Podcast Episode 193: Let Your Geek Flag Fly

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast, Guy is joined by Kate Boyd who is a 25 year veteran of the legal industry. She started her career at law firms Shearman & Sterling and White & Case. After completing her MBA at NYU in 2014, she took her business and legal experience to high-growth legal tech vendors HighQ and Kira Systems. In 2018, she co-founded litigation fund, Validity Finance, and served as COO before joining Sente in 2022. Kate is active on the boards of the leading legal EdTech company AltaClaro, and immigration non-profit Immigration Law & Justice NY.

1. What Using Technology To Create Legal Service Products Online Looks Like and Where You Should Start  

There’s an element about legal services that is believed that when technology is inserted, there is a  possibility of not respecting or enabling the amazing talents of the legal professionals. Lawyers are going to hone their expertise to help them become better, but beyond that it also helps their practice. If they are a bigger firm, it’s going to raise the profile of their practice.  

Then there is the FT innovation competition. The things that really move the needle with a firm brand are how they’re thinking about client service in ways that could move them towards a more digital delivery model. People can be looking to deliver and hopefully deliver quickly, so that the lawyers can prioritize the things that are hard, gnarly and tricky. The things that are quick, and that they’ve done a million times can be done by technology.

2. What PartnerVine Study is About and Where People Should Get Started 

PartnerVine works with big corporations and firms to help make their products available through a shared network. They recently released a study looking at the global 100, and the ranks are very much taking a change. The study found that over 50% of the level, 100 are delivering legal services with software, 43% are productizing and selling them, and 20% are actively optimizing their own delivery of legal services. These numbers continue to increase yearly. They are offering a Chambers ranking approach to assessing the value that those services are providing for giant corporations, and the corporations are loving it because they’re able to get reports on how much they’re using. The law firms are then getting more feedback and more data on the usage of their technology. 

Being anywhere on the spectrum means you’re getting started, and you’re thinking about it. A lot of firms are offering a startup law toolkit so that if an organization is just looking to incorporate themselves, they can quickly fill in some questionnaires and they can get all the documents they need to get started. From there they now have a relationship with that firm. As that company continues to grow, they’re developing and nurturing that relationship for them. 

3. Things That Individuals Should Consider When Thinking about Products and  Legal Services

If your CRM is a manual “rolodex” separate from your other digital marketing real estate, it’s not useful. Know how to pull reports and manipulate data going in and coming out of your CRM. Don’t be afraid to ask and talk about integration and APIs. Get granular so you can personalize the delivery of tools to not only match the industry of your clients but also their roles. Don’t be limited to the GC’s office. 

Thinking about your CRM and how to connect the dots for the internal systems, prioritizing data, and getting familiar with the financials inside your firm will be key for success.

Takeaway: 

Marketing and business development teams inside law firms have an incredible opportunity to identify client service opportunities early! Consider training up on product management or make friends in your innovation and IT teams so you can take good ideas to MVPs for your lawyers in ways that are really rewarding. There are a ton of no code solutions you can use to prototype ideas and get lawyers thinking about how they can help clients on-line.

You can find Kate Boyd on Linkedin and the Company Website. 

Check out our newest ebook, A Law Firm Guide to Digital Marketing Analytics, here