Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Chris Egan, president and founder, and James Bickley, managing director of Celeritas Recruiting, a specialized recruiting firm representing leading organizations and professionals at the intersection of law and technology. We discussed the roles and skills in greatest demand today, the challenges associated with talent acquisition in the current market, and how employers and candidates should react to the FTC's ruling on noncompete agreements.

In this 26th episode of Charting Change in Legal, Caroline Hill, Editor and Publisher of Legal IT Insider, and I discussed Lexpo, ILTACON, ConnectLive, LegalTechTalk, and the conference renaissance.

I spoke with Sandra Aldi, the Chief Marketing Officer at Neota Logic, Michael Powers, the Global Director of Product Marketing at iManage, and Thomas Suh, the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer for LegalMation. The three companies are part of a consortium that supported a newly released report called: Legal Operations at a Crossroads - Understanding How Corporate Legal Teams are Driving Innovation and Navigating Digital Transformation in Unique Ways, featuring the perspectives of 30 legal operations leaders from various companies. We discussed the results and what they indicate about how law departments are leveraging AI, automating how they provide legal services, and empowering self-service.

I spoke with Danette Shaifer, the founder and Chief Empowerment Officer at Florishion Consulting and Coaching, LLC. We discussed how leaders in legal align digital transformation with personal growth, creative ways to train leaders to reinvent the workplace, and how coaching in legal is evolving.

I spoke with Aaron Lee, the co-founder and CEO of Smith.ai, a company that provides 24/7 answering services through phone or chat for small to midsize businesses using a combination of AI and human support, including law firms, among others. We discussed why the legal industry has embraced AI, ways to make lawyers more comfortable with AI, balancing AI with human talent, and where the use of AI in legal is headed.

I spoke with John Scott, an accounting partner with Anders CPAs and Advisors and the Legal Niche Leader at Summit VCFO Services by Anders. We discussed the most important financial metrics for growing a law firm, best practices for maximizing the leverage model, and how law firms take advantage of dynamic forecasting.

Caroline Hill, Editor and Publisher of Legal IT Insider, discusses changemakers, talent, legal transformation, and tracking technology trajectory in the legal industry. Highlights include prioritizing people in tech advancements, rise of Gen AI skills, forming running groups at legal conferences, evolving legal ops role, ownership debates in contract management, and the pivotal role of AI in eDiscovery.

I spoke with Josh Aaron, CEO of Aiden Technologies, a provider of modern, intelligent software packaging and deployment for Microsoft Windows. We discussed how law firms can improve their security posture and operational efficiency and how the IT security paradigm is shifting.

I spoke with Taylor Willingham, the owner of Willingham Law Firm, an estate planning, probate, and elder practice, and WG Title, a title company, both based in McKinney, Texas. We discussed the most compelling issues in elder law, common mistakes people make in retirement planning, and how the field of elder law is changing.

I spoke with Rich Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of New Era ADR, a technology company that increases predictability in the legal dispute process. We discussed the emerging technologies affecting the dispute resolution process, the role that chatbots and generative AI applications serve in ADR, and the skills required of modern neutrals.