Mollie Nichols is the CEO of Redgrave Data, a company that uses data analytics and technology to assist the legal industry. After leaving Hogan Lovells, Mollie launched Redgrave Data in January of 2022 and has seen a strong demand for their services in data analytics, regulation, compliance, and internal investigations. Companies often seek the expert assistance of Redgrave Data in order to improve efficiency among the law firms, eDiscovery services, ALSPs, and internal legal operations. She is working to move legal departments away from being seen as a “black hole for money” and focused more on the unique and valuable in achieving the strategic goals of the company. One of the hidden gems in these legal departments is the insights that the legal team can uncover through visualization and analysis of the data within the department. 
One area that Mollie things the legal industry needs to change is how it processes and analyzes the data we collect and create. You cannot look at data simply as a commodity. Where your data tools or your outsourced data analytics teams take unique batches of data and then send it through a one-sized fits all process. Data has to be analyzed through the lens of the current legal issue or toward the goals of the company. This is one of the areas that she says Redgrave Data stands apart from others in the field.
In her Crystal Ball projection, Mollie Nichols sees the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal field is likely to increase, but some lawyers and judges may not fully understand or accept it. AI can help with the growing volume and complexity of data in legal cases, but there may be challenges in accessing and using this data effectively. Overall, she thinks that AI is going to have a significant impact on the legal field.

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We are SUPER GEEKED about our new logo design. Shoutout to logo designer @ChangoATX who did a wonderful job and got our new logo completed just in time for the holidays!! Let us know what you think.
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Voicemail: 713-487-7821
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Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading Redgrave Data’s Mollie Nichols on the De-Commoditizing of Data in the Legal Industry (TGIR Ep. 184)

This week, we have a jam-packed episode featuring five of our colleagues from a 2022 American Association of Law Libraries panel on APIs.
  • Emily Rushing, Director of Competitive Intelligence, Haynes and Boone, LLP
  • Pam Noyd, Information Resources Manager at Foley & Lardner LLP
  • Erik Adams, Manager of Library Digital Initiatives Manager of Library Digital Initiatives at Sidley Austin LLP, and Chief of Technology at Golden Arrow Publishing LLC
  • Keli Whitnell, Director of Firm Intelligence at Troutman Pepper
  • Christopher O’Connor, Senior Director, Product Management at LexisNexis
APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, have become an increasingly important tool in the legal industry. The panel included members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, including both librarians and non-librarians. This diversity provided a holistic view of the topic, covering everything from the technical aspects of using APIs to the importance of data quality and vetting vendors.
APIs are like building blocks for legal solutions (think: LEGO Blocks), allowing for the flexible sharing of data between different computer environments. This enables more creative solutions than vendors could create on their own and has led to a range of innovative legal solutions.
Overall, the panel provided valuable insights into the use of APIs in the legal industry and highlighted their potential for facilitating more efficient and effective legal work. As the use of API’s continues to grow, it will be important for legal professionals to stay up to date on the latest developments and best practices in this area.

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Crystal Ball Question:
Brad Blickstein discusses the potential for a recession and its effects on the legal industry. He speculates that Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) will benefit from the downturn, as law departments will be unable to increase headcount. He also discusses the question of where the work done by ALSPs will go once the recession ends and whether law firms will be able to regain the work.
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Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading APIs are the LEGO Building Blocks of Data – API Panel Discussion with Emily Rushing, Pam Noyd, Chris O’Connor, Keli Whitnell, and Erik Adams (TGIR Ep. 183)

We give you the true “3 Geeks” experience on this week’s show as we are joined by an OG (original geek) Toby Brown. Toby, Marlene, and Greg talk with Litify’s President and COO, Ari Treuhaft, and Pam Wickersham, the VP of Product and Engineer there at Litify. One of the taglines at Litify is that they #BreakLegalSilos. Treuhaft and Wickersham explain what that means, and how they focus on providing an operating system, built on Salesforce, that creates transparency between Corporate Counsel and their law firms.

Both Ari and Pam got their start in Financial and Professional services, so they come at these business problems with a different approach. With Pam’s engineering background, and experiences at Google, she brings in a unique perspective on how to build the technology through the lens of the customer. Ari’s experiences with the Financial Services industry going to the cloud over a decade ago also positions him to better understand the naysayers in the legal industry who are still resistant to placing data in the cloud.

It’s a great conversation. We want to thank the great folks at City Acre Brewery in Houston, Texas for letting us record this episode there. And, for not laughing too hard as Greg destroyed his laptop by spilling an entire Maple Porter into his brand-new laptop. We hope this is a semi-regular event! (Recording at City Acre… not pouring a beer into laptops!!)

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Crystal Ball Question

Toby Brown takes on our question this week by talking about the fact that attorneys are resistant to changing behaviors, not because they are unwilling to adapt to new technology, but because this is an industry that is very reputational based.

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Voicemail: 713-487-7821
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca

Transcript

Continue Reading Creating Actual Transparency Between Law Firms and Clients – Litify’s Ari Treuhaft and Pam Wickersham (TGIR Ep. 182)

At present, the most universal priority for law departments is “controlling outside counsel costs” per 85% of respondents to the most recent TR Legal Department Operations Index.

I understand. I also doubt the marginal utility of simply pressing harder on the traditional levers of cost control (discounts, panels, RFPs, outside counsel guidelines, AFAs). My sometimes solicited, alternative advice:

  • Package work. Identify opportunities to enter portfolio arrangements, including integrated law relationships with New Law offerings.
  • Move work. Right source, including greater use of legal marketplaces to find the right talent at the right price.
  • Re-examine costs on autopilot. Major advances in ediscovery, ADR, court reporting, staffing, etc. present substantial, immediate spend-optimization opportunities.
  • Don’t stop investing in compliance by design. Embedding legal knowledge in business processes is the only viable, long-term approach to meeting the evolving legal needs of business in an increasingly complex operating environment.

If you want to discuss, call me, maybe.

Herein, however, I am not focused on being better. Rather, we will continue our exploration of avoiding worse. The unpalatable message remains that even when something must be done, doing nothing is superior to doing the wrong thing. Running in the wrong direction cannot be course corrected solely by redoubling our efforts.

Continue Reading Trust Fall: the limits of discounts, panels, billing guidelines, etc.

In a recent article from Legal IT Insider, Caroline Hill wrote about how “63% of all legal contracts are gender-biased” based on a report from Genie AI. We wanted to dive deeper into that topic, so we asked Caroline and Alex Denne, Genie AI’s Growth Marketing Lead, to come on at talk with us.
Genie AI is an Open-Source product with some 1,500 legal templates available in the UK currently and is looking to expand into the US in 2023. Alex Denne mentions that in the evaluation of these templates, and in discussions he was having in the industry, there was talk of gender-bias in contracts, but that there was no baseline to measure whether the industry was improving or regressing in its bias. Therefore, Genie AI took it upon itself to evaluate the contracts it had for bias terms and phrases. It was this evaluation that found that nearly 2/3rds of contracts had gender-biased terms in them.
Caroline Hill shares her experiences in the Legal Tech industry to note that the number of CIOs in the UK who are women is actually going down instead of up, and that she’s noticed that even in simple things like job descriptions, gender-biased terms have a cumulative effect. Jobs which pull from STEM graduates still used gender-biased terms and according to Hill, phrases like “we are looking for a strong” or “aggressive” or “go getter” tend to have a direct effect on whether women apply for these positions or not.
Alex Denne points out that the UK government is requiring gender-neutral language in all contracts they approve. Both Denne and Hill agree that in order for law firms to adjust their own contract language to use more gender-neutral terms, clients have a direct impact on how seriously they take that mission. If it is part of the culture of the client to reduce gender-bias, then perhaps that should be part of the outside counsel guidelines for the firms they use.

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Legal Value Network Crystal Ball Question:
This week, Erik Perez, Central Legal Operations Officer at Shell USA, Inc., answers our Crystal Ball Question by focusing on the long-term needs of legal operations to both stay on task, hire and retain excellent talent, and use the right people for the right tasks.
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Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7821
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading Nearly Two-Thirds of Legal Contracts are Gender-Biased and Why That Matters – Alex Denne and Caroline Hill (TGIR Ep. 181)

Tim Parilla isn’t just the Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares… he’s also a customer. That unique position of being the leader of the legal department of a company whose mission is to improve the workflow and efficiency of corporate legal departments, creates an exciting environment for Tim and his team.
Juliette Kopecky is the Chief Marketing Officer at LinkSquares and is leading the company’s DEI Initiatives and works closely with the in-house legal team to handle everything from internal issues to reviewing all the marketing and business development contracts. Juliette points to the fact that both she and Tim sit on the company’s executive team and have aligned their individual departments to the company’s overall mission, helps both of them understand and prioritize their overall processes.
Tim also gives us some insights on how he works with his outside counsel in large law firms. He lists some very simple, but effective ways that he interacts with law firms:
  • Have clear communications
  • Set scope and expectations
  • Be professional and competent
Most of all, Tim and Juliette point to the fact that regardless of if you are dealing with outside counsel, in-house legal teams, or even with the software development teams… the goal is to solve “business problems.” Not legal problems. Not organizational problems. Not technology problems. Solve business problems. If that is the way in which you address your issues, then that helps put you on the right path for creating an effective solution.

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Crytal Ball Answer
Stuart Dodds is Principle at Positive Pricing and is an executive board member at the Legal Value Network. When it comes to the future of legal pricing, he sees a focus on setting expectations for delivering superior client service, understanding the need to find the right people with the correct skillsets, and establishing the correct change management processes to help lawyers and others adjust to the upcoming shifts in the legal market.
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7821
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading LinkSquares’ Tim Parilla and Juliette Kopecky: These Aren’t Legal Problems or Tech Problems… These Are Business Problems (TGIR Ep. 180)

This week we are joined by LexisNexis’ Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer and Head of Global Talent Development, Ronda Bazley Moore. Ronda and a team of LexisNexis leadership in the LexisNexis African Ancestry Network & LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation Fellowship tasked 18 Fellows from Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU) Law Schools with one very complex task: Uncover how LexisNexis products could be used to address and eliminate systemic racism in the legal system.
The 2022 LexisNexis Equity in the Law Symposium was held in Washington, DC, where the 18 Fellows presented the results of their findings on how to reduce/eliminate system racism. The results were split into six separate clusters:
  1. Equity for Youth in the Legal System
  2. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Legal Education
  3. Diversity in Leadership of Legal Profession
  4. Diversity and Equity in the Courts
  5. Equity in the Criminal Justice System
  6. Racial Equity in Wealth and Ownership
Ronda describes some of the novel ways that the Fellows proposed to leverage the data, resources, and power held by LexisNexis to achieve the audacious goal set before them.
Links:

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Crystal Ball Question – Legal Value Network Conference

Amanda Norris, Senior Operations Manager at Integreon steps up this week to answer our Crystal Ball question. Amanda has a very interesting expectation on how support staff at law firms, specifically Legal Assistants and Legal Secretaries, provide support both in-person and remotely over the next few years.
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7821
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript 

Continue Reading The Mission: Eliminate Systemic Racism in the Legal System – LexisNexis’ Ronda Bazley Moore (TGIR Ep. 179)

Whether you loved it or hated it… Season One of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is in the books. And this also wraps up Season One of SuperHuman Law Division (SHLD) Podcast. We’ve enjoyed going through and spotting the legal and law firm issues and discussing them from both a lawyer’s perspective and a legal operations professional’s point of view.

We reached back out to local counsel this week and brought back Ashley Carlisle, Head of Marketing at HyperDraft to walk us through the legal topics of this specific episode, but also to put back on her marketing and business development hat and break down the good, the bad, and the downright ugly of GLK/H’s marketing strategy. Honestly, it was GLK/H’s lack of marketing strategy that really happened in this fictional MCU BigLaw firm.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to listen to our thoughts on the show. We’ll take a break and determine what we’ll talk about in a possible Season Two of SHLD. If you have suggestions, ping us at @SuperHumanPod on Twitter.

Stay Super Everyone!!

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Transcript:

Continue Reading What If… GLK/H Had A Great Marketing Team? (SHLD Ep. 9)

I’m not really into the whole brevity thing. I already wrote a brief post (only 800 words) that concludes with succint advice to law departments on discounts, AFAs, panels, outside counsel guidelines, RFPs, and, in particular, a humbling recommendation they not ask law firms about the use of technology unless the answers will inform structured dialogue to improve business outcomes at scale and pace (because I’d previously written a book on this subject).

At the conclusion of this off-brand concision, I promised my tiny corps of hard core readers an extended universe of nerd content. Fair warning, this is not for everyone.

Continue Reading Scary Stories about our Wicked Problems (Legal Nerd Halloween)

This week we reached out to local Los Angeles counsel, lawyer Ashley Carlisle, who is the Head of Marketing at HyperDraft to help break down Ep. 8 of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, “Ribbit and Rip It.” And there is a lot to talk about in the penultimate episode of season one.

We’d really like it if Jennifer/She-Hulk would take a little more time interviewing her clients before representing them in court. Specifically, ask more detailed questions of anyone who runs around in a superpowered Frog suit and calls themselves LeapFrog. Even if, or maybe especially if, your client’s father is a big client at GLK/H.

We finally get to see Matt Murdock, AKA Daredevil, in action, both in the court and fighting goons in dark hallways. Not to mention the chemistry between Jen and Matt. For two people who can fight and discuss legal defense strategy at the same time, we need to see them team-up much more often. (Maybe there is a future Murdock and Walters law firm in the making??? Please, MCU, say yes!!)

Just how much property damage can She-Hulk cause, and still feel like she needs to leave a note confessing to it?

And finally, the Gala Awards for “Female Lawyer of the Year” starts off bad, and immediately gets worse.

Huge thanks to Ashley Carlisle for lending a hand this week in discussing all the legal and other issues. To find out more about Ashley and HyperDraft, check out the links below.

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Transcript

Continue Reading She-Hulk and Daredevil: Attorneys at Law (SHLD Ep. 8)