In this episode of The Geek in Review, we sit down with Narrative founder John Tertan to talk about law firm pricing, messy data, and why substance matters more than shiny tools. We pick up from our first meeting at the Houston Legal Innovators event, where John had the pricing and KM crowd buzzing, and ask what he is hearing from those teams as they look toward 2026. John explains how Narrative focuses on “agentifying” business-of-law work, starting with pricing and analytics, so firms stop guessing and start grounding decisions in better data. The goal is simple, improve decisions for pricing teams, finance, marketing, and partners who want to win work that also makes financial sense.
John walks through the pain points that drive firms to seek out Narrative, from low realization and high write-offs to tedious non-billable work and a lack of trust in the data behind pitches and budgets. Many firms track key metrics in scattered spreadsheets, checked once in a while rather than used as a daily guide for strategy. Narrative steps into that gap by improving the accuracy of historical matter data, identifying the right reference matters for new proposals, and supporting alternative fee structures. John explains how this foundation supports better scoping, more confident pricing conversations, and far stronger alignment between firm goals and client expectations.
We also dive into John’s founder journey, which runs from Freshfields associate to innovation work, then through venture-backed tech in other sectors before returning to legal. That mix of big law, startup experience, and prior success with HeyGo shapes how he builds Narrative. John talks about serving “mature customers” who expect more than a slick interface, they expect real understanding of their business, their politics, and their constraints. Relationships sit at the center of his approach, not only with clients and prospects, but also with advisors, former firm leaders, and legal tech veterans who guide both product and go-to-market strategy.
The name “Narrative” is no accident, and John explains why time entry narratives sit at the heart of his product. Those lines of text describe what lawyers did, for whom, and why, yet they often sit underused in billing systems. Narrative improves and structures that data, then uses it to highlight scope, track what remains in or out of scope, and surface early warnings when matters drift away from the original plan. John talks through the life cycle, from selecting comparable matters, through modeling AFAs and scenarios, to monitoring work in progress and feeding lessons back into future pricing efforts. Along the way, better transparency supports stronger trust between partners and clients.
We close by asking John to look ahead. He shares his view on how firms will move toward more sophisticated pricing models and better measurement, while the billable hour continues to evolve rather than vanish overnight. Stronger baselines, cleaner matter histories, and better tracking create room for fee caps, success components, and other structures that clients want to sell internally. John also shares how he stays informed through alerts, networks, and a new chief of staff who helps turn those insights into resources for pricing and finance professionals. For listeners who want to learn more or follow Narrative’s work, John points them to narrativehq.com and invites outreach from anyone wrestling with data, pricing, or margin questions inside their own firm.
Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
[Special Thanks to Legal Technology Hub for their sponsoring this episode.]
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript:
Greg Lambert (00:00)
Hi I’m Greg Lambert with The Geek in Review and I’m here with our friend Nikki Shaver from Legal Technology Hub and Nikki you’re going to talk to us about the new portfolio management feature for LTH tell us a little more.
Nikki Shaver (00:14)
Yes, hi Greg.
So we have just launched a feature that we think will be really helpful for law firms and for legal ops departments. Typically at a law firm, especially in the innovation team or the IT team, depending on how the firm is set out, you’ll have one person who’s responsible for tracking the market, which they can now of course do through Legal Tech Hub, but also for tracking the way that that firm is using practice technology. So what are the solutions that they license, which are the ones that they have looked
at or piloted and which are solutions that they may be interested in in the future for other projects. And that kind of a spreadsheet can really be a significant piece of work. It’s hard to maintain and it’s divorced from where a lot of firms now do their research, which is on our platform. So at the behest of many firms, we have built out a portfolio management platform that actually sits in Legal Tech Hub in your account. So when you log in, you…
can follow solutions now, but in the new feature, you can move your followed solutions between three different tabs. One for portfolio, which is where you keep your list of solutions you license. Another for reviewed, which is where you keep your list of solutions that you’ve looked at and for whatever reason decided not to move forwards with. And one for watching, which is for your solutions that you may have an interest in and you want to keep tabs on.
You’ll get updates on all of those solutions by virtue of following them in the platform, which means whenever a new feature is released or we update their profile, you’ll get a notification. But also importantly, you can move solutions between those tabs at will in your account and you can add notes. So you can add a note to say, piloted this waiting until SOC 2 certification, for example. And those notes are completely private to you in your account. So…
It should really allow for additional rich functionality within the platform for firms who want to use it instead of Excel. We’re all for moving things into more automated, more efficient platforms. ⁓ And now Legal Tech Hub can offer you one of those. for those who do have a subscription and want to learn more, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll talk you through it. But for those who are not yet subscribers and are interested,
reach out to us at info@legaltechnologyhub.com and of course check out the platform at legaltechnologyhub.com. Thanks Greg.
Greg Lambert (02:47)
That
sounds super useful. I’m going to jump off here and then dive in and start marking what we have and what we want.
Nikki Shaver (02:54)
Amazing.
Greg Lambert (02:56)
Okay.
Marlene Gebauer (03:04)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gabauer.
Greg Lambert (03:11)
I’m Greg Lambert and today we are joined by John Tertan who actually said we should pronounce it Tur-ton but we’re going to go the more English. All right, all right, so we’re going with John Tertan. John is the founder of Narrative. ⁓ Hey John, welcome to the Geek in Review.
John Tertan (03:21)
Not quite, Greg. That was actually not- That was actually- The first way you did it was fun. ⁓
Marlene Gebauer (03:22)
It’s tear-ton. It’s tear-ton.
John Tertan (03:34)
Thank you so much for having me and great to meet everyone.
Marlene Gebauer (03:38)
So John, we met you at the Houston Legal Innovators event that you sponsored the other day, and you’ve been spending time inside like Legal Ops, the KM pricing community. So, you know, what are you hearing from those teams that’s influencing your roadmap and what do you think that Legal is finally ready for in 2026?
John Tertan (04:00)
That’s a great question, Marlene, just to kick off right from the start. So many things. So I think one, in terms of kind of a bit about narrative and what we’re building and kind of ties into what we’re hearing, we’re really thinking about on the big picture, how can we really agentify and improve and elevate a lot of those business of law type tasks and stuff that lawyers kind of don’t like doing, but it’s necessary for the business. And we’ve really started with a pricing and analytics kind
entry point and so that really ties into what we’re hearing and one of the things that we hear over and over again from every firm that we speak to is our data is
we’ll use polite language as a low average. And we can’t figure out, you know, what are the right matters for a new piece of work that we want to price for and our clients expect us to know all of these things. And so that is the core of what we’ve been building and what we’ve been solving and making sure that we track in terms of the KPIs and the accuracy and so on. And then it’s kind of building on that is thinking, well, what else can we do? What are the further capabilities that can support
Greg Lambert (04:43)
Yeah.
John Tertan (05:09)
not just our pricing and biz ops teams, either on the financial side, but also on the marketing side, but how does that extend to the partnership and what we can do to support our partners when you work and win that work in a profitable way as well. Because obviously every partner wants to win a deal, but we have to win the right deals and we have to win those deals in a way that makes sense for the business and for the practice. And so then tying into your broader question,
is, you know, and it’s related to what we’re building is there’s a lot of excitement in terms of all the new tech, all of the new tools that are coming to market. But I think we’re entering a point in time where we really want to understand, okay, yes, this is cool. Yes, this is fancy. But so what? What is the impact not just internally to our business, but for our clients? Because that’s really what matters at the end of the day is what is the improvement in
terms of quality, in terms of pricing, in terms of service level that we’re able to give our clients. And how does that translate to how we’re working and how we’re pricing and how we’re thinking about the business side of things for the firm itself, for our day to day. And that’s the bit that we step in. And I think that’s also been noticeable in terms of the types of conversation, the level of conversations that we had at that event, but also following around it and so on, is we’re able to get into the detail.
in the substance. And I think fundamentally what lawyers, what the industry want is not just glitz and glam, but substance. And I think that that ties in very closely with what we’re doing, what I think the industry is seeing as well.
Marlene Gebauer (06:48)
like how fast that that value can be turned around, right?
John Tertan (06:53)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. mean, like I was speaking to a…
Magic Circle firm today that we’re starting to work with over here in the UK and the types of estimates in terms of how fast we can improve their data, how fast we can deliver on X, Y, Z. They were like, ⁓ really? That quickly? We can actually kind of deliver that value. It’s like, yes, of course. We just need the green light. And that is a bit of the change in terms of kind of the spot in time that we’re in.
And I think the industry is getting quite excited and quite alive to those changes as well.
Greg Lambert (07:31)
Let me dig on that just a little bit. So if I’m in a law firm, typically if I’m looking at narrative as my solution, tell me who I am and what my problems are that caused me to reach out to you.
John Tertan (07:48)
Yeah, so ⁓ great question. on the high level, it’s we as a firm or a business want to either well and or improve stuff like realization rates, win loss ratios, the time wasted on non-chargeable tasks or activities. Those are kind of the big KPIs. The starting.
Greg Lambert (08:09)
Wait, wait, we should be measuring those? Huh. ⁓
John Tertan (08:14)
Sometimes
some of those should be Maybe at least you know like in person in terms of the first one You know it seems like the industry tracks that I think the industry even at the top side of the market You’re looking at 18 % average relight like average write-offs And write-downs, so it’s big numbers
Marlene Gebauer (08:16)
Maybe.
John Tertan (08:38)
And then in terms of kind of the people, it depends by firm by and large, just because of where we found a nice, easy entry point to start providing value quite quickly in a way that gets through InfoSec, all of those components relatively quickly. You know, we start with those pricing finance functions and then branch out into kind of, you know, the partnership, the senior associates and so on. Because even though we started with the
pricing analytics piece, we actually have a lot of solutions on the life cycle management, being able to show what is within scope, what is out of scope for an active project, being able to automate the work in progress updates, automate some of the outside council guidelines applications and so on. And a lot of the things on our roadmap look at how can we further help both the partners and the business enhance those relationships with their clients or prospective clients.
So those are kind of the types of individuals, some of the kind of the main KPIs that were also, hopefully the firm is tracking, but at least everyone cares about.
Greg Lambert (09:44)
Yeah, we’re tracking it’s in a spreadsheet somewhere, I’m sure.
John Tertan (09:48)
That you look at every now and then. Of course. Yeah.
Greg Lambert (09:51)
update once a year. Well,
John, you come kind of have an interesting background. I mean, you’ve been in tech, but it’s been a variety of different tech. So, know, travel tech, professional services and working with the technology in those. So, I’m kind of interested in you walking us through your founder journey.
⁓ You know, and what is it that you learned in these other areas that made you want to tackle legal, but also I think, you know, made you also prepared better for legal.
John Tertan (10:26)
Greg, that’s a whole different podcast, Greg. We can go into quite a lot of that one. Yeah, so my… Yeah, exactly. That one is almost kind of like a bourbon kind of session where you have to go through it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. ⁓
Marlene Gebauer (10:32)
The Founders Forum, we’re going to start a whole new one.
Greg Lambert (10:34)
There we go. ⁓
Marlene Gebauer (10:40)
It’s the after conference session, is that what it is? Yeah. After
Greg Lambert (10:41)
Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (10:47)
dark conference, yep, that’s it.
John Tertan (10:48)
Yeah.
So my journey started, my, so I, for everyone listening, my background. I started, I did, so I grew up in Canada, then went to the UK for, for law school, then went to fresh fields. was an attorney there in the kind of the, corporate department. So and A type work. My first introduction to tech proper was also while I was at the firm, cause did a lot on the innovation side and also internal kind of change management.
So both internal external tooling I Quite like that and then like you said I kind of left and I did the kind of the entrepreneurial sprint across venture-backed companies and so on so I I think and One that yes definitely helped in terms of looking at this type of product this type of sector I think the customers that were working with and want to continue building and working with as well are very mature customers they expect you to
be able to come to the table with something that is fully formed, but also a deep understanding not just of them and their problems and what they’re trying to achieve, but also the business side of things. And so even though we’re relatively new, I’m able to leverage a lot of that experience to mean that actually, you know, we have the funding, we have the right advisors, whether they’re former chairmen of firms or founders of the right networks across legal tech hub.
value network and so on.
that we are able to put all of the basics in place that I think if you were a first time founder, you wouldn’t quite know how to do. So all of that kind of company building, team building, I think that helps a lot. The other thing that I think it helps with is understanding what the journey is and what that looks like. When you’re relatively early, you’re able to frame everything correctly and say, look, this is where
we are, this is where we’re going to be. As you kind of, you know, go through those stages, it’s not a surprise you know what’s coming next to a degree. mean, like, you you never know what’s really coming. But because things evolve, things change. But you have that appreciation of this is what is involved in this kind of journey. This is what you can expect. This is what we bring to the table. And you’re able to merge those two together in a way that is quite synergistic and
hopefully quite value add.
Greg Lambert (13:15)
Yeah,
I noticed it when I was at TLTF that this gave me some exposure to the PE and VC money that were out there. your example was something that a couple of the financiers were talking about. was like, I’m looking for somebody that is just starting their second or third startup that’s already, you
done it once or twice has exited and is now on the next venture. And I think a lot of that is because they want somebody that knows the different pieces and understands that.
John Tertan (13:51)
Yeah. And I think another kind of component, is, mean, like when I’m approaching this and kind of ties into like why we’ve even started this one, like, you know, narrative and the mission that we’re on, like it to somebody who doesn’t know the space, doesn’t sound, my God, so sexy or so, you know, but to me, it’s actually very, it’s, it’s, it’s a clear plot problem area. There’s like clear solutions that no one else has built. Like that specificity, that ability to say, actually, we know how to solve this. We know how to build something here.
and we know how to scale in a way that is meaningful, you know, it’s not the obvious protocol of someone who’s never, who’s never built something before. And I wouldn’t have done this first if this was my first kind of project either, so you know, and I think that, maybe Greg, maybe, if we do things right, if we do things right, yeah.
Greg Lambert (14:35)
It would have been your first and your last.
Marlene Gebauer (14:42)
Well, I have to disagree. think there’s a lot of people out there that think, you know, what you’re tackling is pretty sexy. I think they’ll be really thrilled. And it’s funny, like you mentioned that this probably wouldn’t have been your first foray, but you did have another.
John Tertan (14:48)
I think so.
Greg Lambert (14:49)
Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (14:57)
another startup, HeyGo, and that had major traction and real investment behind it. So what did that experience teach you about building products in sort of tough legacy heavy markets? how did that shape the way you’re approaching narrative?
John Tertan (15:18)
I think it completely gives so much clarity and direction in terms of what’s important. think particularly it’s nice because with narrative I kind of merge a little bit of my legal background and also kind of that founder, you know, background from the previous company. And it just makes, I don’t know, things feel quite clear in a lot of ways. I mean, like there’s a lot of, you know, things that obviously require navigation and so on. But for this,
this
product to work really well. Obviously we have to solve the pain point in a way that no one else has and can do and we’re already doing that. But really what it comes down to, and this is the most important thing is, can we build and foster really good relationships with the right people in the right places in the right way? That sounds really simple, but that is actually what this is. It’s making sure that the amount of
kind of the human input, the human care, the human relationships are front and center because a lot of times when you’re building, like, okay, let’s build a cool tech product and you say, it can do this and this and this. That’s great, but…
At the end of the day, what legal is, what we’re building is all about the relationships fostering and strengthening client law firm relationships, partner client relationships, partner pricing, partner relationships, and so on. And so that is what is a really helpful guiding principle and set of values for myself and for narrative that I think comes from that set of experiences in the past from kind of working in an industry
where yeah, you do have a lot of kind of legacy components and it’s a very people first business. And I think that translates and holds true for legal.
Greg Lambert (17:05)
A lot of times, especially in legal tech, the founders of a startup typically have worked in a large law firm and have run into some particular issue that drove them crazy while they were practicing and you decide, ⁓ this is the thing I’m going to solve.
Did you, were you running into this problem when you were practicing and innovating as a lawyer? And what is it that you said, you know, hey, this is what it is that I need to solve and this is what I need to build.
Marlene Gebauer (17:39)
Because it’s sexy. It’s sexy. Remember? We decided. We decided.
John Tertan (17:40)
Yes. It
Greg Lambert (17:41)
Yeah, absolutely. Well,
John Tertan (17:43)
was, it was, it was a combination sway, you know, like the business side of things, there’s so many inefficiencies and, and.
Greg Lambert (17:43)
yeah.
John Tertan (17:52)
frustrations that I experienced firsthand, including this. remember once when I was a junior associate, I got a bunch of partners pretty much over the weekend, one time to just be like, help me like pitch for this new piece of work that a friend of mine is, you know, now, you know, big part of this kind of new Asian base, was a Hong Kong based company. And we need to, you know, pull together an RF, like an RFP reply and blah, blah. And there was just no resources and there was no help.
and we just kind of, I just had to phone call a bunch of partners across Brussels and London and Frankfurt on Saturday and Sunday and just be like, we just have to make this, where do we start? And they don’t even know it. That was my first kind of introduction to the problem where I was like, we really don’t have anything in this space. We started with actually some of the life cycle management pieces because like I experienced that on a daily when I was an associate.
Greg Lambert (18:37)
the
John Tertan (18:49)
A lot of the refinement to get to where we are now with the product like on the pricing and data piece actually came from listening to the people that we just kept chatting to like it was a lot of pricing finance directors pricing directors CFOs at various different firms everything from you know, the AM law 100 down like magic circle some of the kind of the high tier
specialty practices as well and they just kept talking about the same problems which I had a glimpse into when I was practicing as well and we realized that no one actually has built anything that that properly solves the space. You have you know
big incumbents that have something, but it doesn’t go anywhere near to what actually needs to be done to solve these problems, to actually provide value. And so we’re like, okay, let’s build there and start there. And that has proven out to be so far a really good approach where we’ve listened to our customers and we’re building up those relationships. And now we have a number of firms that…
we’re building together with and now starting to onboard a lot ⁓ more firms in part of that process.
Marlene Gebauer (19:58)
So hopefully I sound better because I just realized that my mic was off to side this whole interview. Greg’s going to be mad at me. Sorry. I do have a fancy mic. The problem is the fancy mic was way the heck over here and so I don’t know if it was catching my voice enough. anyway. Yay. All right. Now we get to the very important question of what the product does. So.
Greg Lambert (20:00)
it.
John Tertan (20:03)
You have a fancy mic, Marlene. We don’t have one.
Thanks.
Greg Lambert (20:16)
fix that in post.
Marlene Gebauer (20:26)
You know, narrative is tackling pricing and margin and scope management, in a way that most tools on the market do not. And that’s why I think, you know, everybody I saw that was talking about this and saw the demo was very, very excited about it. So, you know, what are the specific gaps that you saw in the market and, know, what are the capabilities that firms are telling you that they, really need?
but they aren’t getting from their existing systems.
John Tertan (20:57)
Amazing question. So I would say, one ties into what we were talking about before. What are the main business goals, KPIs that we want to achieve? And that ties into, okay, yes, we want to improve our realization rates, which matters if you’re starting at the wrong starting line, it makes a difference as to how much you’re going to get at the end of the day. Two, we want to improve the confidence, the relationship that we have with our clients or prospective clients.
predictability, they want to be able to trust what their lawyers are saying is likely to be true. And that ties into how we price deals, how we’re quoting, how we’re predicting what a work product is going to look like. And three, we obviously want to be working on the most high impactful things and not putting, not trying to scrape together sets of scrapes, assumptions, and trying to figure out across our repository of X thousands of matters. What is this like?
to be and so on. What that then translates to is kind of four kind of problem solution areas that we’ve started with and there’s a bunch of other stuff coming up but the first one is thinking about okay as a baseline it ties into what we were talking about before we need to improve what the
What is that baseline for how we’ve done things in the past? What is our visibility and appreciation and understanding of our previous matters? So that’s where we start. And we do an exercise of really elevating to about kind of 15 % accuracy improvement in terms of understanding and appreciating what has been done in the past, how has it been done, and so on. That then forms a much more solid foundation for the second piece, which is
when partners or finance teams are trying to figure out for a new piece of work, where do we start? What is the reference class that is most relevant? That is actually really difficult because I think a partner at a big UK firm used this analogy, which was, and I like to copy it because it’s a good one, but it’s like if you’re doing a kitchen rental of a flat, it makes a big difference whether the flat or the apartment that you’re renovating
is a modern, you know, 2024 apartment or an apartment or a house from the 1900s. Why? Because other factors become relevant. You’re talking about, do we actually need to replace some of the electrical, some of the flooring and so on. And
if you’re a contractor doesn’t appreciate those kinds of nuances or all of the pieces, or when you’re quoting a piece of work, you’re not considering all of those reference class components, it makes a big difference. And so what we’re able to do is say, okay, these are the relevant matters and why are they relevant? Actually tease out the components that make a difference, whether that’s regulatory approvals, different kind of jurisdictions, or from kind of a litigation perspective, number of
the number of witnesses and so on. And you can go add infinitum because there’s so many different factors that are relevant and being able to sort through that information, the tens of thousands of matters or projects that a firm has done in the past is tricky. So that’s part two. Part three is, okay, we want to create a reply to what the client wants us to kind of pitch for.
there’s lots of different variables at play. so being able to play with all of those variables, whether it’s thinking about different AFA arrangements, different fees, different ways of working, the different AI tools that we as a firm are starting to deploy or purchase and so on. All of those go to what’s the cost, what’s the profit, what’s the leverage and being able to surface that transparently, but also being able to just play with those different models and different scenarios. Currently very, very difficult slash
Cook.
impossible. And so we help with that as well. And then the final component is thinking, okay, we’ve generated something, we’ve hopefully won the deal and so on. How are we tracking our progress? How are we thinking about our work? What’s in scope? What’s out of scope? How are we helping our partners or senior, senior attorneys think about, okay, how can we continue to improve that relationship or make sure that we are capitalizing on the good work that we’re doing and so on and feeding all of
learnings back into the new work that we’re going to be pitching for as well. So kind of closing the loop, thinking about that virtuous life cycle and it’s across those four areas that we’ve kind of been focused on.
Greg Lambert (25:36)
I know there was a couple of things that you highlighted or that were highlighted for you probably by Toby Brown who was there as well, Mr. Pricing Expert. And he had mentioned one, the name of the company Narrative. There’s a reason that it’s called Narrative. But also one of the things that I think drove him crazy as, or still drives him crazy as a pricing professional is when things
kind of slowly get out of scope from the original matter from what you were taking on. Do you mind just covering quickly why you’re called narrative and then two also about the scope creep that you helped kind of identify?
John Tertan (26:22)
Yeah, no, I mean, one, think it’s a good title. It’s a good name where we can create a lot of fancy slogans at some point, controlling your narrative, defining your narrative and so on. yeah, we still have to have, we still have to come up with a good slogan, Greg. So if you or Marlene have one, right. But it is, you know, it comes from the fact that actually the
Greg Lambert (26:28)
There you go.
Marketing is important.
Marlene Gebauer (26:34)
Yes.
John Tertan (26:46)
understanding how things were done in the past and figuring out what that story looks like for the future does sit with our narratives or the time entries that we as practitioners record. That is the first piece of data that we improve and elevate. And it forms a big part of the foundation for everything else that the product does. And so that’s kind of the genesis of the name. The second piece of like thinking about, okay, how do we
track. I mean, I saw this so much and I think both of you see this as well. We don’t know what’s been incurred in a project like until it’s been a month later. Also, we might get a number back from billing of like, this is how much has been recorded, but we have no idea of like, okay, is that how much of that is actually what we think or is in line with what we said we would be doing or not. And so that is kind of tying to that fourth kind of problem area and solutions.
space of the kind of the life cycle management. That is something that we we’ve built out and we’re helping firms with is keeping track of okay, this is yes, how much has been incurred, updating the client with that with automatic updates and that obviously the lawyer is in charge of and is able to kind of review before anything goes out. But then being able to just transparently record and show internally, okay, this is what’s in scope. This is what out of scope where I
expecting to track what we said or agreed with the client, actually maybe we’re looking to exceed that. And so just being able to share that information to then be able to have that dialogue with your client, think is critical, helps improve those realization rates, but also helps improve, make everyone, hopefully a little bit happier and trust everyone a little bit more. And I think that’s critical to being able to have that client come back to
for returning business and vice versa.
Greg Lambert (28:45)
before we get to the crystal ball question, we’ve been we’ve been throwing a new question at everybody. And I and I’ve been looking at your bookshelf behind you so I can tell you’re a heavy reader.
So, you know, there’s just so much going on and the change is so rapid, as Marlene had mentioned earlier. What do you do to kind of keep up with all of the changes that are going on, both in the market and with the technology? What’s some of your go-to resources?
John Tertan (29:11)
Yep.
It’s quite a spread. mean, one, I have like those classic Google press alerts now with lots of keywords and so on where, you know, it comes in your inbox and you’re like, okay, cool. I can scan XYZ things that other topics or people or, you know, companies that I’m interested in. Two, it’s…
surrounding yourself, I think, with the right people, I think is quite critical because, you know, things come up as you, you know, one, of course, is what you get in the public space, but it’s, you know, like we were tying into before a lot, everyone kind of seems to know everything in legal or kind of they know everyone, but that’s only true if you are talking to the right people. And so making sure that, you know, that’s something we’ve been obviously doing, whether it’s Toby or others surrounding ourselves with
people who are in the know, who are shapers of the industry, and that we’re able to get that inside track both in terms of our thinking, whether that’s product or in the relationship side of things, but also broadly like just keeping up with the market.
and then I think, you know, we actually just hired a new chief of staff as well, who I’m very excited for cause there’s a bunch of stuff on my plate that I haven’t, I still have to like get through sometimes and hence why, you know, we have to work quite late into the evenings. you know, one of the things she’s helping me with as well is thinking about how we can start sharing some of those learnings, sharing some of those learnings with our early adopters, our early kind of partners.
Greg Lambert (30:31)
Yeah
John Tertan (30:50)
⁓
and the people around that that are, you we’re hoping to be able to kind of bring on in that kind of capacity, but they’re also quite interested in making sure that they keep track of what’s happening in the market and so on. we’ve just started building up.
that side of things as well and we’re going to hopefully be able to pay it forward to make sure that we’re able to help finance pricing people who are interested in the innovation side of things but more from a business perspective have that resource as well and so hopefully that might be relevant to some of the people here.
Marlene Gebauer (31:26)
So John, we are going to ask you to peer into your crystal ball and give us your impressions of the future. So in the next few years, do you think firms are going to get better at managing and using their data to improve pricing? Maybe even move to different models of pricing or value pricing? What else do they need to measure to be able to accomplish this?
John Tertan (31:50)
Yeah, think, I mean, yes, absolutely to the first sense. mean, I think already we’re seeing a lot of impact on that from the firms that we’re starting to work with.
I think increasingly those kinds of pressures from the client side to think about creative different structures and solutions will be there. don’t think that means in the next three or four years, we’re not going to have billables in the same like billable hours and so on that will just continue to evolve, continue to change and be combined with other components. But it makes it so critical for firms to start that work to be able
to create those baselines, to be able to say actually if we are going to do a fee cap or maybe a percentage of revenue and so on, what does that look like? What are the numbers that we need to see? What can we actually, you know, offer to our clients to help them increase their predictability, increase their confidence, sell it up to either their C-suite or what have you because, you know, everyone has KPIs or certain ⁓ goals that they’re trying to
achieve and being able to push to whoever they’re reporting to as well. And so our job is to be able to make our clients’ lives easier, be able to help them with that transition that they’re going through as well. And so, you know, from a law firm perspective, that’s just part of that evolution. And so those are the core components that I think, you know, we’re seeing will hopefully be able to be a part of shaping and evolving. And then thinking about kind of further improvements as well.
I think those, you know, being on top of what will actually be happening and changing in the legal work proper, as in, you know, what we’re doing on diligence, what we’re doing on contract review, what tools are we using, how we’re doing that and so on. Obviously we can help track those things and also think about kind of how that pipes into the data and the pricing side. But that does kind of ask those big questions of, you know, how are we going to evolve the core business?
going to make sure that we maintain or improve the value and the leverage that we’re extracting as a business as well. And those are questions that will evolve, like the answers to those questions will evolve over time. And so I don’t have those ones, but I know that being able to track, measure, have those right benchmarks and be able to pipe that into those future works and track that kind of life cycle is going to be critical to helping navigate those questions.
Greg Lambert (34:24)
Yeah, the bad data was a 25-year-old overnight problem that we’ve uncovered.
Marlene Gebauer (34:30)
Ha ha ha ha.
John Tertan (34:30)
It’s
shocking how it hasn’t improved. It’s mind-boggling. But here we are.
Greg Lambert (34:35)
Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Hopefully AI can fix it this time around, right? KM didn’t quite fix it. Maybe AI would give two more letters to throw at it.
John Tertan (34:40)
Yeah, AI and a lot of…
Yeah, why not?
It has opened up. The ability and the techniques that we’re able to deploy are quite significant. And then that translates to what’s the output, what’s the value, what’s the so what. Because that is just improving things for the sake of improving it. It’s great, cool. But there needs to be a so what. There needs to be a value that goes either to the business and to the client.
Greg Lambert (35:12)
All right, well, John Tarten, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. And it was great meeting you at the Houston Legal Innovators meeting last week.
Marlene Gebauer (35:21)
Thanks, John.
John Tertan (35:22)
Likewise, Greg, Marlene, thank you so much for having me and great to meet everyone on the show.
Marlene Gebauer (35:29)
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 LinkedIn and TikTok.
Greg Lambert (35:41)
And John, if any of the listeners want to learn more about narrative, where’s the best place to point them to?
John Tertan (35:49)
Yeah, so two places, mean, one, narrativehq.com is our domain, so you can have a look that obviously gives an overview of the product. And also, if you want to get in touch, either to hear more from the new resource that we’re putting together on a weekly, bi-weekly basis, or if you think this kind of stuff might be relevant for the firm that you’re working with or for, send me an email at john at narrativehq.com.
Welcome.
Marlene Gebauer (36:19)
And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you, Jerry.
Greg Lambert (36:24)
Thanks, Jerry. All right. Thanks, everyone.
Marlene Gebauer (36:25)
Thanks everyone,
bye.
John Tertan (36:27)
Bye.