The Geek In Review

Wouldn't it be cool if a law school and a business school could collaborate on issues of legal analytics, entrepreneurial opportunities in the law, and collaboration between the university and the local business and law firm industries? We talk with a couple of professors at Georgia Statue University (GSU) who are turning this 'cool idea' and making it a reality. Anne Tucker, Professor of Law, Legal Analytics & Innovation Initiative, and Ben Chapman, Executive Director, Legal Analytics and Innovation Initiative join us to discuss the details behind The Institute for Insight at GSU. The Institute brings together professors from different backgrounds of Engineering, Computer Science, and Statistics and with this type of cross-pollination with business and law, the professors are looking at applied analytics questions and bringing in their own unique skill sets to understand and solve these issues.  This mashup of law, business, data science, risk management, statistics and more isn't a purely academic endeavor for the Institute. Following in the tradition of GSU being an urban school, the Institute works with well known players in the Atlanta business and legal community to put the ideas into real-world situations. This gives the Institute's professors and students the opportunity to work side-by-side with the business and legal leaders to help identify, study, analyze, and potentially solve issues facing the business and legal industry. This is one of the many values which Tucker and Chapman see for not just preparing students for the practice of law, but also for the business of law. Information Inspirations While Greg was busy playing guitar in his law firm's band, Marlene was speaking at the DLaw Summit in NYC last week. Competitive Intelligence guru, Kevin Miles from Norton Rose Fulbright gives us some nice checklists on different CI topics along with some templates designed in MS Word to help start you on the CI path at your law firm. The Financial Times came out with a 15 article report on the legal industry ranging from top legal business technologists, to the Big-Four's advancement in the legal industry, to both the promise, and the overwhelming nature of understanding legal tech processes. We hope that Google still follows the "Don't Be Evil" rule because they are now touting success in the Quantum Computing area. Google recently announce that its new Quantum Computer can computerate complex data in less than 3 minutes what it would take current supercomputers 10,000 years to do. We guess it's not a good or bad thing, but the future is definitely upon us.  Northwestern Law's Daniel Rodriguez, and Legal Mosaic's Mark Cohen have a lengthy discussion on how to advance today's law school's teaching into the 21st Century. It's a great conversation. Listen, Subscribe, Comment Subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform.

This week, we bring on Kevin Clem, Chief Commercial Officer for HBR Consulting. Kevin discusses the HBR Law Department Survey which has become a staple in the industry over the past 16 years. There is still a bit of a Family Feud between the in-house and the outside counsel ranks, but the survey is showing that there are lots of opportunities for the two sides to communicate and collaborate, rather than keep the status quo in the relationship. GC's are wanting their outside firms to help them beyond their legal issues, and really get to understand their business needs and pressures. Whether it is laying out strategy and pricing, or assisting the law department with their understanding of legal tools or knowledge collection, there are needs which law firms need to help with, or someone else may fill that void.  Clem has used the platform of the TV game show, The Family Feud to show his audiences of corporate counsels how they see their relationships. And the survey says... it's not great.  Some 87% of GC's he had surveyed found the relationship to be either okay, or needing help. It's a great conversation, and we cover a number of topics, and the one thing that we all agreed with, is that Richard Dawson was our favorite host.  Information Inspirations: Pepperdine's online course makes a PR push for "nons." Greg thinks maybe they should find another term. After all, hospital administration is not referred to as non-doctors. There's some inspirational tweets out there ranging from why it's okay to talk about your projects at conferences, to how great a brother (and customer service provider) Levi is. Marlene is speaking at the Disrupt Law conference in NYC on Oct. 22-23. She is also on the ILTA Practice Management Content team, so if you have ideas for presentation, white papers, or other topics, tweet her! The Relativity, FTI Technology, Kaplan survey of in-house counsel points out that 97% of the GC's surveyed are considered business strategy leaders in their companies. And once again, it's important for their law firms to have solid knowledge of their businesses beyond their legal needs. This is a golden opportunity for CI/BI legal information professionals to step up and help law firm lawyers gain that knowledge. While the Trump tax returns may seem ever elusive, one researcher from ProPublica used FOIA requests to find individual parts and then piece them together.  Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. We’d love to hear any ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Also, subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!

Three law school innovators, three law firm innovators, a law student, and a biglaw Partner meet on a podcast... this podcast... and share thoughts on how to improve law students' tech skills before they arrive at the firm. That is the setting for this episode of The Geek in Review.  Nikki Shaver, Director of Innovation and Knowledge from Paul Hastings got this conversation started on Twitter when she discovered that most of the New Fall Associates (NFAs) did not take any technology or innovation courses while in law school. This is not an uncommon story. There seems to be little incentive, either on the law school, or law firm side of recruiting which stresses tech competencies. But just because that's the way it has always been, that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. There is definitely room for improvement! So we wanted to get a group together and do just that. We asked Vanderbilt Law School's Cat Moon, Vermont Law School's Jeannette Eicks, and University of Oklahoma Law School's Kenton Brice to cover the law school innovation perspective.  Nikki Shaver, Marlene, and Greg cover the law firm innovation perspective. We also asked Jackson Walker Partner Matt Acosta, and Michigan State University Law School student, Kanza Khan to jump in and share their experiences with the expectations for legal technology skills.  We take a deep dive into the topic ranging from what law schools are actually offering students, what are law firms expectations for tech skills, and are law firm recruiting, and law school placement incentivizing students to be more proficient with tech before they arrive as NFAs? Update on Government Actions on Legal Information It's been a few months since we last talked with Emily Feltren, Director of Government Relations with the American Association of Law Libraries. While the country may be focused on the impeachment inquiry, Emily catches us up on legislation that has passed the US House (and is sitting in the US Senate.) There's a potential Thanksgiving budget crisis... yeah, we hadn't heard that either. And, there were hearings last week on FREE PACER (and how some US Judges are not on board for that.) So Jam Packed, We Had To Postpone Information Inspirations We skipped the Information Inspirations portion this week. We promise it will be back in the next episode!! Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. We’d love to hear any ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Also, subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!

It turns out that the West Coast doesn't have a lock on law and tech innovation. On this episode, we talk with four guests who are involved in the upcoming NYU Law and Tech: Impact on Innovation, coming up on October 15, 2019.  Our guests today are Felicity Conrad is a NYU grad and CoFounder and CEO of Paladin. Michael Weinberg is the Executive Director at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU. Christian Lang, Head of Strategy at Reynen Court. And, Anna McGrane is also an NYU Law alum, and is the Co-founder and COO of PacerPro. Each discuss their individual experiences with legal tech innovation, and how the NYU campus has become an launching point for many of its grads toward the legal technology and innovation community. From start-ups to meet-ups, our guests believe that NYU is showing that innovation can have a definite East Coast flavor.  Information Inspirations The Return of FREE PACER!! Northwestern University’s Interdisciplinary team, which includes seven law faculty, including our previous guest, Tom Gaylord, was awarded a National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator Grant this month. The $1 Million grant will be used to advance Northwestern’s AI-Powered data platform which interfaces with the federal PACER system. The Northwestern Open Access to Court Records Initiative (NOACRI) Team includes lawyers, journalists, economists, and policy makers across the different schools at Northwestern, and they are working to create tools needed to make the data locked in PACER available, and then link that data to public information about the litigants, judges, lawyers, and the courts. We wish them luck!! Can Congress Regulate Algorithms used in judicial processes? California Representative, Mark Takano has introduced the “Justice in Forensic Algorithms Act of 2019.” The idea is to create a standards for these algorithms that make them more transparent, especially to the defense teams, not just for the results, but for the entire process. Algorithms used in the courts will also not be able to hide behind trade secrets to prevent those affected by the algorithms from understanding how these results were produced. Can the government actually pull this off? It'll be interesting to see how this progresses.  Plus, a bonus inspiration on what law firms should be doing to encourage 1L's and 2L's to learn more about technology while still at the law schools. Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. We’d love to hear any ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Also, subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!

Makerspaces are becoming very popular in libraries, and today we talk with two librarians who are ready to bring the collaborative thinking and working spaces into the law school library environment. Ashley Matthews is at George Mason's Antonin Scalia Law School, and Sharon Bradley is at the University of Georgia School of Law. Both believe there is a great benefit in carving out spaces within the law school library to allow students and faculty the ability to tinker and experiment with their creative sides, and potentially come up with the next big idea in the legal market. Matthews recently wrote an article on makerspaces entitled "Teaching Students to 'Tech Like a Lawyer'." While some of us may see 'tech like a lawyer' as a way to stop technology, Matthews thinks that the law school library environment can be the perfect place to teach law students the analytical skills they'll need in their practice to truly understand how a legal issue can benefit from technology, and how to issue spot, reason, analyze, and resolve legal issues more effectively with technology. Information Inspirations The Dangers of Categorical Thinking The human mind is build to categorize the things we see and do in the world. It just helps us make sense of the world, whether it's the fight or flight between seeing a stick and a snake, or the business decisions we make in selecting the perfect candidate out of a pool of ten qualified applicants. We group the hard skills and the soft skills. In this Harvard Business Review article, the authors warns not to be so caught up in the larger categorical picture, and lose sight of the details and nuances that really make the difference in the end. Four Firms are Moving the Needle on Diversity… and looking for a Fifth Eversheds Sutherland (US) announced this week that they are joining Goodwin, Orrick, and Stoel Rives in participating in a project called "Move the Needle Fund." These four firms have committed to meet the goal of having 33% women partners, and increasing the overall representation of racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, lawyers with disabilities, and veterans to at least 15% of their ranks within five years. The Move the Needle Fund is looking for a fifth law firm to join this group. Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. We’d love to hear any ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Also, subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!

While we could talk all day with the husband and wife team of Andie Kramer and Al Harris about being BigLaw Partners, it is their work on women's conflicts and bias in the workplace which brings them on the show today. Andie and Al recently released their second book, It's Not You, It's the Workplace: Women's Conflict at Work and the Bias That Built It. And we jump in with both feet to discuss how the workplace environment, even at law firms (or maybe, especially at law firms), is designed to place women in adversarial roles against one another. Andie and Al have mentored women, conducted speaking consultations, and have written books on the subject of gender communications for over 30 years. Because they bring both the female and male perspectives into this very difficult conversation, they pack a one-two punch for their audiences and definitely grab their attention. When we asked Al Harris how important it was for him to bring in men into this conversation, his answer was, "in a word… VERY!" We take a deep dive into the issue of gender bias in the workplace, and the environment which contributes to that very bias. You can learn more about Andie Kramer and Al Harris, including a question guide to their books, at their website, andieandal.com. Definitely check out the website after you listen to this week's interview! What Does Your Family Think You Do?? We have one more story this week about a family member who thinks that being a library manager is a glorified file clerk job. We imagined that Thanksgiving that year was a little awkward. If you have a story to share, leave us a message at 713-487-7270 or email us your story at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. Information Inspirations Come on men... it's 2019!! The Pence Rule of a man not being alone with a woman in the workplace, or attending a social event with alcohol without having a man's wife present is affecting work environments, including law firms. American Lawyer senior columnist, Vivia Chen's article, #MeToo Backlash Is Not Going Away, shows how men are less likely to work in one-on-one situations with women at a higher rate in 2019, than in 2016. This is having a significant effect on the ability for women to have equal access to opportunities and advancement. Vivia puts it best when she says "Considering it's 2019, it's frick'n unbelievable." We couldn't agree more. Investments in In-House Training Pays Off According to MP McQueen at CorporateCounsel, legal departments who spend more of their budgets on training, and who use their own in-house folks to conduct the training, have a higher return on their investment, and end up with a significant overall savings. A Gartner study of 140 in-house legal departments examined these training practices to handle lower risk issues created significant savings over using outside firms.  Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. We’d love to hear any ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Also, subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!

Andre Davison was literally a sixteen year old student when he began his career in law firm libraries. Now the Research Technology Manager at Blank Rome's Houston office, Andre has taken a leadership role both within his firm with technology and diversity programs, and has been rewarded for his efforts with multiple awards. Andre was awarded his firm's Nathaniel R. Jones Diversity Award for his diversity efforts, and he was the American Association of Law Libraries' Innovation Tournament winner for his Seamless Access to Secondary Sources (SASS) which enabled lawyers and others at his firm to dive into the portions of research materials directly, and without having to worry about usernames, passwords, or client numbers.  Andre's work expands past his award winning efforts at his firm, and he has taken on leadership roles on the local level with the Houston Area Law Libraries (HALL) as the current President. The local chapters are a wealth of professional development, and local community efforts which he says brings a family-like environment to him and his peers.  How does your family describe what you do? Speaking of family, we share stories of how our families describe to others what we do for work. As might be expected, it doesn't always match the reality of the situation. Greg thinks that it might have been easier on his family if he worked at Walmart. We'd love to get more stories to put on the show of what it is that your family members think you do. Leave us a voicemail at 713-487-7270 or email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com and share your story! Information Inspirations How Should Law Schools Adjust for Gen Z? Wake Forest Law School LR&W Director, Laura Graham wrote an excellent law review article which was featured as a Thursday Think Piece on SLAW. Gen Z's are very different from their Millennial law school predecessors. Learning and social styles are different and like it or not, law schools (and eventually law firms) are going to have to determine how to make adjustments for these new entrants into the legal profession. Greg would love to get a book club going on this topic, so reach out to him if you want to share ideas! Tech Trends and the Meeker Report The annual Meeker Report is out, and our past TGIR Interviewee, Stephen Embry has a review of how that relates to the legal industry. Marlene highlights three areas of how people educate themselves online with videos and podcasts. If you learn via podcasts (and we hope you do!), then the Kennedy-Mighell podcast covers this topic as well. American Law Firms in Transition This book from Randall Kiser just might be the next End of Lawyers? for the legal industry. Kiser discusses how law firms are still spinning the data of how healthy they are and ignore problems in their business model. WIth the recent collapse of LeClaireRyan, maybe firms might find Kiser's insights to be more relevant. Rise of the Alternative Business Structures (ABS) in the Legal Industry Our friend, Jordan Furlong has a series of Tweets covering the adoption of ABS in states like Utah, and in some Canadian provinces. Furlong says that we should be prepared for a “seismic change ripping through legal service regulations.”

Welcome to the 50th Episode of the Geek in Review!! American Lawyer Media Reporter, Dylan Jackson, joins us this week to discuss two of his recent articles which focused on the mental health of law firm staff, as well as the persistent caste system which still exists in the large law firm environment. Jackson talked with a number of people within law firms regarding how firms view the mental health of staffers, what firms are doing (or not doing) to address the issues, as well as how firms value their staff's contribution to the success of the firm. While the days of having a chair tossed at you by a partner might have faded in the past couple of decades, the stress placed on staff to handle more work, and to take on much more strategic missions for the law firm has significantly increased over the past ten years. Jackson found that it is still difficult for even the most senior of staff to get a seat at the table within the law firm, and that old barriers still exist to separate lawyers from the professional staff. In the end, these professionals need to be recognized for their contribution, and they want to be treated with respect. Information Inspirations The Dark Side of Personality Tests Many law firms are conducting personality assessments on their lawyers and staff. The idea is that if we better understood each other's personalities, we can communicate better. Author Quinisha Jackson-Wright points out in a New York Times piece a significant flaw in personality tests when other use it to "fix" the other person, rather than adapt their own behavior. It's important that workers don't feel like they are being "outed" by being a certain personality type. KM as a SUSTAINED Innovation Practice Ark Group's new book, Tomorrow's KM-Innovation, comes some of the best practices around Knowledge Management in law firms. Ranging from the diversity needed within KM, to where innovation sits, to the collaboration needed for KM projects to succeed, this book covers it. While the US firms are still trying to define KM, it seems that firms outside the US have a clear vision. What is your Law Firm's Purpose? Bruce MacEwan at Adam Smith, Esq., builds upon the recent announcement by The Business Roundtable that corporations should no longer view maximizing shareholder profits as the sole guiding principle for its existence. How should this effect law firms? When partners ask the question "What is your Law Firm's Purpose?" of course, compensation is high up there… but what else is its purpose?  Looking to Code? Marlene discovered a fun (and free) place to learn some of the basics of coding. Free Code Camp has a number of options ranging from how to survive a tech conference, to even building your own version of a Flappy Bird game. Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!

Most of us learned that if you set goals, those goals should be measurable. Sameena Kluck, Vice President of Business Development at Paladin, PBC, sits down with us this week to discuss how Pro Bono goals should also be measurable. While Pro Bono work is primarily viewed as a way for lawyers to do "good work," it has a larger impact than just on those receiving the work. We anecdotally know that Pro Bono impacts professional development, business development, recruiting, retention, attorney morale, marketing, branding, and more. However, there hasn't been a very good way of actually quantifying how Pro Bono works affect the law firm. We've measured our work by the hours we put in (pretty typical for a law firm), but that doesn't really tell us all the story. Sameena walks us through some of the metrics that she and Paladin are measuring to show the true value of Pro Bono work and how it benefits much more than just the Pro Bono client. Information Inspirations: AI for the Business of Law Jennifer Roberts, our Data Science Superhero from Ep. 26, has an article in LegalTechNews this week which says that the AI Hype Cycle might be in full swing when it comes to work that lawyers are doing, but that cycle is still in it's infancy when it comes to the business side of the law firm. Specifically in the Business Development and is the Risk Management departments of law firms, AI is just getting started. Roberts lays out examples of ways which AI tools can identify client traits. Predictions and modeling on client's likelihood of attrition, or forecasting client's financial viability, or the buying patterns of clients are just a few things that AI can assist business development professionals. When it comes to conflicts, Roberts writes that AI can reduce the time it takes to clear conflicts by up to 80%. There's definitely some value-add which AI can bring to the business side of the law firm table. The 1619 Project and Howard University Law Grads The New York Times Magazine launched an amazing expose on the 400th anniversary of slavery in the United States. One section focuses in on four recent law graduates of Howard University. It is a powerful piece which describes the journey of these families starting with their enslaved ancestors, and travel the path through today, and the lawyers' plans for the future. There is also a 1619 Podcast launching this week as well. Accelerated Learning Mission.org provides concise summaries of management writings, and Marlene points us to one of her favorites. "131 Actionable Ideas from Ten Books I Wish I Had Read Ages Ago." Author Louis Tsai walks through key takeaways of ten management books. In about 10 minutes, you should be all up to speed. Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. We’d love to hear any ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Also, subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!

When mega-legal publisher, Thomson Reuters, acquired regional legal publisher, O'Connor's in January 2018, there were many Texas lawyers and law librarians who worried about what would happen to this very popular publisher. Greg sits down with former O'Connor's Vice President, Jason Wilson, and talks about the history of O'Connor's, why they focused on information design, and the plain English style of writing of their books. Wilson says the secret to good publishing, is spending a good amount of time preparing the material, and a systematic approach to organizing the material in a way that makes sense to the attorneys. While O'Connor's has be gobbled up by Thomson Reuters, Wilson thinks that there is still a lot of room for small and regional legal publishers. In fact, he says it makes perfect sense for large publishers to license some of their more regional or niche materials to smaller vendors so that they can give it the attention to detail those topics need.  Information Inspirations In a world where you can't swing a swag back at a legal conference without hitting a vendor claiming to have AI which will transform the industry, is ROSS Intelligence pushing it a little too far when they claim that they've pulled legal research out of the "dark ages" and that they've eliminated the need for humans to compile information found in traditional secondary sources (AKA treatises)? Greg suggests that when you read PR like this, have your law librarian test it to see if it really is transformative, or if it is purely PR speak. Thomson Reuters recently published a white paper called The Next Gen Leadership: Advancing Lawyers of Color (pdf). In a legal industry which is 85% white, and 64% male (compared to US stats of 76.6% and 49.2% respectively), TR sets out to interview 23 attorneys of color across the country to find out what they see white/male attorneys are doing to advance and retain lawyers of color. There are three themes picked up by TR in the interview which cover: sponsorship to navigate law firm spaces access to critical assignments, and increase understanding on the unique experiences of lawyers of color. Stephen Embry has a great blog post that fits nicely with this topic, and covers the ABA's 2019 Profile of the Legal Profession Report.  Listen, Subscribe, Comment 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. We’d love to hear any ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes. Also, subscribe, rate, and comment on The Geek In Review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca, thanks Jerry!