"Whether you like it or not, everybody's searching for us online. And everybody is looking at your LinkedIn profile, whether you're on LinkedIn every day, or once a year, so you might as well make it work for you." - Stefanie Marrone

Stefanie Marrone is an Outsource Marketer who advises legal professionals on improving their social media presence.  Even legal professionals in large law firms can benefit from a strong social media presence because clients and potential clients relate to the individual more than they do the firm. Marrone's experience in firms like Proskauer and MoFo helped shaped her understanding of how important it is to have a strategy when it comes to branding. LinkedIn is her suggested primary platform for lawyers and legal professionals because that is the most likely platform where you'll find your peers and clients. 

One of the most effective forms of content, even on LinkedIn, is short-form video. In addition, list posts, infographics, carousel images, and finding ways to bring even firm posts to life helps draw attention to social media posts. For lawyers who have a marketing team, Stefanie suggests establishing a social media training program, especially for LinkedIn. 

While we would all love to have some metric that identifies the return on investment of social media, it is not as easy as the number of likes a post receives. Success on social media is a combination of brand awareness, influence on decision making, and information dissemination. However, Marrone points out that many firms have thousands, or even tens of thousands of followers, and if the only engagement you are receiving is minimal, or from a few people, then it is clear that your social media strategy is not working. 

Marrone also points out that lawyers and legal professionals should stick to one or two platforms and not spread yourselves too thin. LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter are probably the safest bets, but it depends on the message you are trying to convey. 

To learn more from Stefanie, check out: 

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert

Transcript available on 3 Geeks

This week we are joined by Shayne Phillips, Director of Analytics Solutions at Anaqua/Acclaim IP. Shayne talks about the value that Patent Agents bring to the legal industry. She explains how Patent Agents can use data to uncover insights about competitors and potential markets, and how they can go beyond the typical patent search to provide competitive intelligence and business intelligence.

She emphasizes how Patent Agents can help R&D teams use the patent literature to their advantage, such as looking for references to answer an office action from an examiner or to conduct a freedom to operate opinion piece. Additionally, Patent Agents can look for trends in what patents a competitor has let die before their statutory term, and what countries they are now filing in where they maybe hadn't before with that particular technology. This can help uncover potential markets and provide insight into what the competitor may or may not know about a particular geographical region.

Many law firms realize the value that Patent Agents can bring to making existing clients more profitable by understanding their patent portfolio as well as uncovering the strategic directions that potential clients may be headed in their patent and overall business goals.

As with many industries, Shayne recognizes that there is a giant role that technology and AI tools will play in the immediate future of the profession. With millions upon millions of patents to parse through, there is definitely value in leveraging the technology to enhance the role she plays in finding the hidden jewels that are buried in patent information.

Join us as we talk with Shayne about her career growth, her move to Texas, and her involvement in the Licensing Executive Society to mentor and connect with the newer generation of LES members.

Shayne's Twitter - @ShaynePhillip15

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert

Transcript available on 3 Geeks

This is going to be something that all of you will find "interesting," but maybe not something that you will like. Last week on 3 Geeks, I posted a blog that talked about how to use AI to generate summaries of legal articles. This week, I wanted to expand on that project a little and see if I could turn the summaries into a podcast. The goal was to try to get it completely automated, and completely AI generated. Well... as you can see from the title of this episode, it was almost completely automated, and AI generated. But not 100%.

Here’s the process I created, and I attached the mp3 of the output.

All of these tools are actually free, except for GPT, which is about $0.01 or less per article. 

This is far from perfect, but it is kind of cool, and I think there are some uses for these tools.

Whether you love this, hate this, or don't really care, I'd like to hear what you think!!

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert

There is a lot of buzz around ChatGPT and GPT 3.5, but is it really the next Tesla, or is it the next IBM Watson? We talk with HyperDraft's Tony Thai and Ashley Carlisle about OpenAI's popular tool and why, lawyers at least, shouldn't be ready to go all in on this specific technology. While there are great examples of how GPT 3.5 impressively handled things like Bar Exam questions, there are still a lot of unknowns from this resource from a company that started out as Open Source and non-profit, but has released a product that is neither.

While the conversation focused a lot on the short comings of ChatGPT, there is a lot of promise in the technology, even if it may be years before it can handle the complex issues that lawyers and the legal community handle on behalf of their clients. Are we going to reach The Singularity in 2023, or is it decades away? Can AI plug the Access to Justice gap, or will it cause more issues than it solves? Will this specific AI tool continue to improve as it devours more data and leverages millions of users, or will it become corrupted by bad actors who discover how it inputs its data? Can society use this to better ourselves, or will it become another way to play upon our short attention spans?

We cover all of this and more in a roundtable discussion. We'd love to hear your thoughts on what value you see in ChatGPT and GPT 3.5 in the legal industry. So reach out to us on Twitter or give us a call!

Links:

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert

Mollie Nichols is the CEO of Redgrave Data, a company that uses data analytics and technology to assist the legal industry. After leaving Hogan Lovells, Mollie launched Redgrave Data in January of 2022 and has seen a strong demand for their services in data analytics, regulation, compliance, and internal investigations. Companies often seek the expert assistance of Redgrave Data in order to improve efficiency among the law firms, eDiscovery services, ALSPs, and internal legal operations. She is working to move legal departments away from being seen as a "black hole for money" and focused more on the unique and valuable in achieving the strategic goals of the company. One of the hidden gems in these legal departments is the insights that the legal team can uncover through visualization and analysis of the data within the department. 

One area that Mollie things the legal industry needs to change is how it processes and analyzes the data we collect and create. You cannot look at data simply as a commodity. Where your data tools or your outsourced data analytics teams take unique batches of data and then send it through a one-sized fits all process. Data has to be analyzed through the lens of the current legal issue or toward the goals of the company. This is one of the areas that she says Redgrave Data stands apart from others in the field.

In her Crystal Ball projection, Mollie Nichols sees the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal field is likely to increase, but some lawyers and judges may not fully understand or accept it. AI can help with the growing volume and complexity of data in legal cases, but there may be challenges in accessing and using this data effectively. Overall, she thinks that AI is going to have a significant impact on the legal field.

Links:

New Logo!!

We are SUPER GEEKED about our new logo design. Shoutout to logo designer @ChangoATX who did a wonderful job and got our new logo completed just in time for the holidays!! Let us know what you think.

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert

This week, we have a jam-packed episode featuring five of our colleagues from a 2022 American Association of Law Libraries panel on APIs. 

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, have become an increasingly important tool in the legal industry. The panel included members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, including both librarians and non-librarians. This diversity provided a holistic view of the topic, covering everything from the technical aspects of using APIs to the importance of data quality and vetting vendors.

APIs are like building blocks for legal solutions (think: LEGO Blocks), allowing for the flexible sharing of data between different computer environments. This enables more creative solutions than vendors could create on their own and has led to a range of innovative legal solutions.

Overall, the panel provided valuable insights into the use of APIs in the legal industry and highlighted their potential for facilitating more efficient and effective legal work. As the use of API's continues to grow, it will be important for legal professionals to stay up to date on the latest developments and best practices in this area.

Links Mentioned:

Crystal Ball Question:

Brad Blickstein discusses the potential for a recession and its effects on the legal industry. He speculates that Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) will benefit from the downturn, as law departments will be unable to increase headcount. He also discusses the question of where the work done by ALSPs will go once the recession ends and whether law firms will be able to regain the work.

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert

We give you the true "3 Geeks" experience on this week's show as we are joined by an OG (original geek) Toby Brown. Toby, Marlene, and Greg talk with Litify's President and COO, Ari Treuhaft, and Pam Wickersham, the VP of Product and Engineer there at Litify. One of the taglines at Litify is that they #BreakLegalSilos. Treuhaft and Wickersham explain what that means, and how they focus on providing an operating system, built on Salesforce, that creates transparency between Corporate Counsel and their law firms. 

Both Ari and Pam got their start in Financial and Professional services, so they come at these business problems with a different approach. With Pam's engineering background, and experiences at Google, she brings in a unique perspective on how to build the technology through the lens of the customer. Ari's experiences with the Financial Services industry going to the cloud over a decade ago also positions him to better understand the naysayers in the legal industry who are still resistant to placing data in the cloud.

It's a great conversation. We want to thank the great folks at City Acre Brewery in Houston, Texas for letting us record this episode there. And, for not laughing too hard as Greg destroyed his laptop by spilling an entire Maple Porter into his brand-new laptop. We hope this is a semi-regular event! (Recording at City Acre… not pouring a beer into laptops!!)

Crystal Ball Question

Toby Brown takes on our question this week by talking about the fact that attorneys are resistant to changing behaviors, not because they are unwilling to adapt to new technology, but because this is an industry that is very reputational based. 

Links Mentioned:

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm, @glambert, or @gnawledge

In a recent article from Legal IT Insider, Caroline Hill wrote about how "63% of all legal contracts are gender-biased" based on a report from Genie AI. We wanted to dive deeper into that topic, so we asked Caroline and Alex Denne, Genie AI's Growth Marketing Lead, to come on at talk with us.

Genie AI is an Open-Source product with some 1,500 legal templates available in the UK currently and is looking to expand into the US in 2023. Alex Denne mentions that in the evaluation of these templates, and in discussions he was having in the industry, there was talk of gender-bias in contracts, but that there was no baseline to measure whether the industry was improving or regressing in its bias. Therefore, Genie AI took it upon itself to evaluate the contracts it had for bias terms and phrases. It was this evaluation that found that nearly 2/3rds of contracts had gender-biased terms in them.

Caroline Hill shares her experiences in the Legal Tech industry to note that the number of CIOs in the UK who are women is actually going down instead of up, and that she's noticed that even in simple things like job descriptions, gender-biased terms have a cumulative effect. Jobs which pull from STEM graduates still used gender-biased terms and according to Hill, phrases like "we are looking for a strong" or "aggressive" or "go getter" tend to have a direct effect on whether women apply for these positions or not. 

Alex Denne points out that the UK government is requiring gender-neutral language in all contracts they approve. Both Denne and Hill agree that in order for law firms to adjust their own contract language to use more gender-neutral terms, clients have a direct impact on how seriously they take that mission. If it is part of the culture of the client to reduce gender-bias, then perhaps that should be part of the outside counsel guidelines for the firms they use.

Links Mention:

Legal Value Network Crystal Ball Question:

This week, Erik Perez, Central Legal Operations Officer at Shell USA, Inc., answers our Crystal Ball Question by focusing on the long-term needs of legal operations to both stay on task, hire and retain excellent talent, and use the right people for the right tasks.

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert

Tim Parilla isn't just the Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares… he's also a customer. That unique position of being the leader of the legal department of a company whose mission is to improve the workflow and efficiency of corporate legal departments, creates an exciting environment for Tim and his team.

Juliette Kopecky is the Chief Marketing Officer at LinkSquares and is leading the company's DEI Initiatives and works closely with the in-house legal team to handle everything from internal issues to reviewing all the marketing and business development contracts. Juliette points to the fact that both she and Tim sit on the company's executive team and have aligned their individual departments to the company's overall mission, helps both of them understand and prioritize their overall processes.

Tim also gives us some insights on how he works with his outside counsel in large law firms. He lists some very simple, but effective ways that he interacts with law firms:

Most of all, Tim and Juliette point to the fact that regardless of if you are dealing with outside counsel, in-house legal teams, or even with the software development teams… the goal is to solve "business problems." Not legal problems. Not organizational problems. Not technology problems. Solve business problems. If that is the way in which you address your issues, then that helps put you on the right path for creating an effective solution.

Crytal Ball Answer

Stuart Dodds is Principle at Positive Pricing and is an executive board member at the Legal Value Network. When it comes to the future of legal pricing, he sees a focus on setting expectations for delivering superior client service, understanding the need to find the right people with the correct skillsets, and establishing the correct change management processes to help lawyers and others adjust to the upcoming shifts in the legal market. 

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert

This week we are joined by LexisNexis' Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer and Head of Global Talent Development, Ronda Bazley Moore. Ronda and a team of LexisNexis leadership in the LexisNexis African Ancestry Network & LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation Fellowship tasked 18 Fellows from Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU) Law Schools with one very complex task: Uncover how LexisNexis products could be used to address and eliminate systemic racism in the legal system.

The 2022 LexisNexis Equity in the Law Symposium was held in Washington, DC, where the 18 Fellows presented the results of their findings on how to reduce/eliminate system racism. The results were split into six separate clusters:

Ronda describes some of the novel ways that the Fellows proposed to leverage the data, resources, and power held by LexisNexis to achieve the audacious goal set before them. 

Links:

Crystal Ball Question - Legal Value Network Conference

Amanda Norris, Senior Operations Manager at Integreon steps up this week to answer our Crystal Ball question. Amanda has a very interesting expectation on how support staff at law firms, specifically Legal Assistants and Legal Secretaries, provide support both in-person and remotely over the next few years.

Contact Us:

Twitter: @gebauerm or @glambert