Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Tom Lambotte, the founder and CEO of two companies, GlobalMac IT, a managed services provider focused on supporting lawyers nationwide who use Apple products, and BobaGuard, a suite of turnkey cybersecurity solutions built for solo practitioners and small law firms. We discussed the most common IT challenges that solo and small law firms in the legal community face, best practices for safeguarding client data, and risks to which solo and small law firms are vulnerable.

I spoke with Peter Krakaur, the Global Law Innovation & Technology Leader for Ernst & Young. We discussed how corporate legal teams are moving beyond a focus on legal technology and more towards enterprise applications, the personnel and process changes impacted by enterprise technology, and the change management challenges, or opportunities, in evolving corporate legal departments.

I spoke with Jamie Wodetzki, the chief product officer at Catylex, a developer of contract AI applications. We discussed contract AI, the connection between contract AI and contract lifecycle management, the most common challenges legal teams face in organizing their data to optimize their use of CLM, the tipping point for true AI adoption in the legal profession, and the skills necessary for legal professionals to thrive in a more tech-enabled environment.

I spoke with Amy Sellars, Senior Legal Counsel for eDiscovery and Operations at CBRE, and one of the founders, along with Christine Payne, Stacy Sampeck, Kevin Brady, Logan Cornett, Chad Riley, and Mary Kostick, of the Mind-Budget Connection™ which is a new organization that is studying the mental health of e-discovery professionals. We discussed the mission of the organization, how the pandemic has impacted the work of those focused on e-discovery, best practices for managing a litigation support workload, and the importance of well-being in this sector.

I spoke with Dr. Gavin Manes, the founder and CEO of Avansic, a provider of e-discovery and digital forensics services, about the primary activities and technologies incorporated into e-discovery projects, where are litigants facing the most challenging e-discovery issues, how legal teams are approaching self-service e-discovery, and the role of forensics in modern discovery.

I spoke with Jake Stein, the co-founder and CEO of Common Paper. a structured contract platform. We discussed contract lifecycle management, the process of converting contracts into APIs, the benefits of using standard contracts, and emerging standard agreements, and the release of its data processing agreement and service level agreement.

I spoke with Peter Baumann, the founder and CEO of ActiveNav, a data privacy and governance software provider that serves various sectors, including legal. We discussed how unstructured data impacts legal organizations, the challenges of managing unstructured data, best practices for assessing the risks related to unstructured data, and how this issue is evolving.

I spoke with Jason Levin, an executive career, business development, and outplacement coach with Ready, Set, Launch, LLC, and the author of Relationships to Infinity: The Art and Science of Keeping in Touch. We discussed how legal professionals can improve their networking, the value of dormant ties, best practices for reconnecting with contacts, and how trust and friendship relate to connecting and reconnecting.

I spoke with Bill Bice, the CEO of nQ Zebraworks, the developer of the Queues workflow engine, which law firms around the world have deployed. We discussed how the pandemic impacted how law firms approach their workflows, the challenges and opportunities associated with hybrid operations, and what legal technology companies can do to facilitate the broader adoption of their products.

I spoke with Phil Thurner, the founder and CEO of Nexl, the Revenue Operations Cloud platform built to support the business development initiatives within law firms. We discussed the current state of business development within law firms, the challenges that law firms have in converting relationships into revenue, and the value of Revenue Operations.