LINKS, Citizen Coders & Auditing Shelfware: Insights from Harbor’s Kris Martin

Marlene Gebauer 0:07
Welcome to The Geek in Review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:14
And I’m Greg Lambert. So we have a very special episode this week with our friend Kris Martin. He’s the Executive Vice President with Harbor. Kris, thanks for joining us and being available. We’re very excited to talk about a number of things that are going on at Harbor, formerly known as HBR. We’ll, we’ll get to that later. So Kris, welcome to The Geek in Review.

Kris Martin 0:14
Marlene, and Greg, thank you.

Greg Lambert 0:19
So it is that time of year again, where conference time, we’re getting ready for the Lynx conference. And so Harbor has the Lynx conference set up this week. And it kicks off with a keynote on unleashing human potential in the age of AI and technology. And of course, we have to talk about AI and technology this year.

Marlene Gebauer 1:04
I like that we’re throwing in human potential in addition to AI and technology.

Greg Lambert 1:09
Absolutely. So Kris, tell us a little bit about links. And then with this type of keynote, what what’s the theme that we’re we’re working with this year?

Kris Martin 1:18
Yeah, well, I mean, starting off with that keynote, wow, it’s those of you who know, Nita come ll her story, and sort of kind of the journey that she’s been through. We’re really excited about that start to Lynx this year, every year, we’ve had the benefit of some some really good keynotes to get us started. This is the time of enhanced focus, yes, on AI, but also on psychological safety on a newer Diversity. And really, if you start to think about where those themes fuse, the less, we have to be focused and thinking about how we’re going to produce a letter to send to our boss or to our client, or so forth, versus what the meaning is, or what the depth of that is, you can start to see where that human power becomes even more important, and even more read through when the machine is writing all of our emails for us. The only way to really differentiate what’s good or bad, what’s true and genuine versus not, is going to really just come down to who we are as humans, and the sort of intersection between that human power and that and that technology. Power is a really fantastic and fascinating topic to dive into.

Greg Lambert 2:25
I imagine there’s a lot of people that want to just have the AI write everything for them right now. So having that empathy, having the humanity behind is probably going to be more important than ever.

Marlene Gebauer 2:39
Kris, I know that you have worked with Gino Grady on the strategic start stop survey. And you’ve guys have collaborated for the past few years. And that the survey covers vendor behavior and AI adoption this year. So what are some of the key AI tools and vendors law firms should be considering right now? How can law librarians help evaluate these tools and guide procurement decisions?

Kris Martin 3:05
Well, let me also first kind of roll back and talk about the Stop stop survey for a second give it give us a little history. Yeah, Jean. And I as many of you that we’ve all known each other for many, many years, Jean launched the start soft serve a good decade ago and such a fantastic topic to really just get a pulse on the entire legal community. What products are we starting to use? What products are we stopping to use? What behaviors are we starting? What what behaviors are we stopping and just just as a as a quick like point in time polls and when you look at that year over year, in fact, when we go back in time and look at old ones, it is a pretty fascinating study, just to see how that’s changed. Is all of it purely scientific? No, that’s almost the opposite of the point we keep the questions predominantly for those of you who have participated in it are predominantly like open ended questions, right? So, so really allowing people to just kind of express what they’re doing. And then we do all the hard work of actually compressing that into useful data. I’ve loved the survey. So Jean did it on her own for years. And a couple years ago, through COVID, she had a bit of a gap. I wasn’t sure if she had sunsetted it or what so we talked and we collaborated and kind of decided like, we can help her with the analysis and whatnot. But it really is still jeans work of art here and a really cool output. So now to answer the question, though, I don’t know that there is really a clear winner. In fact, that’s almost maybe the point there are 93% of firms are moving forward and doing some kind of activity around AI that can be as little as demoing things and exploring it that the 7% by the way are firms that have said we’re not doing absolutely anything with AI right now. We were too afraid to take that next step or to jump into that universe. So but from a product side, I think what’s interesting certainly CaseText had a head start on the universe and in the space and their name come A lot, we do a lot of this just kind of crunching it down to see what names, what vendors what themes repeated themselves throughout the survey. So definitely what that team is working on and activity coming into Thomson Reuters, which happened just as the survey was launching was probably the most prominent name that you’re going to see repeated throughout the survey. While I’m looking for

Marlene Gebauer 5:19
I’m looking forward to seeing the results,

Greg Lambert 5:21
we may look back on it and think that the 7% that are sitting on the sidelines right now may actually be the smart ones. I mean, I mean, think about it links. The seconds conference. Last year, the only AI we were talking about was was extractive AI, which was kind of, you know, kind of a bummer.

Marlene Gebauer 5:41
Yeah, I’ve been around.

Greg Lambert 5:44
Now 10 months has changed the whole thing. Speaking of of links a second year, this is actually the third year coming up. And Marlene and I have had the pleasure of doing the wrap up session for for each of the first two. And we’re gonna do that again this year. So we actually have I think the the easiest job, we just got to listen and take notes, and then color commentary. And then, but, you know, in the three years now that you’ve been doing this, you know, what’s been the value that Lynx has brought to the community?

Kris Martin 6:19
You know, the lakes conference itself really stemmed out of May 1 To just give credit where credit’s due, this was absolutely calling cables, brainchild. But before there was links, there was a survey. And the survey is the bliss survey is really a labor of love that we began in 2016. It’s an absolutely free to participate survey, we put an extraordinary amount of time and effort into into creating the output with the with the survey results, because we know that those who participated put an extraordinary amount of time and effort in in providing us their answers. It’s not a quick and easy, you know, six question multiple choice it, it’ll take most, you know, well well over an hour to go through and complete and pull together all the facts. So we want to give them a solid and quality output. The findings is as that survey started to see change happening year over year, we ask about 80 to 90% of the questions each year are consistent questions that we ask every year. And then we layer in some more current trends type questions. And so of course, you know, no doubt this year is around AI last year was around analytics. So each year we’re gonna we’re gonna make a little bit of modification to some of the some of the changing behaviors, we wanted a different outlet, we and I think we’re blessed really started from was we had a webinar where we shared some of the results. And it we did that through double A double L. And we’re just they were shocked. We were shocked by the amount of interest in in joining that webinar. So we took that and we evolved that into this conference with the idea that weaved throughout each session is facts and figures that come out of the bliss survey, but also really trying to bring in some some fantastic thought leaders, you know, we’ll we’ll put some links in the show notes for those of you who catch this episode with with time to spare. The conference itself is probably the cheapest out there $59 For a participation, we find that a lot of people don’t even bother asking for permission to attend, they just use their personal guard to run that up in part because the entire $69 is actually a contribution to the George Strait minority fund from with double A double Well, so far in the last two years, we’ve given up fold of about $13,000. This year, we’re on track to definitely keep pace with the with the prior years if not exceed it. And even more exciting some of the actual participants or sorry, some of the actual recipients of the scholarship fund will be joining us during the conference. So it’ll be super cool just to like see that full circle of giving and and incorporation of of those individuals. Maybe even one day in the future, we’ll have them as speakers that will even be more cool to to see that all the way come through.

Greg Lambert 9:05
So Kris, I’m gonna shift gears just a little bit. Back in June, speaking of calling cable you Coleen wrote an article and it was entitled leveraging the law firm Library’s untapped value. The library can be a secret weapon for differentiating your firm and bringing previously untapped resources to bear. We had a we had kind of a prior discussion on this last week where Marlene was going, why does the library need to be a weapon? So I like it, I like it. So but in the article itself, you discuss the importance of strategic purchasing practices to mitigate the cost that law libraries assume for that for their firms. You know, so What specific steps in the article did you recommend the law librarians take? When and when something that we actually need to do is make that audit of our library resources. And in using that to negotiate with the vendors.

Kris Martin 10:11
Yeah. So and really every year we call in and I tried to launch a platform paper this year, I think with all the goings on with Harbor, it got delayed a little bit later into the summer into early summer. But it’s typically something we tried to kick the year off with as essentially a platform paper, we had gone a little bit quiet on cost savings type focus, for the last couple of years, I think, not to say that cost and budget isn’t a priority for libraries every single year. But it’s it’s certainly come back into into focus. And so we did bring that one back forward. Again, it is it is one of the areas that that we feel that libraries are going to need to think about differently maybe than they have in the past, I’ve been working with libraries and cost cutting cost savings for geez, actually nearly nearly 20 years at this point, it was the law library that kind of brought me into this space. The big challenge that we’re facing now is cutting is no longer the the way to prosperity, right, we had a decade plus for most firms to be able to continually look at print collections and sort of the more obscure titles and types of things as well, even into the electronic side, to say, you know, we can reduce that in order to reduce cost. Now, we’ve seen pretty substantial consolidation of products to large vendors who are also themselves investing pretty significantly in the new technologies that are really expected of them as vendors. And so trying to really find that balance then becomes a bit of a different art. It’s not simply about how much do I use this product, a lot of the products, you don’t actually necessarily use the way that you may be now paying for them to use. So now it’s about really trying to evaluate what is the right product that aligns with my firm for the future. If I’m already stealing my crystal ball moment, I’ll come up with another one later. But the image I think some of us are starting to form of the future when it comes to these products is the vendors are going to find their way as a content set into the tools that we operate and utilize. You’re seeing already, of course, some conversation around how products like Westlaw and Lexus are integrating with tools like Microsoft, and surfacing themselves inside of the tools that the lawyers are already interacting with. We’re gonna see more of that. And so understanding what these products are, becomes less about the place where your lawyers are gonna go, the fact that your lawyer likes or doesn’t like the interface of product X, that’s definitely still relevant today. And it’s not that that’s going away in next year or the year after. But the interface of these tools becomes much less relevant than the content within them, and the technology behind them. Because as those things progress in advance, we’re going to see ourselves into a different kind of future where the lawyer is really just talking to a completely differently.

Marlene Gebauer 13:16
So Kris, you know, you’ve mentioned, look, we’ve trimmed the fat on the library budget, right, we’ve done that, that job. And now we’re at a point where we still have to continue to look at cost savings, you’ve also mentioned that a lot of our beloved products are becoming more integrated with other beloved products. So these are basically quite sticky. And they’re, you know, the firm’s have them. However, it may prevent exploration into other tools, you know, perhaps even newer tools that don’t have that type of integration that aren’t as mature. So how do you continue to to balance cost savings and then still provide access to essential research tool, legal research tools, and that meaning, you know, looking at some of these new products that could really revolutionize and change the way that we work.

Kris Martin 14:15
And I think that part of the answer to this is about the library and those who are responsible for acquisitions of both new things and existing renewals is understanding and working closely with the permanent strategy. The cost justification around this is probably no longer going to be well, your budget was x last year, and so will allow for maybe a 3% increase in budget, but we also want you to go and purchase this seven figure plus new technology. It doesn’t work. The math itself doesn’t work. Now, does that mean that we can’t get the best possible deal on that seven figure product that you go and purchase? Well, yeah, that’s where our job comes back in and That’s how we need to think about how we’re going to negotiate that the best price on that. But the idea that we’re going to somehow fit these tools, because we’re going to categorize them as research tools inside of a library budget, that’s probably a bit of a fallacy.

Marlene Gebauer 15:14
Yeah, I was I was gonna say, I mean, again, with more of the integration, this could be a cost spread across different departments. I mean, the more integration that there is, some of these tools like when you’re talking about Microsoft, I mean, that’s traditionally an IT tool. But if you’re sort of using aspects of of an information tool that are integrated, you know, perhaps this is something that could be spread a little more broadly,

Kris Martin 15:35
the analogy that I’ve tried to draw this to this is not the same as a product releasing its newest generation. This is more akin to as we, as we talked about the AI tools, specifically, this is more akin to when law firms had to make that decision to put a desktop computer on every single lawyer’s desk at $10,000, a pop was a pretty substantial investment, thinking about doing that. And you know, there were times in the very beginning where only not even just partners only select individuals were granted the computer. And usually those were the ones that had a technology client, so that they could demonstrate that they were using their product, and they were really just a prop to grow business. And I’m sure we’ve all heard those stories. But with time, the firm began to understand the overall value proposition of the tool and cost justify as utilization that’s where we’re at with making kind of financial decisions around these products right now.

Greg Lambert 16:32
And Kris I’m gonna, I’m gonna blow up this next question and go in a different direction a little bit. And I’ll let Marlene pictures pick through the bones of that question, if there’s something that she wants. One of the things I just got back from Vanderbilt University where I talked with a bunch of law students in in a few of the professor’s there, we talked about doing an audit of the resources that the law firms have. And I had mentioned some stories that not just me, but other colleagues of mine have had, which is with the excitement, the hype, the expectations around what generative AI is supposed to do to the law firm environment, just the practice of law itself, it has enabled us to start having conversations that we probably should have been having for the past 510 years, which is you’ll have someone come up and say, hey, I want to change how I practice in this area, or how I do this piece of work. Because I know that ChatGPT can can help me with this, and allows us to then have that conversation of, well, generative AI may do a little bit of that work. But really, this tool that we bought you five years ago, that you asked for and are using, that’s the tool that will help you will change streamline your the way that you practice or or the output that you have, or or speed up or make it more effective. And so we’re having those conversations, are you seeing kind of the same result that when you do the do the audit, that you’re exposing tools that you’ve already had that have essentially been shelfware, for years are now coming out in showing their value? Because we’re actually having that conversation? Are you seeing that? I think

Kris Martin 18:32
there’s kind of two interesting things in this. I will not share the vendor, the product or the vendor name here, but suggests that, you know, there’s there’s an analytics tool in particular, the vast majority of large law firms have purchased, they have accessible on an enterprise scale. So every single one of their lawyers can can utilize the tool, but the actual utilization of this product is minimal. And why now, if you showed the lawyer the output from this tool, and you said, Is this useful? Well, they all say yes, they all love it, they love it to death. But when you actually say, alright, now sit down to start to use it. That leads to the other theme, which is citizen coder. And, you know, the theme of citizen coder is really interesting and legal, which is to start to really get the lawyers more conversant or more capable of having sort of a dialogue in the language of code. Citizen coders in in sort of the conventional sense are using low code, no code tools to create and develop product. But more importantly than that, it allows them to then think about what their process is in terms of a tool or a product or software to then translate it and be able to speak to people who know these things bet. All right, so I’m bringing these two themes together to say the more the lawyers can talk about what their needs are, and the process of what they’re doing in terms of actual technologies, whether they exist today, and they are things that are inside the firm just not being used, or things that the firm or the firm’s vendors should be creating, we now have a little bit more of a circular conversation here where the lawyer can communicate to an internal stakeholder, the internal stakeholder can talk to a vendor and a vendor can come back and sell a product to the firm that actually has utility, maybe a bit of a roundabout answer to your question. But I think this concept of getting the the lawyers a little bit more conditioned to talking about what they’re doing in a framework of what is actually possible with the tools that do actually exist presently, today, again, whether the firm has it, which they may or not,

Marlene Gebauer 20:47
alright, so I like this this concept of citizen coder that you’ve brought up, because it sort of touches on the various shaped lawyers that we’ve we’ve talked about on the podcast about sort of attorneys being more comfortable with, with technology and speaking the language of technology. But you know, yet this remains a real challenge, because, again, that’s not what well, it is not perceived that that is what their day job is that that that sort of tech, that sort of information is not part of what they’re doing. They are lawyering, they are dealing with law, and you know, that sort of the technology is is left for someone else, and the low code stuff does help. But again, have you seen kind of best practices to kind of get that type of engagement from attorneys, you know, what sort of incentives are they given? To do that, that that or what sort of processes are you seeing in firms that are changing to embrace that type of idea?

Kris Martin 21:58
Yeah, it really starts to become more about and it’s it’s certainly few and far between, at this stage, I worry about and I think about really even going back to Casey’s Kia study a decade ago now, Is that about right? I

Marlene Gebauer 22:11
think the will is there, I think the will is there for many. And that’s

Kris Martin 22:15
what I was gonna say I feel like between the fact that generations have progressed in terms of like, new entrants into into the partnership, and just the overall demand and energy around this particular theme, more so than do I know how to write a formula in Excel. It’s do I know how to write up a useful prompt in ChatGPT? That will give me an answer that will actually help me with my practice. I also find that generative AI isn’t all that dissimilar from the Socratic method. And so the actual way the thinking happens is pretty well aligned to maybe the way a lawyer behaves, or thinks, which will make it feel a little bit more natural. And so then this, this starts to then allow us to evolve the conversations, we at Harbor, sit down with groups of lawyers and help them think through that. So have we seen it happen? Absolutely. I mean, we’re, we’re helping to facilitate that happening. But the actual kind of product or outcome from that really is so variable based on, again, the fluency or the ability to be conversant around the tools when we’re talking in hypothetical about things that we don’t understand. It’s like trying to order a Big Mac and in Paris, you do way better if you knew what it was actually called there.

Marlene Gebauer 23:35
Isn’t it lit Royale with cheese?

Greg Lambert 23:37
Now that’s a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Marlene Gebauer 23:41
All right, so we’re shifting from the hypothetical, the theoretical to the more practical Kris. The recent rebranding of HBR Consulting to Harbor brings together six merged companies into one unified brand. As the legal industry undergoes rapid change what motivated the rebranding to Harbor now,

Kris Martin 24:02
so from our view, and and I think each kind of grouping or pocket of clients is sort of viewing what’s happened here a little different. From our view within Harbor. This isn’t a rebranding, this is a brand new launch, we are a altogether net new company, bringing together six very impressive and prestigious brands under one roof, we have a singular goal of really being able to provide an end to end solution to our clients. And we look at this in sort of three steps from the assessment of what a problem is to build, identify the problem, understand it, build a general solution or direction around it, to help you implement the answer to the solution that was discussed, whether we help get you there or not. And then finally, as needed to help you manage that and in the ongoing those three pieces really define when we talk about how we can support any legal organization, whether that’s a law firm or a law department and to end It’s kind of across those three areas with sort of a fourth appendix. And this is really for everybody. And this is sort of this is really how we interact with the community is through our insights, just like we were talking about earlier with bliss, just like we were talking about earlier with LINKS Harbor as a whole has an intention to really be in the market to provide the front end the cutting edge information about what’s going on in the legal space.

Greg Lambert 25:22
Now, how big is Harbor now, how many employees roughly,

Kris Martin 25:27
so about 650 employees within the group that I lead, which is research and intelligence, we have about 230. And so predominantly, librarians and other kinds of information professionals.

Greg Lambert 25:40
And I know a lot of law firms go through this when they when they merge, or they acquire, you know, either boutiques or or other firms. So I know you guys have have had a number of, you know, individual companies that have come under the Harbor umbrella. And now that it’s all one, one company, what have you guys done to kind of allow you to realize that, that cross selling, I guess, to the different expertise within Harbor, how are you learning to kind of collaborate within so that you know, when to reach out and get help on an issue that a law firm may have?

Kris Martin 26:21
Yeah, no doubt. Fantastic question. I mean, I think I’ll start very humbly here and say, this is a this is an ever evolving process, that really any naysayer against the way that that an organization like this outside of legal within legal doesn’t matter, whatever be a, when you bring together all these different units, do they function in individual silos. And really, it’s just a composite of parts? Or is it actually truly one company and so the way that you do that is a few things. One is true and actual alignment across one vision and one set of values which we’ve done, this whole process of, of bringing organizations together, started last year, and really just was announced formally to the market a few weeks ago, the majority of the process today hasn’t been about the mechanics of bringing our organizations together, it’s been about the actually bringing of the people together under under one roof with one set of culture, one set of vision. The power here comes with taking thought leaders and individuals from different disciplines and spaces, subject matter experts, and integrating them kind of in a cross function sense into different practices. So we’re set up with four different practices, we’re not expansive out into every little niche does its own little thing. Everything sits within one to four, strategy and transformation, research and intelligence, vendor governance, and strategic sourcing, and legal technology. So everything that we do fits inside of those buckets, those buckets are just as focused on the stakeholders that they serve as the the solutions that they’re intended to deliver. And so by being able to partner then at that stakeholder level, we’re sharing and interacting on needs versus trying to just push through a single solution. This allows us to bring over and cross in other parts of our organization as needed based on based on what we’re hearing from the client.

Marlene Gebauer 28:22
So Kris, I really love the name Harbor. So whoever thought that went up, you know, kudos, kudos to you. I just, I think back about, like, when I used to practice and health care, you had safe harbors, you know, these areas where, you know, hospitals could, you know, you know, have have a safety net. And so I think it’s just a very apt name, I just kind of have this vision of a bunch of people, or a bunch of boats, like in a port, you know, and just, you know, safe from the storm. So, how does this notion of Harbor as sort of a safe port, as a safe point of support and knowledge exchange? How does that resonate with the company’s mission to help clients achieve breakthrough outcomes during industry transformation? Yeah,

Kris Martin 29:10
the overall direction of where we are expecting to go. And I think this really started with the initial vision of why now, why even do this point in time was a true shift in what we saw to be the direction of the law firm. And so as we see, law firms increasingly focus on their back end operation, the hated and dreaded terminology of the non lawyer. You know, what, what’s in a name, right. And there is a fair amount of lawyering these days that’s happening by non lawyers by those so as much as that might be seen as a as a negative term within the law firm. The reality is, a great amount of the actual delivery of law happens by the two of you, by your peer group are the ones who are really making a lot of magic happen. And so building an organization that they’re and designed to support that really became the the wine now for us, we really were at that precipice at the at the point of the development of, of the legal community where, where this was actually demanded or needed.

Greg Lambert 30:20
And I also noticed it, and it took me a couple of days before I realized it shouldn’t have it was that HBR and Harbor essentially had the same letters in in them as well as got it. Kris we ask all of our guests our crystal ball questions. So we’re going to ask you to pull out your crystal ball and peer into the future for us. What do you see on the horizon, that would be a challenge or a change in the legal industry over the next, say, two to five years?

Kris Martin 30:53
Yeah, you know, briefly a bit in passing earlier. But the idea that legal research is really going to integrate itself into lawyer process, the need for and let’s start with, with with the role of the library, or, or where many librarians will start to fit in. Gino Grady had done a post about pumped engineers ability to really think through and evolve, the way that these products are integrating into that legal process will be a pretty key element of the way that lawyers act and behave. And so just thinking how that’s going to work, how we’re going to interact with vendors differently through that process, the pieces that we were talking about as well in terms of lawyers surfacing, new process that will leverage and evolve from the Large Language Models that are out there, and the way that they’re creating the hierarchies inside their organizations. I think all of this is a pretty substantial shift in behavior and not so far on the future that we shouldn’t be thinking about that from how we organize our teams, how we hire new people, the types of resources that we’re looking to acquire, all of those topics should should fall into this lens of we’re probably know there will be a future and date of where people are going to places to get information versus just having it elevated and surface towards

Greg Lambert 32:12
Well, Kris Martin, executive vice president at Harbor, want to thank you very much for joining us on The Geek in Review. And hope to see you later this week at the links conference as well. Again, we’ll put a we’ll put the link on for links on the show notes. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer 32:32
And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague, we’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media, I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter, LinkedIn, and at m gay Bauer 66 on threads.

Greg Lambert 32:51
And I can also be reached on LinkedIn or glamoured on Twitter, and glamour pod on threads and blue sky. So, again, so many places to post these days of Kris, what about us, if someone wants to continue the conversation or learn more? Where can you be found online.

Kris Martin 33:10
So you can definitely come in through our website is not just Harbor but Harborglobal. So Arbor global.com is the website that that we just launched a few weeks ago and and can connect through there. I personally can be reached at Christopher.Martin@HarborGlobal.com. And if you’re still interested in links, you can either reach out to me directly, or use the links email address is just that word LINKS at Arbor global.com.

Marlene Gebauer 33:42
And so listeners, Greg and I have been talking about retiring the voicemail. So it’s kind of like Twinkies, you know, we’re gonna be getting rid of it, unless anybody uses it. So you can still leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7821 but perhaps not for long. And as always, you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert 34:11
Yeah, thanks, Jerry. Alright, Marlene and Kris. See you guys later.

Marlene Gebauer 34:15
Bye. Bye.