The Geek In Review

Mollie Nichols is the CEO of Redgrave Data, a company that uses data analytics and technology to assist the legal industry. After leaving Hogan Lovells, Mollie launched Redgrave Data in January of 2022 and has seen a strong demand for their services in data analytics, regulation, compliance, and internal investigations. Companies often seek the expert assistance of Redgrave Data in order to improve efficiency among the law firms, eDiscovery services, ALSPs, and internal legal operations. She is working to move legal departments away from being seen as a "black hole for money" and focused more on the unique and valuable in achieving the strategic goals of the company. One of the hidden gems in these legal departments is the insights that the legal team can uncover through visualization and analysis of the data within the department.  One area that Mollie things the legal industry needs to change is how it processes and analyzes the data we collect and create. You cannot look at data simply as a commodity. Where your data tools or your outsourced data analytics teams take unique batches of data and then send it through a one-sized fits all process. Data has to be analyzed through the lens of the current legal issue or toward the goals of the company. This is one of the areas that she says Redgrave Data stands apart from others in the field. In her Crystal Ball projection, Mollie Nichols sees the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal field is likely to increase, but some lawyers and judges may not fully understand or accept it. AI can help with the growing volume and complexity of data in legal cases, but there may be challenges in accessing and using this data effectively. Overall, she thinks that AI is going to have a significant impact on the legal field. Links: Redgrave Data Website Mollie Nichols - Bio Mollie Nichols - LinkedIn New Logo!! We are SUPER GEEKED about our new logo design. Shoutout to logo designer @ChangoATX who did a wonderful job and got our new logo completed just in time for the holidays!! Let us know what you think. Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

This week, we have a jam-packed episode featuring five of our colleagues from a 2022 American Association of Law Libraries panel on APIs.  Emily Rushing, Director of Competitive Intelligence, Haynes and Boone, LLP Pam Noyd, Information Resources Manager at Foley & Lardner LLP Erik Adams, Manager of Library Digital Initiatives Manager of Library Digital Initiatives at Sidley Austin LLP, and Chief of Technology at Golden Arrow Publishing LLC Keli Whitnell, Director of Firm Intelligence at Troutman Pepper Christopher O'Connor, Senior Director, Product Management at LexisNexis APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, have become an increasingly important tool in the legal industry. The panel included members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, including both librarians and non-librarians. This diversity provided a holistic view of the topic, covering everything from the technical aspects of using APIs to the importance of data quality and vetting vendors. APIs are like building blocks for legal solutions (think: LEGO Blocks), allowing for the flexible sharing of data between different computer environments. This enables more creative solutions than vendors could create on their own and has led to a range of innovative legal solutions. Overall, the panel provided valuable insights into the use of APIs in the legal industry and highlighted their potential for facilitating more efficient and effective legal work. As the use of API's continues to grow, it will be important for legal professionals to stay up to date on the latest developments and best practices in this area. Links Mentioned: Afraid of APIs? Implementing APIs for Law Firm Data Requires Soft Skills as Well   How To Evaluate and Get Started with Data APIs If Data is the New Gold, then Law Libraries are a Goldmine: Panning for Gold with APIs Crystal Ball Question: Brad Blickstein discusses the potential for a recession and its effects on the legal industry. He speculates that Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) will benefit from the downturn, as law departments will be unable to increase headcount. He also discusses the question of where the work done by ALSPs will go once the recession ends and whether law firms will be able to regain the work. Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

We give you the true "3 Geeks" experience on this week's show as we are joined by an OG (original geek) Toby Brown. Toby, Marlene, and Greg talk with Litify's President and COO, Ari Treuhaft, and Pam Wickersham, the VP of Product and Engineer there at Litify. One of the taglines at Litify is that they #BreakLegalSilos. Treuhaft and Wickersham explain what that means, and how they focus on providing an operating system, built on Salesforce, that creates transparency between Corporate Counsel and their law firms.  Both Ari and Pam got their start in Financial and Professional services, so they come at these business problems with a different approach. With Pam's engineering background, and experiences at Google, she brings in a unique perspective on how to build the technology through the lens of the customer. Ari's experiences with the Financial Services industry going to the cloud over a decade ago also positions him to better understand the naysayers in the legal industry who are still resistant to placing data in the cloud. It's a great conversation. We want to thank the great folks at City Acre Brewery in Houston, Texas for letting us record this episode there. And, for not laughing too hard as Greg destroyed his laptop by spilling an entire Maple Porter into his brand-new laptop. We hope this is a semi-regular event! (Recording at City Acre… not pouring a beer into laptops!!) Crystal Ball Question Toby Brown takes on our question this week by talking about the fact that attorneys are resistant to changing behaviors, not because they are unwilling to adapt to new technology, but because this is an industry that is very reputational based.  Links Mentioned: Platform overview Salesforce Advantage Specs on Litify for Corporate Legal Recent blog by Ari about collaboration Recent blog about creating a culture of retention Relevant announcements Litify alliance with Deloitte Litify winning a Legal Tech Breakthrough Award Ari's Podcast Interview with Bob Ambrogi Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm, @glambert, or @gnawledge Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

In a recent article from Legal IT Insider, Caroline Hill wrote about how "63% of all legal contracts are gender-biased" based on a report from Genie AI. We wanted to dive deeper into that topic, so we asked Caroline and Alex Denne, Genie AI's Growth Marketing Lead, to come on at talk with us. Genie AI is an Open-Source product with some 1,500 legal templates available in the UK currently and is looking to expand into the US in 2023. Alex Denne mentions that in the evaluation of these templates, and in discussions he was having in the industry, there was talk of gender-bias in contracts, but that there was no baseline to measure whether the industry was improving or regressing in its bias. Therefore, Genie AI took it upon itself to evaluate the contracts it had for bias terms and phrases. It was this evaluation that found that nearly 2/3rds of contracts had gender-biased terms in them. Caroline Hill shares her experiences in the Legal Tech industry to note that the number of CIOs in the UK who are women is actually going down instead of up, and that she's noticed that even in simple things like job descriptions, gender-biased terms have a cumulative effect. Jobs which pull from STEM graduates still used gender-biased terms and according to Hill, phrases like "we are looking for a strong" or "aggressive" or "go getter" tend to have a direct effect on whether women apply for these positions or not.  Alex Denne points out that the UK government is requiring gender-neutral language in all contracts they approve. Both Denne and Hill agree that in order for law firms to adjust their own contract language to use more gender-neutral terms, clients have a direct impact on how seriously they take that mission. If it is part of the culture of the client to reduce gender-bias, then perhaps that should be part of the outside counsel guidelines for the firms they use. Links Mention: Legal Gender Bias Report 2022 Genie AI's Gender-Neutral Legal Templates Textio Textmetrics LexisNexis New Guide to Gender-Neutral Drafting (subscription) Legal Value Network Crystal Ball Question: This week, Erik Perez, Central Legal Operations Officer at Shell USA, Inc., answers our Crystal Ball Question by focusing on the long-term needs of legal operations to both stay on task, hire and retain excellent talent, and use the right people for the right tasks. Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Tim Parilla isn't just the Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares… he's also a customer. That unique position of being the leader of the legal department of a company whose mission is to improve the workflow and efficiency of corporate legal departments, creates an exciting environment for Tim and his team. Juliette Kopecky is the Chief Marketing Officer at LinkSquares and is leading the company's DEI Initiatives and works closely with the in-house legal team to handle everything from internal issues to reviewing all the marketing and business development contracts. Juliette points to the fact that both she and Tim sit on the company's executive team and have aligned their individual departments to the company's overall mission, helps both of them understand and prioritize their overall processes. Tim also gives us some insights on how he works with his outside counsel in large law firms. He lists some very simple, but effective ways that he interacts with law firms: Have clear communications Set scope and expectations Be professional and competent Most of all, Tim and Juliette point to the fact that regardless of if you are dealing with outside counsel, in-house legal teams, or even with the software development teams… the goal is to solve "business problems." Not legal problems. Not organizational problems. Not technology problems. Solve business problems. If that is the way in which you address your issues, then that helps put you on the right path for creating an effective solution. Crytal Ball Answer Stuart Dodds is Principle at Positive Pricing and is an executive board member at the Legal Value Network. When it comes to the future of legal pricing, he sees a focus on setting expectations for delivering superior client service, understanding the need to find the right people with the correct skillsets, and establishing the correct change management processes to help lawyers and others adjust to the upcoming shifts in the legal market.  Contact Us: Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca Transcript available on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

This week we are joined by LexisNexis' Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer and Head of Global Talent Development, Ronda Bazley Moore. Ronda and a team of LexisNexis leadership in the LexisNexis African Ancestry Network & LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation Fellowship tasked 18 Fellows from Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU) Law Schools with one very complex task: Uncover how LexisNexis products could be used to address and eliminate systemic racism in the legal system. The 2022 LexisNexis Equity in the Law Symposium was held in Washington, DC, where the 18 Fellows presented the results of their findings on how to reduce/eliminate system racism. The results were split into six separate clusters: Equity for Youth in the Legal System Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Legal Education Diversity in Leadership of Legal Profession Diversity and Equity in the Courts Equity in the Criminal Justice System Racial Equity in Wealth and Ownership Ronda describes some of the novel ways that the Fellows proposed to leverage the data, resources, and power held by LexisNexis to achieve the audacious goal set before them.  Links: 2022 LexisNexis Fellowship Publication.pdf   During Symposium, Law Students Tackle Racial Inequity in Legal System - The Washington Informer Crystal Ball Question - Legal Value Network Conference Amanda Norris, Senior Operations Manager at Integreon steps up this week to answer our Crystal Ball question. Amanda has a very interesting expectation on how support staff at law firms, specifically Legal Assistants and Legal Secretaries, provide support both in-person and remotely over the next few years. 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

For the first time, Law360 and Major, Lindsey, and Africa team up to survey BigLaw partners in their 2022 Partner Compensation Survey. We are joined by Craig Savitzky, Senior Data Analyst at Law360 and Jeffrey Lowe, Global Practice Leader of the Law Firm Practice at Major Lindsey and Africa. With this being the first survey of law firm partners since most firms have made some effort to return to the office, there were some surprises on how much remote work partners want to take versus how much their firms are offering. It may not be what you think. Women and minority partners made some strong gains according to this survey in narrowing the pay gap. While the gap is still significant between women/minority partners and their white male colleagues, this was the smallest percentage in the history of the survey which began in 2010.  For the first time, the difference between average equity partner pay was more than $1 Million over average non-equity partner pay.  Savitzky and Lowe unpack a lot of data from the survey for us. Links: MLA's - 2022 Partner Compensation Survey Law360 Pulse's - The 2022 Partner Compensation Survey Articles  Crystal Ball Answers from LVNx This week we talk with Properoware founder Keith Lipman, who recently merged into Litera, about the role that ALSP's and others will play in filling the gap left by law firms when the economy begins its expected downturn. 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

In a recent ALM Pacesetter survey, the report found "that innovators among professional services providers are grappling less with technology installation and more with process and culture reengineering." We sit down with one of the people behind that report, Tomek Jankowski,  Director, ALM Intelligence Pacesetter Research, and dive into the ways law firms and in-house legal departments are working to change the cultural roadblocks to advance innovation and improve overall client experiences. We discuss some specific examples of firms going to great lengths to improve their interactions with clients, but that Jankowski reminds us that it doesn't take a Moon Shot project to improve overall satisfaction with your clients. Sometimes, it is as simple as talking with your clients. Tomek Jankowski also sees a future filled with challenges over the next few years with financial, social, and global political issues bringing back old Cold War problems than not many lawyers today experienced first-hand like he did. Links Discussed: Executive Summaries of Pacesetter Reports Available Here Crystal Ball Question: This week we continue our crystal ball answers from the recent Legal Value Network eXperience conference in Chicago. This week we have Damien Riehl from Fastcase and SALI discussing the need for a true organized method of allowing legal vendors, attorneys, clients, and governments to label and share information.  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

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