Podcast Episode 14 – Jeff Marple and the Art of Incremental Change; Plus “Free PACER”?

On this episode we will talk with Jeff Marple, Director of Innovation, Corporate Legal at Liberty Mutual Insurance company. Plus, we have our monthly update on government action in legal information from AALL’s Director of Government Relations, Emily Feltren. So, it’s an action packed episode, so grab a drink of your choice and settle in for a good one.

 

15:13 – Jeff Marple, Director of Innovation, within Corporate Legal at Liberty Mutual discusses what it is like to be the innovations guru within a large corporate legal environment. The key is incremental change, lots of communications, having the customer in the room, and publicly executing poor performing processes or projects in the town square.

 

07:22 – Emily Feltren, Director of Government Relations at American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), gives us her monthly update on happenings in the legal information field in regards to government actions. AALL submitted an amici curiae brief in the recent PACER class action, National Veterans Legal Services Program et al v. United States of America, which is currently on appeal. AALL made the points that PACER Fees Harm Patron Access And Legal Research Instruction and that PACER Fees Impede Law Libraries’ Responsibility To Preserve Legal Materials.

There are a number of bills at the federal level focusing on opening up access to PACER. Is free access to PACER on the horizon? Seem that there are a number of politicians looking to do just that. 

00:45 – Marlene (@gebauerm) walks us through how “Thinking Like a Lawyer” might be exactly what we need in this highly polarized environment we live in. A recent Law360 article discusses how law schools may be the best place to start reminding incoming lawyers of how to passionately argue multiple sides of an issue, yet remain professional while doing it. It might be something that we all need to remember.

03:00 – Greg (@glambert) discusses his “book report” from Kim Cameron’s leadership book, “Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance,” on Positive Communications and how high performance teams interact and communicate.

Please feel free to Tweet us at @gebauerm or @glambert with any comments you have about this episode of The Geek In Review. Please take a moment to subscribe, comment, and rate us so that others can find us.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast designed to cover the legal information profession with a slant toward technology and management. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

[00:00:17] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. On this episode, Marlene, we’ll be talking with Jeff Marple, Director of Innovation, Corporate Legal at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Plus, we have our monthly update on government action and legal information from AALL’s Director of Government Relations, Emily Feltren. So it’s an action-packed episode, so grab a drink of your choice. I’m drinking beer. And settle in for a good one.

[00:00:41] Marlene Gebauer: I’m drinking coffee. So it’s a two-for-one today. Let’s get started. So Greg, in light of the closing Kavanaugh vote, there was a Law 360 article, actually you had mentioned this to me, which discussed the need to think like a lawyer. Now, we discussed on Episode 9 with Kenton Bryce, how thinking like a lawyer can incorporate both legal theory and the business of law. But this focuses on what I think you could call critical thinking. So listening to both sides of an argument and engaging in principled debate. The background for this commentary was a Wall Street Journal article that highlights how Wake Forest and other universities are sponsoring classes, workshops, and get-dinner programs. on how to engage in civil discourse and cope with ideological disputes. You know, university-sponsored dinner parties on civil discourse is a far cry from what I was offered in college. I don’t know about you.

[00:01:33] Greg Lambert: Yeah, no. We had those every Thursday night, but we called it happy hour.

[00:01:38] Marlene Gebauer: You were much more refined than we were. So the author says that, you know, forget the parties on open-mindedness and think like a lawyer. I think instruction on civil discourse is very important. And honestly, it should happen well before college. We should be teaching this in elementary school. But I get where the author’s going. It’s not just about being political or tolerant of other views, although there is indeed a behavioral element in this. It’s about being thoughtful in your actions and words. Actually weighing the arguments and being able to offer a reasoned debate, whatever side you’re on. Now, the author notes that the leaders of our country, not to mention the general public, seem to have lost this capacity and that we desperately need to get it back. What I’m seeing in the news, I can’t say that he’s wrong.

[00:02:25] Greg Lambert: No, it’s definitely such a polarized world right now.

[00:02:28] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly.

[00:02:29] Greg Lambert: I mean, literally last night I was having a discussion on this very controversial topic with one of our partners here who was on the other side of the issue that I was. But the nice thing about it was we were able to have a discussion and there were some issues that I pointed out to him and he pointed out to me. And it was a good conversation, even though we walked away, you know, not having changed any of our minds. But at least we didn’t walk away hating each other.

[00:02:55] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah. Well, let’s hope that more people can follow that type of model.

[00:03:00] Greg Lambert: So I actually got to do something fun.

[00:03:03] Marlene Gebauer: You got to do something fun. Do tell.

[00:03:05] Greg Lambert: I know. I get to do something fun all the time. But this time I got to actually do a book report to some of our partners here.

[00:03:13] Marlene Gebauer: That doesn’t sound like fun.

[00:03:15] Greg Lambert: Well, you know, I’m kind of a nerdy geek.

[00:03:19] Marlene Gebauer: So the kids would disagree with you strongly.

[00:03:21] Greg Lambert: So you know how I always say that it’s important to have a seat at the table when it comes to making the library’s voice heard? Well, sometimes when you’re at that table and you get asked to do some unusual stuff. So that’s how I got wrangled into doing this book report. And it’s really, it was a chapter of a book report. So not a full book report, but I did have to say that I did come prepared. I had my diorama out. I had the prettiest diorama out of all the other people.

[00:03:49] Marlene Gebauer: Of course you did. Of course you did.

[00:03:51] Greg Lambert: It was actually the only diorama. You know, it had characters. I used clay models. I got my 128 pack of crayons out. Wait, where was I? Oh, wait. The book report. The book report.

[00:04:02] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah. So the book report itself was, you know, as part of our leadership training, we all had to read this book called Positive Leadership Strategies for Extraordinary Performance by author Kim Cameron. It’s not a new book. I think it came out in 2011, 2012, but it does have some really good strategies for leaders. And I got to discuss the positive communications chapter. To give you the high level cliff notes on this, it comes down to a few things.

[00:04:29] Greg Lambert: High performance teams have a five to one positive versus negative discussions. So in other words, there are five positive communications talking about what’s going right to every conversation, which focuses on what’s going wrong. Those high performance teams also gather ideas from the group in addition to the leader giving out directions. On that one, there’s a minimum of a one to one feedback. So feedback from the group versus instructions. So there is a good communication between the group.

[00:04:58] Marlene Gebauer: So there’s like a back and forth.

[00:04:59] Greg Lambert: Exactly. The team feels like they’re part of the discussion, part of the performance, and not just being told what to do. But the part I liked the most was how to take descriptive statements so that you are authentic and helpful when you’re providing negative information. Because we can’t just be positive all the time. There has to be some conversations which say, Hey, here’s some things we need to be doing better. But it gave a good approach.

[00:05:07] Marlene Gebauer: told what to do. What to do. But the part I liked the most was how to take descriptive statements so that you are authentic. and helpful when you’re providing negative information, because we can’t just be positive. all the time. There has to be some conversations which say, hey, here’s some things we need to be doing better.

[00:05:27] Greg Lambert: So Dave’s a good approach to how to have those conversations and is laid it out in three steps. And that’s one, to provide a dispassionate description of the event or behavior, two, describe the reactions or the consequences of the behavior, three, suggest a more acceptable alternative. So simply put, it means don’t frame your conversation in a way that is argumentative and attempts to place the blame, but rather be dispassionate in explaining the situation. Describe what the reaction or the consequences were due to the event and suggest a better way of doing it from now on. So there’s a Kindle version of this book out on Amazon that’s left. I think there’s a few print copies, but I’ll put a link in on the show notes to that book. So I think that fits kind of with what your article is saying, is to have a dispassionate conversation where you’re not laying blame, but you’re rather just laying out, here’s what this effect does.

[00:06:25] Marlene Gebauer: Here’s what happened. Here’s what’s happening, and here’s the consequences of that. And here’s how we could do it differently.

[00:06:31] Greg Lambert: Hey, you said it better than I did. Maybe you should do the book report next.

[00:06:36] Marlene Gebauer: You know, the other thing you could do, it’s like if you were saying if the copies are low on Amazon, you could probably check it out from your local library and save 10 to 20 bucks, right? There you go. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a great leadership activity. I mean, certainly something that’s a good takeaway for anybody who’s working in teams, which is pretty much all of us.

[00:06:57] Greg Lambert: Pretty much all of us. Great. Well, it was funny because my wife who teaches middle school also read this chapter, and she said she’s going to apply it to the middle schoolers, which I thought was a perfect parallel because what’s closer to law firm partners than middle school students, highly independent people that are forced to work in teams.

[00:07:16] Marlene Gebauer: There you go.

[00:07:17] Greg Lambert: Every month we have a segment where we bring in Emily Feltron from the American Association of Law Libraries. She gives us an update on what’s happening within government when it comes to legal information. So let’s see what’s going on. Joining us as she does each month from Washington, D.C. is Emily Feltron. Emily is the Director of Government Relations at the American Association of Law Libraries, and she is here to give us an update on important news regarding the government’s impact on legal information. Thanks for joining us, Emily.

[00:07:54] Marlene Gebauer: Thanks for having me. Emily, I think most of our listeners know what PACER is, but for those who don’t, PACER is a uniform docket system, which is the backbone for all of the federal courts. There are fees paid for usage and searching of PACER for most of us who access information, but there was a recent class action which is trying to open up the access to PACER. Can you tell us what’s happening on that front?

[00:08:15] Jeff Marple: Sure. Thanks. So many of your listeners may be familiar with the recent PACER class action. It’s National Veterans Legal Services Program et al. versus USA, and it’s currently on appeal. The case was intended to answer a basic question about how the administrative office of the U.S. court spends PACER fees and whether the way they do so is in violation of the E-Government Act of 2002. U.S. court spends PACER fees and whether the way they do so is in violation of the E-Government Act of 2002. The law says that the judiciary, quote, may only, to the extent necessary, prescribe reasonable fees to reimburse expenses incurred in providing these services. The lawsuit centers on the meaning of those terms.

[00:08:50] Greg Lambert: So Emily, what’s the American Association of Law Library’s stance on this suit?

[00:08:53] Jeff Marple: AALL filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia calling on the body to ensure that the administrative office makes electronic federal court records freely available, quote, to the greatest extent possible, which is language used in the E-Government Act report. We made the point that PACER fees harm patron access and legal research instruction and that PACER fees impede law library’s responsibility to preserve legal material.

[00:09:19] Marlene Gebauer: But doesn’t it make sense that lawyers accessing PACER should pay fees to support the platform?

[00:09:24] Jeff Marple: So it’s essential to remember that the E-Government Act stated that the administrative office may charge fees only to the extent necessary. To reimburse those expenses incurred in providing the services. In March, the district judge ruled that about $200 million in PACER fees were being spent by the administrative office in violation of the law. Those included victim notification and web-based juror services, as well as courtroom technology. So things like flat screens in the courtrooms. There was a significant question about whether the fees collected should be from those using the Case Management Electronic Court Filing System, or CMECF. In other words, filing fees or those accessing information in PACER. And I think we’ll see more about that question as this case winds its way through the court and Congress conducts its oversight.

[00:10:10] Greg Lambert: Speaking of Congress, what are they doing in the meantime on this issue?

[00:10:14] Jeff Marple: So while this issue is winding its way through the courts, Congress has become increasingly interested. In February of last year, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on judicial transparency and ethics, during which Professor Tom Bruce, director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell, testified on greater access to PACER. In addition, Congressman Issa and former Senator Lieberman, the lead sponsor of the E-Government Act, submitted an amicus brief last summer in the PACER case. Meanwhile, three recently introduced bills, one in the Senate and two in the House, would direct the administrative office of the U.S. Courts to provide greater access to PACER. A little bit about those bills. First, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, Senate Bill 3357, would require all written opinions to be made available to the Government Publishing Office, or GPO, which would then be required to make the opinions publicly available for bulk download. The PACER language is part of a much larger package of corruption and transparency-related measures. Second, we have the Judiciary Room Act, introduced in the House as H.R. 6755. It was introduced by Congressman Issa of California, and it would require that all opinions in PACER be stored in a machine-readable format, and searchable by date, citable using a vendor-neutral and medium-neutral citation system, and made available to GPO. The bill would also require video streaming of appellate court proceedings and real-time audio streaming of oral arguments before the Supreme Court. The Room Act was favorably reported by the House Judiciary Committee on September 13th, which gives it some additional chances of passage by the full House. And finally, we have the Electronic Court Records Reform Act of 2018, or H.R. 6714. This was introduced by Doug Collins of Georgia, and this bill would consolidate the CMECF system, and require all documents on the system be made available to the public and to parties before the court free of charge, that all documents be text-searchable and machine-readable, and include digital audio and visual files of court recordings when those files are available. The bill also requires the Administrative Office to, quote, minimize the burden on pro se litigant. Doug Collins’ press release makes clear that he thinks it’s unfair that self-represented litigants don’t have easy access to information in PACER about their cases. Mr. Collins became interested in greater access to PACER after the House Judiciary Committee hearing last year. The Congressman serves on that committee. So, obviously, time is short to pass these bills in this Congress. The House is out through October, reconvening after the November elections, and the Senate is focused on a few nominations right now. But there may be time to pass the legislation before the end of the year. And even if one or more of these bills doesn’t pass this year, it’ll give us a good start to work on access to PACER issues in the new Congress.

[00:12:59] Marlene Gebauer: Well, those midterms are closing in fast. There’s not a dull moment in D.C. these days.

[00:13:03] Greg Lambert: No, there is not. So, thank you, Emily, for joining us today. This has been Emily Feltren, the Director of Government Relations at the American Association of Law Libraries. And she joins us each month for an update on government actions on legal information issues.

[00:13:17] Marlene Gebauer: Thanks, Emily, for the update. Thank you, Emily. Thanks. I can tell you, even from a simply administrative standpoint, I would be delighted not to have to pay for PACER.

[00:13:29] Greg Lambert: Yeah, me too. But I do have to say that many of the people who will benefit from this, however, they’re not the most sympathetic groups.

[00:13:36] Marlene Gebauer: OK. Law firms not having to pay for PACER might not seem so sympathetic to most people. But, you know, honestly, I don’t think there would be a great deal of pushback if we just had to pay a subscription. It’s really the way we have to pay that is the problem. You pay per page, 10 cents a page, and trying to allocate this correctly takes a great deal of staff time. And quite frankly, it’s a nightmare.

[00:13:57] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I’ll verify that. That is a nightmare.

[00:14:00] Marlene Gebauer: You know, but the thing is, law firms and legal information vendors are going to be the ones that reap the rewards from an open PACER platform. True.

[00:14:08] Greg Lambert: And I know that there will be some trickle down for the normal guy. But those are going to be the big winners in this, especially when it comes to the bulk download portion for vendors. You know, while I appreciate the value that the vendors can bring to this, they’re just going to turn around and sell that interface to us. But I have to do say that my urge for having a free PACER may outweigh my discomfort for giving vendors free data, which we’ll end up paying for.

[00:14:36] Marlene Gebauer: Yep. Free PACER.

[00:14:37] Greg Lambert: Free PACER.

[00:14:38] Marlene Gebauer: Free PACER. OK, so moving on from the disruptive changes at PACER, we turn our discussion towards a kinder, gentler incremental change with Jeff Marple, Director of Innovation, Corporate and Legal at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company.

[00:15:00] Greg Lambert: Let’s get to it, Greg. All right, let’s do it.

[00:15:08] Marlene Gebauer: Today we welcome Jeff Marple, Innovation Director of Legal at Liberty Mutual. Jeff’s responsible for trying out new innovative processes and new toys and to advance and execute innovation within the legal department.

[00:15:20] Emily Feltren: Thanks for joining us, Jeff. Thanks so much for having me, Marlene. I’m very excited to be on the show. Honored that you guys wanted to speak to me. Thank you again.

[00:15:26] Greg Lambert: Absolutely.

[00:15:27] Marlene Gebauer: Jeff, we’re going to talk a bit today about innovation and how accessible it really is. This isn’t just for tech wizards. You don’t need a giant project team and you don’t need to blow up what you already have in place to make change. The media is blitzing the industry with stories about the latest and greatest development at this law firm and that law firm, you know, this startup and that startup. I was reading recently in China that real robots are answering legal questions in the rural areas. It can be inspirational to hear about all these new cool developments, but how is this onslaught detrimental to making innovation change happen? I mean, frankly, it can be overwhelming. People get panicky or shut down completely.

[00:16:06] Emily Feltren: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re answering your own question a little bit there. I like to do that. I felt it myself. You know, a feeling of keeping up with the Joneses when you if you just read the press all the time, but you kind of it’s kind of a necessary evil. You have to sort of keep up with what’s going on because so much is changing in our space so quickly. So I say it’s kind of bad. You get new ideas or it might trigger a new idea. Like you said, it can be inspirational. But I have this problem is you can get spread very, very thin because you want to try to tackle everything at once. And that is a recipe for disaster. So you do sort of have to try to maintain your focus and maybe just take down good ideas for another time.

[00:16:44] Marlene Gebauer: So basically, you know, just just continuing to put one foot in front of the other and, you know, work on the things that you can work on and, you know, keep the others in the sandbox for later. Right.

[00:16:54] Emily Feltren: That’s right. You know, develop a good backlog, add information when you can to that, you know, maybe mature those ideas. Ideas take a long time to come to. So usually your first idea is probably not what you’re going to end up implementing. If you have something you’re going to actually work on, have a place where you can park those ideas and think about them. You can have discussions with your colleagues, you know, at the water cooler or spread them around. See if somebody else has sort of a missing piece to that idea that sort of unlocks it and give them time to sort of grow.

[00:17:19] Marlene Gebauer: Can the media improve on this model or how can we adjust our mindset?

[00:17:23] Emily Feltren: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. And so so much of it is driven around getting eyes on a story and getting clickable headlines, et cetera, et cetera. But I would love to see sort of some sort of like there’s a ton of information out there. I’d like to be able to consume that at scale a little bit better. What if there was this sort of I have my story, but maybe I also have a database behind the scenes. So if I’m following a trend or a technology, I might tag all those stories to that trend or technology. And I might even publish that table so that other people can download it and access it quickly. And then sort of every story that goes along with that, I’ve got a one to many relationships. So I could very easily and quickly go back and just pull all that information. I think that might be an interesting product for researchers and just for folks like me that really need to quickly take a deep dive in a particular area.

[00:18:12] Greg Lambert: Yeah, we like anything that helps researchers.

[00:18:17] Emily Feltren: I thought you might. That’s a good idea. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[00:18:20] Greg Lambert: So, Jeff, I understand that you are a big believer in incremental change. So how does that differ, in your opinion, from, say, large scale or disruptive change?

[00:18:31] Emily Feltren: Yeah. So, yeah, I am a big believer in incremental change. How does it differ? Well, first of all, it’s incremental as opposed to all at once. But I think all at once innovation or big moonshot innovation, 10x innovation isn’t really that. I think that it’s kind of blind men discovering an elephant and everyone is touching a different part of the elephant and thinking that it’s something different. Whereas you’re just not seeing all of it, including the company that’s developing it until it’s all done. Those large scale giant innovations that we’ve seen through history are all really truly, in my mind, a series of smaller innovations that are collected together. And then oftentimes you can’t even see what that product is going to be until you climb up. Some of these smaller innovations are able to see a little bit further. I like to think of it as like you can’t see the next couple of miles until you get on top of the hill, the small hill that you have to build first.

[00:19:24] Greg Lambert: So how hard is it for you to talk to the people involved in being the customers of the innovation that you’re developing to seeing that big picture? How do you describe that to them as you’re going through the process?

[00:19:37] Emily Feltren: That’s a good question. A lot of times they tend to be focused on the need at hand. So you’re really trying to solve whatever their need is initially. That’s kind of what they want to hear. Once you sort of start getting them to think about that and think about and accepting this sort of new way of potentially doing something, then it’s time to broach like what are the next steps that could happen from this. So a lot of times, you know, I see this a lot with artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence implementation until you implement it is all about the technology around the A.I., the magic that it can do. As soon as it’s implemented, immediately the shift goes to workflow. And all of a sudden it’s, can I do my work with this new technology? That’s kind of the next hill that you have to climb. That hill may lead to other hills or even mountains that you might have to scale later that are going to yield even greater benefit.

[00:20:27] Greg Lambert: All right. So Marlee, make sure you have your mountain climbing gear on when you go through the innovation task.

[00:20:32] Marlene Gebauer: Get my boots on.

[00:20:33] Emily Feltren: That’s right.

[00:20:34] Marlene Gebauer: I know, my grandpa’s. I actually have a couple of those. Jeff, what are some of the examples of what you’ve done to institute incremental change?

[00:20:44] Emily Feltren: Sure. So sometimes it’s a linear thread products that can go together. But other times you get to a place that’s sort of a little more abstract and you’re able to apply that attraction somewhere else. So I’ll give you an example. And this this is probably like everyone’s sort of first small innovation that they can do. So one of the first things I worked on here was developing a client facing application that would help our clients develop non-disclosure agreements, which is kind of like the Innovation 101 for any kind of legal ops is like, are your NDAs automated? That was a big hit for us while it was a relatively simple product or service for us to stand up and deliver. But what’s interesting about that is it did it did several things. So, first of all, our data now has become digital on NDA contracts. So we understand all the components of all the contracts that we create, who they’re delivered to, when they’re delivered to them, when they’re signed, who they’re requested by and what they’re about. All the components of the contract are now digitized. So we can recreate that contract or at least we can understand what the components of that contract are. And any time we want to down the road without pulling a document, we can just look it up. We also introduced e-signature with that, which was something that we really needed to do here. And those two components, sort of a self-service form generation, as well as electronic signature, sort of caught on around the rest of the organization. But what’s more interesting is that now we also have a foothold or a place for NDAs to be uploaded as well. And there are other services out there that allow you to evaluate non-disclosure agreements when they’re coming in, understand whether or not they fit your playbook. We didn’t really have a place for that to hang off of before, but now we do because it’s sort of the next logical step. Additionally, the digitization of those contracts has led us to think about other things, other types of information within our organization that can be digitized and all the sort of interesting things that you can do with that once you digitize that information. So we’re looking all across the organization and others are sort of catching on now that if I have data first and second, it makes all of that information more portable, more pliable. You’re able to do more things with it.

[00:22:44] Marlene Gebauer: I’m glad you raised the business culture issue because I was thinking about that when you were, you know, when you’re speaking that sounds like you’ve moved from a culture where this wasn’t something that was embraced into a culture that has. What were some, if any, of the challenges that you face there?

[00:23:00] Emily Feltren: You know, this is not new to anyone that’s thinking about innovation. Attorneys are trained to spot risk and be somewhat resistant to change because change often introduces unknown risk. Now, think about doing that at an insurance company, perhaps a hundred year old insurance company in the legal department. You may be talking about one of the risk averse places that you’ve ever been to.

[00:23:21] Greg Lambert: The fact that that’s actually the business model.

[00:23:23] Emily Feltren: Exactly. Actually, our business model, right? Like, that’s that’s how we make money. But we’ve developed a few techniques to sort of help us get around that. And sort of the number one, the optimal way to do it is don’t tell people about what you’re going to do. Build something for them to put their hands on. The naysayers immediately go from naysayers to feature requesters. All of a sudden, instead of telling me this can’t work, they’re asking me for new things that they can do and maybe even giving you new ideas about how it could work. That’s kind of how you can sort of key to that conversation a little bit.

[00:23:57] Greg Lambert: In a way, it’s the old, if you build it, they will come approach. Is that how I’m hearing that?

[00:24:02] Emily Feltren: Sure. That’s an interesting way to think about it. Yeah. If you can build it, they will come. It’s just the old adage, right? Like you really can’t know someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. Well, we’re just letting them walk in the shoes of what could be. It’s just way different than telling someone about something and not letting them sort of get the full picture. When you put your hands on something, when you try something out, this is why prototyping is so important. You get a better understanding of what could be happening.

[00:24:25] Greg Lambert: In terms of innovation, what are you seeing? Are you seeing any incremental or disruptive change from the legal service providers that you use?

[00:24:36] Emily Feltren: Sure, I think– You sound like you’re struggling there. It’s like, yeah, I’m sure we do. Right, so from a service provider perspective, ALSPs seem to just be eating everything up right now, offering new ways to be hired into new jobs, and they’re just sort of coming at all angles right now. So from a service provider perspective, ALS piece seem to just be, you know, eating everything up right now, offering new ways for them to be hired into new jobs. And they’re just sort of coming at all angles right now. I was at the Solid Conference two weeks ago, and that was definitely the theme of that conference, as a matter of fact, the keynote speaker talked about how the big four is essentially. coming and is going to eat all of this up as fast as they can get it. So that’s probably sort of the most disruptive thing that I’m seeing right now. Next after that, it’s just the explosion of legal technology that’s occurring and the ad of automation, artificial intelligence, et cetera, better workflows, better user experience, better data capture all the way around.

[00:25:25] Marlene Gebauer: Jeff, do you think that size matters in terms of a legal service provider being able to promote incremental change or any change?

[00:25:34] Emily Feltren: I would say that size matters less than product and experience. Developing a tech is easier than developing a product. I think we’ve sort of seen that with people that lead with their general technology first and their product second. So I’d rather see a good product and there are a handful of startups out there that have a great product and they’re not necessarily the biggest companies in the world. They’ve just, they’ve stumbled across something that really has tremendous value. And then implementing any product or service at scale across sort of different verticals, you know, an insurance company today, you know, an energy company, a pharmaceutical company, whatever it is, that requires a whole different set of skills. Change management is a big deal with these types of changes, and you don’t want a product to die on the vine and implementation is where that happens.

[00:26:19] Greg Lambert: Very interesting. You’re a client. You work for a company that uses outside legal services, so we would view you as a client. But you’re also a quote unquote service provider in that you deliver legal and knowledge services to your company, which is your client. It’s a unique position that you’re in. Do you think it gives you any kind of special insights into both what can be realistically delivered or expected in terms of innovation?

[00:26:43] Emily Feltren: That’s interesting. I don’t think of them as my clients. I almost think of them as my constituency. I feel like if I don’t do a good job, I’ll get voted out. Get voted off the island. But yes, I definitely. You don’t want to get voted off the island. It’s not good.

[00:26:55] Greg Lambert: No, no. I was thinking, oh, brother, where are thou? Is you is or is you ain’t my constituency? That’s that’s what I always say.

[00:27:03] Emily Feltren: That’s right. So many cultural references. Fantastic reference. But yeah, I think that puts me in an interesting position. You know, oftentimes I’m asked to be the advocate for the company to the provider and then the other. And then I flip right around and have to be the advocate for the provider to the company. Sort of sort of sit right in the middle there sometimes. I think it allows us to sort of understand the market. And I think we have a pretty good idea of what is sort of possible from a technology and product or service perspective. Like you can’t believe everything you necessarily hear. And so you have to really sort of understand, you know, where those tires are hitting the road. But then also we have a pretty good idea of what’s going to work for us. And for us, we tend to have scale needs that not everyone can provide. So we need to make sure that whatever we’re going to get can scale to whatever it is that we need. And we understand some of the cultural and implementation challenges that will sort of come along with that. So, yeah, I think it does put us in an interesting position. It’s a great question, though. I had never really thought of it that way.

[00:27:59] Marlene Gebauer: Well, Jeff, I mean, clearly you’ve given this space a lot of thought and you’re very immersed in it and have had a lot of successes here. What are three pieces of advice that you would give to a legal service provider trying to start a program of incremental change?

[00:28:13] Emily Feltren: Sure. First thing I would do is you’ve got to understand where you’re at. So take an inventory somehow of your big pain points or your needs or what people are wanting, what your constituency is asking you for. If you have to use some sort of a framework, you know, is it is it technology process and people or is it the framework? It almost doesn’t matter. But use something and get a little bit organized. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And don’t worry about getting it exactly correct, because this will be a living, breathing document or a group of data that you can change later on. But get something in place. The second piece is to take a nibble or just try something. You’ve got to get your feet in the water and sort of understand what’s going on, both in whatever it is that you’re trying out. And then also what it’s like to implement something at the group that you’re at. You want to try to find something that it will be sort of a layer. You don’t want to worry too much about ROI on that first product. You want to worry more about your constituency. And by that, I mean your users, not your customers, because those can be very different. You want them to sort of like that. You want them to be happy that you gave them this new magic wand that makes their life easier. Finally, make sure you’re telling your story. Let everyone know what you’re doing and how it’s going, even if it’s not going well. You know, if your product fails, you need to publicly execute it in the town square and make sure everyone knows that that, you know, you tried this out. It didn’t work out. Here’s why it didn’t work out. And we’re going to do better next time. Be a skunkworks. People will not trust you.

[00:29:40] Greg Lambert: I love the executed in the town square. I’ve got a few products that I want to do that, too.

[00:29:45] Marlene Gebauer: I would very much like having the magic wand.

[00:29:45] Emily Feltren: I would very much like having the magic wand.

[00:29:47] Marlene Gebauer: That would be great.

[00:29:48] Emily Feltren: It’s hard to do. It’s a lot really easy for me to sit here and say that it’s a terribly hard thing to do from a pride perspective. But if you can pull it off, you can gain a lot of respect.

[00:29:57] Greg Lambert: That’s true.

[00:29:59] Emily Feltren: Yeah. So I was listening to your interview with Jay, and I had something I wanted to follow up on. I was thinking about what you said about having lawyers in the room. And it’s not just lawyers. This sort of goes across. I’ve worked in other parts of Liberty, not in the legal group. And this is, it goes to business leaders as well. I was thinking about my brother, my little brother. He went to the Naval Academy. He didn’t end up on a nuclear boat, but I know that the people that serve on nuclear vessels, they all have to go to sort of nuke school. And they all have to really understand what it means to serve on a nuclear warship. They have to understand nuclear reaction and the reactor and how it powers the ship, et cetera, et cetera. But the captain of a nuclear submarine isn’t working on the reactor, but he understands that core technology just as well as anybody else on the boat. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how everything that we kind of do these days, it runs on technology. So why aren’t we required to know as much about the technology as the captain knows about the nuclear reactor? You say, well, Jeff, because if the reactor melts down, everybody dies. Well, OK, fair enough. But if your computer doesn’t work or your software doesn’t work, aren’t you sort of dead in the water these days? I mean, we’re so dependent on technology. Why aren’t we sort of getting a better sort of base education around technology so that we have an understanding of what we want and need and how to sort of get out of jams when something does go wrong? So I just thought that was a really interesting question. that was a really interesting question. And that’s the first step is to get the lawyers in the room. And then additionally, I think law schools can and are doing a better job of educating students on the sort of technologies that are at play in their profession.

[00:31:37] Greg Lambert: That’s a good insight, Jeff. One of the things I always say is watch what happens when the network goes down. It’s one of the few times that you will see more than two lawyers in the hallway at the same time. Everyone just kind of gets up away from their desk, walks out into the hallway, and they introduce themselves to people they worked with for years or at least since the last time the network went down.

[00:31:59] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, and I was just thinking it’s like the other thing you see is, you know, the people who get really creative about trying to get what they need to get done done even in times where things aren’t happening the way they’re supposed to be.

[00:32:10] Emily Feltren: Totally. Either like working off their phones, dictating into their phones, or as you said, Greg, getting up and finally introducing themselves to Joe, who sat across from them for 10 years and they never spoke to.

[00:32:21] Greg Lambert: Exactly. I think some firms, I can talk on the law firm side, I think some firms are doing a lot more on requiring associates and newer attorneys to better understand the technology, but there’s probably still a long ways to go.

[00:32:37] Emily Feltren: Yeah, and I wouldn’t sort of segregate that only to the legal community. That’s been an ongoing problem for years. One of the issues is that with enterprise software, business software, not retail software, let’s say it that way. software, not retail software, let’s say it that way, is that the customer and the is that the customer and the user are different, right? So the buyer is not the same person who uses it. The buyer, the customer, is often looking for data collection, whereas the user is often looking to input data. And you want that data input to be easy if you’re the user, and if you’re the customer, the easier it is, oftentimes the more expensive that product is. So you really want to look for those intersections of satisfying the customer and the user at the same time, and having those users in the room is one way to start doing that. design thing about is designing for that end use.

[00:33:25] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I mean, I think sort of the focus on it’s got to be easy is really critical and having people in the room who can immediately say, Oh yeah, that will be useful for me and I can operate that easily. Very important in terms of adoption of whether it’s incremental or larger, ’cause if it’s not as easy as what people are doing at that moment, then they don’t seem to be interested in moving in another direction.

[00:33:52] Emily Feltren: Yeah, you can always tell when a system is designed poorly. When you talk to the users and you find out that there’s actually a subsystem, which is like an Excel spreadsheet they’re keeping that they don’t tell their management about, that they’re really tracking everything in, right.

[00:34:04] Marlene Gebauer: Like that’s– The secret Excel spreadsheet, yes.

[00:34:08] Emily Feltren: The secret Excel spreadsheet. That’s right. Exactly.

[00:34:11] Greg Lambert: That’s on the shared network drive.

[00:34:13] Emily Feltren: Exactly. That’s also on the death list to be retired at some point soon and they don’t know what to do about it yet.

[00:34:19] Greg Lambert: Well, Jeff, thank you very much for joining us today. It’s a pleasure listening to your insights.

[00:34:25] Emily Feltren: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I love podcasts, so being on a podcast is kind of a life goal of mine, so I can check that off. And thanks so much for having me. It was really, really super fun. Thanks so much.

[00:34:35] Marlene Gebauer: I’m happy it helps with your bucket list.

[00:34:37] Greg Lambert: Yeah, but you need better goals than that.

[00:34:39] Emily Feltren: I’m stepping up now.

[00:34:40] Greg Lambert: All right. Thanks again, Jeff. Talk to you later.

[00:34:42] Marlene Gebauer: Bye. All right. Thanks, guys. So, Greg, great interview with Jeff Marple. And like Jeff mentioned, hearing about tech and innovation turning the profession on its head like we do in the media can seem daunting, but it really doesn’t have to be. I really like the idea of incremental change. I found it’s challenging to get people to accept disruptive change, but you can be very successful and your users can be very happy if you break it down into smaller steps that get you to the same end goal. So build upon your successes. You know, I also want to point out that it gives you the opportunity to assess where you are at each milestone to see if you need to adjust or to scrap the project entirely with less investment up front.

[00:35:31] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I have to say that my favorite part was Jeff’s analogy of executing a bad performing process or software in the public square. That is something we need to do more often. So stop trying to save things that don’t deserve to be saved.

[00:35:45] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly. Move on.

[00:35:48] Greg Lambert: Move on. Well, speaking of moving on, that will wrap up this episode of The Geek in Review. I want to thank all of you, our listeners at The Geek in Review. Please don’t forget to click the subscribe button on iTunes or wherever you listen, as well as rate and review so that others can find us. You can tweet us at GaybowerM or GLAMBERT if you have comments or suggestions.

[00:36:13] Marlene Gebauer: Thanks again to Jeff Marple, Innovation Director within Corporate Legal at Liberty Mutual, and Emily Feltron, Director of Government Relations at AALL for joining us today. Also, thanks to Kevin MacLeod for his original music.

[00:36:25] Greg Lambert: Bye now. Bye.