Nicole Bradick, Founder and CEO of Theory and Principle, along with Ryan McClead, Principle at Sente Advisors, join us to talk about their collaborative product Map Engine. Map Engine is an easy-to-use, but powerful data visualization tool that allows law firms to quickly and easily turn their multi-jurisdictional data into beautiful, shareable maps. Instead of the common approach of placing data in flat documents like PDFs, Map Engine allows the firms to tell the story embedded in some or all of the data and allows for the maps to enhance the consumer’s experience through the interactive interface.
Along the way, we also discuss Nicole and Ryan’s individual experiences in launching a startup (without breaking the bank or eating only ramen.)

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Information Inspirations
Bloomberg Law is developing a Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Framework to measure how law firms are meeting and/or surpassing DEI metrics which Bloomberg is developing with experts across the industry.
Steve Embry breaks down some of the problems AmLaw firms will eventually face if they keep moving more partners into non-equity roles, and keep the “old boy’s network” going on in the equity ranks.
The Association of Legal Administrators released a new white paper on “Remote Working as an Effective Recruitment and Retention Tool for Law Firms Post-COVID-19. [PDF]” The firms that remain flexible on remote working options will benefit over those competitors that demand that all work be done in the office.
Clients love multidisciplinary teams (MTD), but it seems that law firms only have a very narrow definition of what that means. Spoiler: only lawyers should make up the MTD.
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Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 115 – Nicole Bradick and Ryan McClead on the Launch of Map Engine and Life as a Startup Founder

David Kamien is the CEO of Mind Alliance and is someone who understands that in order to truly collaborate with your clients, you have to understand their needs on a granular level. That means capturing the data in a way that proactively predicts legal and regulatory risks that companies like them are likely to face, but also list the probable impact that those risks are likely to impact them specifically. While this may sound like a pipe dream to some, and a delusion to others, Kamien thinks that improving the state of data in law firms through knowledge graphs and taking concrete, and logical steps toward improving and leveraging data, will help get law firms to where they can leverage the data in ways that will truly turn them into counselors to their clients. It means creating a data strategy for the firm that creates higher levels of sophistication so that the data turns into answers, and those answers turn into the types of action that clients are willing to pay for. Law firms should not sit back and wait for this to magically happen. If you want to generate value, you are going to have to collaborate very closely with clients. And in this day and age, that involves data.

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Information Inspirations
Most of us in the information profession have touted our skills as fact finders. In this time of misinformation on the Internet, that skillset is needed more than ever and seems to be showing up more and more in the media as they look for Misinformation Experts like the University of Washington’s Information School, Jevin West. West appeared this week on one of our favorite non-legal podcasts, Make Me Smart, where he uncovered some of the reasoning behind the cult that is QAnon, and why its ability to manipulate information makes it so popular, and so hard to convince those believers in the conspiracy that it really is misinformation.
Staying in touch with clients and others isn’t simply about setting up the next Zoom meeting. Julie Saravino produced a great list of ways to have that personal interaction with others in a way that “ups your game” and makes you stand out from those who still rely upon Zoom, email, and phone calls.
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Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 86 – Using Data to Really Know Your Clients and Predict Their Needs – David Kamien

I was recently approached by the ARK Group to write a chapter for their forthcoming book about How Intelligence Functions within Law Firms Can and Should Support One Another. For years, and most recently in a series of ILTA webinars on CI, I have been advocating for collaborative intelligence. I may have even blogged about it here once or twice too.  While writing my chapter, with the same title as this post, I was able to articulate a few concepts that I thought were worth sharing and reiterating, even if they all seem obvious.

Data Doesn’t Make Decisions it seems obvious, but I think in all the AI, RoboLawyer hype we need to be reminded.  People are still central to decision making, data in its various forms and all the ranges of analysis from SWOT (simple) to AI algorithms (complex) still does require human intelligence and interaction to get at the nuance and understand sometimes complex emotional context.
Continue Reading Data Doesn’t Make Decisions

My Workshop for the South African
Online Users Group Meeting in
beautiful Pretoria, South Africa (6/7/16)

It’s been a while now since I’ve written a truly geeky post that didn’t focus on law libraries. I’m going to try to make up for that with this one on how to pull data from websites using Excel.

One of the best features that Lex Machina provides for Intellectual Property attorneys is their increased accuracy of information pulled from PACER. The improvements that Lex Machina has made on Cause-of-Action (CoA) and Nature- of-Suit (NoS) codes entered into PACER make it an invaluable resource to clearly identify relevant matters and weed out irrelevant cases.

Next Thursday afternoon at 3:30 PM in the Maryland A conference room of the Gaylord National Resort in Washington D.C., Sean Brady and I will be giving our presentation: APP 13 – The Future of Data Delivery Or: How I Learned to Stop Browsing and Love the App.  

Ours is the last session on