The Legal Ops Podcast

Carl Morrison is the Director of Legal Operations at MGM Resorts International, based in Las Vegas. He began his legal career as a paralegal, working primarily in litigation support and legal project management. He progressed to management roles in which he lead teams of paralegals to efficiently deliver complex discovery and document review initiatives, eventually combining his existing skills with technology, analysis and strategic advice to move fully into legal operations. We covered many topics with Carl, including: * How he progressed from paralegal to director of legal operations * What specific challenges he encountered on his journey and how he handled them * The challenges that come with being a legal operations leader in a small legal team * As a sole legal operations resource, how he prioritises his time and effort * The impact of an organisational merger on a legal operations function * Observations on the legal operations market in the US compared to other parts of the world LINKS Carl Morrison on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlmorrison/ Carl's email: carl@dearlegalops.com

Nam Truong is the head of Digital and Innovation at Law Squared, an innovative and young law firm based in Melbourne, Australia. Nam is relatively new to the legal industry, having spent a number of years working with digital products in the financial services industry. This non-legal background, combined with the blank canvas of Law Squared's existing tech stack, enabled Nam and the firm to eschew many traditional legal tech services and instead create a flexible and robust system which leverages modern architectural principles. We covered many topics with Nam, including: * Why he moved from fintech to the legal industry, and what key observations he had after making the move. * How Law Squared is different to a traditional law firm and how that affects the day-to-day employee experience. * How Nam and the firm approached the design of their tech stack. * Which particular applications the firm uses, how they are integrated and how it improves the handling and management of data. * Why they chose a modular approach over a monolithic approach, and what benefits and costs it offers. * How the tech stack is expected to grow and develop in the future. LINKS Nam Truong on Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/namtruong96 Law Squared: https://www.lawsquared.com/

Zach Posner is a co-founder and managing partner of The Legal Tech Fund, an investment fund which focuses exclusively on early stage legal tech start ups. He is an accomplished entrepreneur himself, having started and sold three companies in a variety of industries. In a wide ranging and fascinating conversation, we covered many aspects of the legal tech investment world, including: * What is unique about the legal tech market, and why he and The Legal Tech Fund focus on it * What makes a good start up, both in general and in the legal industry specifically * How to validate a new business idea * Why timing is of critical importance, and what to do about it * What "pre-seed", "seed", "series A" and other investment jargon means * What funding cycles are and how they work * The role of an investor in the day-to-day operations and management of a business * What sort of exit investors look for and why the exit profile in legal tech is different to other markets LINKS Zach Posner on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachposner The Legal Tech Fund: https://www.legaltech.com/ TLTF Summit: http://tltfsummit.com/ Nate's news: https://www.legaltech.com/natesnews

In this Talking Tech episode Alex and Elliot speak with Matt Patel, co-founder and COO of Malbek. Malbek provides provides contract review and management software solutions to companies across the globe. LINKS Malbek website: https://www.malbek.io/ Matt Patel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-patel-36680a9

Electra Japonas is the founder and CEO of The Law Boutique, a legal optimisation consultancy which aims to turn law departments into commercial enablers by supercharging their business through legal design. Electra and TLB are on a mission to drive efficiency through standardization. Their first two contract standardization projects, OneNDA and OneDPA, have received widespread adoption and acclaim. Their next venture, Claustack, aims to build on that success by creating a platform which enables all industry participants to start and run their own standardization projects. We sat down with Electra to discuss these initiatives in more detail, including: * Electra's background and what led her to start her own consultancy. * How OneNDA has performed during its first year since launch. * Why Claustack is like a combined Github and Stackoverflow for legal. * How Claustack and TLB will help lawyers to run their own standardization projects. * Why standardization can and should be applied to more than just documents and contracts. * What success will look like for Claustack and standardization in general. LINKS Electra Japonas on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/electra-japonas/ The Law Boutique website: https://www.tlb.law/ Claustack website: https://www.claustack.com/ OneNDA website: https://onenda.club/

Alex and Elliot chat about: * Why are investors pouring money into legal technology? * Is it getting easier to switch legal tech vendors? * Google's move into e-signature and what it means for other markets * AirSlate's recent $51.5m capital raise * Why Alex isn't wearing his Apple Watch any more (most of the time) Thanks to HBR Consulting for sponsoring this episode. Find out more about HBR here: https://www.hbrconsulting.com/ LINKS Money pouring into legal tech: https://www.ft.com/content/b6f0796e-0265-40c6-ad4c-a900cd788c39 Switching legal tech vendors: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2022/06/24/legal-professionals-face-cost-time-and-trust-barriers-when-switching-tech-vendors/ Google's move into e-signature: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2022/07/12/googles-move-into-e-signature-isnt-likely-about-the-clm-market/

In this Talking Tech episode Alex and Elliot speak with Kevin Clem and Lauren Chung from HBR Consulting. HBR is one of the world's largest legal operations consulting firms, headquartered in Chicago with operations throughout the USA, Canada and the UK. In addition to consulting on all aspects of legal operations, technology and strategy, HBR conducts an annual law department survey to analyse and understand developments in the legal industry. In the episode we draw on the survey, as well as Kevin and Lauren's extensive experience, to discuss recent trends in the industry and a number of insightful predictions for the future. LINKS Kevin Clem on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinclem Lauren Chung on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenmchung HBR Consulting: https://www.hbrconsulting.com/ Counsel Command: https://www.hbrconsulting.com/what-we-do/software-solutions/counselcommand/ Counsel Guide: https://www.hbrconsulting.com/what-we-do/software-solutions/counselguide/

Meera Klemola and Astrid Kohlmeier are legal design pioneers. They are both teachers, speakers and writers, specialising in the application of design principles to legal services delivery. Both have consulted on this topic to the world's largest law firms and in-house teams. For this episode we sat down with Meera and Astrid to discuss their book, "The Legal Design Book", which was published in 2021. We covered many topics including: * Why they wrote the book and why now is the right time to publish it * What "legal design" is and how it differs from some other methodologies, such as Lean Six Sigma and Agile * Why "legal design" is about more than visually pleasing documents * The key philosophies and mindsets that underly legal design * How to apply legal design in practice, including case studies * The relationship between legal design and legal operations LINKS The book: https://legaldesign-book.com/ Meera's website: https://www.groundm.com/ Meera on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meera-klemola/ Astrid's website: https://astridkohlmeier.de/ Astrid on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/astridkohlmeier/

Alex and Elliot chat about: * A recent survey suggesting lawyers are (possibly) moving away from MS Word * Recent capital raisings by Evisort, SirionLabs and Dilitrust * The M2 MacBook Air and what's to like (and not like) about it LINKS Lawyers moving away from MS Word: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2022/05/25/are-some-inhouse-lawyers-falling-out-of-love-with-word/ Evisort: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/evisort-raises-100m-in-funding-led-by-tcv-301545180.html SirionLabs: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/10/sirionlabs-lands-85m-to-inject-contract-management-with-automation/ Dilitrust: https://www.dilitrust.com/en/actu/dilitrust-continues-to-grow/

Alex and Elliot interview Eyal Iffergan, Managing Director, Legal Business Advisory at Hyperion Global Partners. Hyperion provides legal operations consultancy services to legal teams across the world. In this episode, Eyal, Alex and Elliot discuss technology roadmaps and data analytics, including: * What a technology roadmap is, why it's important in both private practice and in-house and how it relates to the team's broader strategy. * How legal operations is helping to drive the legal industry to become a "customer driven market". * What legal teams typically do well (and less well) when creating a technology roadmap. * What we mean by "legal metrics" and whether or not they must be quantifiable. * What is most challenging: collecting, analysing or utilising metrics? * What are the most critical metrics for a legal function to focus on. LINKS Hyperion Global Partners: https://www.hyperiongp.com/ Hyperion Research: https://insights.hgpresearch.com/