Daily Matters: The changing face of the legal industry

Got questions about the CARES Act, the EIDL, or the PPP? Chris Gruenke has your back.

As Principal at CPN Legal, Chris and his wife Peggy specialize in law firm accounting and bookkeeping. During the coronavirus crisis, they’ve been leading live weekly e-workshops (in partnership with Clio) on the CARES Act, and in this episode Chris joins Jack Newton to share expert insights and information on the government financial aid programs available to law firms to help them weather this economic storm.

As Principal at CPN Legal—a Cincinnatti-based company specializing in law firm accounting and bookkeeping—Chris Gruenke is a Clio Certified Gold Consultant, a QuickBooks Pro Advisor, and an Amicus Attorney Certified Consultant. 

After a 15 year career with Marion Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Chris started his own business, an up-scale billiards club, and realized that small business was in his blood. Since then, he has been bringing the strategic thinking, process improvement techniques, operational discipline, and implementation skills he developed at Merrell Dow to small and mid-market companies in a variety of industries—legal in particular. Chris has held the positions of VP Operations & Finance, VP Administration, President, CEO, and owner.

“As leaders right now, we have to be very aware of how we are showing up—the energy that we’re bringing,” says Allison Wolf, PCC. As one of the most senior lawyer coaches in North America, Allison helps legal professionals better manage stress, career difficulties, uncertainty, and other challenges. So, yes, she has an important role to play during these times of transition and upheaval.

In this episode of Daily Matters, Allison and Jack Newton delve into a deep discussion of what it means to be a leader during periods of crisis, how to manage your mindset from day to day, and what to do about the stress, uncertainty, and grief that almost all of us are experiencing right now, in one form or another. 

Allison Wolf, PCC, is among the most senior lawyer coaches in North America. She has 16 years of experience as a certified executive coach with a practice focused on helping lawyers grow thriving and rewarding professional and personal lives. She runs the lawyer coaching company Shiftworks, and she is also the founder and publisher of the law blog “Attorney With A Life.”

Allison’s coaching practice is entirely focused on lawyers, helping them thrive not just survive in their chosen profession. She is retained by individual lawyers and law firms with clients across the United States and Canada. In addition to her coaching practice, Allison has over 20 years of experience as an in-house legal marketing and business development professional for law firms of all sizes and scope. She is a Professional Certified Coach and member of the International Coaching Federation; a former board member with West Coast LEAF; a former President of both the LMA Vancouver Chapter and the non-profit Pacifica Family Addictions Foundation.

“Really, what lawyers need to do is think in terms of product-market fit,” says Nika Kabiri, a JD PhD who offers consulting services to companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, PepsiCo, the Seattle Seahawks, and Clio (among many others). 

Nika’s expertise is in data, research, and Decision Science. In this episode of Daily Matters, she shares her perspective on the ways the legal marketplace is changing, and how the legal consumers of today and tomorrow will differ from the legal clients of yesterday. She also suggests new ideas for lawyers and law firms to approach business in the post-COVID world.

Nika Kabiri has spent 20+ years studying how people make decisions in a variety of contexts. She has a JD from the University of Texas and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Washington, where her academic focus was on human decision-making. She currently teaches Decision Science at the University of Washington using a cross-disciplinary approach leveraging insights from behavioral economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political science. It is Nika's mission to leverage her knowledge of human decision-making to help businesses effectively influence consumer behavior and make better decisions of their own. Nika has worked with businesses of all sizes, including Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, Sony, Oakley, PepsiCo, General Mills, Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Seattle Seahawks, Zillow, Expedia, Smartsheet—and Clio. She is also an Advisor at Madrona Venture Labs, where she helps startups get their footing.

As one of the early adopters of cloud-based technology in legal, CuroLegal CEO and Modern Law Practice Co-founder Chad Burton understands the growing pains many law firms are now experiencing as they shift to distributed, remote practice models. In this episode of Daily Matters, Chad and Clio CEO Jack Newton discuss some of the pain points they’ve seen law firms experiencing while adjusting to this new reality, and Chad and Jack identify what those firms should focus on as they adopt new technologies and workflow methods.

Chad Burton is a former litigator who developed one of the nation’s first “new model” law firms, leveraging cloud-based technology and modern business practices to develop a lean virtual law firm. Chad serves on the Governing Board for the ABA’s Center for Innovation. He regularly speaks around the country on topics related to legal technology, virtual law practice, and the future of the legal profession. Chad has been quoted and published in publications like the ABA Journal, Inc., the Atlantic, and Entrepreneur Magazine. He was named to the Fastcase 50 list of global legal innovators in 2014 and received an award by ALM for the Most Innovative Use of Technology in a Small Law Firm in 2012.

Long before law firms were forced to practice remotely because of the pandemic, Cynthia Morgan-Reed had already adopted the work-from-home life—first as a solo practitioner, and then as the Founder and CEO of Vanst Law, a virtual law firm working to change the culture in legal (and the recipient of the 2019 Reisman Award for Best New Law Firm). 

In her interview with Jack Newton, Cynthia shares her in-depth knowledge of virtual law practice, so you can improve your own remote working experience. She also talks about her own journey to leave the traditional law firm model behind, how she foresees law firms operating in the future, and why working in a different way has such huge implications for law firms, legal clients, and attorneys.

Cynthia will also be featured in the upcoming CLE-eligible webinar How to Build a Virtual Law Firm (And Why You Should), which will take place on Tuesday, May 12, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. PST. You can register for the webinar now!

Cynthia Morgan-Reed, Founder and CEO of Vanst Law, went to law school to be a different kind of lawyer. Initially, she wanted to practice public interest law and save the world. Instead, after many law firm experiences where she earned her right to call herself a survivor, she decided to change the culture; one attorney at a time. She launched Vanst because she knows that every attorney has the right to live a meaningful life and practice law. And every attorney deserves to be paid what they are worth.

For more than a decade, lawyer and journalist Bob Ambrogi has usually been the one interviewing Clio CEO Jack Newton—but in this episode of Daily Matters, the tables are turned. Jack welcomes Bob, one of the most respected names in the legal technology, to the podcast.

“The future has suddenly arrived,” Bob says, in reference to the massive changes the coronavirus has caused. “Lawyers’ eyes are being forced open in a way that they never have been before.” You can listen or watch the episode for Bob’s expert take on this paradigm-shifting moment in legal history. 

Additionally, you can register here to sign up for Bob’s upcoming webinar with Clio Lawyer in Residence Joshua Lenon. The webinar, “Understanding Legal Technology Competence,” will take place on Tuesday, June 9, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. PST. And you can access Bob’s LawSites coronavirus resources page here.

A lawyer, journalist, media consultant, and blogger, Bob Ambrogi is known internationally for his expertise in legal technology, legal practice, and legal ethics. Bob writes the award-winning blog LawSites, is a columnist for Above the Law and the ABA Journal, and hosts the podcast about innovation in law, LawNext. He also works with the legal publishing and software company LexBlog as publisher and editor-in-chief. In 2011, Bob was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” In 2017, he received the Yankee Quill award for journalism from the Academy of New England Journalists and was honored by the ABA Journal as a Legal Rebels Trailblazer. In his law practice, he represents newspapers and the news media and serves as executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association. 

As Chair of the American Bar Association’s Coronavirus Task Force, Jim Sandman has a birds-eye view of COVID-19’s impact on the legal industry. In his interview with Jack Newton, Jim paints a picture of what’s happening in legal, and what law firms should be focusing on in terms of reducing overhead, serving clients remotely, and how to mitigate the impacts of this crisis on firm staff. 

In Jim’s words: “I think that good will come of this. I think that lawyers will be more effective practitioners in the service of their clients. I think our society will ultimately be better off because of this experience that we’re sharing.”

Jim Sandman was president of the Legal Services Corporation from 2011 to 2020, and he now serves as president emeritus. He practiced law with Arnold & Porter LLP for 30 years and served as the firm’s managing partner for a decade. He is also a past president of the 100,000-member District of Columbia Bar and a former general counsel for the District of Columbia Public Schools. Recently, he has become the Chair of the ABA’s Coronavirus Task Force.

Additionally, Jim is chairman of the board of the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and a member of the boards of Washington Performing Arts, the College of Saint Rose, Albany Law School, and the Tahirih Justice Center. He is a member of the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission, the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, the District of Columbia Bar Pro Bono Committee, the American Law Institute, the Advisory Council of the American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation, the Board of Advisors of the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Center on the Future, and the Pro Bono Institute’s Law Firm Pro Bono Project Advisory Committee.

In this episode, LexBlog CEO and Founder Kevin O’Keefe joins the podcast to discuss why he feels the COVID-19 crisis won’t be a short-term problem; how lawyers are rising to the occasion to analyze and report on impact to the legal and business worlds; how to approach relationship-building with audiences online; why opening up about your own vulnerability helps you form strong connections; and why now is the time to be different—not the same. 

Kevin O’Keefe is the CEO and Founder of LexBlog. A lawyer of 35 years, Kevin practiced as a trial lawyer in rural Wisconsin before moving to Seattle in 1999 to start his first company, Prairielaw.com, a virtual law community. Prairielaw.com eventually sold to LexisNexis, where it was incorporated into Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyers.com. After serving a stint as VP of Business Development at LexisNexis, Kevin founded LexBlog out of his garage in 2004. Kevin saw blogging as a perfect way for lawyers to build relationships and reputations, and after teaching himself the essentials of blog strategy, promotion, and support, he grew LexBlog from a small team to a network of over 25,000 legal professionals, including over half of the nearly 1,000 blogs from the United States’ top 200 law firms. Kevin publishes his own blog, Real Lawyers, which is now in its 15th year.

When former lawyer Matt Homann founded his meeting facilitation company, Filament, he knew that meetings were broken for a lot of organizations. But Matt never could have predicted the new roadblocks that would arise as businesses rushed to adopt virtual meetings in light of COVID-19. Now that this new reality has arrived, he has tons of advice and useful insights for companies and law firms that are trying to figure out how to succeed in a remote collaboration environment.

In his forward-looking discussion with Jack Newton, Matt touches on what it means to create “practically in person” meetings, how law firms can become more effective by using the right cloud-based solutions, and how the shift in legal that this pandemic has caused will change the way law firms work in the future. 

Matt Homann is the Founder of Filament, as well as the founder and former CEO of Invisible Girlfriend and Invisible Boyfriend—and a former lawyer who earned a reputation as a tireless advocate for legal innovation, alternative fees, and client-focused service. An accomplished keynote speaker and creative facilitator, Matt has worked with legal, accounting, financial services, nonprofit, and healthcare professionals around the world, as well as with executives from companies like McDonald's, HP, IBM, British Petroleum, Nokia, DuPont and the US Military. He was named one of the 50 most innovative people in law by Fastcase, a "Legal Rebel" by the American Bar Association, and is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management. He has a natural knack for helping really smart people think, meet and learn together better. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, Jessica and daughter, Grace.

At Vanderbilt Law School, Cat Moon works with both law students and lawyers to help move the legal industry forward through the use of innovative design practices. In her Daily Matters discussion with Jack Newton, Cat talks about the new realities facing legal educators and students in the wake of COVID-19. She also describes the Delta Model for legal professionals (balancing the elements of people, process, and practice), and she provides some resources and suggestions lawyers can explore to bring innovation into their practices at this critical time. 

As Director of Innovation Design in the Program in Law and Innovation and Lecturer in Law at Vanderbilt Law School, Cat Moon teaches law students critical 21st-century lawyering skills. She works with colleagues to develop innovative curriculum, responsive to the demands of a rapidly-evolving legal profession. She helps students navigate through this evolution, to identify innovative opportunities in practice and beyond. Also, as Director of the PoLI Institute at Vanderbilt Law (innovatethelaw.com), she helps lawyers gain these same critical innovation leadership skills through intensive, interactive courses presented at Vanderbilt's innovation hub, the Wond'ry.