A Race to the Bottom Welcome to an Expert series podcast featuring our former colleague and head of our eDiscovery and document review business, John Reikes. John is now the CEO of High Impact, a studio which specializes in litigation-related graphics. On this podcast, John talks with eDiscovery leader Jeff Fehrman, Vice President at Reveal Brainspace. Jeff and John discuss eDiscovery pricing, flipping the funnel on document review and partnership. [00:53] John sets the stage for our conversation, noting a misalignment between how we pay for discovery services and how people value what they've received. [02:37] If we measure value in risk and people time, why price it by the gigabyte? [04:31] The number of hours an attorney spends on a matter does not align with the value they've brought to it. [06:29] Hosting gigabytes are not relevant to either party, so why are we using them? [08:13] Any additional ancillary value, whether artificial intelligence or applying translation, should be wrapped into one common price. [11:37] Charge per doc, that's plain and simple. [16:08] Can we expect success moving to a similar model on the data side of eDiscovery? [19:10] To charge or not to charge for hosting – it comes down to value. [23:20] AI drives automation and efficiency and can flip the pyramid – you get the documents you need and set aside the others. [27:02] Advice to buyers and sellers? Commit to a partnership.

Hours and Hours of Boredom Filled With Sheer Seconds of Terror Welcome to a special edition of the Elevate.Together.Podcast. Inside the Engine Room, where we highlight the stories and people who help bring you Elevate's award-winning products and services. Our host for this series is Dr. Daniel Katz, Vice President of Data Science and Innovation at Elevate. His guest today is our Elevate colleague, Julian Cagadas. [00:50] Let's meet Julian… [02:12] Someone has to answer the red phone but rest assured it takes more than one person to 'push the button'. [04:45] A job at Accenture and law degree start to shape a different future for Julian. [08:51] Law with a focus on innovation, technology, and business [10:30] By aligning budgets, people, and technology, we apply process to the field of law. [11:49] Using AI and NLP, Natural Language Processing, to extract clauses and relevant data fields from legal documents [13:05] It's an exciting time to be in this area of the business of law. ENJOY!

A Legal Team Took on the Might of the Post Office This Impact series podcast episode features Elevate's Vice President of Get Shit Done, Stephen Allen, talking with James Hartley, the National Head of Litigation and Disputes Advisory at Freeths. Stephen and James review HUGE complex litigation that resulted in success for the Freeths team - on behalf of a significant group of claimants. Elevate gets a mention for the AI, data analysis, and document management assistance we provided to accelerate the review of the vast amount of case evidence. [00:00] Let's jump in. Stephen introduces James and the case at the centre of this podcast. [01:30] Landing the case. Perhaps 'the case' of the century. [03:04] A significant investment of time - and the benefit of technology. [05:02] AI in the context of data analysis and document management, which was essential. [08:34] Freeths began to re-think how it does litigation. [12:00] Creating a more sophisticated approach to analyze litigation risk. [15:34] Clients don't want to pay for the process. They pay for expertise. Enjoy!

Technology, Process, Content and People Stephen Allen, Vice President of Get Shit Done at Elevate, had the pleasure of hosting a talk with Dr. Roger Strathausen and Elevate’s Rob Couch. Dr. Roger Strathausen is a business consultant and acting Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Liquid Legal Institute, a non-profit association committed to promoting digitalisation in the legal industry. Rob Couch is a managing director of Consulting, focused on the contracting and CLM practice at Elevate. Roger and Rob have put together a white paper Elevate is publishing around contract life cycle management trends, why contract, how to contract, and who owns the contract - a wide-ranging series of thought leadership. [01:15] The tenet of our white paper surrounds three points: the evolution of contracting today, technology matters, and AI is the future. [04:40] There is an evolution of technology occurring within the contracting space. AI is completely changing the rules related to contracting. [07:30] Contracting started as a handshake and then transitioned to the lawyers for good reasons - contracting and transactions became more complicated. [09:44] Technology, templates, and a library of allowed deviations. [11:01] Today CLM tools have AI is part of the original design, built into the technology use case. [15:16] Balancing the technical possibility of what can be done with a compelling use case. [18:04] Smart Contracts have evolved because of AI. [19:19] What should businesspeople who contract, and lawyers who support them, be doing now? Enjoy!

Constantly Loop and Improve Tracey Yurko is the Chief Legal Officer for Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater is a global macro hedge front located in Westport, Connecticut, with 150 billion dollars of assets under management. [01:14] Tracey's role, leading the hedge fund legal department. [04:18] Her role has evolved over the last year. [06:57] ‘There's a whole bunch of work that needs to get done, we can't ignore it for loftier explorations.’ [07:35] Place value on innovation. Constantly loop and improve. [10:00] Successful personas that have a curiosity mindset, connect with the business and operate digitally. [12:00] We can configure everything like a machine. If you have a good machine, you'll have consistent outcomes. [13:52] Lawyers getting to their highest and best use through technology. [16:24] Do you want a bunch of different hammers or a toolbox with different tools? [18:30] When it comes to diversity, demand more from your law firms. [20:06] Don't be afraid to ask for mentorship and to seek mentors out. [22:24] Leadership in tough times requires …

Innovation is a sum of steps and tweaks. Part of our Next Normal leadership series, this episode features Elevate's Chairman and CEO, Liam Brown, talking with Reena SenGupta, CEO and creator of FT Innovative Lawyers. Reena and Liam talk about leadership, innovation, and becoming digital. Reena leads RSG consulting, the FT Innovative Lawyers Programme, and is a special membership advisor to the Digital Legal Exchange. [01:24] In 2004, innovation and lawyers did not ever go together. [03:46] Moving a market. [05:24] It's okay to try new things, to talk about new things. [07:23] An invention, innovation, and improvement are they different? [10:46] A knowledge business is democratic and requires phenomenal leadership. [12:50] CEOs are asking their business functions, including legal, to operate digitally and innovate at the speed of the rest of the business. [15:46] Only two out of 10 legal departments are digitally enabled enough to support their companies. [17:08] Until that data can flow back and forth between other functions and other digital workflows, these pools of data lose their value. [21:53] It's important to know when something isn't working anymore – and when to get out.

The Accelerating Use of Analytics. Welcome to another edition of Inside the Engine Room with Dan Katz, Vice President of Data Science and Innovation at Elevate. The Inside, the Engine Room series, focuses on the stories and people who bring Elevate's award-winning products and services to our customers. For this episode, Dan is joined by Warren Agin, the Managing Director of Products here at Elevate. [00:46] A one-minute description of Warren’s SME and data scientist role at Elevate. [02:08] Warren’s journey from 28 years as a practising Bankruptcy trustee to a career in data science. [04:27] Good advice, two meals, and a published paper pave the way for a career change. [06:57] Realising the practice of law can be different with numbers, math, analytics, and quantitative analysis. [10:35] Practicing law at scale. Start with the desired outcome, the information available at the start of the case, and in half the cases, we can predict whether the case would be successful or not with a high degree of certainty. [12:32] Working on the Elevate ELM. [14:23] ‘We're at this cusp where things will start accelerating in terms of practising law at scale using analytics.’ [15:36] Senior partners, people who have 30 years of law practice and senior positions, are fueling this movement; we're also seeing the continued growth of programs in the law schools turning out phenomenal lawyers with technical skills. [18:20] The bottleneck is the real-life deployment of these technologies. It takes time to get the engineering part down and move it into production.

Do the Right Thing. This podcast episode is part of our Expert series featuring Elevate's, Steven Allen, Vice President of Get Shi*t Done, talking with Susan Bright, Global Managing Partner for Diversity and Inclusion and Responsible Business at Hogan Lovells. Susan and Steven discuss innovation, creating change, ESG, and Diversity and Inclusion. [01:05] Susan has a passion for diversity and inclusion. [02:53] Project Redefine became about engagement. [04:48] When your business is performing well, it's hard to engage people to think differently to innovate. [07:00] Harnessing incremental change and small innovations to create BIG change. [09:27] Allocate work well, and you achieve many different things. [12:52] Diversity, inclusion, sustainability, well-being. Focus, motivate and encourage others to get involved. [15:57] Every boardroom is interested in ESG. You need to have a purpose and drive change. [19:19] Be brave and be resilient, you're pushing boundaries - you have to keep going.

Celebrating A New Decade. In celebration of our tenth anniversary, Elevate brought 9 of our co-founders together for a conversation. This 15 min podcast episode includes highlights from that discussion. [00:27] Listen in as Kunoor Chopra reflects on early discussions to join Elevate and the essential and immediate support of those first customers [02:09] Pratik Patel, VP of Innovation, comments on an immediately shared vision, a humble beginning, and our mission to move the industry forward [03:56] Tariq Hassan, VP of Procurement Services, reflects on a customer’s reaction to Elevate entering the market - and the impact Elevate has had on the lives of many [05:08] Vijoyata Lama, Project Lead, talks about her decision to join Elevate and our willingness as an organization to address complex topics and build a culture of acceptance [07:08] Mark Redmayne, VP of Business Development, talks about outcome predictability and jointly improving the businesses of our customers, never losing focus on our values [08:45] Elevate’s President, John Croft, talks about structuring the business for the future, having unquestionable faith Elevate would grow into that structure and the impact of Elevate on creating the law company market [10:31] Joyce Thorne, VP, Head of People, reflects on establishing an organization focused on its people [11:28] Lokendra Tomar, Chief of Staff and Chief Corporate Development Manager, talks about growing faster than we thought we would grow [11:59] Liam Brown, Chairman, and CEO talks about the speed of growth, reflects on the state of the market in 2011, how the market has and is responding, and the opportunity ahead

Just do it. In this episode, industry colleague and former Elevate leader Jon Kenton interviews KWM's Michelle Mahoney and Elevate's Pratik Patel. Jon, Michelle, and Pratik discuss structured innovation and executing an experimentation phase to work through steps, including transition to BAU.[00:48] Our guests start by agreeing on what innovation is… [03:01] Applying rigor and structure. A new, more scientific, evidence-based approach. [06:01] Eight steps broken into four and four. The first four, democratise the process. Then we ideate. [09:29] We experiment to see what does it look like? What are we learning? And it allows us to firm up a process. [11:40] It's not an easy job to identify the true problem or the job to be done - the job we're trying to achieve. [14:04] It's called the innovator's dilemma. It's a thing. [16:47] Is our learning objective met? What needs to be true? And we'll have a series of statements that need to be validated, and we validate it. It's very evidence-based. [20:09] Validation is important, and there's a resource scarcity issue in that there are always more ideas than a resource to solve. [22:05] A database we use every day "What have we looked at previously? What tech have we reviewed? It helps change the conversation. [24:38] The trouble with legal is that on any given day, legal activities go from being wildly administrative to wildly complex and require extraordinary judgment [28:38] As people begin to innovate, they get to the different maturities they need to get to, but they will never get there unless they decide to innovate.