Most of us learned that if you set goals, those goals should be measurable. Sameena Kluck, Vice President of Business Development at Paladin, PBC, sits down with us this week to discuss how Pro Bono goals should also be measurable. While Pro Bono work is primarily viewed as a way for lawyers to do “good work,” it has a larger impact than just on those receiving the work. We anecdotally know that Pro Bono impacts professional development, business development, recruiting, retention, attorney morale, marketing, branding, and more. However, there hasn’t been a very good way of actually quantifying how Pro Bono works affect the law firm. We’ve measured our work by the hours we put in (pretty typical for a law firm), but that doesn’t really tell us all the story. Sameena walks us through some of the metrics that she and Paladin are measuring to show the true value of Pro Bono work and how it benefits much more than just the Pro Bono client.
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Information Inspirations:
AI for the Business of Law
Jennifer Roberts, our Data Science Superhero from Ep. 26, has an article in LegalTechNews this week which says that the AI Hype Cycle might be in full swing when it comes to work that lawyers are doing, but that cycle is still in it’s infancy when it comes to the business side of the law firm. Specifically in the Business Development and is the Risk Management departments of law firms, AI is just getting started. Roberts lays out examples of ways which AI tools can identify client traits. Predictions and modeling on client’s likelihood of attrition, or forecasting client’s financial viability, or the buying patterns of clients are just a few things that AI can assist business development professionals. When it comes to conflicts, Roberts writes that AI can reduce the time it takes to clear conflicts by up to 80%. There’s definitely some value-add which AI can bring to the business side of the law firm table.
OKRs in Team Meetings
We talk a bit in the interview today about OKR (objectives and key results) to remain focused on your goals. Marlene found a great primer article to help you if you find yourself wasting time in meetings where OKRs can help. Bringing in OKRs can help your team stay focused on the goals, keep the motivation high, and allow the team to adjust course when necessary. Henrik-Jan van der Pol’s article, “Use OKR to make team meetings more focused, effective, and meaningful,” is a great place to start if you’re looking to tighten up those meetings, and stay on target for your team’s goals. For additional reading, check out the difference between OKRs and KPIs.
The 1619 Project and Howard University Law Grads
The New York Times Magazine launched an amazing expose on the 400th anniversary of slavery in the United States. One section focuses in on four recent law graduates of Howard University. It is a powerful piece which describes the journey of these families starting with their enslaved ancestors, and travel the path through today, and the lawyers’ plans for the future. There is also a 1619 Podcast launching this week as well.
Accelerated Learning
Mission.org provides concise summaries of management writings, and Marlene points us to one of her favorites. “131 Actionable Ideas from Ten Books I Wish I Had Read Ages Ago.” Author Louis Tsai walks through key takeaways of ten management books. In about 10 minutes, you should be all up to speed.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast designed to cover the legal information profession with a slant toward technology and management. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:00:27] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. So coming up later in the episode, we talk with Sameena Kluck, Vice President of Business Development at PaladinPVC. And we talked to her about how to measure the return on investment that pro bono work brings into your law firm and ways to expand your relationship with clients through pro bono work.
[00:00:46] Marlene Gebauer: And before we get to that, I want to mention, Greg, that you and I had a great webinar this week with AALL about podcasting basics.
[00:00:54] Greg Lambert: Yes, we did.
[00:00:55] Marlene Gebauer: And I hope some of the listeners had a chance to join us for a little inside look at what we do to get the podcast out every week, and some suggestions on what someone would need to do to get their own podcast up and running.
[00:01:07] Greg Lambert: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. And if you are a AALL member, and you didn’t get a chance to listen in to the live webinar, we did record it so you can listen to it on the AALL website. And now Marlene, let’s jump into this week’s information inspirations.
[00:01:26] Marlene Gebauer: So my first information inspiration is, we’re going to revisit some AI this week, but hopefully I won’t be in the dark place that I was last week. We’ll see how this goes.
[00:01:39] Greg Lambert: So our guest from episode number 28, Jennifer Roberts, who we named the data scientist superhero.
[00:01:47] Marlene Gebauer: And she is.
[00:01:48] Greg Lambert: And she is. So she had a great article in the Legal Tech News this week on how artificial intelligence in law firms isn’t just for the work that the attorneys do for the clients. It can also help us gain insights about those very clients. So when it comes to the business side of law, Robert says that the AI hype cycle is still in its infancy. Some of the areas where AI can help us are things like buying patterns for specific segments of clients, prediction on the client’s likelihood of attrition, and forecasting the financial viability of those clients. She also points out a couple of low-hanging fruits in departments where AI tools can play a major role of moving them into the reactive rather than proactive participants in the law firm’s overall business strategy. And those are the business development department and the conflicts and intake group. So for BizDev, she points out that AI insights help deepen and even help mend relationships with the clients. She does that by exposing opportunities which may be hidden from the firm. For risk management, the use of AI can reduce the overall amount of time spent on conflicts. by up to 80%. As with most processes where AI is involved, it’s not solely the machine doing all the work. The processes, both human and machine, have to augment each other. The value add is made possible through the combination of both the legal professional and the allied professional and the analytical power brought in by the AI. So there, I think I stayed on the bright side of AI.
[00:03:25] Marlene Gebauer: You did. You did. You did a very good job with that. Greg, my first inspiration is using OKR, or Objectives and Key Results, to make team meetings more focused, effective, and meaningful. So I’ll ask the listeners, how many of us out there have found meetings where they’re kind of big time wasters, or they’re ineffective? You get off topic and leave without clear action items or decisions. Greg, has this ever happened to you?
[00:03:56] Greg Lambert: All the time.
[00:03:59] Marlene Gebauer: I am sure that we have all had this experience. Well, having OKRs, again, Objectives and Key Results, as part of your meetings may be the solution. There are potentially three big benefits. First is team goals stay top of mind. Second is motivation remains high. And third, you can adjust course if you need to. The article nicely lays out what to do and what to expect when you apply OKRs in your meetings. Now, one important note, OKRs are not the same as KPIs. So a KPI measures the success, the output, quantity, or quality of an ongoing process or activity. An OKR is a goal management framework that helps leaders lead their teams from A to B. So OKRs are essentially a bridge between ambition and reality. And as an example, if a KPI needs adjusting, an OKR is where you might start and make that adjustment become a key result. You got all that?
[00:05:04] Greg Lambert: I did. It was an acronym alphabet soup.
[00:05:07] Marlene Gebauer: It certainly was. Well, I think these are some of the acronyms that we really have to get into our nomenclature. I think, you know, we’ll be seeing a lot more of this stuff. So.
[00:05:18] Greg Lambert: Absolutely.
[00:05:19] Marlene Gebauer: There’s a test on this later. There’s a test on this later.
[00:05:23] Greg Lambert: So my second information inspiration comes from New York Times Magazine’s The 1619 Project. There’s a story within that focuses in on four recent graduates of law schools and their family history. It was 400 years ago this week, Marlene, that the first slave ship came in and landed in Virginia. And the New York Times is doing an expos├⌐ on the 400th anniversary. And in this expos├⌐, they cover a number of stories of interest. But the one that I focused in on when I looked at it is the story of the four recent Howard University Law School graduates, starting with their enslaved ancestors and then weaving the family history through today and what those recent law graduates plan to do with their future. The whole 1619 Project is a powerful ensemble of stories. And there’s also a podcast series from the New York Times that’s coming out. So I highly encourage everyone to check it out.
[00:06:26] Marlene Gebauer: That sounds like it will be very powerful. So I will definitely check that out. My second inspiration is for those of us strapped for time. So for those of us who are strapped for time but want to ingest all the business management books, I found something on Medium that might help you. Medium.org is a platform of articles and business tech podcasts designed to help accelerate learning. So the article I read was 131, so not 130, not 129, but 131 actionable ideas from 10 books the author wishes he had read years ago. So he distills the key points in various books like Purple Cow by Seth Godin, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and Getting Things Done by David Allen, along with several other popular titles. So if you’ve read these books, it’s a great refresher. If not, you get the most important bits very quickly. I also like that it is an easy reference if you ever need to go back to it. I know Mission.org puts out a lot of content, and I’m definitely going to check out some of the various podcasts like Mission Daily and The Journey. And that wraps up this week’s Information Inspirations. Samina Cluck, Vice President of Business Development at Paladin PBC, joins us this week to talk about measuring ROI on pro bono work and looking at it as a business benefit for attorneys, firms, clients, and society. I really think this is going to be an interesting and modern spin on how pro bono can benefit law firms. Let’s take a listen.
[00:08:06] Greg Lambert: I’d like to welcome Samina Cluck, Vice President of Business Development at Paladin PBC, to this week’s episode of The Geek in Review.
[00:08:20] Marlene Gebauer: this week’s episode of the Geek & Review.
[00:08:22] Greg Lambert: Hey, thanks for joining us, Samina.
[00:08:23] Sameena Kluck: Thanks so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be on.
[00:08:26] Marlene Gebauer: So Samina, can you tell us a little bit about your background and about what you’re doing at Paladin?
[00:08:31] Sameena Kluck: Thanks for having me on because I’m really excited to tell this story. It’s been a kind of crazy eight months I’ve had. I am an attorney by trade. I only play one on TV for the last 16 years, but I briefly clerked for the Eighth Circuit after law school, and I worked at a small firm in St. Louis, Missouri, a civil litigation defense firm, and found it really wasn’t for me practicing law. I was really focused on marketing and business development and engaging with clients, cultivating relationships, and I just couldn’t find a good thought for that at the time. So I ended up at Thomson Reuters for 16 years in a variety of training and client development, global client management roles. Then at the end of last year, I kind of realized I’d been at the same place for 16 years and took the opportunity to go out and figure out what I was going to do with the second half of my life. But I was really looking for something that I was passionate about. I’ve always been pretty passionate about the legal industry and kind of things that are buffeting the industry right now, the changes with emerging technologies, diversity and inclusion, personal branding. I started working with the network of folks I kind of engaged with over the 16 years, and the Paladin Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Kristen Sand├⌐, is somebody who we’d been on panels together, and I was really excited about how they were kind of sitting at the intersection of technology and access to justice and figuring out how can we help more attorneys do more good work benefiting everyone all around. As the Vice President of Business Development at Paladin, so really my role at Paladin is focused on going in and talking to law firms and in-house counsel teams about the pro bono programs they’re running now and seeing if we can partner using technology to streamline the administration of their pro bono programs so they can really focus on ramping up engagement and really making a deeper impact.
[00:10:23] Marlene Gebauer: Well, that is quite an interesting story. And I have to tell you, like we at the Geek in Review, we love to hear these stories about how people have essentially transformed their jobs and their careers over time and have gotten to places that they want to get to. These stories are always really interesting to us and I think to everybody else, so thank you for sharing that. you for sharing that. So people have been writing for years about how pro bono can be used to promote business. You know, it’s a good thing to be associated with good works. The same for professional development. So doing legal work pro bono helps attorneys get exposures to legal work that they might not get for some time working, particularly in big law. So what is the 10,000-foot view that you see for how tech and analytics are impacting the business case for pro bono?
[00:11:17] Sameena Kluck: I’m really glad you asked this because, of course, pro bono has been around a long time. I think as long as lawyers have been around, right? There’s been good works. There’s just not enough representation. There’s too many people unrepresented in our courts every day. And I think law firms have really built some pretty impressive pro bono programs that are having a huge impact for them in terms of a lot of aspects of their firm, professional development, business development, retention, recruiting, attorney morale, marketing, branding, all these things, but there hasn’t really been a way to kind of quantify what impact that’s making. Previously, the impact of pro bono was pretty much measured in terms of hours, right? So the Pro Bono Institute challenge or vault or various different surveys from the American Lawyer, people didn’t really know what happened with those hours, who was doing those hours, Lawyer, people didn’t really know what happened with those hours, who was doing those hours, how the attorney performing the work was really getting any benefit out of that, or how the firm might be. And now as we kind of think about the business case for pro bono, we’re looking at how can we leverage technology to capture metrics and KPIs in those areas. For instance, with retention, does providing attorneys meaningful work enable them to kind of find more value in their day-to-day jobs? I think the 400 largest firms are losing like 9.1 billion a year in attrition. So anything that can help that is a good thing. That’s a big number.
[00:12:41] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I saw that same report.
[00:12:44] Sameena Kluck: Well, and just, you know, the American Bar Association’s first profile of lawyers or something that was released at the annual meeting last weekend was pretty shocking. And a lot of the statistics around diversity and inclusion and how kind of white male dominated the legal industry is all around from the judiciary to law firms, you know, in terms of attorney wellness and mental health, we’re hearing so much about that now. If we can actually see the amount of pro bono attorneys are doing, can we say, hey, there’s actually something here that giving attorneys some meaningful work they value and they’re passionate about, can that help them remain in their practice longer and remain at your firm in their practice longer, right? You know, we’re hearing a lot about authenticity as well. I’ve actually been interviewing a lot of large law firm leaders the last week or two about how they’re encouraging authenticity from their employees and why that’s important. We’ve kind of gone through the circle, I think, of diversity. We’re bringing people into firms now who don’t necessarily look like everyone else. Inclusion of making sure they have a seat at the table, but now there’s a little bit more of this push around belonging and authenticity and making sure people feel like it’s okay to voice their opinion and to express interest in something different or to show that they have a different background. If I’m a first generation law student or lawyer, sometimes in the past, I might hide that fact about myself and try to blend in with everybody else. But instead, you know, maybe people say, hey, I came from Anacostia, D.C., you know, I went to this school that was a Title I school, and I would like to give back and do pro bono right there among, you know, my former community. If technology and analytics applied to pro bono can free up law firm pro bono teams from having to focus on the day-to-day right thing, like gathering emails in from 15 different legal aid organizations, cutting and pasting into one email, forwarding that, a spreadsheet to keep track of which attorneys expressed interest in which opportunities, phone calls, emails back and forth to legal aid organizations to see if your firm won that pro bono case or if it was actually taken four days ago by another law firm and you just didn’t know. it yet. For me, technology can centralize some of that, streamline some of that, and let the pro bono teams really focus on where could we be having more impact. What pro bono opportunities would give our attorneys more meaningful work or what would actually allow attorneys, you know, to partner with their clients or to develop skills they haven’t? To me, that’s really the greatest way technology and analytics can really harness the power of pro bono for law firms and in-house teams.
[00:15:25] Greg Lambert: So let me ask more of a specific question on what I’m gathering is you’re trying to show the return on investment or ROI on pro bono work. So I saw a recent tweet where you mentioned that pro bono work would be a great experience for a first-year associate. How can BigLaw use the tech like you have there at Paladin to incorporate pro bono more systematically into the professional development plan for these first-year associates as they progress up through the ranks?
[00:16:02] Sameena Kluck: I’m glad you asked that question. I think it’s a great question because I do think in BigLaw, you know, new attorneys just don’t get to practice as many skills when they start as in past years because we know there’s a lot of lawyers in law firms who are working on cases now. We’ve heard a lot about how Gen X is getting a little squeezed between the millennials and the baby boomers. the baby boomers. Yeah. Beyond that client, right?
[00:16:24] Greg Lambert: Sounds like you’ve been listening to our podcast.
[00:16:26] Marlene Gebauer: I know.
[00:16:27] Sameena Kluck: Just a little bit. And as a Gen X-er myself, I feel their pain, but also, you know, clients just aren’t willing to pay for new attorneys to get trained on the job on their dime. So it may be the case that a new attorney might be on the job for multiple years and not really get the same courtroom experience, deposition experience, client management experience, whatever that they might have in the past. At Pollinate, if we can capture what skills a legal aid organization says are required for an attorney to take on a certain pro bono matter, and even, you know, what skills they expect an attorney will master or at least get to work on through that, that’s going to help build a more holistic picture. for the law firm of, okay, here’s skills that our attorneys will need to do this pro bono and what they would gain out of it. And then be able to compare that against the firm’s professional development or learning plan for that individual associate. You know, and I want to say too, for new associates, you know, there’s obviously skills for new associates. There was a DLA associate at the event I tweeted, you mentioned that it was a DC Bar Pro Bono Partnership Luncheon, Naomi Abraham, and she was literally a first year associate talking the fact that, you know, she does IP work, but she was in a courtroom very quickly and she had to think on her feet and it made her more confident when she was dealing with her big corporate billable clients. And it’s, you know, not just new attorneys, you know, mid-level associates actually get to work on managing client expectations and emotions that they may not really get much practice with, with their billable clients. Senior associates are, perhaps their transactional attorneys can develop a few litigation skills in case they are going to be moving in-house that makes them a little more well-rounded for the kind of day-to-day pressure cooker you have in-house. And I think I heard the pro bono counsel, Wylie Ryan, say that really the key part of professional development as a lawyer is being able to appreciate different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences, right? That’s what clients want.
[00:18:29] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly. You know, I’ve always wondered, do pro bono clients or the organizations that represent them, do they ever get the chance to give feedback on how an attorney, a legal team, or a law firm is doing? You know, why do you think that’s important and what are some tech -enhanced ways that feedback can be obtained and used by firms in a business-minded manner?
[00:18:53] Sameena Kluck: Yeah, this is actually a really great question and something we’ve been thinking about a lot at Paladin. Traditionally, there’s not been much of a mechanism to collect this information from pro bono, you know, the direct clients or the legal aid organizations representing them. And also kind of vice versa. So, there’s not really been a great mechanism in law firms or in-house legal teams to kind of collect individual attorneys or legal teams.
[00:19:17] Marlene Gebauer: Because it’s interesting, isn’t it, that there isn’t that feedback because I think that would tie into some of the things you were talking about earlier, like, you know, are they satisfying the competencies, you know, in a professional development plan? Are they getting the experience that they need? That feedback loop sounds like it’s really something that is important, yet we don’t have it. So, where can tech help us?
[00:19:44] Sameena Kluck: Right, and so that’s something we’ve been thinking about a lot. We just ran a design sprint at the end of April with about a dozen pro bono counsel across the United States and Europe, really looking at pro bono reporting, which, like I said earlier, has really been focused mostly on hours. And so we started thinking through, how can we not only capture the impact the pro bono work is having, both for the direct client who’s receiving it and the legal aid organizations, but also for the attorney in the law firm? But beyond that, kind of thinking about, is there a way to really capture the quality of that work that was done in terms of, can we think about a way to survey clients, legal aid organizations, and the pro bono attorney at the end of a matter to collect robust data on that experience? Because if you have that data, you can ask the attorney, so, hey, you know, what was your experience working with XYZ legal aid organization like? Did you feel like you had enough training? Did you feel like there was, you know, enough client communication? So that law firms that have that information would be able to kind of tailor their programs accordingly and saying, wow, you know, attorneys really felt like they were shepherded through this process. You know, an IP attorney who had never done immigration work really felt like they were able to handle what they needed, and vice versa for a legal aid organization to say, gosh, we felt like there was great enthusiasm at this law firm, but the attorneys didn’t really feel prepared, and maybe we want to work with that law firm to think through how can we better develop our pro bono, you know, the work in the future on matters. Where do we need to take a step back and perhaps prepare guides or forms that would guide the attorneys better, that type of thing. So that’s really what we’re thinking about now, and we’re looking at whether we could develop a survey for doing that at the end of matters that would automatically go out to attorneys. to kind of collect their information, and if we’d have some mechanism for doing that with legal aid organizations, then that’s probably going to be another design sprint before we figure that out.
[00:21:46] Greg Lambert: Speaking of design sprints, I want to ask you about how to approach, say, pro bono in a different mindset. Normally we think of pro bono as giving lawyers opportunity to do work outside their normal day-to-day type of work, that they’re doing it, obviously, for free as a benefit to someone, and it can range from anywhere from people who do not or who cannot afford work to taking on an idea or an ideal that maybe the law firm wants to promote on its own. We talked a couple weeks ago, actually, with the Rule of Law Foundation president, Ian McDougall, who had highlighted some ways that firms can contribute pro bono initiatives by not necessarily by just putting in hours, but by actually leveraging tech and their legal expertise, and I know that your company is leveraging technology to help lawyers handle and track and measure pro bono measures. You see some vendors like Neodologic that are doing exercises like Iron Lawyer. We see legal design sprints that are very popular, and maybe you have some other examples on this, but how can pro bono work benefit firms from a business perspective and looking at it in a different way other than, these are the hours we spent on it?
[00:23:21] Sameena Kluck: And it’s a great question, and it’s kind of one of my favorite things. I’m actually going to be flying between DC, New York, and out to San Francisco in October because UC Hastings is going to be doing a hackathon on homelessness and partnering with law firms to really think through, are there technology solutions that would alleviate legal problems and access to justice issues for the homeless, right, in terms of, you know, would digital identity be a useful thing, but for me, design sprints, is something we do a lot of at Paladin. In fact, the platform we have today was only developed after doing a design sprint with pro bono counsel from law firms like Ben Weinberger from Vedran and folks from legal aid organizations like Kate Shank at LAF, I guess it’s now LAC in Chicago, because you could truly, we wanted to make sure we had all perspectives and look at a problem with empathy and kind of listen to your clients or your intended recipients before you draft what you think is the right solution, and I think that’s something, with legal thinking, I don’t think we often start there. I think we look at a problem, think about how we’ve handled the problem in the past, what we’ve seen in the past, and start working through a solution without always necessarily bringing other folks to the table to think about that, and there’s just a million examples of that in law firms, right?
[00:24:39] Greg Lambert: That’s how we’re taught in law school, you know, apply IRAC to everything and come up with your conclusion. Yes.
[00:24:47] Sameena Kluck: Yes, yes, and I interact with the best of them. But the thing is, there’s just so many people in a law firm who can bring so many different perspectives, and I’ll try not to get up on my soapbox that I always get on about the way so many people don’t get a seat at the table and are essentially labeled under the term non-attorney, which I find offensive, but-
[00:25:05] Marlene Gebauer: A legal support professional.
[00:25:08] Sameena Kluck: Exactly. Well, and that’s the thing, because I think we focus, when we look at the access to justice issues, we focus on pro bono as being a huge way to address that, and it is a great way to address it. I mean, at Paladin, we’re really, our first and primary focus is on getting more lawyers doing more pro bono work, whether they’re in-house or in law firms, so absolutely, that’s where we’re focused as well, but it’s going to take more than attorneys doing more pro bono to really move the needle on the access to justice gap, and it shouldn’t just be the provenance of those who have gotten a JD education, right? There’s innovation and practice management folks who can have ideas on the most efficient processes to streamline pro bono intake. Knowledge management folks can bring some insights into the type of data that might be best to utilize in a project or how to call it the best way or the contours of it. There’s just so much work to be done from everyone, and for me, if a law firm can bring together some of those folks who don’t always get to work together, whether that’s folks in different roles across the firm, whether that’s people, you know, I’ve had several firms lately come to me, transatlantic firms, and say, we really want pro bono where folks in our Charlotte office can work with folks in our London office, right? Like DLA’s new perimeter, bringing attorneys from across the world together to work on pro bono. It’s a great thing, too, just for younger attorneys or any attorneys to work with people outside of their practice group. I think when we can bring attorneys professionals together from across the firm, it’s a great way to bring a diversity of thought to thorny problems, and so I think it’s encouraging people to look to colleagues other than those they work alongside every day for help, even when they’re in billable client situations.
[00:26:54] Marlene Gebauer: I want to take that one step further. What about client engagement? So working with firm clients on some of these new pro bono opportunities, is there a market for that? Do we have any metrics or success cases where this work can strengthen the firm-client relationship?
[00:27:14] Sameena Kluck: Oh, absolutely. There’s a market for working with clients on pro bono, and I frankly don’t know why every lawyer is not trying to do pro bono with their in- house counsel, because over the past few years, regardless of your politics in this kind of administration that we’re in in this country, there have been a lot of people clamoring to do more to help other Americans, other citizens, other folks living here, right? I think there were a lot of attorneys who saw immigration attorneys rushing to airports a few years ago and saying, wow, I wish I could do that. I don’t have that expertise. I’m scared. I don’t know how to do immigration work. Although I will tell you, there’s immigration work being done by all kinds of lawyers all across the country. We see a lot of that on Paladin.
[00:27:57] Greg Lambert: And just a side note on that. When that was happening, the attorneys were using Neo2Logic, and actually Ryan McLeed was up apparently all weekend creating the airportlawyer.com website that was going on using a sprint design, working with attorneys. But Ryan is not an attorney. He was the talent that we needed. And it doesn’t matter if you throw every attorney at an issue. If they’re not the right type of person to handle the right type of job, then the effect is minimized. So, sorry, a little aside there.
[00:28:37] Sameena Kluck: No, and that’s fascinating. And that’s a great example. There have been great things that 650 at Wilson-Sonsini, the types of tech and apps they’re developing, the Hello Landlord, Landlord Tenant app in Arizona. There’s a lot of great things that can be done. And what I keep hearing from in-house lawyers that I’ve talked to over the last few years is they really want to do more pro bono. But they have such small teams, or sometimes they’re so specialized in very nuanced areas, they’re not always comfortable going out and taking on individual matters. And at Paladin, we see a lot of in-house pro bono, a fair amount, is very heavily event-based rather than individual matters. But firms, big firms are generally, a lot of them are full-service national firms. They’ve got numerous attorneys in numerous practice areas across numerous geographies. And so if a law firm partnered with their client on pro bono, they can provide more of that structure and oversight and subject matter expertise that the in-house team might not have. But together, they can kind of confidently pursue the matters. And the benefits for the relationship are just beyond, right? Like joint pro bono can allow the outside counsel and the client to spend time together, not in a billable setting, not where anyone’s trying to sell anyone anything, and really understand desired communication styles. Oh, this is how, you know, I’ve been talking to the general counsel about these kind of top level matters. But this is really when they’re in the thick of a matter, this is how they like to work on things. This is their working style. You know, an AMLA 10 partner recently told me that with joint pro bono, you can build trust because no one’s trying to sell anyone anything. And you actually just get to know each other.
[00:30:30] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, you build a real relationship, not just a working relationship. And I can’t see how that doesn’t strengthen the ties between, you know, the firm and the client for the future.
[00:30:30] Sameena Kluck: Absolutely, absolutely. And I mean, I’ve met in-house counsel who were really grateful when they had a partner at a law firm who introduced them to another in-house counsel in the vertical they were in, because they were able to kind of get some, you know, experience and insights from them. And we have some examples of this, sorry, you asked for statistics, but like Denton’s and Allstate Insurance have a clemency project, and they have filed 75 different clemency petitions through that partnership. Invaluable to their working billable relationship they have. Verizon and DLA have done a lot of projects together. John France at Verizon has written a lot about this. Lisa Dewey at DLA and Ann Ford have spoken to me about this. and just talking to high school students, generally in underprivileged areas, about the law. So, right away, we know that American citizens don’t know a lot about their rights, and especially their rights when they’re out in their own communities. But also, they’re encouraging those students to careers in the law, right, which we know is an issue from that recent ABA report. And we’re trying to foster that as well. We’re running a pilot right now with Dell and a couple of their outside counsel on doing pro bono.
[00:32:06] Marlene Gebauer: Well, big law, you know, if you’re hearing this, pay attention.
[00:32:12] Greg Lambert: Definitely.
[00:32:13] Sameena Kluck: Absolutely.
[00:32:14] Greg Lambert: One of the things that we are doing on our senior management team here at my firm is reading things like John Doerr’s Measure What Matters book. I’m curious, at Paladin, what are you guys reading and what’s kind of your guidebook for measuring what matters out there?
[00:32:34] Sameena Kluck: Wow, I’m so glad you asked this question, because I’m actually writing a piece right now on how different it is going to a mission-based startup from being in a, you know, enterprise-wide, at some point, 60,000 employee tech company for the past decade and a half of my life. And it’s fascinating to me. We actually have OKR meetings at Paladin about every, I guess we have them once a month. For a while, we were having them every other week. And we have product prioritization meetings every other week. We call it the Fortnightly product prioritization meetings. We’re a bit of a nerdy group, and there’s settlers of Catan at our retreats and everything you would expect from a startup. I love that game. I love that game. We play that all the time.
[00:33:18] Greg Lambert: So, Fortnite is in every two weeks, or Fortnite is in the game?
[00:33:21] Sameena Kluck: As in every two weeks, although, yeah, I am a mom of a Fortnite 10- year-old addict, so. We all are. Join the club. But what’s fascinating to me, I don’t know exactly what Felicity and Kristen, our co-founders, are reading, but one of the things I’ve been really fascinated about in these meetings is, when we’re talking about product prioritization, and this is our roadmap for the things we’re going to be building this two-week sprint we have coming up in the next two weeks and this quarter and this year, and every two weeks, we’re going back and forth. And thinking about, is there anything we need to change or move up? They’re asking me, Samina, when you’re talking to law firms, what are you hearing about what they need? Do we need to tweak this? We’re talking to our legal aid organization relationships woman, what they need. But there’s always another question in every meeting, no matter what we’re doing is, how is this going to impact the access to justice gap? Not, how is this going to help us sell more of Paladin? How is this going to help us get more legal aid organizations using the service? Because they get the service for free, they don’t subscribe to it. But really, at the end of the day, how is this going to help the client? What is this going to do to move the needle on that? And it’s just such a refreshing change from how I have looked at how we’re measuring success and progress in the past and other companies. At other companies, obviously, we have had mission statements and values that we all aspire to. And they were on our end-of-the-year performance review systems. You had to say how you did all these things, how you put trust at the heart of everything and put the client first. But it’s a little humbling to think about, at the end of the day, we’re just another company. When we’re no longer here, or when we’ve moved on, what did we do to really help that woman who is seeking a domestic violence protection order? Or to help that immigrant who’s just seeking asylum and trying not to get deported and separated from their children? That’s powerful to me.
[00:35:30] Greg Lambert: I like the idea. In fact, I think I’m going to pitch that every meeting should now end with, okay, how does this help the client? I like that.
[00:35:39] Marlene Gebauer: Oh, absolutely. That’s the endgame, right?
[00:35:43] Greg Lambert: Yeah. All right. Well, Samina, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today.
[00:35:48] Sameena Kluck: Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
[00:36:01] Greg Lambert: Samina gave us some really good insights on the power that pro bono work can be used to leverage education, client relations, and how to measure the results of the work. It’s kind of like when you are out on vacation, Marlene, and they say, if you don’t take pictures, it didn’t happen. Same thing. If you don’t measure it, it didn’t happen. Exactly. The idea of sitting down and doing a sprint design between clients and law firms and finding a common mission where you can place your resources, you can learn from each other, and make a difference on something that matters to both the client and the law firm, that’s just a golden opportunity. And the thing that I think I liked the most was when she talked about at the end of the meetings, asking the question about how is this going to impact our mission? I truly do think that all meetings should end with that question.
[00:36:53] Marlene Gebauer: So I agree with everything you’ve said. And I will add that I also liked the perspective that Samina gave us on how pro bono can be used more formally to develop attorneys, both in their professional development and also to develop and deepen client relationships. I mean, I think pro bono has historically been looked at as a good thing because, first of all, it is a good thing. And more informally, that it gives attorneys some exposure to skills that they might not get right away. What Samina was talking about is really you can make this a much more formal program for your attorney education. And also working directly with clients on projects, both legal and maybe more tech-influenced to really sort of experience the relationship a different way. So it’s not just kind of you’re doing their business and you’re doing the work for them, but you guys are working together on a solution for others. And I think that that can lead to sort of a deepening relationship. And I think that’s something that everybody wants.
[00:38:14] Greg Lambert: Totally agree with that. All right, Marlene. Well, that brings us to the end of another episode. I want to thank Samina Kluck again for talking with us this week.
[00:38:23] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, thank you very much to Samina. Do us a favor, listeners, and subscribe to the Geek & Review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Rate and review us as well. If you have comments or suggestions, you can reach us on Twitter at GabeauerM or at Glambert. Or you can call the Geek & Review hotline at 713-487-7270. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeSicca. Thank you very much, Jerry.
[00:38:57] Greg Lambert: All right. I will talk to you later, Marlene.
[00:39:00] Speaker E: Okay, Greg. Bye-bye. Hey, hey, don’t take me away. I could walk on by the North Star. But I fail to notice that it’s still daylight. And the devil’s back from afar. And the devil’s back from afar. And the devil’s back from afar.