The Geek In Review

We try... and fail to stay off the COVID-19 topic this week, but it's just too ingrained in our lives right now. For those of you out there doing the remote work thing, we understand and hope you are adapting to the new work mode with little interruption. We, too, are working remotely, and hope there are not too many background noises of kids, refrigerators, or pets making cameo appearances on this week's show. We have a great talk with Charlie Uniman, Legal Tech Startup Evangelist, and founder of Legal Tech Startup Focus. LTSF is an online community of nearly 1,000 legal startup professionals that gives its members a place to find like-minded individuals and bounce ideas off of one another. Charlie also produces the LTSF Podcast. We cover the issues of how law firms and legal startups communicate with each other. Charlie details the basic processes that law firms and legal startups need to take to build a solid relationship that is beneficial to both parties. While some of what he lays out may seem like common-sense to Charlie, it is insightful to those of us who may not have the constant relationships with startups like he does.  Information Inspirations PwC launched its COVID-19 Navigator this week. This online resource shows some of the flexibility that the Big 4 accounting firms may have over law firms. The COVID-19 Navigator allows business leaders to answer a survey of questions to determine how prepared they are for the COVID-19 business disruptions. PwC says that this "digital tool contains 3 sections of questions that will help you understand where your company stands as you respond to COVID-19 in the areas of: crisis management and response; workforce; operations and supply chain; finance and liquidity; tax and trade; and strategy and brand." Can you imagine law firms using an iterative software design like this to leverage their subject matter expertise with technology to assist customers and potential customers with major issues like COVID-19? If not, it's time to start thinking about it.  Marlene's inspiration this week is for all of us to stay healthy and work through our transition to the remote working that many of us are not accustomed to doing. If you're struggling or want to share your experiences, please reach out to us and we'd love to have that conversation. 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.

Using Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing to hold a conversation might seem like a far off idea when it comes to the legal industry, but it is not. We sit down with Baker Hostetler's Katherine Lowry, and Puerto Rico defense attorney Diego Alcala to get a better understanding of how chatbots work, and what value they can bring from legal practices ranging from BigLaw Bankruptcy practice to a solo attorney's criminal law practice. Katherine Lowry won the American Association of Law Libraries' Innovation Tournament in 2018 with her attorney-facing chatbot. In the nearly two years since that recognition, she has created a chatbot for her Bankruptcy practice that answers thousands of potential questions and helps her attorneys find information quickly and frees up her researchers' time for more complex questions. Diego Alcala is working on chatbots which will assist him in his practice by answering basic questions that family members need to know about the clients he is representing. While Diego is not a programmer, he has learned the concept of chatbots through numerous platforms that allow for those with no coding skills to still create powerful chatbots to answer practical questions.  Listen in and see if the ideas shared by Lowry and Alcala spur any ideas of how automating a conversation might help you in your practice. Information Inspirations There's another bill in Congress that creates a FREE PACER! Congressman Hank Johnson, D-GA, is not stopping there. He is also requiring more transparency in the Federal Courts by requiring audio and video recordings are made available of court proceedings. While the bill creates a FREE PACER for most, there is a surcharge for power users who have $25,000 or more in quarterly usage. That means some BigLaw firms will have to pay that surcharge. COVID-19 continues to dominate the conversations (check out our episode). The World Health Organization is testing its messaging to the youth through Tik Tok. It's a novel approach for a novel virus. We are all updating our business plans to prepare for the worst when it comes to COVID-19, but a recent report says that businesses are more likely to suffer from the slow burn of the everyday risks which traditionally bring businesses to their knees. 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.

With all of the news about COVID-19 (Coronavirus) making its way into the United States, it is time for law firms to think about what they are going to do to prepare for a possible outbreak that will affect their business operations. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans need to be dusted off and updated to manage the different scenarios that may come our with over the next few months. We asked the Association of Legal Administrators interim Executive Director, April Campbell, to discuss what law firms need to be doing to prepare. There are definite immediate and local actions that should be implemented such as: Restrict travel to hotspots 14-day work from home policies for personnel who have traveled to those areas, or were exposed to others who may have traveled to hotspots Stress that sick employees stay home Explain proper handwashing techniques And LOTS OF HAND SANITIZER The CDC released communications resources on these actions. While these may be common sense approaches to reducing the risk of exposure to COVID-19, the firm's leadership must go deeper and layout a strategic plan for what to do if the epidemic becomes a pandemic and affects the overall business operations of the firm and the firm's clients.  There will most likely be a significant increase in those working from home. The firm needs to test the ability of the firm's infrastructure to handle that type of stress. While many of the lawyers may be set up to work from home for a prolonged period, but what about the other employees of the firm? Are they properly trained? Do they have the right equipment? How do you manage personnel who may have never worked from home before?  There is a multitude of issues facing law firms should COVID-19 become a serious epidemic. The better prepared the firm is now, the better the firm will react should the event come to fruition. As the saying goes, no emergency should go to waste. Now is the time to act and test where the firm needs help, or where there needs to be more flexibility in business operations. If you do not have a disaster recovery plan, reach out to your colleagues in the industry to ask them for help.  If your firm has created new policies or is testing scenarios based on a COVID-19 outbreak, we'd love to hear more. Send us an email or voicemail and share your experiences. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Special thanks to Gabriel Teninbaum for his inspiration on this issue. 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.

The legal industry relies upon the writings and communications of lawyers, judges, and lawmakers. For the citizens and clients who are subject to these legal writings, understanding the legalese is painfully frustrating. We were asked by a fan of the show (in full disclosure, it was Greg's sister-in-law Wendy) why lawyers can't write in plain English. We pulled together a panel of four experts on legal communications and asked them just that. It turns out that writing in plain English is not only possible, but it is the preferred method of legal writing. Our guests on this episode are: Neil Guthrie - Director, Professional Development, Research, and Knowledge Management, at Aired & Berlis LLP in Toronto. Author of Guthrie’s Guide to Better Legal Writing. Chris Trudeau – Law and Medical Professor at the University of Arkansas/ Little Rock and author of The Public Speaks: An Empirical Study of Legal Communication. As well as journal articles on plain English writing for lawyers in Healthcare. Jesse Katz – Litigation Editor at O’Melveny and Myers, as well as a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist before taking on his editing role. Sara Harris – Jackson Walker associate who is known for her writing skills, and is an editor for the American Lawyer’s Young Lawyer Editorial Board. Suggested Reading List Typography for Lawyers Plain English for Lawyers Letting Go of the Words Information Inspirations Greg got to drop in on a Houston Young Lawyer Association meeting for First-Generation Lawyers on the topic of lawyer recruiting. The meeting was great, but the biggest impact was made by a question a minority law student was asked on why his experience as a person of color would bring value to the firm. Is that something a firm should even be asking? Marlene geeks out over Evan Parker's article on How to Talk Data and Influence People, Including Lawyers. This dovetailed nicely with our guests' discussion on presenting the information in a way that tells a story and presents information in a way that is understandable by the reader. Data analytics is just another method of communicating. The trick is communicating in a way that actually makes sense and informs.

We reach across the Atlantic Ocean and talk with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner's Nick Pryor on his work the firm's BCLP³ innovation objectives. Nick heads up the firm's European, Middle East, and Asia innovation projects, and gives us some insights on the joys and hardships that come with innovation in the global legal market. Whether it is regulations, cultural challenges, competition, or setting a long-term vision, innovation is challenging. However, Nick also stresses that it is also very rewarding. Innovation Inspirations If you had any doubts that privacy was dying, the work that Clearview AI is doing may put those doubts to bed. The facial recognition company has scraped billions of images and personal details from the open web over the past few years and has created a database for law enforcement which claims to have a 99% accuracy rate for matching faces to these images. In a recent The Daily Podcast from the New York Times, reporter Kashmir Hill investigates Clearview AI's entry into the facial recognition marketplace and finds a story that is equally amazing and scary. Federal and state law enforcement are raving about the power of this product to help them solve crimes that may have gone unsolved forever. There is a dark side to this power, which Hill found out first hand when the company manipulated results on her photos and possibly intimidated police who were talking with her.  Check out the podcast The End of Privacy as We Know It? On a lighter note, Marlene's innovation comes from another podcast that explains how new words are added to the Miriam Webster dictionary. The podcast doesn't just stop with the explanation, they are actually attempting to place one of three words into that dictionary, and are asking for help on picking which one. Which will it be? Niblings? Preregret? Or, Pistracted? You can help pick America's Next Top Word. 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.

If there's one thing that many of us need these days, it is a cybersecurity expert on retainer. Luckily, law professor Steve Black, visiting professor at the University of Houston fills that need. Prof. Black talks with us on a number of issues including what motivates hackers and cybercriminals (spoiler: it's money), the dark web, how law firms and business approach information stored in the cloud, and what process automation means for data security.  Law firms might be a weak link in the eyes of cybercriminals when it comes to acquiring information. Professor Black discusses the different tactics cybercriminals use, the vulnerabilities found in law firms, and the actions that we need to take with our equipment, our network, our people, and our data. We guarantee that his discussion would be the highlight of any party. Information Inspirations While some still think of Millennials as the new kids in the workforce, that isn't really true. In a recent white paper from Thomson Reuters titled, "Becoming the firm where millennials want to work," the authors discuss the needs of a generation which is now the largest percentage in the workforce. Greg ponders the idea of there actually being two subsets within the generation of those in the workforce through the Great Recession and those who entered after the downturn. There is almost a decade of lawyers who have never actually experienced what it's like to work during a recession. Everyone loves a good story. And we love learning about ways we can create better stories. Marlene discovered a great training site that helps teach you just that. Story Ready from Janece Shaffer offers workshops that deal with what makes details of a story stick in your mind. There are offerings on self-awareness, and design thinking as well. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Special thanks to Joel Lytle, Security Expert from Jackson Walker, LLP for helping me prepare questions for Professor Black. 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.

The social media platform Fishbowl is designed to create an anonymous but verified space for professionals to socialize with others in the same profession. CEO and co-founder Matt Sunbulli joins us this week to talk about FIshbowl's entry into the legal industry social media space. It's been about eight weeks, but there is already a large number of attorneys and other legal professionals using the platform to discuss issues ranging from what's an appropriate salary range, to advice on lateral moves, to is it okay to vape in the workplace. The answer to that last one is a solid, NO! Fishbowl creates an optional identification for its users which range from anonymized job title (Attorney, Partner, etc.), to "works at X law firm," to full identification, based on the user's needs on individual interactions. Because users have to sign up with their real names and be verified by your work email and LinkedIn profile,  there's a self-policing aspect to the platform. This seems to have tamped down the Troll factor you find on other platforms like Reddit. Because it allows for anonymity in the posts, users are more comfortable about asking questions to peers or others in more senior roles. It's a very interesting concept of professional anonymity that brings us some very interesting conversations that we just don't find on other professional networks like LinkedIn.  Information Inspirations The American Association of Law Libraries has allowed for full Open Access to the Law Library Journal and Spectrum magazine. The Open Access movement in professional journals and publications is something that has been occurring in academic circles, and once again, AALL is leading the way for other professional organizations to promote professional writing and promotion for its members. Our Ep. 39 guest Hannah Bloch-Wehba is back with a great upcoming law review article on the problems surrounding the idea of automating social media platform's ability to remove questionable content. While it may sound good on paper, in practice there are many unintended consequences that have to be discussed and exposed. The National Archives was caught censoring a photo on its Women's Sufferage Movement display. We cannot stress enough how wrong this was. While the National Archives admitted their mistake and is working to replace the image with an unedited one, it is the responsibility of librarians and archivists to not bow to demands or desires to whitewash history.  Two brothers worked for years to create an alphabet and working writing system to their native Fulfulde language. Through their work and collaboration with UNICODE's Michael Everson, and Microsoft, their vision of creating a way for the millions of native speakers to have their language on a computer system became a reality.  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 may have had a tough time pronouncing things correctly, this week's guests said all the right things when it comes to being a leader within their organizations. Laura Toledo, Communications and Marketing Manager at Nilan Johnson Lewis PA in Minneapolis, and Kevin Iredell, Chief Marketing Officer at Lowenstein Sandler LLP in New York, discuss their year-long experience in the SmithBucklin Leadership Institute. Both are leaders within the Legal Marketing Association, which sponsored their attendance at the institute. While people in leadership positions may feel that they need to have all the answers, Toledo says that she learned it is okay to be patient and learn more about the situation before just going with her gut reaction. Iredell stressed that the key to being a great leader is making sure that you've given those who report to you all the tools and support they need in order to succeed. The Institute brings together leaders from different industries and helped both of our guests understand that the legal industry does not have a monopoly on stressful situations and the need for solid leadership.  Information Inspirations Greg points to a recent TED talk article from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic called “Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? And what can we do about it?” The article and video are about as harsh as the title implies. While Chamorrow-Premuzic takes liberties at the expense of men, pointing out that the traits of bad leaders skew toward men, the traits of a good leader do not have a gender bias. We have a tendency to value confidence over competence, narcissism over humility, and the belief that leaders can do anything rather than know their limitations. This inspiration dovetails nicely with our guests today. Marlene's inspiration came from Jean O'Grady's reporting on the Law Street Media's relaunch of its legal news platform, beginning with high tech and intellectual property news. For those of us wanting a little more competition with Law360 and other legal new providers, this offering from Fastcase may be exactly what we've been looking for. Greg's final inspiration is more of a request for certain media outlets. In the past month, there have been articles where the images placed on the article do not fit the content of the article. While the intent of the images may have been innocent or just unaware, the results are misogynistic and racist. Imaging matters, especially in an age where many people do little more than skim the titles and images of an article. Hopefully, this will inspire the publisher to make a more concerted effort to use more appropriate imagery for their articles. Marlene's discusses Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Brittany Kaiser, who sat down with Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood on Make Me Smart, and discusses how we may be in a worse place than we were in 2016. (Cue the dark place music.) Listen, Subscribe, Comment Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

With the new decade comes a new tagline for The Geek in Review introduction. Let us know what you think of the change. Ellyssa Valenti Kroski is the Director of Information Technology/Director of Marketing at New York Law Institute and is the editor of the new book, Law Librarianship in the Age of AI. Whenever there is a monumental shift in technology and processes, there will be winners and there will be those who are left behind. The authors of this compilation give the readers a path to better understanding what Artificial Intelligence is, and what it isn't. Ranging from the basic understanding of AI concepts to listing specific tools occupying the AI space within the legal industry, to the benefits, risks, and ethical issues surrounding the tools, this book covers a lot of ground. It's definitely worth checking out. In addition to the book, Ellyssa discusses her other books and projects, including makerspaces and using escape room activities for professional development and end-user training. She will be running an escape room event at the  Ark Group’s 14th annual Law Firm Library, Research & Information Services in New York, NY, March 12-13, 2020. The escape room is called Escape the Library: The Search for Alexander Hamilton and the Missing Librarian: A Time Travel Adventure. Apparently, Alexander Hamilton did not die from his duel with Aaron Burr but is actually a time-traveler. Whether true or not,  it sounds like a lot of fun. Attendees can get a 20% discount on the conference by entering the code "ESCAPE" when registering. Information Inspirations We've covered how BigLaw is adopting the Mansfield Rule to increase diversity within the ranks and is basing that rule upon the National Football League's Rooney Rule. Hopefully, BigLaw does better than the NFL has. When the Rooney Rule was adopted in 2003, there were three black NFL head coaches. At one point, that improved to eight. However, habits persist and after nearly seventeen years in, the NFL coaching ranks are back to exactly where we started. Three. If BigLaw is to do better, it must be vigilant, and firms not complying should be called out.  Marlene's inspiration discusses what happens when your career so encompasses your life, that you can't separate yourself from your job. In a recent  Harvard Business Review article, author Janna Koretz discusses the effects of what psychologists call "enmeshment" where professionals are so intertwined with their career identity, that they lose their self-identity. She describes ways to understand if your identity has become enmeshed with your career, and methods to break free of that enmeshment. The example she uses is a partner at a large firm, and we all probably know that this type of career/personal identity enmeshment is very prominent within the legal industry.  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. 

The past ten years have been what University of Tennessee Law Professor Ben Barton calls "the lost decade" for law schools. In his new book, Fixing Law Schools: From Collapse to the Trump Bump and Beyond, Professor Barton walks us through the issues he sees with the current structure of legal education in the United States, and ways to actually fix it. The book focuses on three areas that need correction: The cost of legal education is simply too high, and cannot be maintained. Technology has to be leveraged within the educational curriculum to help future practicing attorneys to do more work, charge less, and make more money in the end. Regulations have to be focused on the outputs of legal education, and be given teeth so that students are more likely to succeed. While the book title is about the lost decade of the 2010s, the root of the problem goes back well over a hundred years. Professor Barton talks with us about where we've been, where we are, and where we need to go so that we really are Fixing Law Schools. Information Inspirations We keep it short and sweet this week (mostly because neither of us has finished our holiday shopping.) Wireframes are becoming less relevant — and that’s a good thing - In his Medium article, Sean Dexter argues that using wireframes is basically old school now, especially given the rise of Agile product development, and Lean UX processes. Today's visualizations require more on-the-fly modifications which standard wireframes just don't allow. Newer products like Think Sketch, Adobe XD, or Figma are the modern tools you might want to check out. 25+ Legal Tech and Business of Law Predictions for 2020 - Aderant released its third annual predictions and the common theme seems to be centered around the idea that we need less talk about innovation and more actual implementation of innovative ideas and products. Stop with the PR and BS, and get something done. Greg wanted to add one other idea to the 2020 prediction and declare that collaborative software products like Microsoft Teams or the legal industry-focused product Workstorm are going to become must-have products in the team environments in which most of us work. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Our holiday gift wish is that you take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Be generous!! 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.