Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Derek Duarte, the president of BlackStone Discovery, which integrates e-discovery, consulting, forensics, case management, and technology development for law firms and corporate legal teams worldwide, with a focus on the West Coast of the U.S. and Asia. We discussed key trends in electronic discovery, where organizations are incorporating innovation into their discovery processes, how they can negotiate the scope of their discovery requests, how metadata impacts e-discovery strategy, and where e-discovery support is headed.

I spoke with Bill Hamilton, a legal skills professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law and the executive director of the UF Law E-Discovery Project, which is hosting the UF Law E-Discovery Conference on Thursday, March 29th. Bill practiced with Holland & Knight in Miami and Tampa for 27 years and at Quarles & Brady in Tampa for six, where he served as the firm’s national e-discovery partner. We discussed the UF Law E-Discovery Conference on Thursday, March 29th, the Careerfest component of the event, the consortium of professors meeting after the conference to discuss e-discovery education in law schools, and how individuals can remotely take advantage of the content (as the law school will be live streaming and recording the sessions).

I spoke with Michelle Desachy, the vibe manager for the Hard Rock Hotel in Riviera Maya, Mexico. We discussed her role at the facility, the importance of maintaining a unified culture, and the value of understanding client interests to constantly improve customer service.

I spoke with Joe Garber, the global head of product marketing for information management and governance at Micro Focus, a global software company that among many other tools, develops security and risk solutions, as well as predictive analytics. We discussed in the increased interest in predictive analytics, how professionals are approaching security and risk in 2018, the challenges associated with encouraging enterprises to adopt stronger information governance strategies, and what the rise of tools like those offered by Micro Focus indicate about the trajectory of the legal industry.

I spoke with Keith Lee, a lawyer, author, and blogger in Birmingham, Alabama. He has been blogging at Associates Mind for eight years and recently created LawyerSmack, a private community for attorneys interested in discussing practice-related issues with their peers in real time. We discussed the genesis of LawyerSmack, how it works, the community’s most active groups, what is driving its popularity, the surprising benefits of its creation, and what its growth indicates about the changing nature of communication in the legal profession.

I spoke with Konrad Pola, the co-Founder and CEO of Diligen, a software platform designed to help law firms and law departments with their contract and legal document review efforts. We discussed the genesis of Diligen, what is driving the interest in artificial intelligence, whether law firms and legal departments ready to embrace AI, what legal teams should look for when considering an AI solution, and where AI adoption is headed in 2018.

I spoke with David Cowen, the president and managing director of The Cowen Group, a staffing and recruiting firm focusing exclusively on the eDiscovery, litigation support, privacy, security, and information governance sectors. His firm also produces the Summit on Legal Innovation and Disruption in various cities across the U.S. We discussed the genesis of the SOLID summit, why the legal industry so focused on innovation and disruption this year, how individuals can give themselves an advantage in an increasingly competitive job market, and how events like SOLID capture the evolution of the legal profession.

I spoke with Ray Zwiefelhofer, the president of World Software Corporation, the maker of Worldox, a leading document management platform, at Legaltech 2018 about the company’s 30th anniversary, the importance of company culture, and the most significant issues affecting the evolution of the legal industry. The company will be exhibiting at the ABA Techshow this week in Chicago and recently shared details on its global expansion.

I spoke with Andrey Zinoviev, the co-founder and CEO of Visabot, an artificial intelligence tool designed to help businesses and consumers navigate immigration issues. The company was a participant in the first cohort of the LexisNexis Legal Tech Accelerator. We discussed the genesis of Visabot, how it works, why immigration law is a field that artificial intelligence can empower, and how AI is impacting similar areas of the law.

I spoke with Ross Guberman, the founder of Legal Writing Pro. He provides training on legal writing worldwide and recently released Brief Catch, a Microsoft Word plug-in that offers detailed editorial suggestions to improve your writing and metrics to benchmark your performance.