1 00:00:02,700 --> 00:00:04,640 Rodney, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,772 --> 00:00:09,279 doing great, you know, it's a nice kind of slightly rainy day here in St. 3 00:00:09,279 --> 00:00:10,370 Louis, Missouri. 4 00:00:10,370 --> 00:00:11,012 And you know what? 5 00:00:11,012 --> 00:00:13,690 I'm just around the corner from you, so I'm... 6 00:00:13,690 --> 00:00:16,832 I know, that's how we connected. 7 00:00:16,832 --> 00:00:21,965 I was listening to one of your podcasts ah and all of a sudden I hear you talking about St. 8 00:00:21,965 --> 00:00:22,885 Louis. 9 00:00:23,266 --> 00:00:24,927 And I'm like, holy cow, he's in St. 10 00:00:24,927 --> 00:00:27,628 Louis and I think I sent you LinkedIn. 11 00:00:27,628 --> 00:00:34,502 didn't have a way to contact you so I messaged you through LinkedIn and we connect and we've had a couple of breakfasts since and here we are. 12 00:00:34,502 --> 00:00:41,502 And we had some really interesting conversations during those breakfast meetings and which is why I really wanted to get you on the podcast. 13 00:00:41,502 --> 00:00:43,402 So I know you're a busy guy. 14 00:00:43,402 --> 00:00:45,422 I appreciate the time. 15 00:00:45,562 --> 00:00:47,342 Well, let's get you introduced. 16 00:00:47,342 --> 00:00:51,602 So you've been 30 plus years in Big Law. 17 00:00:51,682 --> 00:00:58,642 You've been 15 plus years at Ogletree Deacons and you lead the Farms Innovation Council. 18 00:00:58,642 --> 00:01:03,212 Like give us a little bit of background on, what you, you know, your 19 00:01:03,212 --> 00:01:06,212 your rise up the ranks and kind of what you're doing today. 20 00:01:06,212 --> 00:01:07,142 Yeah, sure. 21 00:01:07,142 --> 00:01:15,847 So, yeah, I started, uh, I've been in a big, started a big regional law firm in Kansas city, moved to St. 22 00:01:15,847 --> 00:01:19,409 Louis and was it a big regional firm, uh, in St. 23 00:01:19,409 --> 00:01:22,581 Louis, just honing my craft. 24 00:01:22,581 --> 00:01:29,705 Um, I have a background as primarily a airline and railroad lawyer, um, representing airlines and railroads. 25 00:01:29,705 --> 00:01:34,027 So it's always been in the employment space, uh, and it's always been on the management side. 26 00:01:34,027 --> 00:01:36,398 So that's all I've done my entire career. 27 00:01:36,672 --> 00:01:43,385 In 2008, uh Ogletree Deacons had just opened about six months earlier in St. 28 00:01:43,385 --> 00:01:44,235 Louis. 29 00:01:44,614 --> 00:01:53,849 And a bunch of my peers at other firms who I had worked with and uh three of them I went to law school with were making the transition to Ogletree. 30 00:01:53,849 --> 00:01:55,639 So I made the jump as well. 31 00:01:55,880 --> 00:02:04,983 I continued to sort of hone my craft and then that sort of evolved into a business development and became a business developer. 32 00:02:05,059 --> 00:02:07,941 developed a large number of clients. 33 00:02:07,941 --> 00:02:16,307 uh then three years ago, or four years, three years ago, went on our board of directors. 34 00:02:16,307 --> 00:02:19,448 So I'm our firm's board of directors, which is six of us. 35 00:02:19,669 --> 00:02:30,056 And then three years ago, or four years ago, took over as the chair of the Innovation Council, which is uh just a group of multiple different people within the firm. 36 00:02:30,056 --> 00:02:32,198 But my career has sort of evolved. 37 00:02:32,198 --> 00:02:34,521 There's a lot of people from 38 00:02:34,521 --> 00:02:47,604 practitioner to um business developer to now someone who is probably a little bit more interested in how we as a firm do business. 39 00:02:48,285 --> 00:02:58,215 Still tied to the practice and still work with clients all the time, but really focused on the business aspect of what could we do better as a business. 40 00:02:58,786 --> 00:03:03,685 And how much of your time is focused on that versus the practice? 41 00:03:03,939 --> 00:03:15,247 I always like to say that 80 % of my day is servicing clients, 80 % of my day is doing firm stuff, 80 % of my day is business development, and 80 % of my day is innovation 42 00:03:15,247 --> 00:03:15,868 related. 43 00:03:15,868 --> 00:03:25,655 Kidding aside, it kind of depends on the week, but the Innovation Council and the innovation piece um is a lot. 44 00:03:25,655 --> 00:03:31,439 um Not only do I chair our firm's Innovation Council and sort of... 45 00:03:31,439 --> 00:03:32,959 help provide strategic direction. 46 00:03:32,959 --> 00:03:35,300 I'm sure we'll get into how we do it. 47 00:03:35,420 --> 00:03:45,623 But also, I've been to three offices in the last two months to do an in-person lunch and learn about innovation for two hours. 48 00:03:45,663 --> 00:03:47,244 I do online webinars. 49 00:03:47,244 --> 00:03:55,666 We tend to find that lawyers teaching lawyers about the benefits of using Harvey, for example, um is a good thing. 50 00:03:55,666 --> 00:03:58,557 um So I do that as well. 51 00:03:58,954 --> 00:04:01,315 And what, what was the catalyst? 52 00:04:01,315 --> 00:04:04,726 Like what really pushed Ogletree Deacons? 53 00:04:04,726 --> 00:04:13,058 And you guys have been clients of ours for a long time, seven plus years and back all the way back before we were InfoDash, we were Acrowire back then. 54 00:04:13,058 --> 00:04:23,911 So I've had a, I've had a bird's eye view and have seen the growth and it's been exciting to watch and it's been fun to partner with you guys, but I'm, I'm curious, you know, I can 55 00:04:23,911 --> 00:04:25,774 only see so far into the firm. 56 00:04:25,774 --> 00:04:26,662 what 57 00:04:26,742 --> 00:04:29,087 What was the nexus? 58 00:04:29,087 --> 00:04:32,112 What started the firm's conversation around innovation? 59 00:04:32,567 --> 00:04:43,595 I think it's not, I like to think we've done it very, very well, but I think like most firms, it started with the traditional knowledge management role. 60 00:04:43,595 --> 00:04:54,403 um Patrick DiDomenico, who I'm sure a lot of your listeners know, was our chief knowledge management officer and just a fantastic expert in this area. 61 00:04:54,403 --> 00:05:00,077 And I worked a lot with Patrick, um but at the start it was a traditional 62 00:05:00,175 --> 00:05:14,135 knowledge management function where we're taking the collective knowledge of, you know, at the time, probably 400 lawyers and others who are doing things and in silos, but, you 63 00:05:14,135 --> 00:05:16,175 know, we're a very dispersed firm, right? 64 00:05:16,175 --> 00:05:19,055 We're not 1100 lawyers sitting in one building. 65 00:05:19,055 --> 00:05:23,135 We're 1100 lawyers sitting in 60 some plus offices. 66 00:05:23,235 --> 00:05:26,475 So, you know, it was that traditional role. 67 00:05:26,475 --> 00:05:28,895 And then I would say the first 68 00:05:29,859 --> 00:05:41,005 You know, we had some portfolio clients where you're getting a flat fee and innovation plays a special role, I would say, because, you know, financial is everybody, know, 69 00:05:41,005 --> 00:05:44,587 leverage is your key to profitability. 70 00:05:44,728 --> 00:05:47,509 And, you you raise rates or you improve your leverage. 71 00:05:47,509 --> 00:05:57,044 um And, you know, if you have a flat fee, you really focus on leverage um versus going to the client and saying, hey, we're doing things really, really poorly. 72 00:05:57,044 --> 00:05:58,535 Can you please pay us more? 73 00:05:58,544 --> 00:06:00,796 It's usually not a good client development strategy. 74 00:06:00,796 --> 00:06:13,456 So, the use of document automation, some of the earlier adoptions of innovation uh in law firms, uh particularly on the tech side. 75 00:06:13,577 --> 00:06:14,937 And we sort of did that. 76 00:06:14,937 --> 00:06:17,922 then, again, we're labor and employment. 77 00:06:17,922 --> 00:06:25,997 you've got, when the federal government's not really making significant changes, got states that are constantly, constantly 78 00:06:26,031 --> 00:06:28,891 changing the rules and things of that nature. 79 00:06:29,171 --> 00:06:41,591 you know, in order to scale that in a sort of way to generate revenue, we started with this OD comply concept, which is there were a number of top background checks, wage and 80 00:06:41,591 --> 00:06:53,151 hour, various topics that really were ripe for kind of developing some type of online platform where you can select a state, you can, you know, and that now has evolved into 81 00:06:53,151 --> 00:06:56,015 our current client portal, which you might be familiar with. 82 00:06:56,015 --> 00:07:08,738 um But that sort of was the early, and then there were some early AI, know, legal nation with answers and other sort of products that were sort of early promoters of the use of AI 83 00:07:08,738 --> 00:07:10,879 in the legal tech space. 84 00:07:10,999 --> 00:07:15,760 Then COVID comes along and now you are scaling beyond belief. 85 00:07:15,760 --> 00:07:26,253 you know, uh innovation is about, scaling is a huge part of innovation in my opinion, where you are trying to take something that you can, you know, 86 00:07:26,671 --> 00:07:37,991 Templates, things we were doing during COVID and the demand was through the roof as states were grappling and our clients were grappling with what to do during the pandemic. 87 00:07:38,131 --> 00:07:45,651 And then coming out of that, OD comply evolved to the client portal and then it just started taking off. 88 00:07:45,651 --> 00:07:50,611 I kind of view innovation as sort of like, I don't know, it's upward curve. 89 00:07:50,931 --> 00:07:54,071 And we've always said, we went from books to Westlaw. 90 00:07:54,756 --> 00:07:59,038 you know, computer processors to computers you took home. 91 00:07:59,038 --> 00:08:09,884 ah know, we went from, you know, everything has been innovative, but we're now on an upward trajectory that I've never seen in 30 years of practice, and I don't think anybody 92 00:08:09,884 --> 00:08:10,384 has seen. 93 00:08:10,384 --> 00:08:21,490 ah And that expertise in that innovation function becomes all the more paramount because a lawyer who's practicing can't keep track of everything. 94 00:08:21,490 --> 00:08:22,200 You just can't. 95 00:08:22,200 --> 00:08:24,851 You need experts in the field. 96 00:08:25,196 --> 00:08:28,208 And then what made you take the role? 97 00:08:28,208 --> 00:08:39,917 Like what did, um did you just gravitate towards that sort of discipline or did the firm tap you on the shoulder and go, Rodney, we think you'd be the guy. 98 00:08:39,917 --> 00:08:41,278 Like, how did that happen? 99 00:08:41,463 --> 00:08:42,414 Yeah, you know, it's funny. 100 00:08:42,414 --> 00:08:56,305 I remember when I made the move from my prior firm to Ogletree, um the managing partner at the firm told me that he thought I was entrepreneurial, which I don't know if that was a 101 00:08:56,305 --> 00:08:57,556 valued thing or not. 102 00:08:57,556 --> 00:08:59,698 I still haven't figured that out. 103 00:08:59,698 --> 00:09:02,440 But I've always think I thought differently. 104 00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:05,893 I view myself as much of a project manager as I do a lawyer. 105 00:09:05,893 --> 00:09:07,764 I like to think I'm a good lawyer. 106 00:09:07,764 --> 00:09:08,865 I've tried cases. 107 00:09:08,865 --> 00:09:11,527 um 108 00:09:11,587 --> 00:09:15,750 People, respected the advice I gave and viewed me as a partner. 109 00:09:15,750 --> 00:09:18,712 And I did the practice of law very, very well. 110 00:09:18,712 --> 00:09:25,917 But I remember, I look back at your innovator versus lawyer mindset post. 111 00:09:25,917 --> 00:09:35,493 And while I certainly have many of the traits of a lawyer, I like to think that I'm a future looking, I clearly have a bias toward action. 112 00:09:35,493 --> 00:09:41,080 I'm sort of of the belief that 99 % of the mistakes I'm going to make are fixable. 113 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:43,782 and moving with some velocity is a lot more important. 114 00:09:43,782 --> 00:09:51,088 um You gotta be mindful of the ones that are not fixable and not make them or just hope that you don't. 115 00:09:51,088 --> 00:09:54,151 uh But I'm okay with failure. 116 00:09:54,151 --> 00:09:56,172 I think failure is the only way you learn. 117 00:09:56,854 --> 00:09:59,656 And I like to be in a constant state of change. 118 00:09:59,656 --> 00:10:03,358 I'm comfortable with things changing all the time. 119 00:10:03,359 --> 00:10:04,400 There is no end. 120 00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:07,762 Anybody who tells me that there's some end goal, 121 00:10:08,397 --> 00:10:10,148 I don't think is being innovative. 122 00:10:10,148 --> 00:10:14,411 You have to be willing to live in a constant state of flux. 123 00:10:14,792 --> 00:10:25,319 And I was fortunate to have several clients who fostered that in their business and wanted their outside counsel to think like that. 124 00:10:25,319 --> 00:10:36,146 Your podcast, I've never done, I don't know the person from DHL, I was listening to the podcast, but I was fortunate to have clients like that who really drove you. 125 00:10:36,146 --> 00:10:37,539 um 126 00:10:37,539 --> 00:10:40,080 to be forward thinking, to be innovative. 127 00:10:40,080 --> 00:10:41,901 They wanted flat rates. 128 00:10:41,901 --> 00:10:50,584 They wanted you to push you to find ways to deliver better products, the better product at less cost to them. 129 00:10:50,584 --> 00:10:54,346 And they challenged you to do that and make more money for you. 130 00:10:54,346 --> 00:11:02,839 So at the end of the day, you might be getting less revenue, but instead of spending $1.20 to generate a dollar, you're spending 80 cents to generate a dollar. 131 00:11:02,839 --> 00:11:05,950 And they wanted you to really drive that. 132 00:11:08,131 --> 00:11:10,433 That is the thing that got me involved. 133 00:11:10,433 --> 00:11:27,296 And I think that mindset also led me to sort of push from a lawyer-centric, lawyer-driven innovation strategy at Ogletree to one where it's professionally driven by Dave Bowlin and 134 00:11:27,296 --> 00:11:31,649 Tim Fox at our firm. 135 00:11:32,350 --> 00:11:34,711 innovation has to be in the hands of professionals. 136 00:11:34,831 --> 00:11:43,923 We play a valid, a valuable, indispensable role, but we shouldn't be the ones out there truly just driving it. 137 00:11:44,238 --> 00:11:46,118 I completely agree with that. 138 00:11:46,118 --> 00:11:48,297 It's great to hear that. 139 00:11:48,297 --> 00:11:51,118 think that a couple of things. 140 00:11:51,118 --> 00:12:01,018 think that law firm leadership has, and I've worked with 110 AMLaw firms and that's when I stopped counting because counting gets difficult when firms merge. 141 00:12:01,018 --> 00:12:03,078 And so I quit counting at 110. 142 00:12:03,078 --> 00:12:12,198 It's probably more than, it's certainly more than that by now in the, the 17 years that I've been working with InfoDash and Acrowire. 143 00:12:12,340 --> 00:12:20,706 And so I've had a really good cross-sectional view of how law firms do things, especially in the KM, IT, now innovation. 144 00:12:20,706 --> 00:12:23,678 Innovation didn't exist really 10 years ago. 145 00:12:23,678 --> 00:12:24,718 It was brand new. 146 00:12:24,718 --> 00:12:30,746 um In fact, I did a little analysis of the Ilta roster in 2014. 147 00:12:30,746 --> 00:12:34,958 There were 16 people who had the word innovation in their title and none of them were C-suite. 148 00:12:34,958 --> 00:12:37,027 And I think there was two directors. 149 00:12:37,147 --> 00:12:38,988 So it was brand new. 150 00:12:39,149 --> 00:12:41,410 And I've talked a lot about the innovation theater. 151 00:12:41,410 --> 00:12:54,061 that has happened in legal where law firms have wanted to look innovative, but weren't necessarily committed to the change necessary to really move that forward. 152 00:12:54,061 --> 00:13:07,112 And it's hard because I feel like, I don't know if this is your take as well, but like law firm culture has been, you know, the status quo has been very sticky, especially since 153 00:13:07,112 --> 00:13:09,890 like we, we, the 154 00:13:09,890 --> 00:13:15,264 financial crisis recovery, Like AMLaw profits have been on the increase every year. 155 00:13:15,264 --> 00:13:22,879 It's kind of hard to say, hey, you're doing it wrong when law firms are performing better every year than they did the previous year. 156 00:13:22,879 --> 00:13:32,426 But I don't think that's going to be forever unless we make some pretty serious change around all of this transformation that's taking place. 157 00:13:32,426 --> 00:13:34,727 So it's good to hear you say that. 158 00:13:34,727 --> 00:13:38,946 And I'm curious, like with the Innovation Council, like what would... 159 00:13:38,946 --> 00:13:40,569 Who's on it? 160 00:13:40,691 --> 00:13:42,335 Not the names, but the roles. 161 00:13:42,335 --> 00:13:43,452 Is it all lawyers? 162 00:13:43,452 --> 00:13:48,492 you know, so the Innovation Council is a group of lawyers. 163 00:13:48,492 --> 00:13:56,752 They typically are going to be lawyers who have more client exposure. 164 00:13:56,992 --> 00:14:01,612 It's not just because you're a top business generator or firm, you're on the Innovation Council. 165 00:14:01,612 --> 00:14:08,192 You have to be somebody who's got a portfolio of clients where you use innovation. 166 00:14:08,192 --> 00:14:09,517 It's generally people who 167 00:14:09,517 --> 00:14:10,617 are respected in the firm. 168 00:14:10,617 --> 00:14:21,052 So to the extent they're out there trying to push change management, which I'm sure we'll talk about awareness and adoption and education, is, before we started, said, there's a 169 00:14:21,052 --> 00:14:22,112 couple of challenges. 170 00:14:22,112 --> 00:14:26,054 uh One is people's personal interest. 171 00:14:26,054 --> 00:14:31,716 You always got to get over those humps when you're trying to introduce innovation. 172 00:14:31,847 --> 00:14:39,379 I would say if you introduce innovation that, kind of a joke I always tell when I speak is, if we came up with something, 173 00:14:39,695 --> 00:14:53,575 that generated valid time entries that complied with every billing guideline, that captured every second I work, that captured every phase code and task code without me 174 00:14:53,575 --> 00:14:54,155 doing a thing. 175 00:14:54,155 --> 00:14:58,555 Like I plugged something into my head at the start of the day. 176 00:14:58,675 --> 00:15:00,895 And that was it. 177 00:15:01,195 --> 00:15:05,755 I would have 150 % adoption in my firm. 178 00:15:08,559 --> 00:15:12,219 And again, you have to think about that interest. 179 00:15:12,379 --> 00:15:14,099 So we have lawyers. 180 00:15:14,439 --> 00:15:16,759 Right now, usually five. 181 00:15:16,759 --> 00:15:19,259 The Innovation Council is probably 10 people. 182 00:15:19,259 --> 00:15:23,799 So maybe four or five lawyers are managing shareholders on it. 183 00:15:23,999 --> 00:15:26,239 I'm on it, so we have two board members. 184 00:15:26,639 --> 00:15:31,519 And then we will have other lawyers who practice. 185 00:15:31,759 --> 00:15:38,823 Obviously, our chief knowledge and innovation officer and then our senior director of innovation, Tim Fox, they run it. 186 00:15:38,892 --> 00:15:49,365 They prepare the pre-read on Tuesday, which has kind of all the projects that are in flight that we're talking about that day, a single slide on all of the projects we have 187 00:15:49,365 --> 00:15:57,037 that are in flight if people want to ask about them, and then a bunch of things that are sort of in the hopper um that we're currently contemplating. 188 00:15:57,037 --> 00:16:06,759 It talks about our strategy, which obviously, you know, we just had our three, we do a three-year strategic plan, and purposeful innovation is one of our three four pillars. 189 00:16:06,809 --> 00:16:09,770 So we align everything around our strategic plan. 190 00:16:09,770 --> 00:16:11,681 And I'm happy to talk about that too. 191 00:16:12,062 --> 00:16:23,569 And then all of the chief, like our chief financial officer, our chief administrative officer, we're in the process of interviewing and hiring a COO, that person will be on. 192 00:16:23,569 --> 00:16:30,532 So pretty much not every single chief, a chief client service officer, we try to include all of them. 193 00:16:30,532 --> 00:16:33,154 uh Our CIO is on it. 194 00:16:33,254 --> 00:16:35,499 The idea is that innovation happens everywhere. 195 00:16:35,499 --> 00:16:37,060 It's not confined to lawyers. 196 00:16:37,060 --> 00:16:39,361 It's not only client facing. 197 00:16:39,501 --> 00:16:41,062 It happens everywhere. 198 00:16:41,062 --> 00:16:50,167 If we can innovate to improve a billing within the billing department or how our AR, our revenue specialists are collecting. 199 00:16:51,823 --> 00:16:53,023 You know, that's awesome. 200 00:16:53,023 --> 00:17:04,288 um But we pulled it all into the Innovation Council and we pulled it all into our Knowledge and Innovation group to avoid having innovation in silos. 201 00:17:04,648 --> 00:17:14,713 We didn't want innovation to happen in silos where somebody doesn't know what somebody else is doing and you're pulling resources or you're duplicating efforts or you're doing 202 00:17:14,713 --> 00:17:17,114 something that is inefficient. 203 00:17:17,114 --> 00:17:18,664 So that's the team. 204 00:17:18,664 --> 00:17:20,565 It's a good group. 205 00:17:20,813 --> 00:17:23,287 You know, there's usually one or two changes every year. 206 00:17:23,287 --> 00:17:29,266 um But it's a good mix of people we meet every month, the third Thursday of every month. 207 00:17:29,266 --> 00:17:34,814 we have a pre, I and my co-chair do the pre-review on Tuesday. 208 00:17:34,814 --> 00:17:37,267 And then we meet in person once a year. 209 00:17:37,772 --> 00:17:38,984 Okay, interesting. 210 00:17:38,984 --> 00:17:41,146 Yeah, this is really good. 211 00:17:41,146 --> 00:17:54,108 um In the seven-ish years we've been working with you guys, from the outside in, it looks like you guys have had about 4x growth on the KM Innovation team. 212 00:17:54,108 --> 00:17:59,492 Yeah, when Dave Bowen started it was 29 people and it's 110 today. 213 00:18:00,418 --> 00:18:11,885 So how do you think about ROI, because people are expensive, how does the firm and the Innovation Council think about ROI with these efforts? 214 00:18:11,885 --> 00:18:15,408 Yeah, KM and Innovation are one department. 215 00:18:15,408 --> 00:18:19,075 We don't have a chief innovation officer and a chief knowledge manager. 216 00:18:21,423 --> 00:18:24,205 I don't think of them as two different things. 217 00:18:24,966 --> 00:18:35,144 I think traditional knowledge management, like the old traditional, like I know you're like, we have our intranet platform that I know we work with you on, has just evolved 218 00:18:35,144 --> 00:18:36,135 fantastically. 219 00:18:36,135 --> 00:18:39,558 I mean, what we do with it is remarkable. 220 00:18:39,558 --> 00:18:40,931 um 221 00:18:40,931 --> 00:18:48,438 but introducing some type of chat bot into it, which we call ODGPT. 222 00:18:48,438 --> 00:18:53,842 All of these things that we're doing that are innovative, they also tie into knowledge management. 223 00:18:53,842 --> 00:18:58,866 It's all about how you find and harness the data. 224 00:18:58,927 --> 00:19:02,690 It's the work product, which is the old KM, but now it's becoming data. 225 00:19:02,690 --> 00:19:06,933 Like how do we harness data and how do we use data? 226 00:19:07,494 --> 00:19:08,505 I imagine it's some... 227 00:19:08,505 --> 00:19:13,499 point with firm with client permissions, people are going to start selling. 228 00:19:13,499 --> 00:19:15,340 Who knows where data is going to go. 229 00:19:15,340 --> 00:19:19,463 um But as a firm, we have so much of it. 230 00:19:19,483 --> 00:19:21,385 And that's part of knowledge management. 231 00:19:21,385 --> 00:19:22,786 It's also part of innovation. 232 00:19:22,786 --> 00:19:26,028 ah But we look at it as adoption. 233 00:19:26,028 --> 00:19:30,211 I think we have four pillars that I think we analyze our ROI on. 234 00:19:30,211 --> 00:19:31,832 Adoption and awareness. 235 00:19:33,134 --> 00:19:35,575 If we get Harvey licenses, 236 00:19:35,962 --> 00:19:37,092 How many people are using it? 237 00:19:37,092 --> 00:19:38,693 How many people are really using it? 238 00:19:38,693 --> 00:19:44,134 Does that justify the expense of an enterprise license? 239 00:19:44,134 --> 00:19:51,276 Lexus Protege, other products that we look at, what's the adoption of those? 240 00:19:51,276 --> 00:19:53,536 People gotta be aware of it, they gotta be educated on it. 241 00:19:53,536 --> 00:19:56,297 Two is revenue, or second is revenue. 242 00:19:56,297 --> 00:20:05,945 uh When Dave came in, RK and I, I'll share this stuff, but our Knowledge and Innovation group did less than a million dollars in revenue. 243 00:20:05,945 --> 00:20:17,398 And if you look at revenue, talking our data analysts, because we do that work and bill it for instead of hiring outside forensic uh data analytic groups on class actions, cetera, 244 00:20:17,398 --> 00:20:23,280 litigation support, uh and our client portal, which is a product that we sell. 245 00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:26,741 It went from less than a million to over 16 million. 246 00:20:27,821 --> 00:20:33,921 And that is recognizing that, and I'll turn to talk more about it, about how we look at 247 00:20:33,921 --> 00:20:42,185 innovation and I think it was again one of your podcasts I heard somebody talk about it about sort of the different evolution of innovation and when you start selling services 248 00:20:42,185 --> 00:20:54,350 that you didn't ever think you would sell that's to me that's innovation right uh doing things differently I mean there's little innovation with improving things making you more 249 00:20:54,350 --> 00:21:01,863 efficient etc but we you know there's so much we can do and and then profitability a lot harder um 250 00:21:02,029 --> 00:21:08,901 I think you always talk about how firms, how great firms are at understanding profitability and analyzing it. 251 00:21:08,901 --> 00:21:10,351 uh That's sort of a joke. 252 00:21:10,351 --> 00:21:12,090 mean, every firm struggles. 253 00:21:12,090 --> 00:21:15,073 I mean, we sell time and how do you cost that time? 254 00:21:15,073 --> 00:21:19,284 And how do you really look at whether this dollar is worth the same as this dollar? 255 00:21:19,284 --> 00:21:22,364 But we do on flat fee matters. 256 00:21:22,505 --> 00:21:31,327 When we introduce innovation, we'll do a sort of pre and a post to look at the profitability of that particular project or engagement. 257 00:21:31,407 --> 00:21:33,109 And lastly, user satisfaction. 258 00:21:33,109 --> 00:21:43,039 We pulse uh users constantly to get their, understand what their pain points are, what they wish they could do so we could push out better education and 259 00:21:43,414 --> 00:21:43,904 Interesting. 260 00:21:43,904 --> 00:21:44,184 Yeah. 261 00:21:44,184 --> 00:21:53,078 So it's pretty unique that a KM function is or innovation function is revenue generating. 262 00:21:53,078 --> 00:21:54,569 You don't hear about that a lot. 263 00:21:54,569 --> 00:21:57,480 It's not the only time I've heard it, but it's rare. 264 00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:09,185 So yeah, you know, what's interesting is I feel like the labor and employment world is somewhat unique in that at least from an outsider, this is how it looks. 265 00:22:09,185 --> 00:22:12,558 So there's about five big national firms that 266 00:22:12,558 --> 00:22:27,266 um I can name and all of them, it's one of the few practice areas where I've seen firms completely zero in on this type of work and be able to scale to a thousand plus attorneys. 267 00:22:27,727 --> 00:22:38,524 I guess there's just so much of it out there, but having those blinders on and really focusing in creates really interesting opportunities like the client portal where you guys 268 00:22:38,524 --> 00:22:39,534 have 269 00:22:39,668 --> 00:22:53,630 accumulate all of this data that you can then hire brilliant data folks like Tim Fox and his team, who's very highly regarded in the industry, to create insights that you can 270 00:22:53,630 --> 00:22:54,991 monetize. 271 00:22:54,991 --> 00:23:04,288 I don't know if that's a function of your focus, but I don't see a lot of firms who aren't zeroed in like that be able to pull that together. 272 00:23:04,867 --> 00:23:15,353 Yeah, I think it's a tribute to Dave and Tim and what they their vision and what they do and also the support of the firm's leadership and in making decisions on flipping the 273 00:23:15,353 --> 00:23:23,257 flipping the nomenclature from cost to investment, even that using that word investment instead of referring to it as a cost. 274 00:23:23,257 --> 00:23:31,542 um And then obviously convincing, convincing lawyers that that adopting whatever it is we're using, right? 275 00:23:31,542 --> 00:23:33,663 Adopting using Harvey. 276 00:23:34,104 --> 00:23:34,908 Yeah. 277 00:23:34,974 --> 00:23:43,835 whatever it might be, um will it personally benefit them if you focus on that personal interest? 278 00:23:43,835 --> 00:23:46,646 um Which I think you have to. 279 00:23:46,646 --> 00:23:47,546 Yeah. 280 00:23:47,587 --> 00:23:50,849 So here's, I'll throw a little bit of a curve ball at you. 281 00:23:50,849 --> 00:24:01,746 We, we, we had a nicely prepared agenda, but you mentioned something that the LinkedIn post about the innovation innovators versus the lawyers mindset. 282 00:24:01,746 --> 00:24:07,540 And I used, I've talked about it before on the podcast, the traits that Dr. 283 00:24:07,540 --> 00:24:14,885 Larry Richard, who spent 35 years and has assessed 30, 40,000 attorneys. 284 00:24:14,885 --> 00:24:16,362 He's got a real, he's 285 00:24:16,362 --> 00:24:19,964 really got it dialed in on typical traits of lawyers. 286 00:24:19,964 --> 00:24:30,790 And then I use the five um traits of innovator that Mark Andreessen, who is the managing director of A16Z. 287 00:24:30,790 --> 00:24:32,926 He was the founder of Netscape eventually. 288 00:24:32,926 --> 00:24:35,012 I mean, he invented the web browser. 289 00:24:35,012 --> 00:24:40,556 um And I got some really interesting dialogue around that. 290 00:24:40,556 --> 00:24:45,590 And then um another post was, I talked about Big Law 2.0. 291 00:24:45,590 --> 00:24:57,220 and how the partnership model creates some interesting challenges or friction towards innovation like R &D. 292 00:24:57,470 --> 00:25:03,085 I would imagine that on day one when you hired all these data analysts, they weren't revenue generating. 293 00:25:03,085 --> 00:25:08,410 You had to look two, three, four years out into the future. 294 00:25:08,410 --> 00:25:13,554 And the partnership model really prioritizes 295 00:25:14,382 --> 00:25:16,324 and your cash basis accounting, right? 296 00:25:16,324 --> 00:25:29,920 Like, so how did you get the support necessary when as an industry, and I know there's a variation within firm to firm, but as an industry, it's really how much can you drive 297 00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:31,622 bottom line performance every year? 298 00:25:31,622 --> 00:25:35,916 How did you get the firm to come to the table and say, hey, we have to invest? 299 00:25:36,304 --> 00:25:49,907 so data analytics is an interesting one because it's a, you you have a class action practice in California and they are handling mass amounts of class actions. 300 00:25:50,868 --> 00:25:58,890 And then all of the sudden you need to run damage analysis and the clients, okay, paying for that. 301 00:25:59,310 --> 00:26:04,371 And you know, throughout your history, you've outsourced that. 302 00:26:04,975 --> 00:26:08,775 And then you decide, you know, let's try insourcing it. 303 00:26:08,775 --> 00:26:16,855 And you insource it and you get a little, you have a taste of success, right? 304 00:26:16,855 --> 00:26:32,235 You know, all of a sudden the lawyers who are managing and originating clients who are having these cases in California suddenly see, hey, I've got work that we can do at a 305 00:26:32,235 --> 00:26:35,035 competitive same quality. 306 00:26:37,533 --> 00:26:40,354 better pricing than outsourcing. 307 00:26:40,635 --> 00:26:48,141 And we are going to go and now all of sudden the work that we're generating for a particular case, it goes up incrementally. 308 00:26:48,141 --> 00:26:52,583 And those people are, well, I got five more cases and they're like, well, we need three more data analysts. 309 00:26:52,584 --> 00:26:55,726 Well, I have 50 cases, well, we need 10 more data analysts. 310 00:26:55,726 --> 00:26:58,888 So I think you see that grow incrementally. 311 00:26:58,929 --> 00:27:02,601 I think what then becomes a whole different. 312 00:27:03,459 --> 00:27:11,336 Discussion that we have as a firm have never had this is Rodney speaking in my own brain or thinking in my own brain is Okay. 313 00:27:11,336 --> 00:27:20,684 Now if we got this great group of people doing it for our clients Why don't we go bottle them and sell them to other firms and get other firms to hire now that might be a 314 00:27:20,684 --> 00:27:29,992 challenge You might not be going to some of our competitors and doing that they may not be up for that But you go to in-house, you know, you got this group of people doing something 315 00:27:29,992 --> 00:27:31,393 that's competing with 316 00:27:31,396 --> 00:27:37,989 these traditional data analytics firms, why not go do that? 317 00:27:37,989 --> 00:27:46,983 It's taking your litigation support team and growing that, and they can be, in some cases, revenue generating for certain types of matters. 318 00:27:46,983 --> 00:27:49,934 Well, why not see if they client will use them for others? 319 00:27:49,934 --> 00:27:51,185 Now, we don't do those things. 320 00:27:51,185 --> 00:27:55,026 We limit these functions to our clients and the work we're doing. 321 00:27:55,026 --> 00:27:56,467 But that's how it happens. 322 00:27:56,467 --> 00:27:59,068 I think it happens and you start to see success. 323 00:27:59,268 --> 00:28:07,177 And then that success builds confidence in investing for things that might not realize for a year or two. 324 00:28:07,630 --> 00:28:15,573 So you build financial credibility, uh, essentially, uh, you, yeah, very interesting. 325 00:28:15,654 --> 00:28:18,495 And here's, here's another kind of curve ball for you. 326 00:28:18,495 --> 00:28:27,579 So, you know, we've worked with Dave Boland since he basically, since he started, and I thought he was a great hire that you pulled from outside the industry. 327 00:28:27,679 --> 00:28:35,002 And I think that has really helped him because he came with. 328 00:28:35,124 --> 00:28:45,477 out all of the, you know, in legal, even in the legal tech world, like in the legal tech world, there is a life cycle, standard life cycle of companies like ours. 329 00:28:45,477 --> 00:28:51,298 You know, they start out small and independent like we are, they get to about 10 million in revenue, and then they sell to one of the big companies. 330 00:28:51,298 --> 00:28:54,100 And you know what, I don't want to do that, right? 331 00:28:54,100 --> 00:29:01,682 I'm thinking differently, but, and we have created a board of advisors who 332 00:29:02,232 --> 00:29:08,024 come from all sorts of walks of life rather than just legal tech founders because they have that mindset. 333 00:29:08,024 --> 00:29:18,408 Was there any strategy around bringing in people, and you've got a mix, you've got people who are lifers in legal and then you've got people like Dave who came from public 334 00:29:18,408 --> 00:29:18,988 accounting. 335 00:29:18,988 --> 00:29:24,771 um What is your strategy with that, bringing those different perspectives? 336 00:29:24,771 --> 00:29:27,072 Yeah, that's a great question. 337 00:29:27,093 --> 00:29:39,133 I think when you are bringing in people who are not practicing lawyers, even if they're lawyers and have a law degree, but they're not practicing lawyers. 338 00:29:39,133 --> 00:29:49,371 mean, one thing about law firms, and I've heard you talk about this with respect to the big four, is lawyer, I'm 57 years old. 339 00:29:49,371 --> 00:29:51,392 I got eight years left to practice. 340 00:29:52,054 --> 00:29:54,075 I don't think. 341 00:29:54,218 --> 00:29:58,791 as long as I am practicing, our firm will be owned and will be run by lawyers. 342 00:29:58,791 --> 00:30:01,413 I I don't see that dynamic. 343 00:30:01,413 --> 00:30:04,875 Like I don't see a firm bring in an outside CEO. 344 00:30:04,875 --> 00:30:16,273 I'm not commenting on that, whether it's a good idea or bad idea, but bringing in an outside CEO to run things and for that person to make decisions rather than consensus 345 00:30:16,273 --> 00:30:21,246 based decision making by a group of lawyers who meet as a board every month. 346 00:30:21,871 --> 00:30:29,471 even having an executive committee of three lawyers who are really involved in sort of the day-to-day decision making. 347 00:30:29,531 --> 00:30:41,991 I think you see firms delegating sort of what I would call the things that don't impact the bottom line so dramatically to the professional legal staff that is non-practicing. 348 00:30:42,031 --> 00:30:48,631 Obviously Dave Bowen has discretion to make decisions within his budget and things that he's doing for that year. 349 00:30:48,659 --> 00:30:52,340 I don't think anybody goes in and micromanages him. 350 00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:59,682 So I think you have to have a mix of business people, because we're business um at the end of the day. 351 00:30:59,682 --> 00:31:09,585 And you have to have lawyers who are willing to let those business people run their departments, make decisions without micromanaging every decision. 352 00:31:09,585 --> 00:31:18,747 On the other hand, you need to have people making those decisions realize that they're making decisions that may impact how lawyers do things. 353 00:31:18,945 --> 00:31:24,115 And we're not the most changeable lot of people in the world. 354 00:31:24,115 --> 00:31:34,481 I still have colleagues who write their time down on a yellow pad of paper and give it to their practice assistant to enter into the timekeeping system. 355 00:31:35,002 --> 00:31:42,385 we're not the best constituents for change management, I guess is the way I would put it. 356 00:31:42,385 --> 00:31:48,467 So you need to have that partnership and that trust between those two groups that A, 357 00:31:48,772 --> 00:31:51,756 A, you're not going to run off and do something that no one's going to use. 358 00:31:51,756 --> 00:31:56,502 And B, we're not going to manage every little thing you do. 359 00:31:56,502 --> 00:32:01,588 So I think that's the key, more than the person in the job. 360 00:32:01,849 --> 00:32:03,520 If that makes sense, that's how I view it. 361 00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:04,461 Yeah. 362 00:32:04,461 --> 00:32:14,790 Well, and you know, so law firm, the, the big law market is extremely fragmented and you can measure that number of different ways. 363 00:32:14,790 --> 00:32:21,556 can look at concentration of your top X number of players in the space. 364 00:32:21,556 --> 00:32:29,280 If you use, I think the top five law firms, uh, have about 4 % market share overall. 365 00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:38,654 in total legal spend, whereas the big four, for example, have 97 % of the publicly traded. 366 00:32:38,654 --> 00:32:41,155 This is on the audit side. 367 00:32:41,155 --> 00:32:43,676 I'm not sure about advisory and tax. 368 00:32:43,676 --> 00:32:47,658 But on the audit side, they own it. 369 00:32:47,658 --> 00:32:52,019 scale has not been important in legal thus far. 370 00:32:52,180 --> 00:32:57,666 And because it is a bespoke craft, artisan, um 371 00:32:57,666 --> 00:33:11,676 process or practice and I am of the belief, I'd love to hear your thinking on this, that when we move into this next iteration, this next 2.0 of big law, I think scale is going to 372 00:33:11,676 --> 00:33:19,421 be important because there's going to be, you're not going to differentiate yourself by going out and implementing Harvey or co-counsel, right? 373 00:33:19,421 --> 00:33:25,565 What's going to differentiate you is your data and your tech and if you buy it off the shelf, your competitors have access to it by definition. 374 00:33:25,565 --> 00:33:27,468 That's not differentiating. 375 00:33:27,468 --> 00:33:30,499 So I think that scale is going to become more important. 376 00:33:30,499 --> 00:33:35,782 And what I have trouble envisioning is how this partnership model accommodates that scale. 377 00:33:35,782 --> 00:33:46,606 So when you look at a typical governance, like corporate governance infrastructure, you've got shareholders and they install management and you've got all sorts of layers of risk 378 00:33:46,606 --> 00:33:52,909 management, like inside the line of business, you've got risk management, they call it the second line of defense. 379 00:33:52,909 --> 00:33:55,210 You've got internal audit. 380 00:33:55,822 --> 00:33:58,762 None of these things exist in law. 381 00:33:58,822 --> 00:34:01,022 part of that has to do with scale. 382 00:34:01,022 --> 00:34:07,642 But to really scale, if you want to be a Fortune 500 company, it is uniform across the board that that exists. 383 00:34:07,642 --> 00:34:21,182 I'm wondering, how you think about once we get into this tech-enabled legal service delivery world that we seem to be stepping into, who knows when the switch is going to 384 00:34:21,182 --> 00:34:21,942 flip. 385 00:34:22,182 --> 00:34:24,844 how do you see? 386 00:34:24,844 --> 00:34:29,322 the current model, A, do you think scale is going to be important going forward? 387 00:34:29,322 --> 00:34:38,578 And B, if so, how, you know, if it's just lawyers running the firm, there's no outside capital in these governance structures, how will it accommodate that scale? 388 00:34:38,989 --> 00:34:44,862 Yeah, well, first of all, think you're talking to me in the context of a labor and employment firm. 389 00:34:44,862 --> 00:34:54,006 I think it's probably different than if you talk to a firm that has more of general practice, especially like a regional general practice. 390 00:34:54,006 --> 00:34:56,817 mean, scaling, the client portal is scaling, right? 391 00:34:56,817 --> 00:35:04,230 Historically, ah clients would call up and they would have a question about New Jersey wage hour law. 392 00:35:04,490 --> 00:35:06,851 And you would handle those one off. 393 00:35:07,271 --> 00:35:11,444 and each individual inquiry was handled differently. 394 00:35:11,444 --> 00:35:14,976 Somebody needed a form for this or a form for that. 395 00:35:15,137 --> 00:35:18,319 Scaling, the client portal is scaling 1.0. 396 00:35:18,319 --> 00:35:29,287 It is a classic example of taking all of this information that we have as a firm, building it into a portal, allowing clients to collectively share the uh costs across the platform. 397 00:35:29,287 --> 00:35:31,518 um That is scaling. 398 00:35:31,518 --> 00:35:36,071 You're doing RIFs. 399 00:35:36,396 --> 00:35:49,295 in a downturn and you're doing them for hundreds of clients um and having the ability to not only scale the creation of the documents you're going to need, but also to, and then 400 00:35:49,295 --> 00:35:51,947 sell that for a fixed fee. 401 00:35:51,947 --> 00:36:04,756 So if I do it on an individualized basis, it's going to cost you $50,000, but here I've got this bespoke product, you know, that you can get it for $500. 402 00:36:04,833 --> 00:36:06,845 Again, that's scaling, right? 403 00:36:06,845 --> 00:36:14,872 And in our space, it's a little easier to do because it's something that's more predictable uh where these scaling opportunities are going to be. 404 00:36:14,872 --> 00:36:18,735 um Data collection, you mentioned that. 405 00:36:18,735 --> 00:36:26,362 I mean, that's another area where I think there's tremendous opportunity within the legal industry that's been lost. 406 00:36:26,362 --> 00:36:31,566 um If I right now want to get a sense of how much, you know, 407 00:36:31,791 --> 00:36:33,911 But he's litigating a case. 408 00:36:34,191 --> 00:36:36,751 The opening demand is $100,000. 409 00:36:36,931 --> 00:36:40,251 He wants to have an idea of where the case might end. 410 00:36:40,251 --> 00:36:44,491 You're going to try to find people who've maybe had cases with that plaintiff's counsel. 411 00:36:44,711 --> 00:36:47,651 It's going to be off the cuff. 412 00:36:47,651 --> 00:36:49,031 Here's my thought. 413 00:36:49,031 --> 00:36:53,471 That's probably right 20 % of the time and wrong 80 % of the time. 414 00:36:53,471 --> 00:36:59,919 But if I've got 150 cases that our firm has litigated with this person and I've collected this data, 415 00:36:59,919 --> 00:37:11,119 And I could say, hey, accounting for certain outliers, if this person starts at $100,000, they're going to end at $47,253 within this confidence level. 416 00:37:11,159 --> 00:37:12,859 That's the use of data. 417 00:37:13,259 --> 00:37:20,899 I think you're going to see more of that type of, because now the technology enables you to do that, right? 418 00:37:20,899 --> 00:37:29,959 You're not relying on lawyers to look at their yellow pad of paper and enter some information before they throw that yellow pad of paper. 419 00:37:30,393 --> 00:37:40,836 So I think you're gonna see it in the current setup of our firm, I think we will achieve that. 420 00:37:40,836 --> 00:37:45,962 And I don't think we need a structure to do that. 421 00:37:46,043 --> 00:37:49,927 For us, I'm not saying that that's the case for everybody. 422 00:37:49,964 --> 00:37:52,834 Yeah, yeah, you guys have really niched down. 423 00:37:52,834 --> 00:37:55,602 I mean, you do labor and employment, immigration. 424 00:37:55,602 --> 00:37:56,624 Is there anything else? 425 00:37:56,624 --> 00:37:57,565 Any other? 426 00:37:57,565 --> 00:37:58,146 That's it. 427 00:37:58,146 --> 00:37:59,046 Yeah. 428 00:38:00,089 --> 00:38:01,036 Yeah, that's a very. 429 00:38:01,036 --> 00:38:02,616 it enables us to do that. 430 00:38:02,616 --> 00:38:11,576 mean, when you look at innovation and how it impacts that, I think the challenge is not the scaling. 431 00:38:11,776 --> 00:38:22,536 I think the challenge becomes convincing lawyers who all have different interests, like you and I talked about at the beginning, convincing attorneys who have different personal 432 00:38:22,536 --> 00:38:23,596 interests. 433 00:38:24,867 --> 00:38:29,068 I'm somebody who is compensated based on meeting my billable hour requirement. 434 00:38:30,029 --> 00:38:32,529 And I meet it every year, barely. 435 00:38:32,529 --> 00:38:40,712 And somebody now comes along and says, hey, here's this tool that's going to cut 200 hours out of your year. 436 00:38:40,852 --> 00:38:43,613 You might not be too excited about that. 437 00:38:43,613 --> 00:38:50,535 But if I'm a lawyer who bills way too much and I'm looking to find ways to become more efficient and use AI and other tools to... 438 00:38:51,779 --> 00:39:03,101 to reduce my workload so I can deliver better work product, focus on the things where maybe my judgment is more important, it'll be welcome. 439 00:39:03,500 --> 00:39:10,117 Well, so that means internal firm compensation would have to change too, right? 440 00:39:10,425 --> 00:39:11,565 you're gonna have to look at. 441 00:39:11,565 --> 00:39:21,698 mean, those are the things I think, not so much the governance structure of a firm from being a partnership or having outside leadership, know, non-lawyer leadership. 442 00:39:21,698 --> 00:39:34,478 I think the things that are gonna be, that are gonna, over the next five years, you're really gonna see a struggle with is, what's, how, and we're, every firm is grappling with 443 00:39:34,478 --> 00:39:34,588 them. 444 00:39:34,588 --> 00:39:35,322 We grapple with them. 445 00:39:35,322 --> 00:39:36,943 How do you compensate? 446 00:39:36,943 --> 00:39:37,903 What do you value? 447 00:39:37,903 --> 00:39:39,092 um 448 00:39:39,092 --> 00:39:44,356 Do you value just bottom line dollar or do you care about profitable dollars? 449 00:39:44,356 --> 00:39:48,119 And if you care about profitable dollars, how are you measuring profitability? 450 00:39:48,119 --> 00:39:49,420 How are you capturing it? 451 00:39:49,420 --> 00:39:54,784 What tools are you providing to people to improve profitability and be able to regularly measure it? 452 00:39:54,784 --> 00:39:57,366 Every business measures their profitability. 453 00:39:57,466 --> 00:40:01,909 They know how much they charge for, they make on things, they know how much they cost. 454 00:40:03,131 --> 00:40:08,719 I don't think every firm has that really nailed down completely. 455 00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:12,019 I think different people have different opinions about it. 456 00:40:12,099 --> 00:40:14,319 But those are the challenges. 457 00:40:14,619 --> 00:40:23,739 And another example that Ted, it's just the last one I'll give is, if I'm somebody who's just starting out developing business, and I've got a client who expects that this 458 00:40:23,739 --> 00:40:29,719 handbook is going to $10,000 because when they were practicing lawyer, that's how much it cost. 459 00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:30,719 And they don't want a flat fee. 460 00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:32,579 They want to pay me by the hour. 461 00:40:32,619 --> 00:40:38,639 And I go to somebody and I say, hey, why don't you use this handbook builder that we've generated? 462 00:40:38,729 --> 00:40:40,800 and you'll be able to generate it. 463 00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:45,863 It's only going to take you one hour to type in the information and it'll generate it for you. 464 00:40:46,384 --> 00:40:48,905 And they're like, yeah, but I'm only billing by the hour. 465 00:40:48,905 --> 00:40:52,339 And the client thinks it's going to take 10. 466 00:40:52,567 --> 00:40:54,468 Why in the world would I bill them one? 467 00:40:54,468 --> 00:40:57,830 I mean, again, you have those thoughts. 468 00:40:57,830 --> 00:41:04,174 I'm not saying that as a firm, of course you want to think that everybody would do it as efficiently as possible. 469 00:41:04,174 --> 00:41:06,535 But again, you just have these 470 00:41:07,129 --> 00:41:16,002 sort of barriers to, in addition to lawyers being lawyers, there are institutional barriers to change that you have to just be aware of. 471 00:41:16,002 --> 00:41:17,665 Yeah, for sure. 472 00:41:17,665 --> 00:41:30,946 speaking, you know, we talked a little bit about AI and you know, how has AI shaped what you guys do there at Ogletree Deacons in terms of offerings and pricing? 473 00:41:30,946 --> 00:41:37,407 Yeah, I mean, you can give different examples where, and again, it has to be a communication with the client, right? 474 00:41:37,407 --> 00:41:39,527 At the end of the day, you've to be communicating. 475 00:41:39,527 --> 00:41:42,267 know, again, take legalmation. 476 00:41:42,267 --> 00:41:46,267 We were an early user of legalmation for answers to complaints. 477 00:41:46,487 --> 00:41:55,647 And there's a certain flat fee charge that goes with the use of legalmation that you advise the client of and you pass it through, which is significantly less than the cost of 478 00:41:55,647 --> 00:41:58,587 somebody sitting there and generating an answer. 479 00:42:00,589 --> 00:42:02,431 If everybody's on board with that, that's great. 480 00:42:02,431 --> 00:42:09,195 I mean, it's not like you're using these things and not reviewing them and that's problem if you have people do that. 481 00:42:09,636 --> 00:42:16,725 none of our lawyers, know, we're all, our firm is a great firm and we're always very attuned to making sure that that work product is perfect. 482 00:42:16,725 --> 00:42:21,125 Cause the end of the day, nothing can affect the product of the work and the service delivered. 483 00:42:21,125 --> 00:42:28,370 um You're seeing probably a more of an education about flat fees and how to flat fee work to 484 00:42:29,055 --> 00:42:31,096 reduce the client's cost. 485 00:42:31,856 --> 00:42:33,307 So you're reducing the client's cost. 486 00:42:33,307 --> 00:42:41,881 You're reducing the bottom line dollar value that you're bringing into the firm, but you're improving the profitability of that. 487 00:42:41,881 --> 00:42:50,024 So if I can go to a client in my handbook example and say, I'll pay you 2000, I'll charge you 2000 instead of 10,000, and you're gonna get the same exact handbook. 488 00:42:50,304 --> 00:42:53,535 And I can do that with the punch or click of a button that takes me five minutes. 489 00:42:53,535 --> 00:42:57,741 We made $8,000 less. 490 00:42:57,817 --> 00:43:03,001 but I've made $2,000 that cost me $50 to generate. 491 00:43:03,365 --> 00:43:05,910 I think the second is much better than the first. 492 00:43:06,030 --> 00:43:08,210 Yeah, for sure. 493 00:43:08,570 --> 00:43:09,690 Well, we're almost out of time. 494 00:43:09,690 --> 00:43:19,190 I wanted to talk, ask one final question about differentiation and how Ogletree Deacons thinks about it. 495 00:43:19,190 --> 00:43:22,070 I feel like it's a really important topic. 496 00:43:22,070 --> 00:43:23,990 And like I said, is, I, am I right? 497 00:43:23,990 --> 00:43:28,150 Is there about five L and E focus firm like big one, 500 turns? 498 00:43:28,850 --> 00:43:29,830 Yeah. 499 00:43:30,210 --> 00:43:30,842 Yeah. 500 00:43:30,842 --> 00:43:33,887 Austin Littler and Jackson Lewis are the three largest. 501 00:43:33,887 --> 00:43:39,005 um But yeah, there's only a handful that do it nationally or globally. 502 00:43:39,094 --> 00:43:48,214 And how does the firm think about differentiation today when you're competing against these other L &E firms? 503 00:43:48,214 --> 00:43:52,854 Like how do you pitch OD is different and here's why? 504 00:43:53,552 --> 00:43:55,653 Well, that's a great question. 505 00:43:55,653 --> 00:44:00,556 I think you could focus on, it's not what you have. 506 00:44:00,997 --> 00:44:02,357 we have Harvey. 507 00:44:02,488 --> 00:44:03,849 we have co-counsel. 508 00:44:03,849 --> 00:44:06,500 we have Lexus Protege. 509 00:44:06,500 --> 00:44:09,602 we use this product or that product. 510 00:44:09,602 --> 00:44:13,124 um It's how are you using it? 511 00:44:13,385 --> 00:44:17,627 And how are you using it to deliver better service for less money? 512 00:44:17,627 --> 00:44:23,233 um You talk about innovation theater, and I think that's a great thing to talk about because 513 00:44:23,233 --> 00:44:36,448 If I just walk around and say, I've got, I'm now partnered with X and we're out, using it, but you don't talk about what you do with it and focus on that, then everybody does that. 514 00:44:36,448 --> 00:44:39,730 You know, that's, that's innovation theater to me. 515 00:44:39,790 --> 00:44:52,935 But if you really dig into how am I going to use these tools with you as a client to deliver superior performance, better product quicker, you know, 516 00:44:53,560 --> 00:44:57,886 in a a in a in a in a way that considerably. 517 00:44:58,528 --> 00:45:00,150 Drops your budget. 518 00:45:01,373 --> 00:45:05,912 Then you'll differentiate yourself versus just talking about what you do. 519 00:45:05,912 --> 00:45:06,872 Yeah. 520 00:45:07,213 --> 00:45:09,434 And then what about in the future? 521 00:45:10,156 --> 00:45:18,983 obviously, so buying, like I mentioned, buying software licenses that everybody else can buy, it doesn't create differentiation. 522 00:45:18,983 --> 00:45:26,909 I'm a believer in that some of the things that you're doing, like with your, currently with your client portal, all of that data. 523 00:45:27,050 --> 00:45:31,212 And then you you guys have just signed on as extra net customers of ours. 524 00:45:31,212 --> 00:45:42,528 I'm really interested to start to put some Lego pieces together and say hey, what if you took that client all that or all that um L &E data that you have and you've got all these 525 00:45:42,528 --> 00:45:51,852 employment contracts and throw Azure Open AI on top and flag exceptions like I don't know anybody who's doing that like there's lots of interesting recipes like. 526 00:45:52,560 --> 00:46:00,722 You've got to understand what the demand is within your clients, your demand within your attorneys, your demand within your various departments of the firm. 527 00:46:00,803 --> 00:46:06,966 And then you need to build products for them and customize things for what they need. 528 00:46:06,966 --> 00:46:13,188 The real challenge, think, Ted, is that take our intranet, which has evolved. 529 00:46:13,188 --> 00:46:14,688 It used to be 95%. 530 00:46:14,688 --> 00:46:21,945 It's now moving to this world where my personalized space is now getting larger than the 531 00:46:21,945 --> 00:46:24,637 firm space, which is what I care about. 532 00:46:24,637 --> 00:46:32,601 Yes, I like to see that there's this news alert coming out, but I really want to see the things that matter to me, the clients that I'm working on, the matters that I'm handling, 533 00:46:32,601 --> 00:46:34,232 the information that's important to me. 534 00:46:34,232 --> 00:46:41,786 And what you really got to realize is that what's important to me is different than what's important to the lawyer sitting in the office next to me. 535 00:46:41,786 --> 00:46:45,888 It's different than my practice assistant sitting across the hall from me. 536 00:46:46,268 --> 00:46:48,775 We all have things that we want to see. 537 00:46:48,775 --> 00:46:51,641 I may care more about billing and collection, 538 00:46:51,641 --> 00:46:54,912 than I do about how many hours I've built this month. 539 00:46:54,952 --> 00:47:04,875 And you have to build something that speaks to everybody and that they can focus on what's important to them and not be stuck with, they're only getting one tenth of what they 540 00:47:04,875 --> 00:47:09,536 really care about because you got to give one tenth to the other nine people. 541 00:47:10,356 --> 00:47:12,477 That to me is the key. 542 00:47:12,797 --> 00:47:13,937 And that's where think it's headed. 543 00:47:13,937 --> 00:47:18,218 I think it's headed to a much more customized experience for me. 544 00:47:18,218 --> 00:47:20,839 The ability for me to customize my experience for my clients. 545 00:47:20,935 --> 00:47:23,937 And that's going to be critical to us. 546 00:47:23,937 --> 00:47:25,108 We don't like to build. 547 00:47:25,108 --> 00:47:33,044 We like to partner with companies like yours, the experts, the people who have the bandwidth to build what we want. 548 00:47:33,185 --> 00:47:40,940 And I think you're going to see a demand for things that are usable across lots of different personal interests. 549 00:47:40,940 --> 00:47:43,591 Yeah, well this has been good stuff. 550 00:47:43,591 --> 00:47:48,432 You're the first, we've had lots of CKO's, CKIO's, CNO's. 551 00:47:48,432 --> 00:47:58,716 You're the first, um you're the first guest that's on a leadership executive committee and it's been really insightful. 552 00:47:58,716 --> 00:48:03,377 I've really enjoyed um having that perspective on the show. 553 00:48:03,377 --> 00:48:06,118 So I appreciate you spending a few minutes and sharing that. 554 00:48:06,118 --> 00:48:07,018 really, really important. 555 00:48:07,018 --> 00:48:07,589 I loved it. 556 00:48:07,589 --> 00:48:08,399 I think it was great. 557 00:48:08,399 --> 00:48:11,392 really uh like to geek out on this stuff. 558 00:48:11,392 --> 00:48:15,245 um And I really think it's the future of our firm. 559 00:48:15,245 --> 00:48:18,938 And think it's just in the future of the practice. 560 00:48:18,938 --> 00:48:22,461 I hope law schools are doing a good job at preparing people. 561 00:48:22,461 --> 00:48:29,767 um I think you're going to see professions and positions within the legal profession impacted by this in different ways. 562 00:48:29,767 --> 00:48:35,371 uh But I think everybody will be impacted in how they practice over their. 563 00:48:35,371 --> 00:48:36,313 over the years to come. 564 00:48:36,313 --> 00:48:38,717 There's no way to escape it. 565 00:48:38,819 --> 00:48:45,014 you're either going to figure a way to be at the forefront of it, or you're going to get dropped. 566 00:48:45,014 --> 00:48:47,575 It's going to happen to you or by you. 567 00:48:47,575 --> 00:48:49,376 So you choose. 568 00:48:49,436 --> 00:48:50,734 This is good stuff. 569 00:48:50,734 --> 00:48:52,517 All right, Rodney, I really appreciate the time. 570 00:48:52,517 --> 00:48:55,779 Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us today. 571 00:48:56,259 --> 00:48:57,599 All right, take care. 00:00:04,640 Rodney, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,772 --> 00:00:09,279 doing great, you know, it's a nice kind of slightly rainy day here in St. 3 00:00:09,279 --> 00:00:10,370 Louis, Missouri. 4 00:00:10,370 --> 00:00:11,012 And you know what? 5 00:00:11,012 --> 00:00:13,690 I'm just around the corner from you, so I'm... 6 00:00:13,690 --> 00:00:16,832 I know, that's how we connected. 7 00:00:16,832 --> 00:00:21,965 I was listening to one of your podcasts ah and all of a sudden I hear you talking about St. 8 00:00:21,965 --> 00:00:22,885 Louis. 9 00:00:23,266 --> 00:00:24,927 And I'm like, holy cow, he's in St. 10 00:00:24,927 --> 00:00:27,628 Louis and I think I sent you LinkedIn. 11 00:00:27,628 --> 00:00:34,502 didn't have a way to contact you so I messaged you through LinkedIn and we connect and we've had a couple of breakfasts since and here we are. 12 00:00:34,502 --> 00:00:41,502 And we had some really interesting conversations during those breakfast meetings and which is why I really wanted to get you on the podcast. 13 00:00:41,502 --> 00:00:43,402 So I know you're a busy guy. 14 00:00:43,402 --> 00:00:45,422 I appreciate the time. 15 00:00:45,562 --> 00:00:47,342 Well, let's get you introduced. 16 00:00:47,342 --> 00:00:51,602 So you've been 30 plus years in Big Law. 17 00:00:51,682 --> 00:00:58,642 You've been 15 plus years at Ogletree Deacons and you lead the Farms Innovation Council. 18 00:00:58,642 --> 00:01:03,212 Like give us a little bit of background on, what you, you know, your 19 00:01:03,212 --> 00:01:06,212 your rise up the ranks and kind of what you're doing today. 20 00:01:06,212 --> 00:01:07,142 Yeah, sure. 21 00:01:07,142 --> 00:01:15,847 So, yeah, I started, uh, I've been in a big, started a big regional law firm in Kansas city, moved to St. 22 00:01:15,847 --> 00:01:19,409 Louis and was it a big regional firm, uh, in St. 23 00:01:19,409 --> 00:01:22,581 Louis, just honing my craft. 24 00:01:22,581 --> 00:01:29,705 Um, I have a background as primarily a airline and railroad lawyer, um, representing airlines and railroads. 25 00:01:29,705 --> 00:01:34,027 So it's always been in the employment space, uh, and it's always been on the management side. 26 00:01:34,027 --> 00:01:36,398 So that's all I've done my entire career. 27 00:01:36,672 --> 00:01:43,385 In 2008, uh Ogletree Deacons had just opened about six months earlier in St. 28 00:01:43,385 --> 00:01:44,235 Louis. 29 00:01:44,614 --> 00:01:53,849 And a bunch of my peers at other firms who I had worked with and uh three of them I went to law school with were making the transition to Ogletree. 30 00:01:53,849 --> 00:01:55,639 So I made the jump as well. 31 00:01:55,880 --> 00:02:04,983 I continued to sort of hone my craft and then that sort of evolved into a business development and became a business developer. 32 00:02:05,059 --> 00:02:07,941 developed a large number of clients. 33 00:02:07,941 --> 00:02:16,307 uh then three years ago, or four years, three years ago, went on our board of directors. 34 00:02:16,307 --> 00:02:19,448 So I'm our firm's board of directors, which is six of us. 35 00:02:19,669 --> 00:02:30,056 And then three years ago, or four years ago, took over as the chair of the Innovation Council, which is uh just a group of multiple different people within the firm. 36 00:02:30,056 --> 00:02:32,198 But my career has sort of evolved. 37 00:02:32,198 --> 00:02:34,521 There's a lot of people from 38 00:02:34,521 --> 00:02:47,604 practitioner to um business developer to now someone who is probably a little bit more interested in how we as a firm do business. 39 00:02:48,285 --> 00:02:58,215 Still tied to the practice and still work with clients all the time, but really focused on the business aspect of what could we do better as a business. 40 00:02:58,786 --> 00:03:03,685 And how much of your time is focused on that versus the practice? 41 00:03:03,939 --> 00:03:15,247 I always like to say that 80 % of my day is servicing clients, 80 % of my day is doing firm stuff, 80 % of my day is business development, and 80 % of my day is innovation 42 00:03:15,247 --> 00:03:15,868 related. 43 00:03:15,868 --> 00:03:25,655 Kidding aside, it kind of depends on the week, but the Innovation Council and the innovation piece um is a lot. 44 00:03:25,655 --> 00:03:31,439 um Not only do I chair our firm's Innovation Council and sort of... 45 00:03:31,439 --> 00:03:32,959 help provide strategic direction. 46 00:03:32,959 --> 00:03:35,300 I'm sure we'll get into how we do it. 47 00:03:35,420 --> 00:03:45,623 But also, I've been to three offices in the last two months to do an in-person lunch and learn about innovation for two hours. 48 00:03:45,663 --> 00:03:47,244 I do online webinars. 49 00:03:47,244 --> 00:03:55,666 We tend to find that lawyers teaching lawyers about the benefits of using Harvey, for example, um is a good thing. 50 00:03:55,666 --> 00:03:58,557 um So I do that as well. 51 00:03:58,954 --> 00:04:01,315 And what, what was the catalyst? 52 00:04:01,315 --> 00:04:04,726 Like what really pushed Ogletree Deacons? 53 00:04:04,726 --> 00:04:13,058 And you guys have been clients of ours for a long time, seven plus years and back all the way back before we were InfoDash, we were Acrowire back then. 54 00:04:13,058 --> 00:04:23,911 So I've had a, I've had a bird's eye view and have seen the growth and it's been exciting to watch and it's been fun to partner with you guys, but I'm, I'm curious, you know, I can 55 00:04:23,911 --> 00:04:25,774 only see so far into the firm. 56 00:04:25,774 --> 00:04:26,662 what 57 00:04:26,742 --> 00:04:29,087 What was the nexus? 58 00:04:29,087 --> 00:04:32,112 What started the firm's conversation around innovation? 59 00:04:32,567 --> 00:04:43,595 I think it's not, I like to think we've done it very, very well, but I think like most firms, it started with the traditional knowledge management role. 60 00:04:43,595 --> 00:04:54,403 um Patrick DiDomenico, who I'm sure a lot of your listeners know, was our chief knowledge management officer and just a fantastic expert in this area. 61 00:04:54,403 --> 00:05:00,077 And I worked a lot with Patrick, um but at the start it was a traditional 62 00:05:00,175 --> 00:05:14,135 knowledge management function where we're taking the collective knowledge of, you know, at the time, probably 400 lawyers and others who are doing things and in silos, but, you 63 00:05:14,135 --> 00:05:16,175 know, we're a very dispersed firm, right? 64 00:05:16,175 --> 00:05:19,055 We're not 1100 lawyers sitting in one building. 65 00:05:19,055 --> 00:05:23,135 We're 1100 lawyers sitting in 60 some plus offices. 66 00:05:23,235 --> 00:05:26,475 So, you know, it was that traditional role. 67 00:05:26,475 --> 00:05:28,895 And then I would say the first 68 00:05:29,859 --> 00:05:41,005 You know, we had some portfolio clients where you're getting a flat fee and innovation plays a special role, I would say, because, you know, financial is everybody, know, 69 00:05:41,005 --> 00:05:44,587 leverage is your key to profitability. 70 00:05:44,728 --> 00:05:47,509 And, you you raise rates or you improve your leverage. 71 00:05:47,509 --> 00:05:57,044 um And, you know, if you have a flat fee, you really focus on leverage um versus going to the client and saying, hey, we're doing things really, really poorly. 72 00:05:57,044 --> 00:05:58,535 Can you please pay us more? 73 00:05:58,544 --> 00:06:00,796 It's usually not a good client development strategy. 74 00:06:00,796 --> 00:06:13,456 So, the use of document automation, some of the earlier adoptions of innovation uh in law firms, uh particularly on the tech side. 75 00:06:13,577 --> 00:06:14,937 And we sort of did that. 76 00:06:14,937 --> 00:06:17,922 then, again, we're labor and employment. 77 00:06:17,922 --> 00:06:25,997 you've got, when the federal government's not really making significant changes, got states that are constantly, constantly 78 00:06:26,031 --> 00:06:28,891 changing the rules and things of that nature. 79 00:06:29,171 --> 00:06:41,591 you know, in order to scale that in a sort of way to generate revenue, we started with this OD comply concept, which is there were a number of top background checks, wage and 80 00:06:41,591 --> 00:06:53,151 hour, various topics that really were ripe for kind of developing some type of online platform where you can select a state, you can, you know, and that now has evolved into 81 00:06:53,151 --> 00:06:56,015 our current client portal, which you might be familiar with. 82 00:06:56,015 --> 00:07:08,738 um But that sort of was the early, and then there were some early AI, know, legal nation with answers and other sort of products that were sort of early promoters of the use of AI 83 00:07:08,738 --> 00:07:10,879 in the legal tech space. 84 00:07:10,999 --> 00:07:15,760 Then COVID comes along and now you are scaling beyond belief. 85 00:07:15,760 --> 00:07:26,253 you know, uh innovation is about, scaling is a huge part of innovation in my opinion, where you are trying to take something that you can, you know, 86 00:07:26,671 --> 00:07:37,991 Templates, things we were doing during COVID and the demand was through the roof as states were grappling and our clients were grappling with what to do during the pandemic. 87 00:07:38,131 --> 00:07:45,651 And then coming out of that, OD comply evolved to the client portal and then it just started taking off. 88 00:07:45,651 --> 00:07:50,611 I kind of view innovation as sort of like, I don't know, it's upward curve. 89 00:07:50,931 --> 00:07:54,071 And we've always said, we went from books to Westlaw. 90 00:07:54,756 --> 00:07:59,038 you know, computer processors to computers you took home. 91 00:07:59,038 --> 00:08:09,884 ah know, we went from, you know, everything has been innovative, but we're now on an upward trajectory that I've never seen in 30 years of practice, and I don't think anybody 92 00:08:09,884 --> 00:08:10,384 has seen. 93 00:08:10,384 --> 00:08:21,490 ah And that expertise in that innovation function becomes all the more paramount because a lawyer who's practicing can't keep track of everything. 94 00:08:21,490 --> 00:08:22,200 You just can't. 95 00:08:22,200 --> 00:08:24,851 You need experts in the field. 96 00:08:25,196 --> 00:08:28,208 And then what made you take the role? 97 00:08:28,208 --> 00:08:39,917 Like what did, um did you just gravitate towards that sort of discipline or did the firm tap you on the shoulder and go, Rodney, we think you'd be the guy. 98 00:08:39,917 --> 00:08:41,278 Like, how did that happen? 99 00:08:41,463 --> 00:08:42,414 Yeah, you know, it's funny. 100 00:08:42,414 --> 00:08:56,305 I remember when I made the move from my prior firm to Ogletree, um the managing partner at the firm told me that he thought I was entrepreneurial, which I don't know if that was a 101 00:08:56,305 --> 00:08:57,556 valued thing or not. 102 00:08:57,556 --> 00:08:59,698 I still haven't figured that out. 103 00:08:59,698 --> 00:09:02,440 But I've always think I thought differently. 104 00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:05,893 I view myself as much of a project manager as I do a lawyer. 105 00:09:05,893 --> 00:09:07,764 I like to think I'm a good lawyer. 106 00:09:07,764 --> 00:09:08,865 I've tried cases. 107 00:09:08,865 --> 00:09:11,527 um 108 00:09:11,587 --> 00:09:15,750 People, respected the advice I gave and viewed me as a partner. 109 00:09:15,750 --> 00:09:18,712 And I did the practice of law very, very well. 110 00:09:18,712 --> 00:09:25,917 But I remember, I look back at your innovator versus lawyer mindset post. 111 00:09:25,917 --> 00:09:35,493 And while I certainly have many of the traits of a lawyer, I like to think that I'm a future looking, I clearly have a bias toward action. 112 00:09:35,493 --> 00:09:41,080 I'm sort of of the belief that 99 % of the mistakes I'm going to make are fixable. 113 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:43,782 and moving with some velocity is a lot more important. 114 00:09:43,782 --> 00:09:51,088 um You gotta be mindful of the ones that are not fixable and not make them or just hope that you don't. 115 00:09:51,088 --> 00:09:54,151 uh But I'm okay with failure. 116 00:09:54,151 --> 00:09:56,172 I think failure is the only way you learn. 117 00:09:56,854 --> 00:09:59,656 And I like to be in a constant state of change. 118 00:09:59,656 --> 00:10:03,358 I'm comfortable with things changing all the time. 119 00:10:03,359 --> 00:10:04,400 There is no end. 120 00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:07,762 Anybody who tells me that there's some end goal, 121 00:10:08,397 --> 00:10:10,148 I don't think is being innovative. 122 00:10:10,148 --> 00:10:14,411 You have to be willing to live in a constant state of flux. 123 00:10:14,792 --> 00:10:25,319 And I was fortunate to have several clients who fostered that in their business and wanted their outside counsel to think like that. 124 00:10:25,319 --> 00:10:36,146 Your podcast, I've never done, I don't know the person from DHL, I was listening to the podcast, but I was fortunate to have clients like that who really drove you. 125 00:10:36,146 --> 00:10:37,539 um 126 00:10:37,539 --> 00:10:40,080 to be forward thinking, to be innovative. 127 00:10:40,080 --> 00:10:41,901 They wanted flat rates. 128 00:10:41,901 --> 00:10:50,584 They wanted you to push you to find ways to deliver better products, the better product at less cost to them. 129 00:10:50,584 --> 00:10:54,346 And they challenged you to do that and make more money for you. 130 00:10:54,346 --> 00:11:02,839 So at the end of the day, you might be getting less revenue, but instead of spending $1.20 to generate a dollar, you're spending 80 cents to generate a dollar. 131 00:11:02,839 --> 00:11:05,950 And they wanted you to really drive that. 132 00:11:08,131 --> 00:11:10,433 That is the thing that got me involved. 133 00:11:10,433 --> 00:11:27,296 And I think that mindset also led me to sort of push from a lawyer-centric, lawyer-driven innovation strategy at Ogletree to one where it's professionally driven by Dave Bowlin and 134 00:11:27,296 --> 00:11:31,649 Tim Fox at our firm. 135 00:11:32,350 --> 00:11:34,711 innovation has to be in the hands of professionals. 136 00:11:34,831 --> 00:11:43,923 We play a valid, a valuable, indispensable role, but we shouldn't be the ones out there truly just driving it. 137 00:11:44,238 --> 00:11:46,118 I completely agree with that. 138 00:11:46,118 --> 00:11:48,297 It's great to hear that. 139 00:11:48,297 --> 00:11:51,118 think that a couple of things. 140 00:11:51,118 --> 00:12:01,018 think that law firm leadership has, and I've worked with 110 AMLaw firms and that's when I stopped counting because counting gets difficult when firms merge. 141 00:12:01,018 --> 00:12:03,078 And so I quit counting at 110. 142 00:12:03,078 --> 00:12:12,198 It's probably more than, it's certainly more than that by now in the, the 17 years that I've been working with InfoDash and Acrowire. 143 00:12:12,340 --> 00:12:20,706 And so I've had a really good cross-sectional view of how law firms do things, especially in the KM, IT, now innovation. 144 00:12:20,706 --> 00:12:23,678 Innovation didn't exist really 10 years ago. 145 00:12:23,678 --> 00:12:24,718 It was brand new. 146 00:12:24,718 --> 00:12:30,746 um In fact, I did a little analysis of the Ilta roster in 2014. 147 00:12:30,746 --> 00:12:34,958 There were 16 people who had the word innovation in their title and none of them were C-suite. 148 00:12:34,958 --> 00:12:37,027 And I think there was two directors. 149 00:12:37,147 --> 00:12:38,988 So it was brand new. 150 00:12:39,149 --> 00:12:41,410 And I've talked a lot about the innovation theater. 151 00:12:41,410 --> 00:12:54,061 that has happened in legal where law firms have wanted to look innovative, but weren't necessarily committed to the change necessary to really move that forward. 152 00:12:54,061 --> 00:13:07,112 And it's hard because I feel like, I don't know if this is your take as well, but like law firm culture has been, you know, the status quo has been very sticky, especially since 153 00:13:07,112 --> 00:13:09,890 like we, we, the 154 00:13:09,890 --> 00:13:15,264 financial crisis recovery, Like AMLaw profits have been on the increase every year. 155 00:13:15,264 --> 00:13:22,879 It's kind of hard to say, hey, you're doing it wrong when law firms are performing better every year than they did the previous year. 156 00:13:22,879 --> 00:13:32,426 But I don't think that's going to be forever unless we make some pretty serious change around all of this transformation that's taking place. 157 00:13:32,426 --> 00:13:34,727 So it's good to hear you say that. 158 00:13:34,727 --> 00:13:38,946 And I'm curious, like with the Innovation Council, like what would... 159 00:13:38,946 --> 00:13:40,569 Who's on it? 160 00:13:40,691 --> 00:13:42,335 Not the names, but the roles. 161 00:13:42,335 --> 00:13:43,452 Is it all lawyers? 162 00:13:43,452 --> 00:13:48,492 you know, so the Innovation Council is a group of lawyers. 163 00:13:48,492 --> 00:13:56,752 They typically are going to be lawyers who have more client exposure. 164 00:13:56,992 --> 00:14:01,612 It's not just because you're a top business generator or firm, you're on the Innovation Council. 165 00:14:01,612 --> 00:14:08,192 You have to be somebody who's got a portfolio of clients where you use innovation. 166 00:14:08,192 --> 00:14:09,517 It's generally people who 167 00:14:09,517 --> 00:14:10,617 are respected in the firm. 168 00:14:10,617 --> 00:14:21,052 So to the extent they're out there trying to push change management, which I'm sure we'll talk about awareness and adoption and education, is, before we started, said, there's a 169 00:14:21,052 --> 00:14:22,112 couple of challenges. 170 00:14:22,112 --> 00:14:26,054 uh One is people's personal interest. 171 00:14:26,054 --> 00:14:31,716 You always got to get over those humps when you're trying to introduce innovation. 172 00:14:31,847 --> 00:14:39,379 I would say if you introduce innovation that, kind of a joke I always tell when I speak is, if we came up with something, 173 00:14:39,695 --> 00:14:53,575 that generated valid time entries that complied with every billing guideline, that captured every second I work, that captured every phase code and task code without me 174 00:14:53,575 --> 00:14:54,155 doing a thing. 175 00:14:54,155 --> 00:14:58,555 Like I plugged something into my head at the start of the day. 176 00:14:58,675 --> 00:15:00,895 And that was it. 177 00:15:01,195 --> 00:15:05,755 I would have 150 % adoption in my firm. 178 00:15:08,559 --> 00:15:12,219 And again, you have to think about that interest. 179 00:15:12,379 --> 00:15:14,099 So we have lawyers. 180 00:15:14,439 --> 00:15:16,759 Right now, usually five. 181 00:15:16,759 --> 00:15:19,259 The Innovation Council is probably 10 people. 182 00:15:19,259 --> 00:15:23,799 So maybe four or five lawyers are managing shareholders on it. 183 00:15:23,999 --> 00:15:26,239 I'm on it, so we have two board members. 184 00:15:26,639 --> 00:15:31,519 And then we will have other lawyers who practice. 185 00:15:31,759 --> 00:15:38,823 Obviously, our chief knowledge and innovation officer and then our senior director of innovation, Tim Fox, they run it. 186 00:15:38,892 --> 00:15:49,365 They prepare the pre-read on Tuesday, which has kind of all the projects that are in flight that we're talking about that day, a single slide on all of the projects we have 187 00:15:49,365 --> 00:15:57,037 that are in flight if people want to ask about them, and then a bunch of things that are sort of in the hopper um that we're currently contemplating. 188 00:15:57,037 --> 00:16:06,759 It talks about our strategy, which obviously, you know, we just had our three, we do a three-year strategic plan, and purposeful innovation is one of our three four pillars. 189 00:16:06,809 --> 00:16:09,770 So we align everything around our strategic plan. 190 00:16:09,770 --> 00:16:11,681 And I'm happy to talk about that too. 191 00:16:12,062 --> 00:16:23,569 And then all of the chief, like our chief financial officer, our chief administrative officer, we're in the process of interviewing and hiring a COO, that person will be on. 192 00:16:23,569 --> 00:16:30,532 So pretty much not every single chief, a chief client service officer, we try to include all of them. 193 00:16:30,532 --> 00:16:33,154 uh Our CIO is on it. 194 00:16:33,254 --> 00:16:35,499 The idea is that innovation happens everywhere. 195 00:16:35,499 --> 00:16:37,060 It's not confined to lawyers. 196 00:16:37,060 --> 00:16:39,361 It's not only client facing. 197 00:16:39,501 --> 00:16:41,062 It happens everywhere. 198 00:16:41,062 --> 00:16:50,167 If we can innovate to improve a billing within the billing department or how our AR, our revenue specialists are collecting. 199 00:16:51,823 --> 00:16:53,023 You know, that's awesome. 200 00:16:53,023 --> 00:17:04,288 um But we pulled it all into the Innovation Council and we pulled it all into our Knowledge and Innovation group to avoid having innovation in silos. 201 00:17:04,648 --> 00:17:14,713 We didn't want innovation to happen in silos where somebody doesn't know what somebody else is doing and you're pulling resources or you're duplicating efforts or you're doing 202 00:17:14,713 --> 00:17:17,114 something that is inefficient. 203 00:17:17,114 --> 00:17:18,664 So that's the team. 204 00:17:18,664 --> 00:17:20,565 It's a good group. 205 00:17:20,813 --> 00:17:23,287 You know, there's usually one or two changes every year. 206 00:17:23,287 --> 00:17:29,266 um But it's a good mix of people we meet every month, the third Thursday of every month. 207 00:17:29,266 --> 00:17:34,814 we have a pre, I and my co-chair do the pre-review on Tuesday. 208 00:17:34,814 --> 00:17:37,267 And then we meet in person once a year. 209 00:17:37,772 --> 00:17:38,984 Okay, interesting. 210 00:17:38,984 --> 00:17:41,146 Yeah, this is really good. 211 00:17:41,146 --> 00:17:54,108 um In the seven-ish years we've been working with you guys, from the outside in, it looks like you guys have had about 4x growth on the KM Innovation team. 212 00:17:54,108 --> 00:17:59,492 Yeah, when Dave Bowen started it was 29 people and it's 110 today. 213 00:18:00,418 --> 00:18:11,885 So how do you think about ROI, because people are expensive, how does the firm and the Innovation Council think about ROI with these efforts? 214 00:18:11,885 --> 00:18:15,408 Yeah, KM and Innovation are one department. 215 00:18:15,408 --> 00:18:19,075 We don't have a chief innovation officer and a chief knowledge manager. 216 00:18:21,423 --> 00:18:24,205 I don't think of them as two different things. 217 00:18:24,966 --> 00:18:35,144 I think traditional knowledge management, like the old traditional, like I know you're like, we have our intranet platform that I know we work with you on, has just evolved 218 00:18:35,144 --> 00:18:36,135 fantastically. 219 00:18:36,135 --> 00:18:39,558 I mean, what we do with it is remarkable. 220 00:18:39,558 --> 00:18:40,931 um 221 00:18:40,931 --> 00:18:48,438 but introducing some type of chat bot into it, which we call ODGPT. 222 00:18:48,438 --> 00:18:53,842 All of these things that we're doing that are innovative, they also tie into knowledge management. 223 00:18:53,842 --> 00:18:58,866 It's all about how you find and harness the data. 224 00:18:58,927 --> 00:19:02,690 It's the work product, which is the old KM, but now it's becoming data. 225 00:19:02,690 --> 00:19:06,933 Like how do we harness data and how do we use data? 226 00:19:07,494 --> 00:19:08,505 I imagine it's some... 227 00:19:08,505 --> 00:19:13,499 point with firm with client permissions, people are going to start selling. 228 00:19:13,499 --> 00:19:15,340 Who knows where data is going to go. 229 00:19:15,340 --> 00:19:19,463 um But as a firm, we have so much of it. 230 00:19:19,483 --> 00:19:21,385 And that's part of knowledge management. 231 00:19:21,385 --> 00:19:22,786 It's also part of innovation. 232 00:19:22,786 --> 00:19:26,028 ah But we look at it as adoption. 233 00:19:26,028 --> 00:19:30,211 I think we have four pillars that I think we analyze our ROI on. 234 00:19:30,211 --> 00:19:31,832 Adoption and awareness. 235 00:19:33,134 --> 00:19:35,575 If we get Harvey licenses, 236 00:19:35,962 --> 00:19:37,092 How many people are using it? 237 00:19:37,092 --> 00:19:38,693 How many people are really using it? 238 00:19:38,693 --> 00:19:44,134 Does that justify the expense of an enterprise license? 239 00:19:44,134 --> 00:19:51,276 Lexus Protege, other products that we look at, what's the adoption of those? 240 00:19:51,276 --> 00:19:53,536 People gotta be aware of it, they gotta be educated on it. 241 00:19:53,536 --> 00:19:56,297 Two is revenue, or second is revenue. 242 00:19:56,297 --> 00:20:05,945 uh When Dave came in, RK and I, I'll share this stuff, but our Knowledge and Innovation group did less than a million dollars in revenue. 243 00:20:05,945 --> 00:20:17,398 And if you look at revenue, talking our data analysts, because we do that work and bill it for instead of hiring outside forensic uh data analytic groups on class actions, cetera, 244 00:20:17,398 --> 00:20:23,280 litigation support, uh and our client portal, which is a product that we sell. 245 00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:26,741 It went from less than a million to over 16 million. 246 00:20:27,821 --> 00:20:33,921 And that is recognizing that, and I'll turn to talk more about it, about how we look at 247 00:20:33,921 --> 00:20:42,185 innovation and I think it was again one of your podcasts I heard somebody talk about it about sort of the different evolution of innovation and when you start selling services 248 00:20:42,185 --> 00:20:54,350 that you didn't ever think you would sell that's to me that's innovation right uh doing things differently I mean there's little innovation with improving things making you more 249 00:20:54,350 --> 00:21:01,863 efficient etc but we you know there's so much we can do and and then profitability a lot harder um 250 00:21:02,029 --> 00:21:08,901 I think you always talk about how firms, how great firms are at understanding profitability and analyzing it. 251 00:21:08,901 --> 00:21:10,351 uh That's sort of a joke. 252 00:21:10,351 --> 00:21:12,090 mean, every firm struggles. 253 00:21:12,090 --> 00:21:15,073 I mean, we sell time and how do you cost that time? 254 00:21:15,073 --> 00:21:19,284 And how do you really look at whether this dollar is worth the same as this dollar? 255 00:21:19,284 --> 00:21:22,364 But we do on flat fee matters. 256 00:21:22,505 --> 00:21:31,327 When we introduce innovation, we'll do a sort of pre and a post to look at the profitability of that particular project or engagement. 257 00:21:31,407 --> 00:21:33,109 And lastly, user satisfaction. 258 00:21:33,109 --> 00:21:43,039 We pulse uh users constantly to get their, understand what their pain points are, what they wish they could do so we could push out better education and 259 00:21:43,414 --> 00:21:43,904 Interesting. 260 00:21:43,904 --> 00:21:44,184 Yeah. 261 00:21:44,184 --> 00:21:53,078 So it's pretty unique that a KM function is or innovation function is revenue generating. 262 00:21:53,078 --> 00:21:54,569 You don't hear about that a lot. 263 00:21:54,569 --> 00:21:57,480 It's not the only time I've heard it, but it's rare. 264 00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:09,185 So yeah, you know, what's interesting is I feel like the labor and employment world is somewhat unique in that at least from an outsider, this is how it looks. 265 00:22:09,185 --> 00:22:12,558 So there's about five big national firms that 266 00:22:12,558 --> 00:22:27,266 um I can name and all of them, it's one of the few practice areas where I've seen firms completely zero in on this type of work and be able to scale to a thousand plus attorneys. 267 00:22:27,727 --> 00:22:38,524 I guess there's just so much of it out there, but having those blinders on and really focusing in creates really interesting opportunities like the client portal where you guys 268 00:22:38,524 --> 00:22:39,534 have 269 00:22:39,668 --> 00:22:53,630 accumulate all of this data that you can then hire brilliant data folks like Tim Fox and his team, who's very highly regarded in the industry, to create insights that you can 270 00:22:53,630 --> 00:22:54,991 monetize. 271 00:22:54,991 --> 00:23:04,288 I don't know if that's a function of your focus, but I don't see a lot of firms who aren't zeroed in like that be able to pull that together. 272 00:23:04,867 --> 00:23:15,353 Yeah, I think it's a tribute to Dave and Tim and what they their vision and what they do and also the support of the firm's leadership and in making decisions on flipping the 273 00:23:15,353 --> 00:23:23,257 flipping the nomenclature from cost to investment, even that using that word investment instead of referring to it as a cost. 274 00:23:23,257 --> 00:23:31,542 um And then obviously convincing, convincing lawyers that that adopting whatever it is we're using, right? 275 00:23:31,542 --> 00:23:33,663 Adopting using Harvey. 276 00:23:34,104 --> 00:23:34,908 Yeah. 277 00:23:34,974 --> 00:23:43,835 whatever it might be, um will it personally benefit them if you focus on that personal interest? 278 00:23:43,835 --> 00:23:46,646 um Which I think you have to. 279 00:23:46,646 --> 00:23:47,546 Yeah. 280 00:23:47,587 --> 00:23:50,849 So here's, I'll throw a little bit of a curve ball at you. 281 00:23:50,849 --> 00:24:01,746 We, we, we had a nicely prepared agenda, but you mentioned something that the LinkedIn post about the innovation innovators versus the lawyers mindset. 282 00:24:01,746 --> 00:24:07,540 And I used, I've talked about it before on the podcast, the traits that Dr. 283 00:24:07,540 --> 00:24:14,885 Larry Richard, who spent 35 years and has assessed 30, 40,000 attorneys. 284 00:24:14,885 --> 00:24:16,362 He's got a real, he's 285 00:24:16,362 --> 00:24:19,964 really got it dialed in on typical traits of lawyers. 286 00:24:19,964 --> 00:24:30,790 And then I use the five um traits of innovator that Mark Andreessen, who is the managing director of A16Z. 287 00:24:30,790 --> 00:24:32,926 He was the founder of Netscape eventually. 288 00:24:32,926 --> 00:24:35,012 I mean, he invented the web browser. 289 00:24:35,012 --> 00:24:40,556 um And I got some really interesting dialogue around that. 290 00:24:40,556 --> 00:24:45,590 And then um another post was, I talked about Big Law 2.0. 291 00:24:45,590 --> 00:24:57,220 and how the partnership model creates some interesting challenges or friction towards innovation like R &D. 292 00:24:57,470 --> 00:25:03,085 I would imagine that on day one when you hired all these data analysts, they weren't revenue generating. 293 00:25:03,085 --> 00:25:08,410 You had to look two, three, four years out into the future. 294 00:25:08,410 --> 00:25:13,554 And the partnership model really prioritizes 295 00:25:14,382 --> 00:25:16,324 and your cash basis accounting, right? 296 00:25:16,324 --> 00:25:29,920 Like, so how did you get the support necessary when as an industry, and I know there's a variation within firm to firm, but as an industry, it's really how much can you drive 297 00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:31,622 bottom line performance every year? 298 00:25:31,622 --> 00:25:35,916 How did you get the firm to come to the table and say, hey, we have to invest? 299 00:25:36,304 --> 00:25:49,907 so data analytics is an interesting one because it's a, you you have a class action practice in California and they are handling mass amounts of class actions. 300 00:25:50,868 --> 00:25:58,890 And then all of the sudden you need to run damage analysis and the clients, okay, paying for that. 301 00:25:59,310 --> 00:26:04,371 And you know, throughout your history, you've outsourced that. 302 00:26:04,975 --> 00:26:08,775 And then you decide, you know, let's try insourcing it. 303 00:26:08,775 --> 00:26:16,855 And you insource it and you get a little, you have a taste of success, right? 304 00:26:16,855 --> 00:26:32,235 You know, all of a sudden the lawyers who are managing and originating clients who are having these cases in California suddenly see, hey, I've got work that we can do at a 305 00:26:32,235 --> 00:26:35,035 competitive same quality. 306 00:26:37,533 --> 00:26:40,354 better pricing than outsourcing. 307 00:26:40,635 --> 00:26:48,141 And we are going to go and now all of sudden the work that we're generating for a particular case, it goes up incrementally. 308 00:26:48,141 --> 00:26:52,583 And those people are, well, I got five more cases and they're like, well, we need three more data analysts. 309 00:26:52,584 --> 00:26:55,726 Well, I have 50 cases, well, we need 10 more data analysts. 310 00:26:55,726 --> 00:26:58,888 So I think you see that grow incrementally. 311 00:26:58,929 --> 00:27:02,601 I think what then becomes a whole different. 312 00:27:03,459 --> 00:27:11,336 Discussion that we have as a firm have never had this is Rodney speaking in my own brain or thinking in my own brain is Okay. 313 00:27:11,336 --> 00:27:20,684 Now if we got this great group of people doing it for our clients Why don't we go bottle them and sell them to other firms and get other firms to hire now that might be a 314 00:27:20,684 --> 00:27:29,992 challenge You might not be going to some of our competitors and doing that they may not be up for that But you go to in-house, you know, you got this group of people doing something 315 00:27:29,992 --> 00:27:31,393 that's competing with 316 00:27:31,396 --> 00:27:37,989 these traditional data analytics firms, why not go do that? 317 00:27:37,989 --> 00:27:46,983 It's taking your litigation support team and growing that, and they can be, in some cases, revenue generating for certain types of matters. 318 00:27:46,983 --> 00:27:49,934 Well, why not see if they client will use them for others? 319 00:27:49,934 --> 00:27:51,185 Now, we don't do those things. 320 00:27:51,185 --> 00:27:55,026 We limit these functions to our clients and the work we're doing. 321 00:27:55,026 --> 00:27:56,467 But that's how it happens. 322 00:27:56,467 --> 00:27:59,068 I think it happens and you start to see success. 323 00:27:59,268 --> 00:28:07,177 And then that success builds confidence in investing for things that might not realize for a year or two. 324 00:28:07,630 --> 00:28:15,573 So you build financial credibility, uh, essentially, uh, you, yeah, very interesting. 325 00:28:15,654 --> 00:28:18,495 And here's, here's another kind of curve ball for you. 326 00:28:18,495 --> 00:28:27,579 So, you know, we've worked with Dave Boland since he basically, since he started, and I thought he was a great hire that you pulled from outside the industry. 327 00:28:27,679 --> 00:28:35,002 And I think that has really helped him because he came with. 328 00:28:35,124 --> 00:28:45,477 out all of the, you know, in legal, even in the legal tech world, like in the legal tech world, there is a life cycle, standard life cycle of companies like ours. 329 00:28:45,477 --> 00:28:51,298 You know, they start out small and independent like we are, they get to about 10 million in revenue, and then they sell to one of the big companies. 330 00:28:51,298 --> 00:28:54,100 And you know what, I don't want to do that, right? 331 00:28:54,100 --> 00:29:01,682 I'm thinking differently, but, and we have created a board of advisors who 332 00:29:02,232 --> 00:29:08,024 come from all sorts of walks of life rather than just legal tech founders because they have that mindset. 333 00:29:08,024 --> 00:29:18,408 Was there any strategy around bringing in people, and you've got a mix, you've got people who are lifers in legal and then you've got people like Dave who came from public 334 00:29:18,408 --> 00:29:18,988 accounting. 335 00:29:18,988 --> 00:29:24,771 um What is your strategy with that, bringing those different perspectives? 336 00:29:24,771 --> 00:29:27,072 Yeah, that's a great question. 337 00:29:27,093 --> 00:29:39,133 I think when you are bringing in people who are not practicing lawyers, even if they're lawyers and have a law degree, but they're not practicing lawyers. 338 00:29:39,133 --> 00:29:49,371 mean, one thing about law firms, and I've heard you talk about this with respect to the big four, is lawyer, I'm 57 years old. 339 00:29:49,371 --> 00:29:51,392 I got eight years left to practice. 340 00:29:52,054 --> 00:29:54,075 I don't think. 341 00:29:54,218 --> 00:29:58,791 as long as I am practicing, our firm will be owned and will be run by lawyers. 342 00:29:58,791 --> 00:30:01,413 I I don't see that dynamic. 343 00:30:01,413 --> 00:30:04,875 Like I don't see a firm bring in an outside CEO. 344 00:30:04,875 --> 00:30:16,273 I'm not commenting on that, whether it's a good idea or bad idea, but bringing in an outside CEO to run things and for that person to make decisions rather than consensus 345 00:30:16,273 --> 00:30:21,246 based decision making by a group of lawyers who meet as a board every month. 346 00:30:21,871 --> 00:30:29,471 even having an executive committee of three lawyers who are really involved in sort of the day-to-day decision making. 347 00:30:29,531 --> 00:30:41,991 I think you see firms delegating sort of what I would call the things that don't impact the bottom line so dramatically to the professional legal staff that is non-practicing. 348 00:30:42,031 --> 00:30:48,631 Obviously Dave Bowen has discretion to make decisions within his budget and things that he's doing for that year. 349 00:30:48,659 --> 00:30:52,340 I don't think anybody goes in and micromanages him. 350 00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:59,682 So I think you have to have a mix of business people, because we're business um at the end of the day. 351 00:30:59,682 --> 00:31:09,585 And you have to have lawyers who are willing to let those business people run their departments, make decisions without micromanaging every decision. 352 00:31:09,585 --> 00:31:18,747 On the other hand, you need to have people making those decisions realize that they're making decisions that may impact how lawyers do things. 353 00:31:18,945 --> 00:31:24,115 And we're not the most changeable lot of people in the world. 354 00:31:24,115 --> 00:31:34,481 I still have colleagues who write their time down on a yellow pad of paper and give it to their practice assistant to enter into the timekeeping system. 355 00:31:35,002 --> 00:31:42,385 we're not the best constituents for change management, I guess is the way I would put it. 356 00:31:42,385 --> 00:31:48,467 So you need to have that partnership and that trust between those two groups that A, 357 00:31:48,772 --> 00:31:51,756 A, you're not going to run off and do something that no one's going to use. 358 00:31:51,756 --> 00:31:56,502 And B, we're not going to manage every little thing you do. 359 00:31:56,502 --> 00:32:01,588 So I think that's the key, more than the person in the job. 360 00:32:01,849 --> 00:32:03,520 If that makes sense, that's how I view it. 361 00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:04,461 Yeah. 362 00:32:04,461 --> 00:32:14,790 Well, and you know, so law firm, the, the big law market is extremely fragmented and you can measure that number of different ways. 363 00:32:14,790 --> 00:32:21,556 can look at concentration of your top X number of players in the space. 364 00:32:21,556 --> 00:32:29,280 If you use, I think the top five law firms, uh, have about 4 % market share overall. 365 00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:38,654 in total legal spend, whereas the big four, for example, have 97 % of the publicly traded. 366 00:32:38,654 --> 00:32:41,155 This is on the audit side. 367 00:32:41,155 --> 00:32:43,676 I'm not sure about advisory and tax. 368 00:32:43,676 --> 00:32:47,658 But on the audit side, they own it. 369 00:32:47,658 --> 00:32:52,019 scale has not been important in legal thus far. 370 00:32:52,180 --> 00:32:57,666 And because it is a bespoke craft, artisan, um 371 00:32:57,666 --> 00:33:11,676 process or practice and I am of the belief, I'd love to hear your thinking on this, that when we move into this next iteration, this next 2.0 of big law, I think scale is going to 372 00:33:11,676 --> 00:33:19,421 be important because there's going to be, you're not going to differentiate yourself by going out and implementing Harvey or co-counsel, right? 373 00:33:19,421 --> 00:33:25,565 What's going to differentiate you is your data and your tech and if you buy it off the shelf, your competitors have access to it by definition. 374 00:33:25,565 --> 00:33:27,468 That's not differentiating. 375 00:33:27,468 --> 00:33:30,499 So I think that scale is going to become more important. 376 00:33:30,499 --> 00:33:35,782 And what I have trouble envisioning is how this partnership model accommodates that scale. 377 00:33:35,782 --> 00:33:46,606 So when you look at a typical governance, like corporate governance infrastructure, you've got shareholders and they install management and you've got all sorts of layers of risk 378 00:33:46,606 --> 00:33:52,909 management, like inside the line of business, you've got risk management, they call it the second line of defense. 379 00:33:52,909 --> 00:33:55,210 You've got internal audit. 380 00:33:55,822 --> 00:33:58,762 None of these things exist in law. 381 00:33:58,822 --> 00:34:01,022 part of that has to do with scale. 382 00:34:01,022 --> 00:34:07,642 But to really scale, if you want to be a Fortune 500 company, it is uniform across the board that that exists. 383 00:34:07,642 --> 00:34:21,182 I'm wondering, how you think about once we get into this tech-enabled legal service delivery world that we seem to be stepping into, who knows when the switch is going to 384 00:34:21,182 --> 00:34:21,942 flip. 385 00:34:22,182 --> 00:34:24,844 how do you see? 386 00:34:24,844 --> 00:34:29,322 the current model, A, do you think scale is going to be important going forward? 387 00:34:29,322 --> 00:34:38,578 And B, if so, how, you know, if it's just lawyers running the firm, there's no outside capital in these governance structures, how will it accommodate that scale? 388 00:34:38,989 --> 00:34:44,862 Yeah, well, first of all, think you're talking to me in the context of a labor and employment firm. 389 00:34:44,862 --> 00:34:54,006 I think it's probably different than if you talk to a firm that has more of general practice, especially like a regional general practice. 390 00:34:54,006 --> 00:34:56,817 mean, scaling, the client portal is scaling, right? 391 00:34:56,817 --> 00:35:04,230 Historically, ah clients would call up and they would have a question about New Jersey wage hour law. 392 00:35:04,490 --> 00:35:06,851 And you would handle those one off. 393 00:35:07,271 --> 00:35:11,444 and each individual inquiry was handled differently. 394 00:35:11,444 --> 00:35:14,976 Somebody needed a form for this or a form for that. 395 00:35:15,137 --> 00:35:18,319 Scaling, the client portal is scaling 1.0. 396 00:35:18,319 --> 00:35:29,287 It is a classic example of taking all of this information that we have as a firm, building it into a portal, allowing clients to collectively share the uh costs across the platform. 397 00:35:29,287 --> 00:35:31,518 um That is scaling. 398 00:35:31,518 --> 00:35:36,071 You're doing RIFs. 399 00:35:36,396 --> 00:35:49,295 in a downturn and you're doing them for hundreds of clients um and having the ability to not only scale the creation of the documents you're going to need, but also to, and then 400 00:35:49,295 --> 00:35:51,947 sell that for a fixed fee. 401 00:35:51,947 --> 00:36:04,756 So if I do it on an individualized basis, it's going to cost you $50,000, but here I've got this bespoke product, you know, that you can get it for $500. 402 00:36:04,833 --> 00:36:06,845 Again, that's scaling, right? 403 00:36:06,845 --> 00:36:14,872 And in our space, it's a little easier to do because it's something that's more predictable uh where these scaling opportunities are going to be. 404 00:36:14,872 --> 00:36:18,735 um Data collection, you mentioned that. 405 00:36:18,735 --> 00:36:26,362 I mean, that's another area where I think there's tremendous opportunity within the legal industry that's been lost. 406 00:36:26,362 --> 00:36:31,566 um If I right now want to get a sense of how much, you know, 407 00:36:31,791 --> 00:36:33,911 But he's litigating a case. 408 00:36:34,191 --> 00:36:36,751 The opening demand is $100,000. 409 00:36:36,931 --> 00:36:40,251 He wants to have an idea of where the case might end. 410 00:36:40,251 --> 00:36:44,491 You're going to try to find people who've maybe had cases with that plaintiff's counsel. 411 00:36:44,711 --> 00:36:47,651 It's going to be off the cuff. 412 00:36:47,651 --> 00:36:49,031 Here's my thought. 413 00:36:49,031 --> 00:36:53,471 That's probably right 20 % of the time and wrong 80 % of the time. 414 00:36:53,471 --> 00:36:59,919 But if I've got 150 cases that our firm has litigated with this person and I've collected this data, 415 00:36:59,919 --> 00:37:11,119 And I could say, hey, accounting for certain outliers, if this person starts at $100,000, they're going to end at $47,253 within this confidence level. 416 00:37:11,159 --> 00:37:12,859 That's the use of data. 417 00:37:13,259 --> 00:37:20,899 I think you're going to see more of that type of, because now the technology enables you to do that, right? 418 00:37:20,899 --> 00:37:29,959 You're not relying on lawyers to look at their yellow pad of paper and enter some information before they throw that yellow pad of paper. 419 00:37:30,393 --> 00:37:40,836 So I think you're gonna see it in the current setup of our firm, I think we will achieve that. 420 00:37:40,836 --> 00:37:45,962 And I don't think we need a structure to do that. 421 00:37:46,043 --> 00:37:49,927 For us, I'm not saying that that's the case for everybody. 422 00:37:49,964 --> 00:37:52,834 Yeah, yeah, you guys have really niched down. 423 00:37:52,834 --> 00:37:55,602 I mean, you do labor and employment, immigration. 424 00:37:55,602 --> 00:37:56,624 Is there anything else? 425 00:37:56,624 --> 00:37:57,565 Any other? 426 00:37:57,565 --> 00:37:58,146 That's it. 427 00:37:58,146 --> 00:37:59,046 Yeah. 428 00:38:00,089 --> 00:38:01,036 Yeah, that's a very. 429 00:38:01,036 --> 00:38:02,616 it enables us to do that. 430 00:38:02,616 --> 00:38:11,576 mean, when you look at innovation and how it impacts that, I think the challenge is not the scaling. 431 00:38:11,776 --> 00:38:22,536 I think the challenge becomes convincing lawyers who all have different interests, like you and I talked about at the beginning, convincing attorneys who have different personal 432 00:38:22,536 --> 00:38:23,596 interests. 433 00:38:24,867 --> 00:38:29,068 I'm somebody who is compensated based on meeting my billable hour requirement. 434 00:38:30,029 --> 00:38:32,529 And I meet it every year, barely. 435 00:38:32,529 --> 00:38:40,712 And somebody now comes along and says, hey, here's this tool that's going to cut 200 hours out of your year. 436 00:38:40,852 --> 00:38:43,613 You might not be too excited about that. 437 00:38:43,613 --> 00:38:50,535 But if I'm a lawyer who bills way too much and I'm looking to find ways to become more efficient and use AI and other tools to... 438 00:38:51,779 --> 00:39:03,101 to reduce my workload so I can deliver better work product, focus on the things where maybe my judgment is more important, it'll be welcome. 439 00:39:03,500 --> 00:39:10,117 Well, so that means internal firm compensation would have to change too, right? 440 00:39:10,425 --> 00:39:11,565 you're gonna have to look at. 441 00:39:11,565 --> 00:39:21,698 mean, those are the things I think, not so much the governance structure of a firm from being a partnership or having outside leadership, know, non-lawyer leadership. 442 00:39:21,698 --> 00:39:34,478 I think the things that are gonna be, that are gonna, over the next five years, you're really gonna see a struggle with is, what's, how, and we're, every firm is grappling with 443 00:39:34,478 --> 00:39:34,588 them. 444 00:39:34,588 --> 00:39:35,322 We grapple with them. 445 00:39:35,322 --> 00:39:36,943 How do you compensate? 446 00:39:36,943 --> 00:39:37,903 What do you value? 447 00:39:37,903 --> 00:39:39,092 um 448 00:39:39,092 --> 00:39:44,356 Do you value just bottom line dollar or do you care about profitable dollars? 449 00:39:44,356 --> 00:39:48,119 And if you care about profitable dollars, how are you measuring profitability? 450 00:39:48,119 --> 00:39:49,420 How are you capturing it? 451 00:39:49,420 --> 00:39:54,784 What tools are you providing to people to improve profitability and be able to regularly measure it? 452 00:39:54,784 --> 00:39:57,366 Every business measures their profitability. 453 00:39:57,466 --> 00:40:01,909 They know how much they charge for, they make on things, they know how much they cost. 454 00:40:03,131 --> 00:40:08,719 I don't think every firm has that really nailed down completely. 455 00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:12,019 I think different people have different opinions about it. 456 00:40:12,099 --> 00:40:14,319 But those are the challenges. 457 00:40:14,619 --> 00:40:23,739 And another example that Ted, it's just the last one I'll give is, if I'm somebody who's just starting out developing business, and I've got a client who expects that this 458 00:40:23,739 --> 00:40:29,719 handbook is going to $10,000 because when they were practicing lawyer, that's how much it cost. 459 00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:30,719 And they don't want a flat fee. 460 00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:32,579 They want to pay me by the hour. 461 00:40:32,619 --> 00:40:38,639 And I go to somebody and I say, hey, why don't you use this handbook builder that we've generated? 462 00:40:38,729 --> 00:40:40,800 and you'll be able to generate it. 463 00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:45,863 It's only going to take you one hour to type in the information and it'll generate it for you. 464 00:40:46,384 --> 00:40:48,905 And they're like, yeah, but I'm only billing by the hour. 465 00:40:48,905 --> 00:40:52,339 And the client thinks it's going to take 10. 466 00:40:52,567 --> 00:40:54,468 Why in the world would I bill them one? 467 00:40:54,468 --> 00:40:57,830 I mean, again, you have those thoughts. 468 00:40:57,830 --> 00:41:04,174 I'm not saying that as a firm, of course you want to think that everybody would do it as efficiently as possible. 469 00:41:04,174 --> 00:41:06,535 But again, you just have these 470 00:41:07,129 --> 00:41:16,002 sort of barriers to, in addition to lawyers being lawyers, there are institutional barriers to change that you have to just be aware of. 471 00:41:16,002 --> 00:41:17,665 Yeah, for sure. 472 00:41:17,665 --> 00:41:30,946 speaking, you know, we talked a little bit about AI and you know, how has AI shaped what you guys do there at Ogletree Deacons in terms of offerings and pricing? 473 00:41:30,946 --> 00:41:37,407 Yeah, I mean, you can give different examples where, and again, it has to be a communication with the client, right? 474 00:41:37,407 --> 00:41:39,527 At the end of the day, you've to be communicating. 475 00:41:39,527 --> 00:41:42,267 know, again, take legalmation. 476 00:41:42,267 --> 00:41:46,267 We were an early user of legalmation for answers to complaints. 477 00:41:46,487 --> 00:41:55,647 And there's a certain flat fee charge that goes with the use of legalmation that you advise the client of and you pass it through, which is significantly less than the cost of 478 00:41:55,647 --> 00:41:58,587 somebody sitting there and generating an answer. 479 00:42:00,589 --> 00:42:02,431 If everybody's on board with that, that's great. 480 00:42:02,431 --> 00:42:09,195 I mean, it's not like you're using these things and not reviewing them and that's problem if you have people do that. 481 00:42:09,636 --> 00:42:16,725 none of our lawyers, know, we're all, our firm is a great firm and we're always very attuned to making sure that that work product is perfect. 482 00:42:16,725 --> 00:42:21,125 Cause the end of the day, nothing can affect the product of the work and the service delivered. 483 00:42:21,125 --> 00:42:28,370 um You're seeing probably a more of an education about flat fees and how to flat fee work to 484 00:42:29,055 --> 00:42:31,096 reduce the client's cost. 485 00:42:31,856 --> 00:42:33,307 So you're reducing the client's cost. 486 00:42:33,307 --> 00:42:41,881 You're reducing the bottom line dollar value that you're bringing into the firm, but you're improving the profitability of that. 487 00:42:41,881 --> 00:42:50,024 So if I can go to a client in my handbook example and say, I'll pay you 2000, I'll charge you 2000 instead of 10,000, and you're gonna get the same exact handbook. 488 00:42:50,304 --> 00:42:53,535 And I can do that with the punch or click of a button that takes me five minutes. 489 00:42:53,535 --> 00:42:57,741 We made $8,000 less. 490 00:42:57,817 --> 00:43:03,001 but I've made $2,000 that cost me $50 to generate. 491 00:43:03,365 --> 00:43:05,910 I think the second is much better than the first. 492 00:43:06,030 --> 00:43:08,210 Yeah, for sure. 493 00:43:08,570 --> 00:43:09,690 Well, we're almost out of time. 494 00:43:09,690 --> 00:43:19,190 I wanted to talk, ask one final question about differentiation and how Ogletree Deacons thinks about it. 495 00:43:19,190 --> 00:43:22,070 I feel like it's a really important topic. 496 00:43:22,070 --> 00:43:23,990 And like I said, is, I, am I right? 497 00:43:23,990 --> 00:43:28,150 Is there about five L and E focus firm like big one, 500 turns? 498 00:43:28,850 --> 00:43:29,830 Yeah. 499 00:43:30,210 --> 00:43:30,842 Yeah. 500 00:43:30,842 --> 00:43:33,887 Austin Littler and Jackson Lewis are the three largest. 501 00:43:33,887 --> 00:43:39,005 um But yeah, there's only a handful that do it nationally or globally. 502 00:43:39,094 --> 00:43:48,214 And how does the firm think about differentiation today when you're competing against these other L &E firms? 503 00:43:48,214 --> 00:43:52,854 Like how do you pitch OD is different and here's why? 504 00:43:53,552 --> 00:43:55,653 Well, that's a great question. 505 00:43:55,653 --> 00:44:00,556 I think you could focus on, it's not what you have. 506 00:44:00,997 --> 00:44:02,357 we have Harvey. 507 00:44:02,488 --> 00:44:03,849 we have co-counsel. 508 00:44:03,849 --> 00:44:06,500 we have Lexus Protege. 509 00:44:06,500 --> 00:44:09,602 we use this product or that product. 510 00:44:09,602 --> 00:44:13,124 um It's how are you using it? 511 00:44:13,385 --> 00:44:17,627 And how are you using it to deliver better service for less money? 512 00:44:17,627 --> 00:44:23,233 um You talk about innovation theater, and I think that's a great thing to talk about because 513 00:44:23,233 --> 00:44:36,448 If I just walk around and say, I've got, I'm now partnered with X and we're out, using it, but you don't talk about what you do with it and focus on that, then everybody does that. 514 00:44:36,448 --> 00:44:39,730 You know, that's, that's innovation theater to me. 515 00:44:39,790 --> 00:44:52,935 But if you really dig into how am I going to use these tools with you as a client to deliver superior performance, better product quicker, you know, 516 00:44:53,560 --> 00:44:57,886 in a a in a in a in a way that considerably. 517 00:44:58,528 --> 00:45:00,150 Drops your budget. 518 00:45:01,373 --> 00:45:05,912 Then you'll differentiate yourself versus just talking about what you do. 519 00:45:05,912 --> 00:45:06,872 Yeah. 520 00:45:07,213 --> 00:45:09,434 And then what about in the future? 521 00:45:10,156 --> 00:45:18,983 obviously, so buying, like I mentioned, buying software licenses that everybody else can buy, it doesn't create differentiation. 522 00:45:18,983 --> 00:45:26,909 I'm a believer in that some of the things that you're doing, like with your, currently with your client portal, all of that data. 523 00:45:27,050 --> 00:45:31,212 And then you you guys have just signed on as extra net customers of ours. 524 00:45:31,212 --> 00:45:42,528 I'm really interested to start to put some Lego pieces together and say hey, what if you took that client all that or all that um L &E data that you have and you've got all these 525 00:45:42,528 --> 00:45:51,852 employment contracts and throw Azure Open AI on top and flag exceptions like I don't know anybody who's doing that like there's lots of interesting recipes like. 526 00:45:52,560 --> 00:46:00,722 You've got to understand what the demand is within your clients, your demand within your attorneys, your demand within your various departments of the firm. 527 00:46:00,803 --> 00:46:06,966 And then you need to build products for them and customize things for what they need. 528 00:46:06,966 --> 00:46:13,188 The real challenge, think, Ted, is that take our intranet, which has evolved. 529 00:46:13,188 --> 00:46:14,688 It used to be 95%. 530 00:46:14,688 --> 00:46:21,945 It's now moving to this world where my personalized space is now getting larger than the 531 00:46:21,945 --> 00:46:24,637 firm space, which is what I care about. 532 00:46:24,637 --> 00:46:32,601 Yes, I like to see that there's this news alert coming out, but I really want to see the things that matter to me, the clients that I'm working on, the matters that I'm handling, 533 00:46:32,601 --> 00:46:34,232 the information that's important to me. 534 00:46:34,232 --> 00:46:41,786 And what you really got to realize is that what's important to me is different than what's important to the lawyer sitting in the office next to me. 535 00:46:41,786 --> 00:46:45,888 It's different than my practice assistant sitting across the hall from me. 536 00:46:46,268 --> 00:46:48,775 We all have things that we want to see. 537 00:46:48,775 --> 00:46:51,641 I may care more about billing and collection, 538 00:46:51,641 --> 00:46:54,912 than I do about how many hours I've built this month. 539 00:46:54,952 --> 00:47:04,875 And you have to build something that speaks to everybody and that they can focus on what's important to them and not be stuck with, they're only getting one tenth of what they 540 00:47:04,875 --> 00:47:09,536 really care about because you got to give one tenth to the other nine people. 541 00:47:10,356 --> 00:47:12,477 That to me is the key. 542 00:47:12,797 --> 00:47:13,937 And that's where think it's headed. 543 00:47:13,937 --> 00:47:18,218 I think it's headed to a much more customized experience for me. 544 00:47:18,218 --> 00:47:20,839 The ability for me to customize my experience for my clients. 545 00:47:20,935 --> 00:47:23,937 And that's going to be critical to us. 546 00:47:23,937 --> 00:47:25,108 We don't like to build. 547 00:47:25,108 --> 00:47:33,044 We like to partner with companies like yours, the experts, the people who have the bandwidth to build what we want. 548 00:47:33,185 --> 00:47:40,940 And I think you're going to see a demand for things that are usable across lots of different personal interests. 549 00:47:40,940 --> 00:47:43,591 Yeah, well this has been good stuff. 550 00:47:43,591 --> 00:47:48,432 You're the first, we've had lots of CKO's, CKIO's, CNO's. 551 00:47:48,432 --> 00:47:58,716 You're the first, um you're the first guest that's on a leadership executive committee and it's been really insightful. 552 00:47:58,716 --> 00:48:03,377 I've really enjoyed um having that perspective on the show. 553 00:48:03,377 --> 00:48:06,118 So I appreciate you spending a few minutes and sharing that. 554 00:48:06,118 --> 00:48:07,018 really, really important. 555 00:48:07,018 --> 00:48:07,589 I loved it. 556 00:48:07,589 --> 00:48:08,399 I think it was great. 557 00:48:08,399 --> 00:48:11,392 really uh like to geek out on this stuff. 558 00:48:11,392 --> 00:48:15,245 um And I really think it's the future of our firm. 559 00:48:15,245 --> 00:48:18,938 And think it's just in the future of the practice. 560 00:48:18,938 --> 00:48:22,461 I hope law schools are doing a good job at preparing people. 561 00:48:22,461 --> 00:48:29,767 um I think you're going to see professions and positions within the legal profession impacted by this in different ways. 562 00:48:29,767 --> 00:48:35,371 uh But I think everybody will be impacted in how they practice over their. 563 00:48:35,371 --> 00:48:36,313 over the years to come. 564 00:48:36,313 --> 00:48:38,717 There's no way to escape it. 565 00:48:38,819 --> 00:48:45,014 you're either going to figure a way to be at the forefront of it, or you're going to get dropped. 566 00:48:45,014 --> 00:48:47,575 It's going to happen to you or by you. 567 00:48:47,575 --> 00:48:49,376 So you choose. 568 00:48:49,436 --> 00:48:50,734 This is good stuff. 569 00:48:50,734 --> 00:48:52,517 All right, Rodney, I really appreciate the time. 570 00:48:52,517 --> 00:48:55,779 Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us today. 571 00:48:56,259 --> 00:48:57,599 All right, take care. -->