The Legal Ops Podcast

So you want to invest in legal technology, but where do you start? In this two-part series you’ll hear from Alex and Elliot who together have a wealth of experience sourcing, selecting and implementing legal technology for both large and small corporate legal departments. They share practical tips while walking through the following stages that will help ensure you choose the right solution: (1) Defining the problem - a practical framework for establishing and justifying the need, contextualising the problem and developing a problem statement. (2) Rent, buy or build? - is this something you can build yourself using existing enterprise systems already available to you? What are the pros and cons of each option? (3) How to find the right tech - with over 4,000 legal technology vendors globally, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Should you choose an integrated or point solution? Legal specific or enterprise? Where can you go to find the best tech? How do you make the most out of product demos? (4) RFP, RFI, RFQ - what are the differences and what is the best option for your scenario? In Part 2 Alex and Elliot will share practical tips on the fun part - implementation!

In this episode of The Pulse, Alex and Elliot discuss the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s annual State of the Industry survey results. They covered what was surprising and not so surprising about the results and discussed what trends could be contributing to changes in the industry. They also discussed Google’s announcement to create a "new integrated workspace experience" by combing a number of their products into one place. Alex shares how this will dramatically improve his work day while Elliot shares his healthy skepticism. LINKS CLOC 3rd Annual State of the Industry Survey: https://cloc.org/blog/cloc-announces-the-results-of-their-3rd-annual-state-of-the-industry-survey/ G Suite video: https://youtu.be/4Cslvqi38eI

In this episode of The Pulse, Alex and Elliot discuss the Global Legal Tech Report, including what it is, who it's for and some of its findings. They also cover the recently announced update to Microsoft Teams which adds two intriguing features: Together Mode, which uses avatars to simulate being physically together, and Dynamic View, which promises a better way to deliver group presentations virtually. They also provide a brief follow up to the Hey.com story discussed in the previous episode, and they chat about recent coronavirus developments in Chicago and Melbourne. LINKS You download the app and it doesn’t work: https://youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com/ MS Teams update video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1egcVkYrgw&feature=youtu.be

Steven, Alex and Elliot discuss the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic for legal operations, particularly relating to business continuity. They cover: * The history of legal operations, how it has matured as a discipline and the influence of groups such as CLOC and the ACC * Permanently mobile workforces, the challenges this creates and how to maintain personal relationships and connections in a physically separated working environment * Whether or not paper is "dead", and how the pandemic has affected this trend * The extent to which corporates should be concerned about their law firms' business continuity strategies and procedures * Why change management is more important than ever * The importance of data and metrics, both to assess the impact of disruption and to help with planning for future events * Steven's views on the future of legal operations and why collaboration, integration and data will play a key role LINKS Steven O'Donnell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenodonnell1 Mitratec's Business Continuity Transformation Center: https://mitratech.com/business-continuity-transformation-center/

In this episode of The Pulse, Alex and Elliot chat about Hey, a new email service from the Basecamp software company. Hey has been described as the most innovative take on email since Gmail launched in 2004. However the focus of the episode is not on Hey itself, but on the controversy surrounding Apple's rejection of the app from the iOS App Store. Basecamp's CTO compared Apple's behaviour to the mafia, Microsoft's chief legal officer raised serious antitrust concerns and some US politicians have questioned whether Apple is abusing the monopoly that it created over access to iOS. Alex and Elliot discuss all these issues and suggest how they could be addressed in the future, including through the creation of a competing app store for iOS. LINKS Hey website: https://hey.com/ TheVerge's review of Hey: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21286466/hey-email-basecamp-price-availability-platforms-launch

In this episode of The Pulse, Alex and Elliot chat about Alex's new AirPods Pro and the recent integration deal between Slack and AWS. Then they discuss law firms expanding into new lines of business, why they have historically been slow to do this and what types of businesses it would make sense for law firms to consider. LINKS Australian Financial Review article: https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/we-are-redefining-the-law-firm-says-minterellison-boss-20191202-p53g6b

Alex and Elliot discuss the recently released 2020 ACC Legal Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report, including:* What type of companies and legal operations departments are represented in the report * What competencies are included in the ACC's legal operations maturity model and how the model compares to CLOC's equivalent model * What the report identifies to be the competencies with the highest and lowest average maturities across all responding companies * How the overall maturity of legal operations departments correlates with organisational size and scale * Which industries have organisations with higher legal operations maturity, and potential reasons for the reported results * How particular competencies are defined and the average rating of all companies in those competencies * Whether the research behind the report is measuring true operational maturity and, if not, what else it might be measuring LINKS Link to the report: https://bit.ly/3dyZl2Y

In this episode of The Pulse, Alex and Elliot provide coronavirus updates from the USA and Australia. Then they discuss e-execution, including how recent legislative changes in Australia have expanded its availability, what risks this entails, whether the changes will continue despite the legislation being temporary and the international perspective.

Daniela, Alex and Elliot discuss eBay's approach to legal operations, including: * The structure of eBay's legal ops function * Why eBilling was chosen as the function's first major deliverable * The importance of eBay's legal tech roadmap and its alignment with the organisation's wider strategy * How to measure the success of a technology implementation and whether quantitive or qualitative measures are preferred * Whether technology implementations are more or less challenging within technology organisations compared to other types of organisations * Daniela's view on the most pressing issues facing in-house legal that legal ops can address LINKS: Daniela Dwyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-dwyer-79280825/

In this episode of The Pulse, Alex and Elliot provide coronavirus updates from the USA and Australia respectively. They also discuss the Australian Federal government's COVIDSafe app, privacy concerns arising from the app and whether the public benefit is sufficient to outweigh those concerns.