This week, we bring back our original TGIR podcast guest, Zena Applebaum. Zena is now the Senior Vice President of Market Development at Harbor, and we discuss the ongoing transformation driven by technological advancements and strategic shifts. Her insights provide a valuable perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing legal professionals as they navigate these changes.
Zena talks about the integration of generative AI (Gen AI) into legal research tools, particularly at Thomson Reuters, where she previously worked. She emphasizes the challenges in managing expectations around AI’s capabilities while ensuring that the products deliver on their promises. The legal industry has high expectations for AI to simplify the time-consuming and complex nature of legal research. However, Applebaum highlights the need for balance, as legal research remains inherently challenging, and overpromising on AI’s potential could lead to dissatisfaction among users.
Zena was one of the first in the legal market to understand the role of competitive intelligence in shaping product development and market strategies. Applebaum reflects on her experience at Thomson Reuters, where she applied competitive intelligence not just to monitor competitors but to anticipate market dynamics and plan for the future. This approach allowed Thomson Reuters to stay ahead by avoiding surprises and making informed decisions that aligned with long-term goals. Her emphasis on listening to customer needs and understanding market trends underscores the importance of strategic foresight in the legal tech industry.
We also talk about Zena’s move over to Harbor, where she now focuses on market development. She explains that her move was motivated by the opportunity to impact a smaller, more agile company and leverage her legal domain expertise in a broader context. At Harbor, Applebaum aims to redefine the company’s value proposition and position it as a holistic service provider for the legal industry. This shift from a product-centric role to a more strategic, client-focused position highlights the evolving nature of legal services and the increasing demand for comprehensive solutions that address various aspects of legal practice.
Furthermore, the podcast explores the potential impact of AI on the legal landscape and Harbor’s role in helping law firms and legal departments adapt to these changes. Applebaum notes that while AI has not yet revolutionized the industry as quickly as some anticipated, it is gradually driving efficiency and reshaping how legal professionals approach their work. Harbor’s technology-agnostic approach allows it to assist firms in optimizing their tech stacks and preparing for the future, whether through AI, cloud migration, or other technological advancements. This adaptability positions Harbor as a key player in guiding firms through the ongoing digital transformation.
Zena shares her outlook on the future of the legal industry, particularly the growing sophistication of in-house legal departments and the increasing competition for legal talent. She predicts that as AI continues to enhance efficiency and drive changes in the industry, the demand for skilled legal professionals will rise. Law firms will need to adapt to these shifts by embracing new technologies and rethinking their strategies to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
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Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert
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Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript
Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to the Geek Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. So we are welcoming back our very first podcast guest from over six years ago, Zena Appelbaum. Zena is now the senior vice president, market development at Harbor.
So Zena, we are very, very happy to get you back on the show. Sorry. It took us so long to get you back. I
Marlene Gebauer: can’t believe
Zena Applebaum: it’s been six years. Well, you know, lots of, lots of other great guests were here. So. It’s good.
Greg Lambert: Well, we are glad to have you back. So, I know that you’ve only recently moved over to Harbor, but I’m gonna ask you the hard question.
So how’s it going so far?
Zena Applebaum: Honestly, so far it’s been great. a little bit overwhelming, like there’s a lot coming at me. from all different areas of the business, but [00:01:00] everybody’s super excited, super engaged, excited to have me here. and I really feel like I can add value, which is great. Like you want to switch jobs, knowing that you have a purpose, and that you can contribute meaningfully.
And I’m already starting to feel that. So, so far, so good.
Marlene Gebauer: So you’re, coming, to Harbor from Thomson Reuters. And so reflecting on your time at Thomson Reuters, what were some of the most significant challenges you faced when driving the go to market strategy for SAS products, particularly for Westlaw?
I mean, there’s been a lot of changes, with Westlaw in the last few years.
Zena Applebaum: Yeah, so Westlaw is an interesting one, right? Like it is the market leader in legal research and what it does. and I think the biggest challenge, and this is going to come as no surprise to you or any of your listeners who’ve probably are sick of what I’m about to say, but I think, you know, Gen AI.
early 23, I think bringing Gen AI to products that previously wasn’t on the radar was, it was a [00:02:00] challenge, right? And helping people understand what Gen AI can or can’t do, what the risks are, how quickly it’s going to change or impact their processes or not, quite frankly, And then balancing the possibilities with the reality, and the hype.
So I think that was
Marlene Gebauer: the expectations.
Zena Applebaum: Yeah. And helping them, you know, you want to, you want to build a market when you work for one of these organizations, but at the same time, you want to be realistic on what you can deliver and what the products are actually capable of doing. And finding that balance when customers are also really asking for something and really want.
It’s to be the panacea of legal research at the end of the day, legal research is hard and it’s going to continue to be hard. but there are things we can do to make it easier. So it was just really educating the market, on what Gen AI can or can’t do was really, I think one of the most challenging things I’d say the last 18 months.
and continues to be a challenge going forward.
Marlene Gebauer: I just think it’s interesting that so many, like research is [00:03:00] the focus, like Gen AI, like everybody wants to, have that as the answer to research. And as you said, like research is one of the hardest problems to figure out. but that’s immediately what everybody wants to go to.
Zena Applebaum: Cause it’s time consuming and it sucks. And if there’s a way to make it easier and better, you know, of course everybody wants that, but, it’s also the special sauce, right? And so you don’t want to necessarily take that away from, you know, the Litigators either
Greg Lambert: now, I imagine there was pressure to Get the word out.
So how were you able to work with your internal team to make sure? That what you were pushing out for the message was meeting what was actually going on I mean, do you have to have a lot of conversations with?
Zena Applebaum: Oh, yeah, like We spent a lot of time. So my team working with the westlaw team and the practical law team the co counsel team as well, we would spend a ton of time together, because you don’t want to put out more in the market and over promise and [00:04:00] under deliver.
That’s the last thing you want to do. especially when you’re the incumbent and to their credit, the product owners at Thomson Reuters really wanted to take their time and get it as right as they possibly could, rather than jumping the gun and getting to market with something that was, substandard.
they hold themselves to a really high account. and they didn’t want to buy into the hype before they were ready. So yeah, we spent a lot of time with them. and we would never put anything forward that didn’t meet customer expectations. the funny part is of course, many of the people who work on Westlaw are former attorneys or non practicing attorneys, so they’re just as risk averse.
Greg Lambert: Yeah. Um, as actual practicing attorneys and they want to make sure that whatever they put in market actually can deliver on what they say it does. We’ve known you a long time and actually when we first met, which was, gosh, I won’t say what year it was, but luckily I, you know, you were 12 and [00:05:00] I was 14, and in New Orleans.
And I know that doesn’t make sense. but I mean, you kind of broke through and into this market as an expert in competitive intelligence and market insights. And so how sticking with the Thomson Reuters experience, when you move from Bennett Jones, the law firm in Toronto to TR, how were you able to leverage the skills that you were kind of, I don’t know, not inventing or moving over into the, legal industry because, you know, competitive intelligence well known in the, business market, but not that necessarily well known at the time in the legal.
So. How were you able to take the skills that you had and enhance the product marketing there and sales enablement there at Thomson Reuters?
Zena Applebaum: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, and you know, the obvious, the answer that I think most people think I’m going to say is, oh, you know, I monitor what [00:06:00] Lexis did and that’s part of it.
but the reality is competitive intelligence is so much bigger than just what are your competitors doing. It’s looking at things like market dynamics. when I teach competitive intelligence, the two things I tell people to look for, or the two things that good competitive intelligence does is it plans for the future and it avoids surprises.
So what can Thomson Reuters do at the product level, at the market level, at the macroeconomic level as a public company? What are the things it can do to not just understand their customers and the market dynamics, but the value proposition of their products, the messaging of their products, such that they avoid surprises and plan for the future.
And that’s really where something like generative AI comes in, right? Because like, It’s not going to change the world today, but looking five, 10, 15 years out, where are we going to be? And how do we plan to get there? How do we bring our clients along with us to get there? So using that sort of [00:07:00] competitive intelligence framework, we would apply a lot of those learnings to our products, but also to the way in which we enable our sales teams, the conversations I would have with sales teams about what triggers to listen for with customers.
So when customers are talking about X, they’re talking about data modernization. Why are they talking about that? And what does that lead you to and what products that you, what products do you have or services you can provide that align to some of their trigger words? So it’s really those two things.
I think planning for the future and avoiding surprises.
Greg Lambert: So you’re telling them to talk less and listen more.
Marlene Gebauer: He’s going to say it’s her sentiment analysis,
Zena Applebaum: Active listening, man. It’s important.
Marlene Gebauer: so I’m going to shift the, conversation, over to Harbor. So, what motivated you to make that transition from Thomson Reuters to Harbor?
you were obviously doing a lot of really cool things at TR, and also what excites you most about your new role as senior vice president of market [00:08:00] development?
Zena Applebaum: I will say that I ran to an opportunity, not away from one. So I did make sure when I was having conversations with Harbor, I really took the time to reflect that, uh, I was doing cool stuff at Thomson Reuters and I was really deeply embedded in a fantastic team.
There is no better product team out there to work with than the Westlaw team and the, practical law teams, the checkpoint teams that I was working with at Thomson Reuters. They really are the experts in their domain. And so I had to make sure that I was running towards an opportunity that was going to help me grow as an individual, and particularly was going to help me shift my focus away from products more towards my legal domain expertise.
and more towards doing the things that energize me, which is enabling a smaller sales team, being a part of a smaller company. I did feel a little bit occasionally, like I would get lost at Thomson Reuters. It’s, you know, 26, 000 people as opposed to Harbor, which is hovering around [00:09:00] 800. more in line with something like Bennett Jones when I was there.
So, what excites me is the ability to actually have impact. The ability to actually provide services on a more holistic scale across the entire workflow. So, we’ve talked about legal research a lot, but when you look at a company like Harbor and what they’re doing, the services they provide really start, from strategy and transformation right through to sort of, application managed services or optimization of services.
So really the ability to play in the legal domain across the entire workflow is what excites me. and yeah, that’s what motivated me to make the change. I. Relished my time at TR. It was great. I learned a ton. I’m grateful for the seven years I had there, but it was just time to make a change.
Greg Lambert: So, you know, given your new responsibilities there at Harbor, kind of what was the motivator for Harbor to bring you on that they wanted you to kind of [00:10:00] take the reins of right away.
And then, the second part of that question, I’ll ask it now is, once you’ve got that knocked out, what are kind of your long, long range strategies or ideas that you think you can bring, to Harbor?
Zena Applebaum: So it’s been just about four weeks. So I’m not sure I’ve hit anything yet. Um, just figured out how to spell it in
Marlene Gebauer: place.
It’s been a month.
Zena Applebaum: well, I have a 30, 60, 90 in place. I’m almost at the 30 day mark. I’ve learned to spell Harbor without a U.
Marlene Gebauer: So that,
Zena Applebaum: that was the first important, very
Marlene Gebauer: important. Yes.
Zena Applebaum: no, in all seriousness, though, I think the first thing they wanted me to do was to help them define. What that full suite value proposition is and what that portfolio story looks like.
given the history of Harbor and it’s coming up on its one year anniversary as a company. "Harbor is One" and what does that mean to the market? What does that mean internally and externally? And how do we make sure that that manifests in the service delivery as well? So that’s, [00:11:00] I think my first priority.
and then there’s some other areas of interest, not surprisingly. what do we do with our competitive intelligence offering and how do we scale that to offer our clients, service in a way that maybe they haven’t seen before longer term.
Greg Lambert: Well, actually, before you jump into that, let me, let me ask you this.
you mentioned that Harbor is coming up on the, the one year kind of rebranding, re reinventing itself as one company. and I, I fell into this trap when I was talking with Kris Martin in Chicago is I was still thinking HBR and the pieces that they’ve acquired over time. And I was like, Oh, what are you doing with this and this and this and this?
And and you could tell he was a little confused. And he’s like, well, it’s all one now. It’s not, they’re not seen as these individual pieces anymore. it’s all one. so did you, Is it kind of nice that you’re coming in now that they’re all [00:12:00] one? Or are you still kind of, remembering as it was and trying to adjust to how it is now?
Zena Applebaum: They’ve come a really long way in a year or just under a year. I remember listening to Kay Sycamore at ILTA last year, I remember listening to her at their sort of Harbor coming out party, talking about what Harbor means. and they’ve come a really long way.
So there is still conversation about the heritage brands and sometimes people will, you know, Understand Harbor only in the context of one of the heritage brands. But I think we’ve moved beyond that being the only explanation for Harbor. And I do think Harbor has really taken hold and people really are beginning to, see the company as that company.
Greg Lambert: All right. Well, now I’ll let you answer. what are some of the long range? Well, and I think
Zena Applebaum: it ties in, in terms of my longterm goals, my longterm goals are really to help the industry see Harbor as their one advisor. the way you would think of a [00:13:00] KPMG or a Deloitte or a McKinsey, we really want people to think of Harbor as the one place you go to, help with whatever needs your legal department or your law firm has, in terms of, strategy, transformation, management, consulting.
as well as some of the other areas that we offer. So that, that’s the long term goal.
Marlene Gebauer: So I’m curious, it’s like, you know, you were talking about AI earlier and having, a big impact on the legal landscape. So, is that part of what you see, you know, a role that Harbor might be playing in that evolution?
Zena Applebaum: Yeah. I mean, the one really nice thing about Harbor is that we are technology agnostic. So if a firm decides to go with. Elite, for the financial systems or they are an Aderant shop, whatever they are, we can plug and play and we can help them understand how to get the most out of whatever technology they’re using, including the AI enhanced versions of those [00:14:00] products and more importantly, we can help firms who want to take advantage of generative AI or any AI, quite frankly, if they want to take advantage of AI, if they want to take advantage of cloud and people are moving, At various rates to the cloud. And I’m doing, you’ve heard that you’ve had many guests on talking about cloud migrations and whether you should be client forward or not
Greg Lambert: years.
Zena Applebaum: I think the reality is, and thank you to Microsoft and 365, like we’re going to get there, everybody’s going to get there. but getting there is still scary and difficult.
And a company like Harbor can help you get there. You know, with things like understanding your data strategy, helping you modernize your data strategy or modernizing your tech stack, optimizing other services in your workflow to get you ready to take advantage of these things and be future ready as well, both as a service offering, but also so that the firms can be future ready for their clients.
And in house [00:15:00] departments can be more effective for the business that they serve. So I think the idea about AI, it is having a fundamental impact on the legal industry. I think it’s having a fundamental impact on every industry. Legal is just one of them. and when you think about large language models and you think about generative AI, I’ll, I would say this at workshops, like, what is the second L in large language models?
And people would stare at me like I had two heads. but the L is actually about language, right? And the legal industry is predicated on language. It’s like putting language together for the benefit of your client, whether it’s to mitigate risk or from a contract perspective for litigation planning.
So I think that’s why the legal industry feels like it’s interacting differently with large language models than maybe some other industries. it has a more material impact on the work that lawyers do or should do. But the role that Harbor plays in helping you understand how you can take advantage of not just AI, but how you can take advantage of all of the technological, [00:16:00] impacts in the market and it’s moving really quickly.
Greg Lambert: We can meet clients where they are. In their evolution, and help them get where they want to go as well. Well, I want to follow up just briefly on that because we talked a lot about this being one of the first true technologies that really makes a big impact on language and that was the one thing that kind of held a lot of the other advancements in technology. back in the legal industry because legal is like, well, we’re different.
we’re much more around the wording, you know, and the nuance And then all of a sudden we have a tool that everyone thought would immediately kind of, change the entire world. And now we’re coming up on, you know, a year and a half, almost two years after the first, LLMs, went publicly available and we haven’t moved all that far, for most, law firms.
And in fact, our, mutual friend Ryan [00:17:00] McClead is basically saying, you know, the magic that was supposed to take over the industry just really hasn’t happened yet. so what are you thinking that As we’re readjusting to this new expectation of what the large language models and AI can do, where do you think Harbor will position itself in advising, law firms, companies to go forward?
Zena Applebaum: Yeah, I think that the position that I’m seeing so far, is we’ll really meet you where you are. Like, we want to get you to the place where you’re ready to take advantage. of the technology and of the tools at a pace and a rate that makes sense for you. recognizing that some may need a bit more of a push than others as well.
And that’s what our strategy and transformation team can help them understand is how far behind they might be or they could be and how they can leap frog forward should they choose to. But I think ultimately, whatever plan or strategy [00:18:00] you have, we can help you achieve whatever your goals are for your firm, whether it’s, better customer service, better client service or optimizing your data in a way to take advantage of things like, fabric from Microsoft, which is just out of beta.
or some of the other products that are out there that can really help drive efficiency in a firm. We can help you get there, or in a legal department.
Greg Lambert: Well, Zena, we’re at the moment where we have the crystal ball question, and, we didn’t have this, question when you were on last time, so Yeah, we never had a
Marlene Gebauer: crystal ball question for Zena.
that was a new addition in the last six years.
Greg Lambert: Yes, yes. So we’ve had, we have different music, we have different questions, we have a different platform, we record on a different platform. Everything’s different, but we’re all the same. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We are exactly the same. So, we have the crystal ball question that we ask, and that is, what change or challenge do you think, that the legal industry is going to have to address in the next two to five years?[00:19:00]
Zena Applebaum: I think that in house departments are becoming far more sophisticated than they ever have been. The technology tools and the, incentive to use them is greater for in house departments than it was previously. I think as a result, the war on talent is continuing to increase for law firms, as AI continues to drive efficiency and we are seeing it in incremental.
Steps. It’s not, it didn’t happen overnight. It’s not going to happen overnight, but I do think we’ve come, even in the last 18 months, the number of firms that are investing in AI that are talking about AI, the number of chief AI officers that have been named as AI continues to drive discussion and efficiency in the market and technology continues to move faster, I think that demand will continue to increase for lawyers and for the work that they do, volume will continue to rise.
Greg Lambert: as resources [00:20:00] continue to shift and people want different things out of their legal careers. And that’s where I think you’re going to see a lot of change in the next five years in the industry. Excellent. Well, Zena Applebaum, the senior vice president of market development at Harbor, without a U, thanks for returning to the show.
Thanks for having me. Let’s not, let’s not take six years next time. Let’s not
Marlene Gebauer: wait six years. Yeah. I’m in. Let’s do it again soon. Yeah. Thank you, Zena. And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners, for taking the time to listen to the Geek and 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 LinkedIn.
Greg Lambert: Zena, we’ll put links in the show notes, but, what’s the best way for people to find out more about Harbor or to reach out to you with more questions? If they have
Zena Applebaum: Harbor global. com or reach out to me personally at Zena.Applebaum@HarborGlobal.Com, or of course. @ZAppleCI on that [00:21:00] platform formerly known as Twitter.
Marlene Gebauer: Very good. Thanks, Zena. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you, Jerry.
Greg Lambert: Thanks, Jerry. All right. See you guys later.
Marlene Gebauer: Okay. Bye bye.