The Geek In Review

The legal operations community was barely nascent a decade ago. Now there is a booming LegalOps profession and a number of professional associations have sprouted up to help the community learn and collaborate. Legal Operators is one of those communities. We asked the founder of Legal Operators, Colin McCarthy, to come on the show and talk about why he took a small legal ops community that started...

We all know that it takes some "outside of the box thinking" to help improve the legal system in the United States, especially when it comes to Pro Se litigants. Courtroom5 CEO and co-founder Sonja Ebron does exactly that with her startup focused on guiding Pro Se litigants through complex court processes. Ed Walters , CEO and co-founder of Fastcase wants the legal industry to stop trying so hard...

When three legal innovators gather together in their town of Houston, the topic drifts toward the interesting innovation and creativity hubs happening around the city. Both inside and outside of law firms. In a special "after-hours" episode of The Geek in Review, we talk with Norton Rose Fulbright US' Head of Innovation, Zack Barnes . The conversation is a diverse as the city. We talk about the Th...

We are all pretty familiar with the phrase "Legal Tech." Maya Markovich and Yousef Kassim would like you to also become more familiar with the phrase "Justice Tech" as well. In fact, they have a new trade association focused on this issue called the Justice Technology Association or JTA. Justice Tech is defined as those companies which build tech solutions which are designed to improve or open acc...

For many of us, what we think of when we hear "American Lawyer Media", we think of lots of print newspapers, magazines, The American Lawyer, and the AmLaw 100/200 lists. Bill Carter , CEO of the newly re-branded ALM , sees the tremendous value of the  data that ALM collects much more than just the news articles it produces. When Carter took over the reins at ALM in 2012, he evaluated the comp...

When it comes to dockets, the holy grail for most of us has always been state trial court dockets. Nicole Clark , CEO and co-founder of Trellis also felt that way when she was practicing, and decided that she would find a way to access and obtain that treasure trove of data that was always just out of reach. Nicole sits down with us this week to tell us the story behind her mission to seek out loc...

We have a number of repeat guests on the show this week, but all with new stories to tell since their last appearance.  Nikki Shaver and Jeroen Plink have joined forces to launch Legaltech Hub . Their mission is to provide a single place for those of us looking at legal technology so that we can have a clear picture of who are the players in legaltech solutions. We talk about how the two bega...

For those of us who went to law school, a large percentage probably assumed we'd graduate, take the bar, and practice law. But, sometimes life takes you in a different direction. Today's guest fits that mold, and also decided to talk with 15 other law school grads who also found careers outside the traditional legal practice. Adam Pascarella is the Founder of Second Order Capital Management , and...

When the pandemic began, many law firms prepared for the worst by furloughing or laying off lawyers and legal professionals. Many of these same firms then found themselves at a disadvantage when the hiring spree began in the fourth quarter of 2020. Leopard Solution 's Phil Flora joins us this week to talk about the numbers that they tracked over this time on hiring and movement in the legal indust...

This is a topic we’ve wanted to discuss since early 2019, but teaching stints in Helsinki, and a global pandemic pushed it back almost three years. But we did not forget about the topic of The Right to Be Forgotten! However, in that time, even the phrasing of the topic has changed to The Right to Erasure. Our guest, Anne Klinefelter , Director of the Law Library and Henry P. Brandis Distinguished...

We bring on a fellow legal industry podcaster this week to talk about the launching of her brand new podcast, The Portia Project . M.C. Sungaila is a shareholder at Buchalter in California and she noticed that while there were a number of female judges making it onto the trial court bench, there were still a small number at the appellate level. This motivated her to seek out a platform for those j...

This week we celebrate not just our 150th episode, but also our first live conference in over two years. We traveled to New York City to attend LegalWeek 2022 and recorded live (after a number of technical difficulties. We discuss what it feels like to be surrounded by 2,000+ of your closest friends and colleagues and some of the presentations we saw while we were here. Ignatius Grande, Director a...

Sarah Sutherland from CanLII joins us this week to talk about her new book, Legal Data and Information in Practice: How Data and the Law Interact . We have a fun and informative discussion about how the legal industry, ranging from courts, firms, law schools and start-ups are leveraging data within their organizations and how new technologies are allowing us to do amazing things with data that we...

With the influx of Venture Capital and overall interests in Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), the rest of the legal industry is finally figuring out what InnoLaw 's Lucy Bassli has known for years; contracts are sexy. We sit down with Lucy to discuss her second book, CLM Simplified: Efficient Contracting for Law Departments and the potential of making the contract process faster, better, easier...

When Sang Lee set out to begin her own talent management and recruitment company, her two-decades of experience taught her that much of the industry felt like a charade. To change that, she thought of the phrase, "To Thine Own Self Be True" as a guiding principle and from that came the company she co-founded called Thine . The youngest of three daughters from an immigrant family, she had many expe...

There were a number of SNAFUs the past couple of weeks here at The Geek in Review, but even with scheduling difficulties and personal emergencies, we wanted to get an episode out this week. In order for everyone to "get their geek on," we created an "Information Inspirations" episode. We'll be back next week with more traditional content, but we hope you enjoy our musings on news and ideas around...

One of the things we love to talk about on this podcast is how to take data and make it tell a story. This week's guests are doing just that on the topic of Community Policing and making sure that there is equal coverage for both the Community part, as well as the Policing part. Ama Romaine , co-founder and Chair, and Wayne Harris , Executive Director of The Initiative: Advancing the Blue and Blac...

This week's guest is Maker5, Inc . CEO and Founder Sanjay Kamlani . Sanjay's experience of creating businesses like Office Tiger and Pangea3 give him a unique view of the legal technology and innovation sector, and specifically what tends to work well, and what tends to fall short when it comes to true innovation. Maker5, Inc is a Venture Studio designed to incubate its own businesses to spin them...

This week we talk with Factor's Ed Sohn and Michael Callier on the consulting for in-house legal teams through what they describe as New Law companies. New Law is who corporate legal counsel reach out to in order to streamline their operations and find ways of integrating themselves into the overall mission of the corporation, rather than just the department which mitigates legal and business risk...

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” ― Yogi Berra Yet that never stops us from asking our "crystal ball" questions to our guests like Axiom's Chief Commercial Officer, David Pierce . Some of the traits that David believes will make for successful businesses and people include: Emphasis on creativity and great imaginations Make it clear that everyone's health and safety ar...

We have a double-header of interviews this week with Marlene talking with Suffolk Law School's Gabe Teninbaum on his new book, Productizing Legal Work: Providing Legal Expertise at Scale . Greg talks with Lindsie Rank , Student Press Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) about the new website to help journalists answer the question, " Can I Publish This? " Gabe Teninb...

We talk shop with Litera's Vice-President of Sales for North America, Ashley Miller , including Litera's growth over the past few years, and how long it can stay in that Goldilocks' stage of being just the right size to be a big player, yet still nimble enough to pivot when needed.  The recent Changing Lawyer Virtual Summit featured recognizable speakers like Richard Susskind and Seth Godin,...

While neurodiversity might be an unfamiliar word for many, its meaning is simple. We all have different brains. For the legal field, there is value in this, as we need to be able to look at problems in different ways and find new approaches to solving those problems. Haley Moss is an author, attorney, and advocate for neurodiversity, and is neurodivergent herself. Haley has autism, which she sees...

With Thanksgiving falling on a Thursday this year… wait, I'm being told that it does that every year… we decided to release a panel discussion that Greg moderated with the General Counsel from McDonald's, Fannie Mae, Western Union, and Tyson Foods. The discussion ranges from where these GCs are expanding their search for talent, to truly increasing diversity both in their outside law firms as well...

Alex Babin, CEO at Zero, says that the beautiful part about automating processes is to make the machines work the way the lawyers work so that you get a Return on Invest starting the very first day. For many of us, Alex brings up what we might think as the Holy Grail of implementing change in a law firm, and that is to allow the attorneys to continue working the same way and have the technology do...