Transcript

Chad Main: For episode 11 we talked to attorney Lucy Basilli about the modern legal ecosystem and what it means to be a unicorn lawyer. Lucy recently left the legal department at Microsoft where she served as Associate General Counsel. When she left she founded a consultancy and law firm called InnoLegal Services. Lucy also splits her time with contract automation company, LawGeex, where she serves as Chief Legal Strategist.

Also in this episode for all you intellectual property lawyers, we talked to Nehal Madhani about the company he founded, Alt Legal, which is a docketing system for intellectual property matters.

Chad Main: I was pretty excited to land Lucy as a guest for the podcast. The first time I heard Lucy speak was last year at the CLOC annual conference. CLOC stands for Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. Among other events, it has an annual meeting once a year. For the last couple of years the annual US meeting has been in Las Vegas.

If you’re in legal operations or just want to learn more about legal ops, I highly recommend you looking into CLOC. When I heard Lucy speak at CLOC last year, she was still in-house at Microsoft where she was responsible for a bunch of things including implementation of the legal department’s contract management system. She was on the panel with a bunch of other legal ops bigwigs and the topic was on how to really change the way the legal industry does its work.

On the panel that day Lucy said something that really resonated with me. She said that for modern lawyers to really do a good job and deliver value to their clients they are going to have to embrace and work with others who are not lawyers, but have other very valuable and important skill sets.

Lucy Basilli [Excerpt from CLOC session] I think there’s another fundamental shift that needs to happen. I think those few practicing attorneys who are in here. Those of you who are recovering attorneys don’t hide it, we need to embrace all of the other professionals that are in this ecosystem, because without them we will not be able to move the dial.

That’s a fact. I did not research. I have no backing, but you’re going to have to trust me on this. It is a fact that we can not continue to function in our “lawyer versus non-lawyer” world … Who hates that word?

LEGAL ECOSYSTEM PLAYER 1: REGULATORS

Chad Main: What is the legal ecosystem? It’s a group of various key players that serve the needs of legal clients. Some of these players provide what we would consider traditional legal services. But others, they provide very important legal related ancillary services.

As in most industries, you gotta have regulations, and that’s where Lucy thinks the legal ecosystem starts. On a side note and by complete coincidence, Lucy is writing a series of article about the various players in the legal ecosystem. I’ll throw up a link to those articles on the episode page for this episode, episode 11, on TLPodcast.com [Links to articles above].

Lucy Basilli: I think there are a number of key players that together make up this ecosystem, which is very gently and sometimes not gently disrupting each other and forcing each other to change and try new things. If you just go along the cycle of ecosystem or spectrum, however you want to look at it, there are certain regulations, of course. There’s a regulatory body or sets of rules by which attorneys have to practice within the US. Let’s just focus on the US because if we go outside it becomes even more complex. But in the US we know we have 50 states and each of those 50 states has their sets of governing rules of how lawyers should practice. It just addresses lawyers. But what it does is create really the boundaries of the practice of law, and at the same time the confinement of the practice of law and keeping others out. That’s one key player.

LEGAL ECOSYSTEM PLAYER 2: INDUSTRY GROUPS

Chad Main: I didn’t really think about it until my conversation with Lucy, but another key group of players in this modern legal ecosystem are industry and trade groups like the one I mentioned before, CLOC.

Lucy Basilli: Another key player that is certainly becoming more and more notable and listened to I think, are the industry groups. Whether it is CLOC, the one you just referenced, or Association of Corporate Counsel. They have a legal operations group now. There’s more and more happening at the ABA and the Law Practice Management Division, or even parts of the Association of Corporate Counsel that aren’t legal operations. Of all of these, whether it’s legal operations as a general umbrella, or law practice management concepts, these professionals, or the attorneys who are taking on these new roles, they’re all coming together at a greater pace than ever before. They’re forcing conversations and sharing practices and ideas that is also overflowing into impacting the service providers that are part of the ecosystem.

LEGAL ECOSYSTEM PLAYER 3: SERVICE PROVIDERS

Chad Main: Now we get to the group of players in the legal ecosystem that are very near and dear to my heart, the service providers. Service providers can be law firms, they can be tech companies, or they can be alternative legal service providers. The first two are probably familiar to you and exactly what you think they are, but the latter, alternative legal service providers are sometimes known as legal process outsourcers or LPOs, are fairly new to the legal industry. They’re companies like the one I founded, Percipient, that work with lawyers and their clients to accomplish important tasks that may or may not be viewed as traditional legal work, but work that is without question, very important and necessary to getting modern legal work done.

Lucy Basilli: Shifting to the service providers there are a couple of key buckets that. One of course are the law firms. Two, will be the legal tech service providers. Three, will be the alternative or legal service providers, or legal process outsourcers, or legal services companies. There’s a lot of names, one of which I will disagree with. I hear law company out there a little bit now, and I don’t think they actually are doing law. I think they’re doing services, but I digress. Then, the last one, I’m kind of giving it its own category, although I’m not sure it does need one, but I think it’s starting to become one, are the Big Four. They are who they are. They don’t need naming or listing and they are a key player right now in the ecosystem.

LEGAL ECOSYSTEM PLAYER 4: LAW SCHOOLS

Chad Main: Last but not least in our tour of the legal ecosystem we run into the legal departments and law schools, the purchasers of legal services, and the educators of lawyers.

Lucy Basilli: Then of course, we have two other key constituents in the ecosystem. One being the corporate legal departments which are the procurers of the services from those groups that we just listed. Finally, we have of course law schools. As you can see this is a chicken and egg cycle. I don’t know where it starts, and we don’t know where it ends. But all of those players are impacting each other. Actually I just launched a series of articles through Thomson Reuters and their legal executive institute that looks a little bit deeper into each one of those, because it is a fascinating time we’re living in and all these new players working together, and some of the old players that are feeling the pressure to change how they play the game.

IMPACT OF BIG FOUR ON LEGAL MARKET

Chad Main: Before I got to Lucy’s take on why it’s important for all members of the legal ecosystem to work together, I wanted to talk to her a little more about the impact that the Big Four will have and are currently having on the legal market. As the Big Four try to claim their piece of the legal services pie, they’re a good example of how and why lawyers must work with other disciplines to provide true value to clients.

Lucy Basilli: They, like the legal services companies, or the alternative legal service providers, whatever is the best name for those growing companies, like them, they’re pushing the envelope on the definition of the practice of law, in the US for sure, because again, we have some boundaries that are pretty clear and finite, on one hand. On the other hand, there is a spectrum of work that lawyers do that many are arguing really isn’t the practice of law and that you don’t need a license to do. If you don’t need a license, you’re probably a lower cost resource, which is why the alternative legal providers have done so well in the last decade plus.

The Big Four have picked up on that very quickly, so they have their own legal services that they’re providing that are again, not the practice of law in the US, but very close. But in addition to that what they have, what their bread and butter has been for so long is fantastic management consulting skills. Something that the ALSPs are now doing and adding and have been developing. But the Big Four, that was inherent in who they are and what they’re good at. They already have contact into all of the major corporations. I do mean all. Every major corporation is using one of the Big Four for something.

Lucy Basilli: In addition to that, the amount of marketing resources that they have, and how they do their marketing goes well beyond any alternative legal service provider or law firm. Layered on top of that, are the resources that they spend on R&D. They have significant budgets for R&D. If you put all of that together, they’re finally approaching the sleeping giant of legal, that they hadn’t approached maybe for some time and it was safe for law firms to have the lion’s share of the work, as the ALSP started to grow and eat away at some of that law firm work. But more so, the ALSPs, alternative providers were really going after the in-house work that was still not being sent to firms but really bearing the in-house lawyers. That was their sweet spot. Law firms continued in their same sweet spot that’s been historic and the same for gosh, decades.

Lucy Basilli: In comes this new entrant that’s bringing in very highly skilled attorneys who actually aren’t practicing law, but have the benefits of being with a very reputable and prestigious firm, one of the Big Four, bringing in a variety of other skill sets from their consulting side of the house, from the solutions architects experts, throwing on top of that R&D resourcing, throwing on top of that good marketing. There’s this whole mix that they have put together that’s very natural to them, but it’s newer to legal. I see them as a really big threat. Their more direct threat in the US as they start to open up these kinds of special relationships with a law firm where they again, aren’t practicing law but they’re engaged with a law firm of some sort, and these other nuanced and creative corporate entities and structures, where they’re still within the rules of not getting into the unauthorized practice of law in the US, but finding ways to deliver a service that is very close. They are a uniquely positioned set of resources, each one, that bring together, I think, the best of what the ALSPs, the law firms and the legal tech providers have.

WHY ALL MEMBERS OF THE LEGAL ECOSYSTEM MUST WORK TOGETHER

Chad Main: Now that we’ve discussed all the various players in the legal ecosystem we get to the “Why”. Why they should all want to and why they should work together. As Lucy explains, it boils down to increasing the value lawyers provide their clients, bettering the client experience, helping clients further business goals based on the legal advice they receive from their lawyers, and also it helps lawyers and clients actually implement the legal advice they receive from lawyers. It’s this latter part, the implementation where a lot of other players for legal ecosystem can really help attorneys.

Lucy Basilli: Law firm lawyers, they need to expand their horizons of the value that they’re offering. At the end of the day, the value can’t continue to be, that I’m the best litigator, or I’m the best negotiator of contracts, or you name it, regulatory expert, because there’s more needed from the in-house corporate legal departments than that anymore. The complexities that companies are dealing with and the complexities of then the legal teams in-house are dealing with require different sets of skill beyond just the traditional legal subject matter experts.

Lucy Basilli: Receiving legal advice alone isn’t enough to solve the problem that the in-house legal team is dealing with. For example, in a regulatory environment, simply saying, yes, GDPR is coming and here it is, and here’s an 80 page memo on GDPR. That gets handed off from a law firm at a very high price point to an in-house legal team. The in-house legal team then has to figure out, what does this mean for their business, for their corporation, who’s their main and only client?

That disconnect is no longer going to be acceptable going forward as the pressure on the in-house team to move at a faster pace, where they’re not going to have necessarily the time to continue to assess and debate the pure legal concepts, but really, it’s all about applying it to a business goal. It’s the business that needs to accomplish something, and without the help of the business and all of the different skill sets that business brings with them, for the lawyer, it’s going to be very hard to really connect between the great legal advice, expensive legal advice they receive from a law firm, and then the business goal, that they’re there to serve at the company at which they work.

Lucy Basilli: Why are these other professionals necessary? Two reasons. One, other types of skill sets are needed to help the engagement between the law firms and the in-house legal departments be more effective. That’s the how. That is moving away from the “ping-pong” of: I have a question. I’m going to send it to a firm. The firm’s going to answer my question, and they’ll send me a bill. I’m going to pay the bill and then we’re done.

That engagement, that back and forth can only be improved with the help of people who understand how to use smarter, better, collaboration tools, with people who can really dive into that process of engaging each other and help optimize the process to move faster, to move smoother, to access information and data more readily so that you’re not waiting. To acknowledge that you can play a big role, but again, you need people who can bring to light some of these different options, because the attorney’s job is still to deliver that legal advice from the law firm.

Lucy Basilli: They don’t need to be process experts. They don’t need to be green belts in Six Sigma. They don’t need to know how to architect solutions, but they need to know when to bring in all those people who know how to do that other stuff. Let’s just call it “other stuff” for lack of a better word because that’s the only way they will improve and enhance the engagement experience with the in-house team that’s moving at a faster pace than every before, and that pace will only get faster. The pace is never as slow as it is today because it’ll always continue to get faster. That’s one main reason that you need all these other professionals, is the how of the engagement has got to evolve and become more modern, faster, more efficient, more immediate access to information, and immediate access to data and answers.

Lucy Basilli: The other end of the spectrum, why you need these other professionals is really, goes to the core of what is being delivered. That legal advice then needs to be consumed in a business setting. Engaging people who have experience with the running of the business itself, of the company, of the corporation, of that client can really help move that advice from again, a nice piece of legal theory, and accurate legal theory into something actionable. Often times it’s then the lawyers in-house that are finding that they need to engage other professionals, and maybe it’s from their “client group” in the business or maybe there are people within the legal department that have now been brought in who are more closely connected to the business itself.

HOW TO GET BUY IN FOR CHANGING THE WAY LEGAL WORK IS DONE

Chad Main: Let’s move away from the why and talk about a different how. How you get buy-in, either at your law firm, or at your corporate law department. You were at Microsoft for a longtime. You instituted some of these changes there. How did you do it? What was your experience there?

Lucy Basilli: I’m a big fan of small wins along the way. It’s great to get supporters, sponsors and fans along the way. In my case, my experience was that when I could demonstrate a value for that attorney for whose job I’m trying to change, or impact, influence, in a positive way I hope, it’s to work with them in a way that they see that value and then become part of the solution. My specific experience was in contracting. Every company has contracts. Every company has too many. This is a job security for every transactional lawyer. There’s always going to be contracts. How do we, as a company, no matter where you are in-house, how do you do them a little bit faster, a little bit more efficient? How do you take some smart risks?

Lucy Basilli: What I realized is, to the extent of course I had control of that work, it was very easy, because I just had to convince myself. But to the extent that I was working with and collaborating with other attorneys across the department, it was critical to show them the value and the benefits of embracing the change. They weren’t the ones that had to engage with different professionals and incorporate different skill sets into their day job. I was doing that on their behalf. I just needed to get their buy-in. The best way is to show real value. Usually the value for most attorneys is of course, time savings. Everybody’s buried. That’s the first complaint you hear. What we underestimate is the quiet wave of resistance from those attorneys who like being buried. They like having the work they have on their desk. They feel comfortable with it. Changing it by encouraging them to move to more complicated work actually may not be perceived as a value-add.

Lucy Basilli: On the one hand, you’re working to demonstrate the value and get people to come along. On the other hand, you have to really understand and be certain that what you perceive as value is also perceived as value by the person with whom you’re trying to convince. I think that functioning on assumptions or presumptions can be a little bit dangerous. That’s the flip side of that coin. But that’s it. he best answer is get sponsors and believers to come along with you, early on by identifying wins, by demonstrating the change, by demonstrating the value of using these alternative sets of skills that are out there and available.

LEGAL FOUNDER SEGMENT: NEHAL MADHANI OF ALT LEGAL

Chad Main: We’re going to step away from our chat with Lucy for just a few minutes. It’s now time for the segment where we sit down and talk with a legal founder. Today we’re talking to Nehal Madhani, the founder of Alt Legal. If you work in a legal practice that does anything with intellectual property, like with trademarks or patents, Alt Legal just may be an app you want to check out.

Nehal, thanks for being with us today. Tell us a little bit about Alt Legal.

Nehal Madhani: Sure. Alt Legal is cloud-based IP docketing software. For those who aren’t IP lawyers, what we do is we help law firms and in-house legal departments create new IP filings by getting all their information needed for them, automatically create them on government filing websites, and then the worst and most tedious part for any IP lawyer is tracking these deadlines. Our software will automatically connect to government databases, identify their filings and then calculate their filing deadlines for them, so they don’t have to do things manually anymore.

Chad Main: It connects directly to the attorney’s calendars, is that right?

Nehal Madhani: That’s right. It will take all that information, once we calculate these deadlines, we’ll send them alerts automatically by email. We’ll tell them about any changes that happened to their IP filings, and then we’ll take all that information and plug it into their calendars as well. For a lot of IP professionals, whether your in-house or at a law firm, it essentially provides some of the functionality that would traditionally be done by a docketing clerk or IP paralegal. For the docketing clerks and IP paralegals, they don’t have to do input data manually and worry about mistyping a four, when it was supposed to be a three, anything like that. It’s something that’s made possible with data, electronic filings and then smart algorithms.

Chad Main: I know in a prior life you were actually a practicing attorney, but before we started today we were talking a little bit. Come to find out, the inspiration for Alt Legal was not from your practice of law but something else. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Nehal Madhani: Yeah, absolutely. I started my legal career at Kirkland & Ellis in the New York City office, and having graduated law school in 2009, there weren’t too many other opportunities available, so I started in the restructuring group at Kirkland. I did Chapter 11 reorgs, and in 2009 there was plenty of it to go around. Did that for about five years. I last started building one tech business which was at the time a marketplace connecting lawyers and businesses together so that they could find each other and work together with less friction in that transition.

Along the way I ended up doing my own IP work, and I found that whole process to be so cumbersome, so manual, so rife with errors, that I shutdown the legal marketplace, recruited the IP paralegal to join me, and the two of us started building IP docketing software. It wasn’t something I’d traditionally known about, but once I saw how things were being done it just seemed ripe for automation, and ripe for using data.

Chad Main: I think I saw something too that you actually taught yourself to code. Is the right?

Nehal Madhani: I did. Back in 2013, [the movie] The Social Network had just come out. Everyone with any kind of business mindset thought all they needed was a technical guy or gal and they could just build the next Facebook or any billion dollar business. I wasn’t able to really recruit anyone, so more out of necessity I just said, if I’m going to be building a tech business I have to know the fundamentals. I have to be able to do this myself, so read a lot of online tutorials, and just started building, and probably hit my head on the desk quite a few times. Eventually it all came together.

Chad Main: Kudos to you. That’s great. Tell us, who is Alt Legal for? It looks like it’s for pretty much any IP attorney out there. Is that right?

Nehal Madhani: That’s right. Our customers today range from solos to AmLaw firms from privately held companies to some of the largest publicly traded corporations in the country. We’ve been able to serve all ends of the market, but for us, a lot of our outreach, a lot of our focus is on small organizations just because it’s an easier sales process. But really, any IP attorney that is managing a good number of trademarks would really benefit from our software, make sure that they don’t miss any deadlines, subject themselves to malpractice, or worse, lose the trademark.

Chad Main: Last but not least, tell everybody where they can learn more about Alt Legal.

Nehal Madhani: You can find us at www.AltLegal.com. You can engage with our team right there through our live chat. You can also find us on Twitter @AltLegalHQ, and reach me at Nahal@altlegal.com.

INNOLEGAL SERVICES

Chad Main: Okay. Let’s get back to our conversation with Lucy Basilli.

As noted at the beginning of the podcast, Lucy recently left her position in the legal department of Microsoft and launched InnoLegal Services. To use modern parlance, she pivoted from one position in legal ecosystem to another, from in-house lawyer or consumer legal services to an advisor to legal departments and lawyers in how they should deliver and consume legal services.

Lucy Basilli: It’s a law firm and consultancy. Interestingly enough, the reaction is quite different depending on who I say that to. On the one hand attorneys are immediately perplexed. Well, which one is it? I say, both. Well, how? Very simple. Under the umbrella of a law firm I could provide all the consulting services I want, but the reverse is absolutely not true, number one. Number two, perception. In dealing with attorneys it’s very important that they understand that I am not a recovering lawyer who’s moved from the practice of law into legal operations. Because the minute in an attorney’s mind that shift has happened, I am now outside of the box. I’m in a different bucket. That goes back to my original concept of this whole lawyer, non lawyer. It’s interesting and that is a 100% proven reaction that attorneys go through.

Lucy Basilli: As I was thinking about the work I want to do, which is definitely consulting with law firms and legal departments on how they either deliver or receive legal services, there is an aspect of it where I want to provide what is a traditional kind of legal advisory role, legal advice, especially when it comes to risk. So much of change in the legal ecosystem has to do with attorneys accepting risk, understanding risk, taking risks, being comfortable with risks, and that is a very bright line for most attorneys of whom they’ll entrust to provide them guidance on that. By continuing to be a practicing attorney with a law firm, I can provide legal advice to the extent it enables a better consultancy experience for the client I’m dealing with.

Chad Main: I had to ask Lucy, what was her motivation for leaving the security of a very coveted position in the legal department of one of the world’s largest tech companies for the great unknown of entrepreneurship? She had a great answer. It’s because she’s a unicorn lawyer.

Lucy Basilli: At a metaphysical level it was wow, I’ve been doing this thing for a long time. I’m super comfortable. I love what I do. I love my company. But, is there another calling for me? It was very kind of go through this thing in your career stage in life, on the one hand. On the other hand I was seeing a need in the industry for people like me. I’m going to say it. These freakish lawyers, where I’m going to loving refer to us as unicorns. We’re these mystical lawyer creatures who love the practice of law, love being an attorney, but really appreciate and enjoy the operational aspects. Again, the how of being an attorney. If I’m tasked with handling hundreds or thousands of contracts, as a lawyer, negotiating them, having a team of people who negotiate those, why wouldn’t I want to do it in a more creative, efficient way, where I optimize on process and I use technology, and I think about systems? I think for me that combination of both is what I enjoyed the most in my job. At some point it felt like others needed that same help.

LawGeex

Chad Main: After leaving Microsoft, Lucy actually only spends part of her time on InnoLegal Services. Another reason she left Microsoft is because she wanted to get involved in the excitement and challenges of working for a startup. When she’s not consulting others on legal ops, she serves as Chief Legal Strategist for LawGeex, a legal tech company that helps out with contract review automation.

Lucy Basilli: As part of my metaphysical, or philosophical search for the next career move, I really had those desires to work in the startup environment. I felt like that was an energy that I was missing and really needed to experience in my career, at some point. So, enter LawGeex that was just right up my alley, using the latest artificial intelligence and automating contract review, which is my day job, reviewing contracts and managing a team of humans that did that. It just seemed, what an amazing, logical connection for me. Then, in talking with them, we realized that was the right combination of time and skills was for me to help them at this more higher level, strategic role where I can help influence their marketing strategy, their sales strategy, their product roadmap, help engage with customers. Help really consult with customers too because as we’re noticing, and as you know, I’m sure all the unicorn lawyers know, gotta understand your people and your processes before you start getting into technology. I liked being able to play that role as well, and help provide some best practice and tips to their customer.

YOUNG LAWYERS MUST DRIVE CHANGE

Chad Main: As I was preparing for my interview with Lucy I read a bunch of articles she wrote and listened to a couple of other podcasts she did. In one of those podcasts, she discussed her belief that if legal is really going to change, it’s incumbent on younger lawyers to help drive this change. I wanted to ask her about it.

Lucy Basilli: The change that is happening in the legal industry, has got to come from the up and coming future leaders of legal. There are a lot of current leaders who understand that something’s brewing around them, but they’re also quite comfortable. They’re comfortable financially. We see their reports, right? We see the Am Law reports. The incentive to change is certainly not a financial incentive. The only incentive to change right now is really coming from the clients, and to the extent the clients are demanding change. For anybody who’s looking at the future coming their way, the associates, the junior partners are the ones who are going to be carrying this, their firm, their organizations. The demand of change from their clients plus with just the evolution of the legal services market, because of all these other players that I mentioned before, the law firm is going to have to look different.

Lucy Basilli: I am looking to these associates who are also graduating at a time they’re used to instant access to information. They’re used to different work-life balance. They have different career goals than becoming the next big partner in the big corner office. They’re used to of course, technology. It’s in every part of their lives. They get to a law firm, and it just feels like a step back in time still. I really do feel like it’s going to be the future leaders, let’s call them, because I don’t like calling it generational. But it’s really the future leaders of the firms that I think need to show that initiative. It’s hard, but they need to share their ideas. They have them. I just hope they’re not shying away from sharing them.

Chad Main: I don’t want to sound too cynical, but they will receive pushback from other lawyers, other partners, other lawyers at the firm. You and I both practiced in law firms. What is your advice to an associate that has an idea. Hey, let’s improve our process to handle discovery, or handle this transactional matter? What is your advice to them to try to change people’s minds?

Lucy Basilli: My advice is simple. It’s find the partner who’s going to listen. Find the one that when you mention this, don’t roll their eyes, don’t blow you off, don’t ignore you. They’re out there. I promise that at every firm there is somebody like that, and maybe a group of people like that, so you have to find them. Don’t waste your breath trying to convince somebody who isn’t interested. You can tell pretty quickly. They’re out there. You just have to do a little bit of homework and it may not be in your own practice group. It may not be the people you engage with on a daily basis, but once you find somebody like that, turn them into a champion, and pitch something. Pitch an idea. Even better so, and this is a harder one for associates to do, but to the extent they have really good direct client engagement and client contact, talk about it with a client.

SUFFOLK LAW SCHOOL LEGAL TECH CERTIFICATE PROGRAM

Chad Main: If you haven’t figured out by now, Lucy has vast knowledge and experience with legal service delivery, and is more than willing to share it with others. In fact, I’ve got good news for you if you want her to share it with you directly. She’s an instructor at the Institute on Legal Innovation and Technology at Suffolk University Law School. A couple episodes ago I talked to the head of that program at Suffolk, Gabriel Teninbaum, about all the cool stuff they’re doing there. If you want to learn more about this school and the program, I highly recommend you give that interview a listen. Anyways, let’s hear from Lucy about what she’ll be teaching there.

Lucy Basilli: I’m teaching an overview of legal operations. What that means is really dissecting it into … It’s 10 modules and each module addresses one of the key capabilities, or functions that really are all under the umbrella of legal ops. Legal ops is such a big topic and it gets confused where yes, it’s a profession or a career, but really it’s just such a combination of so many different pieces. At every company it looks different, because it depends on what they’re interested in. For example, one module is on spend management. Another module will be on project management. It’s a high level overview of each one. It’s intended really for people who aren’t in legal ops, but hopefully for some of the curious lawyers out there who are wondering, what is all this about, because they’re hearing about it, I’m sure in the legal news.

Chad Main: Well, it sounds like it would be well worth taking the class. Lucy, appreciate your time. If people want to get a hold of you, how do they do so?

Lucy Basilli: The easiest thing is probably to look me up on LinkedIn, or shoot me an email, Lucy.Basilli@Innolegalservices.com, or LinkedIn is always great as well.

Chad Main: Well, that’s a wrap. We hope you liked it. If you want to subscribe, you can check us out on pretty much any major podcasting platform such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, etcetera, etcetera. If you like us enough, maybe even give us a five star rating. If you want to get ahold of me, you can shoot me an email at cmain@Percipient.co. That’s cmain@Percipient.co. Thanks again for listening. We hope you tune in next time. This has been another episode of Technically Legal.