The Geek in Review Ep. 150 – Live From New York… It’s LegalWeek!

Marlene Gebauer  0:07

Welcome to The Geek in Review. Podcast designed. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlon gave our tweeting live from legal week.

Greg Lambert  0:20

And I’m Greg Lambert, I’m here or you’re not tweeting or I’m not tweeting,

Marlene Gebauer  0:24

right, I’m casting, we’re

Greg Lambert  0:25

casting, we are casting. So Marlene, and I got to come out to New York. And I think it’s I know it was my first flight. And over two years, in fact, I think it was two years and one day between my flights

Marlene Gebauer  0:37

this this this was right before everything shut down. Yep. Yes, time.

Greg Lambert  0:41

So we’re going to test this out and see how well we do. And we’re just going to kind of talk about our experiences here at legal week. 22. And hopefully people will listen. And if not, we’re going to, we’re going to record this and put it out on the podcast, probably. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Yeah. So what we want to do is we’re going to try and hopefully some people will drop by, but otherwise, we’re just going to share our experiences.

Marlene Gebauer  1:06

We have tweeted out and we put it out on LinkedIn. So if you’re hearing this or if you see that we’re in the Gibson room on the second floor,

Greg Lambert  1:14

at the Hilton, yeah, and that’s in that kind of back hallway.

Marlene Gebauer  1:17

Yeah. So we have the door open. And you’ll you’ll see us all with headsets and, and microphones.

Greg Lambert  1:23

Yeah. So what we want to do first is we grab someone off the street here who also is attending in fact, you’re speaking tomorrow can moderating tomorrow, moderating, tomorrow. Introduce yourself and then in we’ll talk about your all of our experiences as we’ve been here this week.

Ignatius Grande  1:41

Sure. So my name is Ignatius Grande.

Greg Lambert  1:44

I live here. Amazing name. Hello. Yes.

Ignatius Grande  1:48

So as I didn’t have to Florida to come to come to legal week, but But I work. I’m a consultant with Berkeley research group. And I am also the Chair elect for the New York State bar’s commercial and federal litigation section. So I get involved with the discovery information governance, and it’s great to be on your podcast I’ve listened to several times. Thank

Marlene Gebauer  2:09

you so much for being a willing victim. Yeah.

Greg Lambert  2:13

Not everybody is willing to so um, have you been since a pandemic? How’s your conference life been? Yeah, that

Ignatius Grande  2:21

non existent? Yeah, a couple of, you know, definitely some virtual conferences, I’ve run some virtual CLAS and webinars and meeting thing. But, uh, but yeah, this is, it’s great. It’s great to be back in person. You know, I was having a conversation with someone that really, I do feel like this is the first least for me, this is the first conference I’ve been back at where it felt like things were back to normal are getting pretty close.

Greg Lambert  2:48

Yeah, I’ve been the story I’ve been using as I’m, I’m really an extrovert. And even I think I need to go home after this and kind of just not be around anybody for a little bit. Because it’s, you know, two years being around and all of a sudden, you’re like, What 15, you’re in the thick of it, like 1000 people are, are suddenly there. And in fact, I was I was walking to the vendor Hall today. And there was one group and or one of the vendors had a lot of people that were there. And I could just feel it closing in on me. As I can’t walk through that, let’s let’s go this way.

Marlene Gebauer  3:25

So, you know, I got asked yesterday, you know, what’s what’s, you know, something you’re happy about? Or what did you miss about, you know, being in person. And, you know, I said the thing, one thing that I’m like, very happy about his, his sort of these serendipitous meetings, like, like we actually had, you know, we were setting up and you’re like, Hey, what are you doing? And, and, you know, those types of things. You know, that is priceless, because, you know, I just I feel like there’s a lot of connections and things that happen that way that you just don’t, or, you know, you won’t get on a zoom call,

Ignatius Grande  3:56

right? No, I think, you know, I think our world has changed. I mean, Zoom is not going away. Now, you’re gonna have more virtual events, but you know, the live conferences that you’re in, there’s nothing to replace the in person interaction and grade. And I do feel like it’s a yes, it’s something we’re not used to having these big, big crowds or being in a but but, but you know, it’s starting to feel normal again, you know, we’ll hopefully I’ll stay that way. That’s

Marlene Gebauer  4:25

like the dress code is seem to have Yeah, relaxed a little bit. Well, I should you should turn that

Greg Lambert  4:30

I know. Yeah. Let me let me see that show you my library card. Cardio man is going on there. So

Marlene Gebauer  4:37

I got my sneakers.

Greg Lambert  4:39

Sneakers, alright. So so so far, I know. I know. You’re presenting tomorrow. What’s What’s the topic?

Ignatius Grande  4:48

So it’s data ethics, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All right. So ethics, I gotta tell you, how do you spell that?

Greg Lambert  4:57

So you’re moderating the panel who’s on Come in. Tell us who’s on the panel with you. Sure.

Ignatius Grande  5:02

Kevin flew my from Oracle. Adore Wang from Reed Smith. And Alexandria Ross, who’s from clean desk. Okay. She’s an in house counsel

Marlene Gebauer  5:14

very star studded. Yeah. Yeah.

Ignatius Grande  5:16

No, it should be an ending good conversation. And yeah, and I think they’ve done a nice job with the the panel topics and, you know, it’s it’s definitely it’s a smaller than usual, but I mean, it’s, I think they’re

Greg Lambert  5:29

easily manageable. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer  5:30

I also liked it that like a lot of the sessions have CLE credit, which I don’t remember that happening before. Maybe it did, but I think I think it did it. Yeah. It was a lot of them. I couldn’t. I think it’s more we could be making it up. There still

Ignatius Grande  5:45

are a lot of tracks. But I mean, I do feel like it got to be so much. Yeah. 2020 29 Oh, what are we doing?

Greg Lambert  5:54

Keep talking? We’re still just gonna take pictures you have we have

Marlene Gebauer  5:57

like the Arma. We had double A double L we had ilta. I’m not sure who else sort of sponsor, but I mean, ediscovery. You have data analytics, you have data governance. So I mean, all sort of related topics, not nothing too far flung. And what I also noticed, it seems like certain days, were first more focused on certain topics. Maybe because I know a lot of people kind of came in for a day. They didn’t come in for the whole thing. But they came in for a day. And so they they scheduled their time for, you know, sessions that were going to be most relevant to them,

Ignatius Grande  6:39

right? No, yeah, I think then, the fact they had to move the conference, usually, that’s

Marlene Gebauer  6:44

I’m still trying to figure out how they did it, they must have had some sort of backup thing going on with the Hilton, because I’m like, you can’t just say, Okay, we’re going to move it a month. I mean, that just wants you to book something out that far, you know, something this big. They must have had some contingent contingency plan in place.

Ignatius Grande  7:01

You know, so I do think I told one of the organizers that they they lucked out, because if you’d had this event two or three weeks ago, even nobody would not. Yeah, I mean, people would have come but not it wouldn’t have been that people would not be comfortable

Marlene Gebauer  7:15

at all would have been masked, I know, I would not have been

Ignatius Grande  7:19

comfortable, at least in at least in New York, I mean, nationally, but especially in New York, over the last 10 days. Now, the schools aren’t required to be masked. And

Marlene Gebauer  7:29

it’s funny. Yeah. I checked into my hotel. And then the attendant was was saying, Well, do you have your COVID card? And then one of the other attendants was like, no, no, you don’t need to do that anymore. We just we waive that yesterday. Like, you have to ask people anymore, right? So it’s a good time. It’s a good time. It was a very good timing for the conference. So

Ignatius Grande  7:45

and to use it earlier. I did it. This was the last large conference I had attended. 2020. So you know, but But yeah, but I think you know, even back then I think we all thought things would be back to normal by the spring, you know, we were

Greg Lambert  8:01

always two weeks away.

Marlene Gebauer  8:04

We actually we actually podcasted about it. It’s just like, Yeah, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with this COVID thing. I mean, I went back and listened to it. I’m just like, This is funny. Yeah. And I say,

Greg Lambert  8:13

Yeah, cuz in February, we actually had the, the executive director from the from HLA, the legal Association, legal administrators, and had her on and said, hey, you know, if we should happen to have to, you know, work from home, what is it that we should be doing? And she laid out? And a lot of it, you know, just came true. And yeah, I mean, like, three weeks later, we were, we were all working from home.

Ignatius Grande  8:38

And that’s one of the areas where I think, you know, for some, it’s very surface may be certain law firms may eventually go fully back in person, but I really do think it’s changed for social corporations, but but even law firms, smaller mid sized law firms are have no option.

Marlene Gebauer  8:57

Flexible to think employees are just sort of realizing that look, you know, we can really work better if you if there’s more flexibility. So and I think, you know, you see people kind of moving jobs around jobs like that, and there are statistics that a lot of people are leaving in situations where there is no flexibility, and they’re moving to places that do have that. So I mean, I do think employers, including law firms, and other legal organizations have to, you know, take that into consideration if they’re thinking about what type of talent they want to retain. Right, right.

Ignatius Grande  9:30

And I’ve already seen it where it’s, you know, I think positions that would have been in an office previously may now be remote, or they have the option of being remote or partial.

Marlene Gebauer  9:40

We struggled with a lot of that in terms of folks that are hourly employees. And, you know, there was a time where it’s just like, now we can’t do that. There’s too many problems and then COVID came and suddenly it’s like, well, we can make this happen.

Greg Lambert  9:56

It’s amazing how necessity really, really quickly creates an incentive. Yeah, cuz mostly it was HR. And it’s one of the things, one of the first things I said was that you know, that those rules that you had, especially for hourly employees where they can do certain things, and, you know, they had to take PTO in order to go and like, that’s over, you can you know, that genie is out of the bottle on that, and you can’t put it back in. And so, on your panel tomorrow with ethics, kind of what’s the overall overall theme on it?

Ignatius Grande  10:30

You know, we’re looking at from an AI, data privacy perspective, and, you know, really just, you know, again, all the data that’s out there, especially customer data that’s being being collected and used by companies, you know, where are the points where ethics comes into play? And, obviously, we’ve seen a lot of, you know, those stories in the news, you know, whether it be Facebook or Google, what are you all these companies have, that’s, they just have so much data, you know, there are issues. So anyway, we’re gonna have a discussion, talk about kind of what companies can be doing. To deal with this, these issues deal with the ethical issues that come up, there was

Marlene Gebauer  11:11

a session, I don’t know if it was today, or yesterday, and I, I wasn’t able to attend, but it was talking about, like, you know, data, you can gather from things like, like Slack and teams, and sort of, you know, sort of what’s in there that you might not know about and how to sort of call that information. So I think it’s, it’s a common, there’s a theme about, you know, data and privacy and sort of what’s, you know, acceptable to disseminate what’s not, you know, at this at this conference, right.

Ignatius Grande  11:40

And I do think that, you know, the remote working it for us, we do a lot get involved with a lot of forensic collections. And, you know, just, it’s more and more remote collections. And, you know, I think teams, you know, two years ago, what’s changed was not as big.

Greg Lambert  11:59

A horrible, it was horrible. Yes, that’s horrible. Yeah. It’s better. No, it is better. It’s a lot better now. But yeah, we, but like we were using zoom to do the podcast. So we actually, I had a personal license to zoom. So it wasn’t I

Marlene Gebauer  12:16

remember Skype, Skype. Well,

Greg Lambert  12:19

let me introduce you to teams. Microsoft sometimes takes a really good product and, and, and changes it. We’ll just leave it at that. Yes, leave it as well. I appreciate you stopping by and talking with us and any other any other kind of craziness or something that stood out to you about coming back with so many people

Marlene Gebauer  12:46

nuggets of wisdom? Yeah.

Ignatius Grande  12:48

I think, you know, it was refreshing because that, you know, I think that, like you said, there been so many false starts over the last two years that, you know, to kind of be back feel like it’s back to normal see familiar faces. I mean, that, you know, that’s the other thing is I you know, that this industry is, you know, you get to know, people you get you get, you know, have friends and relationships. Sure. And you know, yeah, and we keep in touch now, you know, it’s because you’ll have those remote meetings and have a zoom call,

Marlene Gebauer  13:20

you kind of know, like, okay, you know, I’m going to go to legal week, and I’m going to see, you know, these people and so that’s that was really disrupted. So that is a nice thing. Yeah,

Ignatius Grande  13:28

yeah. No, it’s It’s good to be back. And I’m hoping the spring only only leads to more. Not only good weather, but but more in person interaction. That’s

Greg Lambert  13:38

right. All right. So thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. So Marlene, I have Sorry, I’m going to move this camera so you can so professional, we can show you. I don’t know if I can if I can. Can you even talk to me? I can’t tell. Yeah, please do.

Marlene Gebauer  14:00

Man. Say this is fun. So I think i Nice to meet you.

Greg Lambert  14:05

Did you. Okay, thanks. So did you present once or twice?

Marlene Gebauer  14:12

I presented once. Okay.

Greg Lambert  14:13

So you and I were on a panel today. And where we talked with Lex Martynas. Carl Harris, about data analytics and what’s going on there. And I think that was pretty well received.

Marlene Gebauer  14:29

We I think people were very engaged. I mean, you know, you’re, you’re speaking and you’re kind of looking out and assessing the audience. And, you know, got a lot of nods, got some smiles. Got some laughs. And we had questions, good questions. So yeah, I think everybody I think everybody got something out of it.

Greg Lambert  14:45

Yeah, I think so too. And in, in kind of a theme and you’re hearing it across a lot of sessions now are the API’s. Yeah. So that I think the industry is really excited to have those in some of the opportunities So, vendors, if you’re not looking at allowing API access to your, to your information so that the law firms and other clients or customers can, can use that and integrate it into their internal data, I think you’re going to be asked for it a lot more.

Marlene Gebauer  15:18

Well, I’m looking forward to the sessions where folks start talking about what they’re doing with the API’s. You know, that’s, that’s sort of what I’m looking forward to. Yeah, that’s sort of the next step. It’s like, Yep, we’re gonna do it. And then here, okay, this is what we do with it. Yeah.

Greg Lambert  15:34

And so I’m going to pull out my crystal ball now. And predict that, because of the, the more influx of API’s across multiple platforms, there’s going to be a new industry, that’s going to be set up, and whether it’s consultants, data scientist, some kind of process management, folks that are going to come in and show you what you can be doing with this data. In fact, probably even setting that up for you, or creating third party products that integrate those API’s as as they come in and make it a little easier for you to set up. So that’s more of a, you know, just plug in and use rather than having to go through your IT or or your, we come to the product development team. There.

Marlene Gebauer  16:29

And, you know, I also think I mean, this is this is probably a perfect opportunity for freelancers, just sort of in firms to sort of think about freelancers, because, you know, we were talking earlier after, after the program, and, you know, some references were made to like, oh, there’s always data scientists on the call, or, you know, this firm hired, like, you know, a bunch of data scientists, which, you know, kudos to that firm, but not every firm is going to do that. And so again, like that’s, that’s a perfect opportunity to sort of develop a trusted relationship with with a freelancer who does this type of work, and who can work on a project basis, because it’s really kind of about implementing a solution. But it’s not about necessarily having someone on staff full time about that.

Greg Lambert  17:14

Yeah, who we who was, I’m drawing a blank on the name we had mayor, Matt, Matt Coke, Matthew McLeod, talking about that, and then maybe talk with him again, at some point on where they see that because he’s big on freelancing and having having your side gig or being able to do that. So it does sound like it’s a perfect environment for somebody to step in, and start working on it. So maybe, I don’t know, maybe we need to go hang our shingle and be the next data scientist.

Marlene Gebauer  17:51

Say, I’ll get right to work on that degree. Yeah. In my free time,

Greg Lambert  17:55

I will do that. Actually, there was something that I did pitch to Jeff Pfeiffer at Lexus on the way out the door from our session knows that it’d be interesting to have someone like a Lexus, or west or, or Thomson Reuters, or another big vendor, create some type of training and certification in doing the data analytics specifically, with with the API stuff. So

Marlene Gebauer  18:22

you know, maybe around language, and it’s funny, just, you must have read my mind, because I was also having a conversation after the presentation about certification and sort of the rise of certs and how so many people are getting certifications. And I think firms are focusing more on people that have certifications, because it’s a no, no, it’s like if, you know, if it’s a trusted, you know, vendor, like, you know, Microsoft or whatever, or, you know, a trusted organization, you know, everybody knows what the requirements are. And so if you pass that, you know, you have people understand that you have certain skills, a concrete understanding of certain types of skills that you have. So, it’s different than a degree, and it’s different than experience. Not that those things are, you know, not necessary anymore. But, you know, if you’re looking for someone with that, that can do a very discreet type of thing. You know, certifications might be the way to go.

Greg Lambert  19:21

Yeah, yeah. I’m not really sure why that hasn’t taken off. I mean, we used to do certifications early in that,

Marlene Gebauer  19:31

I think, I mean, I think it’s a it’s a it’s, it’s more of a burden on you know, your, your HR, your professional development group, anybody who manages people to, you know, make sure that they get all you know, things if it’s required, you know, and keeping track of who has what, you know, so it’s an extra layer. Not that, you know, again, I think it’s probably worth it. But, you know, it’s just another extra layer and just, you know, if it’s not something that’s been done before and sort of work gets done, then sometimes it’s, you know, harder to make the argument that yeah, we should be doing

Greg Lambert  20:05

that. Yeah. And so the other session that that I did on Tuesday, so I actually ended up stepping in and replacing someone on Marlene session. But on Tuesday, there was the three tracks, one for w double L, one for L two and one for ARMA. So interesting set of tracks, and each one I think had three sessions. And so the double A double L. sessions were really interesting, because it had, so the job was first session with I think he had June, you’d have on him June. Yeah. And, and so you know, it. And I think it we’re talking more on the knowledge management front on that, and what knowledge management kind of means. In it laugh because it knowledge management is the ultimate, it depends in the legal industry, because it’s, it’s so hard to have a consistent management across the industry. So it

Marlene Gebauer  21:09

covers so many things. It’s so broad that it, you know, again, this sort of goes back to like, what’s everybody’s pain point, and you got to like, focus on, you know, from a, from my perspective, what’s important, and sort of work from there. And I know, you know, there’s people who kind of want to have that more standardized, and, and I get it, that would make things a lot easier, but I just I feel like, you know, organizations are not cookie cutter. And people aren’t cookie cutter. So there’s there’s got to be some degree of flexibility there.

Greg Lambert  21:42

Yeah. And I’m trying to recall what the second I’ve slept since the second one do you have for me?

Marlene Gebauer  21:51

Day one, let’s see. We had you were talking about knowledge management, legal, technology and art of efficiency. And then there was a communication breakdown, leveraging tools to make relationships stick.

Greg Lambert  22:06

It was um, what was the double a double? Oh, one standard? They’re

Marlene Gebauer  22:09

both double a double. Okay. And then the rise of document automation. Yeah, that was no contract. That was my

Greg Lambert  22:15

that was yours. Yeah, I made videos. I had videos. It was really interesting. I like that you had videos. I mean, that’s very different. Yeah. I wasn’t sure how that was gonna play. But I really wasn’t sure whether or not we were actually going to be here. Because, yeah, it was. So what I did, actually, we were supposed to the conference was supposed to be at the beginning of February. And that was right in the middle, the big Omicron. And so we weren’t sure if it was going to go virtual. So I reached out to Thomson Reuters for the practical law. I reached out to Oh, legal legalization, legalization. And then I reached out to oh, shoot, who was the drumroll? The first one? Hello, thank you for hearing here in a second. This is why we don’t do it live this way. I don’t normally have it have a

Marlene Gebauer  23:06

I shouldn’t jinx it. But I’m like, impressed that we’re at we’re actually like, we’re not like big gaps. And we’re gonna say,

Greg Lambert  23:14

yeah, so talking about document automation, it was it was really well received. I was surprised it wasn’t sure what the audience would be like, it was packed room was packed. The I mean, there were people sitting on the floor, they had to bring in extra chairs. So that’s, that was a little weird, you know, intimidating. And yeah, good. Yeah. But in between, in a good way. And so really interesting to see the feedback come come from folks about what document automation means. And not just necessarily, you know, a transaction or litigation type thing. But there were people in the audience and I kind of swung and missed at a softball question where she were, a woman asked me about some alternative ways that the leveraging Document Document automation. And she actually talked about, I think, like, on her in processing of new employees and things like that they have document automation tools that are set up to do that.

Marlene Gebauer  24:14

And so do all the document work of onboarding, Dan. So

Greg Lambert  24:17

yeah, I mean, it’s so obvious that you can do it. But yeah, I didn’t answer that question. Or he had to come up after the session. And tell me

Marlene Gebauer  24:26

about it. Because you don’t I mean, yes, it makes perfect sense. But you know, you also, like, I think a lot of places you have to sort of weigh it and and you’re looking at it, like in terms of okay, how is this going to impact the bottom line? Like, how is this where’s the ROI? Where’s it going to impact either attorney, Attorney efficiency or, you know, Attorney profitability, and those are always kind of the first things that we always think of when we bring in tools like this, you know, we don’t think of okay, how can we make the administrative side you know, more efficient. Yeah. But that’s, that’s the beauty of some of these parts. products, it’s like, you know, you should be looking at it holistically, because that way it’s like, okay, you have one product, you have to buy like five different products. Okay, this one deals with HR. And this one deals with Attorney contracts. You know, you just have one.

Greg Lambert  25:12

Yeah, make sense. Any sessions you attended that? Stick out for you?

Marlene Gebauer  25:17

Yes. And I’m gonna look at my list. I’m gonna forget the names. Um, let’s see, where is it? Am I on the wrong side? I’m on the wrong side. Wait a minute. Doing with less optimizing your legal tech toolkit. I saw that this morning.

Greg Lambert  25:34

So sounds like the story of my life?

Marlene Gebauer  25:38

Well, you know, I went to this because I think, you know, I’m gonna have to, I wanted to hear what this panel had to say about this topic, because I think this is going to be something that I’m personally going to have to focus on. And they had some some great experiences that they shared and very, like a lot of, you know, they they definitely they included, you know, the the decision makers, they included the attorneys getting their feedback, but what I really loved is like, there’s there’s a real process that they shared, you know, that they’re really, then they have buy in for this, what they have buy in for this where they’re they’re kind of going through this, this process to understand every individual’s work process. And, and capturing that, so that in the future, they can kind of have those conversations. And to me, that’s, that’s gold, because I think everybody you talked to I mean, the challenge is, knowing what that particular individual’s practice needs. Because you know, you can’t just look at it more generically like an okay corporate attorney, or an m&a attorney. Like even within the m&a field, for example, you’re going to have the nuances depending on what they do. And they are capturing that. And once you have that, then those conversations I think flow a whole lot more easily. Yeah, so that was pretty cool.

Greg Lambert  27:05

Yeah. Any other one? Yes. You want me to do one more year? All right. So today, I sat in on one with our friend Toby Brown, and Kevin Cole. Angelo. Nancy, something to say that this is one of the names there.

Marlene Gebauer  27:25

The 131. No, this was the three

Greg Lambert  27:27

o’clock notice. Now there’s someone. Yeah, the 11.

Marlene Gebauer  27:31

Oh, the new wave of client service collaboration and key roles.

Greg Lambert  27:35

Yeah. And so the, the, the overall theme of that one was that just there’s ways that the legal ops team, the the allied professionals can be working with both internally with the attorneys in the teams that are working with their clients, and then also with the clients themselves. And, you know, kind of the big theme, and this is a theme for practically anything in life. And that is, don’t just don’t just do something, listen, and talk him have a conversation. Be be willing to get out there and meet with the clients and not just the not just the in house counsel would go meet with the procurement team, go meet with other powers that be within that organization and find out what those true pain points are. Sometimes it’s sometimes there’s a tech answer. Sometimes it’s just a process answer. And sometimes it’s just finding out there’s there’s things you know, you need to just tweak or you need to stop doing. And so if but if you don’t have those conversations, you’re just guessing. And very, very good. Kevin’s doing cool. Angelo’s doing some really interesting stuff with his company got acquired by the Law School. ls AC? Yeah, I’m sure I’m sorry, Kevin, I should I should know, other acronyms. We’ll put it we’ll put it in the show notes. But but they’re doing a lot with with training and and almost kind of like what is similar to what hotshots doing? Yeah, some of the short of doing it short videos and doing it for students. And in so it sounds sounds really interesting. And they’ve also combined with another company that kind of does the the metrics and data of how much it really costs to go to certain schools and what and what the chances of return on investment return and you know, what your chances of getting hired out of school, all that. I think something that a lot of us would have loved to have had before we went to law school.

Marlene Gebauer  29:48

I would have liked to have that before I went to law school. Sure. Yeah, sure. I’m looking I’m looking at Friday’s so we talked about data ethics. Yeah, it’s funny both like both sessions. Oh fest both sessions deal with ethics. That’s interesting. Let’s see. This isn’t the influential lawyer how legal leaders are driving ESG change? Yes. Geez might be interesting, hot topic. actionable DNI metrics that matter. This is tough. Like, you know, you want to go to both of those and they’re both at the same and they’re no, they’re not both at the same time. I sort of take that back there one after the other. Accelerating the funding for diverse legal technology startups. Data driven play booking. That could be interesting.

Greg Lambert  30:39

Yeah. Yeah, there’s so we still got another day. Yeah. So let’s let’s change gears here a little bit and talk about some fun stuff that we did this week. All right, so we we started off with a bang. We saw the Batman he said see the Batman and it’s long

Marlene Gebauer  30:55

it’s that’s all I have to say about it was long.

Greg Lambert  31:00

I’m still processing it. I thought Robert Robert Pattinson was was pretty good. So he Kravitz was was good. Kellen call him first.

Marlene Gebauer  31:11

Okay, we agree on that one. Yeah,

Greg Lambert  31:12

we agree on that one is unrecognized. There’s some there’s some car chase scenes in there that are very

Marlene Gebauer  31:17

good. I’m not a car chase person. But yeah, excellent car chase scenes.

Greg Lambert  31:22

Yeah, but I can tell you it was long. It was so

Marlene Gebauer  31:25

and and don’t. Don’t Yeah. Wait for the end credit. Yeah,

Greg Lambert  31:30

don’t do go. Do not wait for the it is not worth it. Such a letdown. The other thing we did was we in New York, when you’re in New York, you visit with friends. Right? Right? You do. And so just happen that there’s two nights we went out to Brooklyn. I know. Hang out with friends and eat. Lots of food. Lots of food. So one of my favorite things. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys know who you are. And thank you very much for your hospitality and having us having us out and enjoying some delicious, delicious,

Marlene Gebauer  32:02

delicious. Yeah. And great company. Great

Greg Lambert  32:04

company. A couple a couple of drinks, I think. Couple couple. So. All right. Well, anything else we want to cover? While we’re on?

Marlene Gebauer  32:13

I don’t know. I’m, I’m trying to think I think we’ve did a pretty good job here.

Greg Lambert  32:19

We do a good job. So overall, what was your comfort level?

Marlene Gebauer  32:24

I would say overall, I mean, if you’re gonna do a scale of one to 10, I would say I felt like an eight. I mean, I still like there’s I’m still masking up when when there’s sort of big like, right now I’m obviously not because it’s not going to work. But like if I’m in, in the crowd, I am in a crowd, like some of the sessions if they’re not really, you know, well, you know, super attended, then I sometimes won’t wear it. But if I’m sort of walking the halls, or I’m in the exhibit hall, I still wear the mask. And it’s not so much that like, Oh, I’m afraid I’m gonna get COVID. But it’s just it’s just kind of like I don’t, I don’t get sick. Right. I do that. So

Greg Lambert  32:57

that’s great. Yeah, in fact, I’ve talked to a couple of people that said, you know, that, even in normal times, they they leave this conference sick. So Right. Yeah. So it may make sense. They did require you to show your ID and vaccination card very strict about COVID. Yeah, the lady requirement lady at the door was she was she has this

Marlene Gebauer  33:18

business, no nonsense. I saw some guy trying to talk his way out of it. And she was having none of it.

Greg Lambert  33:24

No, no, she had one job. And she was doing it was right. Good for her. Yeah, I would say I was probably, you know, a seven, eight, somewhere around there. Because I, you know, I know. Being around people that were fully vaccinated. Still not, you know, it’s not 100% It’s not 100% Everyone knows that. I think people were, you know, you kind of judge people’s comfort level on human contact. And I, I posted I think a tweet or something where I was like, if this is going to be me going to the conference, or I’m just going to be like, everybody, there were hugs there was as there were hugs, I can’t help it, I can’t help it. So, but there were people that, you know, fist bumps or elbow taps and things like that. And it was just truly

Marlene Gebauer  34:09

truly like, you could just see it on people’s faces, like truly so happy to see one another.

Greg Lambert  34:16

Yeah. You know, and I know there was talk of it.

Marlene Gebauer  34:19

I think we used to take it for granted and after this. You know, people are not people are just so grateful for

Greg Lambert  34:25

1. Yeah. There’s and I don’t know if other conferences are still thinking about it. But I know there was talk about a kind of a a traffic light signal that you could have so on your hold it up. Yeah, you were on or on your badge. So it’d be you know, it’d be like green Give me a hug. Yellow give me give me a fist bump, red. Don’t touch Don’t touch me. Maybe we should just have that in life in general. Just if I got it. If I’ve got a stop sign on a little card and you can like switch it. Yeah. Yeah, so Well, I think we can wrap this up. We were hoping we could get some other people, but we had to move, you get kicked out of original location because they were throwing a young professionals party up there. And we’re professionals. Yes, we are a parent, apparently, we missed one of the criteria. Yeah, I’ll let the let the listeners figure that one out. But this is kind of fun. We should maybe do we should do this again? Maybe I’ll probably do it at WWL. If you’re there if yes. And, and, and tried, maybe, maybe we just try to do it some week just to do it.

Marlene Gebauer  35:40

I think that’s a good idea. And you know, any, if anybody has any ideas, IF listeners have you have ideas for topics that you’d like us to live broadcast

Greg Lambert  35:49

on using to lie about?

Marlene Gebauer  35:52

Yes. And that, you know, please, please, please let us know. Because we’re always looking for good, good content. And if there’s something that’s particularly work particularly well live, let us know.

Greg Lambert  36:05

Yeah, I’m looking, I’m looking for the theme music so we can so we can roll out there we go. So again, if you are a listener, please go ahead and share this with with other people I know we’re, if you’re on listening to it now. But we’ll put this out as a podcast probably tonight or tomorrow, depending on when when I have time. And and then if you share it with friend if you’re not subscribed, please subscribe. Give us one of those five star reviews we haven’t had. We haven’t had a review in a long time. So

Marlene Gebauer  36:38

yeah, we need some we need

Greg Lambert  36:40

five stars only

Marlene Gebauer  36:43

accept nothing less. Yes, absolutely nothing but the best. So if you want to if you want to tweet at us, I’m at Gebauer M,

Greg Lambert  36:50

and I’m at glamour act. And you can reach us on Twitter on LinkedIn and other other places as well. So thank you, Marlene. And, of course, the music that you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca So thank you Jerry.