The Geek In Review

We’ve been off for a month and we come out swinging for this #Barpacolypse #Diplomaprivilege episode. Each July, thousands of law students and attorneys are required to sit for and pass the bar exam in their states if they wish to practice. The fairness, bias, and necessity of the test has been called into question in the past (Note: the exam is a relatively recent method to determine attorney competency to practice), but COVID 19 may finally force states to do away with the bar examination. The public has called administration of the test into question, due to COVID 19 health concerns, and the response from state and national bar examination boards and state courts have been a hodgepodge of confusion and guarding the status quo. Today’s guests, Professor Cat Moon from Vanderbilt University, Brian L. Frye, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law in Lexington, and recent Georgetown Law School Graduate, Stefanie Mundhenk are digging deep to expose concerns and implications surrounding the 2020 bar exam and to examine creative approaches, such as Diploma Privilege and supervised practice, that not only will protect their health but may prove to be a better gauge of attorney competency. And if you think the bar exam is a good gauge, please see an excellent My Cousin Vinny tweet thread. More reading: The Case for Replacing the Bar Exam With "Diploma Privilege" The Pandemic Is Proving the Bar Exam Is Unjust and Unnecessary Veteran State Court Judge Rips Bar Exam, Says Test ‘Does Not Function To Protect The Public’ COVID-19 IS CREATING A STATE OF EMERGENCY FOR INCOMING PUBLIC DEFENDERS. DIPLOMA PRIVILEGE IS THE ONLY SOLUTION. NCBE Trashes Diploma Privilege, Sprinkles In Some Racist And Sexist Conclusions Ditch In-Person Bar Exams During Pandemic, ABA Says Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day and Online Bar Exams Can’t Be Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

While we have a few comedic moments on the podcast (usually unintended), we actually have a real-life comedian, Eugene Cipparone, join us on this week's episode. Eugene is a lawyer, who took a few years off to join The Second City comedy troop in Toronto, before working his way back into the legal industry as Goodmans, LLP's Director of Professional Support. With the pandemic, the need for support, and KM resources became critical. Eugene's ability to understand the needs of his firm and his ability to engage members of the firm in training by telling a comical story allows people to better remember the training and understand why the resources make the task easier to perform. (14:05) What to Expect from the AALL Virtual Conference Michelle Cosby, President of the American Association of Law Libraries, discusses what to expect from the AALL Virtual Conference on July 13-17, 2020. While the theme of Unmasking Your Potential was initially a tip of the hat to the host city of New Orleans, it's come to have renewed meaning on what it is like to provide professional development and community during the pandemic. (8:50) Information Inspirations Why do we wave at the end of Zoom Meetings?? If you catch yourself waving at the end of a video conference, you're not alone. (2:20) Facemasks aren't just for safety… they are also fashionable!  There are definitely some fashionable facemasks out there that will help you stay safe, and also look good in the process. (3:15) Leading a Remote Team During a Crisis. While all problems are communications problems, there are ways to create a balanced and delegated communication process for remote teams. This inspiration helps identify a few other processes that help with the issues of leading people remotely. (4:33) Like to Cook and Eat, but your also competitive? There's an app for that. The Food Network recently created an app that lets you interact with some of their celebrity chefs while also teaching you cooking and even knife skills in the kitchen. (6:31) Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Since Antonin Scalia was not available to be on the podcast, we reached out to Northwestern Law School's John Paul Steven's Professor of Law, Andrew Koppelman, and Jackson Walker Labor & Employment attorney, Sara Harris, to fill in. Justice Scalia believed in the concept of textualism when it came to the Court interpreting the law, without allowing one's personal political bias to play a role. According to Merriam Webster, textualism is "a legal philosophy that laws and legal documents (such as the U.S. Constitution) should be interpreted by considering only the words used in the law or document as they are commonly understood." The problem, according to Koppelman is that textualism has to be balanced with context. If a Justice were to apply or misapply the context of the issue, then textualism could be made to fit the outcome the Justice wants, regardless of what the text of the law says. In the Bostock v. Clayton Co., Georgia decision, the five conservative judges split 3-2 on how textualism applied to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title VII issue of "because of sex" discrimination, and gave the LGBTQ+ community a win in the process. We dive deep into the text, and the context of the decision. Information Inspirations After a bit of a hiatus, we bring back a few items that inspired us this week, and we hope to inspire you as well. Greg may be retiring his In Seclusion Podcast at the end of this week (awwww), but there are plenty of legal podcasts to fill the void. Here is a couple. Lawyer Forward is a new podcast from Mike Whelan where he winds together a historical legal story along with a contemporary issue for practicing lawyers.  If you're looking for something that is more on the topic of law and working closely with others, then check out The Lawyer-Human Show with Colin and Shreya Ley, where they discuss being partners at a law firm, while also being partners in life. It's a fun and informative show and is now being produced by Ben Ambrogi's Populus Radio network.  Marlene's inspiration comes from the latest print issue of Wired Magazine. While many of us might not see 20 kb of data as a lot, it can add up once millions of people contribute little bits of data to things like email. Danny van Kooten designed a plug-in for MailChimp which helps reduce the amount of data being sent. A little thing like this can help reduce a massive amount of CO2 over time. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

We wanted to produce a special episode of The Geek in Review to discuss the tragedy surrounding the murder of George Floyd and the protests which are going on over the past ten days. While we focus our discussion on the legal industry, the issues are certainly not limited to lawyers and legal professionals. We've dedicated the entirety of the episode to this topic. Just two months ago we had Bryan Parker on the podcast discussing the need to have a better return on investment when it came to legal talent. In the year 2020, two months feels like two years. With the changes resulting from the pandemic, the economy, and now the murder of George Floyd, we asked Bryan to come back and talk with us, and bring along his Legal Innovators business partner and one-time mentor, Jonathan Greenblatt. In the recent article, What the Death of George Floyd Should Teach the Legal Industry, Bryan Parker (with help from Jon Greenblatt) lays out some internal and external steps that the legal industry can take to contribute to the conversation around race while maintaining a respect for everyone willing to have an honest conversation. There is an enormous amount of privilege and power within the legal community, and those traits should be used to drive real change.  One of the first things that Parker and Greenblatt stress that we all must do is to check in on one another. As Bryan says in his article, "[f]or starters, your black colleagues and associates are not alright." This type of interaction and communication shouldn't be limited to the current new cycle. And, as the stress of the current environment sinks with everyone, there is a need to monitor the mental health of all of our colleagues. We hope that this conversation leads to more conversations. You can reach us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.  As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Before the world turned upside down, one of the issues we were following was the Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org case where the State of Georgia brought a lawsuit claiming copyright protection on the annotations for its Official Code of Georgia. Our three podcast series (unintentional) started out with Tom Gaylord discussing the initial filing with the Court, Ed Walters and Kyle Courtney breaking down the oral arguments, and finally, we have today's final episode with Ed Walters returning and bringing  Cornell Law School's Kim Nayyer, and the Legal Information Institute's Craig Newton along to discuss the Court's final ruling. The Court ruled in Public.Resource.Org's favor, but our guests aren't sure how far the opinion actually goes to cover state material beyond the Georgia Code. Could it mean the end of deals between states and vendors like LexisNexis or Thomson Reuters? Does this mean that other materials, such as Regulatory Codes are fair game? We discuss… you decide. We spend the entire episode on this topic. Don't worry, we'll bring our Information Inspirations back next week. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

While most of us in the legal industry were still finding their sea legs when it came to working from home, today's guests were planning a moon shot experiment of creating a virtual legal conference completely from scratch. Haley Altman and Alma Asay from Litera Microsystems talk with us about their experiences in creating and producing The Changing Lawyer LIVE! virtual conference back in April. There were some victories, and some challenges along the way, but the end result was pretty impressive. As we enter the Summer, many other organizations are looking to do some type of online/virtual conference to make up for the cancellation that most organizations had to do because of the pandemic. There's a steep learning curve, so we are grateful that Haley and Alma shared their experiences with us. Information Inspirations Google is shutting down some of their diversity and inclusion training programs because of either political pressure (which Google denies) or to establish global, scalable diversity programs (whatever that means.) Diversity and inclusion don't just make the workforce look better, many studies have shown that it actually creates a more effective workforce, and drives profit to the bottom line.  Harvard Law School helped its incoming students with an online preparatory program called Zero-L. This series of videos and online training helped incoming students understand the processes behind the daily activities of a law student. Now that program is available this summer to everyone. We ponder if a top BigLaw firm might think of creating a Zero-Year Associate online training course that would prepare law students to understand the daily life of an associate and help them understand what the business of running a law firm looks like. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

It's episode 75!! We think we look fabulous and that we definitely don't look a day over 50.  While most professional associations are experiencing significant changes due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, today's guests have launched a brand new network and say that this might be one of the best times to enter the market. The Legal Value Network (LVN) focuses on the delivery of services and connecting professionals from law firms, corporate legal departments, alternative legal services companies, and technology providers. Kristina Lambright and Purvi Sanghvi are part of the LVN Executive Board and discuss the launch of the network, and how they are providing content and connections to those in the network.  Information Inspirations Denton's Managing Partner wrote an excellent article in The Hill entitled "Let's stop asking 'When are We Going Back to the Office?'" The leader of the world's largest law firm had some sharp criticism for many of the partners at his firm who are pushing for a return to the office. He points out the privilege that many of these partners are expressing without consideration to the staff, and the gender disparity that will occur if there is a rush to get back to the office.  It turns out that "Don't let an emergency go to waste" is a Rahm Emanuel reference, and it turns out that we've been saying it wrong... and incompletely. According to Emanuel's interview on Freakonomics, the quote was, “Never allow a good crisis to go to waste. It’s the opportunity to do the things you never thought possible and make them possible.” Our friend, Cat Moon, through her Make Law Better initiative, is looking for volunteers who are legal innovators and are looking for ways to help during this pandemic. Check out Marlene's ILTA co-committee members, Amy Monaghan and Mike Ertel's article on Empathetic Human-Centered Design Overlay on Design Thinking Post COVID-19. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

It's not unusual for law firms to invest around $1M in recruiting, hiring, training, and retention of Associates over the first four years of their legal career. However, if you look at the actual retention rates through the fourth or fifth year, it is essentially a coin flip on whether the firm retains, or loses that talent. Bryan Parker, CEO of Legal Innovators thinks that it is not a good return on the law firm's (and the Associate's) time and capital investment. Parker believes that you can take a more holistic approach to the recruitment process and evaluate the best talent out there, in particular, women, minorities, and those from underrepresented backgrounds through a two-year process that more resembles the European apprenticeship model than the US on-campus recruiting and Summer Associate method. In addition to this fascinating discussion, we also have a deep (and fun) discussion of Bryan's sneaker obsession. Information Inspirations The cancellation of in-person conferences is on the mind of all of us who usually attend these conferences for our professional development and networking needs. There are alternatives, however. For example, Stanford's CodeX conference is available online, and Greg is on a panel for Litera's April 23rd online event called The Changing Lawyer LIVE! Go check out both conferences. We want to say how happy we are in David Lat's recovery from his COVID-19 hospitalization. Bob Ambrogi interviewed David after his release from the hospital for his LawNext podcast.  Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Heidi Gardner, Distinguished Fellow and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, and Brian Stearns, Chief Commercial Officer at Workstorm, talk with us about collaboration when most of us are under a shelter-in-place order. There are definitely tools to make it easier to collaborate remotely, but there is a process that must be evaluated first. There's also a human element that must be considered in who people react to the stress they are currently under.  As we have said before, never let an emergency go to waste, and Gardner and Stearns have some insights on how to evaluate your current structure, determine what works best for your environment, and to remain vigilant and empathetic to those who may be struggling.  It's not all doom and gloom, however. This is an excellent opportunity to be creative. If you are looking for the right time to introduce new processes, tools, or ideas, now may be the perfect time to pitch those. The worst thing you can do right now is to try and stay the same. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

There is no reason why we should let an emergency go to waste. So, we've both taken on a side project while we work remotely. Marlene's new daily ILTA blog presents a quick update on the skills we need to work on while we're working from home. Her first post, Be Sheltering: Not Sheltered discusses a number of initiatives going on which we all can contribute. You can find out more on the ILTA blog page. Greg began his daily podcast miniseries, In Seclusion, this week. These are short, less than 15 minutes, interviews of an eclectic group of people ranging from bar and professional association leaders, legal information professionals, vendors, consultants, lawyers, etc. Pretty much anyone who works in the legal industry and has a story to tell about their new work from home situation. The first episode is included in this podcast. Greg talked with Jim Calloway from the Oklahoma Bar Association regarding how they are helping their lawyers, courts, and community continue to work in this new environment. You can subscribe to In Seclusion on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, or where ever you listen to podcasts. Stay safe everyone! Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.