With the influx of Venture Capital and overall interests in Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), the rest of the legal industry is finally figuring out what InnoLaw‘s Lucy Bassli has known for years; contracts are sexy. We sit down with Lucy to discuss her second book, CLM Simplified: Efficient Contracting for Law Departments and the potential of making the contract process faster, better, easier, smarter, more efficient, operationalized, and automated is the concept that is so appealing. Lucy Bassli’s experience in-house with Microsoft helped launch her new career advising other in-house and outside counsel on legal operations, and how to really communicate with one another in ways to produce true innovation.

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Information Inspirations

The Debt Relief Clinic was named the 2022 recipient of the Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access for its commitment to increasing legal services to low-income Tennesseans and reaching that goal through the innovative use of technology.

We talked about the Law Firm Antiracism Alliance back in August of 2020 (Ep. 83), well our guest, Skadden’s Brenna DeVaney along with Cravath’s Kiisha Morrow talk with Thomson Reuter’s Thomas Kim to catch us all up on the progress that LFAA member firms are doing in order to keep up the momentum we all felt after the summer of 2020.

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.

Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 148 – InnoLaw’s Lucy Bassli on the Sexiness of Contracts

When Sang Lee set out to begin her own talent management and recruitment company, her two-decades of experience taught her that much of the industry felt like a charade. To change that, she thought of the phrase, “To Thine Own Self Be True” as a guiding principle and from that came the company she co-founded called Thine. The youngest of three daughters from an immigrant family, she had many expectations placed upon her, but while she and her sisters all graduated from Georgetown Law School, her father’s dream of a Lee, Lee, & Lee law firm never came into fruition. Instead, Sang found herself in the legal recruiting profession after working as an associate in a large law firm. In 2019, she launched Thine with Jon Strom where they focus on custom assessments and benchmarking for recruiting, leadership skills, and competency assessments to find and build great fits for both the law firms and the attorneys. Thine’s use of algorithmic data, Organizational Psychology, and interview insights creates assessments which reflect what it really takes to be a successful attorney within the firm.
Check out Thine’s and Ari Kaplan Advisor’s Report on how the legal industry is approaching hiring, development, and promotion of associates. 

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Information Inspirations
Down to the Struts is a podcast focusing on issues regarding living with disabilities. In the latest episode, host Qudsiya Naqui is joined by fellow podcasters Cheryl Green and Thomas read to talk about their experiences and the lack of support from the non-disabled community.
Data may be undervalued as an ESG strategy, but with new business scoring which looks at company ESG statements, businesses may need to start looking at the data as part of their overall strategy.
Maya Markovich, Kristen Sonday, and Sonja Ebron join Talk Justice’s podcast host, Jason Tashea to discuss this launching of the new Justice Technology Association (JTA.)
FTI Consulting, Inc. recently announced findings from Part 3 of The General Counsel Report 2022: Leading with Endurance Through Risk, Culture and Technology Challenges.
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Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert.

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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.

Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Transcript

 

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 147 – Sang Lee: Talent Management That Enables People to Be True to Themselves

There were a number of SNAFUs the past couple of weeks here at The Geek in Review, but even with scheduling difficulties and personal emergencies, we wanted to get an episode out this week. In order for everyone to “get their geek on,” we created an “Information Inspirations” episode. We’ll be back next week with more traditional content, but we hope you enjoy our musings on news and ideas around the legal industry.

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Information Inspirations
Bill Henderson’s State supreme courts and the challenges of PeopleLaw discusses the power that state supreme courts have in the regulation and delivery of the legal industry and access to justice. These courts have the power over the market structure, dispute resolution, and licensure of the practice of law. However, the Justices are reluctant regulators and Henderson suggests that they need to shake off this reluctance and fix a system that is in serious need of change.
The American Bar Association is poised to change a series of law school accreditation rules and the change could go into effect as early as this fall. This round of changes deals with anti-discrimination training that law students need to take before they can graduate. 
The ROSS v. Westlaw battle continues with ROSS recently crying foul that Westlaw is using copyright arguments to maintain what they claim to be a monopoly on legal information. Julie Sobowale dives a little deeper on one issue that affects both US and Canadian legal research innovators, and that is access to primary materials like case law. 
Law School 1Ls and 2Ls shouldn’t just look at BigLaw for their summer associate work. Working with startups or venture capital firms may be another option out there. 
The legal industry looked to the NFL’s Rooney Rule to help guide our own version through the Mansfield Rule. While the NFL gave a good blueprint for how to expand the search for minority talent, a recent lawsuit by former Miami Dolphin Head Coach, Brian Flores, alleges that it is also a blueprint for how to claim we are doing great things for minority hiring, but the reality is that it is a check-the-box and continue-as-normal process.
The era of COVID produced a major shift in the concepts of virtual court proceedings. While we’ve had bumps in the road, it seems that virtual courts are here to stay. 
Bonus Inspirations
Sacred Scandal
Comic Book Couples Counseling
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Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 146 – All Information… All Inspirations

One of the things we love to talk about on this podcast is how to take data and make it tell a story. This week’s guests are doing just that on the topic of Community Policing and making sure that there is equal coverage for both the Community part, as well as the Policing part. Ama Romaine, co-founder and Chair, and Wayne Harris, Executive Director of The Initiative: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership, join us to describe how they are taking quantitative and qualitative data from both communities and the police agencies to identify the current relationship between them, and how they are aligned and misaligned when it comes to community policing.
The conversation about [community] policing… really needs to get to where we recognize that we’re in this together. That there’s very little separation between the men and women wearing a police uniform, and the people that they are working with.” – Wayne Harris
What we are really trying to do is give voice to individuals in their communities and create a way for local leaders, for police leaders, for anyone, really, to be able to understand what a community needs. And then let’s focus on creating and providing those needs for that community. That’s what’s going to create thriving communities in the end and, frankly, reduce the need for law enforcement to solve every single problem that we have.” – Ama Romaine
Links:

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Information Inspirations:

Our fellow geek, Casey Flaherty talks about his recent blog post series with Chad Main of the Technically Legal Podcast.

Is a workcation or bleisure travel in your future? A survey of business/leisure travelers seems to point in that direction.
Contact Us:
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert.
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.
Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript:

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 145 – Ama Romaine and Wayne Harris on The Initiative: Advancing the Blue and Black Partnership

This week’s guest is Maker5, Inc. CEO and Founder Sanjay Kamlani. Sanjay’s experience of creating businesses like Office Tiger and Pangea3 give him a unique view of the legal technology and innovation sector, and specifically what tends to work well, and what tends to fall short when it comes to true innovation. Maker5, Inc is a Venture Studio designed to incubate its own businesses to spin them off as independent businesses, as well as being an advisory to law firms and software development services for law firms. When it comes to internal innovation, Sanjay’s view is that  the CIO and CTO do not have enough practicing lawyers integrated with what they’re trying to accomplish at the firm. Too often firms try to innovate in a vacuum, without the input and guidance of innovation partners or practicing attorneys and they end up not having any real authority or responsibility for implementing the innovative project.
In addition to development structure, there are also cultural disincentives to adopting true innovation, especially in the law firm setting.
If you think about how most firms are focused 100% on the billable hour, and then you start thinking about what technology achieves … that ends up reducing billable hours, you immediately start to realize that there’s a big contradiction…. Unless you have an incentive structure that is consistent with the notion of efficiency and better, faster, cheaper, you’re not going to get adoption. Everyone’s going to run in the opposite direction of that tool.” – Sanjay Kamlani
We walk through the processes of coming up with innovative ideas, whether to build it internally or find an off the shelf version, implementation and adoption, and the continuing maintenance of the innovation on a full-time scalable basis. Something that very few law firms are set up to do from start to finish. Kamlani identifies a number of processes that need to be in place, and what questions need to be asked and answered throughout the innovation creation, implementation, adoption, and maintenance lifecycle. It is a fascinating look into innovation that many of us may not have had the opportunity to experience. 

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Information Inspirations
If you have not checked out the #SKILLS22 conference content, Greg’s overview of all 20 sessions can help you find the right session to watch.
Marlene covers more on the Great Resignation from a Boston College report that breaks down who are leaving their jobs and some of the details of what certain sectors of the US population are affected more than others.
Contact Us
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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.
Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript 

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 144 – Maker5’s Sanjay Kamlani on the Who, What, and How of Legal Innovation

Last Thursday, a group of some 400 legal knowledge management professionals came together for the Strategic Knowledge & Innovation Legal Leaders Summit (SKILLS) conference.  Oz Benamram asked me to pull together a 20 minute recap of all of the presentations that day, and share it with the 3 Geeks’ readers. So, here’s about a 20 minute recap of the 20 presentations for that day. Enjoy!!

Jason Barnwell – Keynote

There are two things that most of us know about Jason. First, he thinks there is always opportunities for improvement. Whether that is for himself, his team at Microsoft, and especially for law firms looking to better service their clients. His takeaway quote for me was when Kay Kim asked him what are law firms doing right and what are they doing wrong?

So the biggest challenge I see is, is structural, and as much as the business model works pretty well for about right now. But it doesn’t necessarily work great for where we’re going.

The other thing that we know about Jason is that if you are presenting on innovation in a law firm, he’s going to ask you specifically “is what you are doing benefitting the law firm only, or does it benefit the client?” So, expect to answer that question… at a minimum to yourself, even if Jason isn’t in the room.

Digital Transformation – Shark-TED-Talk-Tank (Part 1)

I loved all three sessions of our Shark-Ted-Talk-Tank presentations. We were just missing the three billionaires, and the large red carpet. But, the content was all there. Continue Reading SKILLS 2022 – Recap

This week we talk with Factor’s Ed Sohn and Michael Callier on the consulting for in-house legal teams through what they describe as New Law companies. New Law is who corporate legal counsel reach out to in order to streamline their operations and find ways of integrating themselves into the overall mission of the corporation, rather than just the department which mitigates legal and business risks. Sohn and Callier stress that New Law companies are not a threat to established law firms, but rather a partner who can help firms differentiate themselves from their peers by allowing for the consultation to clients for alternative legal strategies.
Ed Sohn on Barriers to Adoption in Law
Process adoption, or its failure oftentimes rests with people. It actually rests with social learning. it actually rests with how do you celebrate and story tell and create a culture that’s conducive to the adoption of technology and innovation. 
Michael Callier on Change Management in the Legal Industry
To be honest, it’s not that people fear change, it’s that people fear the loss associated with change. We change every day. We change clothes. We eat different things. We go to different places that we’ve never been before. So it’s not it’s not fear of change, it’s fear of the loss associated with change. And so in particular, with the legal industry.

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Information Inspirations
Jean O’Grady helps bring Thomson Reuters’ abandonment of 24/7 Research Attorney Help Desk from her Dewey B. Strategic Blog, as well as her discussion on Bob Ambrogi’s Legal Journalists Roundtable.
Mergers are hot!
Contact Us
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert.
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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.
Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript 

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 143 – Factor’s Ed Sohn and Michael Callier on Leading through New Law

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
― Yogi Berra
Yet that never stops us from asking our “crystal ball” questions to our guests like Axiom’s Chief Commercial Officer, David Pierce. Some of the traits that David believes will make for successful businesses and people include:
  • Emphasis on creativity and great imaginations
  • Make it clear that everyone’s health and safety are top priorities through clear communication and transparent efforts
  • Be flexible on work environments with clear policies
  • Lay out clear business missions and objectives and make it clear what role each person plays in helping accomplish that mission
We also dive into Axiom’s mission and the role that David has played over the past few years. As well as David dropping some knowledge about Yellow Loading Zones he learned in law school.

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Contact Us
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert.
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Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.
Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 142 – Axiom’s David Pierce on Talent Recruitment and Flexible Working-Models Amid Shifting Industry Expectations

We have a double-header of interviews this week with Marlene talking with Suffolk Law School’s Gabe Teninbaum on his new book, Productizing Legal Work: Providing Legal Expertise at Scale. Greg talks with Lindsie Rank, Student Press Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) about the new website to help journalists answer the question, “Can I Publish This?“
Gabe Teninbaum’s book discusses the variety of ways that processes can be productized, ranging from simple orientation tasks, to more complicated, but repetitive task which can be streamlined through technology, or even by just creating checklists or instructions. While the idea of taking task which we are used to performing and productizing them may be scary for some, it is necessary if we are going to move beyond repetitive tasks and work on processes that really benefit from our skillsets.
Lindsie Rank (12:56 mark) calls herself a 1st Amendment geek, and she and others at FIRE help defend student journalists in colleges across the country when their First Amendment rights are challenged. Surprisingly, the biggest threat to student journalists isn’t the hyper-partisan environment we find ourselves in these days, but rather the threat to university or administrative reputations. In addition to protecting student journalist after the fact, FIRE productized the process that allows journalists to determine the risks before they publish when it comes to liable, intellectual property issues, or other potential risks from publishing stories. Staying with Gabe Teninbaum’s theme, FIRE has productized the process and allowed journalists to access the information through the self-help website, 24-hours a day.

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Information Inspirations
Does the DIY home improvement boom have staying power? Now, if they would only open one of these close to Marlene’s house.
Contact Us
Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert.
Voicemail: 713-487-7270
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com.
Music: As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 141 – Gabe Teninbaum on Productizing Legal Work / Lindsie Rank on Can I Publish This?

Tropes around tech utopianism are attractive fictions that promise quick wins and deliver long-term pain, ultimately undermining our efforts at effective value storytelling (series recap, plus prior screeds against tech-fixated magical thinking here, here, and here)

A new bombshell lawsuit against a contract lifecycle management provider offers a stark reminder of the promise and peril of CLM—and therefore an unfortunate but instructive example of how tech-first solutioning can go terribly wrong.

Bad contracting processes have consequences. At the center of the complaint is a ~$5m contract for CLM services and tech. The plaintiff claim they terminated the contract early for alleged uncured breaches thereof and then mistakenly continued to make ~$1.7m in payments to defendant.

Isn’t it ironic (in the Alanis Morrissette sense of the word) that in a lawsuit centered around a disastrous effort to improve contract management a substantial percentage of the alleged damages are due to alleged failures in contract management.

The business value of better contracting is not in question. As discussed previously, a 20% improvement in contracting efficacy has, on average, 32x the business impact of cutting outside counsel spend by 20%. Tech has an important role to play. But tech should not be the star of the show, especially in the beginning.

When tech is not the primary problem (or the primary solution). The complaint begins its retelling in October 2019 when the defendant gave an in-person platform demonstration. In June 2020—seven months later “following a rigorous selection process”—the parties entered into the $5m contract only to terminate it in April 2021, ten months post execution. Suit was filed in November—more than two years after the demo (which is unlikely to have even been the beginning of this ill-fated journey).

Important for our purposes, the plaintiff specifically alleges only one tech-related misrepresentation giving rise to their claims (the ability to “apply a single contract amendment to multiple agreements simultaneously”). Beyond that, every issue raised in the complaint relates to the enormous amount of work required to properly implement CLM.

Characterized as inadequate in the complaint:

  • Staffing
  • Availability of key resources
  • Status tracking
  • Training
  • Documentation
  • Discovery
  • Design
  • Feedback
  • Data mapping
  • Data conversion
  • Data migration
  • Data validation
  • Template harmonization
  • Contract sorting
  • Clause matching
  • Implementation
  • Integration

The tech is not the central grievance. The gravamen of the complaint is the absence of expertise: Continue Reading Tech-First Failures – Value Storytelling (#6)