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Information Inspirations
PwC launched its COVID-19 Navigator this week. This online resource shows some of the flexibility that the Big 4 accounting firms may have over law firms. The COVID-19 Navigator allows business leaders to answer a survey of questions to determine how prepared they are for the COVID-19 business disruptions. PwC says that this “digital tool contains 3 sections of questions that will help you understand where your company stands as you respond to COVID-19 in the areas of: crisis management and response; workforce; operations and supply chain; finance and liquidity; tax and trade; and strategy and brand.” Can you imagine law firms using an iterative software design like this to leverage their subject matter expertise with technology to assist customers and potential customers with major issues like COVID-19? If not, it’s time to start thinking about it.
Marlene’s inspiration this week is for all of us to stay healthy and work through our transition to the remote working that many of us are not accustomed to doing. If you’re struggling or want to share your experiences, please reach out to us and we’d love to have that conversation.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Lambert: Do you remember anything you want to talk about?
[00:00:03] Marlene Gebauer: Do I remember anything? I can probably come up with something.
[00:00:08] Greg Lambert: Okay, I’ll start off and then we’ll see where it goes.
[00:00:10] Marlene Gebauer: Okay. Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:00:25] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. All right, Marlene, let’s try to get through this without even mentioning coronavirus or COVID-19.
[00:00:34] Marlene Gebauer: You just did.
[00:00:35] Greg Lambert: All right, well, so much for that.
[00:00:38] Marlene Gebauer: Well, but before we get into that, what we should tell everybody is that we also are on a work from home schedule. So disclaimers here, you may hear children in the background or pod dog or pop tops or whatever.
[00:00:57] Greg Lambert: I did turn off the dishwasher, so we’re good there. But I do have to say that our podcast from last month, actually, our interview with April Campbell from the Association of Legal Administrators, that podcast has held up pretty well.
[00:01:13] Marlene Gebauer: Yes, actually, that’s, I think that topped the most listened to, did it not?
[00:01:18] Greg Lambert: Yes, it has. And if you haven’t listened to it, I really suggest that you do, because I think there was a lot of stuff that we said in there that is coming to fruition.
[00:01:28] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, and the advice is all still very timely. On today’s podcast, we have Charles Uniman, legal startup evangelist and founder of the Legal Tech Startup Focus, which is an online community for people involved and interested in the legal tech startup industry. So before we talk to Charles, let’s jump right into our information inspirations.
[00:01:54] Greg Lambert: So Marlene, I did want to stay away from the discussion of COVID-19, but.
[00:01:59] Marlene Gebauer: Impossible.
[00:01:59] Greg Lambert: I know, it’s pretty much impossible. So what I did was I wanted to tie in today’s guest with an inspiration that I found with the help of our friend Patrick Fuller from ALM. So he pointed out an agile design application that was actually pushed out by PwC called the COVID-19 Navigator. Patrick said that this Navigator is a, quote, logic-driven application, meaning an expert system that scales expertise while intaking information from current and potential clients, yielding recommendations and assessments. That’s just some fancy talk for saying, hey, they give you a survey, then they assess how well you’re prepared for COVID-19 and related business issues, and then they learn from the information that you’re putting in. A really interesting piece of, or a way of iterating a piece of software directly to the customer, potential customer. I doubt what PwC has put out is a perfect piece of software or even perfect in its analysis. But what they’re doing is leveraging that expertise or their own expertise in a way that will answer a big issue facing a lot of businesses. It’s this sort of iteration that we expect to see in startups, which may or may not have the subject expertise that, say, a law firm has. But we really don’t expect a law firm to do this sort of thing, although maybe they should. Luckily, I think Charlie talks about this later in the episode. To me, this is PwC taking a calculated risk decision to attack a problem head-on in order to allow its customers to make better decisions based on the results that they get from taking the survey. I’m sure that the answers provided are probably pretty basic and probably have a disclaimer at the end that says, please call PwC’s helpline to get a paid consultant on board.
[00:03:59] Marlene Gebauer: Right, of course, of course.
[00:04:01] Greg Lambert: But at least they’re doing something. What can law firms do to attack the problem that our customers are facing? that our customers are facing? Even more importantly, will we actually do it?
[00:04:12] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, that is a very, very good question and kind of leads into my inspiration. This is not ripped from the headlines, but it’s more of experience that is happening. I imagine many of you out there have been swamped with dealing with access issues, maybe training people on tools they’ve never used before, looking for ways to collect necessary information and train people on how to access that, talking to your users in terms of what they need right now in this critical time. I just want to give you all a shout-out and say, good for you. I know that this is what I’ve been doing over the past few days. It’s definitely a challenge, but I have to say that we’re definitely all on board in terms of looking at how can we make this work for our immediate clientele and how can we make this work for our firm clients. Just a shout-out to everybody. Keep up the good work.
[00:05:16] Greg Lambert: Yeah, can’t agree more. All right, well, that wraps up this week’s Information Inspiration. So, it only took our next guest about roughly four decades to realize that he had another
[00:05:32] Marlene Gebauer: calling besides the practice of law. Well, hey, what? Grandma Moses was like in her 90s before she started painting, so, you know, it’s never too late to start. Never too late. So, Charlie Uniman
[00:05:43] Greg Lambert: is a former big law partner who is now a self-proclaimed legal tech startup evangelist. He is the co-founder of Deal Stage, a productivity and workflow tool for corporate lawyers. And most recently, he created a professional networking tool for legal startups called Legal Tech Startup Focus. He also produces a podcast under the same name. So, let’s hear what advice he has for lawyers, law firms, and legal tech startups to actually work together.
[00:06:17] Marlene Gebauer: We are happy to have Charlie Uneman, a successful New York attorney in big law for four decades, founder of the Legal Tech Startup Deal Stage, and most recently, founder of the Legal Tech Startup Focus, a free, free Greg, online community of nearly 1,000 members worldwide devoted to the success of legal startups. Welcome, Charlie.
[00:06:38] Charlie Uniman: Well, thank you very much. Delighted to be a guest and talk to you both.
[00:06:42] Greg Lambert: Hey, Charlie, welcome. And I’m not really aware of another online community that’s quite like the one you’ve set up. So what prompted you to start this community? And really, what is it that you hope to accomplish?
[00:06:55] Charlie Uniman: Well, when I was practicing in New York City for those almost four decades, I was a corporate lawyer, and much of my practice was devoted to transactional work that oftentimes involved representing startups and on the other side, investors. So I came to feel a lot of empathy for the process, the trials and tribulations that startup folks had to face. And I, together with that, had become a techie about a quarter of a century ago and fell in love with technology. So once I left the practice of law, it took me only four decades to figure out that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I decided after DealStage, the startup that I worked on with two other co-founders, created, learned a lot from that. I decided that I would try to marry my interest in technology, having been at times a lone voice in the wilderness when practicing law and asking my partners to adopt tech and often hearing them say no.
[00:07:55] Marlene Gebauer: You found a sympathetic audience here.
[00:07:59] Charlie Uniman: Right. Yeah, the byword then was we build by the hour. Remember, Charlie? So with Legal Tech Startup Focus, I wanted to create a community where startups in the legal tech area, together with their investors and their customers, could find a way to help one another, share ideas, best practices, celebrate together, commiserate together when things don’t go well. and their customers, could find a way to help one another, share ideas, best practices, celebrate together, commiserate together when things don’t go well. It began about 2 1/2 years ago. And with that, we now have, as you mentioned, almost 1000 members. Fortunately, not only membership has picked up in number, but also engagement. So people are sharing questions and answers and posting and helping one another, and that was the purpose from the outset.
[00:08:43] Greg Lambert: If I’m a member, can you give me an example of how I interact with the community and how that actually helps me?
[00:08:51] Charlie Uniman: Sure. Well, the community runs on a white-label social network, a private company that, for a modest sum, permits me to use their software to create the community. And with that software in place, people, when they register, are able to post articles, short posts, ask questions. The posts can be tagged with categories relevant to LegalTech and startups. And what I’ve discovered is that people generally ask questions. How can I find a venture capital investor who’s willing to invest in the United Arab Emirates, for example? Or I am an executive with years of experience working in technology. I used to be a lawyer. I now want to get into LegalTech. How do I do so? Others are asking, I’ve got a hiring question. What should I do to solve, to answer that question and solve the problem that it poses? So it’s really a back-and-forth, principally through posts that I’m doing on the network. And some people want to write articles, which they’ve done to express their feelings, thinking about LegalTech. So it’s a community. And like many other communities online, it’s a matter of posting, participating, and getting a little back-and-forth going.
[00:10:18] Greg Lambert: So, it’s definitely a professional network, based on a social network.
[00:10:22] Charlie Uniman: That’s right. That’s right. And, it’s, as I like to tell people, it’s not just startup founders and their colleagues, but investors, lawyers who purchase tech, law professors who are interested in getting technology introduced to their students, a whole gamut of people.
[00:10:40] Greg Lambert: What is it that I would need to be in order to get into this network?
[00:10:45] Charlie Uniman: Well, the network, as was stated at the outset, is free. There’s no credit card required. I typically scour LinkedIn and myΓǪ Well, I’ve long exhausted my virtual Rolodex. But, I look for people who express, through Twitter and LinkedIn principally, an interest in LegalTech, and connect with them, and then invite them to join. But, then encourage them to ask anyone and everyone who might share their interest in LegalTech to join as well. There’s no vetting process. Anyone can join. Although, if you have an interest in knitting, for example, I doubt if it’s going to be a very fruitful experience.
[00:11:32] Marlene Gebauer: Not that we have anything against people who knit.
[00:11:34] Charlie Uniman: That’s right. Don’t write me about it. In fact, my girlfriend is a great knitter. So, that’s how anyone and everyone can join. All they have to do is go to, shameless plug, www.legaltechstartupfocus.com, and they can register and participate.
[00:11:53] Marlene Gebauer: And, we’ll put a link on the show notes for that.
[00:11:55] Charlie Uniman: Wonderful.
[00:11:56] Marlene Gebauer: In addition to this social network, you’re very active on Twitter, and you also have a podcast. So, is this part of the greater marketing strategy?
[00:12:06] Charlie Uniman: Well, yeah. The aim is to get the word out about LegalTech Startup Focus and get more members to join, hopefully triggering a feedback loop where more people join and they discover there’s more value to be had in becoming a member and others join. So, network effects. So, that’s the non-commercial goal behind that. But I just have an interest in this intellectually. I’m one foot in the startup world when I was practicing and worked on the late lamented deal stage. And one foot, I should say, in the legal world. So, I just get a kick out of it. The podcast, I’m about to post my 11th episode. I’ve been doing it for a few months, starting late last year. And in addition to being active on Twitter and LinkedIn, it’s mostly a matter of just taking the posts that I put and that others put up on the community and sending them over to LinkedIn and to Twitter. I also send out a newsletter every Monday up to my 73rd consecutive weekly newsletter that summarizes… Yep, I get that. Yeah, wonderful. That summarizes the previous week’s posts. And every now and then, we’ll add a little fill up there in the form of some additional information about a conference I might be attending. So, selfishly, self-interestedly, I want to get word out about the network, but I also want those vehicles, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the podcast to convey information. As the name, perhaps, makes clear, the focus is on startups and the people who not only work at them but feed into them with investments, comments, purchasing. If anyone has a hankering for learning about that particular corner of the legal world and the legal
[00:14:09] Greg Lambert: Yeah, what’s the name of the podcast?
[00:14:12] Charlie Uniman: Very originally, it’s called the Legal Tech Startup Focus podcast. There we go. As people have pointed out.
[00:14:18] Marlene Gebauer: Keeping it simple. Keeping it simple.
[00:14:20] Charlie Uniman: Although, I’ve tried to encourage people to say LTSF after having been chided by members who said, that’s a mouthful, Charlie, Legal Tech Startup Focus. And I simply come back and say, I may have been a lawyer and a failed startup founder and now a community host, but I was never a marketer. I just didn’t come up with a better name to catch your name.
[00:14:41] Marlene Gebauer: As a fellow podcaster, I know Greg and I always talk about how after we have guests on, we’re always inspired. We always learn something new from everybody. So for the LTSF podcast.
[00:14:56] Charlie Uniman: Thank you.
[00:14:57] Marlene Gebauer: You’re welcome. What have you learned? What are some of the takeaways that you’ve learned from your guests?
[00:15:04] Charlie Uniman: Well, I have been encouraged to find that although it hasn’t happened with as much latitude and depth as I would like, that there are law schools who are finally really taking seriously a couple things. First, not just training their lawyers to be in doctrine, which was mostly what I did when I was in law school four decades and more ago, but also making them much more practice aware. which was mostly what I did when I was in law school four decades and more ago, but also making them much more practice aware. And more particularly, practice aware in terms of the technology aspects that are near and dear to my heart and the hearts of the community members. So I’ve been encouraged by that. I’ve learned that those programs are spreading. I’ve learned that legal tech startups are often welcome at these programs to demonstrate their wares and get feedback. That’s one thing that has encouraged me and taught me something that I didn’t expect to be able to learn. I’ve also learned that through the community itself, but also in talking to various podcast guests, that the legal tech world extends way beyond the borders of the United States and North America, and there are active communities in Latin America, of course, in Europe, in the Middle East, in Australia, certainly. So that is something that also was a lesson to me when I started the network and have started talking in earnest to podcast guests. And finally, I guess I’ve learned that it really ΓÇô and this is a confirmation ΓÇô it really is a tough uphill battle to deal with the sales cycles in law firms.
[00:16:59] Greg Lambert: The very long sales cycles.
[00:17:01] Charlie Uniman: Yeah, and that’s really a symptom of any enterprise-level sales and marketing effort, but it’s particularly difficult in law. Although, I think things are changing. We may have hiccupped a little with the downturn at the beginning of the year, but I was of the view, when I started this project, engaging with the legal tech community, that venture capitalists’ institutional money was really not too sanguine about investing in legal tech. I now believe that there is an impetus to invest, despite some of the stumbles like Atrium’s cratering recently. stumbles, like Atrium’s cratering recently and there being a bit of a fall-off recently. But, I want to do what I can to encourage that. I mean, the numbers have to speak for themselves, and institutional investors have to know that they’re going to have a market size with their target investments and returns big enough to justify things, but I want to make them aware of legal tech, and there are candidates out there that are good targets for investment and hopefully brighten the discussions I’ve had a bit with some of the podcast guests about getting funding for their ventures.
[00:18:16] Greg Lambert: Now, when it comes to the legal startup community or just the startup community as a whole, that’s a different mindset than we normally see within the legal industry. Are you finding that your startup community is having a communication issue between themselves and their ideas in the legal organizations that they’re trying to woo into their products?
[00:18:46] Charlie Uniman: Well, I see an improvement over what I faced seven years ago, along with my co-founders at DealStage, where when we sat down, one of my co-founders, along with yours truly, was a lawyer in so-called BigLaw. And the third co-founder was a software engineer. We two former lawyers, sitting down with BigLaw law firms as a raw startup, often discovered that one of the biggest obstacles was just the fact that we were a startup. And they looked at us as if we had two heads coming to take their time.
[00:19:18] Greg Lambert: Yeah, BigLaw doesn’t want to be first in anything, but they don’t want to be last either.
[00:19:25] Charlie Uniman: Right, right. Solidly in the middle. Solidly in the middle, yeah. In the middle is the safest way. But I think things are improving. My reservation in saying that is, is it just a matter of people in law firms, big and small, learning the talk, but not walk the walk? Or is it really people being able to walk the walk? see, I think more than lip service being paid to the idea of innovating in law school. And law firms, there are hires now that direct themselves to innovation. Innovation is sort of a mushy word. It covers a multitude of sins or really means some very good things. We’re not where I want to see it yet. I think that really what needs to happen, and I can’t snap my fingers and make this happen, but there are efforts undertaken by some in-house legal departments. I think the pressure to have private law firms innovate has to come from the clients.
[00:20:34] Greg Lambert: And I was just wondering, speaking of that, is it with these innovative projects? A few weeks ago, we had someone from Brian Cave talk about their spin-off. They basically have created a startup within the law firm. Are processes like that where you can point other law firms saying, look, if you’re having a problem with startups, your competitors are themselves becoming startups and get over that. You’re not going to be the first one to enter this area. Are you finding that’s making the conversation easier or more difficult?
[00:21:16] Charlie Uniman: No, it’s interesting you bring that up because I get to participate in a monthly breakfast in the city about a half an hour from where I live. The discussion, the last one I attended, involved a few lawyers, I think one of them, in fact, from Brian Cave, who talked about just what you were discussing. And another law firm employee said, well, wait a minute. We’re thinking of doing that, too. And they got a real discussion going together after the breakfast ended and they could break off into a little group. So, yeah, I think that’s going to help. And frankly, the AMLaw 25, the top 25 law firms in the country, they’re going to go and do whatever they want to do because they have the leverage in the market to do that. But I think well shy of that. that, or not so well shy of that, I should say, others are going to, other law firms are beginning to feel some client pressure and there are clients who are interested in innovation. Whether they talk to other firms that have their own sister company startups or just realize that it’s the future. The future is now. I hope I’m not being a Pollyanna when I say that. And lastly, on the subject of law firms dealing with startups, I have been working on a presentation that deals just with that, that I was going to give for a London conference that because of present conditions has been canceled. But it was devoted to just that topic, buying legal tech from startups the right way. And there are ways that law firms can, there are steps they can take to grow more comfortable with startups.
[00:23:03] Marlene Gebauer: You had talked about how there seems to be more comfort, I guess, discussing possible partnerships with legal startup vendors. And I think part of that is also because there just seems to be so many more than they used to be. And they’re covering areas where some of the more traditional solutions are not filling that void. But at the same time, we in legal organizations, we’re still, we know how things worked with those traditional providers, but we’re often not really informed regarding what it takes to get a startup off the ground and that different mentality. The investment process and marketing, pricing, the revenue and process among other things, it seems to be a totally different world, I think, than what some of us in big law experience. So what do we need to know kind of coming into these conversations to be more knowledgeable and empathetic?
[00:24:11] Charlie Uniman: Well, akin to what I was saying a few minutes ago, I think that there are ample resources that law firms can consult to find out more about startups. I’ll go back to that. But I think, too, law firms and the lawyers they’re in regard failure as a really ugly F word, if you will. And I can understand that, having practiced for as long as I did. We lawyers have a body of professional expertise. We’re supposed to know it cold within our areas of expertise and not knowing it, omitting something that shouldn’t have been omitted. That sort of failure, I can understand, is something that no law firm or lawyer is happy with. But the approach that startups take is, well, they don’t welcome failure, certainly. But it’s really a matter of trying things out, iterating, as it’s called, the lingo. And sort of experiencing many failures, consulting with customers and internally consulting, and then making changes. So they’re in a process of cycling through small changes, tweaking things, knowing at the outset that they’re not going to get something entirely right software- wise or user experience-wise. But that they will devote themselves maniacally often to getting it right in several very quick cycles. So that is something that if I could sit down with lawyers and elaborate on, I’d want to do that. I’d want them to know that in dealing with startups and brand new products to the market, there is inevitably a testing and an iteration. Not that a startup should go to market with something that’s just a piece of garbage. And I’m not sure where I come on the view that you can go out with a so-called minimum viable product and go from there. It should have some polish. You’re dealing with lawyers. They’re busy. They don’t want to have you keep changing the ground from under their feet. But it’s that appreciation for iteration and a constant and continual improvement that I hope lawyers can come to understand when they deal with startups and their products.
[00:26:32] Marlene Gebauer: So my new phrase, Charlie, is every decision is a risk decision. My new phrase, Charlie, is every decision is a risk decision.
[00:26:38] Charlie Uniman: Good. I still like that phrase.
[00:26:38] Marlene Gebauer: So given that, And you touched on this a little earlier, what are the risks and rewards of legal organizations working with startup vendors? And does it make sense to mix and match startups and more traditional vendors? And I’m looking at this from a content or workflow perspective, but also a cost perspective.
[00:27:05] Charlie Uniman: Well, let’s take the benefits and the drawbacks. First, you’re dealing with companies that are more likely than more traditional tech companies, the larger kinds. I have a great deal of respect for the Thomson Reuters and the LexisNexis and Westlaw types. They do great work. But in dealing with a startup, law firms are going to often find it has a shot at really working with cutting-edge technology and learning cutting-edge workflows. Now, they have to be open to seeing the possibilities of competitive advantage in seeing the new cutting-edge technology and adopting or at least trying out cutting-edge workflows that may not align with what they’re doing now but could make the practice in whatever area the startup’s application works a whole lot better. You’re also dealing with organizations that are eager. They’re going to be more flexible in negotiating terms. They’re going to be more quickly moving. They’re going to be willing to try new things, at your suggestion, more readily, perhaps, in a much bigger company where the ship is harder to turn. They’re going to be nimble and fast to adapt. I think those are very worthwhile advantages to dealing with startups. The drawbacks, the risks, well, the biggest one, of course, is will the startup be there in six months, 12 months? The other sort of correlated risk with the first one I mentioned is do they have the financial and personnel firepower to do what it takes to provide you with the software updates, the feature requests, have the financial and personnel firepower to do what it takes to provide you with the software updates, meet the feature requests, support, training, encryption, and privacy aspects that you need? So yes, there are those drawbacks. What I am trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefits and minimize the drawbacks so that, net-net, it’s worth dealing with the startup. I happen to think not all are going to meet the criteria, but many can meet the criteria where it’s worth a try.
[00:29:18] Greg Lambert: And I think this probably goes on, especially with the health situation that’s going on in the world right now. I’m seeing a lot of the, and you’ve heard the phrase, never let an emergency go to waste.
[00:29:32] Charlie Uniman: Exactly.
[00:29:35] Greg Lambert: And so when it comes to dealing with startups or actually dealing with anyone and having that risk that Marlene talked about, and especially with failure, if I’m the person that’s going to bring in the startup to the firm or to the organization I’m working with. To solve the problem. To solve a problem. Let’s say it does fail. How do I spin that and make a success out of it? How do you tell people or how have people talked about this on the network about dealing with the failures? Is there any stories that you have?
[00:30:13] Charlie Uniman: Well, I think laying the groundwork at the outset. If you happen to be appointed as a champion for a particular startup or as a person who is just going to be the point person with the startup, I would try my best to make it clear to firm management and to the potential users that, at the outset, there are risks. But I think the best thing you can do is let that be known from the outset. What I would counsel is, and it’s certainly not original to me and kind of obvious when you think about it, when you’re using a startup’s piece of software that is new to the market, start with low-stakes use. Don’t adopt it and intend to have the most depth of company matter handled by that software. Don’t let the most senior people in your firm whose time is more valuable work on it. Do it in stages and work from the bottom up with more junior lawyers, allied professionals, and low-stakes matters. You can kick the tires on something where a failure were to occur through no fault of the firms. Then the risks, the consequences of a risk turning out to have been a bad one are much less. Then work your way up so that when you finally get to use it on more serious, consequential matters, you’re more confident that the people behind the software can live up to your expectations and the software actually works. Be prepared at the outset. I can understand a firm saying, I want a discount because I’m an early adopter and I want a period of time to use it for free to get to know it. Sure. When it comes time, if you like what you see, and somewhat counterintuitively for the firm’s benefit, obviously for the startup’s, pay a market price for the software. You thereby provide sources of funds to the startup. You incentivize your users to actually use it, learn from it, and give feedback because if they know you’re paying for it, I should say, they’re actually, I would think, human nature being what it is more likely to use.
[00:32:32] Greg Lambert: Hey, Charlie. I think that advice was worth the price of admission right there.
[00:32:36] Marlene Gebauer: Me too. That was great. I think so often we have discussions with vendors where it’s like, this is the next greatest thing that’s going to revolutionize the way you handle a regular process. But oftentimes, it doesn’t do that for various reasons or it’s good at one small part. So I think what you’ve mentioned is actually very useful to keep in mind.
[00:33:09] Charlie Uniman: And I would add to address a point that you had mentioned earlier, Marlene, and that is, you know, what about the smaller startups that have more point-like solutions than broader solutions? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, and I don’t mean this at all as a disparagement of any of the startups who are part of the community, but I think you’re going to find some sort of consolidation, not only because there are a lot of companies attempting to do the same thing that happens in any market, but I think here with law firms being as slow in the uptake as far as actually licensing software. And wanting to have a solution that doesn’t solve just one thing, you know, I wouldn’t offer a solution to a law firm that says, if you want to sign a document in Blue Ink and Blue Ink only, mine is the application you want to use. I think you want to have more heft. I think that I’m talking to the startups now. I think you want to try to do business development deals with allied startups. I think that you want to quickly figure out as quickly as you can whether making it on your own rather than combining in some fashion, if it’s an opportunity available, it’s worthwhile. Because, you know, unlike Salesforce, for example, which is gobbling up more and more of its customer relationship management market and bolting out other things, law firms don’t have a real big platform, even by department, that they can latch onto and know that they can reliably get much of what they want in doing a deal or handling a litigation or doing an investigation. If I were an investor and I’m not, you know, I would be looking for the larger plays among the startups. But again, I think startups can still be nimble, flexible, and cutting edge, even as they combine in some fashion to gain heft, staying power, and a broader array of features to offer.
[00:35:06] Marlene Gebauer: cutting edge even as they combine in some fashion to gain heft, staying power, and a broader array of features to offer. You had a short post on Medium where you asked the question, and this was in relation to where law school should focus. So I’m going to make the assumption that there are kind of two camps of attorneys out there. And the question was, which do you believe, the debunker, where law is part of a society’s plumbing and lawyers should be trained as ethical business people, or the traditionalist that law is an intellectual study? Lawyers should be taught jurisprudence, sociology, and economic analysis. So in terms of an entrepreneur coming in, and you have these two camps, and you’re going to have to be communicating, what should they be thinking and how should they be addressing this when they’re trying to break into this legal startup field?
[00:36:11] Charlie Uniman: Well, they, the nascent startup founders, I think are best advised in approaching law firms as businesses. They’re there to make a profit. They have to know doctrine. They have to be really good at the substantive knowledge aspects of their profession. And law schools have to continue to teach that. I don’t know whether it should be taught for as long as it’s taught in the three years worth of study, but startup founders should appeal to the business side of the law firm. And their application is not going to, unless it’s some sort of magical AI that can carry out a negotiation or analyze a whole set of documents to come up with a brand new way of structuring a deal. They should sell their wares as something that will enable the business part of the law to succeed, to make money. it’s more efficiency, whether it’s fewer mistakes, whether it is making life better for the practicing lawyers and thus making the lawyers more loyal to the firm and not fleeing the law or jumping ship to another firm and all the costs entailed with that. As far as law schools go, I’m a quasi-debunker. And by quasi-debunker, I mean, look, I think we should, and this is my own personal thing, I think we should all grow up a little. I don’t know that judges have to wear robes to be judges. And I don’t know that lawyers have to use heretofore and whereof all the time in order to feel like lawyers. But I do think, most emphatically, that law is special in one very important way. And that is, the law is a powerful weapon when used badly. People’s lives, financially and otherwise, can be at stake. So I am a great believer in re-regulation, in regulating law firms a whole lot differently from the way they are regulated now to encourage more access to justice and, frankly, competition. But I don’t think lawyers should be excused from the duty to be officers of the court, to offer pro bono work, to be held to a standard that recognizes that the law is part of society. We are not fixing sinks. And no one wants their sink fixed badly. But most often, the results of a poorly fixed sink is not someone going to jail improperly or being poorly represented in a real estate transaction, whether buying a house. So the awful force of the law should only be brought to bear when people have adequate representation. And lawyers should be held to account in providing that reputation and regulating, even better than they are now, frankly, in adhering to ethical standards. That should not go away.
[00:39:32] Greg Lambert: Yeah. Always remember, it’s a profession and a business.
[00:39:35] Charlie Uniman: That’s right.
[00:39:35] Greg Lambert: And you can’t just focus on one or the other. It’s a combination. So, Charlie, I want to wrap this up in a way that has you kind of both looking forward and backward, because you’ve done a lot, I mean, over the years, practicing and then into the legal technology and now with LTSF. What have you seen over the past few years that you think has been one of the most impactful changes in the industry? And then let’s flip that. And what do you see are some changes that are still yet to come to fruition yet? And if you have any tips as far as investments with the stock market like it is right now, you know, hey, feel free to throw those in.
[00:40:26] Charlie Uniman: Sure. I wish I knew answers to the last mentioned question. As far as what I see happening now, my podcast listeners have heard it ad nauseam. But I’ll say it again here. By my lights, legal tech is a 25-year overnight success. And we are hearing now in the legal tech world and in the legal world, talk about legal tech and innovation, innovation being important because you’re changing, you’re innovating the way in which you carry out your work processes, you use to practice law. Those are innovations. You’re innovating by bringing people in. We’re allied professionals. We’re finally hearing a lot of the talk being spoken by people whose decisions really matter now, whether it’s just talk or not, is still to be determined. But as recently, I’d say, as 10 years ago and maybe even more recently, the talk was not at all as widespread. So it’s in the air. And the fact that it’s in the air and it’s being talked about legal technology, the role it can play, the importance it can have on a firm’s bottom line and the happiness with which lawyers and satisfaction with which lawyers practice law is much more the subject of discussion than ever before. And that is a positive for legal tech startups and I think for lawyers. So, you know, I’m encouraged by that. And that is a sea change. The next step is to make it an actual behavioral matter rather than just talking. That may take looking far ahead. That may take a generational change. The law students and the young lawyers who are practicing now are still going to want to make money. They’re still going to want to take pride in being lawyers and practicing their profession. But I will say that in 10 years, and I’m pretty confident of that, the younger lawyers, we’re not only more comfortable, and yes, they are with technology, they’re going to be much more comfortable, I think, in adopting that technology and the practice. The other thing that’s going to change if certain states do what I think they’re going to do and hope they’re going to do is the way in which, adverting to what I mentioned earlier, the way in which lawyers practice and how they’re regulated, that will change. Once that changes, hopefully without lessening the ethical standards that lawyers have to adhere to, you’ll have new ownership structures. You’ll have people being able to do legal related work without having a law degree. And that will encourage technology use and also make law more accessible to more people. So I’m counting on that.
[00:43:15] Marlene Gebauer: OK, folks, you’ve heard it here. Charlie, we may have to invite you back in a few years to see where we’re at.
[00:43:22] Charlie Uniman: I would love that. Yes.
[00:43:25] Marlene Gebauer: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
[00:43:28] Greg Lambert: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Marlene, I liked how Charlie just laid the whole process of how law firms should work with startups. I know to him it came, you know, he was saying, well, you’ve probably heard this before. This is a common sense approach. But quite frankly, I think what he was laying out there is something that most of us hadn’t even thought about because we’re not engaged day in and day out with legal tech startups. Doing that whole process of making sure you’re working on small projects rather than at the firm projects. You’re not obligating your most heavily used attorneys to work on these projects, but rather using others paying retail rates for startups so that they can continue. So, I mean, it’s just a number of things in there that he said that were very insightful to me and how you deal with legal startups.
[00:44:35] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I agree with you completely. And I also appreciated the reminder about fear of failure and how that has to be addressed at the law firm side of things. And I’ll tie it back to what you said in the inspirations about PricewaterhouseCooper and also with what’s happening now with COVID-19. That we’re in this landscape that we don’t really know what the right thing to do is. And so we are all trying out different things and, in a sense, taking these risks to see if these things will work and be fruitful. And I’m hoping that this experience, as bad as it is, is something that we can apply in the future when we’re looking at some of these tools and resources that can really help us change the way we practice. Yeah.
[00:45:36] Greg Lambert: And like you say, all decisions are risk decisions. All decisions are risk decisions. Well, thanks again to you, Charlie, for joining us today. It was nice to have a normal chat on legal technology innovations and startups and kind of veer away from the most prevalent topic of the day.
[00:45:59] Marlene Gebauer: Before we go, we want to remind listeners to take the time to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Rate and review us as well. If you have comments about today’s show or suggestions for a future show, you can reach us on Twitter at GabeBauerM or at Glambert, or you can call the Geek & Review hotline at 713-487-7270 or email us at geekandreviewpodcast at gmail.com. And I will add one thing. Please reach out to us or anybody else if you’re there by yourself in your house and you just not want someone to talk to you about what’s going on. It’s like we’re all here to listen. And believe me, we all want to talk about it. Yes, we do. So please do. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeSicca. Thank you very much, Jerry.
[00:46:50] Greg Lambert: Yeah, thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene. Stay safe. I’ll talk to you later.
[00:46:55] Marlene Gebauer: All right. Stay healthy. Bye.