Pioneers and Pathfinders

Today’s guest is Carmin Ballou, vice president of Data Analytics and Innovation at Attorneys' Liability Assurance Society, also known as ALAS. ALAS is the country’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 223 law firms—including 89 of the Am Law 200—with more than 74,000 lawyers located around the world. A lawyer with a Master of Science in Analytics degree from the University of Chicago Graham School, Carmin is focused on a key element of the legal profession: risk management. She uses her legal background and technical skills to lead the data analytics team at ALAS, with a goal of instilling more robust risk management-based analytics across all functional areas of ALAS, and providing analysis and tools for use of their member firms. The analytics initiatives are designed to assist in ALAS' ongoing operations, and to provide a service to ALAS' member firms by helping them understand and manage their professional liability risk. To this work, she brings many years of experience as a practicing attorney at Skadden, as well as expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, SQL, Python, and Power BI. Listen in to today’s conversation to learn how Carmin's team uses data to test and support the experiences of her loss prevention colleagues. We also talk about the use of data visualization techniques to help communicate the messages learned from the data as to a firm’s area with the most issues. And of course, we talk about her professional journey and how her interest in project management and data analytics instructed her personal path.

Today we welcome back our premiere guest, Dr. Heidi K. Gardner. An economist by training, she is a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession and chair of the school’s Smarter Collaboration Master Class and Sector Leadership Master Class. In addition to these roles, she founded and runs her own consultancy, Gardner & Co. In our first conversation, we talked about her journey, how she got involved in studying the legal profession, and her bestselling book, Smart Collaboration, a data-driven look at the business case for effective collaboration. Now, Dr. Gardner has a new book, Smarter Collaboration, co-authored with Ivan Matviak. In this book, she builds on the concepts of smart collaboration with data, case studies, and ways to help leaders identify places where smarter collaboration is already happening—and take it to the next level. Join us as we catch up with Dr. Gardner on what she has been doing since we last spoke, and explore why she was inspired to write her new book. We cover a wide range of topics: why we should continue to cultivate “serendipitous encounters” at work, how organizations can avoid the dangers of over-collaboration, and how they can better collaborate with outside parties such as consultants and vendors. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

Today’s guest is Alex Smith, Global Product Management Lead for iManage RAVN. He got his start at legal publishing giant LexisNexis, where he began in online editorial work and eventually evolved his role to product management and platform innovation. An interest in new roles in law firms led to his time as innovation manager at Reed Smith, a global firm where he oversaw the firm’s Innovation Hub program that encouraged, communicated, connected, and managed a pipeline of ideas across the firm's global network. Today, he oversees the product roadmap for the search, knowledge, and AI offerings within the wider iManage experience, bringing the voice, needs, and ideas of the customer in service design. The common thread in his career journey is his fascination with search and data, and the evolution of new and emerging technologies, from CD-ROM to contract management, artificial intelligence, semantic search, and linked data. In many ways, Alex’s career maps the evolution of technology in the legal sector. Our conversation flashes back to the early days of online legal publishing up to today's emerging technologies. We talk about Alex's various work experiences, and how he uses lawyers’ penchant for talking about themselves in his work in product design. We also discuss how he has been at the core of some of the critical technology products in the legal industry.

Contracts are a hot topic in education, technology innovation, and practice in the legal industry. In fact, we've had several guests on the show focused on those aspects of contract management, but today's guest focuses on contract formation. She asks a simple, but important question: Can we learn to do a better job of negotiating and drafting better contracts? Laura Frederick is the founder and CEO of How to Contract. Drawn from her 26 years practicing contract law, How To Contract teaches real-world skills in negotiating and drafting contracts. The formation of How To Contract is a fascinating story. Two years ago, Laura began sharing daily contracting tips as part of a 30-day challenge of posting on LinkedIn. The reaction to these posts was overwhelmingly positive, and Laura went from 1,000 followers on LinkedIn to more than 33,000 followers today. This, in turn, led to her book, Practical Tips on How to Contract. Laura also launched How To Contract, the global leader in practical contract training for lawyers and professionals. Through its training membership and events, it has helped thousands of people learn how to manage contract risk and get deals done. Laura is also the managing attorney of Laura Frederick Law, PLLC, a boutique law firm based in Austin, Texas that helps companies that need practical and affordable advice on commercial contracts. In today's conversation, we talk about Laura’s use of social media and her move to being an entrepreneur. We also discuss what ignited Laura's love of contracts, how and why she addresses the human side of contracting at a time when technology dominates, and the influence of SeyfarthLean on her evolution.

Mishcon de Reya is one of the most unique and fascinating law firms in the world. Today’s guest, Elliot Moss, is the mind behind Mishcon’s brand. Elliot is chief brand officer and a partner at Mishcon, a 600 fee-earner firm headquartered in London. This unique combination of roles is made possible by the Legal Services Act 2007 in the UK. Elliot has overall responsibility for brand, marketing, communications, client development, new business, and social impact for the firm. He comes from the world of advertising, having worked for Leo Burnett and Leagas Delaney. It was here that he first met Mishcon’s managing partner—now executive chairperson—Kevin Gold. After a two-year contract with the firm, Elliot stayed on, attracted by what he calls the great “volume of intellectual capital” in the law. Since then, he has become the first nonlawyer to be named as one of the Financial Times' 10 Most Innovative Individuals. He also happens to have a long-running podcast called Jazz Shapers, where he interviews founders and entrepreneurs on their own professional journeys. It was a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation. We discussed the cultural attributes that make Mishcon such an innovative and unique firm. We also veered into a number of other intriguing topics. For example, the firm recently sponsored a film from The Economist on the culture wars, which is not typical for a law firm, and we talked about how their atypical branding moves are “utterly rational.” We also talked about why he made the leap from consumer-oriented branding to the law, how he made the case for Mishcon to make him a partner, and what's next for their IPO—and how he sold it to his partners.

It's always a delight to talk to people who are passionate about what they do. Dr. Silvia Hodges Silverstein is such a person. She researches, teaches, and speaks on purchasing decisions and change in the legal industry. Silvia is the CEO of Buying Legal Council, which supports professionals tasked with sourcing legal services and legal tech through education, research, and advocacy. Their mission is to advance the field of buying legal services and legal tech by sharing intelligence and best practices on how to buy and manage supplier relationships. Silvia is the editor of The Definitive Guide to Buying Legal Services and has authored two Harvard Business School case studies on legal procurement and the legal industry. She has also taught management at Columbia Law School and Fordham University School of Law. Our conversation covered a number of interesting topics. We talked about how Silvia's journey in marketing for an Italian law firm led to her interest and expertise in procurement, the evolution of procurement's role in buying legal services and the ongoing struggle between lawyers and procurement professionals, and her view on which pricing model is least used by in-house counsel and the reason why.

Jennifer Leonard is the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School's chief innovation officer and the executive director of the Future of the Profession Initiative. As chief innovation officer, Jennifer advances projects that evolve our understanding of the skills and knowledge lawyers need to thrive in a rapidly changing professional landscape. She and her colleagues also develop multidisciplinary projects that engage law students with creative thinkers from the Wharton School, Penn Engineering, the School of Nursing, and more to design solutions and make civil legal systems more accessible. In today's episode, Jennifer tells us about her groundbreaking role as the first and only chief innovation officer at a law school, how she is using design thinking to collaborate across Penn and with peers at other law schools, and her advice for creative law students who want to enter the world of Big Law—as well as her advice for those firms.

Zach Posner is a three-time entrepreneur turned investor. He is working to find ways that artificial intelligence can be used to positively affect the world. To that end, Zach is the co-founder and managing partner at The LegalTech Fund, which is the first venture capital fund to focus exclusively on legal tech. Founded in 2020 post-pandemic, the Fund recently closed to $28.5 million, exceeding its goal of $25 million. The vision of The LegalTech Fund is to bring together a community of the world's most forward-thinking experts and advisors to accelerate innovation in the legal world. In today's conversation, we talked about how this finance major came to invest in legal tech, the criteria Zach looks for when he makes investments, and his plans for the inaugural The LegalTech Fund Summit coming in December.

The past few years have seen a rise in heads of innovation at Big Law firms. One of the leading voices in this space is David Wang, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s chief innovation officer. David is responsible for overseeing the firm's innovation strategy, the development and implementation of legal technology programs, and supporting and advising both internal and client teams on the legal and operational implications of emerging technologies and business models. He previously practiced corporate and securities law for more than 10 years, working with private and public companies on general corporate and transactional matters. Prior to becoming a lawyer, David was an entrepreneur himself. Under David’s leadership, Wilson has received multiple accolades for their innovative use of technology. In today's conversation, we discuss how David transitioned from the practice of law to leading a cutting-edge innovation and technology team at a Big Law firm, how he manages his portfolio of responsibilities, his decision-making process for taking on new projects, and what excites him most in the legal tech market.

JusticeText, an MIT- and Google-backed startup, is building technology to improve criminal justice outcomes for low-income Americans. Today's guest is Devshi Mehrotra, JusticeText CEO and co-founder. She started this work when she was a computer science undergraduate at the University of Chicago, while the city was reeling from the death of Laquan McDonald. Devshi and co-founder Leslie Jones-Dove began their work helping public defenders better utilize large volumes of admissible video and audio data. Today, JusticeText is an audiovisual evidence management platform that expedites review of collective video and audio data with machine learning to support the work of public defenders. Devshi talks to us about how falling in love with the problem helped her go against her natural risk aversion, how participating in startup programs and accelerators contributed to the success of JusticeText, and how she is building a strong company culture.