A few years ago, Robert Taylor and Jeff Marple of Liberty Mutual Insurance, along with Suffolk Law School’s Gabriel Teninbaum sat down at Back Bay Harry’s and hatched a genius plan over some truffle fries and sandwiches. The idea was to leverage Suffolk’s law school technology training for students along with Liberty’s desire for the law schools to help students actually learn how to address the issue of design thinking and how it applied to real-world legal issues they were facing. And while the truffle fries were still hot, the Boston Legal Design Challenge was born. On November 13th, 2020,…

No matter what happens during this economic, political, health, and social crisis, Olga Mack reminds us that our skills are ours to keep. Olga is the CEO of Parley Pro, and brings her wisdom to the podcast on what lawyers and other legal professionals need to do to take care of themselves and thrive through the good times and the bad. Olga is the CEO of Parley Pro, a company that developed an innovative contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool, but she is so much more than that. A prolific speaker, a thought leader in the legal industry, a litigator,…

Gender and diversity analysis is necessary to the success of law firms. In fact, diversity metrics are quite openly a common ask from law firm clients.   Firms may not often have this sort of information readily available, due to siloed information and custodial/privacy concerns.  We get the scoop from  Phil Flora from Leopard Solutions about their new searchable gender and ethnic diversity platform, how it works, what it reveals, who can use it, and why.  We discuss what was found in terms of the top 200 and below in terms of racial diversity and there is room for improvement. …

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…

A law firm’s primary function is to enable lawyers to practice law. In fact, many of us on the operations side of the law firm business have heard the complaints of lawyers that there are too many “other tasks” that take away from their practice of law. On today’s episode, we talk with the CEO of Williams Lea, Clare Hart, about the challenges she and her company have faced during the pandemic, and what she sees happening as we push through the current situation, and what will happen as we eventually find our way to the other side…

The i.WILL professional networking forum is a culmination of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP’s CIO, Andrea Markstrom’s passion for empowering women. i.WILL (Inspiring Women Igniting Leadership & Learning) works to connect, professional women across different industries and leverage this network to help give these women the guidance to build upon their leadership skills. i.WILL now has a foothold in New York, New Jersey, Minneapolis, Fort Lauderdale, and (with Marlene’s help) soon coming to Houston. There are over 400 members within the network and growing. Andrea discusses the three pillars of the organization of Networking Events, Giving Back and Paying Forward,…

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we have seen many firms expand and publicize their diversity efforts in the community. Many of these efforts are part of pro bono programs supported by individual firms. Brenna DeVaney, Director of Pro Bono Programs and Pro Bono Counsel at Skadden and the Law Firm Anti-Racism Alliance (LFAA) have a different approach–leverage the legal and technical expertise of law firms and legal vendors as a whole while working with legal services organizations and race equity advocates to battle systemic racism long term. Brenna provides us with some insights into the mission of…

How successful have firms been in handling the stress of adjusting to the needs of the market, knowing how to present that message to clients, and understanding how a sustained firm culture plays a critical role in their ability to cope? Barbara Malin, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Jackson Walker, LLP, and Jennifer Johnson, CEO of Calibrate Legal discuss the critical role marketing, business development, and firm culture play in times of crisis. Our guests tackle some very tough questions about whether firms know and embody their culture and if cultural bias hampers their ability…

  We’ve been off for a month and we come out swinging for this #Barpacolypse #Diplomaprivilege episode. Each July, thousands of law students and attorneys are required to sit for and pass the bar exam in their states if they wish to practice. The fairness, bias, and necessity of the test has been called into question in the past (Note: the exam is a relatively recent method to determine attorney competency to practice), but COVID 19 may finally force states to do away with the bar examination. The public has called administration of the test into question, due to COVID…

[Ed. Note: Today’s post comes from guest blogger, Steve Nelson from The McCormick Group. – GL] Representatives from virtually all large law firms are claiming that innovation is critical to their future. Indeed, in the recently released Altman Weil, 2020 Law Firms in Transition Survey, 75 percent of the responding firms reported including innovation initiatives in their strategic plan and also have created special projects focused on innovation. But when it comes to empowering professionals within the firm to move those initiatives forward, a McCormick Group White Paper revealed quite a different story.  We found that a majority of…

The 2020 PLLIP Summit is set to kick off on Friday, July 10th.  For the first time ever the Summit will be presented as a virtual event.  While over the past several months, we all have experienced and possibly, over experienced Zoom, WebEx, Google Hangouts, and FaceTime, the Summit promises to be an unforgettable experience.  We asked each speaker to provide some insight into what you can expect from their session.  Keynote Address: Reinventing the Modern Law Firm From Information Out: Embracing the Power of Practical Innovation and the Impact of Raising Your Profile Ari Kaplan, the 2020 Summit…