The last time I wrote a blog post for Three Geeks was in 2021. It was the height of COVID, and I had just hosted my first (and only) Clubhouse session. We were talking about the Billable Hour.
Clubhouse has since faded into the recesses of memory. COVID, thankfully, has too. But the billable hour
In this episode of The Geek in Review, we sit down with Narrative founder John Tertan to talk about law firm pricing, messy data, and why substance matters more than shiny tools. We pick up from our first meeting at the Houston Legal Innovators event, where John had the pricing and KM crowd buzzing, and ask what he is hearing from those teams as they look toward 2026. John explains how Narrative focuses on “agentifying” business-of-law work, starting with pricing and analytics, so firms stop guessing and start grounding decisions in better data. The goal is simple, improve decisions for pricing teams, finance, marketing, and partners who want to win work that also makes financial sense.
John walks through the pain points that drive firms to seek out Narrative, from low realization and high write-offs to tedious non-billable work and a lack of trust in the data behind pitches and budgets. Many firms track key metrics in scattered spreadsheets, checked once in a while rather than used as a daily guide for strategy. Narrative steps into that gap by improving the accuracy of historical matter data, identifying the right reference matters for new proposals, and supporting alternative fee structures. John explains how this foundation supports better scoping, more confident pricing conversations, and far stronger alignment between firm goals and client expectations.
We also dive into John’s founder journey, which runs from Freshfields associate to innovation work, then through venture-backed tech in other sectors before returning to legal. That mix of big law, startup experience, and prior success with HeyGo shapes how he builds Narrative. John talks about serving “mature customers” who expect more than a slick interface, they expect real understanding of their business, their politics, and their constraints. Relationships sit at the center of his approach, not only with clients and prospects, but also with advisors, former firm leaders, and legal tech veterans who guide both product and go-to-market strategy.
The name “Narrative” is no accident, and John explains why time entry narratives sit at the heart of his product. Those lines of text describe what lawyers did, for whom, and why, yet they often sit underused in billing systems. Narrative improves and structures that data, then uses it to highlight scope, track what remains in or out of scope, and surface early warnings when matters drift away from the original plan. John talks through the life cycle, from selecting comparable matters, through modeling AFAs and scenarios, to monitoring work in progress and feeding lessons back into future pricing efforts. Along the way, better transparency supports stronger trust between partners and clients.
We close by asking John to look ahead. He shares his view on how firms will move toward more sophisticated pricing models and better measurement, while the billable hour continues to evolve rather than vanish overnight. Stronger baselines, cleaner matter histories, and better tracking create room for fee caps, success components, and other structures that clients want to sell internally. John also shares how he stays informed through alerts, networks, and a new chief of staff who helps turn those insights into resources for pricing and finance professionals. For listeners who want to learn more or follow Narrative’s work, John points them to narrativehq.com and invites outreach from anyone wrestling with data, pricing, or margin questions inside their own firm.
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[Special Thanks to Legal Technology Hub for their sponsoring this episode.]
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Few people understand the intersection of legal practice, data analytics, and diversity like Catherine Krow, Managing Director of Diversity and Impact Analytics at BigHand. In this episode of The Geek in Review, hosts Greg Lambert and Marlene Gebauer sit down with Krow to trace her journey from a high-powered trial lawyer to an influential legal tech leader. After seventeen years at firms like Orrick and Simpson Thacher, Krow’s turning point came when a client challenged her team’s billing after a major courtroom victory—a moment that sparked her mission to fix what she calls the “business of law.”
That single moment led to the creation of Digitory Legal, a company designed to give law firms the data and transparency they desperately needed but didn’t yet value. Krow describes how her framework—plan, measure, refine—became the basis for improving cost predictability and strengthening client trust. When BigHand acquired Digitory Legal in 2022, Krow’s vision found a larger stage. Now, her “data refinery” powers better pricing, resource allocation, and even equity within firms. As she explains, clean data doesn’t only improve profitability, it reveals hidden inequities in work allocation and helps firms retain their most promising talent.
Krow also digs into one of her favorite topics: “data debt.” Law firms are drowning in data but starved for information. She explains how poor data hygiene—like inconsistent time codes and messy narratives—has left firms unable to use their most valuable resource. BigHand’s impact analytics tools attack this problem head-on, transforming raw billing data into usable intelligence that drives decision-making across finance, staffing, and diversity efforts. And while the technology is powerful, Krow is clear that solving data debt is as much a cultural challenge as it is a technical one.
Another major theme is the evolving role of business professionals within law firms. Krow argues that lawyers’ traditional discomfort with financial forecasting and project management is holding firms back. Her solution? Combine legal expertise with the commercial acumen of allied professionals. Together, they can meet client demands for budgets, accountability, and measurable value—especially as AI begins to reshape how legal services are delivered and priced.
The episode closes with Krow’s broader reflection on the next decade of legal innovation. She warns that the biggest shift ahead isn’t about AI or analytics—it’s about mindset. Firms that embrace data-driven decision-making now will define the future of law; those that don’t will be left behind. Through her work at BigHand, Krow is helping to ensure that future is both more efficient and more equitable.
Links:
Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
[Special Thanks to Legal Technology Hub for their sponsoring this episode.]
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Ironclad‘s Chief Community Officer, Mary O’Carroll, has spent the past two decades bringing business acumen to the legal industry. In an industry run by lawyers, most of whom had little to no business training, Mary points out that it is logical that legal ops teams are needed to be the right-hand people in helping lawyers in the business process. Her experience with Orrick, Google, CLOC, and now Ironclad has one common thread, and that is the need to drive change. Mary says that it is just a part of her personality to be laser-focused on efficiency and find ways to clean up the mess she uncovers in the legal industry.
For those of us in large law firms, we understand that Practice Group Leaders have the following responsibilities:
For Lathrop GPM’s Intellectual Property Group, Kate Tompkins can do all of these, except practice law. That’s because she is not a lawyer. She’s a business professional.
We’ve heard the phrase “law firms should be run more like a business.” Well, Lathrop GPM and Kate Tompkins are putting that phrase into action. Kate tells us how she landed this role, and how we may see more business operation professionals stepping up to lead the legal practice as other firms look to run more like a business.
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Apple Podcasts | 
Overcast | 
Spotify
If you’re looking for the future of search, CaseText may have the answer with the help of BERT. In their new WeSearch product, CaseText’s Pablo Arredondo says that the conceptual search product will leverage the open-source neural network framework developed by Google called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or simply BERT, to find related results not based on keywords, but through actual concepts. Bob Ambrogi runs through a few examples in his Law Sites Blog.
The patent office in China pulled about half of 2020’s applications recently due to irregularities. Many are saying that it is downright fraud and that it may have a worldwide impact on patents.
Slack rolled out, and then quickly rolled back a new feature that allowed anyone on Slack to DM anyone else on Slack. After a swift public rebuke on the potential harassment issues that this “feature” opens up, especially against women, Slack is rethinking the changes. Perhaps Slack would benefit from listening to lawyers like K&L Gates Partner Elisa D’Amico who specialize in understanding and fighting abuse on the Internet.
Video games are expanding into what is known as Synthetic Economies where gamers’ actions have economic effects both within the games and outside the games as well.
In support of March being Womens’ History Month, as well as the start of baseball’s Spring Training, check out this Twelve Six Podcast interview of Yankee’s beat reporter Lindsay Adler.
Also, check out how Kelp may save us all on the How to Save a Planet.
Wouldn’t it be cool if a law school and a business school could collaborate on issues of legal analytics, entrepreneurial opportunities in the law, and collaboration between the university and the local business and law firm industries? We talk with a couple of professors at Georgia Statue University (GSU) who are turning this ‘cool idea’ and making it a reality. Anne Tucker, Professor of Law, Legal Analytics & Innovation Initiative, and Ben Chapman, Executive Director, Legal Analytics and Innovation Initiative join us to discuss the details behind The Institute for Insight at GSU. The Institute brings together professors from different backgrounds of Engineering, Computer Science, and Statistics and with this type of cross-pollination with business and law, the professors are looking at applied analytics
This mashup of law, business, data science, risk management, statistics and more isn’t a purely academic endeavor for the Institute. Following in the tradition of GSU being an urban school, the Institute works with well known players in the Atlanta business and legal community to put the ideas into real-world situations. This gives the Institute’s professors and students the opportunity to work side-by-side with the business and legal leaders to help identify, study, analyze, and potentially solve issues facing the business and legal industry. This is one of the many values which Tucker and Chapman see for not just preparing students for the practice of law, but also for the business of law.
Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Spotify
While some law schools in the US
In about 10 days, I will be presenting as part of a panel at the Thomson Reuters 24th Annual Marketing Partner Forum. The session I will be presenting will be focused on differentiation in a highly competitive market. Aside from being a hugely important topic at this moment in time generally as we usher