Transforming Law Firm: From Data to Intelligence
In this episode, Jeannine Zito, senior manager of global knowledge solutions at Cleary Gottlieb, talks about how her background in banking shaped the way she thinks about data, strategy, and transformation inside major law firms. She gets into what happens when firms wait too long for the “perfect” data strategy, how information overload slows down adoption, and why the real driver of insight isn’t spreadsheets—it’s storytelling.
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DescriptioTranscription
ENTEGRATA | OVERRULED BY DATA | JEANNINE ZITO
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
[00:00:00] Jeannine Zito: So you have the lawyers, you have the data, you have the information, but are you setting it up smart? Are you putting time and emphasis on infrastructure? Because the biggest issue that we have with profitability is people not being able to find or locate knowledge and it slows them down. So, you know, the fact that we still have associates at three o'clock in the morning trying to find precedents like is absurd in today's environment.
[00:00:34] Tom Baldwin: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Overruled By Data. Today I am joined by Jeannine Zito, someone I've had the pleasure of working with at Cadwalader. And Jeannine brings a really interesting background. She comes from the banking world, worked at JP Morgan and at law firms. She's worked on the BD and marketing side.
[00:00:49] Tom Baldwin: She's worked on the knowledge management side. She's been assigned some pretty hefty tasks to do tactically and dug them amazingly and thought big picture and strategically, so I'm really excited to have Jeannine work with us. Anyway, Jeannine, thanks so much for joining us today. We're really excited to sit down and chat with you a little bit about data.
[00:01:05] Tom Baldwin: Jeannine, maybe before we get started, maybe just give everyone a little bit of background on who you are and, and how you got to be at Cleary.
[00:01:12] Jeannine Zito: Sure. So thanks, Tom. It's been really a fascinating journey, I would say in my career, not realizing how much it's been focused on data, but it essentially has in that, in that look back and I, I really started my career in investment banking and working through many roles at a large firm.
[00:01:32] Jeannine Zito: That really covered the business side of the investment bank and the m and a business. And I did all sorts of work associated with market and competitor intelligence, managing our pipeline, our revenue profitability, forecasting, trying to think about ways to market and build our book of business there.
[00:01:55] Jeannine Zito: And that really started with. Automating our pitch work and finding those opportunities for client growth through, you know, press relations and conferences and all of the classic things that you would have from a business development perspective. And I did that for quite some time and was really like the center resource for a lot of the bankers and for the business.
[00:02:18] Jeannine Zito: So I was always touching data and really realized that that was the core center of building any sort of business. And I had an opportunity through some changes at JP Morgan to spend some time at a law firm and really get to know their business development business and how they were managing growth opportunities.
[00:02:40] Jeannine Zito: And I was honestly floored at how much information they were actually tracking and using to really understand their client base to do that evaluation as to like what the market needed. And I realized like I was actually doing. A business development, a knowledge management, a business conflicts role at the bank, but there really just wasn't that name for it.
[00:03:04] Jeannine Zito: Right? We just basically supported the business so that it was really my entree into law firms at that time is like the next phase of my career. Moving from banking to law and really was finding the same problems that lawyers just don't have time to understand the information that is scattered across the firm.
[00:03:27] Jeannine Zito: So how can we like spare them for that piece and how can we get them to just be in front of their clients more often? And find those opportunities to feed them with the information that they need to make decisions to build their book of business. So at the last firm I was at where I had the pleasure of working with you, Tom, and where we first met was really focused on the business development and marketing role and also our growth plans.
[00:03:52] Jeannine Zito: And I had an opportunity to come to Cleary to focus on the technology behind the resources that was needed and the information that was needed. And that was really exciting for me because what we were trying to do through my entire career was how do we simplify looking at data, getting data in front of people, and being able to analyze it.
[00:04:12] Jeannine Zito: And I have been here for a number of years doing that work.
[00:04:17] Tom Baldwin: A number of years indeed. Um, yeah, it's interesting, right? So we, as you mentioned, we got a chance to work together at Cadwalader and we got to do a lot of really interesting things. And when I got to the firm, I had no idea that there was someone like you sitting there in BD waiting in the wings to do awesomeness
[00:04:33] Jeannine Zito: in the office next door.
[00:04:34] Jeannine Zito: It just knock on the wall. That's really what it was.
[00:04:38] Tom Baldwin: Yeah. You know, and I'm, I'm sure your personal journey and, and understanding data started before then, but at least the part that I am aware of is when we got to work together, we had a pretty big portfolio of things we were expected to do in a very short window of time.
[00:04:53] Tom Baldwin: And like nine months we had to roll out a new intranet. We had to put in enterprise search, we had to put in a firm directory. Yeah. Looking back on that, or maybe during that time, was there something that you, that was like an, like a, not an epiphany, but where you figured, okay, here's an opportunity, like next time I do this, I'm gonna do something different, or something where you realize like, wow, there's gotta be a better way to do some of this.
[00:05:13] Tom Baldwin: 'cause this was really hard. We did it nine months. We don't want a lot of awards, which is great, but it wasn't easy.
[00:05:18] Jeannine Zito: It wasn't, but I think that's where the epiphany happened, right? Because. Like I said, in my career I've been working with data so much and like having tons of paper on my desk and, and a ridiculous amount of Excel spreadsheets and third party data that we were trying to find.
[00:05:32] Jeannine Zito: And then also like understanding from bankers what knowledge they had and how to collect that and utilize that for any planning. I. So I think through that nine month journey of not sleeping and doing really good work and bringing things forward was it has to be easier than this and we have to use systems and we have to break down the data silos to get there.
[00:05:53] Jeannine Zito: So we had been spending all this time working through it and nothing was really clicking as to like, how can we just bridge these gaps? And really what we kept trying to do was sell the information we were putting on the internet and sell the information that we were putting in the dashboards and trying to teach people how to use enterprise search, but like adding the context into it as to like, what were they really trying to look for?
[00:06:18] Jeannine Zito: And that what's what really hit me that like data is just flat and information is just information. You have to be able to tell the story with the data and that's when it really comes like. The intelligent part of what we do, and I realized I was doing that in all of my roles through the history of my career.
[00:06:37] Jeannine Zito: Basically like providing the narratives to bankers for presentations for clients, and writing TV interview scripts for what's happening in market trends. And getting those recommendations to management for how we can have like business growth opportunities and later in turn drawing insights from adoption rates on our legal technology platforms.
[00:07:00] Jeannine Zito: So it's all about the data, but really the power is what you do with the data. How do you present that in a way that tells you that story? And the way that I always think about, it's like having an outline for a novel without knowing where the characters are headed. So real magic kind of happens when you have that data transformation and you take like that static information and you really make it dynamic.
[00:07:23] Jeannine Zito: And I think that's the point. And during that time period where we started putting systems behind the data and trying to explain to leadership and management and our clients like, what are we doing with this information? What is the story telling us? That's where I got hooked. And I kind of thought about.
[00:07:42] Jeannine Zito: Data being more of the intelligence side and the power behind it and kind of couldn't put the book down after that.
[00:07:49] Tom Baldwin: I wanna circle back to something going back to your time at JP Morgan and then now you spent either equal amount or more amount of time in legal, at least from what I remember. What would you say?
[00:08:00] Tom Baldwin: Your time there. W what prepared you for working in legal? Where were there similarities and where were there stark differences if you're coaching someone who maybe is coming into legal for the first time and just trying to get their feet wet?
[00:08:13] Jeannine Zito: Yeah, I think what prepared me for legal was banking being, um, a much more sophisticated infrastructure.
[00:08:22] Jeannine Zito: Obviously there's a lot of, you know, infrastructure in banking. As there should be because of like SEC regulations and a lot more need for it being a public company. That there were kind of consistencies in the way that we had to deliver information and the way that we were explaining things to management.
[00:08:42] Jeannine Zito: There had to be standards in your reporting because you had all the different divisions of the investment bank reporting up to, you know, Jamie Dimon. So you needed to have definitions. You needed to have like a data lineage. You needed to have consistency. And in law firms coming over, it was basically like, whichever way the partner wants this report is how it gets it, how it gets displayed.
[00:09:06] Jeannine Zito: Or the person in finance that's been doing this a really long time knows the information and knows the definitions and knows how it gets, you know, entered into our finance system. So when you're trying to put some structure in place in law firms, it's really trying to think about and utilize that knowledge or that experience from a very structured business.
[00:09:28] Jeannine Zito: And applying it to law firms. And what I love seeing in law firms now is they are really more business focused than they were 10 years ago when I first started joining them. And that's what's really exciting about legal now today.
[00:09:41] Tom Baldwin: And what would you say was the biggest similarity and the biggest difference between coming from JP Morgan to to legal?
[00:09:48] Jeannine Zito: It's a professional services world, so essentially a lot of the clients are the same and you're just having a lawyer look at it from a different perspective. So the way that lawyers try to get business is very different than, let's say, how banking would try to get business, but the similarities are still in your client relationships and still understanding the market, predicting what could not come next, and trying to grow those relationships or sustain those relationships of the key decision makers at your clients to keep getting new business.
[00:10:20] Jeannine Zito: It's about the same thing.
[00:10:21] Tom Baldwin: Was there a defining moment? Yeah, either before the work at Cadwalader or after, where you realize, wow, data is not just an operational flat tool, but it can be a strategic asset if leveraged the right way.
[00:10:33] Jeannine Zito: So I think my epiphany moment was really as we were going through all these different departments and different sets of information that was available at the firm, we were pulling, you know, finance reports.
[00:10:47] Jeannine Zito: KM or knowledge management side was. Giving us research and precedents, and then there were specific BD reports that we were looking at as well, and we decided we needed to aggregate that data and just showcase it and make it available to partners. But what was happening was we were building essentially like cookie cutter dashboards that were the same thing.
[00:11:08] Jeannine Zito: That was just an overload of information. And because it was so generic and it didn't really add context to it, partners weren't using it. They just didn't have adoption because they didn't know how to use it and they didn't know how to look at the data. So the lesson learned there is think, I think is just don't build dashboards.
[00:11:27] Jeannine Zito: To build dashboards because you're just gonna confuse people. And that's where I look at it as like that expensive digital wallpaper. You really want to make sure that you're building dashboards that provide data that's gonna help with decision making that's going to lead people to that next step and actually be able to do something with it.
[00:11:46] Jeannine Zito: Because once you start overloading lawyers or business people with just a tremendous amount of data, they go into a tailspin.
[00:11:52] Tom Baldwin: Yeah, one of my favorite quotes is from a, a partner I was doing work with in my prior life, and she said, I, I went into the practice of law because I was told there'd be no math.
[00:12:01] Tom Baldwin: And that always resonates with me when we think about who the target audience is. Yeah. So, so yeah, certainly understanding the why behind data is super important and, uh, and I think a lot of folks would, would share in that sentiment. And if you fast forward now. You start thinking about, you know, you've had really interesting roles where you've been in bd, you've been in knowledge management, you're close to the business, you understand how the business makes money, where the pain points are with partners.
[00:12:26] Tom Baldwin: You probably spent more time with partners than, than certainly I have. Uh, you, you're, you get asked to do all the crazy stuff that, that a lot of people don't get bothered with. Where would you say, like, okay, I, I, you're, you're at a firm and you're starting out. What were some of the lessons you learned?
[00:12:42] Tom Baldwin: If you were to, if you were to go to a firm brand new that didn't have anything with data, what were some lessons you learned that you would advise them on thinking about like how to like see around a corner not, not hit a pothole that they may not realize is coming?
[00:12:56] Jeannine Zito: I think there's a big cost to waiting too long for Perfect.
[00:13:00] Jeannine Zito: So a lot of firms are really sitting around planning like what is the perfect data strategy and what is the perfect content strategy? While competitors are out there just already getting started, right? They're connecting their systems, they're spotting those patterns and it's, it's essentially not theoretical because we've all been in these shoes, especially if you've been in the BD world that you know, you get those opportunities to pitch last minute, and we've lost business or we've lost opportunities because you couldn't pull together that relationship intelligence that existed in all of your systems.
[00:13:35] Jeannine Zito: In a timely matter to be able to present that to a client. So start small and think about what your business pain points are, and start with the real problems that you have. And I always say like, everybody's obsessed with AI today, which totally makes sense. I am too. But we really need to ask what is slowing down our firm today?
[00:13:57] Jeannine Zito: And do you have lawyers spending too many hours trying to search for precedents? Like, are your conflict checks really unwieldy? Do you have to like, fix the way that you are processing invoices because they take forever? There's a lot of opportunity to fix those pieces through data and through information.
[00:14:14] Jeannine Zito: It can be done through people. It could be do, done through process. It could be done through procedures, but it, it can also really be done with data and technology. I'd say the second part of that is leverage what you already have, because you do have a lot of data, right? So before you try to think about like the right perfect technology solution, organize your data, think about like your document system, your intake systems, your billing platforms, your CRM, like those are all gold mines of data.
[00:14:43] Jeannine Zito: And the magic happens when you start pulling that together and really thinking about like what is the data lineage? What are the definitions behind here? What information can we connect to make our relationships stand out? Between clients and matters. And it really does then tie into the increased operations and ultimately profitability.
[00:15:05] Jeannine Zito: 'cause that's what you know every firm is focused on, but it doesn't have to be perfect. So if you really start small, then the results will show gradually. You'll get partner buy-in right away. If you give them that like quick tidbit of insight, you know, when they're standing at your door. And that's then where you can spend more time focused on strategy.
[00:15:27] Tom Baldwin: Yeah. A lot of firms seem to get themselves in a bit of a pickle where they don't have the chicken and the egg part sorted out. They feel like they have to have a data strategy before they do anything else, but without the other things. Then the data strategy kind of doesn't have, can't really do much with a 300 page PDF.
[00:15:47] Tom Baldwin: Right. There's not a lot.
[00:15:48] Jeannine Zito: It's true.
[00:15:49] Tom Baldwin: So. So the, the, that juxtaposition of data strategy first, or execution, small, quick wins to build momentum are, do you have any examples of things that you could say to a firm like, Hey, here, here's an idea that, you know, you don't have to go buy a bunch of tech, even if you don't have a team of a hundred people, you, you can do this to show value and, and build momentum for something bigger.
[00:16:11] Jeannine Zito: So I agree with you. I think we are overthinking this quick win win versus the big strategy concept. There's two sides of the coin, right? There is the need to solve the problems today, and you have to build tomorrow's capabilities at the same time. So my analogy for that is always like if you're renovating your house, you still have to live in it at the same time, and you need a place to sleep tonight, but you're also working on that dream kitchen.
[00:16:37] Jeannine Zito: So you have to be practical about which rooms to toggle first, but it doesn't mean that you're abandoning your vision of the this like dream house, right? So some of the easy things to start with that don't cost a lot of money or take up a lot of time is building up that data center of excellence. It's getting the right people in the right room to determine what the problems are and what data is needed to actually solve them.
[00:17:01] Jeannine Zito: And that can't be driven by it like that has to have a collaborative approach to it. So you need your practice leaders. You need your like rockstar BD people. You need your KM researchers or people that could speak to the information that you have and build up this little like committee. It doesn't have to be like a strict governance committee, but it's a decision committee that helps you pick the projects that solve real problems.
[00:17:30] Jeannine Zito: And that could help move you towards the bigger picture as you're doing that. And I also think on that project decision is not thinking about like, what's the splashiest thing to do based on what everybody's talking about in the market. And we have to hurry up and adopt to Gen AI. We really wanna make sure that you're helping your attorneys and you're helping your staff make decisions faster.
[00:17:53] Jeannine Zito: And so the project. If the project doesn't change the way decisions are getting made, then it's probably not worth doing.
[00:18:01] Tom Baldwin: That's a great way to put it. I wanna circle back to something you said earlier. Oftentimes there's this notion that data should be led by it, and certainly it as a service provider has to have involvement, but in reality, it's the business that should be driving these strategic decisions.
[00:18:18] Tom Baldwin: And often one of the biggest challenges is getting everybody at the table where it's. It's what we call big tent projects, right? I need someone from marketing, I need someone from accounting, I need someone from hr, I need someone from finance. And everyone's got a plain ice. And that's the other part.
[00:18:33] Tom Baldwin: Sometimes there's, there's usually somebody always in the room who's got their arms crossed, either literally or mentally they're walled off from the conversation because they're, for whatever reason, just don't wanna get on board. How have you seen in, in your career. You, you know? Or, or if you have instances where you've been able to kind of get people over the hump.
[00:18:52] Tom Baldwin: 'cause there's always gonna be, at every firm, there's always gonna be somebody who's gonna be an impediment, whether they're obvious about it or, or not. Yeah.
[00:18:59] Jeannine Zito: Yeah. And I think a lot of people sitting in that room also don't, they don't understand why they're there and they don't understand how to contribute, but they've been selected by somebody for some reason.
[00:19:07] Jeannine Zito: So I think it's really getting them comfortable with data and understanding their value and why they contribute. And sometimes it's really explaining to them what a win was that already happened and how it got there. And also kind of thinking about the data culture across the firm change. Because if you have a firm that understands the importance of data, you'll get people that had that foundational understanding of why they're sitting in that room because they can lead.
[00:19:39] Jeannine Zito: They have that strategy or they've. Had so many experiences of these wins or failures that they can contribute to. But if you don't have that foundational understanding of a data culture across the firm, like it's, it's harder to get there. So you really need to think about getting everybody just from the management committee to your associates, to your legal secretaries, excited about data.
[00:20:03] Jeannine Zito: And as I said, like in my career, I didn't realize how much I was focused on data. And it's the same way that people across the firm, in every single role, their roles are dependent upon data, right? So it's getting people to think like, we don't need better reports. We need to think about the insights of like.
[00:20:24] Jeannine Zito: This just saved me 20 hours of client work. That's the stuff that I love to hear when you're walking down the hallways because it's people that really understand how information played into that part of efficiencies or getting that client, you know, on board for, for new work. So starting there, if you really have an understanding across the firm as to like what data is and the power behind it, it's easier to get those decision makers in the room or to move the needle on your strategy.
[00:20:52] Tom Baldwin: When you say data quality, talk about what you mean by that.
[00:20:54] Jeannine Zito: Okay. Um, yeah, so I would say data quality and, 'cause we keep hearing this about data quality or the term clean data is being thrown around all over this, all over the place, but like what does that actually mean? And to whom? Mm-hmm. Because one, one mistake I essentially see is treating data quality as like the final checkpoint at the layer that information's being served.
[00:21:17] Jeannine Zito: So when you're looking at your dashboards, but the real data trust happens at the source, so we have to build it at every single layer. Otherwise, you're just pushing the problem downstream, you know, faster. And it's also about the context of the data. So this data point might be correct in your original source, but the person contributing that information into some sort of system, did they understand what it's meant to be for how it's supposed to play.
[00:21:46] Jeannine Zito: Because if people are contributing information in a way that they don't understand the purposes, you're just gonna have bad data down the line as it moves through the, through the lineage. Then it goes on the other side where it's for those people consuming. Are they understanding it? Because I hear this all the time, the data is wrong in the system.
[00:22:05] Jeannine Zito: I don't trust the system. And it's not so much that the data's wrong. Maybe it's not the right information that they need, or maybe they don't understand the definition behind it. Or to be honest, maybe it is wrong. So to me, data quality isn't really a technical issue. It's more I think of a people issue.
[00:22:25] Jeannine Zito: And that is because our technology is advancing so much faster than our cultures in so many different cases. So if you don't get, like I said earlier, people to understand that data is important and it's just embedded in our day-to-day, you're not gonna have anything clean from the source and people that aren't gonna understand how to consume it or use it.
[00:22:45] Jeannine Zito: So it's just a problem in general.
[00:22:48] Tom Baldwin: Yeah. It's interesting you talk about data cleanliness, it's, it's often. That if, if, if data strategy is not number one in people's minds as to why they can't do something, it's, they say, oh, our data's not good. What I've observed is, is that's true and not true in the sense that every source system has some data that is relied upon for reporting that has to have some level of accuracy or you wouldn't be pushing out reports from it.
[00:23:15] Tom Baldwin: 'cause eventually lawyers are gonna see it and say This is wrong and. You will fix it. And so the trick really is say, okay, recognize that not every source system's gonna have a perfect amount of data around a lawyer, a client, or matter. That's perfect. But if I can el, if I can grab elements out of it that are good and leave behind the stuff that's not, then what I'm left with is the best version of data around lawyers, clients, and matters that we have.
[00:23:39] Tom Baldwin: But oftentimes, that's not the mindset. It's like everything has to be perfect in X system. And if there's anything bad in that, then the whole project has to get. You know, kind of like paused until it's perfect and it's never gonna, that's never gonna happen, right? So it, it's strategy or data cleanliness are the two big, sort of like blockers we see when, when firms are, are nervous about moving forward.
[00:24:00] Tom Baldwin: So that's a really good observation. So now looking ahead, right? You know, data and AI are kind of like the cool kids club in, in our industry. Where do you see sort of the market heading in the next couple years? What are you excited about and what concerns do you have?
[00:24:16] Jeannine Zito: Oh, there's so much there in that statement because like I'm thrilled and nervous at the same time.
[00:24:21] Jeannine Zito: But let me tell you why. So the exciting part, and this is kind of where like the data nerd comes out in me a lot, is like getting really excited in the ship that we're seeing of not just the collecting the data, but actually making the data work for us. And I love the idea that instead of having lawyers or business people like dig through all these spreadsheets and dashboards that we actually.
[00:24:45] Jeannine Zito: Could have systems. It's a dream system that essentially would, you know, virtually tap somebody on the shoulder and say like, Hey, here's something you should pay attention to. Or shifting from that, like what happened to, what should we do? And I think a lot of times, especially in law firms, you have lawyers that are so used to looking back, right?
[00:25:06] Jeannine Zito: Because the way that they lawyer and pro provide advice is through precedent. So you always wanna look at what, what happened in the past and in today's world to really make change and give something that could be competitive is looking forward. So it's like that, you know, crystal ball mentality versus the rear view mirror.
[00:25:29] Jeannine Zito: And I think the technology is really setting us up for success to do that. And the technology that I, I think is really cool to watch and get more incorporated into legal or knowledge graphs. I think they're gonna be game changers and thinking of it as the kind of GPS for legal information. And it's organizing knowledge so our tools can talk to each other and we are essentially able to retrieve not just like information from documents, but it's the relationship connection that the systems can do between your legal concepts, your cases, and your principles.
[00:26:09] Jeannine Zito: So that's where I think the fun kind of happens, where everything through knowledge graphs can turn into your actionable firm intelligence instead of just flat data, and it helps you tell the story, like I was saying before.
[00:26:23] Tom Baldwin: Just circling back to something you mentioned earlier, for those that are unfamiliar, what's a knowledge graph?
[00:26:27] Jeannine Zito: Sure. So let me just take a step, step back for a second though, because for knowledge graphs to really work, you have to think about the knowledge and information and, and the intelligence piece. Knowledge being the practice of law and the business of law coming together. And then for information, your data and your content.
[00:26:46] Jeannine Zito: So if you take your knowledge and your information, that's when you really form the intelligence piece. And having all of those different data sets. What knowledge engineering does is then captures all of that information and data, and it applies technology on top of it. Essentially that turns information into dynamic and for it to work to turn the static to dynamic and basically connect that power, you use knowledge graphs and that is the output of all of the knowledge engineering and kind of that connectors.
[00:27:19] Jeannine Zito: Um, that our coders, you know, focus on, but it's the output of the rich contextual information that you're putting into your system. Knowledge graphs are the GPS for AI and LLMs is how I look at it. They basically steer your AI models into the right direction by organizing and linking the data in all of the meaningful ways.
[00:27:42] Jeannine Zito: So if you think about it in more of like this sophisticated web where all of your information stored from legal concepts and documents and your PR principles, and it finds its like place and purpose and transforms all of that data into meaningful insights.
[00:28:00] Tom Baldwin: And then the other question I had is you fast forward a couple years, what's the crystal ball look like for you?
[00:28:05] Tom Baldwin: Where do you see firms moving towards? Are there any interesting use cases or outcomes that you think today might be a little bit out of reach? A little bit of a stretch, but fast forward 18, 24 months that. The industry or individual firms will be better positioned to take on something like,
[00:28:21] Jeannine Zito: so I think the actionable firm intelligence piece is really where we are starting to focus and it becomes that kind of data transformation piece.
[00:28:30] Jeannine Zito: But there's also the AI element that comes to this, and we've talked about like generative business intelligence and like how that connects with your data governance and what your goals are for your information and your business needs. But connecting that with generative ai. Is really where it can get.
[00:28:49] Jeannine Zito: Very cool. So like the innovative part of it is weaving AI into the fabric of how, how lawyers work. So not just like giving them all of these different solutions or different tools or different separate products that they have to learn, which can become like, you know, the stale products that are basically sitting on the shelf collecting dust.
[00:29:11] Jeannine Zito: The cool part about organizing the intelligence is making the tech invisible, but the benefit's obvious. And you can do that by like having insights pop up, right? When you're drafting a client email or you're reviewing a contract. And I think the firms that are really gonna crush it aren't going to be those that are necessarily just like.
[00:29:31] Jeannine Zito: Throwing money at technology, but they're gonna be the ones that understand that this whole data thing is fundamental and it's about people. It's about culture. It's about changing how knowledge moves through the organization and gets to the right person at the right time while they're in their workflows that they're already, yeah,
[00:29:48] Tom Baldwin: that's really, that's well put.
[00:29:49] Tom Baldwin: I love the idea of that contextual, sort of like, Hey, I'm drafting an email. It pops up. That's awesome.
[00:29:54] Jeannine Zito: It's there today. Yeah. The issue is organizing the data and the information. To connect to that as they are going through their workflows.
[00:30:02] Tom Baldwin: You, you brought up a, a topic earlier and you, you talked about the practice of law, you know, juxtaposed against the business of law.
[00:30:09] Tom Baldwin: Mm-hmm. I think most people listening to this probably has some understanding of what we mean when we say practice of law, but maybe give some examples of business, live law use cases that perhaps someone who's new might not have thought of.
[00:30:25] Jeannine Zito: Yeah, so that becomes really understanding who your clients are, what work you're doing for those clients, what relationships you have with the people who sit at those businesses and those companies.
[00:30:39] Jeannine Zito: What type of work are you getting? What type of work are you, are you not getting in? Your competitors are getting thinking about what are the issues when we try to go through our conflicts? And that we are trying to navigate through on making the right business decisions on what work to be forecasting or doing for our clients.
[00:30:58] Jeannine Zito: There's also this side of like matter profitability, so what are efficiency programs when we're actually doing work for our clients? Are we doing fixed fees? Are we doing project work? Are we reducing a lot of the reimbursement that we're getting for our research resources that are happening today? What does that profitability look like and what's slowing us down?
[00:31:21] Jeannine Zito: I think there's also staffing inefficiencies that happen. There's so much data that's out there as to like, do we have the right people staffed on the right projects for the right clients? And I think like these are the data pieces that are important about understanding how to run the business that really tie to profitability.
[00:31:40] Tom Baldwin: Yeah, it reminds me of some of the work that Heidi Gartner from Harvard has been talking about for quite some time and, and putting some legs behind that. I, I talked to a COO of a firm who was a partner, was in pricing, and now it runs a law firm, and so he's kind of seen it from all three angles and, and he made an interesting comment.
[00:31:58] Tom Baldwin: He said that in some ways, the business of law use cases might have more potential for impact on the bottom line. Uh, of a law firm then not to, not to discount the mountain of work done on the practice side, but it's, it's a burgeoning area of, of opportunity for firms to think about.
[00:32:17] Jeannine Zito: To add to that point too, about the, the efficiency is, it becomes like you have all of the resources and the assets at your firm today, so you have the lawyers, you have the data, you have the information, but are you setting it up smart?
[00:32:32] Jeannine Zito: Are you putting time and emphasis on infrastructure? Because the biggest issue that we have with profitability is people not being able to find or locate knowledge, and it slows them down. So, you know, the fact that we still have associates at three o'clock in the morning trying to find precedents like is absurd in today's environment.
[00:32:50] Jeannine Zito: The fact that partners are still calling BD at midnight to get that tidbit for the, you know, 9:00 AM client meeting, like we should not be doing that, right? So there's efficiencies that we can put into place today through people, processes, culture, data, technology that really tied to profitability.
[00:33:11] Tom Baldwin: When you think about firms positioning themselves, so they've said, Hey, cool.
[00:33:14] Tom Baldwin: This sounds great. I'm ready to, to jump in. How should firms be positioning themselves to lead this transformation now? Are there particular initiatives or mindset you think that will set firms apart?
[00:33:26] Jeannine Zito: I think it's setting up this infrastructure, like your data infrastructure, your knowledge, infrastructure, having the right strategies and then the right procedures in place to really operationalize your business.
[00:33:38] Jeannine Zito: There is nothing like throwing, you know, money out the door because you just don't have in efficient operations like any other business. But the importance of that is because you don't want people, or firms shouldn't be jumping on the AI bandwagon. That's what I'm worried about just a little bit without having that proper, you know, data foundation first.
[00:33:58] Jeannine Zito: Because if you don't have the good governance and the infrastructure, it can really lead to problematic outcomes and missed opportunities when you start applying LLMs and generative AI everywhere.
[00:34:09] Tom Baldwin: So now we're gonna switch gears to how do you encourage action within a day strategy. Now we're talking to firms that are maybe still hesitant, they're not quite sold yet, or they're nervous that they, they make a mistake and they have a lawyer file that brief that's got a phantom citation to a matter that doesn't exist.
[00:34:27] Tom Baldwin: All that being said, for firms that are still hesitant, I guess, what lessons or cautionary tales or potholes in the road would you want them to know about so that they have the best chance of success?
[00:34:40] Jeannine Zito: I think there's a lot. Um, I. Opportunity with just training and teaching and educating people, and there really doesn't need to be a significant financial cost to that.
[00:34:54] Jeannine Zito: There might be time and energy that's put to that, but if you educate people on the processes you have in place and why we're asking you to do things, or the purpose of, you know, this field sitting in your DMS system. Or, you know, even setting up your intake system to have more instructions around the, you know, details that are being included.
[00:35:17] Jeannine Zito: You know, when you're trying to downgrade highly sensitive matters to something that could be standard and change the way that the firm has access to information. It becomes less of an administrative burden and more purposeful, and again, this is back to like if people have an understanding of data being, you know, part of your culture, they'll get why you're being asked to do this annoying, kind of frustrating like response of email or click of a button type of thing that lawyers don't wanna do.
[00:35:47] Jeannine Zito: There's a lot of value to that and there really isn't a lot of cost. You need the senior level management buy-in. You need to have it part of your core. And you need the right people to lead and have those conversations because teaching this is not easy. Breaking down all of those silos are, you know, not easy.
[00:36:06] Jeannine Zito: It needs some time and attention in order to get you there, but it's something that's absolutely achievable at every firm.
[00:36:14] Tom Baldwin: Zero saying that it reminded me of two things. One is shout out to Three Geeks and a Law Blog. They had the team on from mentors earlier in the year, and they gave an entire playbook on their rollout of co-pilot.
[00:36:26] Tom Baldwin: And one of the things that they did is they required this required, again, talk about low cost, no cost. It was training and time, but they required any lawyer who wanted a a license had to go through seven one hour training sessions. And those sessions include things like. Safe use of ai, prompt engineering thing, like amazing topics that set the up for success.
[00:36:47] Tom Baldwin: And the other thing that I thought of as you were saying this is I worked at a firm once where a various influential partner was flummoxed when our league table rankings didn't include any of their matters. And I said, well, tell me how your opening your matters. And they looked at me kind of oddly, and I said, well, there's this little pesky field on that form that I'm sure you're.
[00:37:08] Tom Baldwin: Really spending a lot of time on that field that you have your legal assistant pick is driving what comes outta this report and that no one, to your point, had ever connected the dots so that mm-hmm. This intake form was gonna drive our ability to. Properly represent our work when we're doing any number of our legal rankings.
[00:37:25] Tom Baldwin: And so until you educate them on the why and how it's being used, tricky. Okay. We still see a lot of firms get stuck, right? And they think they need the perfect day strategy before they do anything. What advice would you give firms starting small iterating, building a data platform alongside kind of thinking about this almost in parallel where, yes, I need governance, I need all the things.
[00:37:49] Tom Baldwin: But if I don't have something to look at the data in, it's gonna be hard to kind of effectuate any of those strategic goals I put in place. How? How would you advise firms that wanna kinda work a bit more swiftly and that are stuck?
[00:38:02] Jeannine Zito: So I think a lot of it is involving your IT teams, but also not having them drive exactly what the answer to the problem is.
[00:38:10] Jeannine Zito: They need to have a seat at the table, but it's understanding again, what the problems are to solve. But what data are you using on a regular basis, or what reports are you putting together on a regular basis that are manual? So if you are spending way too much time, or it becomes really cumbersome to put a client brief together, I.
[00:38:29] Jeannine Zito: Find opportunities to automate a lot of that. It does not need to be a very heavy lift. It just needs somebody with understanding the information, how to process workflows, where to get the data from, and there's a ton of programs and platforms out there. Even something like Power Automate that you can use pretty easily at a low cost to really push through those workflows and bring in those operational efficiencies.
[00:38:53] Jeannine Zito: Partners are gonna notice that. Absolutely.
[00:38:57] Tom Baldwin: Yeah, you raise a really good point, right? So you have to have something that's a little visible.
[00:39:01] Jeannine Zito: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:01] Tom Baldwin: Like the win can't be it. It can be, but it's not as impactful if the win is something that the partners don't get to see and touch. It's a balancing act.
[00:39:09] Tom Baldwin: Right. So how would you approach balancing kind of that immediate tactical, something behind the scenes win versus something that might take a little bit of a longer term investment to see the fruits of, of that labor?
[00:39:21] Jeannine Zito: I think a lot of it is about really breaking down your processes. I mean, I can't tell you how many in all of my roles, when you're trying to produce information to go out to a client or even for your partner to be educated about the call that they need to jump on, or how an associate needs to draft a particular contract.
[00:39:41] Jeannine Zito: There is so much information that we're losing at the firm because it's just not organized in the right way. So efficiencies come there with just, you know, making a better process or procedures associated with it. But I think it's also, you know, people talk about this like you need partner buy-in all the time, but it actually is, right?
[00:40:01] Jeannine Zito: So by having conversations with those key partners that really can help drive the change or maybe give you the budget or understand. The pain points that go into putting this pitch together. A lot of times they just get frustrated that things take too long. But when you break down actually what that looks like and where you can find those efficiencies and explain that to partners, they might understand what you're dealing with all day or why it takes.
[00:40:28] Jeannine Zito: You know, three Ds or a week to give them something at the level of quality that they want and that you also wanna put forward with. Understanding the pain points that exist at the firm will really help drive the management committees, your chiefs, to really, you know, put some investment behind the strategy or even tools behind it.
[00:40:47] Tom Baldwin: Cool. I think that's it for our questions.
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