This week’s guest, HBR Consulting‘s Axelle Flemming, stresses that “Intentional Leadership” creates leaders who “own their purpose.” And a purpose is separate from a business “goal.” Axelle’s experience showed her that when a leader truly knew what their purpose was, the purpose they were trying to achieve, they went to that level of execution. In addition to being an Intentional Leader, that must be balanced with the wellness of the organization and its people. In today’s work environment, we are in 24/7 fight or flight mode and intentional leaders understands that challenge. Leaders also see beyond their own goals and purpose and see other people’s goals and purpose as well.
On Thursday, September 15th, Axelle Flemming is presenting a Keynote presentation at HBR’s Legal Information + Knowledge Services (LINKS) Conference, on this very issue. She “sprinkles” in some of the spice of her talk her on the podcast, but will bring the “secret sauce” to the LINKS Conference.
Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert, along with John DiGilio will wrap up the conference through a discussion of Axelle Flemming’s and the other presentations of the day.
Registration for the LINKS event is open all the way through the day of the conference.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify
AALL Crystal Ball Answer
Our good friend, Mark Gediman of Alston & Bird, answers our Crystal Ball question by predicting how Law Schools and Law Firms will collaborate on business and competitive intelligence processes to help law students better prepare for the practice of law once they enter the profession.
Links Discussed:
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7821‬
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript:

Continue Reading Intentional Leadership is about Owning Your Purpose – HBR’s Axelle Flemming (TGIR Ep. 173)

When it comes to the future of legal innovation, Olga Mack of Parley Pro at LexisNexis says that as the legal industry becomes more focused on being a ‘service’, legal technology will just become part of the overall design of products and services. It will not stand alone as a separate process, but rather legal innovation will be built into products such as HR tools that build in compliance processes, or financial tools build in legal components by design. Legal tech simply integrates into all technology processes.

Olga Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro and recently led the company through an acquisition with LexisNexis. Olga points out that while she was not a founder of Parley Pro, she took her role at leading the company of contract management and collaboration tools very seriously on how it handled its success during the pandemic. She points out that all startups go through a process of looking at its future and deciding do we go public, do we get acquired, or do we die and file for bankruptcy. Her previous relationship with LexisNexis helped her understand the value that Lexis’ content would bring to Parley Pro and she says the relationship is exactly what Parley Pro, and their customers needed.

Olga has a strong reputation within the legal community and she actually insists that she wakes up each day and works to live up to that reputation. It’s not a ‘brand’ that she presents to the world, but rather her authentic self as she presents at webinars, conferences, or even in TEDx speeches.

In both an upcoming (early 2023) release of her ABA book, Visual IQ for Lawyers, and a soon to be released third TEDx talk on the same subject, Olga’s current inspiration is the adding of visual aspects within documents and contracts. Companies such as Google and others are already using these visual processes in their contracts and it is a skill and concept that Olga thinks many lawyer currently lack. “I think visual intelligence is not something you’re born with. It’s like reading, writing and arguing. It’s something you learn, intentionally.” Olga Mack continues, “And this book is an attempt to, one, show the importance of visual intelligence in communications, and to give frameworks and basic concepts to allow legal professionals, not just lawyers, to understand, relate, interpret, communicate in an increasingly visual world.”

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify
Links Discussed:
AALL Crystal Ball Answer:

We keep it within the LexisNexis family this week with Loyd Auerbach answering our Crystal Ball Question on how the industry, and law librarians specifically are changing the traditional work model as we make remote and hybrid work a part of our daily work process.

Check out Greg’s Newest Podcast, The SuperHuman Law Division.

Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7821‬
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading The Future of Legal Innovation Will Be Built In By Design – Olga Mack (TGIR – Ep. 172)

When you sign a huge new client at your firm, what do you do to celebrate? If you are Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, and you just signed Megan Thee Stallion… you dance!
How Do We Handle Parole Hearings for Supervillains?
Episode Three: The People vs. Emil Blonsky picks up where we left off with trying to understand how The Abomination managed to escape the most secure prison in the world, participate in an underground fight club with the Supreme Sorcerer, and then go back to this prison without anyone apparently noticing he’d been gone. The obvious answer is that it was “magic” or in this case, sorcery. Wong joins in on the fun as he explains to Jennifer that it was his actions that caused Blonsky to escape and that he’d testify to that at the parole hearing. (Nothing is simple in the MCU.)

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify
Can a SuperHuman/Other Worlder Defraud Someone?

Another case going on with the SuperHuman Law Division is Jen and Nikki’s old workmate Dennis Bukowski’s issue with being defrauded by a shapeshifting Light-Elf from New Asgard who pretended to be Megan Thee Stallion. Would a reasonable person believe that Dennis could pull Megan Thee Stallion?? Probably not. But, is Dennis a reasonable person? Probably not.

Office Space at GLK/H

We get a little more of a peek into Jen’s and Holden Holliway’s offices. This is a high-end, well crafted office space. How does it compare to actual law firm offices in 2022? Where are the paralegal offices? Where is the diversity of lawyers at GLK/H? Why does Holliway have a bar in his office and Jennifer does not? We address all of these important issues.

The Wrecking Crew is Out for Blood
Who is the next “Big Bad” for She-Hulk? The Leader? Kingpin?
She-Hulk Thee Rainmaker
Perhaps the most controversial scene in Episode Three was the twerking by She-Hulk and Megan Thee Stallion after she is signed on as GLK/H’s news high-profile client. While real-life Twitter may have been upset, Mr. Holliway was not. Would a Managing Partner have something to say to a rainmaker dancing with her client? We discuss this, as well as the misogyny seen in the show, and how that compares to law firm life for women in the legal industry.
Share/Contact/Subscribe

Contact us at @glambert, @JoshuaLenon, or @SuperHumanPod and let us know what you think!

Share this with friends, and don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
Stay Super Everybody!!
Transcript

Continue Reading She-Hulk Thee Rainmaker (SHLD Ep. 3)

Episode 2 of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is exactly the kind of show that we want to cover her on the SuperHuman Law Division Podcast! Jen Walters finds herself without a job after GLK/H got a mistrial ruling. (Joshua predicted a mistrial in Ep. 1.) After applying at numerous law firms and being less and less picky about where she lands a job, she heads back to the Legal Ease bar to drown her sorrows. And that’s where her former advisory Holden Holliway offers her a job. She can bring her paralegal Nikki with her, but the deal is that Holliway wants She-Hulk as the face of the SuperHuman Law Division, not Jennifer.

So we cover lots of BigLaw issues in this episode:

  • Six-Figure Student Loan Debts
  • Can Holliway demand Jen stay in She-Hulk form?
  • THAT LAW LIBRARY!!!
  • THE SIZE OF THAT OFFICE!!!
  • Maps to the best bathrooms for pooping.
  • Conflicts and Conflict Waivers
  • Parole Hearings
  • So.Much.More…

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify

We’d like to hear from our listeners on what issues you spotted, and what did we get wrong? Do you have a real-life SuperHuman Lawyer or Legal Professional that you’d like us to mention?

Contact us at @glambert, @JoshuaLenon, or @SuperHumanPod and let us know what you think!

Stay Super Everybody!!

Transcript:

Continue Reading The Best Place to Go, When You Have to Go (SHLD Ep.2)

How exactly would a world that contains people with super human powers maintain law and order over those individuals? More specifically, how could a law firm position its attorneys to represent those superhumans, and make some money off of them at the same time? These are some of the questions that Clio’s Lawyer in Residence, Joshua Lenon, and AmLaw 200 firm’s Chief Knowledge Services Officer, Greg Lambert prepare to answer. Starting off with Disney+/MCU’s newest show, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

The series is about how a top-tier Los Angeles law firm, GLK/H has created a new practice group called SuperHuman Law Division. This division is designed to represent those with superhuman abilities against the criminal and civil law suits that they face. Everyone deserves competent legal representation and GLK/H’s high-dollar attorneys plan to do just that.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify

This podcast focuses on the legal issues we spot in the episodes. Some of them may be obvious, some may be ignored, but not by us. Whether it is simple assault, kidnapping, property damages, corporate espionage, or even murder, we’re here to call it out and discuss what the law should do about it.

We’ll also take our unique experiences in working in the legal industry to talk about the dynamics of what it takes to run a law firm with such specialized and unique clients.

So strap into your hoverjet and sit back as we launch the SuperHuman Law Division Podcast.

Follow on Twitter at @superhumanpod

Transcript

Greg Lambert  0:19

So imagine running a superhuman law division of a law firm. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do here. As we start going over the series, she hooked Attorney at Law now on Disney plus, first, let’s

Continue Reading SuperHuman Law Division Podcast with Joshua Lenon and Greg Lambert

For the first time ever, we have a guest co-host this week while Marlene wears her fancy sneakers around ILTACon seeking answers to our Crystal Ball question.
Katie Brown, Associate Dean for Information Resources at Charleston School of Law is on a mission to increase the teaching of practical technology skills to law students. In her view, law professors “are required to educate people so that they can go out into the practice and successfully do that. And so beyond just, rule 1.1 with legal technology and having that competency, for us as law schools, I think we have an ethical obligation to be teaching legal technology.” This approach needs to be embedded into the Law School’s culture, because it costs money, time, and effort to do correctly.
In upcoming research collected with University of Connecticut Law’s Jessica de Perio Wittman, Brown and de Perio Wittman calculated that on average, law students have less than 4 classes during their entire time in law school that have some aspect of teaching them the technology skills in that topic. Brown wants to see that number rise.
AALL Crystal Ball Answer

While in Denver at the AALL Conference, Katie not only answered our Crystal Ball question, she also persuaded Abby Dos Santos, Reference Librarian at Caplin & Drysdale, to sit down with her and have a conversation about the pipeline of technology teaching from law school to law firms. We cover both of those answers and then Katie turns the mic on Greg to ask what law students need to understand about court dockets before landing in law firms.

Special thanks to Katie Brown for stepping in and co-hosting this week!!

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7821‬
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

 

Continue Reading Teaching (and Pressuring) Law Professors to Teach Technology – Katie Brown (TGIR Ep. 171)

As Laura Leopard‘s team at Leopard Solutions was analyzing the 2021 law firm lateral movement data, a glaring statistic stood out. There were a lot of women attorneys leaving AmLaw200 firms, and were not coming back like their male counterparts were. As with any good data expert, Laura worked with her team to find out the reasoning behind this trend. The results of that study were released earlier this summer in Leopard Solution’s “Women Leaving Law” report.
We sit down with Laura to discuss statistics that show that some 64% of women lawyers who leave AmLaw200 firms don’t come back to those firms, some 60% of male attorneys don’t either. And while many might think that the reasons for women not returning are part of the “Shecession” of the pandemic, the survey shows that is not the primary reason. The actual reasons involve things like law firm culture, lack of lateral recruiting of women, uneven promotions, and lack of flexibility needed to retain women in the legal workforce.
The report does give eleven processes that law firms can implement to help recruit and retain women. We go through each of those, one by one to learn more.
AALL Crystal Ball Question
We have a familiar voice joining us this week as Bob Ambrogi answers our Crystal Ball Question and discusses the path he predicts state legal regulatory sandboxes are going to take over the next few years.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify

Links Mentioned:
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading 11 Steps Law Firms Can Take to Stop “Women Leaving Law” – Laura Leopard (TGIR Ep. 170)

Five years ago, Dr. Heidi Gardner, Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and co-founder, Gardner & Co, wrote the book, “Smart Collaboration” where she laid out the “why” behind smart collaboration efforts. In her upcoming sequel, “Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work,” Dr. Gardner explains the “who” and the “how” behind collaboration. The issues that law firms face today are incredibly complex and multifaceted. And in an industry famous for “going it alone,” that approach exposes firms to much greater risk than those who find ways of implementing “smarter collaboration” techniques. 
Smarter Collaboration helps increase revenues, profits, and efficiencies while reducing risks and improving client relationships and positive outcomes. While the idea of collaboration may sound like a “soft topic” for law firm leaders, Dr. Gardner points out that there is empirical data behind this and if firms are not engaging in smarter collaboration when doing the “real work” then they are either doing something that is pretty low value, or that falls into the realm of commodity work.  
In addition to data driven analysis, Smarter Collaboration also includes a number of examples of how companies and law firms thrive through the use of Smarter Collaboration. Plus, there is a test on determining behavioral tendencies when it comes to collaboration. This psychometric tool helps identify seven different dimensions which can lead to great collaboration within the organization, or may be barriers to collaboration. And, as strange as it may sound to those of us in the legal industry, law firms are not unique when it comes to collaborative behaviors. In fact, Dr. Gardner says law firms are more different from each other than they are from other professional services industries or large corporations.
Listen in for more details on the upcoming book, Smarter Collaboration.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify
AALL Crystal Ball Question
This week we have John Beatty from the University of Buffalo Law School answer our crystal ball question where he points out that the pipeline of traditional law librarians for law schools may be running dry.
Links Mentioned:
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

 

Continue Reading Increased Revenue, Profits, and Efficiencies through “Smarter Collaboration” – Dr. Heidi Gardner (TGIR Ep. 169)

This week, we talk about the experiences that law students and recent law grads have during their internships, summer associate positions, and their judicial clerkships. While most of us work very hard to make sure that these (traditionally young) associates and clerks enjoy and learn from their experiences, today’s guests understands firsthand that not all of these experiences are positive. Aliza Shatzman, the co-founder of the Legal Accountability Project, talks with us about her judicial clerkship, which essentially derailed her legal career before it even gets started.
While Shatzman’s dream of becoming a Homicide Prosecutor was taken from her, she took this negative experience and used it as motivation to start the Legal Accountability Project with her WashU classmate, Matt Goodman. The Project’s purpose is to “ensure that as many law clerks as possible have positive clerkship experiences, while extending support and resources to those who do not.”
The Legal Accountability Project is partnering with multiple law schools to create a post-clerkship survey that allows them to share their experiences (both positive and negative) through a database which will be shared with future clerks so they are better informed on what to expect from the clerkships. The idea is to use the data collected to quantify any issues and to craft effective solutions.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify

 

AALL Crystal Ball Question: Emily Janoski-Haehlen
Our Crystal Ball answer this week comes from the Dean of Akron Law School, Emily Janoski-Haehlen. Dean Janoski-Haehlen stresses the need for more legal skills training to better prepare students for legal practice. As a tie-in for the main interview, she also covers what questions her school asks returning summer associates and clerks and how they use those to help identify what is working and what needs improving.
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript:

Continue Reading Aliza Shatzman – Turning a Horrible Judicial Clerkship Experience into the Legal Accountability Project (TGIR Ep. 168)

HyperDraft’s Tony Thai knew he could produce a better method of practicing law and producing legal documents. He viewed processes more like an engineer than a lawyer and understood that there were more efficient ways to do the work, not for the sake of efficiency, but because like any good engineer, he was lazy. Or, as he describes himself, “aggressively lazy.” Not lazy in the traditional sense, but rather lazy in the way that many of us understand that the current way of working is just wasting everyone’s time, and there has to be an easier/better/faster way of doing it. The good kind of lazy.
So after months and years of waiting for the industry to find ways of creating a better process, and failing to actually do it, he jumped in and just did it himself. The idea that he’d been working on and developing to make his own corporate law work better, became his full-time gig and the launch of HyperDraft. This year his fellow BigLaw colleague, Sean Greaney joined HyperDraft as its first General Counsel.
We talk about their journey to create a commercial product. Along the way we ask if creativity, innovation, and producing viable commercial products like HyperDraft means that lawyers at firms have to split off from that firm? The answer is a mix of yes, no, and maybe. One thing that both point out is that while the idea may be viable, a young associate really doesn’t have the legal experience needed to understand the nuances involved in creating a deliverable that scales and fits the overall needs of the lawyer and the client. That’s why Tony and Sean stuck around for a few more years to learn the in’s and out’s of the processes before leaving to launch HyperDraft. It’s a lesson that many entrepreneur/lawyers may want to learn before launching their own startups.

Listen on mobile platforms:  Apple Podcasts LogoApple Podcasts |  Spotify LogoSpotify
AALL Crystal Ball Questions:
We recorded a number of crystal ball answers at this year’s American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) annual conference in Denver. This week, Susan DeMaine from Indiana University Maurer School of Law looks at the effect that inflation is having on law schools and how she and other law school professors and administrators are needing to do to stay ahead of those effects.
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Listener Perk:
HyperDraft is providing Geek in Review podcast listeners with a complimentary month free of its document automation software.
Save 90% of the time drafting legal documents. Click here to try HyperDraft for free.
Transcript:

Continue Reading HyperDraft’s Tony Thai and Sean Greaney – The Compatibility of BigLaw and Innovative Lawyers (TGIR Ep.167)