The Geek in Review Ep. 76 – The Do’s and Don’t’s of Virtual Conferences – Litera’s Haley Altman and Alma Asay

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Marlene Gebauer: I keep telling you we should be doing videos and you keep saying I don’t have a face.

[00:00:04] Greg Lambert: I don’t have a face for a video.

[00:00:05] Marlene Gebauer: You keep saying that.

[00:00:08] Greg Lambert: Maybe someday, maybe after the surgery.

[00:00:19] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

[00:00:27] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. So Marlene, if you had to guess, how many Zoom meetings have you been on in the past couple of weeks?

[00:00:34] Marlene Gebauer: So if I guess, if whoever gets closest, do we get a prize or something?

[00:00:39] Greg Lambert: I don’t even know how to add these up.

[00:00:43] Marlene Gebauer: I know. It’s like, and is it personal or professional? Is it group or one-on-one? So, yeah, I have lost count.

[00:00:54] Greg Lambert: Yeah. So in the same vein, how many of these online presentations from vendors or other types of virtual conferences have you been on?

[00:01:04] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I’ve been on a few of those as well.

[00:01:05] Greg Lambert: Did they all go as planned?

[00:01:07] Marlene Gebauer: Well, you know, it’s the typical like, oh, you’re on mute. And oh, can you everybody see everything? No. Okay. Yeah.

[00:01:16] Greg Lambert: You’ve been on the same ones I’ve been on then. Exactly. Well, luckily, Alma Say and Haley Altman from Lutera are here to give us some of their experiences and suggestions on how to improve these types of online presentations and virtual conferences. So, but before we get into that, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s information inspirations. Well, Marlene, apparently Google is cutting back on its diversity and inclusion programs for its employees. Yay. According to this NBC report that I saw, Google is cutting some of its longstanding diversity programs, and it is exposing the fact that its workforce, which is significantly based in the U.S., is primarily male, and it’s primarily white and Asian, with only about 9% of the U.S. workforce being black or Latino, whereas the makeup of the same population in the U.S. is actually about 29% of the population. The article states that this seems to be some sort of political move by Google during a political year. I know, shocked, we all are. But Google is trying to say that it’s actually trying to scale its diversity program and focus more on the global issues. I think I’ve pointed this out before, but I did want to mention the survey from American Lawyer Media’s Patrick Fuller, good friend of ours, where he showed a significant correlation between law firms who had diverse leadership and promotion into leadership that those firms showed a better long-term growth than those firms who did not have the diversity. So while it may be a bit of an apples and oranges kind of comparison between the massive complex that is Google and the legal industry, diversity programs and efforts to bring diverse employees not just into the workforce but into the leadership traditionally results in economic gains as well as improving the overall makeup of the organization. I really hope that Google is planning to address what is going on to replace these established diversity and inclusion programs.

[00:03:32] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I mean, I really think that the research is in terms of how it is overall better to basically have a diverse group working for you than not. So Greg, my inspiration is about Harvard making online courses for incoming students available to all law schools for free this summer.

[00:03:54] Greg Lambert: Free.

[00:03:54] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, free. We like free. You know, that’s a theme. So traditionally, Harvard Law School was once a place where first year students were told in orientation to look to your left, look to your right. One of you will not be here next year.

[00:04:09] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I was surprised because I was the one in the center. I was expecting I’d be gone.

[00:04:15] Marlene Gebauer: So luckily, that is no longer the case. In fact, Harvard and most law schools work very hard to make sure that students are given opportunities to succeed. And they help by creating programs that students can attend to plug knowledge gaps. Now, Harvard Law School created an online program called Zero L in 2018 to help their incoming 1Ls understand what to expect that first year. Because of the pandemic, Harvard is making the Zero L online program available to everyone this summer. Now, this seems like a great experiment to see how many people, even those who aren’t going to law school or even those in law school now–. going to law school or even those in law school now.

[00:04:56] Greg Lambert: Or even some of us who finished law school years ago.

[00:05:00] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly. Some of us want to see how much we’ve retained so they can take advantage of these recorded courses. So how great would it be if a firm like Wachtel or Skadden were to create something called the Zero Year Associate, where they took the same sort of concept and taught law students what to expect when they go to work for a large law firm? That would be another fascinating experiment that I think would work well in the current environment.

[00:05:29] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I think it would be, you know, we’ve got a summer program that’s, you know, shot. Let’s just face it, it’s not going to be great. It’s time to experiment with some things like this. I think that’s a great idea.

[00:05:45] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, exactly. And that wraps up this week’s Information Inspirations.

[00:05:55] Greg Lambert: Marlene, while you and I have been using Zoom and other video conferencing software for a couple of years now, I don’t think that either of us would say we’re total experts, would you?

[00:06:04] Marlene Gebauer: I certainly wouldn’t admit to it. So today’s guests, Haley Altman and Alma Ase from Littera, talk about their experience and experiments with using tools like Zoom, YouTube Live, and other online collaboration and presentation resources. And they give us some of the do’s and don’ts of live interactions. We’re so happy to have Alma Ase and Haley Altman from Littera join us today. Welcome to The Geek in Review.

[00:06:35] Alma Say: Thanks for having us.

[00:06:36] Haley Altman: Thank you.

[00:06:37] Greg Lambert: So Haley, you’re the, and I’ve got the titles off of LinkedIn. So General Manager of Transaction Management at Littera Microsystems. I think while it’s a little bit long, I think I completely understand what it is that you do. But can you tell us what you do at Littera and a little bit about what Littera is for those of us who may not know?

[00:06:59] Alma Say: Yeah, absolutely. So yes, I am the General Manager of Transaction Management. What that means is we’ve got, you know, at Littera, we have a couple of different product lines. I could probably start there and then I’ll explain what I do in reference to the company. So we look at the whole drafting lifecycle. How do you take a document from kind of the first draft all the way to final delivery? And so whether that’s creating, proofreading, really building out and checking these documents all the way to taking them and putting them into a transaction and bringing them all the way to the final aspect of it. So there’s a lot that goes into kind of running these different transactions. And so we have a workflow management tool that helps transactional attorneys get their deals done. And so I actually manage the overall transaction management area. Like what is the product? What are the needs of our customers that we’re serving? How do we bring it to market and how do we kind of build a work with our customers to help them adopt? So I’m trying to think holistically about an entire area of kind of product that we’re delivering to the market.

[00:08:07] Greg Lambert: All right. And Alma, so I saved you for a second because your title is much shorter. You are an evangelist at Latera. Now, I have an uncle who’s a Pentecostal preacher who’s an evangelist, but I think you’re probably, it’s probably a little bit different. Can you tell me what does an evangelist do at Littera?

[00:08:30] Haley Altman: Yeah, quite different. So my position really has three components. The first is to help elevate the brand and visibility of Littera, make sure that people in the legal community and even outside the legal community know what Littera is, know what value we’re able to bring, and just use my network and my experiences to inject Littera into the conversation where it might not otherwise be. The second component is representing customers when I’m at Littera. So really taking that time that sometimes other people don’t have the time to take to sit down and have one-on-ones with customers, with other people within a law firm or within a corporation, and just forge those deep relationships where I can actually get to the root of what our current needs, what our upcoming needs, what’s happening in the industry, and bring that information back to Littera to make sure that we’re best representing where our clients want us to go and where the industry wants us to go. And the third component is to take my litigation experience and help them as they’re putting more of an emphasis on the litigation side of things. So they have a tool called Litigation Companion, and they’ve been in the litigation space, but not nearly to the extent that they’ve been in the transactional space. And so the timing worked out well for me to come over and help develop that litigation drafting process. They recently acquired Best Support, so we’re looking at how to integrate that with their litigation companion. So those are kind of at a high level, those are the three components of what I do as an evangelist.

[00:10:10] Marlene Gebauer: So I’m going to change the focus just a little bit. When we hit the tipping point in the pandemic, we started working remotely, right? And I think Greg and I have pinned March 11th at that point because… Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced that they had COVID-19, and President Trump put out a travel ban that day.

[00:10:32] Greg Lambert: And that seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?

[00:10:34] Marlene Gebauer: Doesn’t it? It feels like a year ago. Most of us were trying to find our footing on what we’d be doing each day, how we’d set up our in-home offices, and businesses started pivoting to provide services for this new environment. Now, Latera started doubling down on content and education, and not just for its own clients, but for the entire industry. There were blogs and webinars and live daily video presentations and interviews, and even a virtual conference that was set up within the first month of the transition point. Why did you decide to go in this direction?

[00:11:17] Haley Altman: Haley, I’m definitely going to toss this one to you because I started at Latera on March 17th. And I think on March 18th, Haley informed me that one of my first jobs would be helping her to plan this never been done before. Latera had never had a conference before, much less this new kind of conference. So she just informed me that I would be helping her plan this conference and that our plan was to do it the next month.

[00:11:50] Marlene Gebauer: So Haley’s middle name is Ambitious, right? For sure.

[00:11:54] Haley Altman: Pretty much.

[00:11:55] Alma Say: Well, you can see like an almanac. So the part of the way I became the general manager of transaction management is Latera acquired my product, Foxly, and they acquired another product called WorkShare Transact. Part of my job has been to figure out how to combine all these things together and put it out to the market. I think one of the things when we started in transaction management is the idea of thought leadership, like, what is this area? What are we needing to build? What is the market need and getting the idea of like, what is that content that we can provide and educate people on? And so we just had a very focused thought leadership side. And when this happened, you know, the team had already been pretty adept. Like our management team was really good at, like, understanding what it needed to make the shift to work from home. So we made a very quick employee shift in terms to what are we going to do? How are our teams going to get set up? How do we send monitors? I mean, I think I sent Alma a headset before she even started. So I was like, you’re going to need this. I was like, we’re going to need this. So we’re like, OK, the logistics, like we got an amazing executive team. So the logistics were figured out. And so then it was just like, OK, we are a really big company and we’ve done a lot of stuff. And what can we give back to the market as everyone else is trying to figure this shift and change out? And so we really thought like one of the things that we can do to help. and one of the things that we can do is just help bring content to people. And we wanted it to be different. We knew there was going to be a lot of content around what do people need to do with the different changing regulations and what how are they going to handle employment matters? But we wanted to say, OK, we can do more than just, you know, kind of do product webinars on the different drafting tools we have or the different things that we have or how you could use them. We wanted to be more market facing and say, OK, this is changing for a lot of people. We have a huge group of people with different experiences. How can we help leverage what everyone is doing, what we’re seeing, the customers we’re talking to and start getting that out there? And so we wanted to give all of the law firms a forum to be able to share all of the innovative things they’re doing as they make these transitions in-house people. And so we just knew that how we were positioned, the client base we had and the reach we had, we could do it. And so we figured, you know, let’s just be ambitious and let’s try. And so it was really just this idea of how do we level up all of our content? How do we level up our approach? So this Latera TV was taking our webinars and turning it into daily content that people could get and use. And then I love conferences. And so then it was just like, gosh, we’re not going to be able to see each other. We’re not going to be able to, like, learn and hear from each other. So what can we do to just quickly start to say, how do we replace the things that we’re going to lose?

[00:14:45] Greg Lambert: One of the things I got to do with you guys was the live virtual conference that you did, which you named the Changing Lawyer Live. I like to say it like that. So this was all day, yeah, with the hands. This was an all-day event or pretty much all day via Zoom and YouTube. I think you had three very highly regarded keynote speakers and a number of well-respected panelists. And you had me there, too. So this really did seem like a kind of a, especially as fast as you guys got this thing out. This seemed like a real shoot for the moon type of event where there was just so much change. What was your reason to try this style of virtual conference so soon after the world was disrupted?

[00:15:46] Alma Say: I mean, I think what we wanted to do was just bring something to market for people that would get them out of the doomsurfing.

[00:15:56] Haley Altman: Yeah, if that’s what you’re looking for. Just bring like the tiny question.

[00:16:01] Marlene Gebauer: That’s a question later.

[00:16:06] Alma Say: So what we wanted to do in the idea of bringing an event is Latera hasn’t done an event before. And so we wanted to challenge ourselves to say, okay, what can we do to bring content to the market? So what does that content need to be? And what we thought of is that there’s so much that’s changing and there’s so many experiences that are both from the legal industry, but also outside of the legal industry that we could bring in. So we wanted to challenge ourselves to look at what’s going on and what’s happening to the law firms, to their clients from different perspectives. So that was the whole idea of bringing in keynotes that were not from the legal industry, but they all had ties into that industry. and that none of them were legal in specific, but they all had ties into that industry. And so we really wanted there were certain themes that we thought that would be really resonate with people that would get them out of this, this kind of the the repetitive nature of just like kind of seeing a new COVID release and hearing something else on Twitter. We wanted to kind of share things from different perspectives. How have people survived these tough situations in other contexts? So how is a business that got hit in the recession of 2008? What did they do that got them through? And how did a person whose life got upended? How did they get through? So we wanted to tell a story of of what you can start thinking to make it to move it forward. And the reason it was called The Changing Lawyer Live is Latera’s always had a publication called The Changing Lawyer. It’s all about thought leadership and how the legal industry and the legal professions are changing. And so we wanted to kind of continue that with a focus on what’s going to potentially change right now. on what’s going to potentially change right now. And so our goal was to really try to think holistically, all of the different areas within a law firm, within the client experience that are changing, and all the insights that other people could take from different areas. So we really wanted to kind of bring something that would be different. that wouldn’t just be legal, but would really kind of hopefully give people some context of what they can do or how they can move forward.

[00:18:03] Marlene Gebauer: Well, to those in the audience, it may have seemed like a seamless event, but look, we do a podcast, and so we know that the preparation and all of the moving parts, having so many presenters involved. I am sure that it made for some headaches on the back end. So can you tell us a little bit about how you decided to set everything up, and what were some of the good and some of the bad things that you learned that day?

[00:18:34] Haley Altman: It was a lot of back and forth between myself, Haley, and the marketing team. So Haley and I, we kind of shoot for the moon, and then we’d go to the marketing team and keep trying to shoot for the moon, and they’d tell us what’s possible, what’s not. And, you know, Haley touched on the speakers. And she had this bold idea that we could go out and get some of these really high profile speakers, not necessarily from the legal community, because all of these events had just been canceled. And these speakers were probably available and more open to doing something virtually. And of course, that’s also less expensive. You’re not paying for travel. And also, again, you have all these speakers who suddenly have lost their paying gigs for the next few weeks or months. And so, you know, we got excited about that off the bat. And one of the good things was, and a lot of this may have been because of the circumstances, but it was much easier than I thought it would be to get these kinds of speakers. And credit to Latera’s marketing team. They made it seem very easy. They, you know, reached out. They figured out how to get in contact with their agents. That all actually fell into place so much more easily than I would have imagined. And then, of course, we had to put together the rest of the panels. and the breakout or the breaks during the day. And it really helped that Haley and I have deep networks in the legal community. So, you know, I went back to the evangelist team and there were four of us and we all come at the same issues with different perspectives. And so we were able to talk through what the panel should be and come up with things that felt both timely, but also, you know, would have outstanding speakers, people that the legal industry knows and would want to listen to. And so then Haley and I reached out to people with some help from the other evangelists. You know, we kind of came up with our dream slate of speakers and we got most of them. What was interesting, and I would say the bad side, was the hardest category of speakers to get were actually from corporate legal departments. And while it’s always difficult to get speakers from corporate legal departments, there are a lot of people who speak at industry events. But what we discovered that was unique to this time is these corporations had no idea what was okay to speak on or not at this point. You know, everything was happening all at once. They didn’t know what their own plans were, much less how comfortable they were with their people going out and speaking publicly about what their plans might be or what they were seeing. They hadn’t decided, you know, which of our issues are internal to us, and we don’t want to share versus what issues are common across every company right now. And so we should all be talking about them. And so I reached out to people that I’ve met at conferences, I know they speak, I know their companies are comfortable with them speaking, and it was a no-go. So that was something, you know, a challenge that we didn’t necessarily expect to run into when we were developing the panel topics. And ultimately it all came together, but it was way easier to get high- profile speakers and way harder to get corporate legal department speakers than we anticipated.

[00:21:58] Marlene Gebauer: First, all I needed to do was talk about force majeure and at that point, you guys could have had the entire conference on that ’cause everybody had that problem. And secondly, I wanna give kudos to you guys because if you were taking breaks and people had to go to lunch and they all came back at the right time when they were on their own and they didn’t have to go to a place where other people were, it’s very well done. In light of those things. So how is this sort of event presentation different from say the normal Zoom meeting? I mean, I just, did you have a coordinator or something? I feel like you would almost have to and have someone kind of like behind the scenes on a set basically saying, okay, you’re going to be up and.

[00:22:46] Alma Say: So we had a schedule so we had a schedule of when everyone was going on when people needed to be promoted and so we did the we had a big debate one of the big debates is how do you run it do you run it through a conference app do you run it through zoom how do you do it so the back end of ours was actually through zoom webinar. Now we hosted it on our website so that people didn’t have to go in and out of different zoom meeting rooms. We didn’t want people to have to figure out what time based on a global audience. We wanted people to be able to just see the screen and see everything that was going on. And so that also kept us from having to make sure that people’s like other people were hidden and who was the one that was visible. So there were a couple things that we had there but then so we had to have the marketing team put together this like masterful schedule of when people needed to be on. So here, you know, Avinash is kicking the conference off. So Scott and I have to be in the waiting area by a certain period of time because then he’s going to introduce us. That’s when we actually started to run into the first problems of promotion. It takes a second to promote someone to active live speaker. So in the beginning, Avinash would say, and here’s Scott and Haley, and there would not be a Scott and Haley necessarily immediately. And so we learned quickly. And I will say the marketing team was amazing. We had a separate Teams channel where we’re messaging saying, okay, this is what we have to iterate for the next speakers. This is what we have to do for the next people. So then we realized you could promote people but keep them off video and they wouldn’t show on the screen. But then all they’d have to do was turn themselves on video to show. So you could have people in there and then as soon as they were introduced that we did things like that. So you had someone that was kind of saying, okay, when do we promote people and they had to have their button on. Then you had someone else. It’s like, hey, we’ve got these four panelists in the waiting area or we have three, we need the fourth. So someone text message that person and get them on here really fast. But we also learned that when you then publish that to YouTube, there could be a delay in terms of like how the videos got processed. And so there’s a lot of things that we learned during it, because you’re learning as you go. But it was amazing to see like the marketing team just did so much upfront work to think about it and to move it through. And then, and I mean, Alma and I tried to think of a lot of things too. And that’s why there were breaks, we knew that people would need to get up and go do something. We needed like time in between all these speakers. And so we tried to get 15 minute little segments where you could, if you’re able to watch, you’d get like some really good insight into how to network better or what’s going on in access to justice. So, so we tried to think of all of the transitions so that we could move from keynote to panel to like the next thing. So we, we kind of built these different moments in all the way through to kind of the happy hour. Which was another logistical component. How do you take all of these people and bring them into a place and allow them to interact and pick up some of the things that you would have gotten at a traditional conference. And so there were some logistics. So we just, we had a just an honestly an amazing marketing team that took all these things that we said, hey, we got to make all of this happen. And then they were like, Alright, and here’s a schedule. And here’s where people need to be. And we’re going to use Zoom webinar for this. And we’re going to use Zoom, normal Zoom for the happy hour. And then let’s just figure out how to kind of move between everything. And it was, so it was impressive. But there were moments, I mean, Gretchen Rubin’s did an amazing talk, but her video didn’t work the entire time. So you have a behind the scenes, someone get her headshot up, add her headshot to the thing. So it’s not just a blank, here’s her name, like, so you’re like, on the fly, like trying to figure out how to solve for these different problems. Or is this buffering? Like, what do we do?

[00:26:43] Marlene Gebauer: Like live TV, live TV in the 50s.

[00:26:48] Greg Lambert: Yeah. I was gonna say, it reminds me of Saturday Night Live, so you need a good producer and a lot of good directors. Um, would there be anything that you would would have done or would do differently if you were, if you do this?

[00:27:00] Haley Altman: I think we would have liked to have had more time and for there to have been more options for platforms. I think one of the things that will come out of this time is a boom in virtual conference platforms. And there are a handful out there now. What we discovered is that when we were investigating the different platforms, many of them took a month or even two to get up and running. So once you sign the contract, then there needed to be quite a bit of lead time. And of course, we were determined to get this out the door within a month. And so that constrained us a little bit in terms of what platforms were available to us. And ultimately, I think we did the best we could do with the platform that we had. But there were things that we would have liked to have done, like include more interactivity and audience engagement throughout the day. And, you know, that was difficult to do using Zoom webinar. We could have had a more open Zoom experience, but then you hear these horror stories of people jumping in. And so we wanted to control the experience, this being kind of the first time and not just for us, but also one of the first legal industry virtual conferences to go out like this. You know, we didn’t have a lot of other people’s lessons to learn from. And so, you know, there were things that we did to lock it down and make sure we would have control that limited our ability to have people engaged. We also during one of the keynotes, we would have otherwise liked to have shown some clips of video, but we didn’t, we didn’t know how that technical transition would go. And, you know, you can test these things out, but day out, they’re always going to be issues. And so we thought, well, if it’s not that critical, let’s skip that piece and just make sure we have a flawless keynote. And, of course, you know, what happened with Gretchen was outside our control, and that one wasn’t flawless. But there, there were things that I think we would do differently, having learned from this experience. And also now getting to learn from the experiences of other people who are now doing conferences in the legal industry and other industries.

[00:29:18] Marlene Gebauer: Greg and I can appreciate sort of using the KISS principle. It’s like, you know, if it’s not critical, it’s like you just keep it simple and stick with that. So what are you seeing in the legal industry, you know, when it comes to these types of online interactions between lawyers, clients, staff, and others? Is it paying off? Or is it changing relationships?

[00:29:44] Alma Say: I do think you’re seeing a lot of different things. I think you’re seeing more webinars. I think that’s the one thing that’s like, but you know, the question is, is that changing things? Because it’s a lot of content that’s a lot of the same. People are doing a lot of twists on similar webinars. And so they’re trying to find ways to engage with clients and bring clients information. So I think, you know, lawyers are trying to pivot, like, you know, how they can engage with clients, because they can’t go to different events where they might see them. And so I think you’re seeing a lot of shift to thought leadership, how do we really engage people? How do we kind of bring them in? I mean, I think, you know, one of the things we heard when with talking to some of the keynotes is the importance of lawyers engaging with their clients, when it isn’t about a specific task that they need to do. Right now, clients need their lawyers to understand their business, to be a sounding board over these bigger things. So I think the one thing that, you know, you see a shift to webinars, but I think you also need to see more people just engaging with their clients. Just directly kind of reaching out to them and seeing how they’re doing. I think that’s the thing that’s going to really change the relationships, understanding their business. Understanding what they’re going through, just helping them just kind of wrap their heads around what’s changing with their businesses right now and what they need to be aware of. So I do think you are going to see, you’re starting to see changes. But I think that there’s just, we have to expand our own minds as attorneys to think I don’t just need to call my client when it’s in reference to a specific matter. Sometimes I need to just take the time to understand them as a business, to understand what they’re going through as a leader, because everyone’s going through a lot. And so I think hopefully we’ll start to see more of those changes where the engagement is not just about what specific tasks. Can I look at a force majeure provision for you? one of the things like it’s always out there, but it’s like, hey, maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should prioritize what vendors are the most important things for you so we can figure out So I think I think you’re starting to see the changes and you’re starting to see a move towards more content as opposed to just like task-based interactions, but I think hopefully that’ll continue to evolve. I don’t know, Alma, anything you think about that?

[00:32:01] Haley Altman: Yeah, I think that there is a deepening of relationships across the board. I think there’s this sense that we’re all in this together, but there’s also this sense of it’s okay to let the personal crossover into the professional. I mean, we’re all seeing each other’s homes, we’re seeing each other’s pets, we’re seeing each other’s kids and significant others wander through the background. And so you’re getting to know people on a more personal level, which is a little counterintuitive because here we are all separated, and yet the interactions feel a little more personal. I also think that it’s an opportunity to deepen the client-lawyer relationship, not only in the ways that Haley mentioned, but also in the ability of lawyers to be adaptable and proactive. So not only are lawyers learning about clients’ businesses, but are they being proactive in reaching out to their clients and saying, Hey, there’s this new law that came down. We’ve become experts on it in a hurry because there’s all this new legislation, there are all these new issues coming up. And so whereas the lawyer before might have known what a force majeure provision is, that lawyer hasn’t necessarily ever thought about how it might apply in practice. These are not provisions that are the make or break in most deals, if any, before now.

[00:33:15] Marlene Gebauer: The throwaway provisions until now. Yeah.

[00:33:21] Haley Altman: Exactly, and so I think this is an opportunity for lawyers to step up and for clients to really see how adaptable and proactive their lawyers are. Do they have a lawyer who can do an amazing job and apply the law that’s been around for 50 years impeccably? Or do they have a lawyer who can both do that, but also become an expert in a hurry and understand their business in such a way that they can apply a law that was passed yesterday? in circumstances that are unprecedented in order to help drive that business forward.

[00:33:53] Alma Say: I will say one other thing really quick. I didn’t know that this just actually, I just have started seeing this happen. I’ve now seen more law firms start to collaborate amongst themselves in providing like more comprehensive guidance. So there’s a, through the Global Hackathon, Legal Hackathon, Ashurst, Clifford Chance, Norton Rose Fulbright are combining with Barclays. and a number of different providers to say what’s the guidance for like electronic signatures. So if we can’t all send signatures around via couriers anymore, because we break quarantine, how do we deliver that? And they’re actually all coming together with a bunch of different groups, and we’re contributing to it too, into like what’s that guidance? So I think you might see even more like, hey if we’re all going to be in this together and there are a bunch of things that are going to change with these bigger things, how can we work together to give more comprehensive guidance where it’s not siloed to just one firm, but it’s more so industry helpful.

[00:34:51] Haley Altman: I think that’s a really interesting point because firms have always been follow the leader. No one wants to be first off the cliff, but once one firm, two firms, three firms do something, then the other firms are like, oh it must be okay now. But there’s no time for that now. You can’t wait around to see who’s going to be first and then follow the leader. And so I think Haley’s spot on that these firms have realized like, okay none of us want to be the first, but we don’t have time to wait for a firm to get over. time to wait for a firm to get over that. We’re just all going to collectively have to go over the cliff together.

[00:35:24] Greg Lambert: So that’s some of the positives I think that we’re talking about, about how to connect, how to use tools like this. But just with all tools, they can be used improperly. So what are some of the common pitfalls that you have seen or you think people need to be aware of when you’re using these types of tools in this type of format to communicate?

[00:35:53] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah. Like what are the three things that you should avoid? I know Greg has three things that he thinks people should avoid. I know I have my list too. Mine are like, if you have like a really staticky line, just like hang up and call back in. And the other thing is like, please don’t put the camera under your chin. It’s like, please use the selfie roll and like have it either at your face or higher. Those are my pet peeves. Okay. I’m done. I’m sorry. I think lighting is important, right? Not just for the way that you look, but it just helps with creating a more human experience over a video.

[00:36:34] Haley Altman: So I know when I’m doing Latera TV or something, I always check, I put on the video on my camera and I always check the light for that day and where I am to make sure that I look like a human and not like totally blown out or something. I also think it’s really important to realize, and you know, there are more and more articles coming out about this now, now that everybody’s gone overboard on all of this technology, that this is a more stressful way to interact. And having Zoom calls all day, every day, when you’re sitting on the couch in your pajamas at first, everyone thinks like, oh, this will be way easier. And I think now we’re realizing and coming to terms with the fact that it’s actually much harder. And everyone at first was like, oh, this life’s going to be great for introverts. And actually, being on video all day every day is terrible for introverts. And so one of the things that I’ve made a point of is if something can be done with a call, it’s okay to go back to a call. It’s okay to call someone instead of setting up a Zoom video meeting for everything all day every day. And by breaking it up and kind of, I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t have one or more Zoom meetings still, but by going back to calls for some of it, it’s become much, much more manageable. And I think the third for me would be bandwidth. Just being real about how much bandwidth you have in your household and noticing patterns. For example, I’ve noticed that I have really good bandwidth in the mornings and I don’t know if it just gets tired or other people in the area suddenly jump on in the afternoon, but I have worse bandwidth in the afternoon. So if something’s really important that it be where it needs to be on video, I try to schedule it for the morning. When I’m on Latera TV or I’m doing something that’s live, I’ll tell everyone in my house, including my husband, I’ll be like, Can you please just turn your phone off? Don’t even touch the internet. I just need it for one half hour. And just finding ways to balance bandwidth issues. And of course, when I was in Los Angeles, this wasn’t an issue. I had terrific internet and it never occurred to me. But once I came to Virginia, I was like, Wow, this is a real issue. But now that I’ve figured out how to manage it, it’s a lot easier.

[00:38:46] Alma Say: I mean I tend to I agree with all those you know the ability the bandwidth is always one like I every now and then you get the bad internet connection it probably means that I have two kids on iPads and a husband on a computer and so like the world is just gone and Netflix is probably on somewhere and you know some some devices entertaining our children.

[00:38:58] Marlene Gebauer: And Netflix is probably on somewhere. And, you know, some some devices entertaining our children.

[00:39:05] Alma Say: So you have to be mindful of that. I think the one thing outside of it, so I think there’s a lot that we’ve all talked about in terms of lighting and how you make sure you’re still presenting yourself. I couldn’t believe in Florida where they’re talking about someone was taking a courtroom meeting from their bed without a shirt. And I’m like, let’s have common basic decency. But I think the one thing that we sometimes forget is when you’re having these Zoom meetings. Somehow I think some people still forget agendas, meetings still have to have a purpose and being able to set up in advance, these are the things we’re going to accomplish. Yes, we’re gonna be seeing each other, but we should be aligned so that the meeting still has a point and that you can actually kind of move through things. So whether that’s just because we’re meeting via video, we should have something that we’re anchored on, otherwise the meetings run long or they don’t have purpose, and so just still being mindful of what we’re trying to accomplish is, I think, is important.

[00:40:03] Marlene Gebauer: All right, so I’m gonna play the gadfly for a moment. You know, we were talking about these visual points and auditory points that are important in the meetings, but how important is it really? I mean, you know, we all didn’t sign up to become, you know, video stars or influencers, and, you know, we don’t all have the right type of, except you, Greg. You know, we don’t all have the right type of equipment to be able to sort of get a good sound. You know, we might not have the lighting that we need. And, you know, I’ll tell you, at the risk of annoying Greg, who has a background behind him of the Brady Bunch House, like, I don’t use a background. And it’s because, quite frankly, I don’t think it shows my reality. And I feel it’s important for us to show our reality during this time. I mean, people are,

[00:40:46] Greg Lambert: like, I don’t use a background. And it’s because quite frankly, I don’t think it shows my reality. And I feel it’s important for us to show our reality during this time. I mean, people are,

[00:40:58] Marlene Gebauer: are working under conditions that aren’t optimal. And why do we feel that we have to pretend that we’re not? So there’s my challenge. What say you?

[00:41:11] Haley Altman: I think you’re spot on. I think part of this whole experience is, as I mentioned before, getting a glimpse into other people’s lives and feeling like whatever uncomfortableness or chaos you’re dealing with, well, so is everybody else. Whether that’s pet or children or significant other or just the place that you live is not really built to have like this perfect background. I think it gives a sense of us all being in it together. And again, deepens those relationships where you get a glimpse into people’s lives, which I think has become an important part of this whole experience for everyone, which is nothing against people like Greg who do use backgrounds, because they also give us something to talk about and reflect on the person’s personality. I know, Jay, I had Jay on Latera TV and she had a spaceship background. So I find the backgrounds that people choose entertaining and reflective of their personalities as well. So I think whichever way people want to go, I think it’s fine as long as it’s whatever makes them comfortable.

[00:42:19] Greg Lambert: Just to justify my background, it’s because my bed’s right behind me and there’s laundry on it, so.

[00:42:29] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, and I support everybody wearing shirts, that’s important too. Yeah, shirts are not optional.

[00:42:38] Greg Lambert: Shoes are optional, socks are optional, shirts not optional.

[00:42:42] Marlene Gebauer: Rest of it, no.

[00:42:47] Alma Say: I think it’s good to be authentic. I think you, if you’re delivering a message like on Literra TV and things like that, where we’re trying to like, we want to be able to engage with people. And I think the better way to engage with someone is just to be authentic. And that means that maybe I’m working in the third floor attic of our house, and that’s what I can do right now. And it’s the quietest place where the least chance of like two children traipsing in and, you know, showing their I don’t know, whatever they’ve done. Right.

[00:43:15] Greg Lambert: Well, one of the things that we hear a lot about is Zoom fatigue. And I think we’ve kind of skirted around it a little bit. Haley, what do you, what kind of recommendations do you have to cope with that?

[00:43:28] Alma Say: I think trying to find meetings where you can do it while you’re on a walk. Like I feel like some days I don’t see the outside of my house and I get a little bit, it’s just like that not having sunlight or not having like fresh air or like, you know, when you’re in an office, even if you’re in an office and you don’t go outside, you at least walk around. And like, if you’re sitting here and it is back to back scheduled of meetings, all of them on Zoom, you don’t get a chance to get up, you don’t get a chance to stretch your legs. And so it’s just like you’re tired. And you’re just like, you’re just looking at technology. And so I try to find some point in time to go for a walk, either do a call during a walk, or a lot of times lately, I’ve just called someone else in the industry that I haven’t talked to in a while and just catch up and just try to find a break and a moment where I can just, you know, kind of check in with someone. instead of like, I try to find moments for that. The other thing I think we have to do is like, I realized like there are some days I will go eight hours in Zoom meetings, and I can’t be productive in those like, so I’ve now started to try to schedule actual time on my calendar where someone can’t schedule a meeting, just so that I could like respond to email or like actually draft something that I need to do. And so it’s like, we’ve got to build in moments where we can actually get work done that isn’t just being on another call, or being on another Zoom thing. It’s just, how do we find those those moments where we can just do something else?

[00:45:05] Marlene Gebauer: So how do you think the success of the online meetings is going to impact live conference attendance? Is this the end of in person conferences? And what about conferences that are asking for the same monetary commitment as a live session? I mean, do we have a thumbs up or thumbs down on that?

[00:45:24] Haley Altman: I would definitely give that a thumbs down. I think people understand. Thank you.

[00:45:31] Marlene Gebauer: Thank you. Thank you. Hard thumbs down. Like, absolutely.

[00:45:37] Haley Altman: I mean, look, there’s a lot of work that goes into putting on a virtual conference. But you know, it doesn’t care. It doesn’t compare to the work and expense that goes into putting on a live conference where you’ve got to coordinate so many people and things and rent space and you’re feeding people, presumably. I think people understand that part of the cost that they’re paying for a live conference is going toward the facilities and the food and whatnot. And unless you are, you know, renting people quarantine safe office space from which to watch your virtual conference and having food delivered to them throughout the day, I don’t think that you can argue that you’re providing those things to justify the same cost. However, I don’t think that we’re at the end of the in-person conference. What I do think we’re ΓÇô where I think we’re headed is actually the beginning of something new, which is more virtual conferences because they are more inclusive, which is nice for people who can’t be away from their families or can’t leave because of work obligations and attend, you know, a conference on the other side of the country. And so, I think it’s great that people have opened their minds to these virtual conferences and the fact that they can draw more people in. But I also think for in-person conferences, and I think Haley and I are very excited to go back to in-person conferences as much as we loved our virtual conference experience, but I think there’s gonna be a lot more thought given to how do we add a virtual component? How do we make this conference feel accessible to people who can’t travel, who can’t attend for whatever reason? And you know, there have always been recordings of the sessions posted and sort of people have dabbled in this area, but my bet is that we see a lot more hybrids going forward.

[00:47:23] Alma Say: I do also think that it’s going to be like, I mean, Alma and I agree with Alma, like we’re gonna be like, we’re so excited for when like in-person conferences come back and we can actually see each other. Like she’s worked at Letera since March and we have not seen each other in person, even in the context of working together. It’s like the idea of actually getting to come together and have that community in person, I cannot wait for it to happen. But I do think that we’re going to have one more stage before we go back to the big events. Like there is not going to be the ability to have these thousand person conferences, even 500 people, like 200. Like I think we’re gonna see some, there’s gonna have to be some shift where we go from virtual to something where we may have to do smaller regional conferences, like a different sort of like conference setup that can start to bring people together before. conference setup that can start to bring people together before we get to the point in the next year where we can actually have these real big events. I think we’re going to, I think there’s still another kind of iteration that’s going to be different from our traditional like ILTAs and Clio Cloud and things like that, all these big events. I don’t think we are going to get there for a while. So what’s the thing, the next thing that someone’s going to do? I think that’s actually one of the things on Almanai’s to-do list is to figure out what is that next stage of what we could do. So, you know, we’ll see what we can figure out. That’s Hayley ambitious Altman

[00:48:54] Haley Altman: talking there.

[00:48:57] Marlene Gebauer: and I’ll add one more thing to what you said. I think, you know, given now that businesses have seen, okay, online conferences can work and they are a lot less expensive. I think that the in-person conferences, the folks that are putting those together are going to have to be very, very creative in terms of, you know, marketing, what’s different about being in person. I mean, certainly there is the networking that we talked about, but, you know, what can you get there that you can’t get from an online that, you know, we should send our people there. And I think that’s going to require some real thought in terms of making that argument.

[00:49:44] Alma Say: I think that’s absolutely spot on because it is always one of those things when you’re trying to justify the expense. I remember being a practicing attorney and thinking like, okay, I want to go to this. And we didn’t do a lot of conferences from an attorney perspective. So even when I was a partner, it wasn’t like we were just all going to different. Things we had to justify why we’re going. And I think you’re going to see that more. I totally agree, especially it’s like when you could say, okay, well, you can just go to this conference. And I will say part of the reason you go to conferences, all of the networking and the in-person, but as more people challenge themselves to figure out the virtual networking, we had people in our happy hour session from Australia who had just woken up and joined our happy hour and would never have been able to come to the U.S. for a conference like that and network with this group of people and came away with a whole bunch of different connections. So there are advantages to doing things slightly differently. But so the more we come up with it, you’re right. The more that it puts the challenge, which is exciting, like things should evolve like, and that’s great. But so then I’ll get scared as to what I come up with. And the next time I’m just like thinking

[00:50:49] Haley Altman: randomly about something that we can do. Yeah, no, I’m not scared. I’m ready.

[00:50:54] Greg Lambert: So, you know, speaking of people waking up in Australia and going to the happy hour, you know, how do you approach the, you know, the globalness of this and the reality? I mean, heck, I can’t even set up a good happy hour for some friends because we’re across four different time zones. And so, you know, my six o’clock happy hour is, you know, four o’clock and they’re still working on the West Coast. You know, do you have any thoughts on how you adjust to, you know, having these global events, but having to really think about, you know, what

[00:51:30] Haley Altman: what time it is and in different places? I think this is a case of comparing or trying to understand what we’re doing against the ideal state versus looking at it against the current state. Because the truth is, these people like Haley just mentioned, we’re not going to be able like Haley just mentioned, would never be able to attend the in- person conference, right? Or maybe they would, but that’s a different conversation. But let’s take the people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend. They wouldn’t even be going to the in-person conference. And now we’ve opened it up worldwide to people to be able to attend who can’t afford to attend or for whatever other reason can’t attend the in-person conferences. Now, at least there’s an option, right? And it’s up to them if they want to attend it at whatever crazy hour it is for them. I think, you know, there’s no, there’s no getting around the fact that at the end of the day, you have to decide, you know, okay, we’re thinking about this conference as being based in such and such time zone. So for example, Leterra is based in Chicago. So everything was on Chicago time. I think the important thing is that you make very, very clear what time zone your content is scheduled for. I know that there’s been some confusion, not with ours, but with other conferences where the time zone wasn’t made abundantly clear. And then people get confused because they don’t know exactly what time things are on for them. And so I think the best thing we can do to accommodate that is make the time zone clear and hopefully record the sessions such that even if you’re not making them available to anyone after the conference, you’re at least making them available to everyone who’s registered. So that if someone can’t attend at a certain time, because they need to sleep, and they want to pay attention to it, they can watch it later. And I think most if not all of the conferences that I’ve seen out there are doing that. And I think that is a very easy way to get around that issue. Because the other part of it is that by not being in person, it’s a lot harder to quote unquote, take off work, you know, people know that you’re people right now, everybody’s home in front of their computer. They know where you are right now. Yeah, exactly. Everybody knows that. And so it’s harder to say like,

[00:53:46] Marlene Gebauer: oh, I’m attending a conference today, my messages might be delayed, or you know, like, it’s, it’s,

[00:53:51] Haley Altman: it just doesn’t have the same effect. And you’re not fully embraced in that experience the way that you are at an in-person conference. And so I think making recordings available, at least to the registered attendees, is a critical component of a virtual conference for both those reasons.

[00:54:08] Marlene Gebauer: Do you feel that maybe some of the more, you know, I’ll say old- fashioned ways of communicating are more meaningful now. And you know, I’ll give you an example. So the other day, it’s like, I went to the mailbox, and I had a letter from a friend of mine that basically took the time to write a letter to say, it’s like, you know, this is how things are going. And, you know, it was, it was like, so exciting to get that. It’s like, oh, my God, I got a letter. And, you know, it’s not like I’ve never gotten letters before. But this just seemed more important than than, you know, it may have been, say, in January. say in January.

[00:54:46] Haley Altman: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve, I never write cards and I’ve been writing cards for baby showers and birthdays and dropping them in the mail. And so I think receiving something personal is especially meaningful right now, but also sending something personal feels especially meaningful. Even with the conference, we had a conversation about this, right? For all of our speakers, we wanted to send thank you gifts. And so we had a conversation about, you know, what kind of thank you gift do we send right now? You know, people aren’t sitting in their office, so think about the fact that they’re at home with their families. And so it does become a little bit more personal.

[00:55:26] Marlene Gebauer: It’s sort of like slow cooking. This is like the slow movement for communication.

[00:55:32] Greg Lambert: Well, Alma Asay and Hayley Altman, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.

[00:55:38] Haley Altman: Thank you for having us. This is great.

[00:55:40] Marlene Gebauer: Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. I think it was a pretty bold move on the part of our guests to roll out this live, very different type of online experience and just sort of bring in a bunch of people from both legal and non-legal and, and, you know, put that all together in very short order, when we’re really in a time where things are very unsettled, and people aren’t really sure what the message should be.

[00:56:08] Greg Lambert: Yeah, they’re doing a lot with this. And they’ve got the Latera TV that they’re doing, I think every day. So they’re doing a lot over there. So hats off to them. So thanks again to Alma Asay and Hayley Altman for joining us today.

[00:56:25] Marlene Gebauer: Yes, thank you both. 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 @Glambert. Or you can call the Geek and Review hotline at 713-487-7270. Or email us at geekandreviewpodcasts@gmail.com. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David Disicka. Thank you, Jerry.

[00:57:03] Speaker F: Thanks, Jerry. All right. Bye, Marlene. All right. Shelter safe, Greg.