set the same bar on your data. And ultimately, this is all about the data. And you can’t protect what you don’t know. And so if all organizations, if all legal practices knew exactly what data they had in their networks and their systems, they could then manage it appropriate through its appropriate lifecycle, which means that regardless of what regulation they have to comply with, they’ve got some chance of meeting it. And that’s just not the case today. So the first argument we would always make is know what you’ve got to do that you need to do something called a data inventory. In the past, it was called an audit. Mapping has been used as a term. But that can be a little bit misleading in this in particularly the cyber kind of market. And so we talked about a data inventory, and you need to have an inventory of all of your data assets. That’s where that’s where I would start

Greg Lambert 15:57
talking a little bit more about what you mean by data inventory. And I’ve heard it referred to I think we’ve even had guests on here talking about it as a single source of truth. And what that is, and you know, why it is that organizations should take a data inventory? And, and even kind of broader than that, what what kind of repository should they be looking at?

Marlene Gebauer 16:20
And how should they do it? Like, how do you even start?

Peter Baumann 16:23
-It’s top secret. It can be overwhelming. And, and so, you know, you’ll have heard the expression that we talked about, you know, a single source of truth, a single pane of glass, don’t boil the ocean in one go, these are all, you know, I’ve always I’ve been in this space for so long. Now, I think they, those those kind of expressions derived from the morass of unstructured data, and then hear them and hear them again, it’s like the 80% of your data is unstructured. And these things you don’t even know if they’re true anymore. Just everyone talks about it. By the way, I can talk about that a little bit later. But historically, and by historically, I mean, over the last 10-15 years, when people said they need to do you know, data audit to data inventory, what they do is they bring in, possibly their lawyers know, so lawyers may use their own privacy advisory council to come in and do it. Or they may bring others in. Equally, they might bring consultants in those could be information governance, consultants, and similar and there’s lots and lots of them out there in the market. And what they do is they generally interview the business, they’ll, they’ll get subject matter experts, they’ll get some heads, and they’ll look at what the flow of the data is where the most important and then interview them and then fill out what are commonly known as surveys. It’s it’s not a bad thing, in that it gives you a relatively high level, quick and relatively cheap view of what data you’ve got the problem with it, it’s immediately out of date, the moment that that exercise have taken place, the moment that white boards have been wiped clean, that data is old. You’re also at the behest of the human memory. If someone says to me, Peter, what are the important documents you’ve worked on? Just generally in your job? Oh, well, I had to write a board report yesterday. I remember that because I was on it late and it was stressful. What did you do before that? Right, I think I think I did some kind of proposal. I think there’s a proposal, what did you do nine months ago? And what did you do two years ago, that was really important and still has IP value to the business. But is it within within retention is good? You haven’t got a clue? And what about the guy that left that you took over from six months ago? What did his data look like? And so those things are, I would say they’re nearly useless. A day passed. They’re kind of, you know, production date, if you like. And so for us, a data inventory is actually looking at the data itself. And if this is this is kind of overwhelming thought. An average organization law firms say 500-750, people are going to have somewhere in the area of probably 30 to 75, maybe more, but 30-75 terabytes of data. If you take an average kind of par ratio, one to one, gigabytes, the documents etc kilobytes of documents and build it up. For every terabyte, you’ve got around a million files and documents. So you’re talking about somewhere in the 50 million plus, there’s no way you can do that without technology. But the technology has to look at all of them. And what it has to do is it has to do it very quickly. And it has to go through a triage process so that you’re not wasting time. And within a matter of hours or days, you’ve got an inventory of those data assets. Then where it gets really cool is you then map that against the survey process you went through. And then for those Have those kind of knowledge management buffs on the call, you start doing clever things like file schema of our plans, taxonomies. And you really start to understand what your data is. The key thing is, you can keep running the data inventory. And so it’s a single pane of glass. That’s always current. And that’s, that’s a true inventory. And there’s very, very few people that I think really understand this in the market. And there’s very few organizations that have really done a data inventory and all their assets.

Marlene Gebauer 20:29
What would the cost of something like that be? Because I imagine that’s both both in time and money? I imagine that is those are a couple of the hurdles that prevent organizations from from doing exactly what you said.

Peter Baumann 20:45
I think, Molly, I think until not that long ago, it was quite prohibitive in absence of a really good compelling event. And those kind of compel events. Normally, in recent times, we’ve been on breach. So once somebody’s been breached, they have no choice to have to go in and sorted out, they may have a consent order. And if they don’t, their business is shut down. Therefore, they don’t really care what the cost is.

Marlene Gebauer 21:05
There’s an accident at the crossroads. And we have to put us we have to put a traffic light in then. That’s

Peter Baumann 21:11
the more common reasons people acted were m&a, divestitures, acquisitions, and you’ve got to split the data, it could be also under some kind of governmental order, depending on the nature of the content through two simple things like migration program. So you’re moving from this repository to this repository. We don’t want to fill our shiny new Ferrari up with horrible dirty diesel. And and so that’s a good reason to go through the process. What we found in the last year or two, and I’d like to say that we’re kind of we’re at the front of that discussion, is the prices have come down dramatically. So 10, 14 years ago, when we set this business up, you know, a lot of data was two or three terabytes that was like, Oh, my gosh, how are we going to handle that? We now have customers in the petabytes. And so that price point is clearly got a Moore’s Law effect to it. And it’s come down dramatically. And it used to be about storage costs. It’s not about storage blobs, and how much does it cost to pull this data back down, or in case of a litigation requirements and stuff. So you’ll pay that off many times over within the first year,

Greg Lambert 22:18
and are you finding companies are much more comfortable with using an either cloud or a hybrid instead of doing everything on prem? Because I remember back in the day having to literally mail or FedEx, you know, hard drives from one office to another because we didn’t trust it or couldn’t handle that much information in the cloud at that time?

Peter Baumann 22:41
Well, great, we still, we still experienced that we have some customers that still either put us in a certain room, and we have to install on prem, or they will send us in a certain way, and we put it in our safe room and do the work locally. So that does happen. But those are very much the exceptions rather than the rule. The vast rule is because the nature of this data, it has been until fairly recently on prem, because people want to respect their security proxies protocols already in place. And also, I think more so than that is a lot of data. And if you’re going to do anything like textual analytics on that data, you’ve got to be really close to it. And so it’s only with the advent of customers putting their data in the clouds, and then it provides the solution to put your analytical your algorithms next to it in the cloud. And so it’s more about the law of physics and how fast the pipe than it is actually about a willingness. And I think we’ve all we all know, we’ve all seen in our personal lives and our professional lives, that very little hasn’t now moved to the cloud or won’t move to the cloud. And so we’ve basically followed that path, we had a few false starts, when we build our cloud product, we launched our cloud product just at the back end of last year. And until then all our revenue and all our customers are on prem. And so now we have some customers that are looking at both solutions, because ultimately they’re going to migrate across, we have some that are only going to cloud. And then we have some for various reasons, particularly in federal government to who still wants to sit within a cloud environment. Within legal space, it’s a little bit of a mix still. And they’re a bit more conservative, as we know, by nature. So it really depends where their data is, but then might but but the Microsoft stack is driving them into the cloud heart. And so often we’re finding that we just piggyback that story.

Marlene Gebauer 24:31
What sort of repositories should organizations consider in terms of housing the data? And the other question is, so you’ve gone through the evaluation and you figured out the valuable versus the not valid, but what happens to the stuff that’s not valuable?

Peter Baumann 24:46
Okay, so two questions. First one, where is it? Well, it’s, it’s unstructured data, right? It’s everywhere. What you’re going to get the 80/20 gains very quickly is going to be remarkably After doing this for 14 years, they’re still in file shares. The server, the file share people call them, it’s remarkable. But that’s still a thing. And it demonstrates that people never really completed on these exercises. And so there’s a lot of risk there and you’re going to be quick bang for buck there, then it starts to become a little bit more nuanced. Because SharePoint became so prolific, and people moved from certain types of enterprise content management systems and thought SharePoint was the solution. We know SharePoint just made the problem worse, generally speaking, SharePoint is often right at the top of the list. And then and then it’s very much dependent on the industry or the organization. And in within the legal space, you’ll find the Microsoft stack is second year at SharePoint as part of that. But the broader Microsoft stack teams exchange exchange, a lot of lawyers, you know, the they’ve not very good with retention schedules. And so they have an infinite number of emails in their exchange servers. So that’s a classic use case, go go clean that data, obviously, teams slack, depending on the organization again, and then they may have well, in the legal sector, you’re going to have things like was it net docks, I manage. And they are obviously put in place to manage the data and ensure that it’s correctly labeled and meets retention schedules, etc, etc. But we all know there are lines on the end user submitting that data, and end users don’t like adding metadata, let’s let’s you know, face up to it well, doesn’t matter what we do, they don’t want to do it. And so you’ll find a lot of poor quality information, unfortunately, in those kind of proprietary repositories, too. And so those will be the biggest hits, and obviously, cloud and whether it’s cloud, Microsoft as your 365, office docs, or whether it’s other Google, Dropbox, and another, it’s gonna be all over those places. Anyway, you shuffle your unstructured data, the way you go through it. And my gosh, emmalin, we’ve learned this over the years, we went through a lot of painful conversations where we’d find really bad data that customers and they just went delete it, and did a defensible destruction and all the legal terms are caving in. And it would be it’s a backup of a copy. And it’s outside of retention schedule. And it’s only accessible through an application that’s no longer in your policy, I think we’re perfect or something. Yeah, but we can’t delete it, we might need it, or I don’t want to be the person that deletes it. So we came, we came up, I’m sure it wasn’t just that, but we came up with workarounds. And one of the workarounds there is you identify that information, and there’s a trade off process, we won’t have time to go through it today. But there’s a trade off process where you, you get the easy wins, and you work your way down until you really had to do the text analytics on the final subset of data. But you take those slam dunk, because we’ve done billions and billions and billions of files, and therefore the risk is so low that they’re wrong. And you put those into quarantine. And if nobody screens in a year, you hit the delete button, where you have resistance, you allow the end user to claw the data back. But with a form, they have to fill in a fee, and no one ever does it. So I’ve been a little bit, you know, flippant in my response.

Peter Baumann 28:33
And then, and then as you get into the more interest in data, you know, you get into sensitive data you get into IPR, you get into whatever the business is, in the world of law, obviously, Case Files matters, is it on hold is off hold, etc, etc. Then you just build different rules and requirements around it and triage the data separately. And obviously, you got to spend a little bit more time and therefore money because it’s got more value associated with it.

Marlene Gebauer 29:01
So I know you have spoken about dark data. Tell us a bit about dark data. What is its relationship to unstructured unstructured data? You know, what sort of risks does dark data posed organizations and how should we reduce that risk?

Peter Baumann 29:16
Now? I’m glad I’m glad you bring that up. Because I should have mentioned at the front of the call. So I’ll strapline is zero dark data, first of all, and what do we mean by that we want to take our customers to a position of Zero Dark data. And that comes right back to the front of our conversation. If you have no dark data in your organization, oh my gosh, you’re in a good place, you’re going to meet all those regulatory requirements. If you are hacked, the you got a smaller footprint, you know, the threat attack footprint is far, far smaller. And you’re much more likely to have the right process Lifecycle Management potential schedules, etc on it. So from start data, it could be within structured but we’re all focused about unstructured it’s largely unstructured data. It’s all those things that you just don’t want out there. A really simple example are things like password files. And so some of the most kind of well known breaches, the bad actor gets into a network. And this is publicly available through Ponemon Institute’s. Now, on average, around 300 days in the network before they’re discovered. They’re not looking for your iPad and the flat screen TV, they’re looking for the juicy stuff, and the juicy, they’re looking for your crown jewels, and the crown jewels mean different things, different organizations. One of them, which is dark data are password files that haven’t been correctly disposed off, locked down. And not for malicious reasons. Somebody is moving load data IT guy just put it there, delete it later, forgot to delete it Excel spreadsheet, Word document stuff or with password files, they find those files and hey, presto. And, you know, there’s no shortage of examples of where that’s happened. And so for us a password far be a good example of dark data that’s out there. Nevermind, PII and, and all the other kinds of stuff. So as far as unstructured versus structured, well, you know, when I get asked this, I always do get bit flippant, I say, Well, it’s kind of in the name stupid. It’s remarkable how most of the market is still focused on spending a lot of dollars and a lot of time sorting this structured data out to what they know. It’s what they know. Thank you, Greg, why is that? Well, it’s because what they know, is because this, they know what to do with it. And because it’s structured, and it’s where they feel and get the biggest bang for the buck. Now, in fairness, there’s a view that they probably got some of their most valuable information, because they’ve gone to the energy and effort and cost to put it into a structured database, for example. So they the expectations is going to be quite valuable. But that’s not always the case. It’s largely, I think, and I, I do have a self interest here, I think it’s largely because the other problem, the elephant in the room is so great, and they literally don’t know what to do and how to start with it. And they don’t think there’s easy ways to deal with it. And so let’s just focus on structured for now. And I know, I’ll get a lot of a lot of angry responses to that. But that’s our experience. Structured Data largely sits in a database environment is going to have some columns and some labels and think Oracle, think, you know, SQL servers, etc, etc. And you should have the ability through your own SQL queries and search capability to find most of that data. That’s the beauty of being structured, unstructured, has no obvious framework associated with it. And as per our earlier conversation, it can sit in all kinds of different repositories. Some of them may be semi structured like Salesforce, or some of those content management systems. But even there, they’re largely unstructured because they’re free text files. And so I like to think of unstructured being more about comp data that’s associated with humans conversations. And certainly, from a textual point of view, you know, it’s the customer support desk. It’s the litigation file. It’s the slack chat. It’s where you have a human interaction. And of course, you can then add to it, rich media files, video, audio, imagery, etc. That’s also largely unstructured data, we talked a little earlier about the percentages. And forever. We’ve been saying 80% of an organization’s data is unstructured. And I was at the RSA conference last week, and I was with the data analyst. I won’t make mention and be unfair, I think at this point. But is that still real? What does it actually come from? Is it just one of those, like, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like an old wives tale? You know, it’s just gone round and round in the market. And everyone now believes it. And the individual said to me, Well, we’ve actually just recently done some research. And and they’ve got it’s urban legend, an urban legend, over myth. That’s right, as I was looking for, and it’s actually much higher than he

Marlene Gebauer 34:02
must have gotten more since then. Right. Yeah,

Peter Baumann 34:05
that’s high. And so what we don’t know. And I put a plea out to market analysts, researchers, what we don’t know is, what’s the correlation or propensity of being hacked in your unstructured versus your structured and the risk of the dangerous stuff being found in one of those datasets? I don’t think enough research has been done on that yet. But we know that most of the dark data, the unknown data is in unstructured. So the guess is it’s there, but there’s not empirical evidence to support that just yet.

Greg Lambert 34:37
So what about data protection assessment in? How is it that say a legal department should identify their company’s data risk?

Peter Baumann 34:46
Yeah, I think GDPR is a good way to try and answer this Greg. And when you talk about a data impact assessment, data protection impact assessment is a DPI a for trying to make our lives easier and I shot acronym. And then give you an example when when you if you’re following GDPR rules to the letter, when you create a new project, that’s likely to involve some high risk sensitive data, PII, then you need to go through a DPI a process, what is that? I’ll just rattle through some of the the main bullets if you like. So who in your organization is going to be involved in that process? The specific risky data that they’ll be handling the rationale for why they need this data. And this is really I love this one, the rationale, why do you need that? Well, because it’s there. Now, that’s not a good enough reason. Because if it’s there, and you merge it with other data, you can start to create identities, of course. So the rationale is really important. Which of your business processes will it be part of, and the specific risks to the rights and freedoms of the data subjects, you know, as associated with the risky data? And then obviously, what what tools you’re going to use, etc, etc. And so then, who who’s responsible for that? Well, one of the things GDPR did, rightly or wrongly, was it created 50,000 TPS, it created this this data protection officer function, which the US is, I think, largely been frowning on do we need one? Not sure? Well, we have one in Europe and, and under the regulations in the US. Largely, they’re falling under the CPO, if I may, again, I’m not attorney, but they’re largely privacy attorney, they’re largely fallen under the CEO function and there but there are depot’s in the US as well and plenty of them. And so that person is an expert when it comes to complying with GDPR. And so again, you know, how do you how on earth do you deal with all this stuff? Well, you’ve got to know what the data is that you’ve got. And you’ve got to do effectively a data inventory. So every time you do one of these exercises, projects involving a lot of sensitive information, personally identifiable information, you need to have at source what the data is about, and it needs to be in the correct places. And so this is this is a headache. And it comes back to our earlier point started at ground 0101. Understand what the data is, and then all these other processes should be a little easier. Does that help money?

Marlene Gebauer 37:21
Yes. And in fact, it’s it’s interesting, you touched upon the the evaluation of need for a CPO. So it segues nicely into my next question, you know, I’m sure you’ve heard, often IT teams want to control all things security related. But this is really concerned for legal teams as well. So what do you see as the role of the legal department versus it are outside consultants and privacy compliance.

Peter Baumann 37:49
So it’s, it’s forcing people to work together across the organization,

Greg Lambert 37:56
once we found our problem.

Peter Baumann 38:01
But as we also know, not quickly enough, it’s also creating new silos and power battles in most organizations. Maybe if I start there first, I think one of the interesting things is a my respect to any records managers on the call on the podcast, who really understands the data, in your average, you know, Western organization, a records manager, they they’ve got decades and decades, centuries of experience in how to manage data, largely it was physical data, and moved into the world of digital and became totally out of control. But those are the people that really understand data. And they can make the biggest gains and the data. Who are the people driving this discussion? It’s a mixture of legal as in legal counsel, General Counsel, see, so sick security, privacy compliance, a little bit of it? And how often do you see records managers in the same room, when they’re devising the plan? And strategy is very rare. Yeah. It’s very, very, very rare. And it’s really sad, you know, a lot of our our first half of our life ActiveNave was really dealing with records managers, you know, experts in the field of data, thanks to the data scientists, you know, they understand how data works. In the last few years, it’s largely been dealing with people who have a lot of power and authority and, you know, trying to meet certain rules, regulations, requirements, but with very little understanding of the data and how the users and the business use that data. And so I kind of start there, because it demonstrates that we’re not there yet. We’ve got to get those people together. And when you do get them together, it’s fantastic. It’ll, you know, you’ve got the right discussion in the room, and the right, there’s chance of success

Greg Lambert 39:58
and Peter so You know, you’ve talked about the CPOs and the DPOs, these these officer level jobs that are out there. And then you talk about all of the intelligence that’s in your records department, in this area, are those two completely different entities within within an organization? Because I can tell you I’ve, you know, having been on old records manager myself, there’s the technology part of it. And then there’s the records, keeping in the process part of it, and very rarely do those two cross. So how do you how do you advise that you take the intelligence from your records folks, and apply it to these, you know, high level jobs of DPO/CPO?

Peter Baumann 40:50
So it’s not always easy, Greg, I guess we’re blessed because we’ve been doing it long enough that the software actually does some of it. It does that that that transition, because we’ve already got all that knowledge and experience from the records groups on retention schedules, for example. That’s, that’s kind of inherently built into our thinking and our software, which means that if they’re not in the room, it comes up as as a feature or a discussion or possibility capability. However, you still need to make sure that you’re applying the appropriate policies and retention schedules alike to that data. So I think I think it’s fair to say that generates frustrating. And it, it needs to change for the market really, to get a grip of this. And they need to bring people in that understand the data and have been managing worrying about just the data and how users interact with it. And then what’s wonderful, of course, for that community for the records manager, they now have people who care and are interested at an executive level all the way up to, you know, board members non exec, there’ll be people responsible from ESG, governance, cyber, and they now have a voice, and they should have a voice at the top table. So I think I think it’s for both parties to recognize the value of each other and in the relevant to knowledge they have. And what’s remarkable is to really show how crazy it is sometimes we can do deals in either side of a business, you know, I’m not saying we do two deals in the same business. But one day, we could do a deal with, you know, customer a on the record signing, and the next day with Customer B purely on a privacy compliance cyber side, and the two should have a meet. And and that’s just, that’s just crazy, because the benefits clearly across. Now, it’s a little bit more complex and nuanced than that, because both parties have familiarity with different technology and tools. And so if you’re talking to a cyber person, they’re gonna be very familiar with cyber tools that will reach into some discovery capability. If you talk to records that we’re very familiar with records and classification data classification tools that by default at Discovery, but won’t have some of the cyber components. And so you can you can see why sometimes that gets a little bit difficult, because customers don’t want 50 tools doing similar things. And they’re trying to trying to find out which one is the right solution purpose built to solve their problem. And that that is a genuine issue that I think the market faces.

Greg Lambert 43:27
Yeah, one of the things that you had mentioned earlier still kind of is sticking in my brain right now. And that is to understand why it is that you’re, you’re you’re doing they’re creating the data. And it almost reminds me of we had a guest on a couple of weeks ago that talked about court forms, and that you know, there’s this process. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to be creating things or exposing things that you don’t have to expose. And it may actually put you in a higher risk, just because you’re following the steps. But you don’t know why it is that you’re doing. You’re not asking the right questions there. So that I think that’s something that a lot of us don’t think about. And I think that the Chiefs come with it. There’s certain knowledge about why things are and aren’t exposed. So do the records, folks. So, you know, the more collaboration I think you have on this the, especially when you talk about the why, why would you expose that information or create that information?

Peter Baumann 44:29
I think that’s a great question, isn’t it? I think you’re right, Greg is is the question to us. Well, why do you need that information? And do you really need it and that that

Greg Lambert 44:38
helped because the checklist says we need to? We’ve always done it this way,

Marlene Gebauer 44:42
because I might need it someday like to drill. Yeah, I hate that one. How do you explain the relationship between innovation and information security? Do you see them in opposition to one another or do they work in tandem? And I’m thinking You know, in terms of both data, as well as any other types of innovation, I mean, if you’re bringing in new technology, for example, or a new workflow process, do they work together? Or are they kind of at each other?

Peter Baumann 45:15
I think, Jen, they need to work together, because particularly they work together early on in a program, then they’ve got some chance of innovating and changing and making things for the better. I think the problem is, you’ve got a bit of an oil and water issue going on there. Because one is just worried about the perimeters and security and locking stuff down. And the other one is worried about the nuance of the data and meeting certain rules and policies and regulations. And so by default, you’ve got a slightly different interest coming into that discussion. Now, I think I’m an eternal optimist, which for my, from my, my floors, if you like, we’re very early in the world of data privacy, we’re quite early in the world of data security, you know, and when we started this business 14 years ago, I never thought we would be doing this thing called post breach data analysis, discovery, long tail of post breach, to meet a privacy regulation that was like most that, you know, it was more about storage savings, because they were very expensive. And so you can see how the market so we’re very early in our journey at the toddler stage, really in our maturity of the market. And what’s happening is we as individuals are learning about the risks of privacy, and ID and theft and all the rest, that then filters into the workplace. So now we have everybody kind of aware of it. And we’re all going through security training on a very regular basis to avoid ransomware and phishing, and what have you. So everyone’s becoming more educated, which I think bubbles up eventually, to these strategic type discussions. I think you’re referring to Marlene, when there are opportunities to put these smart people together and reinvent the way that we lock the doors down or keep the doors sufficiently open. And so I think it’s, it’s beginning to happen, we see it because those people are now around the same table. I just saw it last week at RSA knew what was always a Cyber Conference over in San Francisco, it’s now probably 20% privacy, and they weren’t in the room four years ago. And now they’re there. So there’s a recognition, it’s the data stupid, because we’re gonna get hacked. And so there is a there is a relationship developing there. So I think maybe that answers your question. I think the reality is that it doesn’t happen that often. But I think it will more in the future. Or Peter,

Greg Lambert 47:40
we usually ask all of our guests, what do we call our crystal ball question. And so I’m going to, we’re going to ask you to pull out your own crystal ball and kind of peer into the future for us, say the next two to five years. And let us know what what you’re seeing as far as data security and what you think the future holds for us.

Peter Baumann 48:02
Yeah, and again, at the risk of being self serving, but I think it has to be the the world of structured data is beginning to get its act together. For reasons we discussed earlier, I already thought it had its act together. But apparently it didn’t. And it’s had to go through a whole, you know, reinvention, that’s largely either underway, happened, or is about to complete and be maintained. Looking out until we control our unstructured data, we’re never going to solve this problem, we’re always going to be breached, roads gonna be hacked, there’s always gonna be somebody smarter than the guys trying to keep us to keep them out. And which as we just discussed, 80 90% of that data is unstructured. Your dark data predominantly resides in unstructured. And so we have to be moving the market towards solving that problem. And what I love them when I really get excited is back to that pinwheel. Once you’ve got the data under control, you can start to leverage the data to actually drive what you care about. If you’re a charity, if you’re a law firm, if you know adding value back to your customers, giving money back to the charity to the actual charitable cause, rather than burning it up in management costs, if you’re a bank, you know, new financial instruments that you didn’t realize the market was asking you for because you never managed to analyze the data correctly. And so I think that’s the real crystal ball. That’s the innovation. And you know, I think, hopefully, I’ll be long retired, because it will happen quickly, and I’ll be retired. But it may still be 1020 years out. But ultimately, it’s no dark data in your systems. And if it is there, it’s immediately found because you have the right tools to catch it. And and then it’s leveraging the data for the reason you have the data and nothing else.

Greg Lambert 49:47
All right. Well, Peter Baumann from ActiveNav, thank you very much for coming in and doing this whole, whole interview whole show on on data security is something that we’ve been Want to do for a while? Thanks, Peter. Thank you. Well, we definitely put the geek in The Geek in Review this week, and so extra geeky that I mean, you look at you look at IT departments anymore. And it’s almost like, there used to be take care of the computers take care of the network. Now, it’s, it’s almost like a third, or maybe half of their job is security. So, I mean, this is just the nature of the beast now.

Marlene Gebauer 50:27
Yeah, it’s pretty much every decision you make is, you know, has security concerns in it. I mean, if we’re looking at buying, you know, a resource, there’s always security that you know, we have to go through and steps you have to check to make sure that that’s going to be in line with, with what you need to do. But it touches all of us, you know, whether you’re in that specific space or not. We all have security training every year about what to do and what not to do. This, I think is critical conversation, and very, very timely.

Greg Lambert 51:01
Yeah, I agree. So thanks again to Peter Baumann, CEO and co founder at ActiveMav, for taking the time to geek out with us and talk security.

Marlene Gebauer 51:11
And of course, thanks to all of you for geeking out with us and taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter,

Greg Lambert 51:25
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 51:29
Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you Jerry.

Greg Lambert 51:40
Jerry was geeking out with us too. I’m sure

Marlene Gebauer 51:42
He Was.

Greg Lambert 51:43
All right. Marlene, I will talk to you later.

Marlene Gebauer 51:46
Okay, bye bye.

Today is the second official celebration of the Federal Holiday, Juneteenth. Some of us are working on this day. Some of us have the day off. Some of us are using this time as a day of service. It’s a mixed-bag of results on how we, as a nation, view the importance of Juneteenth, and how it fits within the whole of the American story. As I was walking last night around my neighborhood and listening to podcasts, Jonathan Greenblatt and Bryan Parker’s “The Law in Black and White” podcast began playing and it really struck me as relevant to why the celebration of Juneteenth is so disjointed, even here in Texas where it began.

Jon and Bryan’s guest was Dr. Renee Harrison, Professor of African American and US Religious History at Howard. Apparently Bryan, ever the believer in life-long learning, is working on his Masters of Divinity there at Howard, and has had the pleasure of taking a few of Dr. Harrison’s courses. And, after listening to the discussion, it made me want to audit a class or two from Dr. Harrison as well.

Dr. Harrison’s new book, Black Hands, White House: Slave Labor and the Making of America, talks about the role “Enslaved black people played a role in building America’s infrastructure and wealth.” And she asks the poignant question, “why is it there is no monument on the National Mall in the National City that speaks to that truth?” American value a single-story narrative about our history, yet this large part of our history is not part of the cultural memory of America. Dr. Harrison points out:

Yes, the cultural memory is all of ours. The American story is all of ours. And I often raised the question, how does a nation or individuals heal without the whole story? How does one or how does a nation address injustice is in America, from slavery to present, without the voices of the injured? And that’s what the museum points us to, the voices of the injured. They’re not in celebration mode. They’re in reflection mode, when you see those shoes, you’re in reflection mode. So how does one address injuries in America from slavery to present without the voices of the injured? How is healing possible with a single story narrative? That means a one sided narrative about America’s history by which we see enshrined in monuments? And whether I said that monument or that narrative is verbal meaning something that’s told in speech, or inscribed something that’s written in a book, or enshrined in a monument? How is healing possible when we have just one dimension of a story?

This is a law blog, and The Law in Black and White is a law podcast, so Dr. Harrison turns the questions back on the interviewees about how does a nation of laws, who values the rule of law, stand by those values when Proclamations are ignored. When the 13th Amendment is ignored, and in some cases not even ratified until as recently as nine years ago? She asks, ” I, as a historian, not a lawyer, I sometimes wonder, what is the value of proclamations, orders and laws that are blatantly disregarded by one segment of the society, but remain enforceable with the greatest gravities of penalties to another segment comprised of people who look like me?”

It is a great conversation, and I hope that whether you are working, relaxing, or doing a day of service, that you take the time to listen in on this wonderful conversation.

Links:

• Ep 018: Juneteenth: Black Independence Day and Story telling through Monuments
• Black Hands, White House: Slave Labor and the Making of America | Fortress Press
• Legal Innovators
• Jonathan Greenblatt
• Bryan Parker

While we are still struggling with COVID outbreaks this summer, the 2022 Summer Associate ranks are faring quite differently than their 2021 counterparts according to a recent survey conducted by Law360. Kerry Benn, Director of Series Surveys and Data at Law360 breaks down the results of the survey and explains how the struggles differ significantly this year. One of the biggest shifts from 2021 to 2022 was around mentorship and the need for the summer associate to “connect” with the lawyers of the firm in face to face interactions. While many law firms still stressed the need access to mentorship, the summers had much less of a concern for that this year versus last. One stressor that did rise this year was the ability to handle the workload being placed upon the summer associates this year. 

Contact Us

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer 0:30
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:38
And I’m Greg Lambert. Well, Marlene, we kind of took an impromptu break last week, because somehow or another you and I could not find, you know, 10-20 minutes to do the intro.

Marlene Gebauer 0:48
We could not find time together.

Greg Lambert 0:50
I guess it’s not a bad thing to be true busy. But it just, it’s hard enough as it is. And but I think with the with all the summer associates with the vacations with kids in in camps and whatnot, it shows you were on the ladder, doing the intro is in our lives right now.

Marlene Gebauer 1:15
Yeah, sometimes life gets in the way, right?

Greg Lambert 1:17
Yeah, yeah. And you get like some instruments going on in the background, right?

Marlene Gebauer 1:22
I do. I do. I’m getting some lighting fixtures and still. So So you may hear a little bit and from what I understand for people that that lends a sense of reality to the podcast, so

Greg Lambert 1:36
We have nothing but reality here.

Greg Lambert 1:38
That’s true.

Greg Lambert 1:39
Well, speaking of summer associates, we brought back Law360s Kerry Benn to discuss a new survey that they recently released on summer associates. So it’s, you know, it’s really interesting to see what a year makes in the difference between what was affecting summer associates last year versus what they’re seeing this year. And you know, it’s significantly different.

Marlene Gebauer 2:05
Yeah, there were some big swings.

Greg Lambert 2:06
So let’s go ahead and just jump into that conversation with Kerry and hear what’s on the mind of those associates that are probably roaming the halls of your office right now.

Marlene Gebauer 2:18
We’d like to welcome back to the show Kerry Benn, Director of series surveys and data at Law360. Kerry, it’s really great to have you back on The Geek in Review. Thanks, Marlene.

Kerry Benn 2:26
And, Greg, it’s great to be here.

Greg Lambert 2:29
So Kerry, you have a new survey out on summer associates, and we wanted to reach out to you and have you come onto the show to discuss the findings from that survey.

Marlene Gebauer 2:39
Yeah, give us a brief overview of the summer associate survey.

Kerry Benn 2:42
Yeah, sure. This is our second year doing our summer associate survey, which is awesome. It’s really exciting as a new data team to have year over year data to be able to compare. So that was very fun for us this year. But yeah, we conducted the survey earlier this spring from March 7 to April 4 of this year, and we got just over 1100 responses, about half of those respondents were from their 1L year, and then 375 2Ls, 200 in their 3L year and the remaining handful were on either part time or evening students. So we got a nice mix of of everybody there. And yeah, one of the things, you know, part of the impetus around this was as, as always the topic on everyone’s mind to sort of see how COVID continues to or doesn’t continue to impact summer associates ships. And also just getting an idea of what students are looking for in their ideal summer firm and which firms are topping their lists. You know, that’s something that we think of as a good indicator of a firm’s reputation or prestige. So who wants to work for whom was another angle that we were trying to tackle here?

Greg Lambert 3:44
You were talking about having year over year data on the switch? I know people that conduct surveys love love doing those comparisons? What did you see as some of the significant changes from last year survey?

Kerry Benn 3:58
Yeah, like I said, one of the topics we did touch on quite a bit was COVID. And, you know, we did see a big change this year, a shift by firms back toward the pre COVID model. You know, last year, I would say a big chunk of things were being done remotely. Two years ago, we didn’t do the survey in 2020. But you know, anecdotally through our reporting that your most summer programs got either completely canceled, or they were a couple of weeks long. So we’ve certainly seen most most programs this year back to their normal length of you know, 9, 10, 11 weeks. And you know, we’ve also seen that in addition to bringing back some of that pre COVID work situation. We’ve also seen firms continue to go along with some of the flexibility that we have seen developed over the past few years. So there they seem to be sort of like reading the room on what people want in terms of work life balance or ability to work from home. So just 69% of interviews for this year’s programs took place remotely and that is compared with 82% from last year. So a lot more interviews being conducted in person. But then you know conversely, like I said, if firms seem to be reading the tea leaves on people wanting more flexibility. 37% of respondents said that they encountered firms that would allow them to do their summer associate shifts remotely, including even from a different city than where the internship was based. So they’re definitely sort of offering that flexibility to try to lure people in. And last year in the survey, more than half of respondents had said they were worried they wouldn’t be able to connect with colleagues or receive sufficient mentoring because of the remote nature of many of the programs. And that number dropped by half to only 25% of folks citing that number this year. So that’s a big, big improvement. Yeah. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer 5:36
That’s interesting.

Greg Lambert 5:37
Do you think this is going to be a long term change? Or do you think it’s still because I know there’s still some firms out there that are not fully back?

Kerry Benn 5:45
Yeah. It seems like it kind of depends on the firm, I guess, which is kind of a cop out answer, maybe. But, you know, that is something that we’ve seen, like, different firms seem to have really different ways of doing this. Interestingly, just to quickly cite a separate little survey that law 360 did, you know, our summer associates survey that my team put together was a survey of summer associates, right? It was of the law students, we also did a really quick little pulse survey of the top 100 firms by size, just to see about what their plans were. So about 22 of the 40 ish respondents said that they were opting for a hybrid schedule and the remainder were doing in person. So it does sort of seem like, it kind of just depends on whatever that firm is doing for their regular employees, you know, their full time employees is just what they’re going along with for summers, but it does seem, you know, with with, just generally, with what we’ve learned in our reporting throughout the last couple of years, is that firms sort of have seen like, okay, the work can get done. So if people want this, then we could offer it at this point, you know,

Greg Lambert 6:47
I think it’s I think we’re gonna have a hard time putting that genie back in the bottle.

Kerry Benn 6:50
Yeah, exactly.

Marlene Gebauer 6:52
But, you know, it’s still interesting, because I mean, just just in, you know, in conversations professionally, I mean, you hear folks talking about the challenges of trying to train particularly Summers, who are new to the firm to train them appropriately to make sure they have, you know, mentorship and opportunity, when they’re not actually in the office. I mean, that’s, that’s been a big discussion point. So it’s interesting that they don’t seem to, it doesn’t seem to trouble them.

Kerry Benn 7:18
This year, I think it was like 92% of the respondents to our survey said they would report in person if they were asked, so I think part of that the difference in how many people were worried about that just stems from the idea that like more people were willing to go in. So they’re not as worried about it, because they know they can actually meet people if they if they want. But yeah, you’re right. I mean, I think it’s also like, you know, from what I know about a lot of summer programs, often you end up sort of doing a rotation where you’re working with many different people in many different practice groups. So it’s not really like you get to have one mentor for the whole thing, or you know, you’re working with the same group of two or three or four people. It’s like, you’ve got to establish a new relationship with a new mentor, a new group of people every week or a couple of weeks. So I could definitely see why that would be difficult. When you’re working remotely.

Greg Lambert 8:05
Yeah, I noticed one of the things that you covered in the survey was just the wide range of salaries that and I didn’t realize it was such a such a varied range on that. What did the survey tell you about what were paying the summer associates?

Kerry Benn 8:21
Yeah, I didn’t realize that either. This was actually the first time we had asked about summer associate pay. So the average pay stipend that our respondents reported was a little over $35,000, which, if you extrapolate that out to a full year would be about $141,000 annual salary. You know, as you guys, I’m sure, and your listeners have seen a lot of the big law firms, you know, every year there’s like that race for who’s going to be the one to raise the bar for first year associates and how many others are going to match. So we’ve seen this year that the first level first year associate salaries are often around 215,000, at those big firms. So it does seem like fairly on par. And if you extrapolate it out to a yearly basis, like obviously, this is someone with no experience coming into, they’re not going to make that first year salary. But it’s, you know, not far behind. But it definitely depends on the firm and the type of work people are doing. We had one really great quote from a respondent and in answer to a short answer question that we asked where they said, quote, I’m paying a hefty sum for this education, but some firms only offer $15 an hour, I could get that at Target. Consider requiring at least $20 an hour for the last field. Oh my God, so that was true. Yeah, exactly. Why? All that stress, right? Although honestly, working in retail might be worse. Who knows?

Marlene Gebauer 9:40
That’s true. That’s true. No, I have a high schooler and it’s like, yep, that is absolutely true in terms of what you can get per hour.

Greg Lambert 9:46
Yeah, I always hate it when I accidentally show up to target with the red shirt on.

Kerry Benn 9:50
Oh, yeah. People ask me

Marlene Gebauer 9:52
Excuse me. I have a question.

Kerry Benn 9:54
I know. That’s so funny. But yeah, it’s interesting to see just the disparity there. And you know, Obviously, like the big law firms are the ones that pay the most. And then I think if you’re doing working for a small firm doing more of the public interest type work, I think that’s where you see that lower end of that range.

Marlene Gebauer 10:10
I mean, did you see a significant drop from like, big law to, you know, say mid size to to smaller? I mean, do you see like substantial drops? Or is it more gradual?

Kerry Benn 10:20
So I actually don’t have data on that, because we asked, we don’t we don’t have these matched up with where the people ended up working. So we are only asking them about like the process of where they wanted to go, not where they ended up. So I’m not sure what salaries match up with which firms unfortunately, it’s something we could look at in the future, potentially, though.

Marlene Gebauer 10:39
All right. So then I’ll ask you the juicy question, you know, who topped the list of summers preferred firms? And, why?

Kerry Benn 10:49
Yeah, you know, this is big news, because it’s a different firm from last year. So that’s very exciting. So Kirkland and Ellis took the top spot among this year summers. Basically, what we did here was we asked on the survey, everybody could name three firms that would be their top choices. If If money or relocating to a different city or getting the interview or getting hired was no object, where would you want to work? And we think that kind of gets at the firm’s reputation among students. So Kirkland, like I said, took the top spot, they leapfrogged over Latham and Watkins, which was last year’s winner, those guys fell to number two, so not too big of a drop off. And yeah, I mean, I know one thing that we do know about Kirkland is that they have a huge number of summer associates shift slots. I think in our reporting, we know that they have about 500 spots for summers. So I think part of it could definitely be people just being like, well, I have a better shot of being one in 500 than I do of being one in 20. So that’s that definitely, I think, is a factor. But you know, people also know Kirkland for a lot of their really strong practice areas. Some of the short answer responses we got from students who specifically mentioned Kirkland, including they praise the firm’s transparency about their business and also said they provide extra opportunities for summers to get to know the lawyers and the practice areas that they’re working in. So that those were factors for people, again, like we’re talking about people want to make those connections. And it seems like Kirkland has a reputation for facilitating that for the associates. And then just to round out the top five Cooley, Skadden, and Sidley Austin, we’re in numbers three, four and five.

Greg Lambert 12:27
Yeah, I was looking at I noticed, I think it was at Sidley the jump from 10 to 5?

Kerry Benn 12:32
Yeah, they’ve had a pretty big leap, which is, which is cool for them. Yeah.

Greg Lambert 12:35
Yeah. I also wonder, I know, sometimes firms can encourage their the people to take the surveys. Did you hear of any firms that were out there, kind of actively encouraging their the candidates to answer the surveys?

Kerry Benn 12:53
Not that I heard of, we actually do the surveys specifically for that reason, we send this directly to the emails of law students that we have as part of our database, we don’t send it to the firms and say, Hey, Please distribute this. Exactly. So that we don’t get a huge landslide of one firm is like really lighting a fire under their associates to give a good review or whatever.

Greg Lambert 13:16
Team is filling it out for them and telling them “just send this in.”

Kerry Benn 13:18
Yeah. But ya know, that’s why that’s exactly why we actually just send it, you know, law 360 is offered to law students, or, you know, you could get a subscription if you’re in law school, for a three year library, I guess. And so, we have some of the contact information. So we send it directly to the students rather than asking the firms to spread it around. Yeah.

Greg Lambert 13:42
So what did you find were some of the reasons that the students were choosing particular firms?

Kerry Benn 13:49
Yeah, for the second year in a row, I the practice areas that the firm has on offer as the top of the list for why students choose a particular firm, which does make sense, especially as a student, you’re kind of it’s like, you know, when, when any of us went to college, like you didn’t know, as a 17, or 18 year old what you want to do with the rest of your life, so you kind of want to try a bunch of different things. So you know, firms that have the practice areas that people either already are zeroed in on or offering a lot of different things that you might rotate through, certainly helps. And interestingly, corporate law continued to top the list of desired practice areas, which kind of makes sense. I mean, that’s like one of the big money areas, right? So not super surprising. And numbers two and three on the list of preferred practice areas actually swapped from last year, intellectual property took the number two spot and general litigation dropped a little bit to number three. And then trial law and employment law are the top numbers four and five of what everybody said they were most looking for. And we you know, we also asked some short answer response questions on the survey about why students were choosing particular firms and you know, sort of on Surprisingly, haven’t mentioned stuff like good work life balance. One thing that came up that was interesting was people were focused on like conscientiousness on some social issues like climate change, emphasis on mental health, diversity, you know, one person said they really wanted a particular firm because they had a diverse cohort of women at leadership levels. So those are all the kinds of things that are leaving people to choose what they’re choosing.

Marlene Gebauer 15:23
I mentioned like I have a high schooler and so we’re looking at colleges, right. And there’s, there’s there’s quite a strategy to sort of where you apply to and things. So I’m wondering if something similar applies to students when they’re applying for jobs or summer jobs at the firm. So you know, how many firms did student apply to? And how many got interviews?

Kerry Benn 15:46
Yeah, well, thank goodness for the Common Application for your high schooler. Right, that saves so much time. Um, but yeah, for to answer your question. respondents reported that they applied to an average of 17 firms to try to land an associate chip. And of the firms that they bid on during their on campus interviews, they got an average of 4.7 interviews during early interview week. So you know, they’re hitting about a third of the time, it sounds like in terms of, you know, yield of interview per application. So, that’s an interesting stat, close to a third of the participants on the survey, though, reported that they did not get a single interview. So that’s interesting.

Greg Lambert 16:25
You had mentioned that the common forum for undergrad, any aspects that you can think of are anyone trying to create some kind of uniform process for students to fill out for law firms?

Kerry Benn 16:40
I haven’t heard of anything like that. But it seems like it’d be a brilliant idea. Right? Let’s save so much time.

Greg Lambert 16:47
New Service.

Kerry Benn 16:51
That’d be great. Patent Pending.

Greg Lambert 16:55
You mentioned that some of the people that even though they they applied, did not get any interviews or summer associates. So associate ships. So what did these students do?

Kerry Benn 17:07
Yeah, the answers here really ran the gamut. We asked a short answer response on this again, because like the number of choices, you’d have to include to just do a check this box type question on a survey for that would be crazy. But so we got some some fairly straightforward answers that seem very, within the same realm, like a lot of people mentioned, getting judicial internships, applying to companies in house legal departments as an intern. One person I think, said that they had an internship with the Supreme Court of Ghana, which is very interesting and cool, like seems way cooler than having a summer association of federal law firm. And then, you know, others cited things like, you know, I’m gonna go back and reapply for my old job at the Olive Garden or the grocery store or whatever. But you know, since we did ask for short answer responses, we got a couple of really, sort of almost heartbreaking ones, like one person said, they would, quote, cry and continue being depressed, I bet on myself and lost big, which was very sad. And another person sort of cited the opacity of the whole process and said, they were going to just keep their nose to the grindstone, keep networking and trying to make connections, but they said, quote, It has been difficult to ascertain exactly why I’ve been selected for so few interviews, but I’ll keep working until I succeed regardless. And cool. Yeah. So that’s interesting. Yeah, I think that students don’t often get a lot of feedback. I mean, I feel like it’s just like any college application job application, you know, whatever, where it’s like, you’re lucky if you even get a note saying, hey, thanks. but no thanks. And so to try to figure out if you think your transcript looks good, your recommendations look good. Why you’re not getting the call back is can be difficult. Certainly.

Marlene Gebauer 18:49
Well, I mean, no to career counseling at the law schools. I mean, this seems like there’s a real opportunity here to counsel people in terms of and, you know, we talked about strategy earlier of, you know, the strategy of applying and sort of where your likelihood is, and you know, what these different places are looking for, based on their knowledge and based on prior placement.

Kerry Benn 19:10
Yeah, exactly. I know. And it’s, you know, students need to make sure they take advantage of those career services, offices and so on. You know, I’m not to say that they weren’t certainly, but that that’s certainly something that could help I’m sure.

Greg Lambert 19:25
And I imagine that probably the majority of the folks that fall into this category are probably first generation law students. Because there’s so much you just don’t know.

Kerry Benn 19:36
Yeah, the process is so opaque, like I said, Yeah, I was just looking. We had a question actually on who the students relied on to guide them through the law firm selection process. And one of the choices on with question was the their school’s career services office, and so 26% of respondents that they had significant reliance on their career services office, but then it was pretty evenly spread. 21% said They had no reliance on their schools Career Service Office. So it’s interesting to see like, you know, I don’t think we have data to match up like whether those people who didn’t rely on that are also the ones who didn’t get interviews. But it’s definitely a sign that maybe the services offices should be encouraging people to make use of them a little bit more, you know.

Marlene Gebauer 20:20
So for those who did get positions, you know, what worries are on those students minds about their summer programs?

Kerry Benn 20:28
Yeah. So like I said, last year, the overwhelming response to this question was like, I’m worried that I won’t get enough face time that I won’t get enough mentorship that I won’t be able to make those connections. That would like it was over half of the people on last year’s survey said that, that dropped off, like I said, this year, less worry about having that access to mentorship that still did bring as ring in as a stressor with about 25% of people saying they were worried about it, but certainly less than last year. Other things that came up as common stressors were people that worried that they wouldn’t be up to the workload. Last year, only 8% of respondents had said that that was a fear on their minds. And this year, that was up to 25%. So like more than tripled the number from last year of people who thought they might not be up to the workload, which is very interesting. Kind of makes you wonder what they hear through the grapevine in terms of like from one of the other options that we had asked about, like for in terms of that question about who you were asking to help guide you through this process was other school alumni or friends who have worked at that firm. So that kind of makes me put two and two together and wonder like what kinds of stories some folks are hearing to make them all of a sudden jump to that conclusion of like, oh, no, I’m not sure if I’m ready for this,

Marlene Gebauer 21:42
that or am I in a position mentally physically to be able to handle it?

Kerry Benn 21:48
I mean, yeah, well, I know. And I mean, I think just everybody like, for all of us, it’s like the last two years have really taken a toll in terms of, I know, for myself, like things that didn’t use to stress me out now or like enough to send off send me into a mini meltdown, just because it’s been such a trying couple of years. So I’m sure that that’s on people’s minds, or just affecting their mental health in ways that maybe they don’t even understand.

Greg Lambert 22:09
Yeah, when thought on the mentorship drop in types of responses this year, it makes me wonder one, whether one of two things happened, either the law firms figured it out. And were able to find ways of creating mentorship in this new work environment, or two, and I think maybe twos more likely, from my experience, the students figured out that they weren’t going to get the mentorship anyway. So it didn’t really matter.

Kerry Benn 22:41
Yeah, that’s interesting. I know, it’s it’s tough. It’s like, you know what? I don’t know that anybody has a good answer to that one. Honestly.

Greg Lambert 22:49
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ll just do a quick survey of my, my own summer associates and see what they say. Yeah,

Kerry Benn 22:54
absolutely. I’d love to know.

Marlene Gebauer 22:57
The mentorship thing is definitely a work in progress.

Greg Lambert 22:59
It always it always is. Well, Kerry, I know you. Thank you for coming on and talking about this survey. But I know that you have some other interesting projects on the horizon. Can you give us a little bit of insight on what you got going on?

Kerry Benn 23:14
Yeah, absolutely. So we’re launching, sometime in the next couple of weeks, we’ll be launching the second part of this summer associates survey. So this first part obviously was done before they started their programs asking about what they were expecting what they were nervous about. So the second half will be done as they are closing out the experience to kind of get a sense of like, okay, what firm were you at? And how did they do? You know, what were the big takeaways for you in terms of how things went? What could have gone better? What could have gone worse? So that’ll be a nice kind of bookend to this one. You know, and I think that’ll be very interesting. And then we also over the summer, we’ll be putting out our annual glass ceiling and diversity reports, which look at diversity of people of color women, LGBTQ folks, people with disabilities throughout the law. So keep an eye out for those because those numbers are always super interesting. And then yeah, this year, we’re actually working on a partner compensation survey alongside the consulting firm, major Lindsey in Africa. So that survey is actually out in the field right now. So if anybody’s a partner, you can find it on our website at law three sixty.com. It’s on a banner at the top if people want to click in to take that survey. And yeah, we’re hoping to publish that sometime in the late September. So it’s really fun. We we did our own version of that survey last year. But we have done a couple of other really interesting partnerships with MLA on return to office and some other COVID related stuff. So we decided to pair up with them this year for that and should be really cool.

Greg Lambert 24:43
Oh, normally we ask people what we call our crystal ball question, which is to let you peered into the future. I want to I want to kind of twist this on you and say oh, you know, over the next two to five years, what types of surveys do you project that law 360 is going to Start asking about that may or may not be asking now.

Kerry Benn 25:04
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think we’re always looking to try to expand some of the data that we collect, I think partly some of it, I think would just be an expansion of what we’re already doing, I think we’d like to be able to collect the data on some of the diversity stuff a little bit more intersectionally than what we have. Now. I mean, we already do that some where we, like, you know, we want to know how many, like Asian American male partners and black female associates you have, but it’d be nice to get all the stats together, how many, you know, white associates who have a disability who are also in the LGBTQ, you know, just trying to compile all that in a more robust way? I think that’s something that’s on our radar. And I think, you know, I think there’s going to be some focus probably on two specific topics that I can think of off the top of my head, one would be sort of like the ESG arena, in terms of like, what firms are doing on that front. That’s something that we asked a little bit about that on our law firm survey this year. And I think some firms had an answer, and some firms maybe didn’t, but I’ve heard sort of behind the scenes from folks saying, like, Hey, I took this even though we didn’t really have a good answer, I took it to my managing partner to say like, Hey, they’re asking about this, it’s something that we need to be focusing on, even they knew they should be focusing on it. But the fact that we’re asking kind of helps drive that point home, I think, and then the other topic I think we’ll probably try to do some more on is just like technology, you know, alternative type, you know, alternative fees, type of stuff of alternative structures, and just what kinds of automation and how is AI being integrated into the law firm role? I think that it’s not really a secret to anybody that the legal industry tends to be a little bit behind the rest of everybody else in incorporating new technology. So it’s interesting to try to keep an eye on that to see like, when they will start to adopt certain things that either maybe have already been floating around for a few years or that are on the cusp right now.

Greg Lambert 26:58
All right, one last question. You just briefly mentioned AI in law firms. I’m curious about the technology. And and if you’re able to leverage, you know, natural language processing or AI tools, when it comes to surveys, is there any any kind of cool things going on with analyzing surveys?

Kerry Benn 27:20
Yeah, so right now, we’re not doing that too much on our surveys themselves. But we do have. So I’m sure you many of your readers, or listeners, excuse me, many of your listeners will have seen earlier this year, we published the first iteration of our law 360 Pulse leaderboard, which is a holistic look at law firms, just sort of taking the idea that law firms are more than just their financials. So we want to look at a bunch of different categories. And one of the things we looked at in there actually was sort of a reputational angle on firms where we did some news sentiment analysis. So we use natural language processing to say we gathered a whole bunch of news stories through one of our LexisNexis compatriots, one of our other sister sites that Lexis and ran natural language processing on it to determine whether firms were being positively negatively or neutrally mentioned in the news and use that as one of the components of that ranking. So that was very cool. And we’re actually working on developing our own more nuanced version of that in house at law 360. Because, specifically for legal media, there’s a lot of words that would get you thrown in the negative bucket that are not necessarily negative, like lawsuit, for example. So we had a lot of work to do last year to sort of work around that. And we, you know, got it working great. But we’re developing our own version of of that engine this year, so that we can tailor it to that specific need. So yeah, I mean, it’d be interesting to see if we can incorporate some of that into our surveys in the future. But right now, that’s kind of the area where we’re using it.

Greg Lambert 28:47
Great. Thanks. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer 28:48
Well, the you know, thank you, Kerry, for joining us on the show. It’s been a great discussion.

Kerry Benn 28:54
Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me again.

Greg Lambert 28:58
It was good to have Kerry back on on the show that there was a couple of things on on this, it really kind of caught me off guard. And that was the, you know, just the range of salaries out there. Because I was gonna say that we’re used to essentially, the making first year associate money while while they’re here, which surprised me,

Marlene Gebauer 29:19
we’re used to griping about how much they make as opposed to how little they make.

Greg Lambert 29:23
But I was thinking and, you know, there’s an opportunity there. It seems like they’re, you know, you could find the people that are getting under hired and finding some kind of interesting role for them. So I, to me, that didn’t mean that ring of opportunity. I was thinking the same thing. Yeah. And the other thing was the was the big drop and worrying about being mentored. And again, I think I think I covered that well while we were in the regular interview, but that I did find very interesting that drop.

Marlene Gebauer 29:57
Yeah, I think they should I think they should be concerned about getting the mentoring and you know, and being remote. And, you know, because I do think that’s a factor. And I also in terms of opportunity, I think this is a real opportunity for the career counseling services at law schools to hear this. You know, I mean, again, some of the some of the quotations, I mean, it’s just you just, your heart goes out, because I mean, look, you and I went to school, we know how much it costs, and, you know, to not get anything and be going back to the Olive Garden, it’s got to be terribly disheartening. And we know, we know that there’s opportunity out there. I mean, we’ve had a bunch of guests on that talk about a DJ initiatives that talk about, you know, other opportunities, and they’re all out there. And so I do feel, you know, and I also feel that there’s a strategy involved in, in selecting your firms and and if, you know, if your career counseling service isn’t doing that they should be doing it, if they are doing that, you should be taking advantage of that. Yeah,

Greg Lambert 31:07
I would say, in my experience, that the the career counseling offices do fantastic jobs, but they do, you know, they can get a little super focused on people that are going to be successful anyway. And so you know, I just And also, if you’re a law student listening to this, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarification, especially for your first gen law students, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so, in, like, I always say, if you don’t ask, the answer is almost always no. So don’t be afraid to ask.

Marlene Gebauer 31:43
And also, do not be afraid to color outside the lines. I mean, this traditional path is not necessarily the only it’s not the only one. And even if you ultimately, that’s what you want, having some of these other experiences are incredibly valuable. I mean, again, all of all of the people that come on this, this podcast, talk about that, that, you know, sort of having a different experience is something that that is that they’re looking for now.

Greg Lambert 32:13
Well, once again, thanks to Kerry Benn from law 360, for coming on the show and talking about the latest summer associate survey.

Marlene Gebauer 32:22
Thank you, Kerry. And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter,

Greg Lambert 32:35
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter. Or you can

Marlene Gebauer 32:39
leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270. And as always, the music you hear is from Mr. Jerry David DeCicca, Thank you.

Greg Lambert 32:49
Thanks JDD. All right, Marlene, I will talk to you later.

Marlene Gebauer 32:55
All right, bye.

The legal operations community was barely nascent a decade ago. Now there is a booming LegalOps profession and a number of professional associations have sprouted up to help the community learn and collaborate. Legal Operators is one of those communities. We asked the founder of Legal Operators, Colin McCarthy, to come on the show and talk about why he took a small legal ops community that started with a few people doing TED-Talk style presentations over drinks, to a community of thousands. Legal Operators produces online learning programs, a list of legal operations software and services, job board, and an innovation hub in order to support the growing legal operations profession.

Recently, Legal Operators created a magazine with the planned distribution in the tens of thousands. While this may seem outside of what you would think a technology-forward operations would do, McCarthy says he believes in doing the unexpected, and providing the best platform for the distribution of knowledge and information. Even if that means going “old-school” from time to time. Check out the online version of the Legal Operators Magazine here.

In September, Legal Operators is hosting the Summit By the Sea at Half Moon Bay, California. The September 14-16, 2022 curated, in-person event is designed for 100 legal ops professionals to gather together and share in conversation, networking, and best practices exchanges. There are a few seats still available.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Information Inspirations

If you are looking for great podcast content that includes some of our peers in the legal community, check out Steven Poor’s Pioneers and Pathfinders podcast where he’s recently brought on the likes of Ed Walters, Colin Levy, Bob Ambrogi, and more.

Speaking of Bob Ambrogi, check out his article, “Why Legal Tech Fans Should Attend AALL in July” on his LawSites blog. Bob is a long-time supporter of the law library and legal information profession and has said for years that the AALL conference is truly a legal tech conference as well as an information conference. Add to this, it is in Denver this year, and you now have multiple reason to attend.

Marlene Gebauer 0:22
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:29
And I’m Greg Lambert. Marlene, it’s I just looked at the calendars. June already.

Marlene Gebauer 0:35
June is a great month, June is a great month!

Greg Lambert 0:39
Really? Because I always thought kind of the end of May was was the best month. But that’s

Marlene Gebauer 0:45
I think it’s just a little better. Yeah,

Greg Lambert 0:47
I just can’t believe we’ve already burned through five months of 2022. But you know, looking back, we’ve had some really great guests. So I guess I guess we haven’t really wasted any of our time.

Marlene Gebauer 0:59
No, I don’t think anybody could claim we’ve wasted any time. So this week, we brought in Colin McCarthy from legal operators to come in and talk about the amazing things that they’re doing and pulling together the legal ops community. If you haven’t ever looked at legal operations.com Let me suggest that you take some time to check them out. Yeah, that’s

Greg Lambert 1:19
a really good one. You pointed, I had not heard of it until you pointed it out to me. So really interesting stuff that they’re doing out there. So you know, since we’ve run out of our legal weak crystal ball questions, we are going to bring back our current awareness section of the podcast, which we lovingly call information inspiration. So my first inspiration is to point to a number of recent episodes that Steven poor from sigh farce Pioneers and Pathfinders podcast, which has a number of our friends of ours on it, such as Bob Ambrogi, Ed Walters, and Colin Levy. And he always does a really great job interviewing these folks. I was on a show months months ago. Go check out Pioneers and Pathfinders. And if it’s not included in your podcast catalog, I would highly suggest adding it to it.

Marlene Gebauer 2:24
So speaking of our fellow legal podcaster, Bob Ambrogi, he wrote an article last week titled Why legal tech fans should attend AALL in July, Bob uncovered the secret a few years ago that the law librarians conference is also a great place to learn about legal technology. Now, we’ve been saying this for years. So I’m glad that people who read Bob’s blog are also learning about the value of the law library community and the decades long relationship that we’ve had with legal information and legal technology vendors in the industry. I think one of the benefits of law librarians and the legal tech vendors is that we’re not just the people who purchase these products. But we also collaborate with vendors to better understand the processes involved in using the products and improving the products as we use them in real life situations. Thanks to Bob for pointing out that we are much more than just the maintainers of Westlaw and Lexis. Hey, man, I mean that that’s absolutely true. Because you know, you I know you both you and I and many of our colleagues have been on advisory boards that you know, we get to see new technology before everybody else does. We get to comment on it, give feedback on it. And you know that technology is adjusted based on the feedback that we give.

Greg Lambert 3:37
Yeah, yeah. And I think although it’s not as prevalent as it used to be, there’s still a lot of product launches that go on at AALL so yeah, definitely, definitely one to check out.

Marlene Gebauer 3:50
And that wraps up this week’s information inspirations.

Greg Lambert 3:58
Today’s guest brings us a view of Legal Operations from the in house side of things. And while he’s originally from Ireland, he’s has been in Silicon Valley for a while including working at places like Sonos, Global Foundries and Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 4:13
Most recently, he set up a network for the legal ops industry. And through this new venture with legal operators, is helping to build a community through training, networking, and sharing of information with legal ops peers. We’d like to welcome Colin McCarthy, CEO and founder and legal operators and a master in the field of Legal Operations, and a master in the field of Legal Operations and innovation to The Geek in Review. Welcome, Colin, and thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Colin.

Colin McCarthy 4:43
Yeah, thank you very much, Marlene. Thank you, Greg. Delighted to be here. For those

Greg Lambert 4:47
of may not know you or heard of you yet. Colin, you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?

Colin McCarthy 4:54
Yeah, sure. Greg. I’ll jump in. So my background is I’m an attorney who went in to Legal Operations, you know, spent some time with some startup companies building their operations functions out, you know, kind of graduated from startups to bigger companies, you know, one of the main Global Foundries where I really kind of honed my craft there. After that, I went back into the startup world, and built out Legal Operations function that rubric and Twitter before launching the Legal Operations community back in 2018. Personally, you know, I’m having to scroll myself on my husband, I’m a father of a five year old daughter, and obsessed with soccer and, um, you know, anything I can do to improve people’s lives is, you know, is always on the top of my mind.

Greg Lambert 5:42
So what’s your favorite soccer team? Before we get going?

Colin McCarthy 5:44
Unfortunately, Manchester United. You know, we’ve we’ve had a run in the in the 90s. Just did they just lose this weekend? Oh, yeah, we got beat 1-0. It was a crystal Palace.

Marlene Gebauer 5:55
was a Crystal Palace. Yes, yes. I watched it.

Colin McCarthy 6:00
Monitor coming in. So hopefully, that can change things up.

Marlene Gebauer 6:05
Yes. Colin, you’ve you’ve worked all over the world. Now, how important do you think holding positions internationally is to becoming a leader in the legal ops field? How important is it being an active member of the community?

Colin McCarthy 6:17
You know, so Marlene, let me the way I view the world is it’s like, you know, it’s perspective, right? It’s like, you know, what, are your kind of internationally or what are your best in the US is great, you’re coming from two different perspectives. If you look at the world of Legal Operations as a whole, right, it’s like, we’re all just tied into an ecosystem, right? There’s, you know, lawyers, there’s alternative legal service providers outside counsel, you know, our job is the operation professionals in house is really the operation operationalize the business of legal in house, and that starts with everything from your process, your spin, the optimization, you know, looking at data analytics, measuring everything you do, looking at the world through a lens of diversity, which is becoming more and more prevalent and important, and then really looking at technology and how it fits in the world of efficiencies. And, you know, with with that a whole host of skills come in, and what are you know, you’re internationally, you know, you’ve held international positions or more domestic positions, your focus is on, really your focuses on just that experience, to drive value and works in your organization. And I think having held positions internationally, probably gave me a different perspective, you know, coming from law school, coming from a different place, probably a different perspective, sometimes good. Sometimes, you know, you’re behind, and you gotta learn. But when you look at roles like this, it’s all about really kind of digging in and getting the experience. So it’s just, for me, it’s just another perspective to add value, right? Not better, not worse, but just a different perspective. And that sounds to your second question, like, How important has it been an active member of the community, you know, you’re either going to lean in, or you’re not going to lean in right to any sort of community, and whether it’s like, you know, the overall ecosystem leaning into that trying to add value, our community, like legal operators, you know, one of the things that when I started the community, it was all about, like, a rising tide raises all boats. And I really, really, sincerely want to see people that I touch, rise up and become better at their craft. And the way I did that is a lot of it is like, you know, community content, collaboration, just engagement, you know, events, just understand where people’s pain points are off. If to join my community, I would tell them come to the community where you’re at, you know, don’t pretend you’re somewhere you’re not, and we will help you we rally around, you will use other community members to build you up. And this happens, honestly, this has happened, like, you know, daily. And in our chat, you know, when people some people lose jobs, some people are moving positions that they might get, you know, a culture that doesn’t work for them. And when you provide a level of support, and community, you can kind of help people navigate relatively quickly through this, that they’re not the only ones that ever went through this. You know, it’s just sometimes human nature, we end up in situations in communities where there is challenges, how do we best navigate them and you’re better off with the community than not what happened community?

Marlene Gebauer 9:34
Yeah, that’s just good to remember for good or bad. You’re I mean, you’re not alone. You know,

Greg Lambert 9:39
have you found any specific trends that you say? Say for example, if your general counsel and you’re more in Europe or UK versus what you’re saying, like where you are in California, are you seeing any, any kind of distinct separation between the Those two international types of General Counsel demands.

Colin McCarthy 10:05
Yeah, I think the demands are, they’re generally similar. But if you’re talking about like US based companies with operations, like, you know, they may have, like, you know, Mia headquarters in Dublin, or London or Paris, to General Counsel is sets the tone of the US, right? It’s just a different way of going to think in the business environment outside the US. The tone is set here. So in legal positions, there’s different challenges there. All right. But, you know, a lot of it is the same, it’s right. You’re dealing with outside counsel, spend your, during the adoption of different technologies, that, you know, that’s a whole global resource. Like I’ve seen a company called Global Foundries that I worked out, like, we have operations in Dresden, you know, Singapore, and Andy and other countries like, but they were our main hubs for me, an AIPAC, and they usually get on the same page, what the US is, if you want to say dictating, or, you know, or laying out.

Greg Lambert 11:05
Like you nailed it the first time. I was just one because I think one of the reasons I asked that, as we’ve had guests on before, they talked about just how much the the issue of privacy and things like GDPR are driving, you know, kind of the incentives for general counsel in Europe. And here’s kind of a different, kind of a different, it’s more I think the business drivers is, but you know, I was just wondering if you’d seen something like that?

Colin McCarthy 11:37
Yeah, so the GDPR thing has affected everybody right from over here that does work, you know, abroad. And, you know, even, you know, I think a lot of the states are kind of getting in alignment, because, well, for business alignment, it’s the rest of it is kind of push from here. And privacy stuff is generally not in legal ops wheelhouse. More and more teams are kind of moving there. But overall, I’d say a small percentage would would manage privacy concerns as well.

Greg Lambert 12:05
You started legal operators back in, I believe in 2019. Right?

Colin McCarthy 12:10
Yeah, I think it was 2019. I might, I might have misquoted myself. So 2018 A while ago,

Greg Lambert 12:14
it all together and anything pre pre pandemic, and then there’s pandemic and post pandemic. So well, we’ll say it’s probably pre pandemic, but, you know, what was what was your motivation and purpose for creating legal operators, and kind of who’s your main audience that you want to draw in.

Colin McCarthy 12:35
So if the purpose of it really kind of started really small, it was just a, you know, a bunch of friends would go to, you know, a basement, they had a speakeasy once a month to do TED talks to each other. And then it says, you know, at the dinner moved online, you know, around the pandemic, you know, it didn’t stop, like, we’ve had 990 500 Plus unique individuals that have shown up to our webinars where we’re like, I think 173, in at this point. So, you know, our part our purpose was really, an educational purpose is just awareness as well on topics, you know, everything from process, you know, your data, your technology, your spend optimization, you know, topics like change management that are very kind of pertinent to, you know, legal teams, I haven’t met somebody, you know, that hasn’t had that issue. You know, like, last year, we, we surveyed, like 50, General Counsel’s at one of our events and change management was the number one issue that stood in their way, with their with their legal teams. So just issues like that we wanted to really kind of tackle get some get the best speakers out there. Speaking about these issues, just bringing them to life, surfacing them, so folks can have some sort of awareness and just create a better conversation. That was really it, you know, to begin with, the community kind of has grown, you know, we’ve grown to like, over 2000 members now, we started with a Slack channel where we just kind of share information with one another, on best practices. And, you know, we’ve met a lot of friendships out of it over the past three years, you know, it’s grown from strength to strength, you know, I didn’t start the community on Earth, any of the other communities. In fact, you know, I’m a big fan of all the other communities I just got back from the clock Global Institute. And, you know, I just taught that pulled off, you know, an amazing conference, bringing folks together, I just really, you know, one, I don’t think one community can solve it all. I’m going to look at communities. I don’t think anybody owns anybody. I look at them as fluid. And when I see gaps, and I think that needs to be fixed, and no one’s fixing them. I don’t ask anybody for permission, I move forward and execute. And, you know, that’s been my mindset from the very start. I jumped all in with legal operators. When I left my position at Twitter, because I believe like I was having an impact, you know, not, not to mention, you know, I did monetize as well. And you know, that’s part of this, but I took a big risk on, you guys kind of got me to a point where the community is just kind of growing. And you know, I’m always looking every day and asking myself, How can I add more value? You know, I wake up every day. And it’s like, am I adding enough value over here? And the challenges of just being a small shop, trying to go out? Sometimes it’s tough, but you know, it’s, you just got to do what you can do?

Marlene Gebauer 15:25
Yeah, yeah. And I have to say, I have gone to several of the webinars, and I like in particular, going to the ones where it’s people that are in house, because that’s always a good, I always feel that that’s a good perspective, for me working at a firm. And, you know, I have to say, like, the the conversations, and the presenters are always, always, always excellent. So thank you so much for that.

Colin McCarthy 15:47
I’m glad they’re bringing your value.

Marlene Gebauer 15:51
So, you know, how, you know, you’ve sort of talked about this trajectory. So how have the challenges of of legal ops teams changed during your career? And, you know, what are professionals doing about it?

Colin McCarthy 16:04
I think that’s a, you know, a kind of great question. But putting it in context, though, of the last few years, it’s like, there’s a lot of challenges right now that just to point out, like, you know, what people refer to as a great reshuffle, where people are, you know, moving from different jobs, you know, on demand and higher wages, I think, I think legal teams have new pressures, right. Whereas before, you know, they could pay market wages, keep keep folks there. Now, if there’s any hint that they’re not paying market wages, that that the risk kind of losing staff that companies are willing to pay more, right. So it’s like, I think that’s a challenge for the kind of legal team, it’s, you know, that wasn’t always the case. Like, you know, these, these are tough roles to come by, for a long time. And now, the 17,000 of them on Indeed, like back in January, which is like, you know, just phenomenal that, you know, there’s so much growth in this area, and, you know, a lot of credit to, you know, folks that have been pushing this for a long time to get that much of the industry energized about us.

Marlene Gebauer 17:05
How about like remote? In addition to the financial at angle? What about working remotely? Is that something that you’re you’re seeing as well being an issue?

Colin McCarthy 17:15
Yeah, I think, you know, some of the companies, you know, just are taking a hard line and want people back again, right. I think we’ve seen that from JP Morgan, and companies like that from from New York, and then the bay area where we’re just, you know, have the year of a lot of folks here to keep pushing the data for full kind of commit, oh, but they’re talking about, you know, a three day a week, two days off, or two days and three off, then off to have to hire people that they’re going to have to bring them in, but you know, I’m living, I’m live, I’m living, right, like, Google is at the back of my house. And I know that they’ve just, they’re building for 1520 years out right now. So I think they eventually want everybody back into the office eventually, right? You know, that they talk about all these studies of like, you know, a better collaboration with your in person, which I can kind of guess, but you know, I think it was kind of a reprieve for people to kind of work at home, not to be commuting two hours to work, you know, not dealing with Bs office politics all the time, and realizing like that they can find more balance in their life. So there’s probably going to be more conversations before this turns itself out, you know, um, where it lands, you know, that might be a hybrid model. And, you know, I think there are kind of some of the challenges like internally, that legal departments are going to face going forward. And you know, I’m sure, you know, a lot of them are going to be able to kind of step to the table and offer these remote positions.

Greg Lambert 18:36
What you had mentioned that you had gone to clock and I know you’ve got your ear to the ground on a lot of the technology and advancements that’s going on in the legal ops field. And I have a feeling, hopefully, you can say something beyond contract, lifecycle management, as everyone knows, it’s hot, but please, something else. What are you seeing out there right now, in addition to say, contract, lifecycle management that you say is hot.

Colin McCarthy 19:05
So I will make one point about contract management. It’s my it’s my wheelhouse, right. But I would say like, you know, one of the things so we’ve, we’ve seen the contract management we’ve seen, like, for companies, you know, in the past 10 years become become the, you know, a billion dollar companies become the unicorns of CLM there’s only 50% of the companies still using contract management. So there’s a whole lot of room and expansion for for the current status quo. I’m at the point where it’s kind of boring me to that because I’m just hearing about it nonstop. Right? And I’m always looking for something new. And you know, I think where a lot of these companies will win is with like workflow automations right. I feel like you know, the no code low code, you know, Washington now logic like if you’re looking at, you know, a companies that I enjoyed recently with all their different use cases that I think could fit in any law firm. Our in house team and is a lot of these workflow tools like the otter logic, you know not to just name them but checkbox brighter. Joseph is another company that are doing just just kind of wonderful things like think smart for me through tech, those five right off the bat that are doing like, incredible work. It’s a it’s an easy thing to do. But I imagine, you know, weaving this into your matter management systems into your Contract Lifecycle Management System, you’re gonna solve areas that haven’t even been attacked yet, in legal and areas like compliance, where there’s, I think there might be one like legal technology for compliance. Right now. We’re to talk, right, there’s so many compliance issues, you know, there’s also kind of investigation tools like that a lot of the bigger ediscovery ones are kind of missing for internal internal use cases. There’s some IP stuff I’ve seen,

Greg Lambert 20:51
so it’s not slowing down, then.

Colin McCarthy 20:54
It’s no, it’s not, it’s not slow out. There’s definitely kind of demand for it. And I think, you know, it’s got to, if anything, like these technologies are an accelerant when the work, but I can tell you, you know, for someone who’s implement this, some of them are just like, jobs programs. Right. And I’ll talk about some of the CLM systems.

Greg Lambert 21:13
Do you think that with the one of the things we were just talking about, which was the the hybrid work system? Do you think tools like work workflow management, in those types of environments, where not everyone is, in one place? And being directed? Do you think one leads to the other?

Colin McCarthy 21:38
Yeah, I think so. I think the challenge you have now, like, just two challenges I see with folks working remotely, right? It’s like coming up with the right map and for intake and triage, right, being able to, you know, push stuff out. But with that, if you’re working off site, there’s gonna be security concerns. So security tech, you know, making sure like, the right person is on the computer at the right time. Right. It’s like, you know, I don’t like micromanaging anybody, but there is, like, legitimate concerns for these companies with all these hackers available, you know, hackers out there, if you’ve got, like, you know, 1000s Either stop sporadically that out across the country, it’s a nightmare waiting to happen, right? If somebody gets breached. So I think I think you’re gonna probably see more, more security technology. I know, there’s a few of them out there that I’ve seen, that did very well, during the pandemic. You know, some of them I don’t like, I just think it’s personally restrictive, that you know, to have you putting in your frickin cord every half hour. Like, my brother and stuff was like, reminds me of my first job at Shook, Hardy and Bacon, where it’s like, Hey, I’ve been at work. If you’re not, you know, why do you have a cord on my hip? And I gotta keep pulling them up and then typing in a number. Like, you know, I felt like I was in jail or something?

Marlene Gebauer 22:52
Well, it’s, I think it’s good that you know that a lot of these new technologies are coming out. I mean, I guess the question is, are clients buying them? And if they’re buying them, are they actually taking the time to think about the workflow and actually implement these these automated solutions? I always

Colin McCarthy 23:09
murli and I’ll say one thing I said the market is so high. Like, if you look at recently, like if you look at like, some of the links, squares, just getting 40x Multiple, right, you’re looking at some of these companies get 20 and 40x multiples, it’s like money’s been pumped into, there’s got to be private equity behind us. It’s just like, the drivers are there. The sales teams are like, have armies that are kind of pushing out and you know, showing all the use cases why it would work for you. And also, you’re going to have adoption. It’s going to get there one where by hook or by crook, I would say, you know, to your original point, I want to address something one of the areas that a lot of people give lip service to, and not a lot of people have did anything to solve. It was like what was diversity? Right. And it’s one of my pillars at Legal Operations, diversity and empowerment. It was a company called justice bent out of Chicago, that I partnered with on an initiative called Operation empowerment challenge where we wanted to give that data from law firms and diverse employees and diverse hires, you know, sliced up, you know, through intersectionality I make this available to folks that are in house so they can make better decisions on hiring practice that could use it as my guide and I felt like I feel like a company like that that’s kind of stepping outside the box, being creative in a legal tech world through RFPs and reverse auctions. I think we’re gonna see more of that as well. I believe, you know, as we move to alternative fee arrangements, we might see more kind of interest in that from in house teams as well and you know, I particularly biased the like that company’s approach to what they’re doing.

Marlene Gebauer 24:56
So this is great because I mean, you’re coming at it from from a leak The Ops team perspective, you know, I’m sort of thinking like, from a law firm perspective, and there’s, you know, much less adoption, you know, on that end of, of the spectrum than then what you’re talking about. So this is this is good for, for everyone to hear. I wanted to get back to some of the new and exciting things. And on Legal Operations, illegal operators site, I saw that, you know, he had some webinars up. One was about subpoena management, what was about workflow automation. And I know you have a summit coming up in September. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Colin McCarthy 25:35
Yeah. For like, the subpoena management, what was what company Safari law, and I think what they did like it, you know, I haven’t in my life have to deal with subpoenas very much, but I knew it was like a tedious process. And what I liked about that company, that really kind of automated the process like that, just like took all that manual donkey work, work and spreadsheets out of the way and automated this. And I liked that I did build a company called Serengeti, which the Psalter Thomson Reuters years before. So good guys, you know, doing reputable things. Yeah, like, I like what they’ve built as well, at the summit by the sea. That is our first summit for 100 decision makers and legal, and the goal is to do it a little different than the big box conferences. So it’s taking place September 14, to the 16th. At the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay, it’s two and a half day events on content, it’s not going to be your big box event, which are, you know, fireside chats, panels, but more plenary session, where we’re going to take five areas that are very important to legal in house teams, you know, based on surveys we’ve did and just passed on knowledge. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to do two hour block sessions on each one of them. The first 30 minutes, we’re going to frame the topic coupled with a pre read that we’re going to send out, then the next hour, we’re really going to do a deep dive roundtable style with facilitators on each of the topics. So let’s say one of the topics is change management, we will just, you know, find out what are the best practices in house on each one of them. Now, we’ve had a practice run at this recently in Chicago and a wetland without a hitch. So it’s a different kind of model that we’re trying to instill for the two hour blocks, and then the last 30 minutes, then we will, we’ll open it up and do a round robin, get as much information as possible, all about like sharing where you’re asked being you know, vulnerable enough to say, hey, here’s where I’m at. I don’t know what I’m doing. I do know what I’m doing. Let’s share knowledge, but it’s all about like bringing some of the best and brightest together, sharing best practices. In a grant environments, we minimize the number of sponsors come in. And we like we handpick their facilitators, the ones are going to help facilitate the sessions as well. And like any of the Legal Operations, Legal Operations events, there’s always like a social aspect as well, like so, you know, we’ve got like evening events planned the day before, we’re putting on a golf tournament at the halfmoon Bay, you know, the old course. So yeah, people are kind of jazzed and excited to take part in this. We’re already almost at full capacity.

Marlene Gebauer 28:20
Yeah, I think you have a few more spots

Colin McCarthy 28:23
that are open. Yeah, my advisory board asked me to open up 25 more spots to fill two tables. So there will be probably 25 more spots. You know, so if anybody you know, is interested, contact me, I’d be happy to share the information that’s on legal operations.com as well.

Greg Lambert 28:41
Okay, and we’ll make sure we put it on the on the show notes as well.

Colin McCarthy 28:45
The focus is like you know, if it’s going to add value to you, you know, we really are looking for the decision maker profile that really can add value to the other attendees as well.

Marlene Gebauer 28:56
So I would be remiss without talking to you and asking you about the magazine legal operators just very recently released I guess its first magazine so you know how very old school you know, it’s it’s it’s not a zine. It’s not a paywall, but, you know, it’s it’s a real glossy magazine. Why did you pick that format?

Colin McCarthy 29:18
So, you know, I did the newsletter, I experimented with that about two years ago. And I got, I got a big traction on it, but I felt like I couldn’t tell a story big enough on it. I felt like okay, now I’m putting too much sponsors on it. I’m not getting enough. I’m only gonna get links to magazine, you know, to articles. But what I really wanted to do is kind of flush it out over about 47 pages, small enough where people will digest this and you know, if there’s something important to them, they’ll read it. I know it’s kind of going back and going against like, Hey, these are out there but I kind of like him still right? I just think I do you know when when everyone else is going one way I want to go the other way. So I I taught like with a magazine, I partnered up with your Peters legal business world, he came on as my chief publication officer and we just ideated on, how can we best tell a story, every quarter to folks and get as much information is still out there. And we, we really want to focus on getting voices that you know, that people respect number one, from the, you know, from, you know, long before I came on the scene, and then also I just want to really kind of activate the legal community that I’m part of the set, let’s lean in, let’s share your use cases that let us profile you, well, how are you seeing the world and just be able to, you know, distill it in one place, send out every month, like, there’s no ego to it, it’s like, you know, I didn’t want to put it behind a paywall that I really just wanted to strip distributed. So we, we have a target of 80,000 that are getting this magazine, and author or force magazine, you know, when we put on was the last month, we had 10,000 readers in the first two hours. Wow, that’s that on for six minutes or more. So to me, it’s like, wow, we have an opportunity here to, you know, I’m not sure how many people is that readership? I’m not sure if even frickin New York Times again, 10,000 people reading their magazines.

Marlene Gebauer 31:26
And I mean, I have to say thanks, the cover was was was beautiful. I mean, it caught my eye immediately. So I think that was very well done.

Colin McCarthy 31:35
So like, you know, I was asked, Well, hey, why didn’t you put action on the front of the cover? And I’m like, Are you kidding me? I’m Miss, I miss an opportunity to put, you know, a lady with a hijab, that’s doing amazing things and challenging the status quo in Germany, of all places, right? And then, you know, my advisor, who’s also in Germany and grow, you know, from Volkswagen, that are doing amazing things. Absolutely. I thought it was the best choice to put them on and talk about women in leadership. And, you know, that’s one of the things is like, I just don’t want to pay lip service to but I want to do something about it. That’s, that’s challenged the status quo.

Greg Lambert 32:14
And it is a great cover, it really catches the eye on on it. So we have gotten to the point in in our discussion here, where we ask our guests the what we call our crystal ball question. And what we want to do is, have you kind of pull out your crystal ball peer into the future for us say over the next three to five years or so. You know, if you want to you want to show us or tell us what it’s telling you about legal ops or Manchester United or whatever. Do you mind giving us a peek into the future they’re calling out?

Colin McCarthy 32:51
Yeah, we’re gonna come back, they’re gonna win the league again, I gotta be very happy to be so happy. I would, I would say, you know, what I said, there’s going to be more Legal Operations professionals, they’re going to be better at their craft, they’re going to demand higher status and legal departments. And we’re gonna see a lot more of that, but we’re also probably going to see a lot of consultants fill in a lot of the minor work, like, like, now, now, now, you see, like consultants coming in and, and, you know, taking paths off hands, you see it, like, you know, sporadically, I think we’re gonna see a lot more that that that have that expertise to come in, you know, fill holes with, you know, implementations, do some of the change management stuff, because, you know, internally, you know, we’re gonna get better at the change management stuff. You know, it’s just that, you know, I tell you, I personally haven’t figured a lot of it out yet. You know, but I think I think we’re gonna get we’re gonna get better at that. And we’re gonna I think we’re gonna see a lot more Legal Operations folks just reaching higher, higher levels in their career. I don’t have a crystal ball, but

Greg Lambert 34:06
that sounds that sounds spot on. So we’ll call him McCarthy from legal operators and legal operations.com We appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk with us.

Colin McCarthy 34:16
Thank you so much, Greg. And thank you very much Marlene, this has been awesome. Really appreciate you guys. Thank you

Greg Lambert 34:25
Marlene, it’s always fun to get somebody on with a with a good Irish accent and get to talk about some some Manchester United football. It’s not always that weekend, some legal tech and operations is

Marlene Gebauer 34:38
throw that in but you know, it’s like but not always that we get soccer on here. That’s that’s a rare one. So we appreciate Colin for bringing that up. Yeah, I thought this was a great conversation. Like I said during the interview. It’s really nice to hear about, you know, the legal ops on the House side and sort of what’s happening there and you know, I’d love that he just decided, like, you know what, I’m going to build this community because we need this community and we need to raise everybody up. I mean, you know, what a good premise, just sort of bring everybody together. And I can say, you know, I’ve participated in some of their webinars and met some people that are, you know, in the organization, and he is speaking the truth. That’s exactly how everybody is.

Greg Lambert 35:22
Yeah. And we didn’t get dive in a lot with all the other things that that legal operators is doing, and which includes an innovation hub, but it’s got its own tech directory, is got a listing of jobs that’s out there. So and, you know, like, like he was saying, the market is red hot right now. So I imagine there’s lots going on.

Marlene Gebauer 35:46
Yeah. So that was that was terrific. And we thank Colin very much for joining us on the podcast. And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter,

Greg Lambert 36:05
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter. Or you

Marlene Gebauer 36:09
can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you Jerry.

Greg Lambert 36:21
Thank you, Mr. DeCicca. All right. Talk to you later. Marlene.

Marlene Gebauer 36:25
He’s like that’s my dad. Bye So hey, take five seconds to pay. Back. Devils back at the devils back

I had the good fortune to attend the first in-person CLOC Global Institute in three years. It was an extremely positive experience. Unfortunately, I came home to find I was different kind of positive (new reality; unsurprising after three weeks of travel). I was therefore not able to timely complete my final CGI Dispatch for Artificial Lawyer. Blogs, however, have no deadlines.

To recap:

Dispatch #1 discussed the rise of legal ops in the context of ever-increasing scale, organizational complicatedness, and legal complexity.

Dispatch #2 covered the stellar pre-conference Legal Ops 101 session, highlighting the importance of education when most legal ops roles are net new and, therefore, being filled by individuals with no prior experience.

Dispatch #3 reported on the first day of CGI, which was bookended by sessions on storytelling (one of my favorite topics).

Dispatch #4 was to be a reflection piece. While I could have done without the multiple days of fatigue and brain fog, I am glad I had the opportunity to truly reflect.

Let me set the scene.

LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM — BELLAGIO, LAS VEGAS — CLOC GLOBAL INSTITUTE — LEGAL OPS 101

The presenters are lined up on stage at the end of a three-hour session built around the CLOC Core 12. The Q&A session is commencing. I am part of a sold-out audience of 170+.

Question: At a company where legal ops is new, which of the Core 12 would you start with?

Presenter1: Well, I began by getting the DMS under control.

Me (mouthing silently): What? No?

Presenter2: Typically, ebilling and outside counsel rates get attacked first.

Me (shaking head and whispering): But…but…

Presenter3: Knowledge management.

Me (clutching table and muttering compulsively): No! No! You start with the business! The business!

Presenter4: Department budgeting.

Me (spontaneously combusts)

END SCENE

The above is not a literal transcript. But it is a fair recounting of the conclusion of the excellent Legal Ops 101. What was unfair was my reaction.

While I have been wrong many times before (here, here), I stand by my substantive point in this instance. I am a broken record (most recently, here) about the importance, and unfortunate absence, of centering business needs in law department planning.

But being right is different than being fair.

I was unfair because I’ve been answering variants of the question for over a decade and am practiced in rejecting the premise. In the moment, the presenters were responding off the cuff to what they personally tackled first, as they generously shared their experience with an audience of newcomers.

The presenters’ candor likely landed better with, and was more useful to, this group, in this setting, than would have been the case had one of them somehow channeled my didactic proclivities. Plus, I had my opportunity to speak to my piece (more below).

The promise is the peril. I’ve always been bullish on legal operation. I remain so. By every metric, the sold-out CGI was a success suggesting the “legal operations revolution” is accelerating. This pleases me.

But I have concerns. My concerns are not so much with legal operations itself—which is maturing apace. Rather, I worry many law departments now ‘doing legal operations’ are underestimating the true scale of the challenges they face, in the present and in the future (see Dispatch #1).

That is, I worry that law departments are expecting too much from legal ops relative to the actual level of investment in dollars, time, and willingness to change behavior—similar to law firms hiring a few talented people to ‘do innovation” as a means to satisfy that related imperative. Indeed, there is nothing unique to legal, let alone law departments, in the penchant for defaulting to organizational, process, and innovation theater because of very real resource and bandwidth constraints in a world where daily operations have inherent tension with projects—while the list of worthwhile projects is practically infinite (i.e., some things simply will not get done).

In the same vein, many legal ops professionals are under unreasonable pressure to manage up. In many cases, these are relatively new, junior team members. Asking them to completely re-orient a department they recently joined is an absurd (and unfunded) mandate.

Returning to my own unfairness, it would have been unhelpful to suggest to a room full of newcomers that they go back to the GCs that just hired them and insist on initiating a thorough operational review in order to devise a target operating model aligned with business objectives amidst an increasingly complex operating environment—even if that is what many law departments ultimately need.

Which is a long-winded way (my favorite) of reinforcing that, while it serves many functions, including educating new professionals, CLOC’s most mission-critical purpose might be shaping the broader context in which legal operations is considered.

In fairly short order, GCs have been convinced that legal operations is a necessity (with 81% of law departments hiring for the role). But it will take even more effective storytelling to not only secure appropriate levels of investment in legal operations but to ensure the right problems are being addressed, the right way, in the right sequence. We don’t only need to change the stories GCs tell themselves about legal operations—we need to change the entire narrative around how the law departments serve the business.

The collective nature of this challenge is one of many reasons I am so heartened by how genuinely CLOC has embraced an ecosystem view of community.

I have a confession. To feed my family, I support the sales of legal tech (the LexFusion business model).

I am also a CLOC member in good standing, with all the privileges thereof (cue Groucho). It was not always this way.

I am not certain how many castes there are in the legal ecosystem. But, having been a BigLaw litigator, an in-house counsel, a legaltech founder, a consultant to in-house departments and law firms, a leader of ‘non-lawyers’ in BigLaw, and, now, an auxiliary executive for legal innovation companies who must sell tech and services to survive, I submit that vendors encounter the greatest levels of enmity—treated as a necessary evil (and, often, not even as necessary).

Just last week, an in-house friend tried to invite me to a dinner conversation but was informed I was not welcome because of my vendor status—regardless of what I might contribute to the conversation or how committed I am about limiting sales talk to appropriate circumstances (I fully acknowledge poor sales decorum has rightly contributed to the negative view of vendors—and law firms, and any other group that needs to sell, which includes everyone). Also last week, an in-house friend I deeply respect sent plaudits to Stephanie Corey of UpLevel Ops and me for our Savings is Not a Strategy article and then asked if we could help him put together a panel of in-house speakers to discuss the content without inviting Corey or me to participate—despite us being the authors and our combined visibility into hundreds of law departments.

Kudos to CLOC for recognizing the essential contribution of vendors to changing how legal services are delivered.

In February 2021, CLOC expanded its membership, “inviting the entire ecosystem to join [the] community.”  As then CLOC Board President Mary O’Carroll explained in the announcement, “At its simplest, this new community is about pairing diversity of thought with the right solutions to spark conversations to drive transformation of the business of law.”

A fine sentiment. But it is one thing to take money. It is another to make good on the implicit promise of an inclusive community. Yet, having just attended the first in-person CGI since membership was expanded, I am living proof that CLOC was true to their words.

Jae and I had our panel (see Dispatch #3) selected among 212 submissions for the 71 CGI sessions because the CLOC Education Advisory Committee believed the content would be valuable for attendees. It was not pay-to-play because we didn’t pay—small shops, neither Six Parsecs nor LexFusion sponsored CGI.

Jae and I are not alone. Rich Lee, founder and CEO of New Era ADR (The Future of ADR?), remarks, “My team and I were impressed by the array of organizations represented at CLOC—including vendors like ourselves—demonstrating CLOC’s strong follow-through on its mission to expand its community. As a part of this, we’re grateful that CLOC chose New Era ADR to host a panel (“Confessions of General Counsel”) despite us being first-timers and not yet being sponsors. Together is how we continue driving cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and scalability in law departments, and CLOC increasingly demonstrates that it is *the* connective tissue that makes it all happen.”

My co-author, fellow vendor, and member of yet another CGI panel, Corey, agrees, “I was surprised, and so pleased. They looked objectively at the merits of the content in the proposals, and provided a platform to the industry experts regardless of their current roles. The respect for expertise wherever it resides is a testament to how CLOC has grown as an organization.” Corey knows of what she speaks—before being a vendor, she led legal operations at FLEX and was a founder of CLOC.

Eric Laughlin, CEO of CLM company Agiloft, concurs, “CLOC is unique in that it is a community where providers and legal ops professionals can be equal conversation partners. That is on display at CGI 2022.”

The commitment to fostering an inclusive community extends beyond speaking opportunities. Basha Rubin, founder and CEO of legal marketplace Priori, is a member of the new CLOC Education Advisory Committee, which launched in December. Rubin explains the benefits of CLOC’s ecosystem focus from a vendor perspective, “Being part of the CLOC ecosystem has benefited Priori in myriad ways — from allowing us to collaborate with clients on our product roadmap, to learning more about the pain points and priorities of legal operations leaders to shape the future direction of the company and building partnerships with vendors and law firms to create more comprehensive and collaborative solutions.”

Partnership is mission critical. Indeed, Rubin’s Priori co-founder, Mirra Levitt, moderated a CGI panel—“It Takes a Data Ecosystem: Deepening In-house & Outside Counsel Partnerships”—that was so well received it garnered a punk rock shout out from the main stage during the day’s closing session from Netflix’s Jenn McCarron, who celebrated the “woman founded” company (McCarron was accurately described elsewhere as “dynamite with a laser beam”). The Priori panel comprised Andrea Kochensparger (fmr. Zimmer Biomet), Farrah Pepper (Marsh McLennan), An Trotter (Hearst), and Wendy Butler Curtis (Orrick).

Curtis’s participation is a great reminder that vendors, of course, are not the only ones welcome to the more inclusive party. Orrick’s Chief Innovation Officer, Curtis observes, “CGI is accelerating innovation by creating community.” Or, in the words of our own geek, Toby Brown, Chief Practice Management Officer of Perkins Coie, “It’s good to see CLOC working to be more collaborative with their outside counsel. It is through these partnerships we will find ways to develop win-win solutions.”

As much I like winning, and win-wins, I will stick with the Curtis characterization. Community is the key takeaway. And if some of us can get off our high horse [raises hand sheepishly], there is so much to be accomplished addressing our collective challenges together—because we certainly can’t do it alone. After some involuntary time to reflect, community was, for me, the story of CGI 2022. I’m already looking forward to adding another chapter at CGI 2023.

We all know that it takes some “outside of the box thinking” to help improve the legal system in the United States, especially when it comes to Pro Se litigants. Courtroom5 CEO and co-founder Sonja Ebron does exactly that with her startup focused on guiding Pro Se litigants through complex court processes. Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of Fastcase wants the legal industry to stop trying so hard to reinforce that “box.” Together, Ebron and Walters are creating a process to help litigants access and navigate the court system through a combination of case process instructions, legal information, Artificial Intelligence, and collaboration with legal professionals. Eventually, Ebron would like to see the courts themselves leverage Courtroom5’s abilities to help those seeking legal recourse.

Walters stresses that the “North Star” of legal practice should be the wellbeing of clients. In a system where according to The World Justice Project, over 75% of legal needs go unmet, and some 80% of citizens seeking judicial action do so without the use of legal professionals. Part of that solution lies with the courts and the need to focus on the ability “to filter out people who need lawyers helping people who don’t.”

Once again, this is not about replacing lawyers with robots, or encouraging Pro Se litigants to not seek legal assistance. Courtroom5 and Fastcase are seeking ways to improve the overall process of placing the right information in front of litigants, at the right time. Even if those instructions are to highly recommend seeking legal counsel.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Links Mention:

• Courtroom5
• Fastcase
• Ed Walters on Stephen Poor’s Pioneers and Pathfinders Podcast
• TGIR Ep. 158 with Maya Markovich and Yousef Kassim on The Justice Technology Association
• Duke Law Tech Lab

Marlene Gebauer 0:23
Welcome to The Geek in Review podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:30
And I’m Greg Lambert.

Marlene Gebauer 0:31
We have a great show lined up this week with Ed Walters from Fastcase and Sonja Ebron. From Courtroom5 discussing their collaboration to help people gain access to the court system here in the US.

Greg Lambert 0:42
Ed’s been a longtime proponent of democratizing the law, as he puts it, and Sonja Ebron is an engineering professor who, you know, she just leveraged her own terrible experience in trying to navigate the legal system into a product that made it much easier for everyone else.

Marlene Gebauer 0:59
Sonja is also one of the founders of the Justice Technology Association. So if you haven’t listened to the episode from a couple weeks ago with Maya Markovich, and Yousef Kassim, let me recommend that to you.

Greg Lambert 1:10
Yeah, definitely, definitely one to listen to. Well, Marlene, congratulations. I know this week, you have the the 2022 Women of Legal Tech event and from the ABA on Wednesday of this week, so congrats on that. How is your speech coming?

Marlene Gebauer 1:27
I’m working on it right now. You know, it’s like always gotta be right on deadline. So it’s, I’m feeling pretty good about it. And I’m very excited to attend this session. There’s like, there’s a great lineup of speakers. And, you know, the the honorees this year are absolutely, in fact, fantastic. You know, many of whom have been on the

Greg Lambert 1:48
podcast. Yep. And many who will be on the podcast. That’s right.

Marlene Gebauer 1:52
If we haven’t gotten you, we’re gonna get to you. Absolutely. So you know, you and I have been a little swamped at our day jobs this week. So a little bit. So we decided to skip out on the information inspirations this week, and just jump into our interview with Ed and Sonja. Hopefully, we’ll have a little time to catch our breath over the holiday weekend and have something for you all next week. In fact, tweet us any inspirations that you might have. We’d love to hear from the audience.

Greg Lambert 2:21
Yes, I’d love it when somebody else does my job for me.

Marlene Gebauer 2:25
Well, you know, we want to be able to talk to people about things that are interesting to them. So if you find something, absolutely send it along.

Greg Lambert 2:35
We’d like to welcome Dr. Sonja Ebron, CEO and co founder of Courtroom5 and welcome back, our friend Ed Walters, CEO and co founder at Fastcase, Sonja and Ed, we’re very excited to have you here on The Geek in Review.

Sonja Ebron 2:50
Thanks so much. Great to be here.

Ed Walters 2:52
Thanks for having us.

Marlene Gebauer 2:53
We’ve brought you both on to talk about the Courtroom5/Fastcase collaboration. listeners may have heard Sonja’s name a couple of weeks ago when we had Yousef Kassim and Maya Markovich, on the show to talk about the Justice Technology Association, and Sonja’s work in creating JTA. Before we jump into the collaboration with Ed, Sonja, would you mind telling us a bit about your background, and we all want to know why someone with a PhD in Engineering is so interested in he lping out the legal industry, we figured you’d be like running away.

Sonja Ebron 3:22
Thanks Marlene. I’m interested in improving access to the legal industry, which I think obviously helps the industry but you know, I want to need it that access is the reason that I’m interested here. Education doesn’t always equal wealth. I’m happy to have college degrees. But it doesn’t always go with strong finances. And people without wealth, as we all know, often get caught up in the legal system. I got sued, I was a college professor at the time, I had a great income. And I went to a lawyer to get some representation, I quickly found out I couldn’t afford it. And what that meant for me is that I had to represent myself, and didn’t really get a fair hearing in court. I felt that we deserve better as a society and to treat our citizens like that. And I wanted to want it to help fix it up. But that’s essentially how I got into the legal industry as a user of it. I don’t have any other legal training than that.

Greg Lambert 4:21
I don’t think truer words have ever been spoken, then I shouldn’t have been treated like this by the court system. So the idea behind Courtroom5, dug in a little bit this week in prep for, it is really interesting, because you’re doing a lot of what I think we’re trying to teach our lawyers to do and that is a lot of the process that’s involved understanding the language, understanding what needs to be done and what doesn’t need to be done, and how those inefficiencies can cause more problems down the line. So can you give us like a 30,000 foot view of what the typical customer is for Courtroom5 and how it is that you help them as a pro se litigant?

Sonja Ebron 5:11
So we decided to focus on the tougher civil claims. We don’t do traffic tickets or the summary procedures, small claims, that sort of stuff. We’ve got folks handling their own foreclosure cases, personal injury cases, medical malpractice, it’s all over the board.

Greg Lambert 5:27
So you went big,

Sonja Ebron 5:28
And we went big, we’ve been, you know, it was there are other folks doing those so called simpler cases, you can find places to get help with your traffic ticket and so forth. But um, I like innovation. I like doing things that haven’t been done. So we did, we decided to focus on the tougher cases. But when you’re representing yourself in those cases, you all know, it isn’t Judge Judy’s court. You’re going to file hundreds sometimes of highly technical legal documents, before the facts even began to matter. And when you’re when you’re doing that on your own, without any legal training, at each step, you essentially have two big questions. One, what do I file right now? And secondly, how can I make that filing persuasive? So I can get to the next step in the case, right. And so we have essentially distilled, highly technical legal procedures into a five step process for every filing to make sure that you’re presenting to the court the most persuasive argument you can do. I can spend hours on this, I won’t take our time that way. But essentially, that’s it.

Marlene Gebauer 6:34
I got a follow up on the one thing you mentioned, because you were talking about they do their own personal injury and med mal cases. And I’m just fascinated by that. Because I mean, a lot of that those are those can be very complex cases. I mean, you have a lot of medical records, you know, usually expert testimony is kind of a key feature of those of those things. How does that work?

Sonja Ebron 6:53
Yeah, it is tough. So our focus is on civil procedure is on making sure people know what their options are at any particular time. And then what law matters at each step, right? Where we stand now, we’re not able to get people experts, but we can help them understand when those experts are needed, and what kinds of expertise are needed. And they can go out on the on the public market and find that expertise. So yeah, that’s but it’s on understanding, you know, if you’re at the beginning of a case, it’s not the best time to be thinking about admissibility of evidence, you can get into that a little bit later. If you’re on the eve of trial, you know, trying to get the case dismissed. I mean, that horses left the barn, right. And so we started just trying to focus help people focus on what’s in front of them, and doing a good job there. So they understand the standards, they make good decisions about what to do at any particular time.

Marlene Gebauer 7:50
This is great, because you’re laying out the steps for people, it’s like, okay, this, then this, then this, then this, because I think it can be very overwhelming otherwise.

Sonja Ebron 7:57
That’s what we found. I mean, our folks, our customers come to us overwhelmed, just don’t have a clue what to do at any particular time. And so our focus is on getting them a sense of comfort, just in time education. So they can, again, just focus on what’s in front of them.

Greg Lambert 8:14
One of the five steps is actually interacting with your AI tool, which you’ve named Sylvia. Can you tell us a little bit about about Silvia and what she does?

Sonja Ebron 8:23
A little bit I can tell you, her primary job is to help people is to track a user’s case, just to help people to understand what their options are reasonable options are at that time, we have to be careful about that, for good reasons. We don’t want to we don’t practice law, we can’t offer advice. But we can help people just understand the lay of the land again at each step. And so that’s our primary job is just to track where people are in their case, and point them to appropriate information and training, often video based training that we’ve developed on our website. Her other roles, though, because she is really really popular is to do some of the superficial customer support. All right. So if somebody wants to find out where do I find out about summary judgment, she can point the user to the resources we have available if somebody wants to understand the discovery process in general, she can point people to to that information. She can also point folks to a contact us form, right if they need some customer support, that sort of thing. So she is taking up more and more of our work every day.

Marlene Gebauer 9:33
All right, well, why Sylvia?

Sonja Ebron 9:35
I have no idea I didn’t pick that name.

Greg Lambert 9:40
Someone in marketing got that one.

Sonja Ebron 9:43
I’m lucky I don’t have to make all the decisions these days. So but I like it. It works. It works for our customers as well. So

Greg Lambert 9:52
well, Ed, I promise we’ll get to you here in a second. But Sonja is what what you’re doing super fascinating and there’s I know that you, you know, lawyers aren’t completely scripted out of out of this process that you do have law firms that are partners with Courtroom5, at least as far as I could tell. How is it that you interact with the legal profession as well as just helping process?

Sonja Ebron 10:22
Well, so you know, in most of the cases that I’ve personally been involved in, and other folks on my team who represented themselves, and we hear from our customers all the time, we all really do want access to lawyers, right? These are experts in the in the litigation process, we don’t want to none of us wants to do this on our own. A big challenge for most Americans, and we just simply can’t afford full representation. And so we’ve long seen limited scope services as a way to close the justice gap. But you can’t walk into a lawyer’s office, generally, with your personal injury case or your foreclosure and say, I want limited scope services. Because you don’t know how to task that lawyer, you don’t speak the lingo don’t, you know, you don’t, you just don’t know how to use those sorts of services. And so what we found is that most of the limited scope services available are really pay as you go services where the lawyer still does all the work, you just, you know, pay for it as you go. And if you can’t afford a lawyer, you can’t afford it on pay as you go either. So we see lots of refugees from that model, who have, frankly, been dumped in the middle of their cases, and just have no no clue where to take it from there. And so what we understood long ago is that technology and education, the sort we provide at Courtroom5, could help people could help prepare people to use lawyers and, you know, in that limited scope way. And so that’s essentially where we are now we think we’ve got the tech where it needs to be, we’ve gotten great feedback from our, from our customers. And we are now, thanks to Ed, in Fastcase able to bring lawyers onto our platform, and to take care of a lot of the administrative burden for them and providing limited scope services. So I’m happy to share more about that. But we aren’t working with law firms directly yet there are some in our pipeline, there’s a short onboarding process requires verifying that you’re actually a lawyer, setting up a payment system so that our customers can pay them outright. So we don’t get into regulatory trouble there. And some other things. So we’ve got folks in the pipeline, but we’ve got some customers ready to use them as we speak.

Marlene Gebauer 12:41
Is there a feedback system for your customers in terms of who they they end up going with? I mean, do you guys get that information in terms of whether they felt the experience was a good one?

Sonja Ebron 12:52
We will do that, sort of under the hood to start and then develop a more robust public or, you know, reviewing system, but we aren’t doing that initially, we’ve got some, the difficulty of being in a regulated environment, as you might understand is you have to do all of these things carefully, deliberately. And so we’re going to study it a little bit first .

Marlene Gebauer 13:14
Got it, got it.

Greg Lambert 13:15
One of the examples that I use a lot is what the Travis County system is doing here in Texas, and that is they actually have a before you as a pro se litigant before you can actually appear before the court you have to get what they call the the golden ticket on certain matters, which basically there’s a self help center that you have to go to that kind of does a little bit of the process to make sure that things are in the right order. Any plans on down the road for Courtroom5 to work with courts directly to help them with their pro se litigants?

Sonja Ebron 13:57
No question about it. I mean, I think in an ideal world courts would be offering a Courtroom5 to their constituents for millions of Americans.

Greg Lambert 14:07
I think we found the problem.

Sonja Ebron 14:08
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think we found a solution. So it’s a question of getting some buy in from the courts. We’ve got a lot to demonstrate to them. And we expect to do that over the next short period of time.

Marlene Gebauer 14:23
Okay, Sonja, we’ve taken up a lot of your time. So it’s your turn now. Welcome back. I know you have a passion for public access to legal information. What prompted you to work with Sonja and her co founder Deborah Sloan on this project to provide unbundled legal services to self represented litigants?

Ed Walters 14:40
Well, that’s really easy. I mean, Fastcase’s mission from the very start has been to democratize the law to make sure more people have meaningful access to the law. And as a kind of legal database provider, there’s some things we can do, but there’s a lot that we can’t do. And so we’re super proud to accelerate Courtroom5 work here to kind of bridge that gap. The legal services market is still pretty broken. Even after many years of people pushing against the Access to Justice Movement. The World Justice Project says 77% of legal needs, legal needs are unmet. If you look back to the 2014, ABA, American Bar Foundation survey, they said that it was something like 80% of people with legal problems, don’t address them with the help of a lawyer. And it’s common knowledge that people’s outcomes are much worse. If they go it alone without the help of a lawyer, it doesn’t need to be the case. It’s not every matter that is going to require a lawyer or every step in a matter that requires the help of a lawyer. And so if we can just bring the legal services market a little closer to people who need that help, and frankly, it will create some more work for people in you know, who are lawyers who could use some more business. If we can just bridge that gap a little bit, then it creates market opportunities for the legal profession, and better outcomes for people who need help. It seems like wins all around. So this is really easy for us if we can just help accelerate Sonja’s work at Courtroom5. We’re thrilled to do that.

Greg Lambert 14:41
Ed, what do you think are some of the barriers that are set up to that kind of get in the way of helping people actually access justice?

Ed Walters 16:40
Well, you know, I want to start where you started, Greg, which is in courts. You know, I don’t I don’t think that courts are really set up to filter out people who need lawyers helping people who don’t. And if we can make processes just a little bit simpler, it would help a lot of people to work their way through the courts. It might not replace lawyers, I don’t think that’s even a goal we should have. But I do think it would make it easier for people who aren’t represented to navigate that system, it doesn’t need to be as complex as it is. So there’s a lot of kind of barriers in judicial procedure, in its inscrutability, and its lack of comprehensive guides that people can understand. So I think that would make a huge difference in the process. And then I think, as Sonja was saying before, there is this kind of all or nothing idea about representation. People either are represented by a lawyer from the very beginning of a process to the very end of a process, which is enormously expensive. Or they’re completely unrepresented, where they are effectively thrown to the wolves, and left to try and fend for themselves in a complex, difficult process. And so I think what what Courtroom5 is saying is that there are places where people can probably go it alone, with just a little bit of guidance, and some assistance. And then places where maybe they might use the help of a lawyer productively. And I hope that’s kind of expands the market for legal services so that lawyers can be expert guides. Even in a world that isn’t all or nothing.

Marlene Gebauer 18:24
Sonja, I know you’ve participated in a Duke law tech lab plus the LexisNexis accelerator. And I think you’re currently involved with Josh Blandi and Unicourt’s legal innovation contest. So it sounds it sounds like you enjoy competing. As a self proclaimed Jane of All Trades, what motivates you when it comes to these types of innovation challenges?

Sonja Ebron 18:46
Oh, I love competing. You’re absolutely right. I love to win. And let me just say the follow up on Ed, you know, we had a number of opportunities to bring this solution to bear and we’ve had inbound for four years, we’ve been working on this solution in public and I really wanted to work with Fastcase There’s not a better group of people to work with. Ed, Bill. Christina, Jack, you know, Joe Fassbender had been just wonderful. The engineering team. I mean, everybody has been fantastic. there and it just couldn’t have worked out I think any better for us. But that’s the you know, I’m old enough to know, you just don’t want to work with people you don’t like. Right. And so we were lucky enough to have a choice of organizations to work with, and are just really so glad that Fastcase came on board with us. This kind of innovation, I think is to Ed’s point is I think going to shape the industry is going to have some significant impact on the Access to Justice problem. And for me, it’s just a win all the way around. So it’s not always competitive. It’s just about winning and getting partners that you can bring to a successful outcome here. I guess I am a Jane of all trades. That’s, that’s fair, I don’t do anything in particular Well, I’ve tried to focus on learning, I’ve always just had a great love for learning. I stayed in college way too long, because I love learning. But I’m also a problem solver. I like tackling big problems. And so the Access to Justice crisis was like a bouncing red ball. For me, I couldn’t resist it once I sort of understood it, and in fact, was impacted by it. And so again, it’s a huge problem that I wanted to tackle. Ultimately, like most people, I just want to make things better, I look for ways to make anything better. And so once we had a sense that there was a solution, inside of Courtroom5, it’s just been, I mean, I’d spend 25 hours a day on this, if I could.

Greg Lambert 20:57
Well, I want to get back Sonja to the topic of you, being someone from outside the typical legal industry profession, because we talk a lot with people like Marlene and myself who have gone through law school may have taken a different path, or people that have worked in the legal industry. And it sounds like you had a bad experience that motivated you to find a solution. And that just happened that bad experience just happened to be a legal industry bad experience. So what would you suggest to people who are are not legal professionals, but want to make a difference when it comes to issues that they see in the legal industry? Especially when it comes to things like access to justice or improving delivery of legal services? How would you suggest that they go about go about it?

Sonja Ebron 21:51
I think, well, let me. Let me give you some more background. I am an electrical engineer, I studied utilities, in school, transformers, power lines, that sort of stuff. And this is actually Courtroom5 is actually my third entrepreneurial adventure. Yes,

Greg Lambert 22:10
We can use you for the power system here in Texas, definitely,

Marlene Gebauer 22:14
Definitely. Come help us.

Sonja Ebron 22:18
Well, you know, my first two companies, my first two startups were in the utility space. And I call them great learning experiences I made, you know, 50 cents, probably from each of them, ultimately, but but it as it turned out, I thought I knew more than I did. Because I’d been educated in that space. And so what I’d say to somebody outside the legal industry who’s looking to deliver a solution in it, and I’ll be happy and proud about that, maintain that child’s curiosity about the space, you don’t know anything. And so the questions are what matter most in these sorts of startups. So I’m really happy that I’m not a lawyer, I think it would have been much more difficult for me, and everyone on my team to deliver these solutions. If we’ve had any sort of legal training, right, we needed to think outside the box. And that’s what we’ve done. It’s really difficult when you’re in the box to do that. So So I would encourage anyone outside the legal space who’s looking at working in the space, just to remain curious, take pride in your lack of knowledge. Although you always want to be learning, right, you will have the best questions available. But it’s important to look at these problems, as though you know nothing and look for answers to your questions that you could explain to a six year old.

Greg Lambert 23:45
I love that. So Ed, what what can we as legal professionals do to help these allied professionals help us?

Ed Walters 23:56
Well, while people are trying to think outside the box, we could stop reinforcing the box.

Greg Lambert 24:02
Titanium box.

Ed Walters 24:04
I feel like we keep making the box more resilient. And that might not be the best approach. Yeah, I think that the North Star for us should be consumers of legal services. It should be clients and, you know, not just clients who are traditionally served. So people who are going through this process should be our North Star as a profession. All of the rules of ethics are kind of created to protect clients, even rules about you know, kind of the unauthorized practice of law are designed in their kind of core to protect clients. And so I would just say we should keep the well being of clients in the center of our profession. And I want to I can’t say this emphatically enough, not just the clients we’re currently serving. You can’t have an ethical practice of law, if the only people we can ethically serve are 20%. It’s not ethical to reinforce a system that only protects the very wealthy few, or the very risk averse few. And so we should be thinking about the well being of clients, as we do, you know, in our ethics rules, but we should be engaged in system thinking about it. How can we get more clients served in the process? How can we do that without, you know, relying on pro bono work or charity worked by lawyers, here and there, to kind of step outside of this box that we’ve created? And that’s, that’s the key for me, how can we protect clients in a system that is designed to process the Justice needs of clients? And see ourselves as guides in that process, and not the beneficiaries of the process, legal processes is set up to protect lawyers, it’s set up to help clients with their needs.

Sonja Ebron 26:05
I want to absolutely pick up on on what Ed said about being available having legal industry available to the larger number of potential clients, the Legal Services Corporation released their justice gap report, just a couple of weeks back. And one of the startling statistics there, beyond the fact that the justice gap is widening, is that there are a large number of people who experience legal problems in their lives and don’t even realize that the solutions are legal. That those issues can be resolved in the courts. And so right now, as Ed said, we’re serving about 20% of the existing client base. But those are folks who know they have a legal problem, the actual number of people that the courts can impact is multiples of that. And so we’ve really got to make our courts our justice system available for its purpose, and reach those massive number of people who should be relying on the courts to to resolve their issues and not on the streets as we’re seeing it these days. To that point, then JTA, the Justice Technology Association, I’m just so happy and proud to be a part of it. And it really appreciate you have in Maya and Yousef on a couple of weeks back. And the shout outs to me personally, but this is really a group effort is that Camilla Lopez as well from PeopleClerk, Erin Levine, very well known at HelloDivorce, I would just give a shout out to the Duke Law Tech Lab, which you also mentioned a few moments ago, because we all met there, or through the Duke LawTech Lab, we’re all graduates that I met that we met Maya, as one of the advisors they’re also met Ed there’s one of the advisors and so Duke law has just really been a become something of a fulcrum in the Justice tech space, really happy to be associated with them and to have them here in Durham. The Justice Technology Association is a trade organization for the growing number of technology solutions that are trying to have an impact on this access to justice gap, I think we all realize, again, that there just aren’t going to ever be enough lawyers for the massive access needs for you know, for the court to help people access the courts. And so technology, as Maya said in that wonderful interview with you all is going to have to be a part of the solution. And what we’re seeing is, again, a growing number of companies, innovators, bringing technology solutions to various parts of this problem, just really excited at the members that we’ve already brought on, we’ve got a couple of dozen now and more in the pipeline, and so expecting to have some voice in the regulatory space in the consumer protection, space. And just all of us collectively being able to close that that justice gap.

Marlene Gebauer 29:07
So we’re now at the crystal ball question of the show. Sonja, would you peer into your crystal ball for us and tell us what you see the next five or so years for the legal service industry?

Sonja Ebron 29:17
Great, great question. You know, I am really happy about the growth and development of the Justice tech space. I think that we are going to have some impact on closing the justice gap. As I mentioned earlier, my vision and I tend to do what I say I’m going to do and I’ve made a commitment to having an impact have to have in Courtroom5, I have an impact on this space. I’d like to see more people having confidence in our justice system, relying on our justice system with a sense that they’re going to have a fair at least hearing not necessarily a favorable outcome but they will at least have some confidence they will be heard in court. And I think technology solutions that I and other people are bringing to bear will have some significant impact on that.

Greg Lambert 30:10
And Ed, besides five more Fastcase50 winners, what do you see say in the next five years or so for the legal industry?

Ed Walters 30:20
My crystal ball is showing me this summer. Greg, you wearing an LSU blazer to the American Association of Law Library’s annual meeting.

Greg Lambert 30:33
Well, I think that’s one thing that will definitely come true.

Ed Walters 30:39
Beyond that, it gets hazier. For those of you who don’t know, Greg, and I had like a little side bet on the LSU, Oklahoma national championship play in in 2019.

Greg Lambert 30:54
I’ve been able to postpone it for two years. But I’m afraid the bill is come due on on a very poor decision on my part to bet on OU.

Ed Walters 31:08
One of the things that I can sort of see beyond that, beyond you’re wearing the LSU blazer is that I hope that we can use kind of data about court outcomes, to take some of the risk out of litigation for clients. That doesn’t just mean like kind of fancy corporate clients, it means clients of all kinds. One of the big problems with the justice gap is that engaging in our legal system is really risky. It’s expensive. If you lose a lawyer, it’s expensive to go through a process that you don’t understand by yourself. And, you know, one of the things we’re trying to do with Fastcase to aggregate a lot of legal data, not just judicial opinions. But now with Docket Alarm, like a lot of the kind of machinations that lead up to the trial, the pleadings and motions practice, so that people can better understand what’s likely to happen, they can understand the steps, they can understand, who often wins or loses at various stages of the process, and to have a better understanding going in what’s likely to happen going out. Today, all of the risk in these kinds of litigation matters is on clients. And when a law firm says we’re going to file this motion, there’s never an answer to the question, are we going to win that motion? Does it make sense to file that motion? What comes next? But I think in the future, the more we’re able to extract from the data, the more we’re able to understand about that process in a kind of a big data way, the less the less risk there is on clients. And the more people I hope will participate in the legal services market, and hopefully with the help of guides from Courtroom5, and lawyers and limited scope, but also with the assistance of data and better maps of the process.

Sonja Ebron 33:01
I should add that part of our partnership is access to Fastcase’s data. And so we are able to put just a wealth of data that some of some of which Ed mentioned into the hands of pro se litigants, which is extremely powerful for them.

Greg Lambert 33:18
That does sound exciting. And I’m telling you when I when I was investigating what Courtroom5 was all about. I’m just I’m just kind of bowled over by what you’re doing. It’s it’s something I think actually will make a difference. When when people are trying to access justice and get get like you said a fair outcome.

Sonja Ebron 33:40
Thank you for that, Greg. Appreciate it.

Marlene Gebauer 33:42
So Dr. Sonja Ebron and Ed Walters, we thank you for taking the time to talk with us about the Courtroom5/Fastcase collaboration.

Sonja Ebron 33:49
Really great to be here.

Ed Walters 33:50
Thanks for having us.

Greg Lambert 33:57
Again, and if you… I was gonna say I was really excited because as I dug deeper into what Courtroom5 was doing, because I saw the big announcement with Ed and Sonja on the collaboration. And I was thinking one thing but then when I got into looking at the site and what it’s doing, it’s like wow, this house How have we not figured this out before? And apparently it’s because we need an engineer.

Marlene Gebauer 34:27
Well, I mean, there were a couple of things that I thought were really cool about this. I mean, first of all, they’re giving you direction every step of the way, like okay, you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this and then you do this and you know this direction

Greg Lambert 34:41
It’s direction on process is not right. It’s not legal instruction, correct. It’s step by steps of what what needs to be done. But

Marlene Gebauer 34:50
but if you need that legal instruction, it’s this is gonna let you know it’s like you do you know, this is where you’re going to need somebody here are some people or you know, look We were talking about this is where you will need an expert. You know, here’s where you can go to find those things. The other thing that I really thought was was fascinating again, I was I was telling our guests before that I don’t, I don’t know that any I don’t know of any place else that’s doing it like this is that the idea of breaking it down to these steps where you can do XY and Z yourself. But then A, B, and C, you’re going to need some legal help on that. And so So basically, it’s you don’t need an attorney for everything. And I don’t I don’t know if that’s going to be threatening to people, well, to attorneys, not to people, but if that’s gonna be threatening to attorneys, or if that’s going to be welcome, because you’re dealing with a lot of the stuff that, you know, can be handled with without legal expertise, and allows you to kind of focus more on doing the legal work. I just don’t know how they’re going to see it, like if they’re going to see this as enhancing their work or is work being taken away.

Greg Lambert 36:01
Yeah, well, I think we can probably both guess. Initially,

Marlene Gebauer 36:06
I was like, I mean, is anybody even doing the work? So I mean, if no one’s doing the work, then then no harm no foul. So

Greg Lambert 36:12
I don’t think that, you know, the there is, as our guest last week, Zach had said on his crystal ball question from legal week, you know, there’s almost an infinite capacity that’s out there, and demand is not going to go down. There’s, there’s so many, you know, it’s like 80% of the market is not being served.

Marlene Gebauer 36:38
And factions, more people. Yeah.

Greg Lambert 36:41
So, obviously, the business model right now is, you know, at least if you’re pro se or yours, Sonja, who’s a professor, and still can’t afford legal, you know, legal services, which is something that we really don’t talk about enough is, you know, it’s not just someone who is at a minimum wage job. It’s middle class, America can’t afford this. And so any, any type of process improvement, any type of technology that can streamline the process, make it more efficient. And outline, here’s the steps that you need to take. There’s it’s going to be winners across the board.

Marlene Gebauer 37:25
Yep, I agree. Well,

Greg Lambert 37:27
So thanks again to Dr. Sonja Ebron. And Ed Walters, from Courtroom5 and Fastcase collaboration for coming back on the show. And, and of course, Thanks, Ed for pointing out that I had to wear that gaudy purple and gold LSU jacket. But you know, I made a bad bet.

Marlene Gebauer 37:49
It happened sometimes. And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter.

Greg Lambert 38:02
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 38:07
Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you Jerry.

Greg Lambert 38:17
Thank you Mr. DeCicca. Marlene, I will talk to you later.

Marlene Gebauer 38:21
Bye Greg.

When three legal innovators gather together in their town of Houston, the topic drifts toward the interesting innovation and creativity hubs happening around the city. Both inside and outside of law firms. In a special “after-hours” episode of The Geek in Review, we talk with Norton Rose Fulbright US’ Head of Innovation, Zack Barnes. The conversation is a diverse as the city. We talk about the The Ion innovation epicenter and Zack’s interest in how these types of innovation hubs can use help from the law firms within the city to help guide entrepreneurs in the early stages. 

• @NRFUSZack (InnovLegal Zack)
• The Ion
• Rice University Data to Knowledge Lab
• Cup of Joey
• St. Arnold
• Karbach 
• Spindle Tap
• 11 Below
• Eureka Heights
• Texas Leaguer 
• Brash Brewing
• Southern Star

Marlene Gebauer 0:38
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer, it’s after hours, I’m drinking and Oso Bueno from 11 Below Brewery.

Greg Lambert 0:49
And I’m Greg Lambert. And as you can tell we’re, we’re starting off a little different this week, we’re actually going to do kind of like quasi live production here, at least a straight through. And I am drinking a Karbach Rodeo Clown. I’ve only had one sip. It’s an imperial tropical IPA. They just literally came out today. But it’s also 9%.

Marlene Gebauer 1:17
Tropical flavors.

Greg Lambert 1:19
And it’s a Tallboy. Karbach is here in Houston, former independent now owned by Anheuser Busch. And today we’re going to be joined by Zack Barnes. Zack, what are you drinking?

Zack Barnes 1:35
I’m drinking a Spindled Tap Houston Haze IPA. It’s got the nice purple color too. You know, reference reference, reference the drank I think the lean, whatever the kids call it these days.

Greg Lambert 1:46
Purple drank. I’m sad, sad. I know that.

Marlene Gebauer 1:50
I like this one. I’m showing everybody this this beer can it’s like I like this. This Oso Bueno, because it’s a picture of a bear on it. And it looks like he’s like a USSR wrestler.

Greg Lambert 2:00
So we like I said, we have Zack Barnes, Head of Innovation US at Norton rose Fulbright to the podcast. And Zack we had you on as one of our LegalWeek crystal ball questions. Hopefully you didn’t burn out on that? Because we’re going to ask you the same question at the end of this. So we’ll see if you give us a different answer this time around.

Marlene Gebauer 2:23
Has it changed in like a month?

Zack Barnes 2:27
No, not really.

Marlene Gebauer 2:29
So Zack, tell us a little bit about your journey to your current role.

Zack Barnes 2:34
Sure, if we go all the way back

Marlene Gebauer 2:35
All the way back to the beginning.

Zack Barnes 2:37
All the way back to the beginning. In grad school, I was really quick got sick of the politics of academia. I gotten some grants, and was like, great, I’ve got this money. Let me let me show you what I can do. And they start fighting over. I’m like, forget it, I will just go start my own company. So there’s a Texas engineering and entrepreneurial society back then. Now it’s called something else like Texas startups or whatever, at UT Austin. Joined that we formed a team, we entered the idea to product challenge and shocked ourselves and finished second, like, oh, well, we’ve got an idea. So we went to the business plan competition, we’ve won. We’re like, oh, wait, we’re good at this. And somewhere in there. We’ve gotten a little bit of attention from an investor. So we give some money. We went off and tried to start a company. Ran into something called intellectual property along the way. I didn’t know what a patent was back then. I thought I just had a cool idea. And we’d license some patents from somebody else. So we’ve got the world beater patio door, and totally not the way it happened. So we sort of exited that, gave over IP, gave all our cool trade secrets, to turns out to Waste Management. And I went to work for an intellectual property law firm here in Houston, Conley Rose, to learn why I was in, my mind screwed out of my millions of dollars and fame and fortune. Again, this was before the whole entrepreneurship and like startup craze that we now see all over the place. So it was a little different back then. Yeah, learned a little bit about IP. But after working there for awhile, I was much better at connecting my clients than I wasn’t writing patents. And I’m sure everyone at Conley Rose will they hear this will totally agree with that. So I went to work for Halliburton. I spent seven years there, where I started out as a patent liaison, managing a patent portfolio. But because I was really good at scouting and identifying opportunities, I had helped build out what became the Technology Scouting and Venturing Program where we went out and found startups and new tech that we could bring into our r&d processes to accelerate things. As the pandemic hit, reassigned a whole bunch. That scouting and venturing thing got called my hobby, I was told to basically go be an accountant.

Greg Lambert 4:40
Now get a real job.

Zack Barnes 4:41
That’s just your hobby. You’re doing that for fun and like but we like we’re profiting we’re doing well with it. And so like your name is just giant portfolio which is like okay, it’s still just two days in my life because I put it in my spreadsheet and the spreadsheet tells me what I need to do. Come back and advise business and that’s about it and the rest of its just running around pushing for new ideas. Getting ideas in the pipeline, but still doesn’t take up much my week. So we’re looking for a new job. And I wanted to sort of build something again. And I found there was a senior manager Head of Innovation for Norton rose Fulbright. It’s like, well, at this point in time, I’ve been working with lawyers for like 1820 years, might as well go for it happened. I know a couple people at Norton rose Fulbright, Brian Fenske is the head of corporate. So I messaged him. And he’s like, I haven’t heard of this position. But here’s how you talk to. Several months of interviews and actual presentations and stuff later, I got the job. I was happy to leave the oilfield, believe it or not at that point in time, because I think it was negative $37 oil.

Marlene Gebauer 5:38
A little bit different than now. Yeah.

Zack Barnes 5:41
Well, I mean, stay on stable geopolitics, whatever. Yeah, came over. And first thing is sort of take your assessment of what’s going on and then start building from there. That’s where we’re at.

Greg Lambert 5:50
And just to clarify, you’re, you’re an engineer, not a lawyer.

Zack Barnes 5:53
I’m not even an engineer. I’m a chemist.

Zack Barnes 5:55
A chemist?

Zack Barnes 5:56
I have a genetics degree, molecular biology, and then plant biology, bio nano material. So none of this lawyer know engineering.

Greg Lambert 6:06
What were you originally planning to do with that degree with those degrees?

Zack Barnes 6:10
I went to college to be a mountain bike racer. Really. That was UT, University of Texas at that time, like that was late 90. So Lance Armstrong was big mountain bike cross country was big. There’s something called the National Off Road Bicycle Association, NORBA. Joined that, like those were the days when there’s lots of money in mountain bike racing. So I got paid to ride ride bikes a little bit, which was a bad, I was not a great student till later, because I didn’t have to be. So whatever.

Zack Barnes 6:43
We all come into our own eventually.

Marlene Gebauer 6:46
But I will have to talk offline, but I like trails. Yeah,

Zack Barnes 6:50
I still ride bikes. I just don’t race them anymore. I was good. I was fast. It just wasn’t coordinated. So I’ve broken lots of bones.

Marlene Gebauer 6:56
That’s a problem with mountain biking. Yeah, not so much with road biking. But with mountain biking,

Greg Lambert 7:01
I was going to say, if you’re in a straight line, it’s not bad.

Zack Barnes 7:05
absolutely, it was fine. It’s just the trees and the rocks.

Marlene Gebauer 7:07
Trees.

Greg Lambert 7:12
Well, I mean, you have done both corporate work and worked at the law firm, you’ve done at least two law firms that I’ve counted. What do you find is the is the major difference between your role within a corporation and your role within a firm? And, you know, are there some things that are more important or more challenging in each of those environments?

Zack Barnes 7:36
Yeah, definitely. So small law, mega energy company, big law, it’s been an interesting sort of path there. At small obviously was very family oriented. It was just get your building and get get your time done. Do good work. So that was fine. Because I was a timekeeper. I was writing patents. When I went into Halliburton was working there. A lot of it was the storytelling had to sort of pass on it give to business leadership. So they made the right business decision. That was where it came down to, you know, how does this change in his patent or filing US Patent get us to where we need, what we’re protecting? What company when we find that bring them in? How does this get us to an end product a viable consumer product that we can sell? And so those stories are a little bit different than I think now big law, where it’s okay, what is the value of the client value? How does this enhance stickiness to our clients? How does this help us tell the client where to get to with their business decision? How does it help them clear some risks, and so that storytelling is more I think I saw it recently, like you, the attorney has to be the hero to ride him to save the day for for the company. And I’m gonna give you the magic spear, the magic sword, whatever it is, like, here’s how we do it better. So that’s one side of it. And then the other side of it is

Greg Lambert 8:50
I’m just saying it was the “Lady in the Lake” image with Excalibur.

Zack Barnes 8:55
That was exactly what I was going for. Fantastic. And then the second part of it is also, I’m all about efficiency. And I know that that sort of grates against the billable hour, but mine is I have an idea of how many millions of dollars written off every year. If I can move percentage points of that into the revenue side. That’s a slam dunk. Like it’ll pay for any tech stack changes we have are like that. So and there’s always more work to be done. There’s more companies. I think we were talking about, you know, regulatory changes and how fast they’re coming in areas. There’s scares clients because that makes bad sure business.

Marlene Gebauer 9:33
What do we do?

Zack Barnes 9:34
Right. How do I make the next business decision? And you know,

Greg Lambert 9:37
But law firms love change and uncertainty.

Marlene Gebauer 9:40
Well, that’s good business.

Zack Barnes 9:42
They love it outside of their own environments. But inside their environments, like oh, well, we’ve always done it this way. And y’all have had just much better staff. We’ve always done it this way. This has worked like, Yeah, but it could work better. And here’s how and telling stories is the hard part.

Marlene Gebauer 10:01
So, again, since you’re you’re sort of fresh back into the law firm market, what do you think are the biggest challenges to innovation in firms? You know, what are some of the the do’s and don’ts in terms of making the transition from corporate to legal?

Zack Barnes 10:16
You want the do’s and don’ts in there? I like that.

Marlene Gebauer 10:20
I was thinking about some of our prior conversations, so I threw that in there. Like, what should we do? What shouldn’t we do?

Zack Barnes 10:25
Yeah, it’s, I mean, on one hand, I’d love to say innovation shall always be in R&D, something should always be trying a little bit of something.

Zack Barnes 10:31
Shall be.

Zack Barnes 10:32
Should be? Shall be? But yeah, I don’t think it will ever happen. Not not the way I would envision it. Just because of the conserved nature of it, like, things that don’t work. In corporate worlds I got that didn’t work, great. Pivot, move it. It’s like this part of agile development or whatever. And law firms. I think my experience has been, there’s like, Oh, we’ve invested in, we have to make it work. And so it’s the throwing good money down the hole after bad money. And so I think one of that’s probably one of the don’ts is be willing to pivot. We are smiling, like, yeah, just be willing to pivot like up? Well, that didn’t work and second plans, let’s go try something else. And so that’s one of the I mean, that’s a big challenge of getting that mindset change. And that’s a culture change. So that’s, I think that will be the biggest challenge I’ve seen right now is understanding the market and how it’s changing the legal services market. You’ll get to my crystal ball question, but it’s gonna keep pressure on that. And so clients are gonna want more faster, and more business focus. So that’s really the biggest part. I think the biggest challenge is getting buy in.

Greg Lambert 11:38
Yeah. Do you think that’s due to the kind of the perfectionist nature that law firms have that? It’s like, we laughed that there is no draft brief. There’s, you’re turning in your what you think is the final brief.

Marlene Gebauer 11:53
We’re not allowed to make mistakes.

Greg Lambert 11:55
Yeah. And so you’re not allowed to make mistakes.

Zack Barnes 11:56
The Final draft 1.0 7.9? Correct?

Greg Lambert 11:59
Yes.

Zack Barnes 12:01
Right. I totally understand that. Yeah, it’s, yeah, that’s exactly there’s a large part of the like, we’re experts in this, we should know what we’re doing. We don’t need to evade or redirect this. We’ve got this we’re gonna go down that path. And again, I’m painting with a broad brush. It’s not every attorney. There’s there’s definitely folks that get it a different way and want to practice that way. But, but it’s, yeah, I want to bring the best. I want to know everything about it before I present the solution to the client. And sometimes, like, just bring me, and I’ll explain it.

Greg Lambert 12:31
Yeah. Oh, Marlene, you get to talk a little longer. So Zack can have a drink.

Marlene Gebauer 12:37
All right. All right. I will ask this question.

Zack Barnes 12:38
This Houston Haze is great.

Greg Lambert 12:40
Spindle Tap is really good. They get a lot of good reviews.

Zack Barnes 12:44
I mean, we’re drinking all Houston beers.

Marlene Gebauer 12:46
That was intentional. That was intentional. Because you know, there’s a lot going on in Houston.

Zack Barnes 12:51
It is it’s great. There’s definitely a lot going on.

Greg Lambert 12:53
I see what you’re doing.

Marlene Gebauer 12:55
You see where I’m going with that? You know, so the other day, we were having lunch. And you had mentioned you had been at The Ion and I was like super jealous. Sorry, super envious. Tell us about The Ion and how it’s driving innovation in Houston. And before you do, I think we should have like a live at The Ion and just like walk around the ion and talk about the ion talk about what’s going on.

Zack Barnes 13:17
We can make that happen. So Joey Sanchez will let us make that happen. He’s gonna be thrilled that I just named dropped him on some legal podcast, The Geek in Review. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer 13:27
Award winning legal podcast.

Zack Barnes 13:30
worthy of course. Of course. Yes. Houston based. So yeah. So The Ion started from it’s one it’s an old Sears building. It’s been repurposed we all we all remember it. I remember buying

Greg Lambert 13:40
it and it wasn’t like the mall Sears It was like one of the one of the freestanding ones.

Marlene Gebauer 13:47
I wasn’t here, but we had one like that in New Jersey to where everybody got their pictures taken.

Greg Lambert 13:51
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was a Santa Claus with Easter Bunny

Zack Barnes 13:55
It’s one of two because I live up by the other one up north. But they were always sort of shady and dingy. They’re all out of business. Now. I guess.

Greg Lambert 14:03
When they were new, they were old.

Marlene Gebauer 14:07
That’s fair. That’s fair.

Zack Barnes 14:08
How to a business process they didn’t innovate much from it did not deviate.

Greg Lambert 14:13
Well, it’s kind of like law firms if it’s hard to tell successful people they are doing something wrong.

Marlene Gebauer 14:16
Are you hearing this everybody?

Zack Barnes 14:17
Rice University had sort of had a discussion with Greater Houston partnership and Houston EExponential. When turns out Houston was not selected to be an Amazon, the next hub or just headquarters for that. And like so it’s had all this money ready to go. Like well forget this will just sink it into Houston and create this innovation like district. So we have the Med Center, we have downtown. So there’s a train ride, one of the few trains at the time that runs along it. And so perfect building couple of perfect buildings. So they built The Ion and it opened. Next they rebuilt The Ion, really, some investment from a couple of banks some energy company is some other law firms we won’t mention. Things like that. And so it was meant to be a gathering spot of innovators, of startups, people, providing advising, financing, whatever for them, you know, community of people to sort of work together, and then the pandemic hit. And so the really big grand opening, sort of died or just didn’t die, it was paused until actually this week. So this is the last day, Friday the 13th. Here’s the last day of their whole activation week. And I’ve been obviously onboarding someone, so I’ve not been there as much as I want. But it’s a great place that because you have so many people meeting, and Joey Sanchez is the Director of Senior Director of like community engagement, I just wanted to call him the Pied Piper of Innovation Houston right now, because he’s done a great job of drawing everyone to him. And actually, like, he’s spawned his cup of Joey, which is a nice pun on his name, and everyone’s getting together for coffee now has like, offshoots in The Woodlands and way out in Katy. I think they’re doing one now. And in Galveston or something, if not, someone should, should write that down and work on that. It’s, it’s really helpful to have that space where everyone gets to talk together, and someone working in innovation in a law firm, it’s great to go down there and hear what startups are concerned about and what they’re working on, whether it’s a software or medical or anything. So just a natural fit for me also from previous roles, I just like being around that sort of energy. So

Greg Lambert 16:24
Yeah, now the building itself, I haven’t been in there, but it’s literally like the bones of the old Sears building. But they’ve really It looks beautiful.

Zack Barnes 16:33
It’s amazing inside. I mean, yeah, they gutted it down to the posts, got wooden, metal, wood,

Greg Lambert 16:40
what this idea kind of reminds me of, and I wish they would do more of it. And in cities like Austin, that are kind of losing the thing that made it cool. Which was, you know, we did the same thing here years ago in Montrose with the arts community.

Zack Barnes 16:57
Yep.

Greg Lambert 16:57
And it was like, you know, let’s set up an area, bringing the artist in, it was an area that was not the, you know, the highest end of town. And, now it is. Now you can’t find an artist there, because no one can afford to be there. So I would like to say, you know, it’s a little little bit of an offshoot here, and it could be because of the beer. But, you know, I would like to see us go back to doing that sort of thing and allowing arts and creativity. And, get those yet because there’s gotta be other more areas, especially on the on the east end of town here that could benefit from them.

Marlene Gebauer 17:36
They did something like that in Brooklyn, too.

Zack Barnes 17:41
Yeah, that’s like, near east downtown, EaDo is one thing, but the Far East End has its own art scene. It’s pretty cool. And there’s some great,

Greg Lambert 17:50
great breweries. Right?

Marlene Gebauer 17:52
I mean, if you go north to I mean, that’s another area that’s ripe for it.

Zack Barnes 17:57
And so, yeah, my, my part of the neighborhood there is pretty good. But I mean, there’s Sawyer Yards is opened up and is expanding and becoming like a little art scene and of itself. That’s pretty cool. I know. We’ve there’s a, I can’t remember Silver Street Studios, it’s like right there. And so there’s a bunch of little art scenes there. But yeah, I think it’s moved a little bit further north. And there’s a lot of those townhome developments. I think they’re a little bit more. But that’s another podcast.

Greg Lambert 18:22
I gonna say if anyone’s been to Houston, they know, they know the four story. Town. Yeah.

Zack Barnes 18:26
That is another podcast.

Greg Lambert 18:27
Yeah, absolutely. So Well, let’s talk a little bit about Rice University and the Data to Knowledge Lab. You know, they recently just recently had an innovation challenge in which you were a participant. I, you know, I hadn’t heard of the data knowledge lab before, but how did it get started and who all is involved in it?

Zack Barnes 18:50
So I’ve been working with rice since I was at Halliburton, and had been involved with their clean tech energy venture forums. And then they’d also host every so often at OTC, which is the Offshore Technology Conference, another pitch contest. So I got to see that the early stage will feel specific tech companies. So I knew they had those programs. I was aware of the data knowledge lab tangentially, as someone else had done projects there. But it didn’t dawn on me even once I’d started at NRF about it. And so we had an ask come up and sort of brainstorming with our CIO, who I also used to work with at Halliburton, Alexis Collins, she’s like, Oh, well, when I was at another role, we use them to do you know, a build an AI engine for us. I was like, Oh, okay. And so we had a little bit of budget, and they’re not terribly expensive for the the data knowledge lab programs. And so we’re like, oh, we’ll come on board as a sponsor. And so we, I, sort of scoped out what we’re going to do. Talked to the partners sort of understood the deal, and then presented it to them as sort of a project pitch and then we refined it like 100 times. And eventually that became a project. So yeah, that was that was how we came about. And so it was started. Jennifer Allen, who just won an award for like, an appointment to the National Academy of like Statistician and something. She’s the brains behind it all credit to her. She’s an amazing person to work with. She’s the founding professor and whatever leader of the whole thing, great to work with. I think it was about 2017, 2016 maybe she started building it up putting together the program. I think that people were working with them in 2017-2018. But like I said, I knew of it tangentially. But it wasn’t in my like, sphere was in something I cared about, even though I did a lot of data, things because Halliburton had its own teams. And I was busy putting together other packages and plans with Colorado School of Mines or Tulsa University or something like that.

Marlene Gebauer 20:43
So what sort of short term and long term benefits do you see for participants in these events?

Zack Barnes 20:48
So the best part for me is that one, I get to go for a relatively new one. Let’s be inexpensive. grad students.

Marlene Gebauer 20:56
We’re digging this hole inexpensive thing. It’s like you see us inexpensive.

Greg Lambert 21:03
How do you spell that? I don’t know. Never. I never heard it.

Zack Barnes 21:06
We’re all in legal, so we all understand the pressure to like, okay, deliver me this excellent, amazing, mind blowing result.

Marlene Gebauer 21:15
With no budget.

Zack Barnes 21:16
But we all understand that. And that’s, I don’t foresee that going away. But this is a place where you get to go do some experiments at a lower cost, learn something, and come back like, Okay, do we build on this? Did this get us where we want it to go? Or not. And so, for me, it was yeah, 25 grand. For a semester, I got seven, free, I’m sorry, seven inexpensive coders and data, analysts and whatever. And I gave them a project, they went and built something that we could use, and we can learn from and ultimately, the results are good, we need to just build on it the next level. So it’s, we may go back again, I’d really like to go back and take this project and use it to build the next step using them because again, they’re inexpensive, and

Marlene Gebauer 22:04
inexpensive, eager, interested.

Zack Barnes 22:07
Right. And it’s a weird, again, you walk in to any high tech, innovative place and say, Well, I’m here from a law firm, they go,

Greg Lambert 22:15
Why?

Marlene Gebauer 22:16
Why are you here?

Zack Barnes 22:18
What do you do? Why? And then in digital space, right? You know, we’re doing a lot of natural language processing, and, you know, identification picking out and things like that. And that was like, Oh, we don’t do those usually. I think the other products were they were like flying a drone, over a bunch of birds. And so they could count the birds faster than someone on the ground with some binoculars, which totally get a sense of me taking, you know, fire data from the city of Houston, and combing it for areas of warehouse versus home versus whatever risk. So it’s pretty cool that you get to see all that also. And you’ve got an eager population of people that like to do that. So it’s pretty cool.

Marlene Gebauer 22:53
I find even some of these things where you feel like okay, maybe that’s completely not related. It gives you ideas. Absolutely. Energy there.

Zack Barnes 23:03
And anywhere we get ideas and innovation for a law firm. And think about new processes, people, whether it’s tech forward or not, like it’s a good thing. I think we have to keep our minds active, too.

Greg Lambert 23:13
You had mentioned a lot of times in law firms show up or lawyers show up. The first question is what? And then second question is why?

Zack Barnes 23:21
And third question is, can we have money? That’s usually how it works.

Greg Lambert 23:25
I can see that. But you said it was inexpensive. So why is it that law firm should get involved in these types of innovation projects?

Zack Barnes 23:36
if we’re going to build a good legal tech pipeline, like it’s getting frothy out there, to quote, Casey Flaherty, with his mergers and acquisitions in legal tech, and I think today was full of crazy news announcements to like, this is a chance to get people interested in otherwise, it’s just the same people turning over and over again. And if really drive it, like get the excepting just you have to have the low level resources that people that are interested in way back in college, not just like, well, that’s where I ended up. So I’m going to do this now. And if you start that there, I think it’s good. I think for law firms, it’s good to get involved in just have the little experience of trying something, learning what how you can direct a project externally, because that’s helping you vendors too.

Greg Lambert 24:20
Yeah. One, you know, one of the things that in this almost fits every startup, legal tech startup that we’ve talked to. The stories, almost always the same. I was an associate at a large law firm, and I hated the stuff I was doing. And so then I decided I was going to create a company or project and I was going to fix this and I spun it off into a company. So one is that this might that be the best way to do it? Or do you think law firms should be able to find that talent, refine that talent, and move it forward within the law firm, what was kind of yours thoughts on that?

Zack Barnes 25:05
D, all of the above? You know, I really think.

Greg Lambert 25:08
Or, let them go? Let that be D and then there is no all of the above.

Zack Barnes 25:13
I’m a big fan of taking the passion within the people you have and fostering a little bit. So if there is that senior associate, partner, I don’t really care, growing their idea a little bit like testing it enough. The hard part is getting larger law firm comfortable with that, to let it grow and see like giving them a little bit of a leash to go try. Then I bring an external is always going to be a good solution, finding external talent that’s newer, younger and has a different series of ideas always going to help drive. Also the person this is not coming up as much but but put into place a good process where you like, Okay, here’s how we’re vetting this, here’s how we’re writing this, here’s how we’re doing the business prop. And then you get through the good products, you know, the high value ones, you keep the other ideas always around, they’re not on hold, they don’t go down a black hole, because someone’s going to come up with a new idea to it or a new version of it, like oh, wait, these to connect and then, but it’s just putting the process in place to make sure that it’s a long valuable.

Marlene Gebauer 26:13
So Zack, you’re clearly not a person who sits on his hands. And you know, you you know, you have a lot of things going on right now. So what’s your favorite current…

Greg Lambert 26:24
Well, it’s hard to sit onhis hand when he’s drinking a beer.

Marlene Gebauer 26:28
Yeah, that would be quite a talent.

Zack Barnes 26:30
Yeah, we we need some curlicue straws. Next time we do one of these.

Marlene Gebauer 26:34
We need snacks. That’s what we need. Oh,

Zack Barnes 26:37
if I thought about that, I have a whole snack box in my office.

Greg Lambert 26:39
That’s on me. Because Zack sent me an email earlier today that said, Hey, can I bring something? And I said, I’ve got the beer if you want to bring something else feel free. And it sat, I had drafted it. And it sat there.

Marlene Gebauer 26:55
You didn’t send it?

Greg Lambert 26:56
I didn’t send it.

Zack Barnes 26:57
Oh, we might need snacks.

Greg Lambert 26:59
Yeah. And so that’s that’s on me.

Marlene Gebauer 27:03
Snacks or curly straws. With the curly straws. You wouldn’t need snacks.

Zack Barnes 27:12
It would get it going a lot faster.

Greg Lambert 27:13
Yeah, they get the curly straws that are edible. The little

Marlene Gebauer 27:18
Then it would be snacks and a straw.

Greg Lambert 27:23
It’s not legal tech, but probably a million dollar idea.

Marlene Gebauer 27:25
I was going to say.

Zack Barnes 27:28
Someone write that down. Like, yeah, I do. I know I’ll file it by myself too.

Greg Lambert 27:32
But are you an expensive? Not anymore. Sorry, sorry. We got off on a tangent.

Marlene Gebauer 27:43
I was asking a question. I was gonna ask you what’s your current favorite project and why? I love all my kids.

Zack Barnes 27:54
So we’re talking about legal tech project. Work for me, because I have so many projects. It doesn’t cut that down.

Greg Lambert 28:00
It is probably rebuilding a Corvette,

Zack Barnes 28:03
No, the Corvettes fine. I don’t have to deal with the Corvette it’s it is a durable piece of equipment. I would say right now. We’ve sort of built a call it like a laser focused. We all call it horizon scanning app. And we’re working on developing that a little bit further

Greg Lambert 28:23
Now wait, horizon scanning

Marlene Gebauer 28:25
slow down.

Greg Lambert 28:26
I know you understand that.

Zack Barnes 28:29
So we’re just talking about us, right? We use, everything we do is changing. I mean all the time regularly,

Greg Lambert 28:35
whether we want it to or not.

Zack Barnes 28:37
Regulations are changing all of the time, all of the time. And so we’ve built what is the basic background of it. And so we’ve got specific use cases that feed into that. And it’s in trial, right now we’re trying out with, but it’s really cool to go through and sort of those iterative processes like oh, well, we’re not getting the results we expected here, or they’re filtered somehow or there’s a bias and I don’t know whether it’s our question or how we’re pulling from a database. So let’s go back and refine that. As part of that. We’ve got some analytical materials that showed how different innovation centers are. So showed how great Houston is actually so I’m gonna brag about Houston little bit more. And like Houston is this like, glowing orb of innovation versus, you know, even Menlo Park and San Francisco like, oh, wait, they are all tech like, but there’s so much here that’s open to be engaged. That’s what’s really cool about it and we’re working with it and finding so it’s pretty cool to do that.

Greg Lambert 29:32
I’m wondering for since we’re bragging on Houston, we always say you know if you if you like fashion and football, you go to Dallas.

Zack Barnes 29:40
Yep.

Greg Lambert 29:40
If you like music, you go to Austin, but if you want to do business, come to Houston.

Zack Barnes 29:46
And I mean, yeah, it’s business. And the crazy thing is that Houston is known for and we keep you know, making Joey and The Ion happy,

Greg Lambert 29:57
It’s Beyonce.

Zack Barnes 30:00
right and right. We’re known for oil and like giant sprawling metropolis, but the fact is we have one of the largest medical centers in the world. And, you know, most well funded.

Marlene Gebauer 30:11
It’s a city unto itself.

Zack Barnes 30:13
Right? It’s staggering.

Marlene Gebauer 30:16
Talking about the medical center.

Greg Lambert 30:17
Yes. Yeah.

Zack Barnes 30:18
And, but we don’t think about like Houston is currently the largest container port in the US by like number of containers per day. And on top of that, like there’s an innovation center down there, Research Center, whatever same, where they’re figuring out how better to like, pack things on and off ships faster, get them into trains, or trucks. And then if you ever look at a map of Houston, Houston used to be just covered where most of our streets are used to be railways. And so it’s like, this was a major transportation hub. And like when you move the port in to, you know, mess with Galveston, that happened, it was part of the deal, like so.

Greg Lambert 30:53
It also explains why the downtown area is not north, south, east, west, but it’s off because that’s how the trains ran.

Marlene Gebauer 31:00
I mean, all the roads follow the train lines?

Greg Lambert 31:04
Downtown. Yeah. Yeah. And it really makes it hard to point north.

Zack Barnes 31:10
Just point to the corner of the building.

Greg Lambert 31:12
Yeah, you can’t you can’t point straight you gotta be at a 45 degree angle,

Zack Barnes 31:17
Unless you’re building a shape. And then forget it. You need your…

Greg Lambert 31:21
Unless you’re in the Chase Tower, which I think is isn’t that off center?

Marlene Gebauer 31:25
You’re you’re asking me like I know.

Greg Lambert 31:27
That’s where you work.

Marlene Gebauer 31:28
I know where I work. That I know.

Zack Barnes 31:31
I worked there. But um, that’s because I when I was hired by Conley Rose, I was up there on the 71st floor. I get to look down on the fireworks from Astros in a park.

Greg Lambert 31:40
Every Friday night.

Zack Barnes 31:42
So they’ll go off tonight too, right?

Greg Lambert 31:43
Yep.

Zack Barnes 31:44
But yeah, it’s it was a we built, it was the tallest five sided building West of the Mississippi.

Marlene Gebauer 31:51
Oh my God, so many fun facts that we have on the podcast today.

Greg Lambert 31:55
Well, I’ll throw one more in the Williams Tower is the largest building outside of a downtown area in the country.

Zack Barnes 32:04
See?

Greg Lambert 32:07
It’s I think it’s 69 stories,

Marlene Gebauer 32:09
Playing Houston trivial pursuit.

Zack Barnes 32:10
We all end up in like innovation because we have a command of thoroughly useless information.

Greg Lambert 32:16
Totally useless. So there’s the hashtag #makelawbetter, and the wellness and legal movements. You know, that’s promoting self care? What sort of things are you doing to because you are a busy busy man. And I know you’re only three quarters of the way into your first beer. But what are you doing to maintain your sanity?

Zack Barnes 32:45
Let’s see.

Greg Lambert 32:47
As he Wow, did you just finish that beer?

Zack Barnes 32:50
Mostly. Mostly, as we’re all like, and we’re done,

Marlene Gebauer 32:54
And we’re done .

Zack Barnes 32:55
With that beer. Yeah. So a large chunk of my time was spent with the Sports Car Club of America, I race cars in a sport called autocross, which is 1% of time through like an obstacle course of parking cones or something in a parking lot. On the track. Old airbase is a great things like that. So it’s a lot of fun. I like it, because you never get to pre run the course. Much like in innovation. So you can only walk it. So you have to know how to translate from a slow speed, usually beer fueled, course walk in the evening, the day before you run to driving the car, you are limited to the number of runs you get at national competition, you’ve done a three so it is like pressures, like on immediately. You can throw down a really good run. And then like no limit poker, someone can throw down better on and you’re wiped off the table. And so it’s all of those things that I like about poker and

Greg Lambert 33:48
So, you’re a gambler?

Zack Barnes 33:51
Yes, shocking as that may be.

Greg Lambert 33:53
So what do you drive?

Zack Barnes 33:55
So I have a 2009 Corvette Z06 So I mean, seven liter Corvette.

Greg Lambert 34:01
Speed?

Zack Barnes 34:01
How fast Have I gotten it?

Greg Lambert 34:02
Yeah,

Zack Barnes 34:03
I plead the Fifth.

Greg Lambert 34:06
Not on the road.

Marlene Gebauer 34:08
So pretty fast.

Zack Barnes 34:09
On the track, I think I’ve seen 145 to 155. But the tracks around here. Pretty similar.

Greg Lambert 34:16
They’re pretty small.

Zack Barnes 34:16
Other places. There’s salt lakes and things like that. So

Greg Lambert 34:21
What do you what do you think the top speed is?

Zack Barnes 34:24
Well, I heard

Greg Lambert 34:26
What I hear is if you take it on I-45.

Zack Barnes 34:33
I-45 is too bumpy and pointed in the wrong direction? Right. It’s uphill.

Marlene Gebauer 34:36
Could you even get fast? I 45. No, you can’t.

Greg Lambert 34:39
Well, my my father in law now this is in a regular car. He had the best description of of I-45. between Houston in Dallas, and mostly between north of Huntsville, south of Ennis is that you can get in the left hand lane.

Zack Barnes 34:57
I know where you’re going.

Greg Lambert 34:58
You can get in a group of cars and can go as fast as you want to go until you lose your nerve. And then you pull over into the right hand lane. And then you take a breath, and you catch your breath. And then you catch the next group that comes over.

Marlene Gebauer 35:15
That’s fair. That’s out out between Houston and Dallas. Yeah.

Zack Barnes 35:20
There’s a lot of people that that are always like, oh, Houston, everyone drives really fast. Not really, right

Greg Lambert 35:26
No, they just drive kind of reckless.

Zack Barnes 35:28
Right, the Houston exit where?

Greg Lambert 35:31
Yeah, three lane, three lane exit. There’s two things that drive me crazy in Houston. And that is the I’m in the far left hand lane. And then apparently, I forgotten that I’m going to exit. And I had to go across four lanes of the interstate without turning No, no, no, there is no turn signals, and then get off. And the other thing that drives me crazy, and I don’t know if you guys have run into this, but if you’re in a like a store parking lot, whichever way the arrow is pointing and the cars park, there’s always somebody coming the wrong way.

Marlene Gebauer 36:05
It’s me.

Greg Lambert 36:06
Is that you?

Zack Barnes 36:07
There’s there’s a strip mall by our house that we have to go by our crickets for our tarantulas. Oh, yes, I have pet tarantulas. But so we have potentials, so they have to eat crickets, and there’s a pet store, they have to go by the cricketer, but the arrow like where the entrance is to the strip mall, like the arrow points straight at the entrance. You like no, that’s where everyone comes in. So it’s straight to straight up. Like, I drive backwards that way too.

Marlene Gebauer 36:35
So I was actually pretty, pretty stoked to to know that they have circles here. I found the circle.

Zack Barnes 36:42
Where?

Greg Lambert 36:42
There are some.

Marlene Gebauer 36:43
Well, there’s actually one not too far from my home in in Sugar Land. Like basically, if you’re over by the stadium there. They have a little one. It’s right, like in a community. And it’s like, you just have to go around in circles. Like I got very excited when I saw that just reminded me of home.

Greg Lambert 36:59
I have no I have to tell a story about traffic circles. So a roundabout. So I was in Vancouver, and I was going through some training, some training for a library system. And the guy was taking us around town and there’s a lot of roundabouts in Vancouver. And so he told me, he said, Well, the reason that we created all these roundabouts in Vancouver was to reduce the number of prostitutes. And that’s all he said. And it was like years, years later, before I figured out what he meant was there was no corners to stand on.

Zack Barnes 37:45
Because traffic doesn’t stop?

Greg Lambert 37:45
Yeah, that’s like it’s like, so there’s no place to stand on the corner.

Marlene Gebauer 37:50
That doesn’t work in France.

Greg Lambert 37:54
It was a joke, Marlene. Before finish so we have one more question. I am. I am finishing up with my favorite Double IPA, which is the original Karbach Rodeo Clown which is great for Houston because we have the rodeo and the my favorite saying is “Get Down with The Clown.”

Zack Barnes 38:20
Oh, it’s right there on the top it Yeah. Oh, I’m next so I’ve got Mostly Harmless which is appropriately named because I still have more social our social things to do this evening. So this is perfect. It’s a light, four and a half percent Hoppy, little treat. Hoppy, pale ale a very little threat, but I’m gonna call it a treat. It’s very tasty. It’s from Eureka Heights, which is up in my neighborhood. Timber Grove oak forest garden oaks, part of the heights,

Greg Lambert 38:53
and it’s got a dolphin. Oh, and I like I like what you’re drinking.

Marlene Gebauer 38:58
Alright, so I am drinking, Texas Leaguer, Knuckle Bock which is a German style dark lager, 6.4% alcohol. My other one was much less than and this is a Texas pastime.

Greg Lambert 39:15
This this brewery, Texas Leaguer Brewing Company is out of Missouri City which is suburb of Houston. And all of their beers have a baseball theme.

Marlene Gebauer 39:27
Yes, there’s there’s there’s like there’s a pitcher there’s an old time pitcher on the on the on the label.

Greg Lambert 39:33
Their double IPA is called the double play. Oh, yeah.

Zack Barnes 39:37
Spindletop has all their little oil. Yeah, field ones. And so I mean, a level below right for we forget,

Greg Lambert 39:44
tell us about 11 Below and you’re your friend and why it’s called 11 Below.

Zack Barnes 39:48
So 11 Below brewing is owned by a couple friends of mine. So I met Bryce Baker, who is the one of the founders, the three founders in 97. Apparently we were in In orientation, I went to UT to be a mountain bike racer. He went to UT to be an engineer. Maybe that first year, we didn’t like each other that much. But later on, we came friends. And he was working for Smith and eventually went on to work. They got bought by Schlumberger. Big shock, here in Houston, Schlumberger, and Halliburton and all the energy companies buy up the smaller ones as it goes. And so he and one of his colleagues, Brandon, and then some other local neighborhood guy, Jeff, sort of brewing together, and they’re like, You know what, let’s just make this our career. And so they did. It’s awesome. I love their beers. The Oso Bueno, I think is one of the cleanest tasting Amber’s in the world still to this day, and the three of them having been oilfield engineers and oilfield software guys, like are meticulous and they hire meticulous people so that everything comes out super consistent. And that’s, they’re gonna thank me for this bragging about them later. Originally, they were going to be called Pump Jack Brewing Company. And they ran into an IP problem with this liquor and wine company called Plump Jack. And so they’d already started like, branding themselves. And Plump Jack came was like, You can’t do that. That’s too close, as we all know how IP goes.

Greg Lambert 41:12
They should have hired you to,

Zack Barnes 41:15
I was at Conley Rose at the time. They did talk to us. And we’re like, yeah, this could get expensive for you. Or you could just do something else. They already hired a like a marketing firm agency. And so 11 Below came about because they were sitting around, I don’t actually know the full story. But 11 Below is there’s the volume of a barrel of oil, and volume of a barrel of beer, and there’s 11 gallons or something that separates the two of them. And so, they are now 11 below they instead of producing barrels, well, they’re barrels of beer and so that’s where the names came up.

Greg Lambert 41:46
It’s interesting because there’s the biggest craft brewery here in Houston is St. Arnold and I’m kind of sad that I didn’t pick up a Saint Arnold, which my favorite Boch is actually Spring Boch by St. Arnold. And Brock Wagner who is the founder of that was actually a Rice grad and decided he was actually brewing beer in his dorm room and decided that was going to be his career and what’s really cool is Brock has actually kind of some of his craft masters, brew masters have gone on and created their own companies and own breweries, and he’s supported them. And it’s been it’s been crazy though so my my actual first my favorite one and they don’t sell it at stores which is why we didn’t end up with it here is Brash and the brew masters at Brash actually had worked with and collaborated with with Brock

Zack Barnes 42:59
Brash is right down from my house so that’s another problem for me. I can just go.

Greg Lambert 43:03
Nobody famous lives in my neighborhood.

Zack Barnes 43:05
Well, I mean it’s just breweries. I’ve got a lot of ties to 11 Below and and Brock you at but Southern Star was the one I remember.

Greg Lambert 43:16
Oh, yeah up in Conroe.

Zack Barnes 43:18
I’ve been in Houston so long. I remember when St. Arnold was off Hempstead.

Greg Lambert 43:22
No air conditioning and no heating.

Marlene Gebauer 43:25
I remember the coins.

Zack Barnes 43:26
Oh, yeah the wooden coins.

Greg Lambert 43:27
Yeah. People don’t people won’t understand that right now. It used to be you go in and pay $10.

Marlene Gebauer 43:36
Yeah, paid to get into the brewery. And then you had for a little coin wouldn’t coins that you could trade in?

Greg Lambert 43:42
And then they made it where they had different colors so that you couldn’t like store up the coins.

Marlene Gebauer 43:49
people got smart.

Zack Barnes 43:49
I mean, so some of the breweries still do that, because they want you to make sure you pay cash for the really big beers. They’re rare beers. But like the things that always yeah, here you go coin. But yeah, I mean, Brock has been a tireless fighter against, you know, the AB, IV, Anheuser Busch, InBev sort of monopoly pushing on distributors. And he’s been a huge ally to restaurants. And so it’s great to have him like that. I mean, he’s helped push some of the distilling laws too. So it’s been great. We’ve had an explosion of distilleries all over both Houston and the whole state because his tireless advocacy for for it as an industry this is Texas, supposed to be a small business friendly state. It’s been great to see those things pop up. So over,

Greg Lambert 44:34
cheers. Cheers to Brock Wagner.

Zack Barnes 44:36
Yeah. Always.

Marlene Gebauer 44:37
Alright, last question.

Zack Barnes 44:39
Sorry, real questions.

Marlene Gebauer 44:41
Alright. So, you know, this is the crystal ball question. So now I know we’ve asked you the crystal ball question. So give you a little leeway on this. You know, it could be the crystal ball for the legal industry. It could be the crystal ball for just innovation in general. It could be the crystal ball for beer. or sports cars or mountain biking? Whatever you want to go with.

Zack Barnes 45:06
So yes. So one of the ones that I was asked when I joined the SCCA, and I serve on a board of directors was like, with electric cars, automated cars is racing gonna go away? I said no. And they looked at me horrified. It’s published in, in multiple articles, you can go find them online, search my name and SCCA, you’ll find it. And then why not all that’s changing is the skill sets. And it went from the guy that knows how to tune a carburetor jet and don’t look at me i, I can, it’s not pretty, to the guy that can code. And that’s where ECU tuning and software tuning has happened and and even today’s cars become more sophisticated, you pull stereo out of some cars, they just turn into bricks, the car won’t move anymore.

Greg Lambert 45:45
Yeah, I had a BMW that would do that.

Zack Barnes 45:47
Exactly. But you have to have a special flash tool. Now. So I’m going to use that people are always like, great, if we do all these cool, innovative things in law, the purpose of Allah is gonna go away, and I say no.

Marlene Gebauer 46:00
I see what he’s doing here.

Zack Barnes 46:01
What I see, like I’ve done this before. No, the lawyer doesn’t go either, because there still needs to be the personal relationship, you still have to have the guy that understands person to person like that personal relationship has to be there. To understand where the business is going, someone has to explain it. And because it’s good as computers are, they don’t make, you know, leaps of extra, you know, they don’t do a whole lot of non coded thinking they don’t, they can’t, it’s just not possible. And so legal innovation will just make the stuff that eats up tons of time. And tons of resources. I’m thinking of like hours, like and irritates all of the junior associates and senior associates, makes them all go away. And then like not go way, but takes all that off the table. So they can focus on the real important part, which is which is which is getting back to the relationship? How can we as lawyers or legal services, solve the business problem, clear the risks, make them feel better about the decision they’re about to make, and then make sure that they’ve got everything in place for it. So we can innovate, and automate all sorts of parts of legal I don’t think our law firms go away. They don’t, you can’t automate legal thought you can’t automate, you know, sort of abstract thought. So I’m still bullish on that, too. Like we cannot take can’t take the driver out of the car, you can’t take racing away from cars, you’re never going to take the lawyer out of law. It’s not possible. And so you’re gonna take paralegal out and want to get administrative like, these are things that I think a lot of people are afraid of. And I don’t buy it.

Greg Lambert 47:48
That reminds me I wrote years ago, I had to be over 10 years ago, because I was at my other firm when I when I wrote this blog post. And it was I had watched my dirty little secret is that I love watching NASCAR races on the weekend and and F1.

Zack Barnes 48:06
That’s fine.

Greg Lambert 48:07
But one of the things that that happens is like during like about the middle of the race, especially when it’s hot, is that, you know, the rubber on the tires, will start to peel off and increase what basically they call marbles. And it changes the racing conditions. And the driver will say, I want to continue driving exactly the same way. That got me where I am now. And the crew chief is saying, you’re going to have to adjust this, you’re gonna take a different line. And I tried to apply that to law firms in that, look, the end, the industry is changing. There’s certain things that just adjust. And it doesn’t take a big adjustment on the attorneys part. But as the innovation guy, how do you talk to them and say, look, the conditions are changing, just you know, by this, I need you to adjust here and get them to understand why it is they need to do that?

Zack Barnes 49:11
I have this slide to him actually. They’re part of my life story. I tell. I start in our academies for our, you know, Junior associates in our mid career associates. And I have it in both because it’s like, what does innovation? So I show them like 1918 Ford Motor Company assembly line, and I show them a Tesla. I don’t show them the Tesla assembly line, but like which one is innovative and everyone pushes with Tesla. And then like, Okay, which one is innovative, the Microsoft I have like the original Microsoft logo when or an Apple iPhone, newest one always like oh Apple, and then you know some other stuff. And I’m like, okay, which are innovative. And so I go and the next slide, it’s like, great. Now which one’s innovative and so I show them the new Ford assembly line, and the new like Microsoft like what Microsoft has done. And the point of this is that innovation is not a step change. Innovation is invention. Adding value. That’s innovation, my definition of it. It’s not a step change. We all think of it as like, oh, overnight. But the reality was, let’s be real when the iPod came out as a piece of crap. Sorry, sorry, Apple, like, barely held 40 songs. Like, you’re dropped it the wrong way, it was dead. Sound quality was terrible, in hindsight, but

Greg Lambert 50:24
Wasn’t it almost completely glass. I mean the outside was almost completely glass?

Zack Barnes 50:28
In the weird glass thing. Like it got scratched just out of your pocket. Like things. We look back and laugh now. But iterative, iterative iterative, like now, I’ve got a supercomputer in my pocket that is more powerful than the CRAY I used to sequence DNA back in, in undergrad. So it’s like, Oh, great. It’s just that it’s you just make the steps. You don’t have to worry about a step change. You just keep up with it enough. And the rest will come along. And just like a track and your tires, you just keep making the changes, small changes. Like when you look back, it’s big. It’s hard to tell myself that sometimes, though. Let me be honest about that, too.

Marlene Gebauer 51:09
I think that’s for all of us. You want it to be the end the end goal, but it’s like you just have to keep plugging at it.

Greg Lambert 51:17
All right. Well, Zack Barnes from the Norton Nose, Fulbright US, Head of Innovation. We appreciate you coming up, coming by and talking with us and drinking some beer.

Greg Lambert 51:29
Anytime there’s beer involved, I’m in.

Marlene Gebauer 51:38
So I think this was a really great conversation with Zack. You know, I think we learned a lot about him. We also learned a lot about his thoughts on innovation and where we’re going in law. So I thought it was pretty cool.

Greg Lambert 51:51
And we learned about innovation. We learned about beer we learned about cars.

Marlene Gebauer 51:58
Houston,

Greg Lambert 51:59
Houston, oh lots lots of Houston. So thank you, Zack.

Zack Barnes 52:03
Sure.

Marlene Gebauer 52:03
So and of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter,

Greg Lambert 52:16
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter and Zack, how about you?

Zack Barnes 52:20
@NRFUSZack on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 52:23
Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 Zack won’t answer that. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert 52:36
Thank you, Jerry. Thank you Zack.

Greg Lambert 52:38
Thanks Zack!.

Greg Lambert 52:39
All right, Marlene, I will talk to you later.

Marlene Gebauer 52:40
All right, ciao.

We are all pretty familiar with the phrase “Legal Tech.” Maya Markovich and Yousef Kassim would like you to also become more familiar with the phrase “Justice Tech” as well. In fact, they have a new trade association focused on this issue called the Justice Technology Association or JTA. Justice Tech is defined as those companies which build tech solutions which are designed to improve or open access to legal rights, improve outcomes, and increase equity within a system that is stacked against users who are often going it alone in the justice system. Yousef Kassim’s product, EasyExpunctions.com is one example.

• Justice Technology Association
• JTA Partnership and Collaboration
• JTA Membership
• To Support JTA
• JTA Twitter
• EasyExpunctions.com

Marlene Gebauer 0:15
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer,

Greg Lambert 0:21
And I’m Greg Lambert. Marlene this week we talked with Maya Markovich, and Yousef Kassim about their amazing work at the Justice Technology Association or JTA.

Marlene Gebauer 0:33
JTA seeks to grow, shape, and organize what they call the emerging justice tech market. JTA’s mission is to demonstrate how technology can provide affordable accessible solutions to people facing everyday legal issues. This also includes ways to leverage the justice tech to help with a large number of cases that people take to courts without the assistance of a lawyer.

Greg Lambert 0:53
So we’re super excited to have Maya and Yousef on, and we have some other some JTA lined up for future episodes as well. And they’re just doing some outstanding things with that association.

Marlene Gebauer 1:05
But first up, we have the very last of our recordings from this year’s legal week and our crystal ball question. We’ve saved one of our favorites for last and talked with Steve Embry from the tech law Crossroads blog and his vision of what the law firm workplace looks like in the next few years.

Stephen Embry 1:23
Well, I’m Steve Embry, and I write the blog Techlaw Crossroads that you guys are gonna know you’re weird blog. And I’m also Chair elect of the ABA law practice division this year. And we’ve just finished doing techshow in Chicago and then starting the process to get ready for next year show.

Greg Lambert 1:45
It never ends.

Stephen Embry 1:47
Right, you know, and so now I’m doing show one this week and show two this one last week show two this week, and then I’ll go home and collapse for a while

Greg Lambert 1:56
Start working on show three.

Stephen Embry 1:57
Because I’m out of shape go into shows.

Greg Lambert 2:00
It does take a lot out of you.

Stephen Embry 2:01
Yeah.

Greg Lambert 2:03
So what do you see on the horizon for us?

Stephen Embry 2:05
Well, good question. I just did an article, I guess, last week, or the week before about the three day workweek, there was a nice article in The Atlantic magazine.

Stephen Embry 2:17
I’m liking where this is going.

Stephen Embry 2:18
But and it wasn’t, of course, the Atlantic article was not about law, but it was about generally. And it’s the phenomena seems to be that people really want to work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in an office, and then the rest of the time at home. And that’s going to become sort of a norm. And the other thing that a lot of employers pointed out are recognizing is that, you know, the law office of the future, or the office of the future needs to be an experience or a destination. In other words, you know, you, you have to give people a reason to want to come to the office, whether it’s a gym, or a nice place to eat, or a lot of the things like

Marlene Gebauer 2:59
Spa! Spa!

Stephen Embry 3:01
Spa, yeah. One of the things that technology companies like Google and Apple recognize years and years ago.

Greg Lambert 3:07
Is that coming from the companies and the law firms, or is that coming from the real estate?

Stephen Embry 3:13
Well, it’s good question. Certainly. Well, the, you know, it was always thought that the law firms would reduce real estate, right? Because they don’t need it. Now. It’s starting to stay current sort of an equilibrium. In other words, they don’t need as many offices, but they have to have a space for their spa, or gym. And so they’re going to end up, you know, renting the same amount of space, which, you know, for a lot of businesses and law firms is not a bad thing. Because they’ve got they’re tied into long term leases. So, you know, if you’re tied in, let’s say you did, you know, two years ago, you did a five year long term lease or a 10 year long term lease. So now you got two years, nobody comes to the office, now, what do you can’t get out of it, you know, and, you know, the landlord is not going to let you out because they need to build a space. So, you know, it’s a way, it’s kind of a little bit of a win win. You can use the office for other things.

Marlene Gebauer 4:04
In a way that makes sense for you.

Stephen Embry 4:05
Yeah, yeah. Okay. But I think, you know, as I wrote in the article, you know, it’s, are we going to see that for law firms? I mean, like, law firms are not necessarily big in to, you know, cool things to be in the office. But they I don’t think they’ve ever faced the competition for talent they’re facing. It’s extreme. And, you know, this morning at the state of the legal market, so discussion about the great, huge percentage of lateral movement in the past couple of years. And it was, I mean, it was strikingly high. You’re not sort of sensed it was high, but now it’s strikingly high. So there’s a lot of competition for talent and they’re going to it by necessity or going to have to offer something. But as I as I talked about it in the post that I did, you know, the big the big deal for law firms, and I think we may have talked about this on one of your shows, has always been, well, we have to have our associates come in, so we can train them. And they have to experience our culture. And so, but you know, what a lot of times the training was, well, you know, maybe you’ll get assigned to partner A, who’s really great mentor and does really well. Or you might get assigned to Partner B, who’s just a real jerk. And you know, it’s not going to give you the time of day. In my career as an associate, I got a little of both. So I actually, so that’s the training program and a lot of places. And then the culture, there’s a great quote from somebody from a UK firm. Culture, you mean, you mean, like working long hours, you know, being subjected to a bureaucracy being screamed at, you know, all these days? I guess, time we got rid of that firm culture is better anyway. So I think that’s, you know, kind of what I’ve been sort of interested in watching is this kind of development and where and how we work.

Marlene Gebauer 6:00
And how we work.

Stephen Embry 6:01
Yeah. And the other thing, I mean, it has huge repercussions because for cities, you know, for downtown businesses, it’s, you know, tech show last week, I kind of wandered around Chicago, and where the streets were pretty deserted. Even Michigan Avenue. Now, it seems to be more people out and about here, but a lot of businesses have folded up and small businesses, grocery stores, drugstores, shoe repair shops, restaurants, so not having lots of workers downtown is.

Greg Lambert 6:33
Seamstresses?

Marlene Gebauer 6:36
Tailors. Yeah, I mean, I just wonder, too, you know, some of these plans we were hearing about, like, for smart cities and things if you’re not seeing all people downtown. I mean, how what kind of impact is that have?

Stephen Embry 6:48
Yeah. You know, and in big cities like New York, you got a lot of people that still live here. Yeah. But it will level, for example, where I live. We don’t have a lot of people within downtown and

Marlene Gebauer 7:00
big cities. It’s like you come in for work, and then you leave.

Stephen Embry 7:02
Yeah. So I don’t know. It’s gonna be different world and we come out of this. See, it could all go back to normal.

Greg Lambert 7:11
I know some people that want it to go back. Alright, well, thanks, Steve.

Stephen Embry 7:17
It’s always good to see you.

Marlene Gebauer 7:22
We are very excited to bring back Maya Markovich to the show this week. And for her to be joined by Yousef Kassim to talk about their work at the Justice Technology Association. They teach us what Justice tech is all about, and how JTA is leveraging it to help improve access to justice.

Greg Lambert 7:40
We’d like to welcome Yousef Kassim, CEO of easy expunctions.com. And welcome back. Maya Markovich is the executive director at Justice Technology Association. Welcome you both to The Geek in Review.

Maya Markovich 7:55
Thank you so much. It’s really great to be here.

Yousef Kassim 7:58
Yeah. Thank you, Greg. We’re really excited to be here today.

Marlene Gebauer 8:01
So Maya, we’ve had you on the show before, but you’ve left NextLaw Labs with Dentons last year, and you’ve been really busy with advising some new entrants into legal tech community. How are you enjoying that role?

Maya Markovich 8:12
Yes, I’ve been I have been very much enjoying going where the action is in legal industry innovation. So I’m working with ALSPs investors, law firms and legal departments on supercharging their transformation efforts. And I’m also advising a few legal tech and justice tech companies, mainly on strategy and growth. I mean, I love I really love working with founders. So that’s been awesome. I’m also justice tech Executive in Residence at Village capital, where we’re helping to build and mobilize informed capital into the nascent justice tech vertical. And there’s obviously quite a bit of overlap there with JTA, our new nonprofit trade association.

Greg Lambert 8:53
What’s the focus of the Capital Group?

Maya Markovich 8:56
Village capital has been working with AmFam for a few years on defining, measuring and supercharging informed investment into the Justice tech space.

Greg Lambert 9:09
Okay. All right. Well, Yousef, before we began, I have a story to say about how small this world is. So last week, I was at a partner retreat for my firm. And one of the newest partners from San Antonio came up to me and he was we were just talking about his innovation that he had created. And that led to a broader discussion on innovation. And he got really excited. He was like, oh, man, I need to introduce you to this guy in San Antonio named Yousef and doing some really cool stuff. And I was like, wait, wait, and I pulled out my phone and my calendar I was like this Yousef? So yeah, and so it turns out, I guess you both know each other. And it actually turns out that Art is an advisor for JTA as well. So it’s a small world.

Yousef Kassim 9:59
very very, very small world. And Art is one of my favorite people. And so, yeah, really, you know, funny how y’all connected over the weekend? And you know, he brought my name up. But yeah,

Greg Lambert 10:11
yeah, it’s interesting, because Art and I are actually working on he’s going to launch his own podcast, and then I’ve been working with him on that. So, but I know it’s a small world. But let’s, let’s talk more about you on this and easy expunctions, you know, some of these other cool innovations that you’re doing? Can you talk to us about what you’re working on?

Yousef Kassim 10:31
Sure. Yeah, I’m the CEO of Easy Expunctions company I founded with my brother, we help individuals get a clear path to a clear record. And so we have an outcomes based approach that supports pro se litigants to you know, achieve expunctions when they’re eligible. So you know, somebody will come to our website, we provide you with a free nationwide background check for creating an account, then for a small fee, you can see if you’re eligible, you know, essentially go through it before and after, to determine if there’s something that we can do to help you. And if there is we provide fixed fee pricing to help individuals achieve that 100% money back guarantee. So including your filing fees to the court, if those are something that you need to pay. And so really an unprecedented level of consumer protections for folks who are seeking legal services. And so started here in Texas, and did a financing last year to you know, start scaling this into additional markets.

Greg Lambert 11:34
Yeah, I have a feeling that most of the listeners will will know what you’re talking about. But would you mind just explaining kind of what an expunction is, and what the effect of having your record expunged does?

Yousef Kassim 11:47
Sure. So expunctions are a legal remedy. They’re state by state. So every state provides some form of relief for individuals who’ve been arrested before, and maybe resulted in non conviction or, you know, it was a one and only conviction situation. We can help you, you know, get a judge signed order that provides you with two main rights. One is the right to deny that that arrest ever occurred. So if you’re applying for a job, or housing or something like that, you can now say that you weren’t arrested. Whereas in the past, you know, maybe that was something you’d have to disclose. And then two, you know, the right to prohibit others from possessing or distributing that information. And so, essentially, the opportunity to monopolize negative data about yourself. And really, the benefit is, you know, 90% of major employers today are running background checks, there’s over 100 million background checks run in the United States every year. More and more jurisdictions are digitizing these records, making them available online. And so this is something that, you know, from an employment standpoint, there’s data to show that folks who go through this process are not only more hireable, but ended up making more money pretty quickly, after going through a process like this.

Greg Lambert 13:05
You’re doing great work, because I know, your customers probably really appreciate it when they’re able to kind of take that off their back.

Marlene Gebauer 13:13
I mean, I was gonna say, I mean, I love the model, and that you make it so accessible for people upfront that basically okay, you know, you get the information first to see, you know, is there an opportunity? I mean, you don’t have to pay for that, first, that you can basically make an informed decision with the information that you’re providing them at? No, at no charge. So that’s fantastic.

Yousef Kassim 13:35
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s probably one of the things that we’re most proud of is, if we can’t help you, we let you know that up front, and, you know, hopefully, you know, save you from spending money somewhere else that maybe you wouldn’t have that same level of consumer protection. So

Marlene Gebauer 13:50
Yeah, and it’s great, because I think there’s a lot of people that are a little, you know, they’re they’re a little skeptical about working in the legal system, and you know, what the costs will be, and so that this is just a very clean and clear model for them. We are very excited to have you both on to talk about the work you’re doing with the justice Technology Association, or JTA. Would you mind giving us an overview of exactly what the mission is for JTA?

Maya Markovich 14:15
Sure. Well, I mean, it may be helpful to start with a little definition for context. So justice tech, companies like Easy Expunctions that build tech solutions that are designed to improve or open access to legal rights, improve outcomes, and increase equity within a system that it’s stacked against users that are often going it alone in the justice system. So we founded JTA earlier this year, as a nonprofit trade group to support these changemakers that harness technology to help people navigate legal matters, foster hope, and self empowerment, and contribute to this to a more fair legal system. So at JTA our mission is to democratize the consumer legal experience through the use of technology for the public good. We know we need to support, you know, both these entrepreneurs and harness this collective voice for regulatory reform, expand the debate beyond lawyers and bars about technologies place in the solution, the suite of solutions to address the Access to Justice crisis, and really bring the public’s interest to the forefront of the debate. So JTA is aimed at supporting primarily direct to consumer justice tech founders, amplifying awareness of the sector, building the ecosystem and really smoothing the path for them to grow and enable positive impact at scale.

Marlene Gebauer 15:32
And Yousef, how’s this impacted Easy Expansions?

Yousef Kassim 15:35
Yeah, well, I think, you know, companies like Easy Expunctions would benefit from an organization like the JTA. There are, you know, obviously, barriers in place historically, for companies like ours, pushback from maybe attorneys, or unauthorized practice of law committees. And, you know, we really think that there’s space here for organizations to provide outcome based solutions that may be different models that didn’t exist before. And so having an organization like JTA, acting, essentially, as a counterbalance to some of these forces, I think, benefits all of us. And so especially organizations and entrepreneurs that are interested in, you know, providing solutions in this space, forever to achieve even relative justice, I really think it’s going to take all hands on deck, you know, attorneys, legal aid clinics, and then, you know, innovative, you know, models that can achieve outcome based products for consumers. And so, yeah, we’re, we’re excited about being a part of it. But we think long term, this is something that could benefit a lot of people besides just the organizations trying to be members.

Greg Lambert 16:46
And I think it’s, you know, anyone that’s spent five minutes in the legal industry understands there are huge vacuums. And especially, you know, there wouldn’t be an access to justice movement if there wasn’t big vacuums of, of needs in the industry. And I think one of the things that we’ve talked about a lot is the fact that there are barriers that there there are kind of structures within the industry that prevents people that are not licensed attorneys within the state to go in and fill those needs. And it’s good to see an organization that apparently is, is set up to help try and identify who can be the best resource for this. And I think whether or not I’m you know, and I think I’ll talk about this in a little bit with your, your board. I mean, one of the one of the members on your board is an engineer, not a lawyer. So I don’t think this is a problem that has to be solved by lawyers.

Marlene Gebauer 17:46
Yeah, I mean, that just segues into my question, like, Who are you recruiting to become members of the JTA?

Yousef Kassim 17:51
Yeah, I mean, I think that there exist a lot of legitimate concerns about, you know, entrants into the space that are non attorneys. But I think, you know, what we found, though, is that being an attorney should not be a prerequisite. And, you know, Sonja is a wonderful example of that. Courtroom5, is a wonderful example of that. And I think we want to support organizations like that, that share our values, you know, we want to make sure that organizations that enter into this space, are ones that are providing value to folks that are protecting consumers, that aren’t pernicious ones that a community can stand behind. And so I think, you know, from the very beginning, we put an emphasis on communicating our values, and then from there trying to identify organizations that fit those values, and that we can better support.

Maya Markovich 18:43
I will say, we put a lot of effort, I’m kind of laughing, because Yousef, like, we put so much time and effort and justifiably so into our code of ethics, for GTA for membership applicants, because we really do need to bring together folks with shared values who are committed to delivering high quality products and services and are prioritizing customer interest, mitigating consumer harm, and supporting the collective success of the sector.

Greg Lambert 19:13
So with the board and the folks who founded JTA, like I said, I noticed like Sonja Ebron from Courtroom5 is there. We have a former Geek in Review guest Erin Levine from HelloDivorce, and Camila Lopez from People Clerk along with you Yousef, makeup the board and the founders. Looking at it, it’s one it’s very diverse, both in makeup and profession. So what is it that kind of pulled you all together to create JTA?

Yousef Kassim 19:48
Yeah, I think, you know, we were already aware of each other, if not having, you know, worked together before and, you know, Sonja and I went through the Duke Law Tech program, which I like to give a shout out to, for, you know, not only connecting, you know, Sonja and I, but providing so many opportunities, it was really wonderful experience for us. But, you know, Sonja, you know, had reached out and pitched the idea. And I think all of us were immediately receptive. We had, you know, at different times shared battle stories and best practices. And, you know, I think it just, you know, made a lot of sense to all of us that an organization like this exist, and started building from those conversations.

Marlene Gebauer 20:33
Maya, you must have known that as soon as I saw that Molly Wood, one of our favorite tech podcasters, total fan girl here, was on the advisory board, I would ask you how you were able to get her to help? Yeah, can you get her to go on our podcast?

Maya Markovich 20:51
She’s great. I mean, you know, she she and I have have have long, you know, been having discussions about the intersection of environmental justice and the justice system. You know, she obviously left NPR/Marketplace recently to build the climate tech vertical at launch, just as I was starting my justice tech Executive in Residence role at Village Capital. So the timing aligned and you know, we’re both very geeked on supporting each other’s work with such a strong overlap,

Greg Lambert 21:15
That’s cool.

Marlene Gebauer 21:16
Yeah, very.

Greg Lambert 21:17
So what value is the in getting away from the the executive board now to your advisory board, which you have a long list of very well known names, not not just Molly Wood, but but others as well. One, how did you get such a diverse group of people to contribute to the organization? And what is it that you’re asking of them to, to give to the organization?

Maya Markovich 21:43
Yeah, I mean, well, well, I should start by saying, like, we aim to identify and create bridges, with people who are sharing our vision and values, we want to help support these efforts, and justice tech entrepreneurs, so we built this very powerful advisory board. And it unites the broad range of disciplines, as you notice that intersect with Justice tech, including VCs and impact investors, top reform advocates, judiciary, you know, academic innovators, and broadcast journalists, and tech leaders, they really represent the different pieces of the puzzle, that Justice tech as a vertical, and as a path to substantive positive impact and kind of as a as a orientation pulls together. So they’re all very eager to support. And we will are leveraging their expertise and networks on various fronts.

Greg Lambert 22:31
How is it that you pull the board together? And do they work more as individuals? Or do they work as a group?

Maya Markovich 22:39
Yeah, I mean, we’re just getting started. So the first, the first round was really us getting together as a founding team, and talking about who we thought would be, you know, number one, enthusiastic about the mission. And number two would want to kind of advocate for our mission and for advocacy efforts. So, you know, we’re planning an advisory board convening this month. And we of course, have a number of asks, but what they do is when and if they’re able to kind of pile in and help they do, it’s very much an opt in scenario with us, as we’re all volunteer driven, and lead. So they, you know, because they represent such disparate and various pieces of the puzzle, as I mentioned, Bill, they’ll want to and be able to contribute, I think, in significant, you know, different ways. And so we’re looking forward to hearing what they want to do as well.

Greg Lambert 23:38
Back to the mission on JTA, I know, there’s some staggering statistics on just how often people represent themselves in a court. And instead of having a legal representation there. And I know you’ve got some stats on that. Can you give us some of those statistics and what you think are some of the core reasons for the for just the large number of pro se’s out there?

Maya Markovich 24:02
Yeah, I mean, I could overwhelm you with statistics, but I’ll try not to. I mean, you know, number one, the US is ranked 126 out of 139 countries, when it comes to affordability of access to the legal system. 75% of matters at least one party is self represented. Sometimes it’s it’s off, it’s as high as 98%. You know, depending on the type of matter. There’s 23 million per year pro se litigants in the US. So there’s 5 billion people in the world that can’t access the legal system. In Legal Services Corporations report on the justice gap that was released last week, low income Americans received no or inadequate legal help for 92% of civil legal problems that impacted them substantially, which jumped unfortunately, from 86% in 2017. As to you know why? Concerns about costs are stopping people from even looking for legal help. Over half of them think they could even find a lawyer if they could afford it. So if this particular study had in that surveyed middle income Americans, I wager that the number would be, you know, even higher, you know, Legal Aid and pro bono are doing unbelievable work, but they’re under resourced and overwhelmed. And there’s this, you know, a massively underserved population in our communities is just not able to access their rights. And we need different models of which we believe that technology can and should be part of that solution.

Marlene Gebauer 25:31
Yeah, I was gonna ask, I mean, in addition to the cost barriers, I mean, is there also a barrier of actual people available to do the work? You know, just people who are who are in that space and doing that type of work?

Maya Markovich 25:46
Definitely. And I mean, in from the attorney side, there’s also a barrier to the types of work that it makes economic sense for lawyers to take on.

Marlene Gebauer 25:56
Exactly. What do you think are some answers to this problem, you know, where technology can be part of the solution? Yousef, let me let me start with you.

Yousef Kassim 26:04
Yeah, I think it’s not, you know, lawyers versus technology, I really think that, you know, there’s a place for technology for attorneys for legal aid clinics, for the courts and clerks. So I think all of us need to be looking for opportunities to incorporate technology. I think on the consumer side, there’s a desire and certainly a need for products and services that are outcome based, that are predictable, that are wrapped in some sort of consumer protections, you know, for folks. And I think that’s where there’s a large opportunity that we see that I know, Maya sees, and our co founders see. And then we’re, we’re, we’re focused on today. And so trying to understand where those consumer needs are, and, you know, you’re right, you know, even if all of the lawyers together, you know, focused on, you know, a lot of these efforts, it’s not possible for us to achieve, you know, the things that we need to achieve. And so, trying to understand where those gaps are, exactly, and where we can be most impactful today.

Marlene Gebauer 27:09
Maya, did you have any thoughts on that?

Maya Markovich 27:11
Yeah, I mean, I think there are more problems than solutions, obviously, by an exponential level. But we’re also starting to see kind of the, with JTA kind of being founded, kind of in the right place at the right time, with no centralizing force previously, in this nascent space, we’re starting to see more and more that, that there are kind of clusters of types of solutions that are coming out. And I don’t think it’s going to be long before we see a lot of the same patterns replicate themselves that we saw in legal tech, you know, five, six years ago.

Greg Lambert 27:47
You know, there’s, there’s a saying out there that, you know, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. And I think that pretty well applies to what you’re doing with the Justice Technology Association. So we’ve talked about all the positives, but unfortunately, not everything’s gonna be positive here. So what are some of the obstacles that are going to be in your way, as you start to grow the association, and try to make an impact on access to justice, especially when you’re talking about across multiple states?

Maya Markovich 28:17
I can start but Yousef, I think you probably have more insight on this, I think I mean, as an organization, we’re aiming to quickly gain critical mass to speak for the sector, the entrepreneurs and the consumers. building awareness is still something that we’re in early stages on, as well, as, as you mentioned, you know, especially across multiple states with respect to UPL rules. Those are, you know, being fought state by state and debated extensively. And so in some states are not being debated at all. But beyond that, there’s also systemic reform efforts that overlap on the criminal justice side as well. And I think that, you know, the problems are huge, but also, so are the opportunities, I really always like to mention that, in my opinion, what I see in justice tech is both an immense challenge and an opportunity not not specifically with respect to JTA itself, but with the sector. And that is that the most powerful, impactful and successful justice tech initiatives are going to be those that include at their core, people with lived experience with the problem that they’re trying to solve. That’s not unusual. I think that’s something that VCs look for probably across, you know, many different types of verticals and as they’re doing their diligence, but in this particular sector, we’re talking about founders who have lived experience often are the same as those who are very much overlooked and underfunded. And so, what we need is support for them upstream as well upstream it’d be great if we had a venture studio, we should put that together. Because we need more support beyond just a trade association for these organizations. But Yousef, I would love to know your thoughts as well.

Yousef Kassim 30:13
I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, we want to build a critical mass, you know, we want to be able to be a force to go after the issues that we see today. And I think just being able to prioritize, you know, the things that we want to do, because obviously, there’s a lot of obstacles that companies in this space face, or entrepreneurs interested in, breaking into this space will face and so certainly a lot of support across the board. You know, Maya mentioned VCs, and, you know, the need for additional investment in this space. And, you know, I echo that as well, as I think more and more investors today are starting to wake up to the tremendous market potential that’s out there. Yeah, you know, for companies in this space. And so I think just being able to prioritize some of the things that we need to do, as a nascent organization with relatively limited resources, we’re gonna make sure that we’re focused on the things that we need to do today. And I think trying to build a critical mass is certainly one of them.

Maya Markovich 31:17
I would just add just what something you said, Yousef, really made me remember that. Another big challenge is shifting the narrative, honestly, to consumer need and consumer protection. Beyond this debate, that is, you know, kind of in, in the higher echelons of either the legal profession or academia, it but I will say it’s a big effort, but we are definitely starting to see momentum on that.

Greg Lambert 31:43
What a novel concept to focus on the customer.

Marlene Gebauer 31:48
All right, so we’ve mentioned developing critical mass, we mentioned investment, and we mentioned shifting the narrative to consumer protection and consumer need. So what can lawyers and allied professionals do to help with JTA’s mission?

Maya Markovich 32:04
Well, we’re developing our funding model. For levels of sponsorship, of course, I’m going to start with that, right, so

Marlene Gebauer 32:10
Money, money, money.

Maya Markovich 32:11
We’re looking to connect with folks and organizations that want to be in early on this burgeoning ecosystem. We’re getting, you know, many inbound expressions of support and interest in collaboration. So I have no doubt that we’re going to be a force in the short term, but we welcome all those discussions, investors and founders are reaching out to us to for, you know, warm intros to funding and deal flow. The founders themselves want to connect on best practices and data, etc. So anyone who’s interested should reach out, I mean, I’m just going to say, to Yousef too, to either one of us, or go to our site, and JTA companies themselves to of course, apply for membership.

Yousef Kassim 32:51
Yeah, I mean, you know, I’m going to re emphasize the all hands on deck. I mean, I think Justice is a cause that all of us can get behind. And I think that, you know, whether you are somebody that has a legal need today, or, or not, certainly at some point in your life, there was a need for some sort of legal assistance. And so understanding that there are millions of your fellow Americans who are still going through that today. Folks that can’t afford to go through the traditional routes for assistance. And so it would benefit all of us to really get behind an organization like JTA. And, I mean, providing financial support is certainly one way to do it. But also, you know, if you work at a company that you think has shared values with what we’re working on, reach out to us and see if there are ways that you could partner with us, or some of the companies that, you know, are members of our organization. You know, if you work for local, you know, state or even federal government, and you think that you have a role to play in promoting justice for consumers today, I mean, reaching out to us and finding ways that you can help and so even beyond the financial aspect, you know, I think there are individual actions that we can all take, that can certainly get us closer to more hands on deck, and then, you know, closer and closer to justice.

Greg Lambert 34:12
Sounds good. So, before we let you guys go, we’re going to ask you our crystal ball questions. So each of you go ahead and pull out your crystal ball and get ready to peer into the future for us. Yousef, I’m going to start with you. What is your crystal ball telling you about how the legal industry and access to justice issues are going to look say in two to five years?

Yousef Kassim 34:35
Yeah, I think, you know, still two to five years is a very short timeline here. I think that in the near term, though, you’re gonna see a lot more law firms, a lot more governments, whether state, federal local, interested in adopting technology into what it is that they do, and so if they have not already and so I think you’re going to See more and more entrants into the legal tech justice tech space. I think whether that’s, you know, new companies forming new investors coming in. And I think you’re gonna see more and more initiatives starting to sprout, you know, where you’re going to see, you know, a community being built, not just attorneys, not just, you know, companies within our space. But, you know, folks really banding together. And that’s the hope is that, you know, more and more people can understand that there’s a role they can all play, you know, to support the work that we’re doing.

Marlene Gebauer 35:34
And Maya, what is your crystal ball saying about JTA and its impact?

Maya Markovich 35:38
Well, I think I have a little bit of assistance from my, you know, rear view crystal ball in terms of legal tech. Because, you know, I see a lot of similarities from what I saw with legal tech starting in 2015. You know, this justice tech is an emerging ecosystem that we’re building, it aims to benefit all players, we’re bringing this entrenched system where everything’s aligned against innovation into the 21st century, the scope is daunting, but there’s a huge amount of opportunity. Of course, it’s different in the sense that, you know, there’s additional complexity, especially for you know, impact investing, direct to consumer versus supporting the business and practice of law, you know, focusing on the legal consumer being much more client concentric. What we started to see maybe a couple of years ago, and legal tech is already happening in justice tech, things like platformisation. And these kinds of clusters of solutions, where, you know, last year, everybody was all of a sudden, like, mainstream, everything discovered CLM, you know, and I think that we’re starting to see that even, it’s a more a little bit more savvy of a market, as well as kind of a quicker understanding of the end of the positive impact that technology can make and disrupting, you know, such a such an entrenched space. I think there’s no question that we have to all work together to fight for access to justice. So I don’t think that there’s any single solution to the crisis. You know, we need pro bono lawyers, we need more support of self help centers and legal service organizations, and more focused on just how widespread the challenges are. And I think that, as Yousef mentioned, I really do think that it’s just going to become more and more accepted that technology is one of kind of the tools in the arsenal that we can use to address this incredible gap that we’ve got.

Greg Lambert 37:28
Well, Maya Markovich and Yousef Kassim. Want to thank you both for coming in and talking about the Justice Technology Association. It’s sounds like guys are well, on your way to make an impact here. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, you so much.

Greg Lambert 37:47
Well, legal tech, and justice tech, which is a new phrase, again, very small world, it was great to have Maya back on on the show and be introduced to Yousef and the great stuff that they’re doing. They’re at the Justice Technology Association.

Marlene Gebauer 38:05
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I really enjoyed listening to them about what you know, what their mission is, and how they’re trying to accomplish it. And, you know, I really think we’re gonna see more, and we’re probably going to have more guests on sort of in this space. It sounds like is this just a sort of a burgeoning area.

Greg Lambert 38:23
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s kind of I’ll, I’ll give a shout out to our friend, Cat Moon, who, few weeks ago on Twitter had posted that, you know, with the industry, you know, it’s perfectly fine that we regulate ourselves and set kind of the rules of the practice of law and an access to justice. But we also have to be able to recognize when we’re unwilling or unable to fill a need, that we need to allow some creativity, and maybe even some outside people to come in and fill those needs. And I hope JTA helps kind of shine a spotlight on that.

Marlene Gebauer 39:03
Outside people, process, and technology.

Greg Lambert 39:05
Yeah. So thanks, again to Yousef Kassim from easyexpunctions.com And our good friend, Maya Markovich, for coming on, and talking to us about GTA.

Marlene Gebauer 39:16
Yeah, thank you both. And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter,

Greg Lambert 39:30
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 39:33
Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270. And as always, the music here is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert 39:45
Yeah, thank you, Jerry.

Marlene Gebauer 39:49
Always trying to figure out different ways to say Jerry’s name.

Greg Lambert 39:54
All right, well, I’ll talk to you later Marlene.

Marlene Gebauer 39:56
Okay, bye bye.

For many of us, what we think of when we hear “American Lawyer Media”, we think of lots of print newspapers, magazines, The American Lawyer, and the AmLaw 100/200 lists. Bill Carter, CEO of the newly re-branded ALM, sees the tremendous value of the data that ALM collects much more than just the news articles it produces. When Carter took over the reins at ALM in 2012, he evaluated the company like a consultant, and determined that the best path forward was through consolidation of titles through the evolution of law.com; moving away from individual subscriptions to an enterprise model, and; focus on the wealth of data compiled by ALM and find ways to leverage that data as the path forward for the company. We have an amazing look into what ALM is doing these days and a peek at what Bill Carter would like to do in the near future.

Links to Items Discussed:

• Law.com Radar
• Legal Compass
• Global Leaders in Law
• Corporate Counsel Advance

LegalWeek Crystal Ball Answer

This week’s Crystal Ball answer comes to us from Ken Crutchfield of Wolters Kluwer. Ken is monitoring all of the exciting legal technologies that are springing out of the AI explosion and who will be the winners, and who will be the losers as things shake out.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer 0:19
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:26
And I’m Greg Lambert.

Marlene Gebauer 0:28
With the recent release of the AmLaw 100 list for 2022. Our timing for bringing in ALM CEO Bill Carter couldn’t be better. We get a pretty good look under the hood of ALM is built describes what he found when he came in a decade ago. All of the changes that he’s guided the company through, and where he sees ALM in five years. He was very open and candid in his experiences with the company as it moved away from a majority print news operation to one that’s now focused on the power of all the data it collects. If you’re a legal information junkie like we are, you are going to love this discussion.

Greg Lambert 1:00
Yeah, I know I really enjoyed the discussion. Bill really let us take a take a big long look behind the curtain there at ALM so we appreciate him coming on the show.

Marlene Gebauer 1:11
Pretty cool.

Greg Lambert 1:11
So But first up, we bring in another legal week crystal ball response from another large legal information company executive. This time it’s Wolters Kluwer, Ken Crutchfield, who is monitoring all the exciting technology that is just springing up all around with the AI explosion, and finding out who’s going to be the winners and who the losers will be as things shake out.

Ken Crutchfield 1:39
So my name is Ken Crutchfield. And I am vice president and general manager of Wolters Kluwer legal and regulatory the legal markets business. So that’s a long winded way of saying that I managed the legal research portion of Wolters Kluwer in the US, I see so many technologies out here and so many exciting things, I think it’s really going to be interesting to see which technologies start to take effect and take a foothold. And recognizing there’s so many companies out there, which ones are really going to become the ones that are truly successful. That’s the part that I think is so exciting, watching and seeing all the activity here because there’s so much energy right now at this conference.

Greg Lambert 2:17
So do you see more consolidation, then? Or do you see more growth or number of

Marlene Gebauer 2:23
Like more breakout technologies?

Ken Crutchfield 2:25
So I think there’s going to be both I think you’re going to see winners and losers. And you’re going to see that start to play out in the next couple of years. And there’ll be some consolidation, no question about that. But I think you’re gonna see some new and interesting things start to come up, as you can start to leverage the AI the data that is being discerned and the information that is coming out of all of this content that’s being generated through AI technologies and other things. And it’s it gets pulled together, especially in like law firms where you’ve got the different silos to be able to make better decisions. I think when you get that next level of like 2.0, or 3.0, or wherever we are in that generational move, I think you’re gonna see some really exciting things.

Marlene Gebauer 3:06
Now, Wolters Kluwer is doing some interesting stuff, right?

Ken Crutchfield 3:09
I think so I like to think that.

Marlene Gebauer 3:12
Is there anything you can tell us about?

Ken Crutchfield 3:14
Well, I think we’re looking at investments more seriously than we have in the past. So I think as we think about Contract Lifecycle Management, that’s an area that we’ve made a couple of different acquisitions in different parts of the organization. And I think, you know, we’re looking at, you know, how do we become more serious about that in the US and in the legal and regulatory side of the business. So that’s an area that I think it’s interesting. We’re also looking intently at ESG as as much of the market and that’s an area that we’re very interested in, looking at partnerships and ways to grow and expand and introduce products to meet that growing and emerging need. Okay. Well, Ken,

Marlene Gebauer 3:54
thank you so much for joining us.

Ken Crutchfield 3:55
Thank you so much, Marlene, I appreciate it. Thank you, Greg. And it’s wonderful to be here.

Greg Lambert 4:03
Once upon a time, American lawyer media was a confederation of different regional print magazines, that they literally would send out individual postcards for renewal every year for their individual subscriptions.

Marlene Gebauer 4:16
I remember that. Now ALM has rebranded and the focus is much more on the data that’s generated in their gathering of legal information. We get to take a look inside Alm and see how this evolution is driving the company today.

Greg Lambert 4:32
We’d like to welcome Bill Carter, CEO for ALM. Bill, welcome to The Geek in Review.

Bill Carter 4:37
Oh, thank you. Great to be here. Appreciate it.

Marlene Gebauer 4:40
So Bill, you’ve had an interesting trajectory through your legal work. You started out as a software engineer, and then a consultant and you worked on an internet initiative with LexisNexis. You did e discovery at Epic, then you move to trade shows then Thomson Reuters and legal research. How do you think all that experience framed you as a professional?

Bill Carter 5:00
Yeah, it was genius move on my part doing all that? Yeah I know, it’s, you know, I think it’s funny that I think a lot of people always surprised that I started as a software engineer, and really, I was a product person, right? I mean, that was my job was how do I build products. I was at a research institution. So I get to build a lot of interesting products. For example, one of the entrepreneur who approached us the early days, his one of his planes, his friends had been killed in a plane crash landing at an airport. And it was before 3d cockpit displays and GPS had just come out. And he managed to get hold of it was only with the government. And we got to build a 3D visualization tool that was in the cockpit. So I got to build one of the first things the pilots see as they’re coming in for landing. So I really got good exposure, a lot of technology, a lot of products. And that really kind of continues to be my base. I think, you know, look, again, I not a lawyer, I married one. So that helps she answers all my stupid questions on the legal industry and teaches me every day on what’s going on there. But at the end, the parts that I most takeaway from all the job experiences was, there were a lot of different leadership roles, especially when you get to tradeshow logistics, and you’re leading 20,000 union employees that makes you think a lot differently about how you’re going to communicate from it, versus talking to an attorney. The other part of it, I would say, has been I’ve had quite a number of product failures in my career. And so you learn from those mistakes and I think that continues to be beneficial at ALM not but I still make mistakes. But I’ve certainly been able to learn a lot from it. And it’s helped self guide the last few years.

Greg Lambert 6:55
Well, hopefully, when you failed, you failed fast, and you moved on?

Bill Carter 7:03
Well, I know you’ve been at ALM for over 10 years now. And we’ve watched a lot of change occur in your tenure there.

Greg Lambert 7:12
So when you let’s say you jump on the elevator, and somebody asked what you do. How do you describe what ALM is today? And how has it changed from an organization? And in the time you’ve been there?

Bill Carter 7:27
Yeah. So my standard line that exactly what you’re asking there, Greg would be, you know, what does ALM do? And I say we are the trusted information, services, data, and media business serving both the practice of and the business of the professions that we serve. And we do it in four industries, legal, insurance, commercial real estate, and financial services from it. So what does it mean, right? We produce premium content, we have a lot of data that we brought forth, we have very valuable audiences are useful to our marketers, and we do a lot of connection between our folks at events. I mean, that’s really how we describe ALM today and these multiple verticals. It’s very different than 2012. When I came in, at that point, we are you guys certainly know it. And everybody else does, too. We were the well known kind of traditional media business, in the legal industry. We had 18 brands, they all operated independently, and either covered geographies, or segments. So Texas lawyer was a publisher, Texas lawyer, New York Law Journal and The American lawyer, you’re serving the largest law firms out there. But the other two are geography geographical base, the one segment base, and they all operate completely independently, they each had their own process for getting a newspaper out or magazine. And we didn’t have one login for all of the sites at that point in time. So it was really, okay, so great brands, but a very independently operating business from it. So the transformation, and it was mostly print, probably 75% print at that point and individual subscriptions. So the transformation we’ve gone through has been taking that media business with strong brands and changing it into an integrated business, again, has still retains the media, but it’s got the information, data components, and they’re all built on top of the strong brands. And if I look at it from legal, it really has been the biggest kind of product transformation has been law.com. And what we’ve done on bringing law.com to the forefront, and law.com being the global kind of brand, really serving enterprises. That that’s been, that’s been the big change. You know, certainly we’re in multiple verticals now, which we were not back then. And the verticals all connected by the professionals, we try to serve each protocol all dealing with risk, whether it’s taking risks, managing risk, or mitigating risks, that’s kind of the common theme. And we try to figure out how we can share assets between them. So the multiple verticals is definitely different piece. I would say what we’ve retained, though, is still that focus on “business of”, versus my prior employers in the legal space, were very focused on the tools to help you get work output. ALM has always had this mindset of let’s look at the business side, and how do we make our professionals more successful in business? And as we’ve kind of evolved over the last 10 years, that still remains kind of our core. That’s the mindset, we try to approach to new products, where our unique space is in the marketplace. And all of this, I just have to because you saw it, we talked about it legal week, we just rebranded the company. And rebranding was really because of this transformation, we dropped media in our name, we just became ALM, we really thought through carefully what our value proposition is today and what it could be going forward. And so we want to make sure getting the logo and then we rebranded and redevelop our website to get everything out. But it was to reflect hopefully, everything we’ve transformed over the last 10 years.

Greg Lambert 10:59
Interesting, why drop media? What was the reason behind that?

Bill Carter 11:04
Yeah, one of the people who still media is a core part of our business because it is the the means we use to collect data to interact with our communities and build relationships. But we’re much more than media now. And it probably gets into you know, a lot of discussion here today, we’ve moved much more into the data side of the business, the data that can support our professionals, and even also the information services offerings we’ve built and are building right now on it. So people when they hear the media, they think of old ALM from an it was a little bit say, still an important part, but we’re a much broader company now from it as we move forward.

Marlene Gebauer 11:41
So I mean, I think historically and currently, many of our lives listeners would associate ALM with intelligence. I mean, you’re talking about data. And there’s a lot of surveys that come out there’s different products that that ALM provides that they’re all about intelligence. Is that changing now with the new rebranding, you know, how and how has it changed, sort of since you came on board?

Bill Carter 12:07
It’s funny, I think, you know, it’s great to hear you thought, and your colleagues thought it is dated intelligence from it. I don’t think ALM totally viewed themselves that way when I got here. Oh, hey, we brought the AmLaw 100 in April, let’s move on. So it’d be a little bit of maybe insight on it, but it was just viewed as it was viewed from a very journalistic perspective back and interesting point in time. I think, probably, you know, what, what I brought to the table personally, when I came in ALM and we you hit on a little bit there at the beginning, Greg is I was a management consultant for a couple years. And when I went to Lexis I moved in into the strategy role. When I first came in, they had much more data than I realized I had known ALM since probably at Lexis 2000-2001. So I’ve known them pretty good for I thought 10 or 11 years and certainly know about all the traditional things. But then I discovered all the datasets that ALM had been collecting, you know, they had been tracking partner moves, lateral hire moves for 15 years or so. They had diversity metrics, headcount, they were keeping track, and where that was, and then we got to things like geographical locations. I think, again, that wasn’t viewed as data. But as a management consultant. My kind of first comment, I think it was in the first month as I’m sitting there learning about this, I said, Look, guys, if I were back in my old job as management consultants, Skadden Arps, hired me and said, tell us how to grow. Where should we go? I said, this is the data. ALM sits on the data that I want to start with from it. Because I’m going to want to look at my competition. How’s my competition doing we outperforming them or not? Where are they going? What practice areas are they in? Where have they been making moves and where they’ve been expanding offices? So I approached with this kind of management consultant mindset, saying, we need to start to think of ourselves as providing the information and data that supports strategic planning, operational benchmarking, business development and competitive intelligence from it. The Evolution has been from like, alright, we get this data, we put it on his journalist and we move on to… No, let’s now start to take that data and try to help people think through these major business decisions add value on it on top of that, so that that’s kind of been the change, I would say, since I’ve started.

Marlene Gebauer 14:24
So the data that you’re talking about, I mean, this is data that’s generated by the firm’s themselves, right? What other kinds of data are you, you know, are you using? Are you pulling to sort of enhance that intelligence footprint?

Bill Carter 14:39
Yeah. We’re doing it a few different ways. And some of it, you’re right, I guess you brought a sense the law firms are generating because even partner moves, right. It’s coming for the law firms, and we’re tracking through and all the different pieces. We probably, you know, on the law firm side, we don’t pull in too much different. But again, it’s a mindset to use. Let me give you part, for example, PACER data, how we approach it differently, I think, then than most others do. Everybody pulls down PACER data from it. But when we looked at it, that kind of this “business of” mindset, and where would we be different? Our focus was on this is business development. How do we alert to it new litigation opportunities, and not in the sense of two months from now want to go back and analyze what law firms won what business. It was a new case just got filed? It’s happened so quickly, Defense doesn’t even though they’ve been sued yet. So you, law firm had been trying to win this client. For this, here’s your chance to kind of, you know, to contact in house counsel, and say, Hey, we can represent you in this case. So we introduced RADAR. So now we ping the federal court system, and within 30 minutes when new litigation being filed, we have put out there here, here’s an opportunity for you to go after it. And we do three sentences, right we do. Plaintiff defendant, counsel representing plaintiff, counsel repping defendant, which usually says not filed not determined yet, then one or two sentence summary of what the case is about. And we say your practice area here, we alert you to this thing. Interestingly, this product got used on us. So we got caught up on a lawsuit closed captioning on one of our CLE classes we didn’t have and so hearing impaired person found it. We got caught up in a class action. One of the law firms saw our name and it was on there, they sent me an email and just said, Here it is. Here’s our experience with these types of cases, we get the stock for $15,000. I was like, Done! You got the job. So. So it’s it, you know that case, it’s a mindset of how to use the data in a different way. I think as we go now, a lot of it’s on the corporate side. And that will be where corporations are generating data that we think we can then be helpful to the law firms. So we’re pretty much more focused on that corporate side. So it’d be like corporate, what are the corporate budgets? How much do they use outside counsel for? We actually just getting ready to release a survey, which interesting was little corporate customers will sensitive to but their diversity metrics. And we’ve been doing their compensation benchmarking of some of their folks. So we’re trying to use some of that, you know, we’ll get some of that data, again, with a lot of support the business development side for law firms or charts, content information. So that’s how we’ll start to bring that into it again, with that kind of business development mindset.

Marlene Gebauer 17:53
And that seems that says real kind of open area, because oftentimes, you know, firms do not get that type of insight. And while there’s products out there for corporate counsel to sort of look into the firm’s a little bit more, there’s not a whole lot the other way around.

Bill Carter 18:08
Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. And so we have, we started, this is something new a membership program called global leaders in law, and it is for corporate counsel. And we’re getting them together and they’re giving us insights are actually starting to provide us some qualitative metrics on law, firm performance, those types of things that we can then come back to the law firms and provide. I would say, we’re just starting to tap into this. But I agree with you, it’s a fruitful, it’s a fruitful direction to go in.

Marlene Gebauer 18:36
And that’s anonymized?

Bill Carter 18:38
Oh, yes, it will be will be, I think at some point, we’ll see if we can get them to agree a little bit more broadly. But so far, on the anonymous,

Marlene Gebauer 18:47
like, if you pay a premium, we’ll tell you where you stand.

Greg Lambert 18:52
Well, Bill, you and I met up in legal week in New York, and we discussed a number of things. But we really talked about the you know, these types of data points and the practicality that they have for the industry. So how is it that ALM can leverage this data that that you’re collecting? And does this have practical application right now? Or is the data used more for prediction to be used later?

Bill Carter 19:23
Yeah, um, I would say, the executive team, and I tend to be pretty practical, I think, because we’ve been in the legal industry for so many years. And back again, all those product failures we had, there were so many things I think we all built, it would sit in market research and be like, Oh, that’s cool. We’d love to buy that, when it comes out and would build it. And then of course, it wouldn’t go anywhere from it. So I think we taken a pretty practical approach. One way I think we try to make it practical is is to go and go back to what I was talking about all that data that ALM had that I didn’t appreciate. We spent about five years aggregating and cleansing all the data and building product we call Compass. Compass has, you can go back and see 30-40 years of financial data, or a bunch of other statistics and metrics that we have on it. You can get that tool, you go look at the tool and play with it all you want from it. But I think the mindset we have exactly the executive team is how many partners, especially managing partners, or heads of practices really want to get into our tool and play with it? What they really want, right, we got to make it practical and useful for them. So one of the things we did about I think we started three, maybe four years ago, were these firm performance reports, firm reports, I think we call it now. And the goal was to give some actionable insights. So what we do is we do a 20 page report sent once a year, just as the AmLaw100, the AmLaw200 Come out with all the metrics. So we take kind of what we’ve been writing about all year on the farm and their strategic moves, hey, you open something a new center in Dublin, and you did this, a new office that you open along with the financial metrics, and we compiled these 20 Page reports. Now, probably for any firm the report on them is not that useful, though. Sometimes it is, which is interesting, because you would think they kind of like they know.

Greg Lambert 21:18
You’d be surprised what we don’t know about ourselves.

Bill Carter 21:22
But for the most part, it’s a competitive intelligence tool. It doesn’t answer all the questions that a firm has, but it gives them a starting point and then they can probe and start to look at the competitor in different ways off it. So we try to make that very practical there. Another way is we do market reports. I think we did one in San Francisco Bay Area last year and it went through and said here’s top firms. Here’s the market A chair who’s here’s baby’s been expanding, here’s what we see in terms of different rates, here’s what it is by practice area, all of those types of things. Again, it’s not anybody in particulars probably gonna want to explore further. And we’ve given them the data to do that. But our goal is to give you something practical that you can start to execute on. So most of its there, I mean, we do, there certainly are some predictive tools that can use a future. I mean, we have an M&A analysis tool, for example, in compass. So combined two firms, you can see your geographic coverage, you can start to see what the combined financials would look like, etc. But I think for the most part, we try to stay pretty practical with it. And again, this concept is like, how do we help people be better in their businesses?

Marlene Gebauer 22:30
So, Bill, you’ve hinted that, you know, the ALM is moving in a different direction, there’s a big focus on data. And you know, you’ve talked about you know, this M&A analysis, a few other things, it seems like data can actually be used to change the market that ALM is in. Explain to us, you know, how do you see data as maybe a different method for for revenue generation and profit?

Bill Carter 22:56
You know, I’d say, since we kind of went through this transformation, one of the things that really had us do was really methodically think through how we want to support our customers, it applies to again, I’m speaking a lot for legal, it does apply, and we try to use the same model, or others, but we have an information model now. And so our informational model has four components. The first is early awareness, and that is ALM is going to tell you that something just happened, we’re not gonna provide a lot of insight to you just, hey, new new litigation got filed, or new regulatory action and just hear it is. The second phase is global context and guidance. So that is, something happened or a series of things happens, here’s what it means to you, here’s a means to your firm. Here’s what means to your practice area industry overall. And that’s why I say law.com, we try to you know, one of the models I use internally is we’re the Wall Street Journal for the legal industry, that’s what global context and guidance is. The third component is engagement. So how do we help you engage with your peers? How do you help engage with, you know, people you might want to partner with or do business with? And then the fourth is strategic intelligence. So it’s back to this strategic planning and operational benchmarking. So we look at it as a close a nice circle where everything fits together data we collect one feeds into the next, for example, litigation filings, who got the business becomes something you can use in strategic intelligence all connects together from it, what it’s done for us in terms of new revenue models, etc, back to kind of ALM when I walked in, in 2012. ALM really viewed itself as mostly serving the individual, we sold individual subscription, right, and we work towards that. Now, we think about it on an enterprise level with that inter with that model there from it. So it’s led to us is we’ve much moved much more to enterprise subscriptions. In fact, the majority of our revenues now do come from the enterprises subscribing as a whole, with it being the whole package connected together, and people seeing the value of that. So it’s been, that’s been a very big transformational point for ALM has been has been that change in the revenue model from it.

Greg Lambert 25:08
Yeah. And you’ve been a lot more direct sales to from ALM to the customer. Now, we’re used to go through third parties, right?

Bill Carter 25:20
Yeah, third parties. We got here, we were still mailing postcards out, saying, Hey, give us your credit card. And we’ll do it in which, you know, again, back then I was actually, I was really surprised when I got into ALM just to pick on the American Lawyer. We looked at the largest law firms and how many subscriptions we had. And I was shocked by how few. But if you think back to it was the days of the people who would get it would be the partners who would expense it. They get the print copy, and then they circulated around the office from it.

Marlene Gebauer 25:54
Ahh, the routing list.

Bill Carter 25:56
Yeah, exactly. What was interesting is cyber shocked like, Oh, my goodness, what was going on here? We took a look though, at the Daily alerts that went out. And this one farm, I’m not gonna say the firm’s name. They had 20 subscribers to The American Lawyer. It was a giant firm. They had 1000 Attorneys, including the associates getting the daily alert on the American lawyer, but if they clicked on it, they hit the paywall couldn’t get through it. So really, our first step was to go talk to the librarians at some of those firms and say, Look, why don’t we get you a site license, the American Lawyer everybody wants it. It was easy everybody once they saw the data, realize what happened there and wanted to get it and so. Now what was interesting was when we went back and and we were going in to say let’s get you a whole license for the entire firm. I said, when asked about any print copies they want, you know, they want five, which print copies will ship on 500 print copies, not a single firm took a single incremental print copy. That’s kind of what started us down our path to where we are today.

Greg Lambert 27:02
You know, speaking of, of law firms, and I know you’ve collected a lot of data, are there any specific requests that you’re getting from law firms that say, Hey, we really want you to look into these areas? And and I’m really curious if anything has popped up, say over the last couple of years with much more remote working during COVID.

Bill Carter 27:25
Let me think about that remote working piece of it. We have gotten requests now kind of go back to it to that model. Again, if I use that, if I start with the early awareness with a lot of it being the litigation filings, we’re using PACER right now. So a lot of the requests have been like, can you get more state and local court from there, so we can see much more comprehensively what’s going on across the US? On the corporate counsel side, we’ve got a little bit of regulatory information, can you get us regulatory changes that are factoring into that? So we’re trying to think through how am I might do that, but a law firm side, it’s give us more information on more courts. So we can have pursue more business development opportunities. On the global context and guidance. So kind of going back to the Wall Street Journal for the legal industry. Most we get to request there, what is more global content. So one of the things we started, we launched law.com International, back in 2020. And put journalists in a number of countries around there. So you might imagine Singapore, so we can cover arbitration, we’ve got Australian reporters, we have one or two in Mexico. So we’re kind of just in Belgium, right? So we’ve kind of really put some people in key places, people have asked us to add more reporters there and keep growing law.con International, On the US side from the smaller in the markets, can we cover more of the states? Can we can we get in some of the states and give some more coverage of what’s happening there? So we’re looking at both of those. On the strategic planning part, the Strategic Intelligence, certainly global, people are wanting to get more information globally, as they think about you know, Hey, how’s Yeah, we might be happy to see how UK DLA Piper is comparing versus UK chambers. But what about firms that are just based in the UK? You know, where can we go there who might be M&A candidates, those types of things that data they would love to see in it. We are about to launch that can June maybe end of May a product called Mid-Market Pro. So if you think amlaw 200. And really, a lot of things are at the global 300. It’s, what about those ones that are 201 or maybe AmLaw, 750? And collecting more data there to kind of get insight into where might they grow? How are they doing? Kind of these other strategic planning and operational benchmarking questions. Those are places where we’ve gotten some requests to do it. We have gotten, you know, as you might imagine, I mentioned earlier about the law firms wanting more information from the corporate counsel to ask for the law firms are like, Hey, we would like more information on that to help us win business and make some more connections between.

Greg Lambert 30:10
Can you ask that question for us? Because we don’t want to ask our clients directly.

Bill Carter 30:15
We will try to that’s what we’re trying to do. So we’ll try to get that data for you.

Marlene Gebauer 30:20
So Bill, you you just referenced a large amount of areas where you’re starting to collect data. Are there any additional pieces of information or data that you’re not collecting yet that you’d like to be collecting?

Bill Carter 30:33
Yes. So we certainly got a lot of requests for data that people would like to collect. We’ve been trying to think we all love this. We’re trying to think one step ahead. And in an area we’re exploring, actually kind of goes back to the corporate side, which may be also relevant to the law firm side is, and it’s a fair question for LM. I mean, we are mostly business of law, do we start to move into the practice of law side of the equation? And what would that mean for us as a company? And look, there’s some very established players who are much stronger I certainly don’t want to take on as competitors. So we think about it in a different light and the area where in speaking to corporate counsel and in house where we’ve gotten some is, and this is a this is how they phrased it to us, which is something new has happened, a new regulatory action, a new law, a new litigation area is emerging. I got to come up with a response from my board. Before they come to me. I need to know it fast. So we’re trying to figure out what kind of reporting what kind of information and things can we gather that It is not meant to provide the full answer, it will provide some high level answer to corporate counsel, if they can go in and do that, then then of course, it becomes more, you know, something to dig into deeper or deal with, they can go hire outside counsel or go to other sources to do it. But that kind of gets access to a little bit of the practice of law side. And so we’re exploring right now, do we move into that? What would that information look like? And how might we use that as data could be something that would be a new area.

Marlene Gebauer 32:19
It’s interesting, because there’s been products out that that deal with like, legislative and, okay, you know, something’s out and what sort of the likelihood of it, you know, passing? And I think some of them actually did, like, sort of what it what it could mean to you based on your industry. And I’m wondering if maybe, looking at it from a regulatory standpoint, like you’re talking about, okay, here’s the high level, this is what it is. But, you know, also what it means, you know, what does it mean to me? You know, based on where I sit?

Bill Carter 32:51
Yeah, no, that’s exactly it. So it’s a, it’s a work in progress. It’s where I’m gonna spend even a good bit of my time, I’d say, with the teams over the next few months of flushing out because I think it might be a next big growth opportunity for ALM. Configure something out there?

Greg Lambert 33:07
Well, you definitely have a lot of moving pieces going on here. And speaking of growth, is this is this something and you and I talked about this in New York. Is this something that is internal growth that you start developing this in house? Or is this something that you start looking as it’d be easier to acquire somebody that’s already doing it?

Bill Carter 33:30
Yeah, it’s, um, we certainly can go both routes in many ways. For example, going global, we chose to do it organically and add our own reporters and things. But there are, there are some opportunities to acquire that would definitely boost us in terms of our coverage, in some of our data and intelligence side of the equation is from it. The corporate counsel opportunity, or I was using the corporate GC as an example in that last one about this practice law. It’s something again, we could build, it would take quite a bit of investment, there might be some opportunities to accelerate their growth through acquisition. So I think as we go forward, we’re going to be looking at both routes to go from. One of the things I think we’ve we’ve done well, and it has been a really big focus for last few years. And to your point, Craig, it’s got us to a lot of things now is new product development. It was something we had, especially new product about and Information Services in data that was a new thing for ALM to learn. And we’ve gotten that kind of down now and are building it, we hope to keep accelerating that it will be something I have to watch as a CEO is where we push it in too many places? What are the big opportunities? And then a lot of it will be is the best way to build it or to buy it, we’ll look at both things.

Greg Lambert 34:48
That’s why they pay you the big bucks.

Marlene Gebauer 34:52
So I in doing my research, I read that you actually do some advising for startups, is that correct?

Bill Carter 34:58
A little bit. Yes.

Marlene Gebauer 35:00
It’s like so so that that seems sort of very different from your sort of current role and what got you started and doing that? What do you enjoy about it?

Bill Carter 35:08
I think there’s, there’s a couple of things I enjoy. I’ll tell you one other thing I do outside which I found, I just put out a few weeks ago, I have a master’s degree, I was getting a PhD in artificial intelligence. So back in the late 80s, early 90s. Before it was either, it was neither as cool nor as lucrative as it is now. So, but I remained on the Georgia Tech College computing advisory board. So I get to, twice a year we get together, I get to hear about new research that’s going on at Georgia Tech. I get to spend time with students and then they have a entrepreneurial program that they launch there. So they’ll pitch business ideas, etc. And I applied a little bit outside of that environment, some more some that are actually in motion and kind of operating. The things I like about it are one, I love new product, I just I love the product. I love the technology, I understand it. So a lot of times when the entrepreneurs are talking, I can kind of relate to what I’ve seen or give some input Hey, by the way, I know this professor over at Georgia Tech, who might be able to get some input on that. So I love making those connections. I think be the part keep coming back so many times I failed. So many products that have not worked that I’ve launched,

Marlene Gebauer 36:25
What did I do wrong?

Bill Carter 36:29
I’ve gotten understand for better or worse in the legal industry, the different business models from it so I can I can give them some advice on like, look, here’s here’s the issue that you face. And I I’ll tell you what, I don’t remember who I was talking to years ago. And we both came to the conclusion that one of the challenges in the legal software space was at the $7 million revenue mark, I don’t know if $7 million holds true today or not right? But 10 years ago, that a lot of companies would get to about $7 million on transactional revenue. So law firms would hire him on an as needed basis, etc. But to get bigger, you had to turn into a subscription model, some kind of way, which meant you had to make your content really useful, really engaging, that people wanted to do it, maybe move into overhead as your expense, right? So a lot of that kind of mentality I try to bring to the startups try to say, look, I don’t you got to, this is what you got to do to get to that and kind of help them think through it. That’s what I, that’s what I try to bring to the table off of it.

Marlene Gebauer 37:37
Well, that that has got to be super helpful for them. I mean, you know, who wouldn’t want, you know, an advisor? Who, who’s had experience to be able to do that?

Bill Carter 37:46
Yeah, and I enjoy it.

Marlene Gebauer 37:47
ALM has been responsible for legal week, for a long time. And, you know, so what do you think, has been legal weeks most important contribution to the industry?

Bill Carter 38:00
Yeah, well, I’ll give you two perspectives on it. One is it keeps all the connections in the legal industry together. So that people I worked with 25 years ago. It’s like our annual reunion place and that networking component of it. And I actually do think that’s a critical thing that legal week does bring is kind of this networking, and these relationships over a period of time. I think it’s been very good. Again, kind of going back to the product side, kind of give you a story from my first time I went to legal week, I think it was it was like it was 2001, I was sent by LexisNexis. And we were looking at the practice management space. And I remember the person who presented the idea. So I’m in the business, I’m in strategy at that point, the person came in said, We gotta buy this company. He’s like, practice management isn’t over you guys. There’s one practice management company out there. I was like, Whoa, really? That didn’t seem right. But okay, I kind of believed him. And then I went to legal week, and I was like, wait a minute, for six practice. Practice Management, software companies here from it. So I needed arise, look, with legal weak back, then you get a good broad perspective of what’s happened out there. Things that are much more mature 2001, ediscovery was just starting. Now, it’s a much more mature industry. And you see its role, his change from the couple of companies that started in 2001, to where it is today. But it gives us a good glimpse into what’s next, and where things are coming. So I think legal weeks been good for that, too. And in terms of keeping me up to date, and what’s on the horizon.

Greg Lambert 39:37
And it’s, I know, as a non ediscovery person that attends legal week that there’s definitely, I mean, at one point, it was mostly ediscovery. And I would say even though there’s still a good contingent of ediscovery, just because it’s such a massive part of the legal practice, but there’s much more to that now than than just ediscovery.

Bill Carter 40:03
And we realized probably the eDiscovery dominance probably about six years ago, really start talking about and that’s what led to changing the formal name, although many of us, you know, say legalweek/legal tech, changing it to legal weak was realizing we needed to play a broader role rather than just kind of that focused and and then had been very conscious about making sure it covers a variety of different things.

Greg Lambert 40:27
Yeah. And of course, wasn’t it last year as it was legal year? I forget how

Bill Carter 40:32
That right, we did. Because we stretched out over six months.

Greg Lambert 40:39
All right, well, Bill, this is the part of the show where we ask our guests to pull out their crystal ball and give us a prediction of what you see over the next, say, five years or so. So you gave me an elevator pitch at the beginning of our conversation. What do you how do you describe ALM when you jump on that elevator and say the year 2027.

Bill Carter 41:03
Well, I’ll give it to you from a legal perspective first. And I’d say that ALM provides a global marketplace that facilitates the provision of superior legal services. So a very succinct statement with a lot of complexity in it. So what does that mean? So I’ll start with in house I mean, right. What we’re talking about is the buyers and sellers so it’s in house, corporations, and law firms, facilitating them working together in again, superior legal services, how can we improve legal services overall? So for our house, our corporation what it would mean would be ALM helps them learn about new trends, emerging risks, gives them some insight in what to do about it. Helps in house discover new approaches, new ways of operating to improve how they’re doing it. And then help them make better selections of outside counsel from there and give them the data and information they do it. So that’s, that’s very different thing that Allen says right now, we need to build out a lot of that. But that’s the corporate side of the market. On the law firm side, it sticks to a lot of how do we help law firms wind new business, make better decisions through analytics, research, insights, and again, connect law firms with customers and their peers and help them engage through that and in conducting business from it. So it takes our traditional law firm business, our emerging corporate business, and starts to link the two together in a variety of different new ways with again, our entire goal is how can make the entire system better going forward and help everybody improve from it. Part of the rebranding that we did was to give us the right to kind of expand into that area back to Ala media. It’s not really media there, we’re talking about some different things. That’s one reason we do it and rebranding, if our thinking about ALM overall, it’s that same type of model, but maybe broaden again, to risk professionals, people who are taking risks, managing risk, mitigating risks, how can we help them, in some ways, engage and give them more tools and information from it. So that’s, that’s what we’ll try and push over the next few years.

Greg Lambert 43:17
All right, well, Bill Carter from ALM we appreciate you coming in having this conversation with us.

Marlene Gebauer 43:24
Thanks, Bill,

Bill Carter 43:25
Thank you very much enjoyed it.

Greg Lambert 43:29
It was good to have Bill come on. I met with him for 30 minutes. So I actually kind of danced around the schedule while we were in New York. And we finally found a time that worked for the two of us and got together and I was probably like, two seconds into the conversation. I was like, we gotta get to the guy on the show. Because there’s, there’s just a lot going on. And I know, us as librarians and information professionals, we have seen the data that they’ve collected for a long time, but I think he’s right, I think a lot of people both internally and externally, still think of it as a media company. And seems like they’ve got a lot more cooking in the kitchen.

Marlene Gebauer 44:09
Yeah, so a couple points, like I’m not sure if people are aware, I mean, you’re saying we’ve been we know about this for years, it’s like so every year they present their their data at AALL like their annual data. And, you know, you you can go and listen to how it was, it was gathered and what they found. So I, you know, I don’t know if people in the industry know that. But you know, you send your librarians there, it’s like, you get that information. And, you know, the data geek in me, I’m just listening to the all of the things that they want to get more involved in, you know, more global information, more state court and just state information, more regulatory information. And you know, already, you know, my mind is just going in terms of like, okay, well, we can do this with it, we can do this with it, we can do this. So I’m really, really excited to see what what they develop.

Greg Lambert 44:56
Yeah, it’s gonna be interesting. And I think you’re probably gonna see a lot of growth. And I know you said, you know, it could go either way, as far as growth or acquisitions, but I feel like we’re probably gonna see some acquisitions.

Marlene Gebauer 45:08
Yeah. I mean, I was I was listening to what he was saying, and I was thinking I was already thinking of a couple companies that might be worth, it might be worthwhile. Maybe they been on the show before, I don’t know

Greg Lambert 45:20
Go see if you get a percentage of that.

Marlene Gebauer 45:24
Charge for my consulting fee.

Greg Lambert 45:26
There you go. Exactly. Well, thanks again to Bill Carter, the CEO of ALM for coming on the show. Appreciate it, Bill.

Marlene Gebauer 45:33
Thanks, Bill. And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter.

Greg Lambert 45:47
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 45:50
Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert 46:02
Thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene, I will talk to you later.

Marlene Gebauer 46:04
All right, ciao.

[Note: We are big supporters of legal standards here at 3 Geeks, so we asked Damien Riehl to convert his presentation at the SKILLS conference into a blog post regarding the work being conducted at SALI for Legal Matter Specification Standards. – GL]

This is a brief introduction to The SALI Alliance. SALI (which stands for Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry) is a nonprofit that provides a framework to standardize legal data to improve legal business management. SALI’s Legal Matter Specification Standard (LMSS) includes 10,000 tags that enable users to extract legal insights — both for legal substance and business. SALI’s LMSS codes improve business intelligence initiatives; data-science initiatives; AI initiatives; and interoperability among clients, legal service providers, and tech and data providers.

Generating insights from data requires first having structured, tagged data across business systems. SALI provides that structure, serving three types of stakeholders. Here are some examples:

1. Buyers (i.e., clients) frequently want to know “Which firms and service providers are the best fit for a particular legal matter?” 
2. Providers (e.g., firms) want to respond, “Of course, we are the best fit for you, client.”
3. Vendors want to provide solutions that support other stakeholders. 

• Who has experience in this particular <Area of Law>? 
• Which is likely to provide this <Result>? 
• Which have provided <Document> at what cost? 
• How does the cost differ in <Jurisdiction_X>? 
• In <Jurisdiction_X>, what is the risk of litigation for <Claim>?

Other key tags that buyers need include Services, Objectives, Causes of Action, and about 10,000+ other items. SALI counts all of these.

Providers (e.g., firms and alternative legal service providers) want to expand existing client relationships and create new ones by determining:

1. Which other law firms are providing <Service> in this <Area of Law>? 
2. Which competitors does this client also hire for <Service>? 
3. Which other <Areas of Law> might our client need? 

The SALI tags enable firms to generate those types of analytic insights. 

Vendors provide applications (e.g., analytics, billing, research, eDiscovery, legal project management) that are fueled by SALI. The standard’s 10,000 tags are the underpinning for many of the industry’s most-advanced AI and data-analytics projects. And because vendors are adopting SALI’s LMSS — as a data standard — that data is interoperable. Vendors, firms, and clients can move data amongst themselves interchangeably. 

Tagging Professionals’ Work Product

As lawyers and legal professionals deliver legal services, they create documents. Unknowingly, that work product creates “hidden data exhaust” — language to be mined and tagged using SALI fields. SALI tags can be used on (1) matters, (2) documents, and (3) tasks.

• Matter tags. Organizations can tag their legal work at the matter level. For example, SALI has tags that can categorize a matter under:
  • Area of Law (e.g., Banking Law, Intellectual Property Law)
  • Service (e.g., Advice, Disputes, Transactional)
  • Industry (e.g., Health Care, Real Estate)
  • Location (e.g., EU, China)
  • Forum and Venue (e.g., N.D. Cal., NY City Court, Immigration Court)
• Document tags. Users can also tag particular document types and components:
  • Document Types (e.g., Merger Agreement, Motion to Dismiss)
  • Document Components (e.g., Claims, Contractual Clauses, Remedies)
  • Actor / Player (e.g., Borrower, Acquiror, Plaintiff, Third-Party Defendant)
• Task tags. SALI has also collected many tags related to legal work itself:
  • Events (e.g., Closing, Appraisal, Due Diligence, Oral Argument, Trial)
  • Services (e.g., Deposition, Settlement Practice, Appellate Briefing Practice)
• Thousands of other tags.

So with SALI’s 10,000 tags, organizations can cover both high-level tagging (e.g., matters) and granular tagging (e.g., documents with “legal propositions” that include “breach of contract” and “borrower”). 

Timekeeping entries also include data exhaust. For example, a patent-infringement case (SALI tags: Patent Law + Dispute) could output time entries that include the words “deposition” or “affidavit” or “summary judgment brief” — each of which is a SALI tag. So a user can tag up time entries to determine how long it takes to perform a particular task (e.g., deposition) for a particular legal area (e.g., Patent Law + Disputes).

Nearly every piece of legal work product can be mined for value. That value can be quantified using SALI tags.

Manual Tagging vs. Programmatic Tagging vs. Hybrid

Organizations could tag their matters, documents, tasks, and timekeeping in several ways — each with varying degrees of effort.

• Manual Tagging. Tagging items manually is very accurate, though time consuming. 
• Programmatic tagging. Some SALI-endorsing vendors (e.g., Fastcase, Intapp) use SALI tags to extract these types of granular items programmatically — automatically, without human intervention. Users can have standardized, tagged-up data — ready for analytics and interoperability — with less or minimal effort from users (e.g., lawyers, firms, clients).
• Hybrid Tagging. Organizations could do a mix of these, running queries (programmatic) with a QA step (manual) to ensure accuracy.
  • For example, organizations seeking all motions to dismiss could query their DMS for `(motion /2 dismiss)` and then:
    • Select all
    • Deselect false positives
  • This hybrid approach can both:
    • Expedite tagging
    • Improve precision (accuracy)

Insights from SALI Tagging

Tagging enables advanced and powerful analytics. Once you’ve tagged up matters, documents, or timekeeping — using standardized SALI codes — those tags can provide analytic insights. 

For example, after populating a dataset with SALI tags, you can obtain insights to questions like “Show me all our patent litigation matters where we represented computer and high-tech clients who were defendants.”  The image below shows the value of tagging using SALI tags.

Because each of the things that I’ve just described is a SALI field, users can run a query on the SALI tags Patent Law (Area of Law) + Dispute (Service) + Computer & High Tech (Industry) +  Defendant (Actor / Player). 

Notably, SALI wisely separates Areas of Law from the Service provided:

• Area of Law = Patent Law
• Service 
  • Disputes (e.g., patent litigation)
  • Regulatory (e.g., patent prosecution)
  • Transactional (e.g., patent licensing)
  • Advisory (e.g., patent advice)
  • Restructuring / Bankruptcy (e.g., patent assets)

That separation of Area of Law from Service greatly simplifies the SALI taxonomy — and increases its power. For SALI’s dozens of Areas of Law, there is no need for Area of Law to be bogged down by five subtypes (e.g., Disputes, Regulatory, Transactional, Advisory, Regulatory/Bankruptcy) for each area.  Instead, permitting the “tagging” gives the same results, but in a much more simplified form. Fewer tags and more flexibility.

In addition, tagging the Service also permits users to run queries on a particular Service (e.g., Regulatory, Disputes, Transactional) across many Areas of Law (e.g., Banking Law, Patent Law, Health Law) and many different Industries (e.g., Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals).

Industry Interoperability

Because SALI is a legal-data standard, which has growing adoption from the legal industry’s biggest players, it enables interoperability across the legal ecosystem. Much like the financial industry has ISO and FIBO — which enables banks and financial institutions to move money and data across organizations — the legal industry now has SALI, which enables clients, providers, and vendors to move data across organizations. 

Because more and more players use the same SALI tags, interoperability is now possible. In the past, people were counting the same item (e.g., Banking Law), but interoperability required mapping all the fields between each of the legal ecosystem’s thousands of players. That’s time-consuming and expensive.

SALI is solving that problem: As a standard, it can provide interoperability. Since everyone uses the same SALI tag for Banking Law, all of the stakeholders (e.g., firm X, client Y, vendor 1, vendor 87) can move data between each other. The SALI API working group is currently crafting the SALI API language. If you’d like to join in that work, please let us know.

Bridging Substantive Law and the Business of Law

One of SALI’s biggest strengths is that it merges two aspects of legal practice:

1. Substantive Law. How do we win or lose? How do we get the deal done?
2. Business of Law. How much will it cost?  What is our profit margin?

SALI tags help with both because they are related. 

• Business of Law. How much does a Deposition cost? 
• Substantive Law. Well, that depends — is it a…
  • …depo for Patent Infringement Claim? 
  • …depo for Slip-and-Fall Negligence Claim? 

Substantive factors affect business variables. SALI counts both. With SALI tags, one is able to determine both: 

1. How do various tags affect cost? 
2. And how do we use those insights to deliver services more effectively?

Browsing SALI’s LMSS: WebProtégé

All 10,000 of SALI’s tags are displayed in the Stanford tool WebProtégé. Using the tool, you can easily explore the SALI taxonomy/ontology by both browsing and searching:

• Browse the various types and subtypes using the left-hand side arrows 
• Search for specific terms, jumping directly to its location in the hierarchy

Because WebProtégé has connected its thousands of tags through conceptual relationships, that enables technologists to more easily bring together disparate concepts. A common scenario: “A new potential client is in the Transportation Industry — what have we done in that area?”

Because SALI has connected the tag Maritime Negligence with Maritime Law and the Transportation Industry, a quick query for Transportation Industry can show results with all Maritime Negligence documents.

Multiple Parentage. Also important, SALI tags can have multiple parents, which reflects the world — and legal concepts — and how they work. For example, you could ask three lawyers “What kind of claim is Negligent Misrepresentation?”

• Lawyer 1: “It’s a Negligence claim.”
• Lawyer 2: “It’s a Misrepresentation claim.”
• Lawyer 3. “It’s a Defamation claim.”
• All three are right. How do you choose?

With SALI, you don’t need to choose: It’s all three. Because that model (multiple parentage) reflects the legal reality: Negligent Misrepresentation is a negligence claim and a defamation claim and a misrepresentation claim. Search for “negligence claims” tag and you’ll get Negligent Misrepresentation. Same with a search for “defamation claims” tag.  All roads lead to the right answer.

SALI’s 10,000 tags are filled with this kind of thoughtful complexity — which can better provide user simplicity. SALI tags reflect the legal world — both in substance and in business.

Conclusion

In a sense, SALI’s 10,000 tags are the DNA of the law: Nearly everything that matters, both to legal business and to legal substance. SALI has collected 10,000+ fields/tags that matter. Our membership — and our number of tags — both keep growing.

Would you like to help shape the SALI legal-data standard? Please visit SALI.org or email info@sali.org.

When it comes to dockets, the holy grail for most of us has always been state trial court dockets. Nicole Clark, CEO and co-founder of Trellis also felt that way when she was practicing, and decided that she would find a way to access and obtain that treasure trove of data that was always just out of reach. Nicole sits down with us this week to tell us the story behind her mission to seek out local court information, clean up the data, and create a method of analyzing that data. As anyone who has ever worked with trial court dockets, you understand how difficult a task this really is.

Nicole says that Trellis is on a mission to add a county court a day and to find additional ways that the information can be sliced, diced, and analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) processes like natural language processing (NLP) and through upcoming API access. She also walks us through some of the unique ways her customers use the data, and that the value of trial court data isn’t just limited to the legal field. The once elusive state court data is now becoming more and more available through platforms like Trellis, so the opportunities for legal researchers to take advantage of this wealth of information is expanding, literally by the day.

In a first, Nicole and Trellis is offering a free trial for TGIR listeners:

Listener Perk: Trellis is providing Geek In Review podcast listeners with complimentary 14-day access to its state trial court research & analytics platform!  Gain insights and intelligence on judges, verdicts, opposing counsel, motions, rulings, dockets and other legal issues.  Click here to try Trellis for free today.

LegalWeek Crystal Ball Question

This week we ask Casetext’s Robert Armbruster to look into his crystal ball and tell us what he sees in the next few years when it comes to our expectations on how search tools like Casetext will evolve.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer 0:24
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:31
And I’m Greg Lambert. Marlene I, as we were getting on, you had not actually heard that Elon Musk had bought Twitter apparently got all the financing lined up and the Twitter board said yes. So a guess I guess he’s got free speech now.

Marlene Gebauer 0:47
Yeah, well, it’s sort of like I like free speech so much, I decided to buy it.

Greg Lambert 0:52
Yes. Well, it’s amazing what you can get for $44 billion. So well, you know, see how it goes. Hopefully doesn’t screw it up. Doesn’t Yahoo it.

Marlene Gebauer 0:59
Let’s see if he it fulfills its societal imperative as a platform for free speech?

Greg Lambert 1:06
Yes, I’ve got a lot of friends that are that are really nervous about that. So

Marlene Gebauer 1:10
You can’t see us, folks. But we got our very skeptical faces on

Greg Lambert 1:14
We do. Well, Marlene, this week, we cover a couple of topics that are near and dear to my heart. And that is advancements in searching and accessing state court trial dockets. So that’s like two big things for me.

Marlene Gebauer 1:30
Yes. Our guest this week is Nicole Clark, CEO and co founder of Trellis. We’ve always said that being able to get into state court dockets. And the underlying content is kind of the holy grail of legal research. We had a great talk with Nicole about the struggles and the rewards that she dealt with and gathering information across multiple states. And getting all that information cleaned up and structured enough to create analytics, no easy task.

Greg Lambert 1:56
Now, having some experience with that that’s no easy task at all. So But first up, we have another installment of our legal week crystal ball question. This time from Casetext Rob Armbruster, who appears into his own crystal ball and talks about the advancements in search technology that he sees over the next five years. So let’s just jump right in with Rob’s predictions.

Robert Armbruster 2:24
Yeah, great to be here. So. So my name is Rob Armbruster. I’m an enterprise account executive with Casetext, which you guys I know, both each of you are very familiar with. I joined Casetext about three and a half months ago, four months ago before that I was with Kira System for about five years. And before that Practical Law, slash Thomson Reuters. So been in this space for a while and definitely seen a lot of things change over that time. And he’s really excited about where we’re going. Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, probably what everyone’s telling you is that technology is going to continue to change the way lawyers work the way law firms work. And really every industry, where they’re working in what we’re doing the Casetext has really tried to revolutionize the search function, and really trying to, you know, make an impact and make searching more effective for attorneys, you guys are familiar with some of our stuff. Obviously, parallel search has kind of three main components of what we’re doing and where we’re looking to take it over the next two to five years. And where it already is now, parallel search is certainly ready to go. Obviously, using the most advanced neural net technology for searching allows you to search in full sentences rather than keywords or Boolean. And that’s going to bring back sentences inside cases that are conceptually similar even if none of the words are present. So getting some really great initial feedback from the firm’s we have.

Marlene Gebauer 3:49
It’s huge, right?

Robert Armbruster 3:50
Yeah, it just a big time saver, you obviously, it’s a challenge putting together is better, yeah, I put in putting together these big all this time spent on constructing these searches, and then still not knowing if you’ve gotten where you needed to go. So we’re going to continue to improve that it’s really at a high level now. But that’s something we’re really going to keep developing. So really excited, we see a lot of growth ahead, particularly as we build out other parts of the platform as well. So we have the fancy search technology. Compose is our brief drafting automation tool that’s gaining a lot of traction, you know, we’re really starting to build some different areas and do rapid expanding there over the next two to five years. The areas that we do have, the motions and things like that for different states, we do go very deep. So we’ll look at just replicate that across more and more documents and more states.

Greg Lambert 4:41
So the changes in search that you see on the horizon? How is that going to change the daily work of an attorney or researcher? What’s the net effect? In the change that you see?

Robert Armbruster 5:01
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, kind of traditional legal platforms, or legal research platforms rather that have been around really, are platforms that you have to write for to get results. In the way that attorneys doing research, research folks that firms are using Casetext that you just have to do your job, essentially right into sentence as you would in a brief or, as a partner might ask an associate to research, or how a judge might describe your case. That’s another thing. So using that full sentence is really kind of a game changer to a lot of folks. So it’s kind of changed the way obviously, that they’re doing the search and

Marlene Gebauer 5:39
and that they’re thinking about it.

Robert Armbruster 5:41
Yeah, yeah. And they may, you know, it gives us Casetext for the whole, the whole project, right, they start there, but sometimes they will use that and go to a different like a traditional platform to get once you’ve gotten those results from Casetext works, because it really kind of pinpoints conceptually what you need to be looking at. So we’ll see what happens there in terms of how we see that being used both ways, Casetexts on its own, and then in conjunction with somebody on the platforms. But off to a really, really good start. And, you know, I know, Marlene, we’ve talked about WeSearch a couple of times. And Greg, I know you’re familiar, we search as well, but we searched they, you know, obviously, the idea was that law firms are seeing the parallel search, and very happy with it. And then there was a little bit of a wait a minute, why can’t I apply this to other things in the firm? And that’s the whole goal research to be able to spin up your own neural net and your own database. That’s the next step.

Robert Armbruster 6:00
Yeah. And you talked about connections and things like that. And that’s of course, what we’re working on. You know, we kind of out of the box that comes you have to upload into research and obviously, there’s API’s in things like that, that we’re going to work on for different connections to make that process easier. But as Pablo [Arredondo] says, We want to make spinning up your own neural net to apply research a parallel search to Eddie corpus of documents. We want to make that as easy as pulling a yellow legal binder out of your out of your desk. That’s just a steal one of Pablo’s fantastic lines. But yeah.

Greg Lambert 7:10
Rob, thanks for stopping by and talking with us.

Marlene Gebauer 7:13
Thanks, Rob.

Robert Armbruster 7:14
Yeah, of course.

Greg Lambert 7:19
Thanks to Rob Armbruster, for taking the time to talk with us there in New York. I think we got a couple of these left in the hopper. So we’re coming to a close on that. Guess we’ll have to get back to our information inspiration sometime.

Marlene Gebauer 7:36
That’s right.

Greg Lambert 7:37
All right. Well, today’s guests had a mission of organizing state trial data in such a way that researchers would actually be able to run analytics on that information. With each court creating unique docket systems along with having their own culture and language around that data. It was a difficult mission, to say the least.

Marlene Gebauer 7:58
We’d like to welcome Nicole Clark, CEO of trellis. Nicole, welcome to The Geek in Review.

Nicole Clark 8:03
Thanks so much. Great to be here.

Marlene Gebauer 8:05
Nicole, before we dive too deep into the interesting technology and data analysis portion of the conversation, would you give us a bit of background on Trellis and what you set out to do when you co-founded the company four years ago?

Nicole Clark 8:17
Absolutely. So I was a litigator for a number of years, I worked a lot in state trial court doing class action wage and hour work. And I simply couldn’t believe how difficult it was to access State Trial Court information, fragmented across 1000s of individual county courts. And so really, what we try and do is bring in all of those 1000s of county courts and make them searchable through a single interface. So think almost the way that PACER lays on top of federal trial court data. That’s what we do for the State Trial Court. And then layer analytics on top of that data.

Marlene Gebauer 8:53
Yeah, well, I think we can I can speak for like everybody, when you say, Can I hear an amen?

Greg Lambert 8:58
Yes. One of the things that we brought you on, we want to talk about some of the technology behind the scenes that Trellis has, but if anyone has listened to more than a couple of episodes of this, though, know that I typically throw red flags up when vendors talk about the use of artificial intelligence. So

Nicole Clark 9:21
So do I.

Greg Lambert 9:23
So I want to I want to just go right up front here and ask what it is that when you say artificial intelligence or AI, they’re Trellis What are you talking about? How are you using it?

Nicole Clark 9:35
Yeah, and I think that’s a great point, AI is a super buzzword that is used a lot. When it’s not actually AI. We would use machine learning as the sort of aspect of AI. But let’s roll back for a second to, it wasn’t possible to use machine learning on the data set that we have originally. Because it’s fragmented raw data from 1000s of different places

Marlene Gebauer 7:19
Hot mess

Nicole Clark 7:19
Exactly hot mess. So what we had to do was structure the data to even begin with before there is any AI, you can apply to anything, you have to structure it. And then on top of that, we had to go through really with manual classifications, for structuring this data so that we could have models to even feed in to algorithms to make them better in the first place. And that’s still an aspect of what we do is a lot of logic based classifications that we can basically continue to make sure that we’re optimizing is the algorithm actually classifying any data correctly? So there’s a lot of different pieces of this, but it starts out with a messy raw data pile, and various levels before you get to AI.

Marlene Gebauer 10:49
So tell me, I just want to dig a little bit deeper into that, like, you know, so in terms of sort of organizing that data, like what were some of the steps that you had to do to get from point A to point B?

Nicole Clark 11:01
Yeah, it’s an ongoing process for sure. So as an example, if you think about the way that a personal injury case is, basically that is identified at an individual court, another court will listen entirely differently PI plus two personal injury, P injury. So what we have to do, I can see

Marlene Gebauer 11:23
you and not even not even consistently in the same court.

Nicole Clark 11:27
the same court, it kills us. I know. Absolutely. So what we have to do is basically recreate our own structure. So we have what we call a personal injury case. And then every 1000 ways that a court can identify a personal injury case, we mapped back to our personal injury. So really creating Trellis as sort of the source of truth on what the structure of the data is, and mapping all of the messy data back into that.

Marlene Gebauer 11:50
It’s like you’re creating your own nature of suit, essentially.

Nicole Clark 11:54
Absolutely. Now, that goes the same for judges every different way you could say, a judge name, parties. I mean, there were so many different aspects of this to create a clean dataset to begin with, that are just ongoing, constant efforts for us.

Marlene Gebauer 12:10
So this is like the softball question of the podcast. But for legal knowledge professionals out there, you know, how do the analytics you compile and Trellis benefit them?

Nicole Clark 12:23
Oh, that is a softball. Love it. So one of the things I would say would be the judge analytics. When I was practicing, you know, we would send around emails that said, does anyone have any intel on judge so and so. And I would collect anecdotes back from colleagues and then make really important decisions based on that. So from a from a starting place judge analytics, being able to see how your judge rules on very specific motions from the start of a case, do you want to try to request assignment to a different judge, you have a narrow window of time to do that. So certainly judge analytics, also just case evaluation and verdict analytics. But then also just take the time that it saves you from logging on to 1000s of different websites to find a case and being able to do it on a single site. So sort of the Google of the state trial courts, if you will.

Greg Lambert 13:12
In the information itself, what’s the interface? Is it pure web interface? Or do you have I imagine you have downloads and what about API’s? Do you have any API’s as of yet,

Nicole Clark 13:28
I love that you asked that we are actually in development, final development of our API right now, which is becoming more and more requested by clients. So we’re super excited to be able to map our data directly into platforms going forward, where people need sort of individual little pieces and don’t need, or they already use the end user platform, right? They use us on the web, but also they’re doing a project where they need very specific data. So we’re excited to be able to fill that soon with API’s.

Greg Lambert 13:58
So you know, there’s a number when it comes to especially docket information, court information. There’s a number of players in the area right now. And I would imagine that a lot of firms like mine, have multiple platforms that we use, because just they’re you know, the information is, is just everywhere. And let me give you a chance here, if you had a chance to talk directly to the attorneys or to the legal professionals in those law firms. How would you pitch using Trellis say over any of those other competitors?

Nicole Clark 14:37
Yeah, I think the fact that we focus on the state trial courts is really a benefit for us. We’re not trying to handle Court of Appeals data, we’re not trying to handle federal data, we focus on trying to really do one thing, and it’s a really hard thing. So what we love to see is actually the attorneys themselves using it. Our clients that are the most successful have, of course, knowledge management, and partners using analytics, but they have their associates in there doing the groundwork of looking up opposing counsel’s prior motions, being able to understand how they’re likely to position something again, in the future. You know, looking up the judge and the particular legal issue, how did they rule along on that particular legal issue in the past? So really doing strategic legal research on our platform, rather than what I would say is available, but still in smaller doses at the state trial court level, we just sort of high level docket research alone, because we have searchable file to documents. It’s a different level of strategic information that you can get on the granular but then also obviously zoomed out for analytics.

Greg Lambert 15:42
Is there a particular group either practicing lawyers or allied professionals, who are kind of in your sweet spot who have a adopted Trellis as their primary user? If so, what is it about those groups that draw them to Trellis?

Nicole Clark 16:01
What we see is it’s more of a practice area of folks that are going to be litigating in state trial court constantly. So what we see a lot is employment litigators, anyone dealing with products, liability, class action, coverage cases, everything where you’re really fighting it out in the state trial court system, those are our sweet spot, because we can offer information that they haven’t been able to find on other platforms. You know, if you’re doing bankruptcy work, we’re probably not the right platform for that.

Marlene Gebauer 16:29
Let’s expand that a bit and look at the types of customers who use Trellis Do you find that this is more for typical law firms on the corporate defense side of things? Or are you actually getting some draw on the plaintiff side of things?

Nicole Clark 16:44
and there is there we’ve got all of those categories. So we do see it both plaintiff and defense, if you think about it, generally, there’s going to be two sides on a case you’re going to have probably a smaller plaintiffs firm and maybe a large defense firm on the other side, both of them need information about the case. Both of them need information about the judge. Now, I was a defense attorney my entire career. And it’s actually really interesting to watch the difference. What we see is we grow faster on the plaintiff side because they share information and they tell each other what sort of products they are finding helpful. The defense side are of course, you know, bigger contracts and its entire firms, but it’s a much slower sales cycle in so I worry that plaintiffs can adopt technology a little bit faster and coming from being a defense attorney. I hope that’s not the case. But it is interesting.

Marlene Gebauer 17:36
So what about interests from corporate legal teams or customers that may not be lawyers? What kind of use to these analytics have beyond the traditional legal groups.

Nicole Clark 17:47
So we do have both of those as customer types as well. So on the on the GC Corporation side, think of your large corporations that are getting sued a lot, maybe gig wage economy, all of those folks that are have a lot of state trial court cases, they’re using us think of it as almost to track their portfolio of litigation. So rather than what they have right now, which is a lot of individual law firms that are handling different cases across the country, they’re able to use Trellis to say, okay, these are all of our cases, we’re gonna get alerts when things change so that I don’t have to rely on counsel, but I can check in on them and say, Hey, we noticed that hearing took place, tell us what happened. And then we also have the other side, which is a variety of industries that utilize state trial court data that have actually been surprising to me. So I came in thinking this was for litigators. It was a legal product, but really, the legal data can be utilized across industries. So what we’re seeing is insurance heavy pull from insurance, that definitely one that want our data via API, but all, you know, entirely state court regulated. So lots there. We see interesting ones of like property management, where all the landlord tenant eviction data is in the state trial court. So there’s there or HR platforms that use us to see if employees have sued prior employers before. So there’s a lot of really interesting use cases that I’m watching our users actually teach me how they utilize our data.

Greg Lambert 19:19
When we put that question together, I was thinking I was I was gonna hear something like, oh, well, academics use it to create their whatever their latest paper is. But those are some interesting use cases. And I mean, there’s a lot of information that’s buried in state court dockets. And it’s always been kind of the Holy Grail. To get to those Yeah, exactly.

Marlene Gebauer 19:41
I mean, it sounds like from what you were saying that the clients are being proactive and sort of monitoring their litigation footprint at the state level, if you will. Are they using that? Or are you finding that they’re using that in any type of proactive way that okay, you know, here, here’s the, here’s the descriptive content. And it’s going to influence our behavior, somehow?

Nicole Clark 20:04
What we’re seeing it as one element of that would be choosing counsel. So a lot of times there’ll be choosing between law firms, and they’re usually sort of taking recommendations from other folks that they know, or they have relationships built. But every now and then there’s a case in a strange county that they don’t know anything about. And then have a look on Trellis. See which firms litigate their which handle this type of case, which actual attorneys do they want from that firm to be on their case. So it’s kind of a window into sort of transparency in litigation that really hasn’t existed to the same degree before.

Greg Lambert 20:41
We talked earlier about how difficult it is and how on unified the court dockets are in court information as and Marlene hears this all the time. But back 20 years ago, I was I was working with actually longer than that now. The Oklahoma Supreme Court where we were trying to create a unified docket system and just how, how painful that was, just because it you know, everyone enters in data differently. And if there’s no rules, but let’s talk about the coverage that you have. So what are I know, you get California and New York and Texas, which are huge. What other states do you have? And what’s kind of on the horizon for you?

Nicole Clark 21:25
Yeah, we’re continuing to move really aggressively in terms of data acquisition. So we are 16 states currently, I just looked at something like 800. This I don’t even remember because it changes on a daily basis on a county level, because we’re bringing it in trying to bring in a new county a day is really what we try for.

Greg Lambert 19:02
Woo!

Nicole Clark 21:46
I know, I’d imagine my engineering team. But we sort of prioritized the country by and that’s obviously why we did California and New York and Texas and Florida first, but by volume of litigation, value of litigation, population size, all of these different pieces are sort of ways that we step back and think about how we prioritize coverage. We’re in an interesting place. Now we’ve got the heavy hitters of the country. Now it’s interesting to actually hear from clients where they have what they’re seeing is, Georgia is what it was an interesting one that we just released and learned about. New Jersey is another one where they seem smaller, but there actually is a high value litigation and so we’ll actually love hearing from our customers now the remaining counties that they think are just, you know, the worst part of their day to try to get done data from and then seeing if we can go after those.

Greg Lambert 22:44
What was the easiest state to get information from? And what was the hardest?

Marlene Gebauer 22:49
I was gonna ask that.

Nicole Clark 22:50
Oh, so the hardest ones are a variety. Illinois is still a hard one,

Marlene Gebauer 22:55
And why are they why are they difficult?

Nicole Clark 22:59
It depends you have different pieces that make it that make it difficult. One is just the legacy technology that they’re working with. The states that I would say are the are the counties that are the most difficult. Those are the ones that aren’t online at all. Now, the truth is for those, if they’re not online at all, you’re not gonna find them on Trellis yet, we’re really going after everything digital first, and then we’ll go in with humans and, and bring in this data. But by far, the ones that you have still have to send a runner in are unbelievable. How does that exist today? That that’s still a way that we have data locked up like that. The easiest are going to be some of the courts that were the most structured or that already have at least the majority of their counties on one, one system, which doesn’t mean that it’s structured, but it simply means there was structure there that maybe they put into a lot of different ways, but at least it’s mapping back to sort of one area so that when we’re able to get that, then we’ve gotten a good chunk of the state, and those are really the big wins.

Greg Lambert 24:01
So for those listening, this is this is not Nicole saying this, this is this is me saying this is whenever you’re dealing with like when I was in Oklahoma, and all of the county court clerks are elected officials.

Nicole Clark 24:13
Yes.

Greg Lambert 24:13
Anytime you’re dealing with elected officials who have information it is it makes it political. And that makes it really hard to pull the information. So I learned that firsthand. So you know, hats off to you.

Marlene Gebauer 24:31
But yes, all right. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna play a game here. Let’s say, you know, I’m a partner or an advertiser or advising a partner at a law firm, and I have access to Charles, how can I leverage it to help me with the following issues? And I’ll just say the first one, understanding my opposing counsel?

Nicole Clark 24:51
Absolutely. So I would start with looking at a law firm, you can also start with looking up your actual opposing counsel, the individual attorney, but start with a law firm, and then go broad. How often do they handle this type of case? So how many cases? How many cases? Do they have active right now? How busy are they? Do they take this case to trial? Do they settle before after MSJ? I mean, these are basic pieces of research that we should be doing on our opposing counsel from the very start of any case, it’s that the data is available now. So we can no longer sort of try to rely on anecdotes, but really just dig in and look. And that I think is sort of from a high level. And then when you get in and you actually, what we’re jury instructions that were filed by opposing counsel was similar matter, how did they think about this case, I mean, there’s a lot of really deep granular ways to get into sort of thought process. And what we found is, you know, attorneys, they we there’s a there’s a lot, they’re busy. So when they’re writing something, they usually find something that someone else in the firm wrote, or they have one of their own motion that they wrote in the past, and they’re using that as a template. So it really does mean that when you find motions that are on point that your opposing counsel filed, you’re likely to get a really good understanding of at least how they’re going to structure their argument, the way they’re going to think about it. So I’d say, you know, all the way from zoomed out, how do they take cases to trial? How do they think about it down to your individual motion practice looking at opposing counsel.

Marlene Gebauer 26:21
And if they’ve moved firms, I mean, you look at the firm first, and then you’re looking at the individual to see if there’s any others.

Nicole Clark 26:28
There’s some interesting individual actually, that’s one of the things we struggle with in terms of sort of lawyer and law firm analytics is, well, this lawyer was at this firm, how do we map their win back now they’ve moved laterally three times? So it’s lots of fun data problems there. But no, just down to the firm handled it, but the individual attorney on it does matter. So that’s why you want to look at the actual file documents. So you can see who’s listed in the caption, who was actually drafting the motions, because there can sometimes be a variety, obviously, depending on how large the room is, if you had a smaller firm and it is two folks, you’re gonna have a great understanding of the way they work. You may need to dig a little bit deeper when it’s a very large firm.

Greg Lambert 27:08
Your reports on the judges’ tendencies are I think, even have a jury tendencies as well. What do those look like? And what kind of information do they tell you?

Nicole Clark 27:19
So we go across a variety one is just a basic judge biography, where did you know all of your subjective information where they go to school, who were they appointed by career history, everything that you try to do we try and make that easy on one page, then the next is going to be high level stats. How many active cases is judge hearing right now? What types of cases are those if they’re personal injury? Let’s Say it’s like 50% Personal Injury docket. What does that actually mean? How many our products liability is, as opposed to right economic torts or whatever the case may be. And then we have a motions tab where you go granular motion by motion. So if I have, if I think this is a an MSJ case, I want to see exactly how my judge tends to rule. And for every metric, what we do is we give the context of other judges in the county and the state. So you’ll always see your judges stats first, and then county average, and then state average. So you can actually see where the judge was an outlier in comparison to other judges, which can be really helpful because you can think, oh, that Judge never grants this motion, but then no one state does either. So it’s not that helpful. And then finally, we just go across timing analysis, basically, by case type, how long does a case sit before particular judge by practice area? And then how long will it take till you first get in front of the judge at a conference? How long will it take if you’re going to go out the way most cases do, which is a settlement? Or if you’re going to make it all the way through trial? What does that look like with this judge?

Marlene Gebauer 28:47
So I like that you mentioned settlement, because I think that Trellis can help with understanding what type of settlement range perhaps a practitioner can look at. And I that’s very interesting, because I think a lot of the other analytics platforms kind of shy away from that.

Nicole Clark 29:05
It’s a difficult aspect, because in one sense, it’s usually private information. So there’s that piece there that makes it more difficult. We have a couple of pieces that are really interesting. So beyond your sort of verdict, high level analytics, if you look class action cases, this is what this was my favorite, because that’s what I did. So it’s it was my sort of game changer. But class action cases of settlements all have to be approved by the judge, which means you will have all of the settlement figures on trellis what went to attorney’s fees, what went to the class, how big was the class? What was it? So there’s pieces there on the class action side, that give visibility that have really never, ever been possible before.

Greg Lambert 29:48
And a lot of our listeners also do business development. How does using something like this help with business development?

Nicole Clark 29:56
I think it’s, you know, when you’re thinking about this is probably going to be the most helpful if you’re pitching, let’s say, small, large businesses or corporations, folks that get sued a lot that you can actually find some information about. So one way is you simply search the company from the start, when you’re going into pitch them. You see what are the types of cases that they deal with? actually trying to understand their business needs, right? What, what are they actually facing? So they can go in and actually speak to it? When judges? Are they in front of can you tell them anything about that judge? Look at who their counsel was previously, how is that counsel doing? How did they handle those cases? So there’s a lot of pieces of information that you can glean before a pitch meeting, to really position why the firm is going to be the best, the best to be able to represent them. And I think those are pieces you should be doing no matter what if you’re going into pitch a client.

Greg Lambert 30:47
So you’ve been doing this for four years. You practice before that? Is there anything that your customers are doing with the data that you think is clever, unique in the way that they’re using the data?

Nicole Clark 31:03
The utilizing us as a giant brief bank was one that’s so obvious to me now that I didn’t think of originally, I thought, oh, they’ll pull, you know, documents, but really just to utilize it as hey, I can use the entire state trial court system as a brief bank. That was one that I was like, of course, that’s genius. And then it would be all of the interesting industries that utilize our data banks, we see sometimes utilize us to do sort of an additional to credit checks to look up a you know, are there any other red flags are so many interesting pieces there that I continue to learn about how our data can be valuable?

Marlene Gebauer 31:41
So you know, I had the softball question earlier. Now I have the crystal ball question now. So we asked

Greg Lambert 31:47
All our questions are spherical.

Marlene Gebauer 31:51
full circle, everything is a circle. You know, we ask all of our guests to pull out their crystal ball and peer into the future for us. What is your crystal ball telling you about how the marketplace and trellis is changing over the next five years or so?

Nicole Clark 32:07
I think there’s actually going to be a lot of changing. I think the pandemic has definitely helped firms with adoption of technology. We’re seeing that it’s easier to train. It’s easier to have webinars with folks. But I think what we’re seeing is on the one hand right now, utilizing this type of data is seen as Oh, it’s a competitive advantage. You could give me some additional information. I genuinely think that this will become industry standard, that of course, you will do this research from the start of your case to look of opposing counsel to look at your judge that those are table stakes in the way you should think about really representing the client. And then also just from the industry side, I’d say I think there’s probably going to be a fair amount of consolidation between smaller legal tech companies and M&A taking place. And I think what we’re going to see because that’s what we’re hearing, and it’s sort of goes to the data on the API side, people are tired of more platforms. And I have a platform. So I can say this. But how do we get them data into more of a single source to make it easier for their attorneys and serve up the data directly to the attorneys where they’re not logging on? And we’re trying to remember passwords for a whole variety of different platforms. And so that’s something we have to think about in terms of how do we deliver data in a way that’s going to make sense for that.

Greg Lambert 33:26
Great. Well, Nicole Clark from Trellis. Thank you very much for coming in and talking with us today.

Marlene Gebauer 33:32
Thank you, Nicole.

Nicole Clark 30:50
So great being here. Thanks for having me.

Marlene Gebauer 33:38
I was saying offline, like anytime anybody, you know, is doing something with state court analytics. I’m like all ears because we’ve just been waiting years and years and years and years for this to happen. And it was very cool some of these ways. I’m always also interested in seeing how people use the data, and just some of the stuff she was highlighting was just, you know, very, very, very interesting, very unique.

Greg Lambert 34:03
Yeah. And I think that the fact that again, here’s another company that’s going to be integrating API’s into their output for this. I think that’s why for the crystal ball question, you’re seeing much more of, we’re going to have these cross platforms that are coming in that you can kind of mix and match and get information directly to the consumer, in our case, the attorneys or to the researchers. So I think, you know, as we talk and talk to more of the vendors out there, that these API Interfaces are going to be all the rage and probably setting the tone for the next five or six years, at least. And again, you know, back to your point, state court materials are difficult. In fact, I, the one time I probably got in the most trouble ever of my career, was I made a comment how one County’s court clerk enters in information one way and another County’s court clerk enters in information in a different way. And I did that in a CLE presentation, and I get yelled at by one of those county court clerks. Because she thought I was being derogatory to her. I was like, No, I’m just saying that this is different. And you know, at that, at that point, at least, if you didn’t spell it, the way they spelled it, you didn’t get it back. So, you know, there’s been a lot of advancements in how information is gathered and retrieved now.

Marlene Gebauer 35:40
Yeah, well, as you were saying, like, I think API’s are the way we’re finally going to get the customization that, you know, again, every time we talk to a vendor, we’ve always begged for, you know, can it do this? And can it do this? And this way, we can just take the information and make it happen.

Greg Lambert 35:57
Yeah, yeah. And we talked briefly after, in fact, I probably should have said something during but again, here’s another woman in legal tech that is making a difference. And in it when we were off camera, we were saying that, you know, we want more, we need more of this, we need wins, so here’s one more. Yep. So thanks again to Nicole Clark from Trellis for taking the time to come in and talk to us.

Marlene Gebauer 36:25
And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter.

Greg Lambert 36:38
And I can be reached @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 36:41
Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert 36:52
Thanks, Jerry. All right. Marlene, talk with you later.

Marlene Gebauer 36:55
All right, bye.

We have a number of repeat guests on the show this week, but all with new stories to tell since their last appearance. 

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

• Jeroen Plink
• Nikki Shaver
• Chevazz Brown
• Sameena Kluck

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer 0:16
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:22
And I’m Greg Lambert.

Marlene Gebauer 0:24
We bring back a couple of repeat guests this week who are now collaborating in a new adventure. Nikki shaver and Jeroen plink, talk with us about legal tech hub and what inspired them to launch this legal tech product which helps the legal tech community find other legal tech products.

Greg Lambert 0:39
That’s a lot of legal tech. So a lot of legal tech

Marlene Gebauer 0:41
in one in one sense.

Greg Lambert 0:42
Well, the legal tech hubs, I mean, it’s a great idea for those of us who have ever been tasked with finding out what players there are in the market when it comes to legal tech products. So oh my god, yeah, we’ve all felt that pain. So Nikki and Juran point out that the process typically results in either that we are completely overwhelmed with trying to identify those products, or, and I would never claim that I’ve done this, but you just go in and pick the two that we know. And then we hope that one of those two works out. So it’s a it’s a great conversation. And we absolutely love having guests come back and catch up with with us on what’s happening with them now.

Marlene Gebauer 1:24
Oh, Greg, hey, I know we’re not doing any information inspirations this week. But we wanted to give a shout out to Chevazz Brown for launching the DiversePro mobile app. She first went on the podcast over a year ago discussing the diverse pro website. The site is a directory of diverse attorneys covering a variety of practices. And now there’s a mobile app to make it easier for everyone to find a legal representative.

Greg Lambert 1:48
Yeah, you know, I don’t know if you know this, but I got to go to the launch party.

Marlene Gebauer 1:52
Yeah, I know, you got to how many times you’re gonna tell me. That’s like, you’re so cool. Cool. You are so cool. I do wish I could have been there. But you know, Mom duty calls, always calls.

Greg Lambert 2:05
So Chevazz was extremely excited about the launch. And the place that they had was was absolutely just a fantastic location at Hermann Park here in Houston. And it was a great event, I got to run into so many friends and colleagues that were there to support him. And I’ll go ahead and make sure that we put a link in the show notes and gotten downloaded. It’s it’s for everyone. And again, congrats to Chevazz.

Marlene Gebauer 2:33
I am not envious at all. No, not even just a little bit, not even just a little bit. All right. Speaking of coming back, our legal week, crystal ball response this week is also a former guest, Sameena Kluck, stepped up to the microphone in New York to tell us what she sees in the future of the legal industry.

Sameena Kluck 2:56
So hi, I’m Sameena Kluck, I’m the CEO and co founder of amplify your voice. And super excited to be sitting down with you all today. The thing I think we’re really going to see just exploding in the legal industry in the next two to five years, is really around talent, and around personal branding and authenticity. And what I mean by that, you know, of course my company, I help attorneys, law firms, legal tech founders, whoever kind of find their brand, hone it, and then share it through social media, networking, that type of thing. But I think during this pandemic, when we were all stuck in our, you know, four walls, with coworkers, we never asked to share space with IE, our children, our partners and our pets. We kind of realized, well, we’re just we’re all doing this work, and we’ve distracted ourselves with other things. But now that it’s all stripped bare, are we really doing what brings us joy? Are we really feeling like we’re authentically seen by our colleagues, our coworkers, our clients, our leaders? And is this Are we making the impact and purpose on society that we want? And so I think that’s why we’ve seen so many people leaving their roles to do other things. And I think law firms are suddenly realizing, Hey, are we investing in these people? In the same way, they’re investing their time and energy in us? Because the traditional law firm model was certainly very different. Right? You came in you were homegrown from summer associate on and you had a path to partnership. And that path is just stretched, and it ends for a lot of people. And so I think firms are going to have to find another way to invest in their people besides throwing six figure sums and associates to stick around and start realizing we’ve got to invest in people in skills to help them build that up, but also in ways to make sure you know, we’ve brought underrepresented groups of attorneys into our firms and huge numbers I think now said the summer associate class last year was the most diverse ever, but we’re not retaining them. long enough to get into leadership. And so how can we encourage people to not just feel like they’re welcome here, but that they belong? And they can be authentically seen? And that’s okay. Right. So

Marlene Gebauer 5:12
what are some things that you’re seeing to sort of make that happen?

Sameena Kluck 5:16
Right? So you know, I’m working with a firm, in England in the Channel Islands, who’s really devoting a lot of time to individual coaching on personal branding with their attorneys, and helping them understand, hey, being an excellent antitrust lawyer is not a personal brand, right, and encouraging them to share more of themselves, helping them understand their brand and the value that them sharing about themselves brings to the organization but also to themselves, right, and helping people find different places, if what they’re doing is not exactly what’s sparking their joy and making them get out of bed on Monday morning, happily and not grumbling. I think we’re also seeing in a big way, for the first time, the legal industry, focusing on people management skills, you know, people have been promoted because of their competencies or technical legal expertise. We don’t get management training in law school, we don’t get sales or business development training. And so I think firms that are investing in coaching, and really helping people, you know, partners and practice group leaders understand how to invest in their talent and bring the best out of them are, you know, some of the ones that are going to find themselves far ahead. And a place where people want to work, this whole idea that firm culture is being hurt by remote work isn’t necessarily, you know, I think it’s kind of bunk. I don’t think that proximity equals culture. I think actually talking to your people investing in them, giving them feedback is really something that’s how you invest in people and make them feel like they belong and they can see and be seen authentically.

Marlene Gebauer 6:57
Well, thank you. So Mina, thank you. You know, Samina helped us quite a bit and grabbing people in the hallways there at legal week to come tell us what they see in their crystal ball. So we wanted to make sure she had her turn at the mic as well.

Greg Lambert 7:13
Yeah. So thanks again to Samina for stepping up to that mic. Yes. Well, this week’s guests are here to catch us up on their new startup legal tech hub. For those of us in km or it or library or any other department in the legal industry where we had to keep up with products that are out there on the market. This is going to be an especially interesting conversation that you’re going to want to listen to and share with your colleagues.

Marlene Gebauer 7:39
We’d like to welcome Nikki Shaver, CEO and co founder of legal tech hub, along with Jeroen Plink COO and the other co founder of legal tech hub to The Geek in Review, Nikki and Jeroen, good to have you both on the show.

Jeroen Plink 7:51
Great to be here.

Nikki Shaver 7:52
Thank you so much for having us.

Greg Lambert 7:54
So both of you have been on the show before we were talking before before we started recording. Nikki, you’re actually on in the pre pandemic, period and Jeroen you were on almost exactly a year ago. So but you both had different careers. And so you both decided to launch legal technology hub or or maybe relaunch it might be a little bit more accurate. Nikki, let’s start with you on this one, what stirred your passion to create and expand legal tech hub.

Nikki Shaver 8:28
So I, as I think most of your listeners will know, I’m pretty passionate about legal tech and legal innovation. And one of the things that I had to do and my job at Paul Hastings and previously at Stikeman Elliott leading teams of legal innovation, and looking for legal technology solutions is try to find what the solutions were in the market. There are all kinds of reasons why within a law firm, you have to go looking for a solution. Sometimes it’s because you’re looking to solve a particular problem internally or address a use case. Other Other times it’s because a lawyer comes to you and they ask you about a specific solution or how something works. And even if you read voraciously all of the blogs and the news out there, it’s a lot to keep track of. And what I found is that there just really wasn’t a place where you could go and easily find the solutions within a category or even find a particular solution. Even if you had the name of it. Sometimes those solutions have funny names or they’re spelt unusually. And Google was just really imperfect for that kind of thing. I also started speaking to a lot of people internationally who had to find solutions that worked in a lot of different languages or that serve different jurisdictions and that I found was even more difficult for them. So in 2019, my husband Chris Ford, who is also in legal tech. He’s in marketing, and I were talking about this and we decided, well, why don’t we build something And that is effectively like an enterprise search for legal technology. And that was right up my alley, because obviously, part of my role was knowledge management, I had worked with enterprise search systems. And so we spent about 10 months in 2020, doing a lot of research to put together a very comprehensive directory. And we launched that in October 2020. But when we launched, Greg, I always thought this could be something more when we did launch, it was a free resource for the community really. And obviously, both of us had significant day jobs. So we didn’t have the wherewithal to build it out. More broadly than that. But there was always the thought in the back of my mind that this could be more that we could add to it, that it could be a content platform that there could be guidance. But it really didn’t take shape in my mind, until I spoke to Jeroen last year who I had known from within the industry, and found that we both had similar ideas about how how this could expand. And that’s really what took us on the journey to where we are today.

Marlene Gebauer 11:07
You’re on we had you on about this time last year, when you were closing one chapter of your career, and we’re looking toward what was next? How did you land on this specific business partnership with Nikki?

Jeroen Plink 11:19
Yeah, first of all, thank you again, for for having me on the show, again. Always fun talking to the two of you. So last year, I just finished two and a half year, stay at different challenges was fantastic. And it taught me a bunch of different things that I hadn’t been exposed to. So in my 22 years of being active in the Alltech, I’ve mostly been in, in the selling side selling stuff to law firms and in house legal departments. I was there for a chance I first saw for the first time what it was like from a buying perspective, maybe realize that the fact that if I had something to sell did not mean that that aligned with the buying behavior or desire of a law firm, which was shockingly new to me. The reason I came to this is I’d had this idea for for a while. And I think we could Nikki and I complement each other quite well, because we come at it from two different angles. Nikki comes at this from a buyer perspective, I come at it from the vendor perspective where Nikki finds it hard to find and select solutions. I found it hard as a vendor to be found. How do you stand out if you sell something of which there are 10, or in some cases 200 different vendors trying to sell something similar. And so I felt the need for for something to support the vendors in, in selling to law firms and in house departments. And so when when someone made the reintroduction to Nikki, rather than start something myself, I thought, well, let’s leverage the fantastic thing that Nikki and Chris had built during COVID. Work on that as the basis and build it out. So we started with the directory, we did a relaunch two weeks ago, in late March, we’re excited about the disk phase of the product. And we’re looking forward to our next phase which is going to be in the summer where so now we’re we’re very much a directory just for legal tech solutions, a bit like G two or Capterra, which are industry wide, or industry independent directories. We are building that just for Neil. In our next phase, what we’re working towards is building Gardner types of content for legal tech. So deep insights into all of our hundreds of 50 different topics. And we’re very excited about both these opportunities.

Greg Lambert 14:33
That is quite a mission statement that you have there. So So Nikki, I’ll start with you and you’re on I’m sure you can add to this. I went to one of those. A tech presentations for startups where there was a panel is almost like a shark tank. Question. So I’m going to hit you with the with the Shark Tank question and that is what problem are you trying to solve with LegalTech A cup.

Nikki Shaver 15:00
So I think I mean, in some ways, we’ve already set it out the directory side of things, solves two problems, it solves the problems of buyers who find it difficult to really wrap their arms around what the market looks like. And to find transparency in the market, that in a market that can be quite murky, to really find all of the solutions they should be looking at, when they have to make a purchase decision. on the vendor side, we’re solving their problem of getting visibility in front of the right buyers. As we move into the next phase of the project, which is our premium content side, the way I like to talk about that is bringing transparency to procurement of legal technology. So helping people navigate that process with guides and how to use an actual tools that just aren’t available in the market right now.

Greg Lambert 15:59
Jeroen you got anything to add to that.

Jeroen Plink 16:02
Now, Nikki is usually way more eloquent than I am. And I’m used to actually sitting in be judged on on the Shark Tank. You think

Greg Lambert 16:16
the judge hears a shark?

Jeroen Plink 16:21
Usually I prefer that that model. But I think that that’s that’s a fair way to describe it.

Marlene Gebauer 16:28
Yeah. So I mean, I liked I liked this transparency idea. So I mean, let’s sort of move to the elevator pitch when you have to give that on what legal tech hub is, you know, how do you hook people? And you know, by people, I mean, vendors and potential investors, you know, how do you hook them on to this idea? Or is it something that they just latch on to really easily?

Jeroen Plink 16:49
I think they’d like to latch on to it quite easily because people feel the pain, the pain for viruses, is quite wide is where do you start? What do you? What’s the start of your journey? How do you start on digital transformation? How do you how do you start to select them? What what makes you ready for a CLM? System? Contract Lifecycle Management System? And that’s that, that’s very clear pay from a buyer’s perspective, the pain is real. Oh, yes, it’s so much.

Greg Lambert 17:28
I think we both can verify.

Marlene Gebauer 17:29
Yeah, we can. I know, that 200 vendor reference before was like no joke. And you know, what you’re saying is like, when when firms are ready for that type of innovation, like, Okay, let’s go and, you know, they want an answer right away as to which products are going to be the right ones. And there’s nothing to help on that.

Jeroen Plink 17:49
Yeah, I just spoke to the General Counsel, or the chief legal ops version of a large company. And they admitted to having evaluated 23 Contract Lifecycle Management Systems, the immense cost that comes with is, it’s just unbearable, and very few companies do that. So I think from a buying perspective, the pain is very, very real. The other developer, I spoke to someone who just replaced a major system for the firm, de evaluated two products. And I asked about three or four other products. And it turns out that they weren’t aware of half of those auto products. And South by Coleman was so you just made a buying decision for the firm to ties the firm into a new system, or an imperfect view of the market. And I think that’s that’s what draws people from a buying perspective to it. And then there’s, there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to get into a into a law firm where central purchasing gives no, no and often for valid reasons, because they’re just implementing a different document management system, and they simply have no more capacity for the system you’re trying to sell to them. And then you go behind the backs of central purchasing, and you start approaching partners, which is the most frustrating thing for anyone involved because partners hate to be approached by vendors. People in central buying positions hated even more because oftentimes when a vendor convinces a partner, that their tool is the best tool for the firm. The partner doesn’t approach is the person is central buying and and often this person in central buying doesn’t have the ability to say no, and so you’ve got a bunch of unhappy people trying to implement stuff. So from a vendor’s perspective, selling to law firms and in house departments is really problematic. And there’s nothing more frustrating than being one on a panel of 23 systems being evaluated by a law. So we need to find a way to cut through that sorry, that’s not an elevator pitch.

Greg Lambert 20:25
Luckily, we’re on the 83rd floor.

Nikki Shaver 20:30
And if I could just add as well to what Iran has said, if you look at the large law firms, from the buying perspective, a lot of them have people whose job it is to evaluate the market and to do this kind of work. But if you go to mid sized firms or even, you know, amlaw, 200, firms, you’re reaching firms where they don’t have those resources, and they need the guidance. The other thing is when we start with the premium type content, Marlene and Greg, both of you come from the km side, do you understand the value of precedents, it doesn’t make sense for us to say to lawyers, you shouldn’t be drafting contracts from scratch. But then every time we run an RFP, or we need to draft requirements to look at a new category of legal technology, we do that from scratch. So we’re looking to provide that type of content and value to the market as well.

Greg Lambert 21:25
Yeah, that’s a that’s a good approach on that. So who are going to be your core customers for legal tech hub? And then once you’ve got everything kind of up and running, and you have your Gartner like, evaluations going on there? Are there any aspirational customers out there that you think you may be able to pull in who may not be the core customers now that may benefit later?

Jeroen Plink 21:50
Yes, I think the core customer question is quite straightforward. It’s the law firms and the in house departments seeking information on products. The the other part of the equation are the vendors who seek exposure and introductions to the to the buyers. But the third, and that’s more aspirational, but I’ve seen it more in the last year. And my period before, for good reasons are the art of financial investors. It’s the VC firms that are new to legal tech. It’s the private equity firms who have stepped into real Tech with with a vengeance. And they too need information about it. I mean, a few years ago, it was all blockchain. That was the hype. Now, it seems like legal tech is the hype for for the PE funds. But they need more information about the markets that are buying into.

Nikki Shaver 22:56
And then what we’ve also seen is that there have been some surprising groups of interested parties. So about a year ago, the University of Oxford approached us from the UK because they were looking for data to support a project they were doing for the UK Government. And so we were able to provide them with data from legal tech hub. So I do think that government bodies, law societies, the ABA, the data we’re gathering may be useful to them over time, I think students are another very significant interested party, we’ve had many students follow legal tech hub, traffic from many different countries, from student bodies, law schools, because it’s educational as well, especially for students who are taking courses where they’re learning for the first time about the fact that technology is likely to be a significant part of their practice in the future. And then, from my perspective, one of the other aspirational groups would be lawyers. So I actually think it’s increasingly valuable for lawyers to just have some insight on what is the variety of legal technology out there? How will it impact their practice? What are the kinds of problems that are being sold by legal technology, and the nice thing about our platform is you can do keyword searches. So you could come to legal tech hub and right, you know, funds management and find out if there’s anything that solves this problem. So if you’re a lawyer and you have a pain point, and you want to know how to address it, this is this is an ideal platform.

Greg Lambert 24:27
Great now I’m going to have more informed attorneys coming to me demanding that we get certain products thanks.

Jeroen Plink 24:35
Yeah, that’s I think that is absolutely critical. For my, my perspective, I found it baffling. There’s still so many lawyers who who’ve been practicing for for the same way in the last 20 years, even though there are some amazing tools out there that can actually make it more efficient. Just one more aspirational aspect is a TJ, who are both extremely passionate about access to justice. For now, the directory is very focused on on a b2b audience. So mostly non consumer side, but we do have in our, in our eyesight, the desire to add access to justice technology, of which there is a growing number of tools on the market.

Marlene Gebauer 25:36
So, I want to switch gears for a second and ask you both. What does it take to step out on your own and start a business? Jeroen, You’ve done this several times. Nikki, is this your first time?

Nikki Shaver 25:49
Yep.

Marlene Gebauer 25:51
Okay, so that’s, uh, I mean, and that’s, that’s the really interesting juxtaposition, right? Like, I’m curious how it feels. And if the considerations are the same for, you know, someone who’s done this often versus someone who’s more new to entrepreneurship.

Nikki Shaver 26:07
I’m so interested to hear your take on this Jeroen.

Jeroen Plink 26:11
I think it’s fun. It’s fun and it’s shatteringly frustrating? I think it’s both. For me, I’ve done it a few times, a couple of times, I’ve been successful couple of times, I’ve been failed miserably. The fun part is collaborating. And I’ve kept myself very lucky that this time I’ve started with with Nikki, there’s not gonna be a long phrase. No, I’m definitely not a mutual one. But I’m very lucky to work with someone who understands the content of the subject matter as well as Nikki does. And so that’s why there’s one comment. The other thing that is fun is that starting a business is all encompassing. One minute, you’re making sales, the other manager drafting the contracts. The third, you’re dealing with banking issues and security issues. And the next is development of the site and design and the that is invigorating, and sometimes frustrating. Dealing with the the inner workings over company like setting up your Office environment with the technical office environment and making sure that you have a document management system. And that sort of stuff is just painful. I think the tools are so much better than they were 20 years ago. But there’s still a lot of red tape that you have to cut through. And it helps that I’ve done a lot of these things before. But they still are never easy. Every time I hit a snag. I’m thinking, my next business is going to be a company out of the box with terms and conditions and payroll and bank accounts. You just buy a company off the shelf with all the tools that you need. And that’s it.

Marlene Gebauer 28:26
That’s the dream.

Jeroen Plink 28:30
What do you think, Nikki?

Nikki Shaver 28:32
I mean, for me, because it is all brand new. It’s incredibly exciting, and really liberating, because my entire career has been spent with large firms or large organizations, you have this giant safety net around you, which is comforting, but it also means you’re not really stepping out of that of that comfort zone. And I just feel incredibly lucky actually because if it hadn’t been for you rune I don’t know that I would have had the confidence to take that step. Because it is scary. It’s really quite scary as as the sort of end of my time at Paul Hastings was approaching, I had put a date in place. I said to people, it feels a little bit like I’m walking towards a cliff and I know that I’m about to jump off. And it did feel like I was a little bit in freefall. But it also just felt really freeing, because you’re doing something for yourself. You’re building something you truly believe in for the broader industry. One person that I spoke to along the way when I was trying to make a decision about this was Damien Riehl. Actually who works at fastcase. I have to give him credit for this and he talks about thinking about the the time you have on earth as being a finite quantity and where you could bring the most value where you could have the most impact and I thought about that a lot I thought about well within a firm I’m impact Putting people within that one firm and perhaps some of their clients, but it’s, it’s really a minimal impact. Or I could try to do something that I’m excited about and passionate about, where I have this amazing support of you rune and really tried to have a broader impact on the industry. And that felt like an opportunity to good to pass up. And of course, I actually, I don’t have the commercial background, I wouldn’t have had a clue how to set up all of these systems. You rune is incredibly wise when it comes to how to run a business, how to get it off the ground, how to sell how to put these systems in place, he has this expertise that I feel like I’m learning from a great mentor actually a lot of the time. So that for me is also terribly exciting. But it is frightening at the same time, no doubt.

Jeroen Plink 30:57
But we also complement each other in our nerdiness. We do geek out together and we complement each other quite well there.

Greg Lambert 31:11
That’s great. That’s

Marlene Gebauer 31:12
a good business partnership.

Greg Lambert 31:13
Absolutely. So I think a lot of people, when you announce the launching of this, we’re wondering how it compared with some of the things that may have been on the market or things that are there now and how it compares or differs from these products. So you have things set up like a random cord and Lex fusion what they do. I know Bob Ambrogi has launched the law next directory. How is it that you describe this as differentiating from the pack of other products that are out there that people may think do the same thing?

Jeroen Plink 31:53
Yeah. So we do you regret to ask this question or something similar. It’s being asked all the all the time, and it’s it’s actually a good opportunity to dispel some of the the unclarity on. So let’s let’s start with people who have launched similar initiatives. So Bob, Bob is a good example is is probably the primary who the law Max directly, let’s first of all, make it very clear that both of us love and respect Bob very much. The he has used tremendous force in the industry. I think, out of the three you mentioned, he is the closest to doing something similar. We were talking to Bob when he announced or, or when it became clear that he was going to launch this. Bob Bob, we respect him. We wish him all the best. It’s good to have competition. He has a tremendous audience. We wish you all the best on rain court and like fusion and distinguish yourself from the pack. The answer is quite simple. We’re in a different pack. Rain, of course, helps organizations or companies that have cloud solutions, sell to law firms and in house deal apartments. We’re helping them understand what’s in the markets, which is completely different. And again, we’re also different from next fusion let fusion in each category represents one company. So they represent add to loft as a as a CLM. Company. And case tax as a as the legal research company. That’s great. We represent we give the view of the entire market. So we don’t want to be have agile off. That’s one of our enhanced profiles vendors. But we also have serial labs and a bunch of others. So we’re much wider and broader than next fusion

Greg Lambert 34:17
when it when it comes to them, say the metadata, how you categorize the different products in group them together. Is that something that you make that determination on or do the vendors make that determination? So this

Nikki Shaver 34:32
is, from my perspective, our very significant differentiator in the market from all of the directories that are out there. Because of my background in km, even with the first iteration of legal tech hub, it was set up to operate like an enterprise search for legal technology. What that means is we were very deliberate about the taxonomies we developed. We developed them with a beta group of people in the industry across the whole world to make sure that it really resonated with a way that buyers looked for technology and the way that they wanted to be able to filter search browse, and we built the directory accordingly. We’ve maintained that great discipline around the taxonomies. But also, when it comes to curation and the data, we apply the tags in the back end, we encourage the vendors to provide us with the information about their solutions, but we apply our concern our taxonomy consistently and deliberately. So we assess whether something actually falls within, say, practice management or matter management or case management, we have strict definitions of scope for each of our categories. And we’re the ones who determine where our solution sits. And I think that’s very important, both for the vendors actually, as well as for the buyers. From the buyer perspective, it’s important, because if you do a search for due diligence on legal tech hub, you only get solutions that actually support the due diligence process. That’s what you expect to see as a buyer. And that’s what you get from the vendor perspective, it helps because you actually don’t, you may think that you want to be in as many categories as possible, it actually doesn’t make you look great if you’re showing up in a lot of categories, and you don’t have a solution to address that particular use case. So from our perspective, that’s the key differentiator. And really, one of the key values of the directory is that we maintain it with great integrity and will continue to do so.

Marlene Gebauer 36:33
You know, and it’s something that could become an industry standard.

Nikki Shaver 36:36
That’s exactly right. And we are we’re talking with Damien about Sally. And it’s it’s something that we’re really thinking about as we as we develop because something we’ve heard from many people in the market, since we’ve launched 2.0 is how difficult it is to define categories. And the fact that the names of categories change. Even from a marketing perspective, sometimes people think it’s a good idea to develop a new name for a completely new category that hasn’t existed before, because then there’ll be the only solution within that category. But it actually, it makes everything Messier rather than cleaner. So the idea is to bring some consistency and some clarity to that for for everyone in the market. And I think standardization is where we’re seeing the market go in many different areas. And this is no different to that. Well,

Marlene Gebauer 37:30
amen to that.

Jeroen Plink 37:32
Yeah, I completely concur with that, even though my commercial approach would be to try to sell everything to have to add to anyone. I’ve got Nikki who keeps me honest. And I do agree with the fact that it doesn’t benefit anyone, for people or for companies to show up in the wrong category. I think the most concrete example is most Contract Lifecycle Management Systems have a signature functionality in it that doesn’t give them the right to appear in the category E signature software and you wouldn’t expect an entire lifecycle CLM system in in E signatures as a as an option because you would never buy a system like I serve this or Syrian labs or agile off just for its e signature capability. You bind us for very different reasons.

Marlene Gebauer 38:35
It seems we had a cycle of really good startups happen you know a while back so PLC Ravel Lex machina case Tex Kira, and you know, to name a few of them. But But recently, we’ve seen a lot more purchases and mergers. And you know, we’ve also seen a lot of investment in legal tech. You know, why is that? And what trends do you think we will be seeing moving forward?

Jeroen Plink 39:01
It’s funny you say that actually, we haven’t discussed this before. But from my perspective, I actually seen a lot of very cool startups appear on the on the market. And there’s there’s companies that work on applications in workforce, or work allocation. There’s a company out of out of England, recent startup that tackles this very important problem. And it’s tackling a problem that deals with the war on talent it deals with diversity deals with keeping your employees happy. So that’s an example of a new category that has sprung up. I think there’s quite a few new applications starting There are a new startups that are still somewhat under the radar. I think the PLCs, raffles, Lexmark and as in case, they are the ones that survived that at the time. We started with PLC in the US, and we weren’t a real start up. But there are a bunch of other companies that didn’t make it. I think we’re not do too much similarity. I think that the the acquisitions and mergers are happening because there’s a whole generation of companies that have now become mature and are ready for for the next level. And then the final thing is, investments. I think there’s so much there’s so much money in the markets that whether it’s legal tech or FinTech, or clean tech, dairy is a search for good assets to do throw money at. And legal tech is not that different from any other industry. The investment, if you’re if you’re a startup, getting money, right now, now’s a good time to raise

Nikki Shaver 41:17
Marlene, I find your question interesting, because I’ve spoken to others who have a similar view. And I think part of it is that for some reason, the journalism in the market has shifted gears. The focus now seems to be on large acquisitions and large funding rather than on smaller startups. And we hear about startups all the time, but they seem not to be getting as much press. I also think that what is happening in the market, too, is a lot of the existing solutions or vendors are coming up with new, really cool technology or iterations of their technology. But again, that’s not getting much coverage in the market. So just I wonder whether it’s really that there’s not as much of that kind of thing happening or whether it’s that there’s a perception that things different things are now interesting to people. I personally would rather hear about the startups. But that just might be my geekiness there

Marlene Gebauer 42:20
that that we’re just not getting exposed to it, I guess the way that we were at one time.

Greg Lambert 42:25
Yeah. And I also wonder if there’s fewer bloggers out there right now than there were 10 years ago, there was there was a boatload of bloggers that talked about legal tech in 2012. That I think some of them three geeks, maybe being one of them that have shifted gears. So maybe that’s maybe it’s time to bring in the the younger bloggers that deal with startups.

Nikki Shaver 42:53
It’s a really good point. Ron Friedman is another one who doesn’t blog anymore in the way that he used to. And he was a great source for that kind of information.

Jeroen Plink 43:03
He’s a great, he’s great to Twitter.

Greg Lambert 43:06
Yes, that’s true. Yeah. Just just changed platforms a little bit. All right, well, we’re gonna wrap this up by letting you guys both pull out your crystal balls and taking a peek into the future here. So Nikki, let’s start with you. What do you see in the future, say the next five years or so? Both for legal tech hub? And for legal innovation as a whole? What’s going to be some, some changes that you see,

Nikki Shaver 43:35
legal tech will become the platform? Yes, it will information about procurement in the market that everyone turns do on the buyer side, on the seller side, on the investment side, we will be the platform that people go to to research in the market at large. Look, I think there’s some really interesting things happening as the technology evolves, I think I know of a number of products now that are using computer vision. As part of their technology, I think AI in legal has gotten a bit of a bad rap. And now there’s actually some really advanced AI entering the market. And we’re not yet seeing its potential impact. I think we will see as a result of some of those technology changes, some of the incumbent products fall away and new ones become the kind of hot commodity to have. I think data is going to continue to be a very critical focus for a lot of law firms and also legal departments and a lot of products will be to support those types of projects internally. So those are some of my predictions you run over to you and your crystal ball.

Jeroen Plink 44:52
So I’m I’m a bit more aggressive hold on We will, we will continue to be the platform for to source your vehicle tech solutions, I think we are we are almost almost there. We’ve got some really exciting things in the in the works, we’ll be able to announce, hopefully in the next couple of months, that I’d be pretty confident that by the end of the year, we are the predominant platform for insights on deal tech, innovation and research. As to as far as legal innovation, I think the time has come. I think it’s inevitable for firms and lawyers to make a dramatic change on the way we will work. I think there’s too much client pressure that pushes law firms to change the way they work. Because there’s too much competitive pressure, what used to be your competitors, or what used to not be your competitors are now your competitors. The Big Four are entering the market, the MSPs are doing work or that used to be done by by law firms and law firms are known over doing but who tells me that the hotels that the the ISPs will not go up in in the value chain. I think that the third leg or outside pressure is increasing regulation will have a profound impact on the way we have to practice law. It’s no longer possible to do these large matters without technology. So I don’t think we have a choice. I think probably in the next five years, we’ll see more change than we’ve seen in the last 100 years.

Greg Lambert 47:11
All right, well, Jeroen Plink and Nikki Shaver from a legal tech hub. It’s, and you can find that at legal technology. hub.com Thank you both. It’s great to have you both back on on the show. Thank you.

Jeroen Plink 47:25
Great to be here. Thank you.

Nikki Shaver 47:26
Thank you so much for having us.

Greg Lambert 47:30
Well, it was great to have Nikki and Juran on back on the show. It’s a this is really exciting. You know, when you have people that have a business that they’re starting up, I know, it’s gotta be nerve wracking for them. But at the same time, you know, there’s just an excitement going on there. And so it was it was great to talk to them about legal tech.

Marlene Gebauer 47:50
That’s exactly why I asked the question. I mean, I really wanted to know, you know, what, what, what’s what’s sort of going through your mind? And like, what are you thinking when when you were doing this? And I mean, I loved like the heck are you saying? Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like that. But, you know, like, I love like Nikki’s Nikki’s description of you know, it felt like, you know, I was walking off a cliff. But I knew I was gonna be walking off the cliff, and you know, but it was very liberating and free. So it’s almost like you’re walking off a cliff to go, you know, fly. That’s kind of how I envisioned it.

Greg Lambert 48:19
And I imagine there’s people listening to this, who would love to do a start, you know, to do their own. So I think if, you know, maybe Jeroen, and Nicky will give you a push in the right direction.

Marlene Gebauer 48:35
I say, that’s what you’re thinking is an inspiration for sure. And, you know, but I mean, really what they’re doing, there is a need for this. And and I can’t stress that enough. I mean, there are so many products out there. And I think it’s absolutely spot on that they are marketed different ways. And sometimes ways that are a little confusing. It’s like, you know what I mean, it might do a few things, but what is it really what’s, what’s its core? What does it really do? And when folks are ready to kind of make this jump, you have to jump like they’re expecting like, Okay, what what should we be going with? And, you know, that is something that has traditionally you know, you’ve had to sort of work through that and do the testing, and work with with the people who are going to be using it to come to those solutions. It’s not something that you can answer right away. And this, you know, this really gives you a shortcut to be able to be you know, very well informed about, you know, the tools that are out there and be able to speak about it quickly.

Greg Lambert 49:40
Yep. So, it was again, once again, thanks to Nikki Shaver, and Jeroen Plink for taking the time to talk with us. I’ll put links out on the show notes, but as as one of my other podcasts that I listened to says, If you don’t really take the time to look at the show notes that I spend so much time putting you can go to www dot. What are you doing?

Marlene Gebauer 50:05
Greg close. Greg close all three activity rings just sitting there.

Greg Lambert 50:13
Now I did that earlier. You’re just now oh,

Marlene Gebauer 50:16
I don’t know. I just I guess.

Greg Lambert 50:17
I guess I was moving. I was moving enough to

Marlene Gebauer 50:21
dancing in your chair or something.

Greg Lambert 50:24
Yeah. I talk with my hands? So? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Marlene Gebauer 50:30
We’re not we’re not gonna. Okay,

Greg Lambert 50:31
go ahead. Oh, back to Jeroen. We were on in Nikki, you go to www dot legal technology hub.com And take a look at what they have up there now for legal tech hub. 2.0

Marlene Gebauer 50:45
I thought we’re gonna talk about regulations and stuff, too. It’s like I was already man. Jazz.

Greg Lambert 50:52
How long do you want the outro to be?

Marlene Gebauer 50:55
this is like a longest outro ever. No that’s good. We can.

Greg Lambert 51:02
Alright, well, let me let me do it. And so thanks again to Nikki Shaver, and Jeroen Plink from legal tech hub. It Legal technology hub.com for coming back on the shows good good talking to him. We’ll do it again in a year.

Marlene Gebauer 51:16
Yes. And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter,

Greg Lambert 51:30
and I can be reached at @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer 51:33
Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert 51:43
Thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene, I’m gonna go start my own business now.

Marlene Gebauer 51:47
All right. Good luck.

For those of us who went to law school, a large percentage probably assumed we’d graduate, take the bar, and practice law. But, sometimes life takes you in a different direction. Today’s guest fits that mold, and also decided to talk with 15 other law school grads who also found careers outside the traditional legal practice. Adam Pascarella is the Founder of Second Order Capital Management, and the author of the new book, Reversed in Part: 15 Law School Grads on Pursuing Non-Traditional Careers. Within the book, you’ll also find two former TGIR guests, Ayelette Robinson and Richard Hsu.

Reversed in Part is designed to give inspiration and some practical insights from professionals who followed their passions and how their legal career experiences helped them along the way. Adam tells us how he essentially used the interviews to help guide himself into a career outside of BigLaw and take the risk to start his own business.

LegalWeek Crystal Ball Question

This week we hear from Michael Burns, Chief Revenue Officer at Steno on what he sees for the legal industry when he peers into his crystal ball. For the industry to improve, it’s going to take the help of allied professionals, automation, and even API integration to make it a reality.

Congrats to Marlene

For those who haven’t seen yet, Marlene was included in the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center’s Women of Legal Tech 2022. Such a great list of leaders, including five former guests. It was nice of the ABA’s LTRC to give us an additional list of eleven more leaders who we need to get on the podcast!!

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Contact Us

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert

Voicemail: 713-487-7270

Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: Jerry David DeCicca

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer  0:26

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

Greg Lambert  0:32

And I’m Greg Lambert. Oh, Marlene, congratulations on being recognized by the ABA, legal Technology Resource Center as one of the women of legal tech 2022. I have to say that’s a heck of a list including we had five I think prior guest of the podcast. So congrats.

Marlene Gebauer  0:49

Thank you very much. It was really quite an honor to be included with this group of amazing, amazing women. And you know, I know we’ve had we’ve had five, but I guess we got to get all the rest of them onto.

Greg Lambert  1:02

Yeah, well, I was telling you that. Well, at least it gives us a checklist of 11 more that we can.

Marlene Gebauer  1:08

That’s right. That’s right.

Greg Lambert  1:10

Well, congratulations and well deserved. Thank you. So today’s guest talks about how important it is to have a network of professional peers and to maintain those relationships. In fact, it was our common relationship with former guest Richard Chu that sparked our being able to even get author Adam Pascarella on the show. That’s right. So Adam has a new book out where he interviews 15 people who were former legal practitioners or law school grads, and who went on to have careers outside the traditional legal industry. Richard Chu and our good friend from all the way back in episode four. Yeah, yeah. Let Robinson Yeah, that was a while ago, was there both in the book along with folks like ESPN J Bayless, Anthony, the mooch, Scaramucci, and other writers, artists, business folks, and more,

Marlene Gebauer  2:01

we talk about why Adam decided to write the book and the effect it had on him as he started his own business and capital management. So stick around for that. But first up, we have another legal week crystal ball question. This time we talk with Michael Burns, Chief Revenue Officer at steno about what he sees for the near future in the legal industry.

Michael Burns  2:22

My name is Michael Burns and Chief Revenue Officer at Steno. We are a legal technology company focusing on litigation support services. So we provide mostly court reporting and deposition services to firms across the country. I’ve been with the firm for a while now. I think I’m coming up on 70 days. So I’m an expert. Exactly. a tried and true veteran. Yeah. But I’ve been in and around legal tech for a better part of 20 years. So I’ve seen a lot of change in this business, mostly for the good, I would say, not 100%, mostly for the good. Yeah. And to your question, get my crystal ball out. So you see where things are going. So I think in general, across the ecosystem, legal is the last bastion of the non digitally transformed, right. So if we think about in house, if we think about law firms, the advantages that other industries or their corporate departments have taken advantage of, as it pertains to automation, really haven’t been reaped by those, those segments. So I, we obviously are seeing the pendulum swing towards automation and towards technology. I think we haven’t seen you know, the midpoint of the fulcrum yet, I think we’re gonna see a lot, a lot of swing, and that should accelerate for us. At steno, a lot of what we’re focused on as not just a court reporting agency, but also a tech company, is identifying ways that we can integrate our services into the workflows of our customers. So we’re very focused on on looking at partnerships with manner management and case management vendors to actually get the litigation services part of an attorney or a paralegal or legal secretaries, workflow automated, right. So we just launched an integration with Wodify, for instance, where somebody could literally in their case management platform, hit a button, and information on the case goes out through API to our back end, you’re able to schedule a deposition seamlessly without leaving the workflow. So I think that’s where things are gonna be going over the next two to five years as it pertains to legal services, and especially litigation services.

Marlene Gebauer  4:39

How do you how do you feel your clients are sort of accepting that like in terms of this move towards automation?

Michael Burns  4:46

Adoption is slow among attorneys. What have we heard of this this breaking news? You heard it here first, folks. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of excitement to hampered by trepidation right? across, across everybody in the industry. There’s always gonna be early adopters, right? And the early adopters are all in they they blazed the trail. And we need to show wins, right? So what we’re focused on is trying to enable our customers who are starting to take advantage of this type of technology, right, really be there for them provide great customer success. Make sure that we surround them with enablement to be able to take advantage of what it is that we’re offering. And over time, right, what we’ll see adoption increase, I’m sure like we have with, you know, eDiscovery, 15 years ago, right. You know, that was new ones, too.

Marlene Gebauer  5:38

That’s true. All right. Well,

Greg Lambert  5:40

thanks for dropping by.

Michael Burns  5:42

Anytime. Thanks, guys.

Marlene Gebauer  5:46

I like how Michael was being polite when he referred to let its of the legal industry as the non digitally transformed.

Greg Lambert  5:52

Yeah, he’s definitely correct in projecting that, you know, there’s the allied professionals along with automation and even API integration, that’s going to have to come into play to improve the overall process of the legal services. So thanks, Michael, for letting us get you in front of a mic there at legal week and have you peer into your crystal ball. Now on to today’s guest,

Marlene Gebauer  6:15

most of us that went to law school thought we were going to end up being some sort of version of a lawyer who practices law. But as evidenced by the two of us that doesn’t always become reality. Today’s guest wrote a book where he interviewed 15 law school grads, who found themselves in non traditional, but very rewarding careers.

Greg Lambert  6:35

We’d like to welcome Adam Pascarella, founder of second order Capital Management and the author of the book reversed in part 15 law school grads on pursuing non traditional careers. Adam, welcome to The Geek in Review.

Adam Pascarella  6:49

Greg, Marlene, thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Marlene Gebauer  6:53

So Adam, before we dive into your book, we wanted to talk a little about your background and how you went from working as a corporate litigator at Baker McKenzie, just starting your own capital management company. We’ve had a few other Penn Law grads on the show before who seem to be very entrepreneurial, very. So is it just something in the water there at Penn that makes grads want to start their own businesses?

Adam Pascarella  7:13

That’s that’s certainly possible. I think, the connection with the Wharton School, there’s something there at least I was at Penn from 2011 to 2014. And back then, a lot of the big direct to consumer companies or startups are being funded and Warby Parker was one of the most notable ones and the founders of Warby Parker came from Penn. So I think maybe there’s something to be said about seeing a huge success come from the Wharton School. And you know, Wharton students and law students thinking they could come up with the next big thing. So. So I do think there is something to that. And even when I was at Penn, I thought of something similar to I was interested in the startup world, even while I was in law school. As you know, while you’re in law school, especially the first year, it’s very important to focus on your academics and your courses, because there’s a direct correlation between that and the job, your first job that you receive after graduation. So the stakes are high. I wanted to do the best I could. But I also had this nagging itch that I wanted to scratch in the startup world. So I was dabbling with some things on the side. But besides those side projects, focused on doing the best job, I could attend law school, I graduated in 2014. Went to Baker McKenzie, and there I was a litigation associate. So mostly worked on general commercial litigation matters. I also did some white collar defense and anti trust work as well. I practice there for about two and a half years. And towards the latter half of my short career there, I was thinking of what I wanted my career to look like, what really came back to me was starting my own business doing my own thing. Maybe it was off the beaten path, I didn’t know exactly what it would look like. But I didn’t really want the traditional path of working at a law firm for six, seven years becoming a partner than becoming an equity partner, perhaps I’m counsel and then retiring. That’s something that I didn’t really want. I think I knew that before I even went into big law into my first job. So didn’t know exactly how my path would play out. But I knew it was something non traditional. And that’s sort of the impetus of why I wrote the book as well.

Greg Lambert  9:10

Yep. Well, I’m just curious. Because right now, we see a lot of associates that come in, and they stay long enough to basically pay off most of their debt and then go do what they really want to do. Was that kind of what you wanted? Or is that kind of what you ended up doing?

Adam Pascarella  9:28

Yeah, something similar to that. Yeah. And I think, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. As long as law schools are charging hundreds of 1000s of dollars in tuition, and you’re taking out loans, especially if you have to live you have to almost look out for yourself first and and by doing that, you know, you may end up like really liking what you’re doing at a big firm and you may end up staying so there’s, I’m not advocating for people just to go there and cut and run once their their loans are paid off. But that is a trend certainly in the past couple decades, I would say and it’s most likely going to continue as long as law school as expensive as it is.

Greg Lambert  10:06

I agree. So, Adam, I was looking at your personal website. And that is kind of interesting, because the way that you have it laid out, you have three words that describe you. And the words are professional, curious, and passionate. And so why those three words? And how does that describe your personal philosophy?

Adam Pascarella  10:29

Sure, I can go through them one by one. So the first one is professional. And since I graduate from college, I’ve been in service based businesses, I’ve been serving clients and serving customers. And it’s service fashion. So what you really need to focus on is being as professional as you can, and professional can mean so many different things, but I think mostly means treating the client or customer like you want to be treated. So that’s responding to emails and calls diligently. That’s, you know, giving them a fair price. If you have pricing power, if you can control pricing. So being a professional towards my clients, that’s, that’s, that’s an attitude I take towards my day to day work. Curiosity is a tenants that I strongly adhere to, and that I follow. I think that’s, you know, you can be interested in your job itself, like, say, a litigation associate, I was, I was interested in the work that I was doing, but I think it makes you a better and more interesting worker, or associate or whatever, if you’re studying or looking into adjacent things to what you’re working on. So say you could be an oil and gas attorney, for instance, if you can study the renewable energy market, or the green energy market that can make you a better oil and gas attorney. So following your curiosity, I think is an important tenant for anyone, whatever you’re doing, and so I try to stay curious and and really try to expand my circle of competence, as they say. And then passion. It’s kind of interesting. In the course of writing this book, when I spoke with 15, law school graduates, some of the questions that I did ask were, should you follow your passion, especially if you want to leave the law to do something else? And there really isn’t a clear answer to that. You see, you hear people like Mark Cuban say, you should follow your effort rather than your passion. There’s something to be said about that. But there’s also something to be said about being genuinely interested in what you’re working on. So I tried to stay passionate in what I’m doing. I it’s interesting. One example from the book is Sandra Daniel supid Sousa, CEO of thumbtack, which is a startup. And he told me that he wasn’t inherently interested or passionate about local services, which is what thumbtack does, the passion kind of grew and evolved into that. So really, what I, what I’m trying to say here is that I tried to stay interested in what I’m doing. I’m passionate about what I do. But I didn’t leave the law to pursue some nagging passion that I had that there were some curiosities. There were some things I was interested in. But it wasn’t like, oh, I have to do this or that,

Greg Lambert  12:48

right? Yeah, these don’t necessarily always stand on their own, you can combine all three of them, it seems like,

Adam Pascarella  12:55

yes, absolutely.

Marlene Gebauer  12:56

Was there something in the work that you were doing as a lawyer that that didn’t allow you to leverage these three principles or leverage them in a way that you wanted?

Adam Pascarella  13:05

Um, I say, maybe maybe it is, especially the curiosity parts. As you likely know, if you’re working at a big law or corporate law environments, that the work is very demanding, and you’re expected to put all of your time and effort into the matters that you have on your plates. And so it doesn’t leave as much time as you want to pursue other interests that you may have, or other other curiosities that you may want to pursue. So at the time, like, like I was telling you a couple minutes ago, I was interested in the startup world, I thought there may be something there that I can be a founder that I could start something. But working at a law firm, it’s obviously difficult to start something on the side, some firms don’t even let you do that, if you look at your employment agreements. So that is one thing. That’s I guess I was deprived of something that I wanted to pursue. But overall, I would say that working at my firm allowed me to tap into those three tenants that I spoke about.

Greg Lambert  13:59

It’s hard to do a side job when you’re billing 2400 hours.

Adam Pascarella  14:03

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. It’s it’s difficult. I’m assuming it’s possible, but very, very difficult.

Marlene Gebauer  14:10

So speaking of the 2400 hours, you know, what are some of the starkest differences that you see owning your own business versus being a practicing lawyer? I mean, I imagine you put in a lot of time, as you know, as a business owner, but you know, maybe where you put the time or how or you know, the things you focus on are a little bit different than when you’re you’re practicing.

Adam Pascarella  14:34

For sure. Yeah, as a business owner, you have to wear so many different hats, especially if you’re a small business, you have to not only provide the service in my situation, that’s the service that I provide to clients, but also you have to deal with housekeeping matters. And sure, you can delegate that to freelancers or a staff but especially in the early days, you may not have resources to do that. So it ends up being on your plate. And that’s one of the things that I think legal practice helps with in some respects is the time management. you’re billing six minute increments at a big law firm. And I’m not, I’m not tracking my time like that. But the focus on time management and maximizing your output within a certain period of time is, is really important. And it’s something that you learn in practice. I just had my first baby, Thanksgiving Day last year. And that’s Thank you. And this lesson is even more stark for me is that when your time is so constricted, you need to make the most out of it and actually end up being more productive. It’s kind of funny that way. But going back to what you’re saying, It’s time management is something and also, I think a bias for action is another huge thing is lawyers. We’re paid to be analytical, we’re paid to sit back, look at case law on my circumstance, look at both sides of an issue, come to some sort of conclusion, write a memo presented to a client and move on. But when you’re an entrepreneur or business owner, you need to take action and action is everything. You can be analytical, especially with larger decisions. I think it helps to be analytical. But for the most parts, you have to be much more action oriented. And for some attorneys, especially me at the start, that was difficult. I think my analytical skills is one of my superpowers. And if you’re not able to tap into that all the time, it can be difficult, but the more you do it, the more you get used to taking action.

Greg Lambert  16:15

Yeah, imagine it’s changing gears from being an issue spotter to identify everything that could go wrong to being more of entrepreneur or thinker and think of the things that could go right. So yeah,

Adam Pascarella  16:30

that’s it. That’s it as attorneys, especially litigators, you’re focused on the downside, but as an entrepreneur, it’s all upside, right? Like, sure, there are risks, but, you know, the upsides could be 10x, the risk so that’s, that’s another mental model change that you have to make.

Marlene Gebauer  16:44

That’s, that’s what I’ve always heard with, with business owners that you’re you’re kind of, you’re less focused on the risk, you’re focused on the, you know, how can we do this? Or we can do this. And then on the attorney side, it’s much more it’s like, no, no, no, you can’t do this because of xy and z. So it’s a really good mindset.

Adam Pascarella  17:02

And for the attorneys listening out there, I think that’s something that can make you especially attractive to clients is having that, that glass half full attitude towards whatever advice you’re giving. Now, granted, you’re being paid to assess risk, there’s no doubt about that. But if you can present solutions or actions that the client can take to help them achieve their goals, not withstanding the risks, that’s extremely attractive. So something to think about.

Greg Lambert  17:26

Well, that brings us now to the book. And it was just released in March, the book called reversed in part. So what made you decide that you wanted to write a book where you interview people who were lawyers or law school grads, but decided at some point to take on a new career? What was the impetus behind that?

Adam Pascarella  17:47

Yeah, it was really to solve the circumstance or problem that I was facing, I wanted to do something different with my career, didn’t know exactly what starting a business, like I said, was something that was appealing. But I didn’t really know how to go from point A to point B. And granted the book isn’t, isn’t exactly that it’s kind of this combination of inspiration and practical steps to get to where you want. But like I was saying, there, there wasn’t really a resource that I knew of, that could help me in that respect. So I spoke with some attorneys that had made the switch, they were practicing attorneys were doing something else. But I also wanted to see you know, what else is out there. So if you look in the book, I speak with an artist, I speak with a nonprofit CEO, I speak with venture capitalists. Now granted, I I’m not creative at all, I’m not going to become an artist in the future. But I wanted to speak with people that had done different things. And, you know, no matter what they’re doing right now, I think there are lessons and insights that we can take no matter what our career goals are. So it really came from solving a personal problem or issue that I was facing when I was at my law firm. And once I got started, I was getting momentum, I was speaking with interesting people. And the project kept going along. And it took me three years, writing a book is no small feat. So there’s, I could have a whole different conversation about that. But it was a problem that I wanted to solve. I felt like a lot of attorneys, maybe don’t say this to each other, but maybe are thinking of doing something different with their careers but don’t really know where to start or what to do. So the book is again, both inspirational and provide some practical guidance in certain areas, if you want to do something else. So

Greg Lambert  19:18

you basically use the research for the book as a your own coaching and counseling to help you along.

Adam Pascarella  19:24

Yeah, that’s definitely fair. And even in my journey right now, I go back to the book and some of the conversations I had and in refer to it because there’s so many good insights in there. Yeah, so it’s almost like like starting a podcast like in your shoes as well. Like it’s, you could speak with interesting people about topics that interest you or problems that you’re facing. So, you know, it’s a win win in that respect.

Marlene Gebauer  19:45

So I’m very happy that you wrote this. First because of what you said that and I’ve heard this over the course of my career, like a lot of attorneys will, will say, you know, I really wish I could, I could do something else but they really I don’t know what else they could do. And I think this book kind of opens different opportunities, you know, for them to explore. And similarly, I’m happy that you wrote the book, because I do think there are certain, you know, groups of attorneys where if people do something outside of practicing law, if they do something else with their legal education, you know, that that’s just that’s odd. You know, and I think you highlight here that no, there’s a lot of people who do this, lots of people that do this. So you know, you have 15 professionals who left their legal careers that are in the book. And that’s including our friends who we’ve had on the podcast, Richard Chu, and a yell at Robinson. The Careers vary from, you know, business leaders, artists, sports managers, and commentators and policy experts. How did you set out to find the people who had a story to tell for your book?

Adam Pascarella  20:57

Yeah, so I wanted to get as diverse of an audience’s as possible for the book. But to back up a little bit. So So first, I was really pursuing my own interests, selfishly like we were, we were alluding to a little bit ago. So I wanted to potentially build a business start a startup. So I thought,

Marlene Gebauer  21:13

right, right about what you’re passionate about.

Adam Pascarella  21:16

Yeah, exactly. And I knew there were attorneys that had done that. But I wanted to start this book project and wanted to help other attorneys that were interested in tech or startups. So I reached out to Keith Raboy, who’s a, who’s a Partner of Founders Fund, who was a member of the PayPal Mafia is involved in a lot of startups. And he responded to me decided to speak with me and I was off to the races from there. And then from that point, I spoke with a couple other people in the startup world, like, like I said, Sandra Daniels, who’s the CEO of Thumbtack. I spoke with David Hornick, who’s also renowned venture capitalist. So it was kind of startup tech heavy. And then I thought, How am I gonna diversify this out a little bit. So really, it was a combination of trying to get as broad of an experiences as possible in the book, but also pursuing my own interests. And I really do think there’s so many different paths that you can take, being a former lawyer, so I couldn’t discuss every single career path that there there is out there, the book would be impossibly long. So chose 15 people, eight women, seven men in different industries and sectors and went from there, I could create a sequel if I wanted to. But I think that I think that there’s enough knowledge in here that it’s a good start for people.

Marlene Gebauer  22:24

How did you get in touch with these these individuals? Like once once you started with the folks that you knew, like, you know, how did you get to some of these other ones?

Adam Pascarella  22:33

Yeah, it was predominantly cold email, funnily enough, wow. For, I think it was 15 or 15 individuals I had no prior experience or relationship with. And I think it really goes to show that if you’re trying to do something difference, a cold email can actually be super powerful. I still use it to this day, and there’s an art to it. You don’t want to be overly spammy or annoying. But if you just have the audacity to reach out to people, you never know what will happen like Anthony Scaramucci, I thought was an impossible person to contact. He has such a high profile. But I reached out to his media people and they directed me to his assistant, and then I was passed up someone else. And then eventually I was able to meet him. So I think if you’re, if you show that you have some value to provide, and if you show some common interests with the person you’re targeting, your odds are better than you’d think. So no matter what you’re trying to do, if you’re trying to even go into a different sector or industry, and you’ve no contact in that sector or industry, just try reaching out to someone you never know what’ll happen.

Greg Lambert  23:31

Yeah, I guess the worst they can say is no or not respond. So.

Adam Pascarella  23:36

And then you get used to rejection, which is honestly a skill or trait that’s very valuable.

Greg Lambert  23:42

Especially if you’re an author.

Marlene Gebauer  23:43

Yeah. Author and an entrepreneur, author and entrepreneur. Yeah.

Adam Pascarella  23:48

You’re trying to create anything rejection is in your future. So get used to it.

Greg Lambert  23:53

Well, Adam, one of the things that and I had an electronic copy of the book, so I did a scanned it and realize that you never once in the book, use the phrase recovering attorney. And before we jumped on, Marlene, and I had a discussion on whether or not this is is is bad, or phrases I make it out to be. But in the whole book, it sounds like you weren’t trying to make it sound like practicing law was some type of failure, but rather, that was one experience that helped them, you know, move on to the next career or their passion. As we talked about earlier. Did you find any commonalities on what caused these 15 individuals to leave the practice of law or the idea of pursuing something in the law and then pursue something completely different?

Adam Pascarella  24:41

I did. Yeah. But But going back to the idea of the recovering lawyer, I agree. I think that’s law school. It is kind of a technical school you learn how to analyze case law and write say a brief in the Cree AK format or version, whatever your your chosen version is. But there are skills. It’s a great training ground and you develop real skills that you can use in different areas, you, you develop analytical skills, oral advocacy skills, problem solving skills. So, and this really was a reason why I named the book reversed in part, you’re not totally turning your back on your legal training or experiences our law school entirely. I think there are plenty of things that you can apply from your past in the law to whatever it is you’re doing. So I agree that the recovering lawyer or attorney phrase, it’s something I don’t use. I do understand people use it, but I would push back on it slightly. But But to go back to your question, I think it was mostly people pursuing their curiosities. Again. So So legal practice, obviously is very important. I’m sitting on the opposite side of the table lawyers are very important to what I do and for for a lot of people both in the profit and nonprofit world, but it is a narrowly defined, you know, job. And so people, the 15 interviewees, I had had different interests, and they wanted to pursue them, they couldn’t pursue those interests in their current line work. So if you look at someone like Melinda Snodgrass who, who’s an author, she’s a very prominent science fiction and fantasy author. She was working at Sandia laboratories in an in house role, I think she also had a commercial law role. But she wanted to write and she, as she told me, in our interview, she had these characters in her mind that she had to put out onto the paper. She couldn’t do that in her law job, so she had to leave. Same thing is true of Sandra Daniels, who’s another man I referenced, he co founded thumbtack while he was in law school, still went to Sullivan and Cromwell, I believe, practice for two years and thought, Hey, I can’t work on this opportunity. While Sullivan and Cromwell This is really gaining traction, I’m going to regret if I don’t leave and work on it. So he did it. So I do think it was this pursuit of a curiosity outside of the law that really prompted people to leave. Now, granted, maybe they left for financial reasons, or there are others that could leave for financial reasons. Like you said, Greg, they may have paid off their loans and thought, hey, I hate doing this, I want to do something else. I didn’t really have that experience speaking with those 15 interviews in a release in my book, but I’m sure there are people out there that feel that way. But going back, it’s just about pursuing something else outside of legal practice. That’s that’s the common thread that I saw.

Marlene Gebauer  27:15

So the final chapter of the book is something really fascinating. you title it 25 key takeaways now, we won’t ask you to go through all 25. But but but many of them revolve around the concept of know yourself and build and leverage relationships. So in that regard, what are some of the biggest lessons you learned as you were interviewing these amazing people for reversed in part? And what are some key things that you do to know yourself and to build and leverage relationships?

Adam Pascarella  27:47

Yeah, relationships are huge, especially if you’re trying to do something non traditional. I really think that if I were to ask all 15 of these individuals, would you have gotten to where you are, if you, you know, submitted your resume on indeed.com, or just blindly submitted resumes? They would say absolutely not. It was all based on relationships, or hustling to is a combination of work and relationships. So those things are absolutely huge. It’s a common thread I saw amongst all of the people. And one of the individuals that spoke about that most was David Hornick, who is actually featured in Adam grants book, give and take, he’s, he’s known for, for maximizing and maximizing his network and expanding, really providing as much value as he can to his network and trying to meet as many people as possible. Even in my case, he didn’t need to pick up the phone or answer my email. But he did, because he understands how powerful relationships are. So that’s, again, if you’re looking to do something different in your career, really try to expand your network and in leverage your network no matter what it is you’re trying to do. So in my case, I think when I was looking at my transition, I guess I didn’t really know what to do. So to better know, myself, I worked with a career coach. And that was actually really helpful. I think that as lawyers, we can be really analytical, we can look at all the different sides of an issue, we can issue spots, that’s what we’re trying to do in law school. But when you’re looking at your own career, you can be so stuck in your head that you’re not asking yourself the right questions and having a nonpartisan third party really probe what it is that you want and make you think about different priorities that you may have is really powerful. So a career coach was good. And then my then girlfriend now wife was, was really helpful in that respect. We talked about work all the time, and she’s always challenging me and making me be the best that I can be. So having a loved one or a friend, really push you in that respect is is helpful.

Greg Lambert  29:39

Yeah, it’s always good to have someone you can bounce things off of and and can also give it to you straight. Yes, yeah.

Marlene Gebauer  29:45

someone you trust someone you trust? Yes.

Greg Lambert  29:49

Or they’re in any general principles or insights that you can share from the book, writing process itself. You know, there might be a listener out there. That’s that’s now listening to this thinking that, you know, they want to write their own book, or she may want to create something else as a side project or side hustles and any insights you can share.

Adam Pascarella  30:11

Yeah, definitely, I would first recommend reading one book, which is called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He’s a, he’s a prominent author, I think he wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance and some other some other fiction books that are well known. But it was, for me, it was one of the most impactful books on the writing or creative process, because he defines this, this a amorphous idea called resistance. And it’s basically, resistance is going to stand in your way of creating anything new. And your job to combat resistance is to become a professional. So you need to treat your job of writing like a professional. So in that case, that means finding, you know, an hour in your day where you can write, whether that’s in the morning or in the evening. It’s like treating it like a second job. And granted for lawyers, like we were alluding to a couple minutes ago, that can be difficult, because your job is all encompassing, especially if you work at a big firm. But if you do want to create something in the world, whether that’s a book or a side hustle or something, you need to put in the time and combat resistance. So that’s, that’s definitely something that’s, that’s helpful when when writing a book. And then in the process of writing a book itself, it’s also helpful to have an audience beforehand. I think, when people are thinking of writing a book, especially working with a publisher, this book is self published. But if you’re working with a publisher, you think the publisher is going to do everything for you. They’re going to promote your book to a huge audience, you’re going to get in Barnes and Noble and all that stuff. And while that may be true, the publisher is really relying on you to do a lot of the work. So if you can create an audience somehow before writing the book, whether that’s on on Twitter, or a blog, or YouTube channel, something like that, that’s really helpful later on when you’re marketing. And it’s also helpful when you’re testing the concept of the book, because you have an audience where you can spit ball ideas back and forth and see if there’s actual demand for the book. So for this book, I was trying to scratch my own itch that I had, I do believe that there are lawyers out there that feel this way that they want to transition into different careers and do something different. But if you can have a large, preferably large audience beforehand, and bounce ideas off of that, it really minimizes your risk and maximizes your chances of success for your book. Yeah.

Greg Lambert  32:16

So how did you find your audience?

Adam Pascarella  32:18

Yeah, so I created a before I wrote the book, I created a course on deciding whether you want to go to law school or not. So that was my little test of, you know, creating an audience, first of all, seeing if I could create value in the law school legal space. And so I created a course I put it on Udemy, which is one of these core sites and had a blog, wrote on Quora, medium, these sorts of places, there were a couple posts I had about big law that got some traction, and I developed a little audience that way. So really, as lawyers, we’re pretty good writers compared to the general population. So if you want to tap into that, that’s, that’s helpful. But then there are also people that have developed really good followings and tick tock or YouTube, legal versions of tick tock or YouTube. So whatever suits your strengths and interests, I would say, build an audience that way, and then test if there’s interest in your book.

Marlene Gebauer  33:05

Yeah, it was funny when you were saying this, I was thinking of stand up. I mean, you know, the best performers don’t just go and, you know, do their hour long, special cold. I mean, they they go to small venues, and they test out their material. And they see you know, if it’s something that’s going to take with an audience before they put the final product together. So there’s a lot going on in the world right now. So we wanted to give you a chance to pull out your crystal ball, and talk about how you think the legal profession may change over the next five years or so. What, if anything, can it do to help professional, curious and passionate lawyers? who are entering the legal field? Enjoy being a lawyer and stay in the profession?

Adam Pascarella  33:51

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think that one of the most prominent things in my mind is the role of technology in the legal field itself. And I’m not as involved as I was back when I was a practicing lawyer. But both as a practicing lawyer and in certain practice areas, there are new innovations and technologies that are really making things interesting. So as a former litigation associate, I can’t imagine now what research tools there are to make your job easier researching case laws. So as a young associate or attorney, I would I would be really bullish on on technology and learning what all these new platforms can offer, both both to you and your clients. And then in terms of practice areas, it seems like crypto is just a huge thing in the legal field right now. There’s there’s a lot of lot of unanswered questions that are being addressed. Both and empty stuff. Yeah, key stuff in the coins themselves. So if you have any interest in technology, I would say as a young attorney, definitely develop some expertise in even even a niche in the crypto field that you can be extremely valuable that way. So that’s, that’s probably what if I was practicing, that’s probably what I’d be doing right now.

Marlene Gebauer  35:00

Yeah, Greg and I both attended a session. And there was a lot of focus on sort of trademark and copyright and around the NF T’s and that there was so much opportunity there.

Adam Pascarella  35:11

Yeah, definitely. And whether coins can be considered securities? I mean, there’s so many unanswered questions. Yes, that are being addressed. And lawyers are billing a lot of time and money for that. So

Greg Lambert  35:22

I was gonna say uncertainty makes a lot of lawyers richer. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Adam Pascarella, founder of second order Capital Management and author of the new book that’s just released reversed. In Part, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to come in and talk with us. It’s been fun.

Adam Pascarella  35:41

Thank you so much, Greg, and Marlene. Appreciate it.

Marlene Gebauer  35:43

Thank you, Adam. So Greg, I think that was a really excellent discussion with Adam. And I think very inspirational, to hear these different stories or hear him talk about the different stories that are in his book. And, you know, I hope that that gives some some insight to those who are listening who, you know, may want to pursue a different path.

Greg Lambert  36:06

Yeah, and I don’t think I mentioned I mean, I mentioned their names. But Richard Chu actually reached out to us and introduced us to Adam so that we could get him on the show. And it was a, you know, super pleasant surprise, because I think we had a yell at Robinson on the show. She was like, on the third or fourth show, early, early. And, you know, her career as an actress. And, you know, as a former lawyer, and now now actress, so it was really, really exciting to see her name in the book as well. So be really happy. Yeah. So I, you know, there was a number of things that he kind of ticked off on his list, but I think a lot of us, you know, well, you and I are not exactly in traditional legal careers, either. And, you know, just this, just this passion, being able to follow it, at some point I would love to do and, you know, an episode, and I think we’ve kind of, like, nibbling around the edges of it. But, you know, what can law firms do, to put more creativity into the work so that you’re not losing these people, and I just don’t think we’re, I just don’t think we’re set up to save these people. And maybe that’s a good thing, maybe, maybe we want to have them spread their wings outside, but boy, be nice to have some of these people,

Marlene Gebauer  37:28

you know, I hear what you’re saying. I mean, it would be nice to be able to harness that, that, you know, that creativity and use it, you know, within the confines, probably confines, within the confines of the loft of a law firm, because

Greg Lambert  37:44

within the jail cell, the law firm

Marlene Gebauer  37:48

known as it but, you know, within the law firms, you know, because I mean, some of the things he said really resonated, that, you know, look, if you’re doing something innovative, you know, you’re going to be, you’re gonna have to deal with rejection on a regular basis. And, you know, he’s, he’s not wrong in that, because, you know, you’re trying something new and, and there’s always a bit of resistance to that. And, you know, and also what, you know, he was talking about, you know, making the time, you know, when you’re starting something new, or you’re starting a new business, that you make the time and again, that is something that I have heard years ago, and it was in relation to training, that look, either there’s people that make the time, and then there’s people that don’t make the time. So if it’s important to you, you will make the time.

Greg Lambert  38:36

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And that’s, you know, and I think that’s one of the things we’ve learned about doing just doing this podcast is, you have to set aside the time, it’s not just something that just occur,

Marlene Gebauer  38:46

right. It’s not, it doesn’t magically happen.

Greg Lambert  38:49

Yeah. And I know I wished it was Yeah. But yeah, that’s that’s how it is so well. It was a pleasure having Adam Pascarella from second order Capital Management and excited for his new book that was just just released called reversed in part 15 law school grads on pursuing non traditional careers. So Adam, thank you very much for taking time to talk with us. That was great.

Marlene Gebauer  39:14

And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at gave our M on Twitter,

Greg Lambert  39:27

and I can be reached at glamour to on Twitter. Or

Marlene Gebauer  39:30

you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert  39:42

Thanks, Jerry. All right. Marlene, I will talk with you later.

Marlene Gebauer  39:45

All right, bye bye.

[Ed. Note: Welcome guest blog post writer David Kamien, Founder and CEO of Mind-Alliance System. – GL]

To produce company profiles and intelligence reports (aka business intelligence or competitive intelligence reports) that help partners and Business Development (BD) managers prepare for meetings and respond to RFPs, law firms should keep five core principles in mind. Deploying technology at the nexus of BD and Research Services is a core focus for Mind-Alliance, and we’ve learned these best practices over the years.

1) Deliver Tailored Reports Quickly

The fastest way to produce company reports is to complete templates automatically using API-driven feeds from multiple data sources. When partners and BD managers have templates set up for different use cases—something they can do themselves or have research teams do for them—they can get most of a report completed in seconds, leaving analysts time to focus on writing executive summaries and completing report sections that require substantial research and analysis. Partners benefit greatly from having time to absorb the information in a report and to ask colleagues deep questions. When analysts must painstakingly complete templates by searching data sources and manually pasting the information they retrieve, they typically can only produce 5–7 reports per week. That number can potentially increase by an order of magnitude when API automation is introduced.

Understanding your internal client’s context and why a partner requests a report at this particular time is key to tailoring a report’s data, structure, and format and delivering it at the right time. For example, partners may need very different information depending on their practice group, the industry of the target company, recent events, the issues and work to be discussed, and other factors.

Analysts who create company report templates in Word struggle to maintain custom template versions for all the partners and BD managers across the firm. Semi-automated report template creation enables research teams to create and manage ten times more report templates.

Producing company reports manually is a massive drain on Research Services teams and comes at the expense of anticipating and deeply clarifying requester needs. With effective automation, firms can provide every partner with profiles about their clients and prospects on-demand and facilitate BD collaboration.

2) Use High-Quality Data Sources

Using high-quality data sources and delivering reports with current information is key to earning and maintaining the reader’s trust. At leading firms, the research and information professionals buy data feeds delivered via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to supplement desktop subscriptions that must be searched manually via Graphical User Interfaces. Experienced research analysts  know which companies and products supply the highest-quality data for each field used in a report and when it is wise to compare answers from different sources. That knowledge should get documented in thoughtfully-designed report template setups, instead of existing only in the analysts’ minds or notes.

3) Foster Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration

Increasingly, law firms recognize that building effective collaboration and knowledge sharing between teams involved in BD is vital to spotting and seizing opportunities in a well-coordinated manner. While interacting with each other, partners, BD managers, and research analysts should be able to comment directly on report content, suggest edits, engage in Q&A exchanges, and discuss BD next steps. Research analysts should be able to divide and conquer the work required to complete a company report, something that is not easy to do in real time with legacy approaches.

Most law firms lack this capability because they produce company profile reports as static PDF, Word and PPT documents, which they distribute as email attachments.  Email is an inefficient medium for interacting with other readers in the firm and does not lend itself to discussing report content with colleagues, which should ideally be supported both asynchronously and synchronously. Dynamically updated company profiles serve as a single source of truth. With legacy approaches, static document reports are short-lived, as each time an update occurs, they need to be exported as PDFs again.

4) Leverage Analytics and Reporting

With analytics and reporting about company profile report production and consumption, Research directors and BD teams can

• Spend money strategically and wisely on data. They can know which data they use most frequently in reports and other requests and adjust their purchases accordingly.
• Know how much of their analysts’ time is spent on manual copy-paste work when producing reports rather than on higher-value analysis and engagement with internal clients.
• More easily collect feedback from report consumers and determine which people, company reports, and BD guidance contributed to winning new business.

Large law firms already spend millions of dollars per year to license data from external providers. Their Finance, Knowledge Management, and Marketing departments spend extensive resources managing internal financial, relationship, and experience data. Yet most firms struggle to bring this data together in useful ways for partners and BD professionals.

5) Leverage Artificial Intelligence and NLP

Storing the information in reports in a knowledge graph makes the content from all past reports significantly more findable and reusable. Think of a knowledge graph as a database where the meaning and relationships of the data are unambiguously defined, connected, and tagged based on ontologies that use formal semantics to support reasoning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications such as chatbots. Leading firms are using taxonomies and ontologies such as the SALI Alliance LMSS and the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO) in tandem with Natural Language Processing technology to tag unstructured text with metadata.

With a knowledge graph, users can get direct answers to natural language questions, as one does on Google with a query such as, “Where are Apple headquarters?” that receives the answer, “Cupertino, CA” in a knowledge panel. If research reports are stored in document management systems as Word or PDF documents, the content is rarely reused and cannot be used to answer natural language questions.

Recommender systems can leverage knowledge graphs to suggest data fields and natural language questions to include in reports, taking into account the user’s recent activity and interest profile. Knowledge graphs can also lower the cost of data management by facilitating data integration and alignment, breaking down traditional data silos across various systems more easily.

Where to go from here?

Law firms that can’t provide all lawyers with high-value, on-demand reports about all clients and prospects are increasingly at a disadvantage. You might be wondering if your Research and BD teams follow these principles when producing company profile reports. Mind-Alliance can conduct an audit of your current capabilities against these five core principles. We will evaluate your processes and technology against our assessment framework and provide you with a report highlighting gaps and suggesting how you can make improvements. Reach out if this is of interest.

Mind-Alliance’s MindPeer BD platform facilitates report design and integrates data from APIs so research analysts produce higher-value custom reports at scale and get more value from data resources. Sign up here for a no-strings-attached demo to see it in action.

On the most recent Legal Value Network podcast, hosts Chad Main and Keith Maziarek interviewed Professor Richard Jolly from the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management about law firm leadership and how difficult it is to teach leadership skills to partners. Jolly uses the analogy of foxes versus hedgehogs. Where foxes are very adaptable to their environments and hedgehogs are animals who do one thing very well. They also go into the benefits of narcissistic personalities in the legal industry, but I may save that topic for another time.

The part of the conversation which caught my attention begins around the 31:50 mark of the podcast. Professor Jolly tells us how he realized that most people in law firm leadership did not want to be leaders. They most definitely did not want to be in leadership training.

There was, of course, the usual excuse of “it takes me away from billing time.” Jolly says:

“One of the things I remember, for years I was running leadership courses for law firms for partners. And, I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but it took me quite a number of years to realize that the partners didn’t want to be there. This was taking them away from their billable hours. I remember I ran this two-day leadership course for them. And it was a Friday and a Saturday, of course, I didn’t want to take away too much client time.”

So, problem one is minimized. Now on to problem two: What do you want to cover in the leadership training? Professor Jolly proactively addresses this issue with the law firm partners:

“I sent out a form in advance about what are your objectives what you want to get out of this training? And one of the lawyers, he wrote, and at the time I was devastated by it, but with hindsight it just makes you burst out laughing. He said, ‘My one objective is to avoid all roleplays.'”

Okay. We’ll be there, but I don’t want to do anything that may make me uncomfortable or expose any weakness in front of my peers. This caused Professor Jolly to come to realize why lawyers don’t want to be in leadership courses to begin with.

“lawyers don’t want to be leaders, they want to be the trusted experts, and maybe even the trusted advisors. That’s their professional identity. And I realized they didn’t want to be in leadership courses.” 

It makes sense if you step back and think about it. Lawyers aren’t there to lead clients, they are there to guide clients through a process. Advise them on the least risky manner in which to proceed. To be there to help them when they are in need. 

So what’s the problem with being a trusted advisor with no leadership skills? The biggest issue is that these lawyers also run the business of a law firm. They have to manage teams, negotiate new work, and operate a business that may have hundreds of people depending upon these lawyers to be successful and profitable. I’ve heard more than one keynote speaker say that law firms are profitable despite the lawyers rather than because of the lawyers. It also fits the narrative of Richard Susskind and others who complain that it is hard to tell millionaires they are doing something wrong.

Professor Jolly tackles the topic of negotiation skills head-on. Lawyers must negotiate with their clients on the scope of the legal matter. That’s how prices and expectations are set. When the scope changes, then the lawyer and client are supposed to renegotiate the terms so that there is transparency on the work performed and the price paid. The problem?

“And most lawyers have done no negotiating training. And what I realized is that part of the problem here for law firms is you just haven’t been trained to negotiate. And you’re dealing with world-class negotiators, who not only have been trained to do it, they do it as part of their daily lives. And professionals are terrible at it. So your whole thing about the charging out of scope for billable hours. So often, we just avoid those difficult conversations. Because we don’t like conflict. We don’t like talking about that. And we sort of rather hope it’s all okay.”

Hope is not a strategy. But many of us see it happen all the time. 

So the moral of the story here is that we can’t just set up leadership training for law firm leadership and expect it to actually produce new skills in these lawyers. Professor Jolly actually adjusted his own approach to moving away from running leadership courses to more one-on-one coaching. And specifically for those who are in “genuine leadership positions in the legal world.” And one of the key pieces of that coaching is focusing on negotiation skills. 

The discussion between Professor Jolly, Keith Maziarek, and Chad Main has many more nuggets of information, so I highly recommend listening to all of it. But, I did want to point out the best comment that Professor Jolly mentioned about why some clients love the fact that their outside counsel tries so hard to avoid conflict and lack negotiation skills.

“The problem is because lawyers are so smart, they think they can use their cognitive capability to win in situations. And so often, I won’t tell the details of the story here, but one client said, “You know what, when I’m with my external counsel, it’s just so easy to negotiate with them.” He said “sometimes, you know, it’s like clubbing baby seals,” is the analogy he used. And I was shocked. It’s such a terrifying metaphor. But I think that law firms, because they rely on their intellect so much as lawyers, I think there’s a sense that we must be good at negotiating. But I think that’s the key problem.”

Check out more of the conversation at the Legal Value Network podcast, Professor Richard Jolly (Northwestern) & Keith Maziarek (Katten) on Legal Tech Adoption, Lawyers as Hedgehogs or Foxes and Why Narcissistic Personalities Help in the Law

When the pandemic began, many law firms prepared for the worst by furloughing or laying off lawyers and legal professionals. Many of these same firms then found themselves at a disadvantage when the hiring spree began in the fourth quarter of 2020. Leopard Solution‘s Phil Flora joins us this week to talk about the numbers that they tracked over this time on hiring and movement in the legal industry. Pre-pandemic, there were 6,000 – 7,000 open jobs at any given moment. Currently, that number is 12,000+. And it doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

Phil Flora discusses a number of issues around how law firms and others are managing, recruiting, and retaining talent in such an active market. Of course, money is the traditional approach for law firms, and that is no exception this time around. However, Flora points out that there are a lot of “greats” going on in the market, including the “Great Pause”, the “Great Resurgence”, and the “Great Reflection” to name a few. And while money will be one piece of the solution, legal talent is wanting many more adjustments in order to keep them content and in place. This includes more work flexibility, mentoring, and even more social awareness by the law firms when it comes to how they align with societal goals.

Crystal Ball Question

We asked Norton Rose Fulbright’s Zack Barnes to look into his crystal ball and predict what he sees for the legal industry. Barnes’ future expands upon the ability for the legal market to expand upon the sandboxes created by Utah and Arizona to allow for ownership of law firms beyond the licensed attorney ranks. For true business innovation, there needs to be diversity in the ownership ranks.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Contact Us

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert

Voicemail: 713-487-7270

Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: Jerry David DeCicca

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer  0:19

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

Greg Lambert  0:26

And I’m Greg Lambert. So this week, we bring back our friend Phil Flora from Leopard Solutions to talk about their latest state of the legal market report, and just the massive amount of open positions and lateral movement that’s going on in the industry. So the report states that currently there’s an average of about 12,000 open legal positions each day out there. So

Marlene Gebauer  0:51

That is crazy!

Greg Lambert  0:52

It’s amazing. So we’ll we’ll dive into that in just a little little bit.

Marlene Gebauer  0:58

First up, however, is a fellow Houstonian who we had to actually meet for the first time when we were at legal week in New York.

Greg Lambert  1:04

Yeah, I actually work a building over from Zack Barnes, who is leading the innovation team at Norton Rose Fulbright. But as many of us in the legal and especially the law firm environment know, you know, sometimes you don’t even know the attorneys that are in your own office, because they work on a different floor. So finding people that work in a different building as just, you know, just don’t do it, you’ll always have to go out and find your neighbors. So, you know, it’s just one more reason to get out of the office and keep that networking going.

Marlene Gebauer  1:34

We got Zack Barnes to sit down and answer our crystal ball question about what he sees happening in the legal industry over the next five years. So let’s hear what he has to say.

Greg Lambert  1:46

All right, well, Zack, just introduce yourself, and then tell us what you think are some changes that we’re gonna see on the horizon, say, the next two to five years?

Zack Barnes  1:55

Sure. So, Zack Barnes head of innovation for Norton rose Fulbright, the US part of the Verein. The biggest change I really see on the horizon, as we start looking at Arizona and Utah, the fact that non partners are increasingly being able to own a law firm, you’re nodding, so yeah, it’s, it’s part of that. And you see now California, Florida, Michigan, think Minnesota and even New York, where we are now all starting to consider that it’s going through sort of those policy changes, on being sort of assess whether it’s viable and long term, I think, maybe the ABA, I know, attorneys and members of that will probably hate to hear but might the power of you know, that might be waning a little bit as we look at, you know, more open business model, where tech does, and not even tech, but a real business runs a firm versus the firm runs a firm. And it’s a it’s a hard point to get to. And that’s one of the things I started looking at, I think come from the outside, from energy in oil and gas. If you get to that profit model, that’s where the efficiency really comes into play. And it’s something that I don’t think has been considered. And even in my short time here, I’ve heard from various partners across the board. You know, it makes sense for us to be a little bit inefficient, because that’s how we build a lot of time we make sure we’ve maximized our use and our clients time. And, you know, I don’t always agree with that. It’s something that I think being more efficient allows more work. I’m an infinite sort of capacity person. So there’s never going to be a decline in legal work available. It’s there’s so much out there. The world is changing so fast. Regulations are changing, how we do business work between businesses are changing. And you know, I heard the metaverse question this morning at the keynote and sort of laughed because

Greg Lambert  3:36

the one that couldn’t define innovation?

Zack Barnes  3:39

I get it. It’s it’s a weird concept to have a virtual world. But there’s already lawyers and law firms in the metaverse now and providing digital, you know, sort of business to business advising as well, that’s, you know, that’s going to change things, too. I don’t know, how many times we had a virtual reality? I feel like there’s been three or four my, in my lifetime. Yeah, so I don’t know. So I don’t think that’s his ey to change as, as the fact that that non partners are gonna start owning law firms. And that’s going to make the Big-4 a little more scary in this area.

Greg Lambert  4:09

And I think that you you hear a lot on the A2J part for the sandboxes in Arizona and Utah. What about on the on the high end of the market? But what kind of effect do you see there?

Zack Barnes  4:21

I mean, I think it’s gonna have effect all the way across, you’re going to have to be more efficient, you’re going, I have to say, I would love to have gone to work or had interns working for me on some odd projects when I was in oil and gas that were more efficient, because I don’t want to deal with the spikes in cost. When a project comes up. I want to just like, hey, I’m bringing you this packet of patents and

Marlene Gebauer  4:43

efficiency and predictability

Zack Barnes  4:45

and I’m acquiring this packet of patents. And then we’re going to partner with this third party with this company and we’re going to do this. I just want to know how much that’s going to cost. So that as that business person, I can tell my management when the GC says okay, go do it. I can say, Okay, what’s it gonna cost? And it’s gonna hit my bottom line. And that’s a real, I think the predictability and the ability to forecast it and plan is really key.

Greg Lambert  5:09

Well, Zach, thanks very much for dropping by talking with us.

Zack Barnes  5:12

Happy to see you guys.

Greg Lambert  5:13

All right. We’ll see you in Houston.

Zack Barnes  5:15

Yeah, right.

Greg Lambert  5:22

So I think we’re gonna see a lot more of the sandboxes across more states, and in the next five years or so, with Utah and Arizona, it looks looks like they have figured it out on on how to how to set that up. It’s gonna be interesting to see more on the does it get away from the access to justice issue? And does it play a role actually, in larger law firms in and outside, just the getting people into the, into the courtroom? So it’s going to be interesting to see how this, this plays out is, and Zach’s predictions are going to be right.

Marlene Gebauer  5:57

Yeah, I think this model gives a lot of freedom to the players to really experiment in in a really positive way. Today’s guests talks about the battle for talent in the legal industry that began in the middle of the COVID pandemic. Even with firms throwing a lot of cash toward laterals, there are still issues facing women and minority legal professionals that won’t be solved with just money.

Marlene Gebauer  6:20

We have had Phil Flora, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Leopard Solutions on the podcast before to discuss leopard unique BI platform. There have been some new developments on the platform. So we’re bringing him back for an update. Hi Phil, and welcome back to the podcast.

Phil Flora  6:34

Hi, Marlene. Hi, Greg. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Marlene Gebauer  6:37

So we got to catch up briefly at LegalWeek, but not nearly enough.

Greg Lambert  6:41

Not enough.

Marlene Gebauer  6:43

You mentioned to me that there are some significant happenings at leopard legal when it comes to your BI tool. So can you give us the scoop?

Phil Flora  6:50

Sure. And yeah, and thanks again for having me. So yeah, so with Leopard BI we’ve, I think when we last spoke, we probably only had about one or two reports that we launched. And it was really more more focused on the diversity side of things. Now we’re we’ve launched 10 different reports. And it’s really focused on sort of the business of law, analytic tools that can help law firms with competitive intelligence and benchmarking and business development. Some of the reports that we’ve launched on like the marketing and, and sort of BD side of things that really helped with CRM enhancements, are our Alumni Tracker, so any, anyone that specifically was at a law firm over the last 15 plus years, sort of, but when they left the firm, where are they now we track that and we update that information twice a week, and actually offer API integration with that. So law firms are able to maintain and track their alumni either at other law firms or even in house, we, we track both sides of that, that coin. We have other business development tools focused on connections and relationships based on shared history. So let’s say attorney at your firm, spent five years at a different firm with a GC that’s at a company right now, that shared history comes up in those those higher degree of relationships or potential for those individuals know each other. So we use past career history and education information to identify potential opportunities. And that can help both with recruiting and will also with business development. We have some other reports analyzing retention from, you know, the ROI of hiring, for both entry level hires and laterals you know how well those particular classes performed. We look back at mergers and acquisitions, how successful they’ve been post merger, we also try and predict out what the cultural differences might be if two firms were to combine, moving forward. And we also look at other tools as well.

Marlene Gebauer  8:52

How do you do that? Like, I mean, how do you how do you determine whether like a merger successful with the criteria?

Phil Flora  8:59

So we focus mostly on what might happen after the firm’s combined from a retention perspective, but we call out potential issues with both firms. So for example, if you have a firm, you know, it could be of any size because we’re tracking over 4200 law firms. So it could be a firm, two large firms combining or it could be one firm, potentially acquiring a smaller firm or some combination of that. So we’re looking at potential conflicts with clients, we’re looking at differences or similarities with financial numbers, we’re looking at diversity, makeup of the combined firms. If one firm is more heavily diverse than the other, that could create a conflict. We look at differences in ages, you know, when people graduated from law school, if one firm is more geared is like I would say younger, JD year 2000 And up versus JD or 2000 and before. Even law schools where people went to law school can have an impact, believe it or not, unfortunately. And we really looking at past marriage As an indicator of what potential outcomes might be.

Greg Lambert  10:03

well, Phil, we wanted to really talk a bit about Leopard’s 2021 State of the Legal Market report. And you know, there’s just a lot to unpack here. So let’s start with and there’s a lot of “greats” in here. And they can’t see me doing the quotes. But I’ve been doing the quotes around “Great.” So there’s the great pause in the great resurgence. So legal organizations have had a different approach, both in terms of laying off and re staffing after COVID. And during COVID. You know, which models were the winners? You think in which were kind of the losers? And how has another great, the great reflection impacted these models?

Phil Flora  10:44

So yeah, so it’s yeah, it’s a great topic to discuss.

Greg Lambert  10:48

It is a lot of great

Marlene Gebauer  10:49

It is a great topic.

Greg Lambert  10:51

Well done Phil, well done.

Phil Flora  10:53

So, so the great pause. Yeah, I mean, absolutely, we definitely saw right after the pandemic hit, everyone was kind of in a state of uncertainty. So they just, they put a pause everything hiring across the board, we track open and available current jobs in the market, on a normal time that that number is around 6000 to 7000, open jobs at any one point in time, it dipped down, right when a pause hit to like just under 3000 or 2500, open jobs. Slowly as the year went along, firms realize that, you know, this was going to be here for a while and it was not really going anywhere. And some firms we spoke to and this kind of goes back to the prior years, state of the industry white paper that we did, some firms actually took it as a, you know, an aggressive, I don’t want to use the word, the term buying opportunity, but they wanted to be they sort of wanted to be a little bit more aggressive, and try to align themselves with clients and the needs that they had at that time. So they, you know, either tried to reshuffle some folks internally into different practice areas, and re staff or, you know, focus in on those do some strategic hiring, you know, maybe partners with books of business or associates restocking certain areas that clients, you know, would have a lot more need for then towards like, I would say Q4, 2020, it just, you know, everything just started ramping up dramatically. And that’s when everything really took off. And in January 2021, it was still pretty low numbers, it was below normal numbers, as far as active jobs is probably around 4500 or 5000 active jobs at that point, as of January of 2022, we were at over 12,000 active in open jobs. So it basically tripled the activity. And that was, and that’s a net number. So everyday jobs are opening and jobs are closing, you know, we were seeing them turn real quick too.

Greg Lambert  12:46

There was a lot of churn going on

Phil Flora  12:48

real quick.

Marlene Gebauer  12:49

yeah, fast.

Phil Flora  12:50

So yeah, I mean, and then the reflection came in, and we’ll okay, what can we do? Well, you know, we’re losing people just as fast as we’re gaining people. So people started looking at different ways to hire larger firms looking, you know, outside the typical, no, all firms really were going outside their typical norms. You know, to find people, we started working with some law firms that never did any lateral hiring. Hundred plus year old, you know, New York based firms that, you know, would have a attorney enter the firm, right out of law school and stay with them and then become a partner. Right, that was that was their approach. And then we started helping them because they were losing folks. Other firms, especially outside the envelope 200, we’re never hearing from recruiters, recruiters just stopped calling them because they were so focused on the money wars of the AmLaw 200. So why, you know, go to smaller firms when you can make a lot more and when you play someone higher? So, you know, there was a reflection really across the leat the law firm industry, and where they needed to go to hire, you know, the right people, and not just constantly deal in this cycle of I lose one, gain one, lose one, gain one. And, you know, I think diversity lab was a big help with that, you know, thinking outside the box. I think there’s a lot of folks out there, you know, Bryan Parker, from Legal Innovation, this talk of expanding your pool of entry level hires at a law school, and an AI you know, all of those things that people are doing, I think is is I think, the the right approach, and then what can we do to keep people engaged within the firm, that cultural, you know, from a cultural perspective, and from a training perspective, and, you know, those are all the those are all the challenges, I guess they were all facing as we got it as we get into 2022

Greg Lambert  14:39

It is good time to be creative.

Phil Flora  14:41

Yes. 100%.

Marlene Gebauer  14:44

So unemployment numbers are at an all time low. Is that true for legal? Does it matter if an employer is a company firm or the government? The report notes that there’s a trend of work to live rather than live to work? Are we seeing an exodus from legal entirely? Or perhaps just a move away from the old model?

Phil Flora  15:03

I would say our numbers indicate that there’s not tremendously like a big Exodus leaving law, I think the numbers are actually pretty in line with what we’ve seen in the past. It what’s amazing, though, is what we always identify, like, when we look at the top 200 from last year, just over 30% of people that left the top 200 actually go to another top 200 law firm. There is tremendous amount of people that go to places outside the top law 200 that could even be smaller firms, they go to in house, they go to government, academia, but that number is sort of in line, what would we historically have seen, and we see a lot of folks then come back at some point or not. And I think a lot of it has to do just with the whole culture of legal legal landscape, right, I think what people have identified during the pandemic is that, you know, firms need to think about things in a different way on how they can retain folks, it’s not just, you know, I’m going to give you large sums of money, I need to come up with different strategies for retention. And I think a big part of that is the flexibility and where people work. And you know, who they speak with and how they interact with others in the firm. And, and I think that cultural aspect of things. I think that’s was spelled out in a report by a few people that not only that we will we saw, will we also interviewed cultural aspects of how associates are going to be trained by partners in those flexible work environments are going I think, be the biggest things. What I see going forward.

Greg Lambert  16:35

Well, you know, looking at the entry level hires, that were actually staying at the firm. And let me verify that I’m reading this number correctly, that it was an increase of 136%. Is that, did I read that right?

Phil Flora  16:52

Yes, that’s correct.

Greg Lambert  16:54

Alright. So and so these these entry hires are staying, but it’s also taking them longer to make partner. And, you know, with salaries and bonuses, you know, that are higher than ever. How in the world are firms going to be able to sustain this?

Phil Flora  17:13

It’s a it’s a good question. I you know, I think I think, again, I don’t know if money is going to be a driver in all this for a lot of us, folks. I think obviously, it’s a you know, it’s a it’s a it’s it’s a big part of it, especially for folks that incurred a tremendous amount of debt right out of law school. But and

Greg Lambert  17:31

it almost seems like money’s the the floor, rather than the ceiling. These days. Yeah.

Phil Flora  17:37

Yeah. So. So I think that’s a it’s a big, it’s a big factor. But I think it’s not the only factor because I think everyone’s basically, especially at, you know, like in the Amlaw 250, or whatever. They’re all basically doing the same thing. Okay, so what separates us are your thoughts? And are you goals align? You know, how is the firm, I think, you know, social impact, I think, is also a very, very big, you know, initiative these days. How is the firm aligned with the societal goals. And if a client, you know, we see this with, with Russia and Ukraine, I mean, some firms have been backing out of Russia and back in, you know, backing away from clients that are in there, are they being responsive to, to what’s what’s going on in the world? And because I think that is extremely important for for young, young people. I mean, my my daughter, my oldest daughter’s in college right now. And I know, just from the conversations I have with her, it’s, these are, these are things they care about. And I think, you know, not only that, again, that being mentored, but also being having the flexibility. I think, you know, there’s got to be some combination on that there’s got to be some flexibility around that going forward.

Marlene Gebauer  18:44

It seems that the battle for talent continues. We recently had Sang Lee on the podcast, where she discussed the sorts of evaluations legal organizations should be employing to secure and retain the right talent. What are you seeing legal employers doing to secure and retain the best talent?

Greg Lambert  19:00

Besides money?

Marlene Gebauer  19:02

Besides money? We know we know that one.

Phil Flora  19:05

Yeah, I mean, I will, I was looking at the data and a lot of the firm’s that recently, were throwing out large sums of money, their success, or I guess, you could say, with regards to retention and hiring, it’s actually sort of a mixed bag. Some firms that did very well with growth, attorney growth, were in some of those firms that, you know, throwing out big numbers, but some did, some didn’t do. Well, I think overall, I think it’s, you know, you know, is it the right environment for the attorney to be in? Are they actively engaging with the attorney to and not only just attorneys, but all employees to provide them the the flexibility, the workplace balance, the opportunities to grow up to entities to achieve their goals, their career goals, whatever their career goals are? I mean, I don’t necessarily know if the partnership model is something that every attorney wants, they might want to work in environment that lends itself to providing them the opportunities to grow, but also maybe to, you know, to work more closely with outside counsel and their and their companies, and be embedded with them more and have the opportunities to develop relationships with their clients and have opportunities to do that. And I think, you know, giving the flexibility, whatever that might look like to to the, you know, to employees as a whole, I think is tremendous. It’s not just a one size fits all approach, in my opinion.

Greg Lambert  20:36

is that something you see in the data that you collect? Or would that be an additional survey study that we would have to look for?

Phil Flora  20:46

So it’s a combination of it. I mean, it’s really speaks more to a survey. I mean, right now, we’re actually doing a survey, where we’re tracking women that have left, you know, attorneys that have left large law, we actually in the data, we see that just over 50% of all entry level hires are women, but only 26% of partners are women. And you know, what happens from day one to make partner is what we’re trying to understand. So just over 30% of all the women that left a big top 200 law firm, went to another top two wonderful law firm, which means 70% of this was there in 2021, 70% of them went somewhere else. Okay, why did they go somewhere else? And, you know, almost as many women went to a corporate company in house than they did to another AmLaw 200 firm, it’s just telling to understand those numbers. It’s, it’s screams to us that, you know, there’s an exodus somewhere, and we’re trying to uncover the why. So we’re getting a lot of interesting feedback, we’ve had a number of people respond to the survey, we’re going to be revealing the results at an Ark Group event on May 25. We’ve, you know, it’s we’re doing some interviews, and we’re gonna do a webinar right after that, you know, is I can even share some of the responses if you guys would like to get some of the nuggets already. I’m happy to do that.

Marlene Gebauer  22:16

Yes, we do. We definitely do. So, you know, you and you hit on this in your last response. And I think some of the facts that rise up in the report, really, really say something here. So I mean, the stats on diversity and female lawyer attrician are troubling on their own, you know, based on the report, but they’re particularly troubling when you combine them with some of the other findings, where you’re saying, okay, homegrown partners have an edge, it takes significantly longer to make partner. So if the people aren’t getting in the door, or getting hit by the door on their way out, that’s my words. What does that what does that say, for the future of the legal profession?

Phil Flora  23:01

Yeah, I mean, unless they drastically change the model, I think there’s going to be a serious retention problem down the road, you’re seeing a lot more, you know, ALSPs, coming in offering very different models. You know, they’re they’re being extremely competitive. You know, you’re seeing a lot of different types of organizations that have traditionally been not competitors are now becoming competitors. We’re talking to a lot of in house counsel that are doing their own internal hiring, I mean, they’re being very aggressive, growing their own house legal departments, doesn’t mean they won’t work with outside counsel. It’s just, they’re trying to do more work in house. And I think, if they don’t look to come up with different models, whether that’s ownership models, growth models, retention models, I think there’s going to be at some point, a very, very serious issue that firms will have with keeping talent and, you know, keeping the people that the clients want to work with, I think more than anything.

Marlene Gebauer  23:59

I think that’s an important point that the clients want to see there.

Phil Flora  24:04

Exactly. Exactly. Well, since

Greg Lambert  24:06

you brought up the the Ark conference on on women leaving the last survey, you want to tell us a little bit about what what’s going to be going on there and the methodology around that survey?

Phil Flora  24:18

So yeah, so I talked a little bit about those stats. The owner, Laura Leopard, you know, we’ve been collecting data for almost 20 years. This is a passion project for her. I mean, she’s advocated, you know, for growth of diversity, women in particular. All diversity within the legal industry. We’ve, we’ve had lots of conversations with the Diversity Lab, on how we can help you know, grow diversity within the legal industry, so from us, and then we just see the data and the data is just as troubling to us as it is to anyone else. So, so this survey was really was in something that we’ve talked about a while for a while. And, you know, we thought, you know, there really hasn’t been anything that really, you know, speaks to this. It’s always surveys are always to people that are in law firms, not necessarily the people that have left law firms. So I thought that that was interesting to do. So that was some of the I that was some of the, you know, the emphasis for doing it. Our group, we don’t have a women in law Summit coming out, it was seemed like a good synergy. For us to do this with them. This will be May 25, and 26th. In Chicago, the survey is still open right now, I think, as of I think we have 150 responses already from again, these are people, women that were at, you know, big law that are no longer there, most of which are outside of law, you know, completely, you know, maybe started their own business went into private practice went academia, government, what have you, the verbatim that we’ve we’ve heard thus far, I’ll put just one in here that I thought was very interesting. You know, having a mentor, someone who cared about my career, well being etc, would have made a huge difference. I worked at a top five law firm. And there were no mentors at all, for any of us all the women that I had started with left practice, except for one who made partner and is thriving. So you know, you think about all the numbers of women that joined the firm, we talked about that last year, more women joined a law firm right out of law school than men. And I think we’re seeing that in college, across the board, more women are graduating from law school, from any school than men. But it’s just not it’s not being represented, you know, kind of once once they get into the law for a world and I think that’s one of the biggest reasons we push for to do this.

Marlene Gebauer  26:38

Yeah, I mean, I like that you’re doing this because clearly, you know, yes, they’re getting there, you know, they’re getting the entry level positions, but something is happening, you know, something is happening once they’re there. And it’s great to sort of hear these these, you know, these anecdotal stories about like, what what it is that would have helped.

Greg Lambert  26:56

Marlene had just mentioned that there were 12,000, current legal openings. Is there any data informing us why these positions aren’t getting filled? Or are they getting filled in? It’s just, they’re opening up as fast as they’re getting, as we’re filling them?

Phil Flora  27:14

Yeah, it’s during 2021. During the majority of 2021, we were seeing on a daily basis, you know, hundreds of jobs be opened and closed at the same time. Now, that’s slowing down. I mean, I would say, you know, stabilizing going on that 12,000 plus number. We’ve been around there since the beginning of the beginning of the year, and it’s been taking around like the low twelves to the mid twelves. Whereas we were seeing in a month easily during 2021, a thousand job growth in one month. You know, so it was just I think it was just like, the chicken or egg type thing. I mean, once you know, it just started, everyone just got crazy. I think there were certainly firms that were ahead of it, you know, again, go back to, you know, some of them really started being aggressive Q4, 2020, and January 2021. But by like spring and summer of 2021. Everyone was doing and I think that point, it just started really spiraling. And I think it’s starting to stabilize, I mean, we’re still at numbers that we don’t typically see though 12,000 Plus jobs at any one time. And we update that number every day, if it stays at this pace, and I don’t really see any reason why it will start slowing down, or at least dipping. But like I said, it’s starting to stabilize a little bit.

Greg Lambert  28:30

Do you know how that compares pre pandemic? What was kind of the average before the pandemic?

Phil Flora  28:34

So prior to the pandemic have the same kind of set of law firms? We were roughly in the six to 7000 job range, like a

Greg Lambert  28:43

40 to 50? Or well, I guess a 90 to 100% increase, right?

Phil Flora  28:48

Yeah, so so we’ll see. I mean, again, it’s it’s stabilized at this point, we’re not seeing hundreds open hundreds, close every day, you know, there is ways we can track, I don’t have it in front of me. But there are ways that we could track the, you know, the length of the job is open. But a lot of them, you know, will noticing a lot of these jobs that are same jobs, and they have them in multiple offices, right. So you might have a job close in New York, but they’re still trying to fill almost the exact same position in DC and Houston. So the job is still, you know, they might take it down for they might adjust the job. So it’s no longer available in New York, but it’s just you know, everyone’s just looking for talent, you know, irrespective of where it is right now.

Greg Lambert  29:24

So Marlene, I know you don’t have the crystal ball question written down here. But do you want to you want to ask him the crystal ball question?

Marlene Gebauer  29:31

I will ask him the crystal ball question. So Phil, we ask all of our guests now the crystal ball question what we call the crystal ball question. So you know, what do you see for the future in the next, you know, several years in legal?

Greg Lambert  29:45

I would actually try to narrow that down a little bit. Phil, if you don’t mind and I would say what is the data that we’re going to try and collect over the next half decade that you think would be really important to help tell the story of legal going in into the, you know, the 2030s?

Phil Flora  30:03

I think it’s a good question. I think the the key data points, I mean, what we’re tracking, we have an index, where we track a couple of different variables that spotlight how a law firm is performing. And these are usually a lot of traditional numbers and, and things but we look at, you know, headcount growth and decline, how well firms are doing it retaining their attorneys, financial stability over time, diversity, all of these things are some of the things that go into our index scores. And that gets updated twice a week, we feel that that’s a good measurement of how a firm is doing at any one time. You know, I what we’re going to be looking at 10 years from now? I think it’s going to be expanding that to not just law firms looking at other organizations looking at, you know, how they conduct law, how they support the industry, how, you know, what are client’s, I think, more and more, we need to hear what client’s thoughts are. So what are their measurements of a successful relationship? I think billing is always going to be something of interest. I think new ways to do that, I think is going to be exceptionally important. So, again, I think a lot of that’s going to be driven by what clients say, but I don’t know what those exact things are. Unfortunately, I wish I could come up with some better things. But I think I think

Greg Lambert  31:29

That’s fine we kind of come out of left field with that one.

Phil Flora  31:31

No, that was good.

Greg Lambert  31:35

Phil Flora, we appreciate you taking the time. It was good catching up with you at LegalWeek. And we’re glad we’re glad that we got you back onto the show to talk about what all you’re doing there at Leopard Solutions.

Phil Flora  31:48

I appreciate it, Greg. Appreciate it. Marlene, and I hope to look forward to you got hope for hope to see you guys at AALL.

Greg Lambert  31:55

Definitely

Greg Lambert  31:58

Marlene, it’s always good, anytime we get a chance to have Phil on on the show, you know, we we go way back to his ALM days.

Marlene Gebauer  32:06

I know, I know.

Greg Lambert  32:07

We got some stories we probably can’t share on the podcast.

Marlene Gebauer  32:11

We definitely can’t. But it was great to have Phil on. And I mean, what what a what a really interesting topic. I mean, right up our alley, it’s like all about you know, data insights and, and what they’re doing over a Leopard. So that’s pretty cool.

Greg Lambert  32:26

Yeah, and it’s gonna be interesting to see what they do. I like his idea. I know, we kind of hit him out of left field with the crystal ball question because we didn’t have it on our on our list. But I think (sorry Phil), but I think, you know, the idea of getting more of the statistics out of out of the client side. I think that’s getting more data points that that side, I think, I think he hit the nail on the head even even though we threw the nail up there at the last second.

Marlene Gebauer  32:53

That’s true.

Greg Lambert  32:54

So thanks again for Phil Flora from Leopard Solutions for coming in and taking the time to talk with us.

Marlene Gebauer  33:00

And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found @gebauerm on Twitter.

Greg Lambert  33:12

And I can be reached at @glambert on Twitter

Marlene Gebauer  33:16

Or leave usa voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you Jerry.

Greg Lambert  33:26

Thanks, Jerry. Alright Marlene, I will talk with you later.

Marlene Gebauer  33:29

Okay, bye bye

This is a topic we’ve wanted to discuss since early 2019, but teaching stints in Helsinki, and a global pandemic pushed it back almost three years. But we did not forget about the topic of The Right to Be Forgotten! However, in that time, even the phrasing of the topic has changed to The Right to Erasure. Our guest, Anne Klinefelter, Director of the Law Library and Henry P. Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law, catches us all up on the current issues surrounding data privacy and the Internet both here in the US, as well as in the EU.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

• “Google LLC v. CNIL: The Location-Based Limits of the EU Right to Erasure” by Sam Wrigley and Anne Klinefelter (unc.edu)
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Framework for Law Firms | Bloomberg Law
• The Geek in Review Ep. 135 – Results of the Bloomberg Law DEI Framework with Molly Huie | 3 Geeks and a Law Blog (geeklawblog.com)

Transcript 

Marlene Gebauer 0:05
Welcome to The Geek in Review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
Greg Lambert 0:12
And I’m Greg Lambert. So this week we are finally, finally getting to a topic that we started the cover back in, I think it was early 2019. And that is on the topic of the right to be forgotten. And, you know, well, we had a number of events that kept our guest, Anne Klinefelter from the University of North Carolina School of Law from being here. We promise we didn’t forget about
Marlene Gebauer 0:36
Yeah, I am finally glad we were able to make this this interview work. We had a great discussion about the current state of the internet and the regulations around the globe, or lack thereof, that protect the users. I really loved her answer to our crystal ball question of where we’re going to be in five years when it comes to data and privacy on the internet.
Greg Lambert 0:56
So stick around for that. But first up, we brought back Molly Huie from Bloomberg Law to talk about the 2022 Bloomberg DEI Framework and some of the changes that they put in the survey this year. So let’s go ahead and listen to Molly.
Greg Lambert 1:15
We’d like to welcome back Mollie Huie. Team Lead, Data Analysts and Surveys for Bloomberg Law. Molly, welcome back to The Geek in Review.
Molly Huie 1:23
Thank you.
Marlene Gebauer 1:24
So Molly, we wanted to have you drop in and give us an update on what you’re doing with the DEI Framework for 2022. Now that it’s live, first of all, tell everyone what the DEI Framework is for those who may not have listened in on the last time you were here.
Molly Huie 1:37
Fantastic. Thank you. Our DEI Framework is a listing of law firms that meet or exceed a standard of diversity. We’re hoping to standardize diversity reporting among law firms. And because we’re publishing a list of firms that make the cut, it makes, makes this usually opaque area much more transparent.
Greg Lambert 1:57
Alright, so we brought you in for one particular reason. And that was to tell us what’s different this year in the 2022 survey, and why you’re adding or changing some of the things that you’ve been tracking.
Molly Huie 2:10
So it’s still a beast of a survey, we are collecting everything. But some new additions this year, we’re starting to ask about neurodiversity. And I know we all talked about that a year or so ago, when the first version came out. You know, we’re not asking for numbers this year. But we’re starting to ask kind of those checkboxes, you know, is it something you’re measuring? Or do you have an affinity group for it? Just, you know, it’s sprinkled in through a lot of different places so we can start to see what firms are doing in this space.
Greg Lambert 2:35
Are you are you defining neurodiversity in a particular way?
Molly Huie 2:39
We are. We’re basically saying kind of broadly, that it’s brains that function differently with examples like dyslexia, autism spectrum, that sort of thing. So we’ve added that we’ve also added a couple of specific questions about origination credit, and about kind of partnership tracking. So those should be hopefully really interesting and get us some really good data.
Marlene Gebauer 3:02
So Molly, remind everyone how firms can participate in the survey.
Molly Huie 3:07
So we have a project page, it’s at PRO.BLOOMBERGLAW.COM/DEI, which I think you all put in the show notes as well.
Molly Huie 3:14
It will be in the show notes. Yes.
Marlene Gebauer 3:15
And right at the top banner of that page, there’s button to submit your data. And when you click on that button, you go to a contact form that you just put your name, your your firm and your contact details. And then I’ll reach out and send a specific access link so that your firm can put all their data in our secure portal.
Greg Lambert 3:32
Do you have a goal for the number of firms that you would like to see participate this year?
Molly Huie 3:35
Last year, we had 28, firms make the list. We had a handful more than that put in their data. I’m hoping we have 75 firms participate this year. That’s a big stretch goal. And I’m putting it out there in the world. So alright, people come on.
Greg Lambert 3:49
All right, well, yeah, make sure that if you are responsible for that, or know someone at your firm that is, pass this along to them. Molly Huie from Bloomberg Law, thanks for dropping in and giving us an update on the DEI Framework. And hopefully, we can bring you back say in October. So when the results are
Molly Huie 4:10
out. Yeah, yeah, more firms that submit data, the better data we’re gonna have to share with everyone. All right, thanks.
Marlene Gebauer 4:15
Thank you.
Molly Huie 4:16
Thanks so much.
Marlene Gebauer 4:20
When the internet began back in the 90s, many of us thought this was going to be the great equalizer for the world and become a utopia of information sharing and learning. Well, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Marlene Gebauer 4:33
No it hasn’t.
Marlene Gebauer 4:34
This week’s guest is an expert in data privacy across the globe, and she comes in to share what she’s learned in her time teaching about it both in Helsinki, Finland with the EU laws, and what we are also doing here in the US.
Marlene Gebauer 4:49
We’d like to welcome Anne Klinefelter, Henry B. Brandeis Distinguished Professor of Law and director of the Law Library at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Anne, welcome to the Geek in Review.
Anne Klinefelter 5:01
Thanks for having me.
Greg Lambert 5:03
Well, and we reached back to you, I think way back in in 2019, to try to get you on the podcast. And then we just kind of funny because we were talking about the topic of right to be forgotten and it feels like we we got forgotten along the way on here.
Marlene Gebauer 5:18
Almost forgot.
Greg Lambert 5:19
Almost forgotten.
Anne Klinefelter 5:19
A few things have happened between then and now.
Marlene Gebauer 5:22
A little a little bit.
Greg Lambert 5:23
That’s what I hear. Well, one of the exciting things was you know that you were in Europe at the time, and then we had the pandemic of 2020. So, you know, I think we’re okay to finally pick this back up a couple of years.
Anne Klinefelter 5:36
That’s great.
Greg Lambert 5:38
So speaking of which, you know, you went to Finland, where you were able to teach at the University of Helsinki, how was that?
Anne Klinefelter 5:46
It was amazing. It was amazing, especially for a person who grew up in Alabama to go to a place that cold. That was a big adventure. So I know that you’re not interviewing me to tell you about sauna, but I’m happy to get into that later if you want to.
Greg Lambert 6:01
Absolutely.
Anne Klinefelter 6:03
I was in Finland for the fall of 2019. It was a Fulbright visit was co-sponsored with Nokia, the Finnish company technology company. And I did I taught us privacy law at the University of Helsinki law school. And I conducted research and interviewed policy centers for Helsinki libraries to find out how do they comply with the European Union Right to be Forgotten, or as they now call it the Right to Erasure.
Greg Lambert 6:33
Erasure? That sounds more permanent.
Anne Klinefelter 6:36
It does, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. It sounds less human. Like it’s a tool. There are many different theories, believe it or not about forgetting versus erasing, but same thing really under the law.
Greg Lambert 6:48
Okay, just out of curiosity, I’m assuming since you’re a person from Alabama, you did not speak Finnish.
Anne Klinefelter 6:57
Good point. Yeah. I was actually surprised by how great a fit this trip was. Because it was not on my radar. One of my colleagues and privacy law, Stewart Brotman, who’s a professor at Tennessee, he recommended this to me, he had held the position before and I kept learning more and more and found. Well, they first of all, to your question, they speak English, a lot of people almost everyone in Helsinki speaks English. And Finnish is that most unusual language for those of us who come from an English background it It is unlike a lot of the things we might be more familiar with. So I also found out that the Fins, they love technology. So this is the home of Angry Birds and Nokia phones, which you know, to their detriment were indestructible, so you didn’t need to ever replace them. But now the company’s doing all kinds of exciting things with smart cities. And anyway thriving Finnish company, emblematic of their fascination with innovation design, and a big startup culture. But they also really love libraries. As you can imagine, part of the year, it’s cold. So it’s really great to go inside a library, where their lights and books, they’re, they’re a very introspective people. And so you might be surprised that in honor of their 100 year anniversary of the founding of their country, what they chose to do in Helsinki, was build a grand modern public library. It is stunning. So and it faces parliament, it’s a really beautiful place to be. And their education system is top notch. Plus, I kept learning about the University of Helsinki and found that they had a lot of scholars who do work in areas that I’m interested in data protection and privacy. So it was a great fit for me. And I was lucky my husband works for a company that has an office in Helsinki, so.
Greg Lambert 9:13
You didn’t need to leave him behind? That’s good good.
Marlene Gebauer 9:18
All right, well, let’s turn our sights to the internet for a second. So back in 1994, I think many of us looked at the Internet as the great equalizer. It was, you know, sort of potential utopia of thoughts and ideas and communication. Now in 2022 It’s kind of a hot mess, right? You know, we need it, we use it. It’s part of our everyday life. And we sure couldn’t have been as efficient during the pandemic as we have been if we didn’t have it, but it’s definitely not utopia. So let’s start off with the biggest question that I can think of. Where did we go wrong?
Greg Lambert 9:59
Let’s start off with an easy one.
Anne Klinefelter 10:00
Not easy question. First that, you know, a lot of the internet still is it’s pretty great. There’s so much content. But the economic model is surveillance capitalism. You know, that’s not pretty. So it’s just true that mostly on the internet, you pay with privacy. Sometimes you pay with money too. And we might have continued with advertisements that just match the content of what you were looking at and engaging with. But instead, we have advertisements that specifically target the individual. And we’re now overwhelmed by the invisibility of what’s happening to us. Because as we are tracked, data is collected across platforms and devices and algorithms are applied to create profiles that are used in so many different ways we don’t even understand it may limit what we see, may provoke or manipulate us and all pretty much happening without our understanding about how it comes to be. So that’s, that’s kind of it’s the economic model. You know, people, people defend the privacy payment system as egalitarianism, because poor people could not pay for internet services while the wealthy could. That’s the argument. But if everybody were served contextual ads, that would be a egalitarianism. And if the I would say that the profits are not distributed in an egalitarian way. So it’s, it’s hard to say that, that the way that we’ve set it up is to be cherished, because of its egalitarianism quality qualities. And people also defend the payment system in privacy as a way to respect consumers who can make their own choices. You know, that’s how we’ve set up a lot of privacy as well, you chose to send that information out into the ether. And yes, it got used in ways you could never imagine. But that was your choice. And you are an adult and you’re grown up and we’re not going to interfere with that. So I do a lot of studies, though, that suggests that this is,
Marlene Gebauer 12:24
except you can’t get what you want without giving it up.
Anne Klinefelter 12:28
Yeah, you don’t. It’s hard to say really making a choice.
Marlene Gebauer 12:32
I have I have a follow up question like, um, and it’s somewhat related. But so when you see the cookie notices come up, now and you go in there and you change all of the permissions, you know, how effective is that really?
Anne Klinefelter 12:46
Well, that remains to be seen, we have to assume that that is exercising our choice, and that we are actually making an impact. But there’s so many other ways besides cookies to track people. That’s just one technology. So this is what happens in privacy regulation is that we end up with these very specific provisions and protections and people get excited about it and think they have control and then it reduces the chilling effect on use of all of these tools. And then, you know, it’s like a leapfrog game. You know, there’ll be a new tracking technology, whether it’s some kind of pixel tracking, or it’s just, you know, any number of ways to take what remains besides the cookie information, and pair it with other data that might create a rich profile of you. So it’s not nothing. I am not one of those people who says, well get over it. You don’t have any privacy anyway. I don’t think it’s a dichotomy. Like, there’s so many metaphors, the horse out of the barn. Yeah, sometimes you can bring that horse back, you know, so maybe there’s something else left in the barn, you know,
Greg Lambert 14:04
so I still want to know how they, how they know if I need some kind of kitchen utensil that I’ve just talked to my wife and all of a sudden that shows up on my Facebook page?
Marlene Gebauer 14:12
Or, I just think about it.
Anne Klinefelter 14:15
That is the way people walk around and wonder, you know, what, I don’t understand how is this happening? And, you know, there’s so many collectors of data about us, depending on how many kinds of devices you have, you know, a smart home kind of device gets a lot of information, depending on what you’ve enabled on your cell phone there, all these different things. Now, some companies don’t want to share. So it’s not like those pieces of information are aggregated all the time. But a lot of it is, but there’s not a huge amount of transparency. So we do rely on a lot of scholars and technologists who work to sort of reverse engineer or exploring and test to tell us. Journalists are doing great work to try to help us understand this. Even Consumer Reports is in on this now they’re doing evaluating products with privacy lens.
Greg Lambert 15:15
Yeah, it’s amazing. Every once in a while you find a company that’s gotten caught doing something that the their said they weren’t doing or were hiding on. So it’s really kind of interesting on.
Anne Klinefelter 15:27
That’s a really good point, Greg. I mean, that that would actually trigger consumer protection law. Because deception is one of the authorities that is given to the Federal Trade Commission, and they can investigate and bring actions against companies who are engaged in trade, who have deceived us who promised something and failed to live up to that promise that is really the cornerstone of modern privacy law in the United States.
Greg Lambert 15:59
Okay, well, speaking of data privacy laws, you know, governments, such as the consumer protection agency, you know, have tried for years to step in with regulations on data privacy. But, you know, one thing you have to deal with is that the internet itself is just vast and it’s global. Can you walk us through some of the attempts on regulating privacy from different governments across the world and the effectiveness of some of those?
Anne Klinefelter 16:27
Well, I can speak to some you’re absolutely right, that there are some challenges, because while law has these country, by country or even, you know, large groups like the European Union, jurisdictions are like the United States too. The internet is ambient. You know, it’s just it does not really respect jurisdictions very well. There are some ways but I would say that it’s not as if we’ve done a great job of trying to regulate it in the United States. You do hear a lot about data privacy, but it’s certainly not resulted in any kind of broad Uniform Federal law in the United States, although that is being debated right now. The European Union does have and some other parts of the world, have taken steps to enact broad data privacy regulation. And over here, we have states doing a lot of innovation and, and data protection law. And so California and Virginia and Colorado, have passed laws about limiting the collection use and retention of personal information. Illinois has a biometrics data protection law, and we have a lot of narrow statutes. Because the United States, you know, we don’t want to pass a law until we absolutely have to. We are not a nation of people who love laws, right?
Greg Lambert 17:58
Yeah. We don’t want to strangle business.
Anne Klinefelter 18:01
Bingo!
Marlene Gebauer 18:01
Not unless we absolutely have to.
Anne Klinefelter 18:03
That right.
Marlene Gebauer 18:03
Look how much money they’re making, we don’t want to interrupt that.
Anne Klinefelter 18:06
So we do things like the Video Rental Privacy Protection Act, right? Or larger than that HIPAA, but yep, it’s really fairly narrow. If you think about it, it only applies to health care providers and insurers, and the clearing houses that support that. But you know, if you have a health app on your phone, or something like that, on a device, it may not be covered at all by HIPAA. So we have a lot of gaps in our system. But you’re absolutely right. And about the internet, eluding a lot of these attempts, even when we do make them. And that’s exactly what I was writing about. When I got back from Finland, I got to do some writing with a PhD candidate from the University of Helsinki. And we were looking at a case that was decided, while I was there, by the European Union Court of Justice, saying Google had said, oh, you can’t have the right to be forgotten. That must be enforced around the world. That’s what France was asserting. And so the court agreed with Google, actually, because Google was doing some kind of good enough, bring the horse back in the barn, geotagging kind of, you know, limitation of their of a particular case from France to just people from France. So
Greg Lambert 19:30
Yeah, I guess that makes sense in the fact that it’s a law of a certain country, that I guess Google’s argument was, as long as we’re following it with our google.fr.
Anne Klinefelter 19:41
That’s right. That’s right. So they started that and then they decided to check like IP address who, where they’re coming from, because the the problem was, of course, a lot of people in Europe can speak multiple languages and would be happy to use other search engines. And so that was thwarting the right of the person who was seeking to not have things about them come up in a personal name search that were protected under the European law. So you’re absolutely right. But the truth is that the law is they said it didn’t it, it could have applied throughout Europe, but it didn’t. And that’s because, frankly, privacy has to fight with other, not only just other interests, like all the fun on the internet, but just other interests, like freedom of expression. So those are in Europe, they think of privacy and data protection is human rights on par with expression. And so they think each country might have a different balancing of those.
Greg Lambert 20:45
Yeah. That would be hard to hard to regulate, and hard, hard to implement, I would I would think, saying,
Anne Klinefelter 20:50
Yes, you got it
Marlene Gebauer 20:51
Do you think that the US will ever get to a point where they do something like the Right to Erasure?
Anne Klinefelter 20:57
Wow, that’s a great question. We have a few laws already that they have a component of the right to erasure, but in that very narrow sense of how we do most of our privacy law, like California has a law for minors who posted something on a platform when they were a minor and then regret it later, they can contact the platform to have it removed. And you can imagine how that would be insufficient, if this information has traveled elsewhere. Or maybe the platform’s gone. You know, there’s all kinds of things, but it’s not nothing. And we have, you know, a bankruptcy, that information does expire in terms of credit reports after certain number of years. So that’s like a right to be forgotten. And then we have a tort, a tort claim that sometimes is used to prevent publication of information that might be stale. We’ll call it that, like, because the notion is that people need to have a way to rehabilitate themselves or move on, you know, we have a tradition in our country long ago have a fresh start.
Greg Lambert 22:11
Yeah. Well, one of the things that caused me to reach out to you is I have a friend of mine, who is not a librarian, who brought up the question of, well, in one, I think she kind of confused as archivist and librarians sometimes. But you know, they’re we’re kind of known for librarians being able to collect information, to store information, to share information. And so when the government’s come in and say, We want to be able to essentially erase certain pieces of information, you know, even when they have the best of intentions with that, does that cause the hair on the back of your neck to kind of raise up sometimes and dive into and find out is, is this actually legitimate? Are there going to be some unintended consequences for this? What what’s been your reaction?
Anne Klinefelter 23:04
Well, that that’s actually the basis of my application to go to Finland was to explore that very conflict. If you think about it, libraries, many of them do archival work. And archives alone are committed to exactly what you describe. And they’ve been described as memory institutions. So right to be forgotten, memory institutions coming to a theater near you, big conflict, you can see. So yes, it makes the hair on the back of my head stand up. And and this is the struggle that I have is someone who teaches privacy law. And as a librarian, I’m sort of you know, torn. But trying to balance those things and find a way forward is, is really important. So a lot of ways that this has evolved in archives for years before we had these rights to be forgotten was just the notion that instead of this right to be forgotten, which, you know, is just describing when information gets stale. It might spring into action, you might have a right to be forgotten after a certain period of time, right? That’s the forgetting part. But with librarians and archivists will say, well, that’s fine. But you gotta, you gotta look forward 100 years from now, that’s when we want it. And that’s when the right to be remembered, comes back into action 100 years later, so protect it, and keep it under lock and key, which is really hard. And then we want to have it because it’s history. It is the story of all of us because we really aren’t just individuals. We are also social creatures as we’ve been learning in the pandemic and missing each other, you know, yeah, so that’s, that is a big issue. So, in Europe, you’ll be glad to know that the librarians and archivists did mobilize, and the way that you would expect a good set of librarians to mobilize. And there is an exception for archival purposes. Under the right to erasure. There’s also exception for balancing freedom of expression. So, as you mentioned, hard to implement, but those things are in there. So most of the libraries there, we’re not worried about this.
Greg Lambert 25:26
Yeah, I’ve got a I’ve got a button somewhere around here from Donald Rumsfeld saying, calling us radical militant librarians. So yeah, one of my favorite quotes.
Anne Klinefelter 25:36
Yeah. Yeah, we are quiet. But we can put together a big organizational effort, can’t we? So I think that that would that would be true here should something come. And another thing that happens in the US is even when there’s not something written into law, sometimes courts will say, hey, this violates the First Amendment. So we’re gonna have to have that’s the way we got fair use and copyright was from a court originally, as sort of a way to accommodate the First Amendment.
Marlene Gebauer 26:08
Alright, so I’m going to move away from the courts, and I’m going to go into the metaverse. Oh, boy,
Anne Klinefelter 26:13
I’m sure it’s in the metaverse, I don’t think
Marlene Gebauer 26:17
yet, you know, how did the new features, you know like the metaverse platform create, you know, new problems when it comes to an individual’s privacy rights on the internet.
Anne Klinefelter 26:30
Where that is where all the fun comes in. And privacy law is that you have to take laws that were created a lot of them in the 1970s and apply them to new technologies and contexts, like the metaverse. But some of the laws are more recent. I would say the the Illinois law about Biometrics is likely to be a barrier. They require consent for a lot of the face recognition and biometrics that underlie a lot of the AI that is part of the metaverse. And then we also have the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Protection Authority to look and see if some secondary uses, I like to say, which means you know, something you didn’t expect is happening to the data that you allowed to be collected. Some of that might be unfair, it might even be it might be deceptive. And we’re going to be looking at how the AI might provoke concerns like that about, you know, all the data that’s collected is it’s astounding how many conclusions you can draw about people from things that we think are innocuous, but the tools can derive some very sensitive conclusions about your health, your religion, all kinds of things you would think oh, no, that’s not. That’s not obvious. But it’s, it’s derived. But there’s also the problem of discrimination because we’ve seen some of these face recognition algorithms result in discrimination. That’s actually a live topic right now. So I think that there will be some some struggles and some pushback, there will be some, some folks who will be pressing back as the metaverse moves forward. We’ll see.
Greg Lambert 28:32
Yeah, I’ve heard situation. This is all anecdotal. But things like being able to track somebody’s mouse movements or imagine with like an with an eye visor, Oculus thing that you can track eye movements or head movements and get actual real health information. Yeah. On these folks. And I, you know, I’ve heard people warn that this is something that there are people that are looking into how do you track that without them without people actually knowing that you’re tracking? So I think there’s, you know, I would say the more you connect yourself, and especially when you physically connect yourself, that you’re going to be able to give more privacy information out with or without knowing. Just just just my anecdotal talk there.
Anne Klinefelter 29:18
That’s, that’s me, you know, they they’re tracking those eye movements now and test taking software to
Marlene Gebauer 29:25
well, this kind of touches on my final question. So we’re gonna, we’re talking about sort of what’s, you know, what’s sort of out there? So, this is, this is what we call our crystal ball question. So, okay. You know, we ask guests to sort of look into their crystal ball and peer into the future for us. So what kinds of changes or challenges do you see over the next five or so years when it comes to privacy? You know, whatever the internet turns into at that point?
Anne Klinefelter 29:52
Well, since you suggested that was it. 94 We were supposed to think that there was Utopia On the internet, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go with utopia. And, oh, here’s how we’re going to get to utopia. First things are going to get worse. Right? It might be necessary to for things to get worse and obviously worse, in order for Utopia to emerge, people start to see about the applicant screening pool for that discriminated against them when they were trying to get a job, say or make some noise, or I did not give you permission to use my image for your biometrics database, and I’m going to make some noise. And sadly, weak privacy or data security will cause more infrastructure disruptions, financial harm, and even more violence as angry people can, you know, get home addresses on people and do damage, and maybe even you know, are stirred up into more damage activity. So a lot of these things, they’re already happening, I expect more. And then there will be a sense of a bounce, I think, for privacy. And all this time, I think we’re already starting to see and we’ll see more of privacy enhancing technologies, we like to call them pets, and policies. So people will adopt more pets. And we’re going to see, it’s not just duck, duck go and VPN. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’ll be AI tools to anonymize video, differential privacy techniques, all kinds of ways to gain utility from datasets without the risk of identifying individuals, services for collecting the data that that businesses hold about you. I mean, things you could do, but they’re very time consuming, cumbersome to do, I think there will be a lot more of this coming into play. And there will also be companies who care about this. They think it’s part of their business model and the reputation, and so there’ll be investing in it too. And then my third factor in the emergence of utopia is that somebody, somebody and I don’t know who but somebody who’s made obscene amounts of money from this surveillance, capitalism economy, is going to choose to create privacy hubs at local libraries across the country, right. Just like Andrew Carnegie, who built libraries across the US distributing his railroad and steel wealth, we’re gonna see some people who are actually modern beneficiaries of these new industries, actually target privacy, trying to promote it through the local library,
Greg Lambert 32:52
like Jeff Bezos terminals that?
Anne Klinefelter 32:57
Well, you know, libraries can be privacy intermediaries, for people who can use the library’s IP address passwords. And librarians can give guidance for helping people get access to information they need for jobs, education, and just fun. Good. So I think that’s, that’s how we’re gonna, how we’re going to get there. It’s gonna be utopia. It’s gonna get bad.
Greg Lambert 33:22
I hope to hope to see you on the other side of this dystopia into this utopia that we’re Yeah, we’re gonna
Anne Klinefelter 33:30
talk again in five years.
Greg Lambert 33:31
Yes, thanks so inclined filter from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Thank you very much. I hated that. It took us two years to get you on. But I’m so happy that we got you. Yeah, that’s
Anne Klinefelter 33:43
a pleasure. Thanks.
Greg Lambert 33:47
Well, it was good to finally finally, finally, claim filter on on the show. So I mean, if you’re, if you’re going to forget about something, this probably is the one one to do. But again, I promise we didn’t, we didn’t forget. But I really have to point out what she said there at the end about the internet. And her view that it will get better that it may actually become the utopia that we have, but But it’s gonna get worse that is going to get worse. Which, which I think I think is is probably spot on. And while I appreciate her enthusiasm for the next group of Andrew Carnegie’s out there to come in and use the Public Library system to to be these kinds of safety zones for internet privacy. I don’t know if that I’m holding my breath for the bank of Jeff Bezos terminals at the local public library, but you know, fingers crossed your mind. Maybe that will happen. Exactly. So thanks again to Anne Klinefelter from the University of North Carolina School of Law for coming in and finally talking to us.
Marlene Gebauer 34:59
Thank Thank you and glad we could make it work. So thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you so reach out to us on social media. I can be found at Gabe Bauer am on Twitter
Greg Lambert 35:13
and can be reached at glamoured on Twitter,
Marlene Gebauer 35:17
Or leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.
Greg Lambert 35:26
Thanks, Jerry. Alright, Marlene, I’m gonna go find those safety terminals at the public library.
Marlene Gebauer 35:33
Go for it!

We bring on a fellow legal industry podcaster this week to talk about the launching of her brand new podcast, The Portia Project. M.C. Sungaila is a shareholder at Buchalter in California and she noticed that while there were a number of female judges making it onto the trial court bench, there were still a small number at the appellate level. This motivated her to seek out a platform for those judges who were at the appellate level to share their stories and perhaps encourage others to seek out similar roles. M.C. discusses how her original idea of creating a book on the topic morphed into the podcast platform as a result of not just the length of time it takes to compile a book, but also because she quickly discovered that being able to actually hear these stories told in first-person had more of an emotional effect than the printed page could convey.

M.C. shares how the experiences of women joining the judiciary changed over the past few decades. How the challenges shifted from the 70s and 80s into the past couple of decades. That the barriers shifted from obvious issues to more subtle obstacles. She also notes how there is a theme among these stories of women trailblazers in particular areas of legal practice, only to be supplanted by their male counterparts once those areas of practice become more prestigious. It is this type of shared storytelling experience that makes podcasting such a popular platform and M.C.’s Portia Project brings these important stories to life. We hope you enjoy this discussion as much as we did.

Crystal Ball Question

While we may be back to a more “regular” style of podcast episode this week, we still have some recordings from LegalWeek that we are going to share for a few more episodes. We asked a number of attendees our Crystal Ball question of “what significant changes do you see in the legal industry over the next five years?” This week, David Bartolone from Wolters Kluwer sat down at the microphone in New York and gave us his projection on the role APIs will play in the near future.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Contact Us

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert

Voicemail: 713-487-7270

Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: Jerry David DeCicca

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer  0:18

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

Greg Lambert  0:25

And I’m Greg Lambert. Well, we’re kind of back to a more traditional episode this week, Marlene after our journey to New York for LegalWeek. And then I decided to take a week off and travel out to Arizona and Big Bend here in Texas. And you know, I loved disconnecting last week, but I will tell you, I am paying for it this week because I got like 1000 emails to catch up.

Marlene Gebauer  0:50

It is necessary, but it is indeed the price you pay.

Greg Lambert  0:53

It is

Marlene Gebauer  0:54

We had a great conversation with M.C. Sungaila about her newly launched podcast called The Portia Project. M.C.’s podcast focuses on women in the legal industry starting with appellate judges, but she’s expanding that to include other traditional and nontraditional legal roles. It’s a great podcast and topic and we get to dive into the details of why she wanted to get these stories out there.

Greg Lambert  1:17

Yeah, that was a great conversation. And you know, and I said, we’re getting back to a more traditional episode this week. But that’s not really 100%. True. completely true. Yeah. So one of the things we did while we were at LegalWeek as we grabbed some friends and some colleagues and asked them our crystal ball question, to see what kind of major changes they saw on the horizon in the legal industry in the next four or five years. And we have a few of those that we recorded. So instead of our traditional information inspirations, we’re gonna go and just jump in into those. And this week, we have David Bartolone, from Wolters Kluwer, let’s listen to his answer on the crystal ball question.

Marlene Gebauer  2:01

Yeah, these were so much fun to get people to sit down and talk to us and give us their answers.

Greg Lambert  2:07

All right, David, take it away.

David Bartolone  2:13

My name is David Bartolone. I am a general manager with Walters Kluwer, Legal and Regulatory based out of Vienna, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. Before I answered the question, I do want to say I am, this has actually been a kind of dream I’ve had to be sitting here talking to you guys, as part of…

Marlene Gebauer  2:36

You got to dream bigger than that.

David Bartolone  2:38

I don’t know.

Greg Lambert  2:40

We need to bring you back then for a full episode.

David Bartolone  2:42

I would like that I would enjoy that very much. This has been one of the more entertaining podcasts that that covers legal information, legal technology, so great to be here. In terms of what I’m concentrated on, or what I feel excited about is API’s and the way that they’re going to influence the way legal information tools are consumed by the law firms or in house corporate counsel. I do believe, for better for worse, that the true use some of the content will be more platform agnostic and being able to engage with the platforms that are built within the firm’s themselves and to allow them to have a seamless access to whatever content they’re looking for. We have the ability to provide that. And so I think that’s going to be pretty disruptive in the future. And it’s an exciting opportunity to continue to partner with the legal firms and in house corporate counsel’s to get them what they need.

Greg Lambert  3:48

Can you give us an example of what you see as let’s say a law firm from a corporate practice? How would I convince a or

Marlene Gebauer  3:59

How have you seen the API’s being applied? And then Greg’s question how would you convince organizations to sort of go down this path?

David Bartolone  4:11

So I manage a number of different business units within Walters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory, and one of the business of managing now is called MediRegs, which is a medical compliance business. And what we do is we help hospitals and payers with their audits, with the managing all of the sort of regulatory complexity that goes with along with reimbursement. And API’s are, we’re much more involved, or I guess, in front of where we are on the legal space in terms of integrating with the SAS providers who are doing sort of large implementations within a hospital and then to be able to partner with those software. integrations to allow access to our tools and to the regulatory information that they need access to in a way that they fits better their workflow. So I’m kind of taking that as a template and saying this could also work in a corporate environment or law firm environment, where they’re saying, Okay, we need certain a certain applications that will tie everything together, in a way, and then to be able then to partner with those applications in order to surface the content that they’re looking for the tool that they need to do the job to get done.

Greg Lambert  5:43

Well, David, thanks for dropping by. And

David Bartolone  5:45

Oh, my pleasure. I can’t wait for the invite to get back one day,

Greg Lambert  5:48

we’ll get you back on. All right.

David Bartolone  5:49

Thank you so much.

Greg Lambert  5:54

Thanks to David Bartolone for his crystal ball question. And I you know, and I, for one, Marlene really hope that more and more of the vendors get on the API bandwagon. And let us integrate some of that data into our own. And so that’s one of the things that that I’m hoping to play with very soon.

Marlene Gebauer  6:13

Yeah, I agree with you. I think this really is sort of the next, the next move in terms of being able to combine outside and internal information. So I want to see it, and I want to see it made easy, and I want to see it for no extra costs. I have demand

Greg Lambert  6:31

You’re not asking for much. Well, like I said earlier, we’ll have a few more of these spots over the next few weeks. But now let’s get to this week’s guest.

Marlene Gebauer  6:43

There are many stories to share when it comes to the experiences of women in the legal field. And our guest this week is doing her part to create a platform to amplify those experiences.

Marlene Gebauer  6:55

We’d like to welcome M.C. Sungaila, shareholder and chair of the appellate practice at Buchalter, and host of the new podcast, the Portia Project, which focuses on women in traditional and nontraditional legal careers. M.C. Welcome to The Geek in Review.

M.C. Sungaila  7:09

Thank you so much for having me.

Greg Lambert  7:12

It’s such a pleasure having you on the show here because we love talking with other podcasters. And your production with the Portia Project is, I think that’s just right down our alley with you know, shining that spotlight on women in the legal profession. I want to get to that. But first, I want to talk a little bit more about you. So what has been your focus in your legal career, and I really wanted to hear specifically about the fact that you were awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. So if you don’t mind, wrap it all up by telling us how you ended up with that?

M.C. Sungaila  7:51

Sure. So yeah, so I am an appellate lawyer. I’ve been an appellate lawyer for over 25 years. And previously a litigator for a short while, but found my true calling and doing appeals, talking to judges, persuading judges instead of convincing juries. And using the experience that I had clerking for various federal judges, you know, now as an advocate, and it also really fits with my initial interest in a career which was being a poet. So being a writer of some type. And so that’s basically what I do for a living, but, you know, in the real world to make a difference. And that’s also what I love about appellate laws, we can make a difference in one case. So I came to appellate law and found it in a pro bono case in front of the US Supreme Court when I was in my 20s. And it involved a judge. So it involved a judge who had sexually assaulted and did all kinds of terrible things to women who were litigants before his court or otherwise beholden to him. He was the only basically, the main judge in this small town, and his brother was the prosecutor. So nothing ever happened until the United States came in and was doing an investigation and came across all of these allegations and prosecuted the judge for them. He was convicted, and then his conviction was overturned, and then taken to the US Supreme Court. So ultimately, he went back to jail. It was a very colorful case, very well covered in the media. He was interviewed, really, probably, if I were his lawyer wouldn’t have advised him to be interviewed. But he was, while this was ongoing, on things like 60 Minutes and 20/20, and things like that. So it was well covered. And he was colorful. So it was a very interesting entree. And when we were able to make a difference and make sure that his conviction was upheld. It really cemented to me like what you can do with appellate law, and that you can make that kind of difference in one case. And I also felt like I had some kind of instinct for it. You know, I was a new lawyer, and it was my first appellate brief that I done, you know, taking the lead on, but I felt like if I really devoted myself to this, I could be, you know, can be really something where I can make a difference more regularly. So I think that leads to the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which honors immigrants, children of immigrants, to the US who have made a difference both in their careers but also in some sense of giving back to the community. So there are a lot of philanthropists, there are people have started charities, but they’ve also excelled in their career. So it’s kind of a it’s a mix. And there are very few lawyers who are medalists, unfortunately. But my year, Thomas Keller, the chef, Buzz Aldrin to astronaut, Indra Nooyi, who was the CEO of Pepsi, a number of other people like that were also honored. So it was, it was amazing to be there and to meet them. And the whole event is really spectacular. It’s held at night on Ellis Island. And there’s a dinner in the arrivals hall afterwards. But there’s a whole like military presentation and speeches and all of this kind of stuff on the island. And then when you come back from the island at night, there’s a personal like a firework show just for the new medalists over the Statue of Liberty. So it’s an amazing experience. It really is truly patriotic, and basically encourages you to kind of give back more and do more.

Greg Lambert  11:39

That sounds exciting.

Marlene Gebauer  11:40

That’s really incredible experience both that and you know, being in front of the Supreme Court in your 20s

Greg Lambert  4:52

Yeah, kind of started off with a bang.

Marlene Gebauer  4:53

Not many can say that. So let’s jump into the Portia Project podcast. What was your reason for starting the podcast? And what drew you to podcasting as your medium for this topic? And you know, from coming from two podcasters? You know, we’re curious to see how you got here, too,

M.C. Sungaila  12:06

Right? How did we make? How do I make the journey to here? Yeah, so I think it’s really an evolution. So like four or five years ago, I noticed that there were more women judges coming on the scene, being appointed, and elected. But at the appellate level, there were not as many. So we’re making better inroads of the trial court level, but not as much at the appellate level. And so I was like, well, it would be really nice to highlight their stories, how they got to the bench, some advice they might have for practitioners, and, you know, just do this kind of compendium of as many people as I could talk to, to get their stories. And so I started working in a book format. But along the way, I found that the judges really like to talk. They love to get on the phone, and they would just tell their story with you know, it’s hard to like get to write it down and do all this stuff. It’s different, like what I heard from them, when I spoke to them, and then what they would write down, you know, it’s in writing, it’s a lot more formal. So it was a little bit different. And also, it took basically a lot more time, from the time we had the conversation to the time it’s then put into a written form. And then, you know, we’re putting all this together, I’m like, it could be like, a while before I have this book together. So I kind of set it aside, because I thought this is taking too, basically, it’s not the right time for this. So I’m gonna set it aside. And then a couple years ago, when podcasting, because of COVID in part, became quite more popular, and there were more people I knew in the legal realm who had started doing some form of podcast, I started thinking about it. So I would say, like, two years ago was when I had the direct idea to do a podcast like this. But then I started to decide to thinking, well, everybody’s doing a podcast or an COVID. And I don’t really know, maybe I’ll let somebody else do this. I don’t need to do it. But then nobody did. And then also, I think it wouldn’t have happened honestly, without COVID, not just because of the podcast itself, like thinking about that as venue. But the fact that judges become very comfortable. And really, lawyers all over the country, very comfortable with Zoom, very comfortable with remote interviews like that.

Greg Lambert  7:31

Yeah.

M.C. Sungaila  7:32

And so it also opened up a lot of opportunities, it’s much easier to have that kind of conversation remotely, than, you know, me traveling to like every state supreme court or something trying to interview people. So it also made it much easier for them. So I think they were open to that kind of venue. And then also, I think that Bar Association’s and bar education work has moved online, both from the law schools to the bar, and that also, the judges are interested in the educational component of this. They’re interested in, you know, sharing the history and educating people about how they got to the bench. But also, in California, at least, I don’t know. And I also think nationwide, there’s a push that’s kind of coincided with what I saw many years ago, which is to diversify the bench, and to have people consider it who might not have considered it previously, whether it’s because they have a different professional career prior to becoming a judge. Sometimes people have a sense, like, you can only do this, you can only be a prosecutor at the state or federal level. And that’s really how you become a judge. And if you don’t do that, you can’t do it. The truth is that does not at all true may have been, you know, lore many years ago, but you hear how these women have joined the bench. And there’s just a whole array of stories from that. So I think they’re more comfortable with this as a venue to educate, and also just people listened to it more. All of that sort of primed it for me to decide to do it. And so honestly, there will be no podcast if these women judges and lawyers did not agree to be interviewed. So that was step one. Step one was trademarking. Step two was the trademark name, which I did two years ago. The second thing was, you know, you people have to want to do this, or there’s not going to be any show. So before I move forward on it, I just asked about 20 people, you know, would you be interested? Would you have an interest in doing this? And no, I have no sample, you can’t see anything, you know, but are you willing to be courageous and do this? And almost every one of them said, yes. So I was like, Okay, we have a podcast, and then just just moved up from there. And even from the time that I recorded those or met with those judges, I started thinking about other ways we could highlight other women in leadership because In the law, so it started out from appellate judges, to different kinds of judges. So we’ve interviewed the interviewer district, federal district court judges, State Trial Court judges, State Supreme Court judges, intermediate Courts of Appeal, magistrate judges, some judges who are appointed, some who are elected, you know, all of that to explore the different ways you can become a judge to process wise. And then from there, I started thinking, well, it doesn’t it’s hard to even be judges, right. There are women, General Counsel, chief legal officers, managing partners of major law firms, sole practitioners, then moving out from there. Well, even Dean’s I’m going to be interviewing out law school dean shortly, and law school professors as well. And then, you know, beyond that is what can you do with a law degree that isn’t the law per se? So people who run nonprofits, legal nonprofits, as the executive director, or just nonprofits, museums, things like that, legal tech founders, so I’m pleased to say that two of our sponsors are women owned tech firms. I had three women founders of tech companies on the podcast. So I feel like it’s opening up those, opening up people’s minds about what you can do with a law degree, the value of it and the different ways that women are making a difference with that training.

M.C. Sungaila  18:18

the different ways that women are making a difference with that training.

Greg Lambert  18:21

I want to go back to the name you said you made sure that you locked in the IP on on that, what was the idea behind the name The Portia Project.

M.C. Sungaila  18:32

So Portia is from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, she had to pretend to be a guy in order to advocate as a lawyer. And so Portia was initially a term that was used for women lawyer to generally and to measure their progress. So first was in like, the academic literature, and, and even some of the studies that tracked women’s progress, even when I when I was in law school. So in the early 1990s, 80s, that was used quite commonly, I think it hasn’t been used as commonly now, but it definitely kind of encapsulates that women’s first, you know, significant entry into the profession.

Greg Lambert  19:13

you had kind of mentioned a little bit about the Bar Association. And I know you do a lot with the bar and have a number of programs that you work with. So how is it that you’re using this podcast in these interviews, to kind of supplement and add to your work with the bar?

M.C. Sungaila  19:34

Yeah, so I still deeply involved with Bar Association and work the ABA, the Orange County Bar Association, just a number of them, I think that it’s so and women’s bars and the Hispanic bar, just a range of bar associations that I think it’s valuable to create community and to be part of that community in a number of different ways. And then I do think that there’s been a difference now in terms of COVID, because there’s been a reduced ability to be in person through those bar associations. So a lot of that work, migrated online. So that I think is where I started thinking about more online and more, you know, podcasting stuff myself. I think that this is different. I think that, particularly when you think about who you would want to have access to this material, I wanted to make it easily accessible to people maybe who aren’t even law students yet, or people who are in law school. And they may be involved with their particular bar association and go to that particular program. But that would be geographically limited generally, and to some degree. And often law students have enough to do with their, with their lives, that they don’t go to those programs, even though there’s a lot of benefit to them. So I thought, well, this is another venue, right? You’re just searching on the podcast app and you and you find this and you’re also able to do it at any time. And you can pull one at a time, if you’re interested and just listen to whatever part you want to listen to you. I also have transcripts on our website. So you could also look at that. I think it plays a slightly different role. It’s supplementary and kind of an adjunct to the Bar Association. There’s still no substitute for the kind of connections you can make through that and the wide array of practices that you can expose yourself to by meeting people who are in those different practice areas in the Bar Association.

Marlene Gebauer  21:36

I imagine during your interviews that you hear a variety of stories from your interviewees. What are some of the common barriers or struggles that your guests have discussed? How do those reflect women’s broader progress and growing opportunities in the profession and in business?

M.C. Sungaila  21:54

I was really conscious to include, especially in the beginning, women who are at a wide range of time and experience levels. So the first episode features Christine Durham, who was one of the first women judges at all in Utah, and was on the Utah Supreme Court for 25 years, including as Chief Justice. So her stories of coming out of law school when she liked Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Ginsburg, you know, women need not apply, right, you couldn’t get positions in a lot of places, they just wouldn’t interview you. And they flat out would say it. I mean, she said she, she said that in the interview and said, men on Law Review only. So that’s encouraging. You’re like, wow, she had to go through that. And she became the Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court. You know, whatever I’m going through is relatively simple compared to that. So it’s kind of encouraging in that way. But that’s a story that’s unique to a particular era. And then, you know, there are still challenges, I would say, continuing, you know, organizationally with politically within organizations, what kinds of opportunities there are to lead. But there are more people, more women going into those roles as well. So I think the common challenges are, the thing that I noticed was that they all talked about different kinds of challenges. And they all talked about how they overcame them, some of them much more matter of factly. Like, well, that’s just the way it was, or this is how it was. And so here’s what I did to get around that, or climb over it, or go around it, or whatever it was. It’s like very practical. Here’s the particular thing I experienced. And here’s how I dealt with it. And some of them didn’t even recognize that some of the things were challenges. It’s just a fact.

Greg Lambert  23:48

Yeah, I can see I can, I can hear my mom telling me stories where she would just go. Well, you have to understand, Greg, that’s just how it was back then.

M.C. Sungaila  17:03

Yeah.

Greg Lambert  17:04

I did notice that as I was listening to your latest episode with Judge Christine Miley, there was one part where she was talking about getting a mentor that she actually selected when she got elected to the bench there in Ohio that they make you kind of go through a two week orientation. And then within the first year, there are certain benchmarks you have to have to hit. And she actually went out and asked specifically for another person for mentorship. Are you finding now that these women who sit on the bench are finding other women who sit on the bench to help them? Kind of use them as mentors?

M.C. Sungaila  24:44

Well, I’ll tell you, there’s an interesting. I mean, I think the lesson overall is that you hear and I asked them about that usually is mentors or sponsors who helped you. Some of them are women, some of them are men, it’s just people who came and helped them at key junctures of their career. And as many of them acknowledge, and as I’ve found in my career, there are probably a lot more people that we don’t even know about, we can’t identify who were in the room at a point of decision making, and helped us and we’ll just never know that, because that’s, that’s something that they do selflessly. And you know, they’re not going to tell you they did it. So that’s just one observation that I think all of them have said, with regard to mentors and sponsors.

Greg Lambert  25:28

Well, I was just kind of wondering, because I hear a lot, especially in law firms that, you know, I looked up at the people who came before me, and I didn’t see myself, I didn’t see anyone that looked like me.

Marlene Gebauer  25:42

And there’s a lot of challenges with mentoring programs. How to match people up and you know, making sure that mentors are really, you know, mentoring. So this is an interesting topic.

M.C. Sungaila  25:55

Yeah. Well, I think that the mentors you choose, as you mentioned, as judge Miley did, are probably more effective. Right. You know, there’s some kind of connection. I mean, that’s what she relayed there was that she thought she was a good match, you know, for various reasons. And it’s turned out to be true. So, so that’s true. But this mentoring piece, I think, is also an aspect that some of the women I’ve interviewed have talked about in terms of this being a form of mentoring as well, the podcast itself, because you may not have access to people in that way that you can get that kind of advice from, and especially going to the bench. I mean, it really helps stuff people have been through the process and can work with you. Even doing prep sessions before an interview with a nominating committee are things like that. If you’ve been mentored, the only way you can pay that back is to mentor someone else, and to help someone else in the same way. and many of the women on podcasts feel that the podcast is one way to do that they can reach a lot more people, in addition of people that they’re doing this one on one with, and, and there’s, you know, significant value to that. And then I also very intentional and I think many of the women who have agreed to be interviewed have also said, look, we, we really want to make sure it’s as diverse as possible. And there’s many different kinds of from experiences to racial and ethnic, to a number of different aspects that are different so that people can say, that’s some Oh, yeah, that’s somebody who I feel like I really relate to and have had maybe had a similar experience. But that that I’ve had.

Marlene Gebauer  27:44

I’m curious, for the podcast. I mean, do you have listeners sort of interacting? I mean, are they using social media to reach out to some of the interviewees with questions? Are they just sort of taking it all in internally?

M.C. Sungaila  28:00

Yeah, I don’t have an interactive component. I mean, we’re, you know, we launched February 7, so I’m just really happy to have podcasts produced, and a website, and transcripts. So we’re just kind of moving one thing at a time, I will say that the women who have been interviewed, some of them have mentioned to me that they really are interested in the range, the group of people that we’ve assembled through the interviews, and that they would like to meet each other, you know, if they don’t already know each other, they would like to have some venue in which we can do that. So that’s my current project is to try and figure out how they can all meet each other if they don’t know each other already, although many of them do. So that that was one of the other things was like, it’s a very small world. When I interviewed people I knew or met from, you know, either from cases or from bar work. And they may, they’re in a totally different state, a totally different level of court. But another judge all asked to be interviewed will say, Oh, you interviewed, so and so? Oh, she’s one of my best friends. Of course, I want to do it, too. So it was kind of like the small world of the women, judges and practitioners already who kind of, you know, they knew of each other, even though you wouldn’t necessarily think so like, Oh, that’s cool. I don’t know how, how you know each other. But that’s great.

Greg Lambert  29:27

I imagine it’s a pretty small social circle.

M.C. Sungaila  29:30

Yeah, I mean, I guess that’s true. I’m just thinking like, nationwide, you know, that’s pretty amazing. And then just reinforces my initial statistical view, which was just not a lot of them. So they do know each other. So that’s good. Yeah, I think I think it’s good. Also, I would say that there are people, you know, there are only a few episodes have aired. So far, we have, I’ve many interviews already done prior to the launch. So I’ve interviewed a lot more people that have come out at this point, been published. But after the interviews is when I feel like we’ve created a kind of a self-perpetuating universe, because the people I’ve interviewed really enjoy the interviews, and they recommend to somebody else that they be interviewed and connect me to them. And, you know, for whatever reason, whether they think that the person’s ready to do that, or, or they would just enjoy doing it. So I take particular joy in that, that in itself, you know, even before it’s published, that people enjoyed it so much that they wanted to have somebody else have the experience.

Marlene Gebauer  30:43

Yeah, I mean, it’s just another opportunity for more meaningful connection between, you know, people who might not otherwise get the chance.

M.C. Sungaila  31:15

Yeah, so I think, Well, I think one thing is that I had hoped that there would be individual, you know, the individual stories would be compelling. Some of them are more like, emotionally compelling than I even knew, even for people that I knew, you know, I kind of thought I knew their story. But when you listen to them and provide a venue for them to share it, you hear a lot more. So I think that’s actually a value of podcasting is that there’s a space that’s held where people feel heard, and as a result, they share a lot more So, I think that’s an that’s an interesting things. I didn’t realize, you know, things I thought I knew. But I thought, boy, maybe I need to be a better friend, I’m not listening well enough, I should have known this already. And then the really what I’d hoped for also has happened, which is the collective. Individually, their stories are compelling, if you want to listen to them individually that, you know, that’s cool, but the collective of all of them, and especially a collective from people who entered the profession, in the 70s, and 80s, all the way through today. That sort of meta story from all of their stories is truly compelling in terms of where we’ve come from, and how far we’re going. But also, there’s a historical and overall historical aspect from a number of anecdotal stories that arises. I think about this in the context of, there’s a field of study called complexity, which looks at different systems and talks about how they interrelate and how some systems themselves create new properties. And I feel like that’s what’s happening here. Yes, there’s a compilation of these individual stories. But from that completion itself, from that system that’s created, there emerges something that is greater and larger than the individual or even the whole itself. And it’s something independent and separate from that. So I’m really excited to kind of see where that goes, just as it’s gone from judges to a whole array of practice areas, and even non legal things to open people’s minds about what that might look like. It’s also creating its own thing, I’m just kind of I’m just here to like Shepherd it along and allow it to become organically, whatever it’s going to become.

Marlene Gebauer  33:47

Well, this sounds interesting, because you’ve hit a little bit about sort of what you know, what’s, what’s coming. And so we’ve reached the point in the podcast where we pull out the crystal ball question. So we do ask each of our guests to basically look into the gaze into their crystal ball, if you will, and look into the future. And, you know, what we would ask you is, you know, what changes do you see for women in the legal industry over the next, you know, five years or so?

M.C. Sungaila  34:13

Yeah, well, I think I have a couple answers to that. One is, I’ll say in the law firm context, particularly in large firms, I think there’s been a lot of focus on pipeline, understandably, you know, making sure that we hire women, and at least retain them through a certain level of associate, associate-dom. But there’s been minimal focus on women Equity Partners, and either making them or keeping them. And there was an ABA study, I want to say a couple of years ago talking about that, about the most experienced women walking out the door, you know, in their 50s, at the point where you would think that women would remain because this is the apex of the career, this is where you’re gonna get delivery on all of the work that you’ve done, and they just kind of throw up their hands and leave. So I think that there’s gonna be an increased focus on that there should be an increased focus on that end, because if you don’t pay attention to that, the women who are coming in through the front of the pipeline, well, as you mentioned, Marlene, take a look around and go, Well, who’s here? You know, is that something I should do or want to do? Because I don’t see anyone who’s in that position after a certain number of years. So maybe there’s something I need to know about. So I think that’s an should be an important focus on one that the ABA has, you know, been in vanguard on with its study. And then the other thing I see is really a trend that happened previously in other areas of the law. And it’s just happening in new areas now. So in the past, I’ll say as an appellate lawyer, because I can I saw this happen, as well as in the in house space, when in house was not paid as well, or not nearly as high prestige. And the same with appellate when it was not a prestige and not paying as well. Women flooded into those spaces. And when they became more prestigious and more powerful, it changed. So many more men, fewer women. And so I think of us I like to think of that as a positive spin of we’re in the vanguard, in part because we want to find spaces to grow spaces that are not constrained already in some way. So I see, start thinking about where is the vanguard there? I think there will be an I hope that there will be many more women judges, for example, they are increasing, and I think it will increase across the panoply of courts. And I hope that were part of that through the Portia Project. The other thing I see is entrepreneurialism. So there’s entrepreneurialism in a lot of different ways, some women early on, you know, started law firms or boutique law firms, because that was their best opportunity, right. And I still think that there are some things that can be done in that setting that can’t be done in larger law firms. I also think that there’s a huge variety of entrepreneurship outside that, both in legal tech, and access to justice, legal tech arenas, there are still few women founders in legal tech at all, but where they are showing up is in areas where they can either help practitioners, or they can help with access to justice, questions. And so, so I’m interviewing as many of those as I can find on the podcast, because I think they’re having an interesting perspective. But I also think that’s another area of growth, because I see it as one that isn’t valued sufficiently at this point. And in five years, we’ll be.

Greg Lambert  37:57

Excellent. Well, MC Sungaila from the Portia Project podcast. I love the alliteration. I want to want to thank you for coming on and sharing these stories. with us. We’ll make sure that we put a link to the Portia project on our show notes, but thanks again for taking the time to talk with us.

Marlene Gebauer  38:23

Yeah, thank you M.C., it’s been great.

M.C. Sungaila  38:24

Yeah, absolutely. I did want to mention that I listened to your podcasts as well, and the legal design podcast that you had, that’s also on my list. I want to have some legal designers on some women who do that as well. And I bought the book after I listened to your podcast.

Marlene Gebauer  31:45

That’s great.

Greg Lambert  38:41

We love the book.

Marlene Gebauer  38:44

Happy to make any introductions you need to

Greg Lambert  31:51

Alright, thanks again.

Marlene Gebauer  31:53

Thank you,

M.C. Sungaila  31:53

thank you

Greg Lambert  38:53

Well, it’s always nice to get a another podcaster in the mix here. Luckily, we stopped recording as we went through, we talked and kind of compared notes on on how each of us were setting up our own podcast.

Marlene Gebauer  32:24

We did the geek compare.

Greg Lambert  32:26

But really interesting, it’s a I’ve listened to a few of the, the episodes, it’s, it’s interesting to hear the different perspectives, just because in the diversity amongst the judges that that MC has, has interviewed, it’s, it’s fascinating.

Marlene Gebauer  39:23

We talked a little bit once we stopped recording, and I really liked the juxtaposition of the crystal ball question where, okay, you know, yes, innovation, and that’s going to mean, you know, some of these women experienced, you know, judges or you know, other women in the legal profession, going out and starting their own firm or doing, you know, starting their own organization or doing their own thing. But the juxtaposition is also the other, you know, focus that she was talking about is how firms really have to look at these women kind of at the apex of their career, who are walking away, and why are they walking away? I just thought that was very, very interesting. Because there’s, there’s opportunity to be had with the innovation side of things, you know, and unless first kind of get their act together, I think that’s gonna be the way.

Greg Lambert  40:14

I imagined not just firms. I imagined you’re seeing it across the industry.

Marlene Gebauer  33:38

Oh, yeah.

Greg Lambert  33:39

Of course, now, I have a new dream, although I may be too late in it, and that is to have my own personal firework show over Ellis Island. So not sure I’m going to be able to swing that but, you know, maybe a person can dream.

Greg Lambert  33:55

Keep working on it. Keep working on it.

Greg Lambert  33:57

Well, thanks again to MC Sungaila from the Portia Project for coming on and talking to us.

Marlene Gebauer  40:44

Yes, thanks, MC. We want to thank all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter,

Greg Lambert  40:58

And I can be reached at @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer  41:01

Or leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert  41:12

Thanks, Jerry. Alright, Marlene, I will talk with you later.

Marlene Gebauer  34:33

Okay, bye bye.

This week we celebrate not just our 150th episode, but also our first live conference in over two years. We traveled to New York City to attend LegalWeek 2022 and recorded live (after a number of technical difficulties.

We discuss what it feels like to be surrounded by 2,000+ of your closest friends and colleagues and some of the presentations we saw while we were here.

Ignatius Grande, Director at Berkeley Research Group LLC also joins us to share his experience and the topic of ethics in data analytics and legal technology, especially in the era of ESG in the legal market.

It’s great to be back surrounded by so many people, but it is also a very strange feeling! We hope to see more of you this year as more and more conferences and travel (hopefully) happens.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Contact Us

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert

Voicemail: 713-487-7270

Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com

Music: Jerry David DeCicca

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer  0:07

Welcome to The Geek in Review. Podcast designed. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlon gave our tweeting live from legal week.

Greg Lambert  0:20

And I’m Greg Lambert, I’m here or you’re not tweeting or I’m not tweeting,

Marlene Gebauer  0:24

right, I’m casting, we’re

Greg Lambert  0:25

casting, we are casting. So Marlene, and I got to come out to New York. And I think it’s I know it was my first flight. And over two years, in fact, I think it was two years and one day between my flights

Marlene Gebauer  0:37

this this this was right before everything shut down. Yep. Yes, time.

Greg Lambert  0:41

So we’re going to test this out and see how well we do. And we’re just going to kind of talk about our experiences here at legal week. 22. And hopefully people will listen. And if not, we’re going to, we’re going to record this and put it out on the podcast, probably. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Yeah. So what we want to do is we’re going to try and hopefully some people will drop by, but otherwise, we’re just going to share our experiences.

Marlene Gebauer  1:06

We have tweeted out and we put it out on LinkedIn. So if you’re hearing this or if you see that we’re in the Gibson room on the second floor,

Greg Lambert  1:14

at the Hilton, yeah, and that’s in that kind of back hallway.

Marlene Gebauer  1:17

Yeah. So we have the door open. And you’ll you’ll see us all with headsets and, and microphones.

Greg Lambert  1:23

Yeah. So what we want to do first is we grab someone off the street here who also is attending in fact, you’re speaking tomorrow can moderating tomorrow, moderating, tomorrow. Introduce yourself and then in we’ll talk about your all of our experiences as we’ve been here this week.

Ignatius Grande  1:41

Sure. So my name is Ignatius Grande.

Greg Lambert  1:44

I live here. Amazing name. Hello. Yes.

Ignatius Grande  1:48

So as I didn’t have to Florida to come to come to legal week, but But I work. I’m a consultant with Berkeley research group. And I am also the Chair elect for the New York State bar’s commercial and federal litigation section. So I get involved with the discovery information governance, and it’s great to be on your podcast I’ve listened to several times. Thank

Marlene Gebauer  2:09

you so much for being a willing victim. Yeah.

Greg Lambert  2:13

Not everybody is willing to so um, have you been since a pandemic? How’s your conference life been? Yeah, that

Ignatius Grande  2:21

non existent? Yeah, a couple of, you know, definitely some virtual conferences, I’ve run some virtual CLAS and webinars and meeting thing. But, uh, but yeah, this is, it’s great. It’s great to be back in person. You know, I was having a conversation with someone that really, I do feel like this is the first least for me, this is the first conference I’ve been back at where it felt like things were back to normal are getting pretty close.

Greg Lambert  2:48

Yeah, I’ve been the story I’ve been using as I’m, I’m really an extrovert. And even I think I need to go home after this and kind of just not be around anybody for a little bit. Because it’s, you know, two years being around and all of a sudden, you’re like, What 15, you’re in the thick of it, like 1000 people are, are suddenly there. And in fact, I was I was walking to the vendor Hall today. And there was one group and or one of the vendors had a lot of people that were there. And I could just feel it closing in on me. As I can’t walk through that, let’s let’s go this way.

Marlene Gebauer  3:25

So, you know, I got asked yesterday, you know, what’s what’s, you know, something you’re happy about? Or what did you miss about, you know, being in person. And, you know, I said the thing, one thing that I’m like, very happy about his, his sort of these serendipitous meetings, like, like we actually had, you know, we were setting up and you’re like, Hey, what are you doing? And, and, you know, those types of things. You know, that is priceless, because, you know, I just I feel like there’s a lot of connections and things that happen that way that you just don’t, or, you know, you won’t get on a zoom call,

Ignatius Grande  3:56

right? No, I think, you know, I think our world has changed. I mean, Zoom is not going away. Now, you’re gonna have more virtual events, but you know, the live conferences that you’re in, there’s nothing to replace the in person interaction and grade. And I do feel like it’s a yes, it’s something we’re not used to having these big, big crowds or being in a but but, but you know, it’s starting to feel normal again, you know, we’ll hopefully I’ll stay that way. That’s

Marlene Gebauer  4:25

like the dress code is seem to have Yeah, relaxed a little bit. Well, I should you should turn that

Greg Lambert  4:30

I know. Yeah. Let me let me see that show you my library card. Cardio man is going on there. So

Marlene Gebauer  4:37

I got my sneakers.

Greg Lambert  4:39

Sneakers, alright. So so so far, I know. I know. You’re presenting tomorrow. What’s What’s the topic?

Ignatius Grande  4:48

So it’s data ethics, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All right. So ethics, I gotta tell you, how do you spell that?

Greg Lambert  4:57

So you’re moderating the panel who’s on Come in. Tell us who’s on the panel with you. Sure.

Ignatius Grande  5:02

Kevin flew my from Oracle. Adore Wang from Reed Smith. And Alexandria Ross, who’s from clean desk. Okay. She’s an in house counsel

Marlene Gebauer  5:14

very star studded. Yeah. Yeah.

Ignatius Grande  5:16

No, it should be an ending good conversation. And yeah, and I think they’ve done a nice job with the the panel topics and, you know, it’s it’s definitely it’s a smaller than usual, but I mean, it’s, I think they’re

Greg Lambert  5:29

easily manageable. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer  5:30

I also liked it that like a lot of the sessions have CLE credit, which I don’t remember that happening before. Maybe it did, but I think I think it did it. Yeah. It was a lot of them. I couldn’t. I think it’s more we could be making it up. There still

Ignatius Grande  5:45

are a lot of tracks. But I mean, I do feel like it got to be so much. Yeah. 2020 29 Oh, what are we doing?

Greg Lambert  5:54

Keep talking? We’re still just gonna take pictures you have we have

Marlene Gebauer  5:57

like the Arma. We had double A double L we had ilta. I’m not sure who else sort of sponsor, but I mean, ediscovery. You have data analytics, you have data governance. So I mean, all sort of related topics, not nothing too far flung. And what I also noticed, it seems like certain days, were first more focused on certain topics. Maybe because I know a lot of people kind of came in for a day. They didn’t come in for the whole thing. But they came in for a day. And so they they scheduled their time for, you know, sessions that were going to be most relevant to them,

Ignatius Grande  6:39

right? No, yeah, I think then, the fact they had to move the conference, usually, that’s

Marlene Gebauer  6:44

I’m still trying to figure out how they did it, they must have had some sort of backup thing going on with the Hilton, because I’m like, you can’t just say, Okay, we’re going to move it a month. I mean, that just wants you to book something out that far, you know, something this big. They must have had some contingent contingency plan in place.

Ignatius Grande  7:01

You know, so I do think I told one of the organizers that they they lucked out, because if you’d had this event two or three weeks ago, even nobody would not. Yeah, I mean, people would have come but not it wouldn’t have been that people would not be comfortable

Marlene Gebauer  7:15

at all would have been masked, I know, I would not have been

Ignatius Grande  7:19

comfortable, at least in at least in New York, I mean, nationally, but especially in New York, over the last 10 days. Now, the schools aren’t required to be masked. And

Marlene Gebauer  7:29

it’s funny. Yeah. I checked into my hotel. And then the attendant was was saying, Well, do you have your COVID card? And then one of the other attendants was like, no, no, you don’t need to do that anymore. We just we waive that yesterday. Like, you have to ask people anymore, right? So it’s a good time. It’s a good time. It was a very good timing for the conference. So

Ignatius Grande  7:45

and to use it earlier. I did it. This was the last large conference I had attended. 2020. So you know, but But yeah, but I think you know, even back then I think we all thought things would be back to normal by the spring, you know, we were

Greg Lambert  8:01

always two weeks away.

Marlene Gebauer  8:04

We actually we actually podcasted about it. It’s just like, Yeah, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with this COVID thing. I mean, I went back and listened to it. I’m just like, This is funny. Yeah. And I say,

Greg Lambert  8:13

Yeah, cuz in February, we actually had the, the executive director from the from HLA, the legal Association, legal administrators, and had her on and said, hey, you know, if we should happen to have to, you know, work from home, what is it that we should be doing? And she laid out? And a lot of it, you know, just came true. And yeah, I mean, like, three weeks later, we were, we were all working from home.

Ignatius Grande  8:38

And that’s one of the areas where I think, you know, for some, it’s very surface may be certain law firms may eventually go fully back in person, but I really do think it’s changed for social corporations, but but even law firms, smaller mid sized law firms are have no option.

Marlene Gebauer  8:57

Flexible to think employees are just sort of realizing that look, you know, we can really work better if you if there’s more flexibility. So and I think, you know, you see people kind of moving jobs around jobs like that, and there are statistics that a lot of people are leaving in situations where there is no flexibility, and they’re moving to places that do have that. So I mean, I do think employers, including law firms, and other legal organizations have to, you know, take that into consideration if they’re thinking about what type of talent they want to retain. Right, right.

Ignatius Grande  9:30

And I’ve already seen it where it’s, you know, I think positions that would have been in an office previously may now be remote, or they have the option of being remote or partial.

Marlene Gebauer  9:40

We struggled with a lot of that in terms of folks that are hourly employees. And, you know, there was a time where it’s just like, now we can’t do that. There’s too many problems and then COVID came and suddenly it’s like, well, we can make this happen.

Greg Lambert  9:56

It’s amazing how necessity really, really quickly creates an incentive. Yeah, cuz mostly it was HR. And it’s one of the things, one of the first things I said was that you know, that those rules that you had, especially for hourly employees where they can do certain things, and, you know, they had to take PTO in order to go and like, that’s over, you can you know, that genie is out of the bottle on that, and you can’t put it back in. And so, on your panel tomorrow with ethics, kind of what’s the overall overall theme on it?

Ignatius Grande  10:30

You know, we’re looking at from an AI, data privacy perspective, and, you know, really just, you know, again, all the data that’s out there, especially customer data that’s being being collected and used by companies, you know, where are the points where ethics comes into play? And, obviously, we’ve seen a lot of, you know, those stories in the news, you know, whether it be Facebook or Google, what are you all these companies have, that’s, they just have so much data, you know, there are issues. So anyway, we’re gonna have a discussion, talk about kind of what companies can be doing. To deal with this, these issues deal with the ethical issues that come up, there was

Marlene Gebauer  11:11

a session, I don’t know if it was today, or yesterday, and I, I wasn’t able to attend, but it was talking about, like, you know, data, you can gather from things like, like Slack and teams, and sort of, you know, sort of what’s in there that you might not know about and how to sort of call that information. So I think it’s, it’s a common, there’s a theme about, you know, data and privacy and sort of what’s, you know, acceptable to disseminate what’s not, you know, at this at this conference, right.

Ignatius Grande  11:40

And I do think that, you know, the remote working it for us, we do a lot get involved with a lot of forensic collections. And, you know, just, it’s more and more remote collections. And, you know, I think teams, you know, two years ago, what’s changed was not as big.

Greg Lambert  11:59

A horrible, it was horrible. Yes, that’s horrible. Yeah. It’s better. No, it is better. It’s a lot better now. But yeah, we, but like we were using zoom to do the podcast. So we actually, I had a personal license to zoom. So it wasn’t I

Marlene Gebauer  12:16

remember Skype, Skype. Well,

Greg Lambert  12:19

let me introduce you to teams. Microsoft sometimes takes a really good product and, and, and changes it. We’ll just leave it at that. Yes, leave it as well. I appreciate you stopping by and talking with us and any other any other kind of craziness or something that stood out to you about coming back with so many people

Marlene Gebauer  12:46

nuggets of wisdom? Yeah.

Ignatius Grande  12:48

I think, you know, it was refreshing because that, you know, I think that, like you said, there been so many false starts over the last two years that, you know, to kind of be back feel like it’s back to normal see familiar faces. I mean, that, you know, that’s the other thing is I you know, that this industry is, you know, you get to know, people you get you get, you know, have friends and relationships. Sure. And you know, yeah, and we keep in touch now, you know, it’s because you’ll have those remote meetings and have a zoom call,

Marlene Gebauer  13:20

you kind of know, like, okay, you know, I’m going to go to legal week, and I’m going to see, you know, these people and so that’s that was really disrupted. So that is a nice thing. Yeah,

Ignatius Grande  13:28

yeah. No, it’s It’s good to be back. And I’m hoping the spring only only leads to more. Not only good weather, but but more in person interaction. That’s

Greg Lambert  13:38

right. All right. So thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. So Marlene, I have Sorry, I’m going to move this camera so you can so professional, we can show you. I don’t know if I can if I can. Can you even talk to me? I can’t tell. Yeah, please do.

Marlene Gebauer  14:00

Man. Say this is fun. So I think i Nice to meet you.

Greg Lambert  14:05

Did you. Okay, thanks. So did you present once or twice?

Marlene Gebauer  14:12

I presented once. Okay.

Greg Lambert  14:13

So you and I were on a panel today. And where we talked with Lex Martynas. Carl Harris, about data analytics and what’s going on there. And I think that was pretty well received.

Marlene Gebauer  14:29

We I think people were very engaged. I mean, you know, you’re, you’re speaking and you’re kind of looking out and assessing the audience. And, you know, got a lot of nods, got some smiles. Got some laughs. And we had questions, good questions. So yeah, I think everybody I think everybody got something out of it.

Greg Lambert  14:45

Yeah, I think so too. And in, in kind of a theme and you’re hearing it across a lot of sessions now are the API’s. Yeah. So that I think the industry is really excited to have those in some of the opportunities So, vendors, if you’re not looking at allowing API access to your, to your information so that the law firms and other clients or customers can, can use that and integrate it into their internal data, I think you’re going to be asked for it a lot more.

Marlene Gebauer  15:18

Well, I’m looking forward to the sessions where folks start talking about what they’re doing with the API’s. You know, that’s, that’s sort of what I’m looking forward to. Yeah, that’s sort of the next step. It’s like, Yep, we’re gonna do it. And then here, okay, this is what we do with it. Yeah.

Greg Lambert  15:34

And so I’m going to pull out my crystal ball now. And predict that, because of the, the more influx of API’s across multiple platforms, there’s going to be a new industry, that’s going to be set up, and whether it’s consultants, data scientist, some kind of process management, folks that are going to come in and show you what you can be doing with this data. In fact, probably even setting that up for you, or creating third party products that integrate those API’s as as they come in and make it a little easier for you to set up. So that’s more of a, you know, just plug in and use rather than having to go through your IT or or your, we come to the product development team. There.

Marlene Gebauer  16:29

And, you know, I also think I mean, this is this is probably a perfect opportunity for freelancers, just sort of in firms to sort of think about freelancers, because, you know, we were talking earlier after, after the program, and, you know, some references were made to like, oh, there’s always data scientists on the call, or, you know, this firm hired, like, you know, a bunch of data scientists, which, you know, kudos to that firm, but not every firm is going to do that. And so again, like that’s, that’s a perfect opportunity to sort of develop a trusted relationship with with a freelancer who does this type of work, and who can work on a project basis, because it’s really kind of about implementing a solution. But it’s not about necessarily having someone on staff full time about that.

Greg Lambert  17:14

Yeah, who we who was, I’m drawing a blank on the name we had mayor, Matt, Matt Coke, Matthew McLeod, talking about that, and then maybe talk with him again, at some point on where they see that because he’s big on freelancing and having having your side gig or being able to do that. So it does sound like it’s a perfect environment for somebody to step in, and start working on it. So maybe, I don’t know, maybe we need to go hang our shingle and be the next data scientist.

Marlene Gebauer  17:51

Say, I’ll get right to work on that degree. Yeah. In my free time,

Greg Lambert  17:55

I will do that. Actually, there was something that I did pitch to Jeff Pfeiffer at Lexus on the way out the door from our session knows that it’d be interesting to have someone like a Lexus, or west or, or Thomson Reuters, or another big vendor, create some type of training and certification in doing the data analytics specifically, with with the API stuff. So

Marlene Gebauer  18:22

you know, maybe around language, and it’s funny, just, you must have read my mind, because I was also having a conversation after the presentation about certification and sort of the rise of certs and how so many people are getting certifications. And I think firms are focusing more on people that have certifications, because it’s a no, no, it’s like if, you know, if it’s a trusted, you know, vendor, like, you know, Microsoft or whatever, or, you know, a trusted organization, you know, everybody knows what the requirements are. And so if you pass that, you know, you have people understand that you have certain skills, a concrete understanding of certain types of skills that you have. So, it’s different than a degree, and it’s different than experience. Not that those things are, you know, not necessary anymore. But, you know, if you’re looking for someone with that, that can do a very discreet type of thing. You know, certifications might be the way to go.

Greg Lambert  19:21

Yeah, yeah. I’m not really sure why that hasn’t taken off. I mean, we used to do certifications early in that,

Marlene Gebauer  19:31

I think, I mean, I think it’s a it’s a it’s, it’s more of a burden on you know, your, your HR, your professional development group, anybody who manages people to, you know, make sure that they get all you know, things if it’s required, you know, and keeping track of who has what, you know, so it’s an extra layer. Not that, you know, again, I think it’s probably worth it. But, you know, it’s just another extra layer and just, you know, if it’s not something that’s been done before and sort of work gets done, then sometimes it’s, you know, harder to make the argument that yeah, we should be doing

Greg Lambert  20:05

that. Yeah. And so the other session that that I did on Tuesday, so I actually ended up stepping in and replacing someone on Marlene session. But on Tuesday, there was the three tracks, one for w double L, one for L two and one for ARMA. So interesting set of tracks, and each one I think had three sessions. And so the double A double L. sessions were really interesting, because it had, so the job was first session with I think he had June, you’d have on him June. Yeah. And, and so you know, it. And I think it we’re talking more on the knowledge management front on that, and what knowledge management kind of means. In it laugh because it knowledge management is the ultimate, it depends in the legal industry, because it’s, it’s so hard to have a consistent management across the industry. So it

Marlene Gebauer  21:09

covers so many things. It’s so broad that it, you know, again, this sort of goes back to like, what’s everybody’s pain point, and you got to like, focus on, you know, from a, from my perspective, what’s important, and sort of work from there. And I know, you know, there’s people who kind of want to have that more standardized, and, and I get it, that would make things a lot easier, but I just I feel like, you know, organizations are not cookie cutter. And people aren’t cookie cutter. So there’s there’s got to be some degree of flexibility there.

Greg Lambert  21:42

Yeah. And I’m trying to recall what the second I’ve slept since the second one do you have for me?

Marlene Gebauer  21:51

Day one, let’s see. We had you were talking about knowledge management, legal, technology and art of efficiency. And then there was a communication breakdown, leveraging tools to make relationships stick.

Greg Lambert  22:06

It was um, what was the double a double? Oh, one standard? They’re

Marlene Gebauer  22:09

both double a double. Okay. And then the rise of document automation. Yeah, that was no contract. That was my

Greg Lambert  22:15

that was yours. Yeah, I made videos. I had videos. It was really interesting. I like that you had videos. I mean, that’s very different. Yeah. I wasn’t sure how that was gonna play. But I really wasn’t sure whether or not we were actually going to be here. Because, yeah, it was. So what I did, actually, we were supposed to the conference was supposed to be at the beginning of February. And that was right in the middle, the big Omicron. And so we weren’t sure if it was going to go virtual. So I reached out to Thomson Reuters for the practical law. I reached out to Oh, legal legalization, legalization. And then I reached out to oh, shoot, who was the drumroll? The first one? Hello, thank you for hearing here in a second. This is why we don’t do it live this way. I don’t normally have it have a

Marlene Gebauer  23:06

I shouldn’t jinx it. But I’m like, impressed that we’re at we’re actually like, we’re not like big gaps. And we’re gonna say,

Greg Lambert  23:14

yeah, so talking about document automation, it was it was really well received. I was surprised it wasn’t sure what the audience would be like, it was packed room was packed. The I mean, there were people sitting on the floor, they had to bring in extra chairs. So that’s, that was a little weird, you know, intimidating. And yeah, good. Yeah. But in between, in a good way. And so really interesting to see the feedback come come from folks about what document automation means. And not just necessarily, you know, a transaction or litigation type thing. But there were people in the audience and I kind of swung and missed at a softball question where she were, a woman asked me about some alternative ways that the leveraging Document Document automation. And she actually talked about, I think, like, on her in processing of new employees and things like that they have document automation tools that are set up to do that.

Marlene Gebauer  24:14

And so do all the document work of onboarding, Dan. So

Greg Lambert  24:17

yeah, I mean, it’s so obvious that you can do it. But yeah, I didn’t answer that question. Or he had to come up after the session. And tell me

Marlene Gebauer  24:26

about it. Because you don’t I mean, yes, it makes perfect sense. But you know, you also, like, I think a lot of places you have to sort of weigh it and and you’re looking at it, like in terms of okay, how is this going to impact the bottom line? Like, how is this where’s the ROI? Where’s it going to impact either attorney, Attorney efficiency or, you know, Attorney profitability, and those are always kind of the first things that we always think of when we bring in tools like this, you know, we don’t think of okay, how can we make the administrative side you know, more efficient. Yeah. But that’s, that’s the beauty of some of these parts. products, it’s like, you know, you should be looking at it holistically, because that way it’s like, okay, you have one product, you have to buy like five different products. Okay, this one deals with HR. And this one deals with Attorney contracts. You know, you just have one.

Greg Lambert  25:12

Yeah, make sense. Any sessions you attended that? Stick out for you?

Marlene Gebauer  25:17

Yes. And I’m gonna look at my list. I’m gonna forget the names. Um, let’s see, where is it? Am I on the wrong side? I’m on the wrong side. Wait a minute. Doing with less optimizing your legal tech toolkit. I saw that this morning.

Greg Lambert  25:34

So sounds like the story of my life?

Marlene Gebauer  25:38

Well, you know, I went to this because I think, you know, I’m gonna have to, I wanted to hear what this panel had to say about this topic, because I think this is going to be something that I’m personally going to have to focus on. And they had some some great experiences that they shared and very, like a lot of, you know, they they definitely they included, you know, the the decision makers, they included the attorneys getting their feedback, but what I really loved is like, there’s there’s a real process that they shared, you know, that they’re really, then they have buy in for this, what they have buy in for this where they’re they’re kind of going through this, this process to understand every individual’s work process. And, and capturing that, so that in the future, they can kind of have those conversations. And to me, that’s, that’s gold, because I think everybody you talked to I mean, the challenge is, knowing what that particular individual’s practice needs. Because you know, you can’t just look at it more generically like an okay corporate attorney, or an m&a attorney. Like even within the m&a field, for example, you’re going to have the nuances depending on what they do. And they are capturing that. And once you have that, then those conversations I think flow a whole lot more easily. Yeah, so that was pretty cool.

Greg Lambert  27:05

Yeah. Any other one? Yes. You want me to do one more year? All right. So today, I sat in on one with our friend Toby Brown, and Kevin Cole. Angelo. Nancy, something to say that this is one of the names there.

Marlene Gebauer  27:25

The 131. No, this was the three

Greg Lambert  27:27

o’clock notice. Now there’s someone. Yeah, the 11.

Marlene Gebauer  27:31

Oh, the new wave of client service collaboration and key roles.

Greg Lambert  27:35

Yeah. And so the, the, the overall theme of that one was that just there’s ways that the legal ops team, the the allied professionals can be working with both internally with the attorneys in the teams that are working with their clients, and then also with the clients themselves. And, you know, kind of the big theme, and this is a theme for practically anything in life. And that is, don’t just don’t just do something, listen, and talk him have a conversation. Be be willing to get out there and meet with the clients and not just the not just the in house counsel would go meet with the procurement team, go meet with other powers that be within that organization and find out what those true pain points are. Sometimes it’s sometimes there’s a tech answer. Sometimes it’s just a process answer. And sometimes it’s just finding out there’s there’s things you know, you need to just tweak or you need to stop doing. And so if but if you don’t have those conversations, you’re just guessing. And very, very good. Kevin’s doing cool. Angelo’s doing some really interesting stuff with his company got acquired by the Law School. ls AC? Yeah, I’m sure I’m sorry, Kevin, I should I should know, other acronyms. We’ll put it we’ll put it in the show notes. But but they’re doing a lot with with training and and almost kind of like what is similar to what hotshots doing? Yeah, some of the short of doing it short videos and doing it for students. And in so it sounds sounds really interesting. And they’ve also combined with another company that kind of does the the metrics and data of how much it really costs to go to certain schools and what and what the chances of return on investment return and you know, what your chances of getting hired out of school, all that. I think something that a lot of us would have loved to have had before we went to law school.

Marlene Gebauer  29:48

I would have liked to have that before I went to law school. Sure. Yeah, sure. I’m looking I’m looking at Friday’s so we talked about data ethics. Yeah, it’s funny both like both sessions. Oh fest both sessions deal with ethics. That’s interesting. Let’s see. This isn’t the influential lawyer how legal leaders are driving ESG change? Yes. Geez might be interesting, hot topic. actionable DNI metrics that matter. This is tough. Like, you know, you want to go to both of those and they’re both at the same and they’re no, they’re not both at the same time. I sort of take that back there one after the other. Accelerating the funding for diverse legal technology startups. Data driven play booking. That could be interesting.

Greg Lambert  30:39

Yeah. Yeah, there’s so we still got another day. Yeah. So let’s let’s change gears here a little bit and talk about some fun stuff that we did this week. All right, so we we started off with a bang. We saw the Batman he said see the Batman and it’s long

Marlene Gebauer  30:55

it’s that’s all I have to say about it was long.

Greg Lambert  31:00

I’m still processing it. I thought Robert Robert Pattinson was was pretty good. So he Kravitz was was good. Kellen call him first.

Marlene Gebauer  31:11

Okay, we agree on that one. Yeah,

Greg Lambert  31:12

we agree on that one is unrecognized. There’s some there’s some car chase scenes in there that are very

Marlene Gebauer  31:17

good. I’m not a car chase person. But yeah, excellent car chase scenes.

Greg Lambert  31:22

Yeah, but I can tell you it was long. It was so

Marlene Gebauer  31:25

and and don’t. Don’t Yeah. Wait for the end credit. Yeah,

Greg Lambert  31:30

don’t do go. Do not wait for the it is not worth it. Such a letdown. The other thing we did was we in New York, when you’re in New York, you visit with friends. Right? Right? You do. And so just happen that there’s two nights we went out to Brooklyn. I know. Hang out with friends and eat. Lots of food. Lots of food. So one of my favorite things. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys know who you are. And thank you very much for your hospitality and having us having us out and enjoying some delicious, delicious,

Marlene Gebauer  32:02

delicious. Yeah. And great company. Great

Greg Lambert  32:04

company. A couple a couple of drinks, I think. Couple couple. So. All right. Well, anything else we want to cover? While we’re on?

Marlene Gebauer  32:13

I don’t know. I’m, I’m trying to think I think we’ve did a pretty good job here.

Greg Lambert  32:19

We do a good job. So overall, what was your comfort level?

Marlene Gebauer  32:24

I would say overall, I mean, if you’re gonna do a scale of one to 10, I would say I felt like an eight. I mean, I still like there’s I’m still masking up when when there’s sort of big like, right now I’m obviously not because it’s not going to work. But like if I’m in, in the crowd, I am in a crowd, like some of the sessions if they’re not really, you know, well, you know, super attended, then I sometimes won’t wear it. But if I’m sort of walking the halls, or I’m in the exhibit hall, I still wear the mask. And it’s not so much that like, Oh, I’m afraid I’m gonna get COVID. But it’s just it’s just kind of like I don’t, I don’t get sick. Right. I do that. So

Greg Lambert  32:57

that’s great. Yeah, in fact, I’ve talked to a couple of people that said, you know, that, even in normal times, they they leave this conference sick. So Right. Yeah. So it may make sense. They did require you to show your ID and vaccination card very strict about COVID. Yeah, the lady requirement lady at the door was she was she has this

Marlene Gebauer  33:18

business, no nonsense. I saw some guy trying to talk his way out of it. And she was having none of it.

Greg Lambert  33:24

No, no, she had one job. And she was doing it was right. Good for her. Yeah, I would say I was probably, you know, a seven, eight, somewhere around there. Because I, you know, I know. Being around people that were fully vaccinated. Still not, you know, it’s not 100% It’s not 100% Everyone knows that. I think people were, you know, you kind of judge people’s comfort level on human contact. And I, I posted I think a tweet or something where I was like, if this is going to be me going to the conference, or I’m just going to be like, everybody, there were hugs there was as there were hugs, I can’t help it, I can’t help it. So, but there were people that, you know, fist bumps or elbow taps and things like that. And it was just truly

Marlene Gebauer  34:09

truly like, you could just see it on people’s faces, like truly so happy to see one another.

Greg Lambert  34:16

Yeah. You know, and I know there was talk of it.

Marlene Gebauer  34:19

I think we used to take it for granted and after this. You know, people are not people are just so grateful for

Greg Lambert  34:25

1. Yeah. There’s and I don’t know if other conferences are still thinking about it. But I know there was talk about a kind of a a traffic light signal that you could have so on your hold it up. Yeah, you were on or on your badge. So it’d be you know, it’d be like green Give me a hug. Yellow give me give me a fist bump, red. Don’t touch Don’t touch me. Maybe we should just have that in life in general. Just if I got it. If I’ve got a stop sign on a little card and you can like switch it. Yeah. Yeah, so Well, I think we can wrap this up. We were hoping we could get some other people, but we had to move, you get kicked out of original location because they were throwing a young professionals party up there. And we’re professionals. Yes, we are a parent, apparently, we missed one of the criteria. Yeah, I’ll let the let the listeners figure that one out. But this is kind of fun. We should maybe do we should do this again? Maybe I’ll probably do it at WWL. If you’re there if yes. And, and, and tried, maybe, maybe we just try to do it some week just to do it.

Marlene Gebauer  35:40

I think that’s a good idea. And you know, any, if anybody has any ideas, IF listeners have you have ideas for topics that you’d like us to live broadcast

Greg Lambert  35:49

on using to lie about?

Marlene Gebauer  35:52

Yes. And that, you know, please, please, please let us know. Because we’re always looking for good, good content. And if there’s something that’s particularly work particularly well live, let us know.

Greg Lambert  36:05

Yeah, I’m looking, I’m looking for the theme music so we can so we can roll out there we go. So again, if you are a listener, please go ahead and share this with with other people I know we’re, if you’re on listening to it now. But we’ll put this out as a podcast probably tonight or tomorrow, depending on when when I have time. And and then if you share it with friend if you’re not subscribed, please subscribe. Give us one of those five star reviews we haven’t had. We haven’t had a review in a long time. So

Marlene Gebauer  36:38

yeah, we need some we need

Greg Lambert  36:40

five stars only

Marlene Gebauer  36:43

accept nothing less. Yes, absolutely nothing but the best. So if you want to if you want to tweet at us, I’m at Gebauer M,

Greg Lambert  36:50

and I’m at glamour act. And you can reach us on Twitter on LinkedIn and other other places as well. So thank you, Marlene. And, of course, the music that you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca So thank you Jerry.

Sarah Sutherland from CanLII joins us this week to talk about her new book, Legal Data and Information in Practice: How Data and the Law Interact. We have a fun and informative discussion about how the legal industry, ranging from courts, firms, law schools and start-ups are leveraging data within their organizations and how new technologies are allowing us to do amazing things with data that we could only dream about a few short years ago. While many of us in the law understand the messiness of the data we produce and collect, however Sutherland points out that there are many industries where the data is messy, and they are using that data to increase the value of the services they provide.

That being said, there are still a number of ways in which we create and collect data that need improvement to support current and potential uses. Leveraging data in better ways helps the legal industry across the spectrum. Whether that is the large law firms assisting global corporations, or helping individuals with access to justice needs. Sutherland’s hope is that a legal industry that has better structure data results in better outcomes for everyone needing legal services. Sarah recently wrote about a hypothetical law firm where she quantified the value of improved information and data.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts |  Spotify

Information Inspirations

A recent leak of confidential court records in California from Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s Odyssey Case Management System is having a wider affect that the court initially thought. It turned out that third party data collection also gained access to the information, including attorney disciplinary records and juvenile records. In addition, no one is really certain if the leak was limited to just the California courts.

Lex Machina and LexisNexis recently released their latest Law Firms Activity Report, which surveys the most active law firms in federal district court.

You know what we are missing? Another Law School in Florida! Enter The Jacksonville University College of Law to become Florida’s twelfth law school in the state.

You know what else we have been missing? Legal Explainer TikToks. But now we have them thanks to Harvard Law Spouses, Maclen Stanley and Ashleigh Ruggles, both 2018 Harvard law grads, They published a book last summer called The Law Says What?: Stuff You Didn’t Know About the Law (but Really Should!), and a TikTok page spun off of the book. Perhaps we need a Geek in Review TikTok page?? Or, perhaps not!!

Contact Us

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert.

Voicemail: 713-487-7270

Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.

Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer  0:15

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

Greg Lambert  0:21

And I’m Greg Lambert. Well, Marlene, I kind of made a promise out on Twitter without necessarily running it by you first.

Marlene Gebauer  0:29

Yeah, I saw that.

Greg Lambert  0:33

So, next week, while we’re at LegalWeek, I kind of I kind of mentioned that we are going to try and do a live episode while we’re out there. So and I thought it’d be kind of cool to do it, because next week will be our 150th episode if we if we are able to pull it off.

Marlene Gebauer  0:50

Yeah, you know, I’m always up for a challenge. And this is really a good stretch goal. You know, plus, it seems from Twitter that a lot of folks really want us to do it.

Greg Lambert  0:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, I saw a lot of people want to drop in and bomb us. So…

Marlene Gebauer  1:04

I think that’s great.

Greg Lambert  1:07

Well, we’ll try and pull everything together. So if you if you’re interested in listening to a live show, look for more information on Twitter as we tried to make my unilateral promise of reality.

Greg Lambert  1:22

Well, this week, we have Sarah Sutherland from Canley. She joins us to talk about her new book, Legal Data and Information in Practice: How Data and the Law Interact. So we have a really fun and informative discussion about how the legal industry ranging from courts and firms law schools, and startups are leveraging data within their organization, and how new technologies are allowing us to do amazing things with data that we could only dream about a few years ago.

Marlene Gebauer  1:53

So stick around for that. But now let’s get to our information inspirations.

Greg Lambert  2:00

Well, it seems that the state of California had a major leak of confidential court records including juvenile records and confidential attorney discipline documents due to a security glitch within the State Bar of California through their Tyler Technologies Odyssey case management system. And while the California courts seem to have caught the issue and remove the confidential and juvenile records from their site, these records had already actually been scraped by a third party called JudyRecords. So the court issued a statement saying that it appears that the previously unknown security vulnerability and the Tyler Technologies Odyssey case management portal allowed the nonpublic records to be unintentionally swept up by JudyRecords. When they attempted to access the public records using a unique access method. The State Bar is working with Tyler Technologies, the maker of the system to remediate the security vulnerability, which we believe may not be unique to the state bar’s implementation and could impact other users of the Odyssey systems. So on top of that, the website JudyRecords which scrapes state and federal court records has even issued their own statement on the issue in which they are saying that out of an abundance of caution, the search functionality of the site is disabled, while any possible case access issues are resolved. Additionally, direct access to cases of the affected case management system have also been disabled. So you know, I think that portion that I read in California statement, which said that other states may also be affected by Tyler Technologies Odyssey system. I think that’s going to be a little bit of a stressor for courts as they dig through to see if they too were experiencing any kind of data leak on this issue.

Marlene Gebauer  3:58

Yeah, greed. Lex Machina and LexisNexis recently released their latest Law Firms Activity Report, which surveys the most active law firms in the federal district court. This report focuses on the three year period from 2019-2021 and analyzes law firm activity in 16 practice areas and in cases caused by COVID-19. The final section of the report includes an analysis of the overall most active law firms in federal district court. So a couple highlights. There are metrics around major employment firms that appeared on the most active list by practice area, by most active firms involved with cases by COVID-19, and most active firms overall. And class actions and suits, excluding multi district legislation and related to a particular event, continue to be impactful in the overall landscape of litigation, and the area’s influenced our products liability, torts, and insurance practice areas.

Greg Lambert  4:56

Yeah, COVID brought us some high activity

Marlene Gebauer  5:00

Exactly. And will continue to,

Greg Lambert  5:02

Especially as you see the AmLaw 100 and 200 results come out over the next couple of months. You know you’ll see how busy.

Greg Lambert  5:10

Well, Marlene, you know what we’re missing?

Marlene Gebauer  5:13

What?

Greg Lambert  5:14

Another law school in Florida.

Marlene Gebauer  5:17

Of course we are.

Greg Lambert  5:17

Yeah. So with some of the kidding aside, you know, there actually hasn’t been a new law school open since 2014. And in the meantime, Florida Coastal and Indiana Tech law schools shuttered over the past few years. You know, the new school is going to be located in Jacksonville, Florida, and will be named the Jacksonville University College of Law. It’s a private institution, but it’s getting a chunk of change from the City of Jacksonville, which is ponying up $5 million in public funding to get Florida’s 12th law school opened. In a somewhat related bit of news, I think maybe you saw this as well. Congratulations to our friends up at the University of North Texas Law School for getting full ABA accreditation this week. So yeah,

Marlene Gebauer  6:07

Good job, guys. Congratulation! So you know what else we’ve been missing, Greg?

Greg Lambert  6:11

What else?

Marlene Gebauer  6:12

Legal explainer TikToks.

Greg Lambert  6:16

My life is now complete.

Marlene Gebauer  6:18

But now we have them thanks to Harvard Law spouses. Maclen Stanley, a 2018. Harvard grad, published a book last summer called the law says what stuff he didn’t know about law, but really should and realize he needed help to promote it. So he enlisted the help of his wife, Ashleigh Ruggles, also a 2018. Harvard Law grad. Now, Ashleigh was a little reluctant, but after realizing she wasn’t going to have to dance, got on board. The videos started as promotionals for the book, but they quickly turned into legal explainer videos regarding current legal topics, like vaccine mandates, for example. So there’s a cool side note, both Ashleigh and Maclen took a class at Harvard on design thinking, and we’re big on design thinking, right. And it’s called legal innovation through design thinking. And it’s taught by Professor of Practice and director of executive education, Scott Westfahl. And the couple say that the experience has really influenced their TikTok endeavor. Now, they’ve been invited to speak on the national news channels and at conferences around the country. So maybe we can get them on the pod.

Greg Lambert  7:23

Maybe that’s what we need next. Marlene is a The Geek in Review, TikTok.

Marlene Gebauer  7:28

There we go.

Greg Lambert  7:30

Yeah, I don’t think so. All right. Well, that wraps up this week’s information inspirations.

Greg Lambert  7:42

Today’s guest discusses her new book on legal data and how the legal industry should better leverage the information we gather ways to improve our own practices and business objectives, as well as to better serve the markets, which have been sorely ignored and underserved for years.

Marlene Gebauer  8:00

We’d like to welcome Sarah Sutherland, President and CEO at the Canadian Legal information Institute, often referred to as CanLII, and author of Legal Data and Information in Practice: How Data and the Law Interact, which was just released. Sarah, welcome to The Geek in Review.

Sarah Sutherland  8:16

Thank you, Marlene.

Marlene Gebauer  8:18

So the book is on legal data. So let’s start off with a really broad question. How do you define legal data, at least as far as you describe it in your writing?

Sarah Sutherland  8:29

I gave legal data purposefully a fairly broad definition in in this book. And so that would include any kind of documents that are produced by courts or legislatures. So the entire corpus of the primary law, all the court filings, bills, but also things like all of lawyers work products, statistical data around the court processes, or lawyers work and time sheets, all those things, I purposely wanted to include them all, because I think they’re all part of the wider context. And I think that as we move into integrating data into our work, it’s important to have this wider view of what it all could be, so that we can really understand the potential and then we can start narrowing it down into what we actually want to do at any particular moment or project. If you read this book, my goal is you will be conversant in the issues. You know, if you’re if you’re supporting others work, you’ll understand what they’re doing. And you’ll understand what’s possible so you know where to direct your efforts in order to move forward.

Greg Lambert  9:49

I know many of us, including yourself have talked about the importance of leveraging data in the legal industry for many, many years now. You know, we’ve seen it in others industries. But why is it that the legal industry seems to be so reluctant to start integrating the data into our business practices?

Sarah Sutherland  10:09

I think that there’s quite a few reasons, I think one of the reasons is a bit more esoteric, and that, you know, people who are drawn to the law tend to be wordy people.

Greg Lambert  10:20

That’s true.

Sarah Sutherland  10:21

And so, you know, we, we tend to be language focused, and not so much knowledge/ mathematics focused. And so there’s a little bit of a cultural disconnect between the people who happen to be in the system, and these applications. But I think that also, the thing about the law is that we have such long timelines. You know, if we look to the common law is going back, you know, 1000 years, it’s, we’re approaching 1000 years of the Common Law. And so we have these complexities, you know, the, our courts go back to the medieval court, where you would go and you would appear before the local lord or the king and ask to have your your case adjudicated like this is, it’s deep, and it’s messy, and it’s evolved over time. And a lot of the processes that we have developed not as a way to support legal research, or to even I think, support the process of going to court or to practice the law, but to provide a record that good governance has been done. So with the primary law in particular, it’s just, it’s a way to keep track of everything, and to look through all the stages, and that all the T’s have been crossed, and the i’s have been dotted as we’ve been governed. And it’s messy, because there’s a lot of people involved. And so we end up with these large complicated documents that are built with a whole bunch of authors, and a whole bunch of copies. And it’s just not easy.

Greg Lambert  11:55

Yeah, I think I think saying messy, kind of, encompasses the

Marlene Gebauer  11:59

precedent takes such a…

Sarah Sutherland  12:01

Yeah, and is, it’s because they reflect human cultures and human societies, and the way that we choose to live together as communities, and human beings are messy.

Greg Lambert  12:13

Well, and there was one other thing that and Marlene and I had talked about this a week or so ago, and that was, even simple things are hard to track and put data points on such as, you know, how, how many wins, has your litigation team done, you know, what was the win? So yeah, being able to define things. So I can, I can see where messy is a good term for it.

Sarah Sutherland  12:38

Another thing is that we’re dealing with language, and human language is enormously complex. And so to analyze these documents, where you have, you know, court judgments with, you know, they can be 100 pages more than 100 pages long, and you’re going to actually analyze them as a whole and compare them to others. The computing power just hasn’t been there. It’s only recently that that kind of computing power, is there in a way that would support it.

Marlene Gebauer  13:10

Yeah. And I mean, you know, precedent is so important in this industry. I mean, you have to, you know, you have to keep it all and you have to keep it going way back, because you don’t know if you know, precedent will change or you know if it is, you know, what are you going to go back to make that argument.

Sarah Sutherland  13:29

Exactly.

Marlene Gebauer  13:31

One of the issues we’ve discussed before on the podcast is that, while we may be swimming in an ocean of data within law firms, courts and other parts of the legal industry, we aren’t exactly known for having the cleanest of data to work with the oceans polluted. How do you convince the powers that be not to let this stop you from compiling and extracting, analyzing and leveraging data in our business and legal practices?

Sarah Sutherland  14:00

I think, to pull back a little bit from the question, I think that the problem of messy data is something that everybody who deals with data has. If you ever talked to someone who’s doing dealing with life science data, or anything else, I think 90% or more than 90% of their time is actually spent cleaning their data before they get started analyzing it. So that’s not a problem that’s unique to us. I think the compelling element for this is the benefits that can be had. So if we think about a law firm, there are enormous potential benefits for being able to provide better answers to people. I did an analysis a few years ago based on some business principles about you know, kind of optimizing information at various decision points and how much it would actually be worth in kind of an overly simplistic hypothetical law firm. And the numbers that I came up with were enormous. It made so much difference, to improve the quality of advice to clients, even 1% or 2%. So that could be, you know, optimizing advice at some stage, it could be integrating better processes that would require some kind of checks and balances along the way. It could be trying to find the bottom performing lawyers and targeting them for increased training. All of these things have enormous potential to increase the value of work for clients, and in return the value of the client relationships for the law firms. For governments and courts, I think that the argument is, it’s clear that our laws are not applied equitably, that there are, you know, there are differences in outcomes. And without understanding exactly what they are, it can be difficult to know how to remedy it. So a better understanding of data would allow us to better implement the systems that we would need in order to govern more justly and more efficiently.

Marlene Gebauer  16:15

So you know, in that instance, what you’re saying is sort of identify the problem using data and then work backwards to solve?

Sarah Sutherland  16:23

Yes. And potentially, over time, if there could be a practice of experimental design within the law, there could be the potential that instead of having people say, well, we’ll do this. So we’ll do that. And that will solve this or that problem. This way, we could actually have something like a randomized control trial, that would allow some kind of evidence based assessment of what different potential legal interventions would lead to.

Greg Lambert  16:53

You know, Sarah’s as I was reading through the book, I found chapters four and five. And I highly recommend them for any of the data wonks out there, because you dive in on data analysis techniques, in chapter four. And then in chapter five, you do interpreting legal data. And, you know, I think a lot of us in the industry, know that we have opportunities to leverage data, but we may not know where to even start. So what are some techniques that you’ve seen or think that we can work with the data that we have, and use that as a starting point?

Sarah Sutherland  17:33

I think that in many cases, we aren’t ready to actually use the data that we have. So I think that we will probably need to explore ways of collecting and finding data before that can move forward. And

Greg Lambert  17:49

Okay. That went a different direction.

Sarah Sutherland  17:52

Sorry. But then going forward, I think, once that is done, there could be things like standard business analysis that would, you know, allow law firms to optimize and, you know, start to integrate some business practices that would perhaps, look at making more standardized documents. Using the data to do better predictive systems that would allow firms to work better, faster, more efficiently, and perhaps with higher quality. You know, there’s a lot of products that exist already. So things like personal injury damages, or sentencing, cost awards, those kinds of data points have been used for years. And, you know, there’s commercial services that you can buy that provide those numbers. And, you know, there’s different ways to, to parse that.

Greg Lambert  18:44

Yeah, jury verdicts, I think, would be something.

Sarah Sutherland  18:47

Yes. Any of those things. And I think there are getting to be outward looking machine learning applications that allow plain language to be to be input. I think at this point, most of the things that you’re going to get off the shelf that you’re just going to import your content into are going to be more proofs of concept rather than something that you’re gonna be able to deploy. But it’s definitely worth exploring. And once you kind of see what can be done with what you have, it can start giving you a better idea of how to move forward. But I think that, in the immediate term, the most promising systems will likely be for research within academia. I think that there’s a great deal of room for academics to explore things like the structure of language, how we talk about different groups of people. How do different attributes of the judges the way they speak or write, how do they affect outcomes? These kinds of discussions are very important to explore and the this academic research will start to point the way for deployment in the legal industry and in government as it’s in process.

Marlene Gebauer  20:06

So I have a follow up question because you’re, you’re touching on what I was going to ask. So, you know, we hear a lot of buzzwords when it comes to legal data. So things like predictive coding, or machine learning, natural language processing, and you know, of course, the catch all, you know, artificial intelligence. How are you seeing these technologies working in the industry? And, you know, how much of it is real? And how much of it is just hype?

Sarah Sutherland  20:35

Well, I think, artificial intelligence in particular, it’s not really a technical term, it’s a, you know, it’s a

Greg Lambert  20:44

You wouldn’t happen to think it’s marketing term, would you?

Sarah Sutherland  20:48

It’s a marketing. In some instances, it’s synonymous with magic, the way people use it. And so, once we think of it that way, it’s not, it’s not technical. So I will pull back from that one, though, the technology, you know, the technologies that are grouped in that grab bag are, are important and useful. I think the natural language processing is, it’s come a long way. And I think it’s is going to continue to proceed, and it makes a big difference in the way things will be handled going forward. And it will allow us to do things with the primary law with documents with internal documents that were never possible before. And this can be many things. It can be next sentence prediction, it could be extracting statistical information or other numerical information from plain text documents, it could be any number of things kind of fall in that group. And I think that’s where a huge amount of progress is going to be coming forward. With machine learning, there’s kind of a couple areas of research that I would kind of group machine learning in and one of them is essentially enhanced statistical analysis of a particular data set. And another is more along the lines of the natural language processing. And so I think that, as I said, the natural language processing is going to be this huge element going forward. The statistical analysis is important. But I think in many cases, in law, we’re unlikely to ever have the kinds of large datasets of statistical information that we would need for that kind of application. So if you think of something like Amazon’s predictor of whether you’re actually going to buy something, whether they should, you know, start the process of getting ready to ship to you. That is very in depth, they have millions and millions of interactions to base that on. And in most cases, in law, we’re dealing with interactions that people have with other people, whether it’s mediated through writing or some other way. And so as long as we’re dealing with people and people, we’re always going to end up with a relatively small number. And so I don’t have a huge amount of… I don’t want to say I don’t have optimism, but I just don’t think it’s going to be as widely adopted in in law as natural language processing. I think that instead, we’re more likely to deal with more traditional statistical analysis, which would be something that you would learn if you took statistics in college or university, just because we don’t need to process datasets that large.

Marlene Gebauer  23:53

What about like neural networks and conceptual types of searching? Where do you see that going?

Sarah Sutherland  23:59

I think that’s an important development. I think it’s going to be more widely deployed. And it’s going to be more widely deployed in organizations that are smaller. It won’t require such huge amounts of investment going forward. Because, you know, these applications, many of them are open source, you can just you can download them. And if you have the computing power, you’re willing to drop several grand on, you know, Amazon server space or whatever system, you can get this running if you have the expertise. And so I think that creates a lot of opportunity for many smaller systems to be to work better. And I think that many of the organizations that are doing that work, see the opportunity to have that work, use again. So I think that that will probably be happening is that these neural networks will kind of proliferate and we’ll have more that are particular to law. And so the work better.

Greg Lambert  25:03

And one other factor neck external data. We’re seeing a lot more of the legal vendors being, or are opening up parts of their of their databases through API’s, do you think that this external data may help with either cleaning up or improving the internal data?

Sarah Sutherland  25:28

I think it’s entirely possible, it depends on what you want to do. Having large data sets of legal language will help with things like the neural nets, with all these applications, because we need training data. And so within many organizations, even a large law firm, I suspect that it’s difficult to get enough data to actually have the training data as well as the production data. And you don’t necessarily want to pull out, you know, 20, or 30% of all your internal data to not be processed in your system. And so, for your testing, and so I think that if you can train it on these external sources, if the external sources are robust and ready, it has the potential to make a lot of these internal projects more possible.

Greg Lambert  26:25

Sarah, you, you’ve been at CanLII for a number of years now, you know, and there’s this goal there of making Canadian law more accessible. What is it that governments could be doing to make information and legal data points more accessible to the public? And are there specific things that that you would fix if you had the power to fix it?

Sarah Sutherland  26:50

I didn’t know you were gonna give me a magic wand like this?

Greg Lambert  26:53

Well, you get the magic wand now, be ready, because we’re gonna ask you to pull out a crystal ball later.

Sarah Sutherland  26:58

Okay. Okay. I think I would really like to see governments put in the effort and the time to publish documents in ways that support current and potential uses. Court cases should be readily created, you know, and disseminated from the courts in ways that support things like accessibility for people who need to use screen readers or other applications like that. That these things should be done from the beginning. And they should be robust enough that as we move forward, these, you know that the documents can be used in more ways into the future. And so a good example of this, that I explored in my book was the publishing system in Singapore, where years ago, they looked at, you know, how to structure their judgments, and to have all the judgment structured in the same way, you know, the sections are tagged properly with XML tags so that you can actually kind of publish and parse and understand and use those documents as data in a much more robust way. As opposed to the situation in the United States or Canada, where it’s much more artisanal. And there’s, you know, that the judges can kind of format their documents to some degree, how they choose. And there’s a certain amount of judicial independence that I do understand. They shouldn’t necessarily be forced to do everything exactly the way that

Greg Lambert  28:37

That they’re still publishing and WordPerfect?

Sarah Sutherland  28:40

Yes, yes. And so to have those kinds of things handled, I think would make a huge difference, because it’s very difficult and expensive to retrofit data collections. I would like to see governments invest in research and development in law to move between, you know, the primary research that can go on in academia and commercialization in the same way that there is for the life sciences. So that these applications are coming through and are regularly developed and move forward in the way that they would be in another discipline. But we just don’t really have like a research lab. You know, there’s no government research in law in the same way. I would like to see governments and courts take responsibility for addressing the tensions between privacy rights and access to legal information in creative ways. So instead of making the privacy interests more exposed, and reducing access to legal information, I would like to see go the other way we can increase access and protect people’s personal needs.

Marlene Gebauer  29:51

Alright, so continuing with the magic theme. Before we go, we want you to pull out your crystal ball and peer into the future for us. What do you see happening in regards to how the legal industry will expand and better leverage data over the next five years or so?

Sarah Sutherland  30:12

I think that my forecast is that we will have an increased market size for the legal industry as a whole, because there’s a very large unserviced market for legal problems that there’s a lot of people who perhaps can’t afford to have, you know, a fully lawyer mediated experience with a lawyer, but who has some money to help solve their problems. And I think the way that we can accomplish that partly is through increased productivity. So I think the data will allow work to be faster and more exact. And this will allow services to be cheaper. So I don’t think there will still be big corporations and individuals with big complex legal problems. I don’t think that’s in doubt. But there’s a lot of people who have problems that are very complicated for them personally, that aren’t necessarily all that complicated legally. And I think there’s a lot of room there to bred out legal services to help them. And it’s not going to be as profitable, but if the productivity grows enough, it might be an opportunity to build some really robust businesses in there. I hope that there will continue to be more research and investment into born digital legal data. So I would like to see systems that for example, you know, remove unnecessary ambiguity from the law, so that we don’t have to help make a fuss about something that, you know, is ambiguous for no purpose. But then to also say, in legislation, for example, there’s often a legitimate reason why you would have ambiguity where you could say, we’re not going to lay out every possible outcome in this law before we pass it. So this is where it’s appropriate to have human judgment step in and it could go to court or however you want to deal with it. And then we just come back to publishing the laws in more structured ways, from a computing standpoint. For artificial intelligence and machine learning, I think there’s many applications that exist right now. So, you know, people are trying to predict court outcomes and, you know, do writing assist technologies, and all these things. And I think those will all continue. But I don’t really see a future where, you know, human judgment, and, you know, all these decisions are going to be made based on AI recommendations, because most things that go to court, go to court because they’re complicated, and novel. And machine learning applications don’t deal very well with things that are novel and complicated. And so, you know, simple things, I think can be increasingly dealt with through machine learning. But hopefully, that will save the time of people who worked in the legal system to devote their efforts to solving bigger problems.

Greg Lambert  33:25

That sounds good. And I think people are happy to learn that there will be no robot lawyers in the next five years. Well, Sarah Sutherland, CEO and President at CanLII, as well as the author of the brand new book, Legal Data and Information in Practice: How Data and the Law Interact. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.

Marlene Gebauer  33:50

Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Sutherland  33:51

Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Marlene, I was very happy to join you today.

Marlene Gebauer  33:58

So, Greg, you know, love to talk about data and you know, data, like we’re definitely data wonks. We are her audience.

Greg Lambert  34:08

Yeah, it was a shame. You know, we tried to get her on a few weeks ago, right, as the book was being released, but, man, it’s just been crazy. So I’m glad she was able to hang on and come, make sure she got on the show.

Marlene Gebauer  34:22

Yeah. And so I agree 100% What she’s saying in terms of the neural networks and conceptual searching and sort of having these opportunities in these small organizations. And I even think there’s opportunity and for some larger applications, particularly in the States. I mean, we see some of the large players already in e-discovery, I mean, conceptual searching is has been around for a while, and we see things like CaseTexts, with their new enhanced capacities. So I do think that particularly here in the States and also in Europe, you’re going to see a lot of that type of development.

Greg Lambert  34:55

Yeah. And I think what you know, one of the things she was focused in on was, it’s affordable for the smaller ones where before it wouldn’t necessarily have been affordable. And I think that’s one of the hidden benefits that we’re seeing with the amount of processing power that’s out there. And things like, as much as we complain about Amazon for other things when it comes to their cloud storage, I think those types of opportunities for smaller organizations, and firms, and governments really opens up the ability to play with the data that you have.

Greg Lambert  35:30

Well, thanks again to Sarah Sutherland, from CanLII, and the author of Legal Data and Information and Practice: How Data and the Law Interact, for taking the time to talk with us. Thanks, Sarah.

Marlene Gebauer  35:41

Yeah, everybody, go out and buy the book. And of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter.

Greg Lambert  35:56

and I can be reached at @glambert on Twitter.

Marlene Gebauer  35:59

Or you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert  36:11

Thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene, I’m gonna go crunch some data.

Marlene Gebauer  36:14

crunch crunch crunch

Greg Lambert  36:16

Talk to you later

Marlene Gebauer  36:21

Bye