The Geek In Review

Adam Curphey's new book, The Legal Team of the Future: Law+ Skills guides the reader through the need for less silos in legal practice and much more reliance upon teams and collaborative efforts. The idea of a "Law+" model for the profession brings in the essential processes of adding people, business, change, and technology to the law and creating legal teams to solve legal problems. Curphey's experiences at law firms like White & Case LLP, Reed Smith LLP, and Mayer Brown LLP helped provide insights into what worked and didn't work in legal innovation. His membership on the O-Shaped Lawyer Steering Board also provided the human-centric skills needed for the integration of teams into an industry filled with accomplished individuals used to going it alone. This expansion of the T-Shaped and the Delta Model Lawyers brings in more of that human interaction that is needed in today's complex legal environment. The Legal Team of the Future: Law+ Skills also lays out multiple case studies and examples of collaboration, teamwork, and professional progression. We talk about some of the case studies along with Adam Curphey's view into his crystal ball on what is on the horizon for the legal industry in terms of legal innovation. LVNx Crystal Ball Answer This week, Purvi Sanghvi from Paul Hastings, and a current Legal Value Network Executive Board Member, explains how the legal industry may approach a potential economic downturn in 2023, and how that must be different from the 2008 or the 2020 approaches on previous challenges to the profession. Links to Order The Legal Team of the Future: Law+ Skills Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the US and the UK  Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7821 (note the NEW NUMBER!) Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks

Four speakers and a moderator were presenting at a conference.  That sounds like the beginning of a joke, but according to the 2022 ILTACon Conference Co-Chair, Martha Breil, that type of conference presentation just won't draw in the next generation of conference attendees. Workshops, hands-on experiences, and interactive presentations are needed for conferences to stay relevant as we emerge from the two and a half years of lost conferences due to COVID.  While ILTACon made an appearance in 2021, it was this year's conference which was extremely successful. With nearly 3,000 attendees, the conference held at the National Harbor, MD, was completely sold out (thanks to those pesky fire codes!) Breil was very happy with how she and the team of ILTA staffers and volunteers pulled together the 2022 ILTACon and shares with us some of the experiences and comments from the event.  Legal Conferences are a collaboration of Association leaders, members, volunteers, as well as partnerships with vendors and sponsors. As more and more conferences take place over the next few years, there will be different expectations from all of those different groups on how to attract attendees, volunteers, and sponsors. Once the honeymoon of 2022 is over, those expectations will need to be met to continue making conferences, and the money they bring in to organizations like ILTA, a success. LVNx Crystal Ball Answer Speaking of conferences, Greg just returned from the Legal Value Network eXperience in Chicago with a fresh batch of answers to our Crystal Ball Question. First up is Kate Boyd, COO at Sente Advisors on the new generation of professionals and the diversity of experiences and knowledge they are bringing to the legal industry. Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert (We have stickers... tweet Greg for more info!) Voicemail: 713-487-7821 (note the NEW NUMBER!) Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music by Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

This week we have Debbie Reynolds, "The Data Diva," join us to discuss the current state of data regulations, privacy, access, and what's on the horizon for data in the legal industry. Debbie is a 2022 ABA Women in Legal Tech Honoree and the host of The Data Diva Talks Privacy Podcast. According to Debbie, there is exponential growth going on in technology and the types of data that is being captured. At the same time, governments across the globe are trying to find ways of regulating how businesses and organizations can capture and use data they gather from individuals. These two event are not coordinated so it has created a "Wild West" situation where the law is trying to catch up to the realities of data gathering in the business world. Training on data security is also lagging behind what is really needed today. Most training on data security is framed around the idea that "data security is everyone's responsibility." Reynold's response to that is unless you are more specific about what it is you need people to do in regards to data security, then it turns out that "everyone's responsibility is actually no one's responsibility."  As technology advances beyond encryption, satellite integration, IoT devices, and morphs into the Metaverse, the types of data produced and gathered is going to completely overwhelm any government's ability to regulate it. The Data Diva thinks that if we don't start creating more transparency when it comes to individual's data privacy, it's just going to get more and more complicated than it is right now. AALL Crystal Ball Answer Wolters Kluwer's Anand Daga is our last AALL Crystal Ball response. His view of how the legal information industry will change in the next two to five years revolves around how the information is delivered to the end users. He sees things in much smaller chunks of information delivered to the researchers in shorter, practical methods in ways that value the practitioner's time. At Legal Value Network eXperience Greg is going to LVNx this week and will have The Geek in Review stickers to hand out. So if you're in Chicago at LVNx, be on the lookout and prepared to answer our Crystal Ball Question! Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7270 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

This week's guest, HBR Consulting's Axelle Flemming, stresses that "Intentional Leadership" creates leaders who "own their purpose." And a purpose is separate from a business "goal." Axelle's experience showed her that when a leader truly knew what their purpose was, the purpose they were trying to achieve, they went to that level of execution. In addition to being an Intentional Leader, that must be balanced with the wellness of the organization and its people. In today's work environment, we are in 24/7 fight or flight mode and intentional leaders understands that challenge. Leaders also see beyond their own goals and purpose and see other people's goals and purpose as well.  On Thursday, September 15th, Axelle Flemming is presenting a Keynote presentation at HBR's Legal Information + Knowledge Services (LINKS) Conference, on this very issue. She "sprinkles" in some of the spice of her talk her on the podcast, but will bring the "secret sauce" to the LINKS Conference.  Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert, along with John DiGilio will wrap up the conference through a discussion of Axelle Flemming's and the other presentations of the day.  Registration for the LINKS event is open all the way through the day of the conference.  AALL Crystal Ball Answer Our good friend, Mark Gediman of Alston & Bird, answers our Crystal Ball question by predicting how Law Schools and Law Firms will collaborate on business and competitive intelligence processes to help law students better prepare for the practice of law once they enter the profession. Links Discussed: 2nd Annual LINKS Conference Book Your Ticket Here Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7270 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

When it comes to the future of legal innovation, Olga Mack of Parley Pro at LexisNexis says that as the legal industry becomes more focused on being a 'service', legal technology will just become part of the overall design of products and services. It will not stand alone as a separate process, but rather legal innovation will be built into products such as HR tools that build in compliance processes, or financial tools build in legal components by design. Legal tech simply integrates into all technology processes. Olga Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro and recently led the company through an acquisition with LexisNexis. Olga points out that while she was not a founder of Parley Pro, she took her role at leading the company of contract management and collaboration tools very seriously on how it handled its success during the pandemic. She points out that all startups go through a process of looking at its future and deciding do we go public, do we get acquired, or do we die and file for bankruptcy. Her previous relationship with LexisNexis helped her understand the value that Lexis' content would bring to Parley Pro and she says the relationship is exactly what Parley Pro, and their customers needed. Olga has a strong reputation within the legal community and she actually insists that she wakes up each day and works to live up to that reputation. It's not a 'brand' that she presents to the world, but rather her authentic self as she presents at webinars, conferences, or even in TEDx speeches.  In both an upcoming (early 2023) release of her ABA book, Visual IQ for Lawyers, and a soon to be released third TEDx talk on the same subject, Olga's current inspiration is the adding of visual aspects within documents and contracts. Companies such as Google and others are already using these visual processes in their contracts and it is a skill and concept that Olga thinks many lawyer currently lack. "I think visual intelligence is not something you're born with. It's like reading, writing and arguing. It's something you learn, intentionally." Olga Mack continues, "And this book is an attempt to, one, show the importance of visual intelligence in communications, and to give frameworks and basic concepts to allow legal professionals, not just lawyers, to understand, relate, interpret, communicate in an increasingly visual world." Links Discussed: Parley Pro Olga Mack: How Smart Contracts Will Change the World - TED Olga Mack: Law as a Service for All | TED Talk Notes to my (Legal) Self AALL Crystal Ball Answer: We keep it within the LexisNexis family this week with Loyd Auerbach answering our Crystal Ball Question on how the industry, and law librarians specifically are changing the traditional work model as we make remote and hybrid work a part of our daily work process. Check out Greg's Newest Podcast, The SuperHuman Law Division. Contact Us: @glambert or @gebauerm 713-487-7270 Transcript Available at 3 Geeks

For the first time ever, we have a guest co-host this week while Marlene wears her fancy sneakers around ILTACon seeking answers to our Crystal Ball question. Katie Brown, Associate Dean for Information Resources at Charleston School of Law is on a mission to increase the teaching of practical technology skills to law students. In her view, law professors "are required to educate people so that they can go out into the practice and successfully do that. And so beyond just, rule 1.1 with legal technology and having that competency, for us as law schools, I think we have an ethical obligation to be teaching legal technology." This approach needs to be embedded into the Law School's culture, because it costs money, time, and effort to do correctly. In upcoming research collected with University of Connecticut Law's Jessica de Perio Wittman, Brown and de Perio Wittman calculated that on average, law students have less than 4 classes during their entire time in law school that have some aspect of teaching them the technology skills in that topic. Brown wants to see that number rise. While in Denver at the AALL Conference, Katie not only answered our Crystal Ball question, she also persuaded Abby Dos Santos, Reference Librarian at Caplin & Drysdale, to sit down with her and have a conversation about the pipeline of technology teaching from law school to law firms. We cover both of those answers and then Katie turns the mic on Greg to ask what law students need to understand about court dockets before landing in law firms.  Special thanks to Katie Brown for stepping in and co-hosting this week!! Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7270 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

As Laura Leopard's team at Leopard Solutions was analyzing the 2021 law firm lateral movement data, a glaring statistic stood out. There were a lot of women attorneys leaving AmLaw200 firms, and were not coming back like their male counterparts were. As with any good data expert, Laura worked with her team to find out the reasoning behind this trend. The results of that study were released earlier this summer in Leopard Solution's "Women Leaving Law" report.  We sit down with Laura to discuss statistics that show that some 64% of women lawyers who leave AmLaw200 firms don't come back to those firms, some 60% of male attorneys don't either. And while many might think that the reasons for women not returning are part of the "Shecession" of the pandemic, the survey shows that is not the primary reason. The actual reasons involve things like law firm culture, lack of lateral recruiting of women, uneven promotions, and lack of flexibility needed to retain women in the legal workforce.  The report does give eleven processes that law firms can implement to help recruit and retain women. We go through each of those, one by one to learn more. AALL Crystal Ball Question We have a familiar voice joining us this week as Bob Ambrogi answers our Crystal Ball Question and discusses the path he predicts state legal regulatory sandboxes are going to take over the next few years. Links Mentioned: ILTACon - Couch to 5K Learning Strategy to Transform Your Training Program  LawNext Podcast and LawSites Blog Leopard Solution's Thought Leadership and Events Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7270 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Five years ago, Dr. Heidi Gardner, Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and co-founder, Gardner & Co, wrote the book, "Smart Collaboration" where she laid out the "why" behind smart collaboration efforts. In her upcoming sequel, "Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work," Dr. Gardner explains the "who" and the "how" behind collaboration. The issues that law firms face today are incredibly complex and multifaceted. And in an industry famous for "going it alone," that approach exposes firms to much greater risk than those who find ways of implementing "smarter collaboration" techniques.  Smarter Collaboration helps increase revenues, profits, and efficiencies while reducing risks and improving client relationships and positive outcomes. While the idea of collaboration may sound like a "soft topic" for law firm leaders, Dr. Gardner points out that there is empirical data behind this and if firms are not engaging in smarter collaboration when doing the "real work" then they are either doing something that is pretty low value, or that falls into the realm of commodity work.   In addition to data driven analysis, Smarter Collaboration also includes a number of examples of how companies and law firms thrive through the use of Smarter Collaboration. Plus, there is a test on determining behavioral tendencies when it comes to collaboration. This psychometric tool helps identify seven different dimensions which can lead to great collaboration within the organization, or may be barriers to collaboration. And, as strange as it may sound to those of us in the legal industry, law firms are not unique when it comes to collaborative behaviors. In fact, Dr. Gardner says law firms are more different from each other than they are from other professional services industries or large corporations. Listen in for more details on the upcoming book, Smarter Collaboration. AALL Crystal Ball Question This week we have John Beatty from the University of Buffalo Law School answer our crystal ball question where he points out that the pipeline of traditional law librarians for law schools may be running dry. Links Mentioned: Pre-Order Smarter Collaboration - Amazon or Barnes & Noble Gardner & Co Smart Collaboration Accelerator Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7270 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

This week, we talk about the experiences that law students and recent law grads have during their internships, summer associate positions, and their judicial clerkships. While most of us work very hard to make sure that these (traditionally young) associates and clerks enjoy and learn from their experiences, today's guests understands firsthand that not all of these experiences are positive. Aliza Shatzman, the co-founder of the Legal Accountability Project, talks with us about her judicial clerkship, which essentially derailed her legal career before it even gets started. While Shatzman’s dream of becoming a Homicide Prosecutor was taken from her, she took this negative experience and used it as motivation to start the Legal Accountability Project with her WashU classmate, Matt Goodman. The Project’s purpose is to “ensure that as many law clerks as possible have positive clerkship experiences, while extending support and resources to those who do not.”  The Legal Accountability Project is partnering with multiple law schools to create a post-clerkship survey that allows them to share their experiences (both positive and negative) through a database which will be shared with future clerks so they are better informed on what to expect from the clerkships. The idea is to use the data collected to quantify any issues and to craft effective solutions. AALL Crystal Ball Question: Emily Janoski-Haehlen Our Crystal Ball answer this week comes from the Dean of Akron Law School, Emily Janoski-Haehlen. Dean Janoski-Haehlen stresses the need for more legal skills training to better prepare students for legal practice. As a tie-in for the main interview, she also covers what questions her school asks returning summer associates and clerks and how they use those to help identify what is working and what needs improving. Links Mentioned in this Episode: Statement for the Record (Shatzman's congressional testimony) Clerkship Reporting Database — The Legal Accountability Project Data Collection and Analysis — The Legal Accountability Project Pioneers and Pathfinders: Marlene Gebauer | Seyfarth Shaw LLP Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7270 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

HyperDraft's Tony Thai knew he could produce a better method of practicing law and producing legal documents. He viewed processes more like an engineer than a lawyer and understood that there were more efficient ways to do the work, not for the sake of efficiency, but because like any good engineer, he was lazy. Or, as he describes himself, "aggressively lazy." Not lazy in the traditional sense, but rather lazy in the way that many of us understand that the current way of working is just wasting everyone's time, and there has to be an easier/better/faster way of doing it.  So after months and years of waiting for the industry to find ways of creating a better process, and failing to actually do it, he jumped in and just did it himself. The idea that he'd been working on and developing to make his own corporate law work better, became his full-time gig and the launch of HyperDraft. This year his fellow BigLaw colleague, Sean Greaney joined HyperDraft as its first General Counsel. We talk about their journey to create a commercial product. Along the way we ask if creativity, innovation, and producing viable commercial products like HyperDraft means that lawyers at firms have to split off from that firm? The answer is a mix of yes, no, and maybe. One thing that both point out is that while the idea may be viable, a young associate really doesn't have the legal experience needed to understand the nuances involved in creating a deliverable that scales and fits the overall needs of the lawyer and the client. That's why Tony and Sean stuck around for a few more years to learn the in's and out's of the processes before leaving to launch HyperDraft. It's a lesson that many entrepreneur/lawyers may want to learn before launching their own startups. AALL Crystal Ball Questions: We recorded a number of crystal ball answers at this year's American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) annual conference in Denver. This week, Susan DeMaine from Indiana University Maurer School of Law looks at the effect that inflation is having on law schools and how she and other law school professors and administrators are needing to do to stay ahead of those effects.  Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7270 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog Listener Perk:  HyperDraft is providing Geek in Review podcast listeners with a complimentary month free of its document automation software Save 90% of the time drafting legal documents.  Click here to try HyperDraft for free.