Over the past year, many of us have said “I guess all law firms are virtual law firms now.” While that may technically be true, there are many firms whose business model is based on being a virtual firm. Dan Packel from The American Lawyer gives us a primer on Distributed Law Firms like Fisher Broyles, Ramon, Taylor English and Duma, and Culhane Meadows and how they operate without a physical environment. While many of these firms may fly below the radar for many biglaw firms, distributed firms like Fisher Broyles may be poised to break into…

For those who went to law school, do you remember that class we all took on creativity in the legal work environment? No? We don’t remember it either. And neither does Adam Tsao, that’s why he decided to write The Creativity Playbook for Lawyers: Strategies for the Business of Legal Practice. Adam sits down with us and discusses how he integrated creativity into his own legal education at Penn Law School, as well as his legal work at Skadden and Covington before starting his own business, At Philosophy. He stresses that creativity is a vital process in…

For those of us in large law firms, we understand that Practice Group Leaders have the following responsibilities: Develop a strategy for the Practice Group (PG) Advance the business development of the PG Ensure equitable distribution of work among the more junior PG attorneys Identify attorneys within the practice who are struggling and find mentoring and coaching opportunities for them Practice law at the same time For Lathrop GPM’s Intellectual Property Group, Kate Tompkins can do all of these, except practice law. That’s because she is not a lawyer. She’s a business professional. We’ve heard the phrase “law firms should…

For nearly the past twenty-five years, Jeroen Plink worked on the cutting edge of innovation in the legal market ranging from creating software to help with project management and process improvement, to being the CEO of Clifford Chance Applied Solutions. His passion for looking at issues from unique perspectives, as well as his dislike for inefficient processes and waste, has led to a number of successes in legal innovation during this time. As he moves on from the Alternative Legal Service Provider environment and begins his new journey, Jeroen sits down with us to talk about his efforts going forward…

Karl Harris, CEO of Lex Machina, took an interesting path to legal analytics. Initially working on sonar systems taking streams and signals and converting those into data, then on to mobile application analytics, then on to law school. Pulling these three skills together, the idea of legal analytics came together. With Lex Machina becoming the fourth pillar of the Lexis+ platform, along with legal research elements, practical guidance, and brief analysis. Harris walks through the progression of legal analytics over the past decade, and even projects some of the potential analytics has in the assistance of practicing law.…

Attorney Sophia George has one strong suggestion for those looking to increase equity in the legal industry: Hire minority lawyers! In order to help individuals find diverse lawyers, Sophia joined in the project created by Jackson Walker Partner Chevazz Brown called DiversePro. The online database works to connect diverse lawyers with potential clients who are looking to find lawyers from communities where they share a culture, language, or life experience. With a starting list of 250,000 lawyers in the DiversePro database, Chevazz Brown created an environment for diverse lawyers to go in and claim their profile, or create a…

Most of us in the legal industry did not think of the employment market as being anything close to stable in 2020. However, as we are witnessing from the AmLaw 100/200 firm revenue numbers being released, many firms had record revenue and profits. In fact, recent reports show that the industry actually added some 5,000 jobs recently. Geoff Zodda, Chief Solutions Officer of IT Search at PearlCare Search Group, talks with us about what happened in the legal market surrounding the technology, information, analytics, and knowledge workers in 2020, and the projections for these types of professions as…

If you’ve listened to The Geek in Review podcast the past couple of weeks, you heard that Marlene and I are enjoying the discussions we’ve joined on Clubhouse. Well, we are going to each host a room this week, and we’d love to have the readers of 3 Geeks and the listeners of The Geek in Review join us. So grab your iOS devices and listen and discuss the following topics this week: Monday, February 8th at 1:00 PM ET – Legal Podcasters Roundtable: What’s On Your Latest Episode? This is a weekly room for legal topic podcast creators and…