The Right Tech: Get Control of Your Practice Management Software

Episode Notes

Transcript

Christopher Anderson: Hey listener, you can participate in the Community roundtable free and get feedback on issues you may be facing in your solo or small firm practice.  On the third Thursday of every month, lawyers from across the country join me to discuss any questions brought to the group.  RSVP free of charge and secure your spot at the virtual roundtable by visiting the link found on The Un-Billable Hour page at legaltalknetwork.com.  We hope to see you there.

Before we start the show, we’d like to thank our sponsors:  Lawclerk, Belay, Lawmatics, and Lawyaw.

[Music]

Intro: Managing your law practice can be challenging.  Marketing, time management, attracting clients, and all the things besides the cases that you need to do that aren’t billable.  Welcome to this edition of the Un-Billable Hour, the law practice advisory podcast.  This is where you’ll get the information you need from expert guests and host Christopher Anderson here on Legal Talk Network.

Christopher Anderson: Welcome to the unbillable hour.  I am your host, Christopher Anderson.  And today’s episode is about operations or in the context of a triangle that we like to discuss, production.  Specifically, we’re going to discuss how to find and apply some of the most important technologies to the work of delivering on the promises we make to our key stakeholders.  And if you remember, those are, one, our clients, two, our employees but last but not least, by any stretch of the imagination the owners ourselves in our business.

And in the main, you remember we have this other triangle of what it is a law firm business must do.  We talk in some shows, we talk about acquisition acquiring new clients.  In some shows we talk about producing the results that you’ve promised to those new clients.  That’s production.  That’s what we’re going to talk about today.  And of course, in some we talk about achieving the business and professional results for the owners.  In a sense, we’re talking about that too.  But really, we’re focused on production and applying technology to our business and applying legal technology specifically, but technology also writ large to our businesses.

To have that conversation with us today, I am extremely pleased to welcome Lydia Flocchini.  She is the Chief Marketing Officer for SurePoint Technologies.  SurePoint is a provider of CRM financial and practice management software to law firms all across this great land of ours.  And today’s episode of The Un-Billable Hour is The Right Tech.  And once again, I am pleased to introduce my guest, Lydia Flocchini, Chief Marketing Officer for SharePoint Technologies.

Ms. Flocchini, in her bio, which I am going to now murder as I usually do, is a business transformation leader with 30 years of experience of working in legal technology.  She is passionate about helping legal professionals leverage technology to deliver greater value to their clients and innovating the way they work.  As Chief Marketing Officer for SurePoint Technologies, she works with them to provide CRM, like as mentioned, financial and practice management software to law firms and she leads the marketing strategy product launches and community marketing programs.  And in fact, she just told me that they launched something new recently.  So I’m so excited to talk about that.

She’s got lots of experience working with startups in the legal tech field, launching new product categories like legal analytics and legal research and she’s worked in leadership roles in customer success, marketing sales, etc.  So she’s been in this industry deep for a while.  She’s been the winner of the Demand Gen Reports 2021 B to B Innovator Awards and is passionate about advancement of women in law and technology.  She’s a proud San Francisco native and has her juris doctorate from the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Lydia, welcome to the show.

Lydia Flocchini: Thank you Christopher, that was really great to hear just as I reflect on my career, just the various elements that you brought up.  So thank you for that very warm welcome.  I’m delighted to be here, really excited to be able to just chat and talk about what’s happening in legal tech and how it applies to law firms.  And as you said, I really love the approach they had to businesses and helping them think about new ways of growing and better serving their clients.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah, well, thanks for that.  What you might not know is I’m a bit of a legal nerd myself and it seems I could learn a few things about product marketing from you as well.  And I’m always excited to have people like yourself on the show who bring that science to helping law firms understand what can help them, but also understanding from the law firms what products to build and then that’s kind of an exciting skill set that you bring to this.

(00:05:00)

But so knowing that like hearing your history in that and in the legal tech field.  Can you just tell a little bit more about yourself that I didn’t get out right?  How did you come to legal technology and how did you come to your role at SurePoint?

Lydia Flocchini: Yeah, when I think about it, for me, when I went to law school, obviously I wanted to go and practice law.  And when I was in law school, I realized that it took a long time to do certain things as you were, like sight checking or writing a paper.  And I soon discovered Westlaw and Lexus.  And I realized that there was just a way of doing things much faster, much more efficiently, but not just that really discovering more than was probably available to you.

And so I immediately fell in love with legal technology and just learning everything that I could about how to use technology while I was at school and then later when I graduated and started working in firms, really thinking about how do you innovate the way that legal professionals work?  And from there, I’ve started my journey in working with legal tech companies.  I started working at Thomson Reuters and held various roles in sales and account management and then had the amazing opportunity to launch the next generation of legal Research Wesla next in a marketing role.

And then from there I went to work at Lexmac and helped bring legal analytics to the legal industry, which was just amazing to be part of a startup, be able to build a company.  And now I’m here at SurePoint where I’m able to really bring my passion for technology to all areas in the law firm.  So, from anywhere from the accounting team to the IT team to shareholders to the marketing team and really think about the whole ecosystem of the law firm and how you use technology to really think about growth better servicing your clients, delivering more value, differentiating your firm and how people work.

So I run the marketing team here and in my role, I get to work with all of our customers, which we call the Shipwreck community.  A thousand law firms strong and be able to really learn from them and help them be able to think about the way that they practice both the business and practice of law and their future growth.

Christopher Anderson: Fantastic.  So and it sounds like in SurePoint you’re actually touching all three ABCs of my triangle.  You’re doing stuff that helps the law firms with their client acquisition.  You’re doing stuff that helps them with practice management, with managing the cases, moving the cases through.  And you’re also helping them with metrics so the owners can understand profitability and business score cards and stuff like that.  You do all three?

Lydia Flocchini: Absolutely.  And that’s what I think makes it so exciting is because you’re able to really touch every area of the law firm when it thinks of how do we bring new business in?  How do we continue to deliver more value for our clients?  And how do we innovate the law firm and think of growth?  So it’s absolutely every single area of the law firm from financial management to practice management, and also analytics and business intelligence.

Christopher Anderson: Do you consider yourself a platform for these things, or are these like, discrete software?

Lydia Flocchini: Well, we provide, we have two platforms or three, I should say, the SurePoint Legal Management System, which is an ERP for law firms.  We also have Coyote Analytics, which we’re just so excited, just launched into the cloud on this past Friday was our big announcement.  So we acquired Coyote Analytics this year.

Christopher Anderson: How do you spell that?  Is that C-O-D-Y?

Lydia Flocchini: Coyote. Coyote.

Christopher Anderson: Oh, coyote like awoo.

Lydia Flocchini: Yes.

Christopher Anderson: Okay.

Lydia Flocchini: And so we acquired Coyote Analytics this year, which has been an on-prem tool, and we still wanted to be able to launch a cloud platform, cloud hosted version.  We just did that this past Friday.  So it’s been a very exciting day as we’ve had law firms reaching out, wanting to learn more about being able to work in the cloud.

Christopher Anderson: Excellent.  Yes, that’s so funny.  We’ll tell our listeners we were worried that maybe Lydia’s dog might participate in the show, but here we go.  The first animal noise was me howling.  So there we have it.  That’s fantastic.  So I want to turn our attention now to what’s really going on in the legal field with law firms, because as you’ve experienced, as I’ve experienced this, as everybody listing has experienced.  Legal technology doesn’t grow in leaps and bounds.  Usually, it’s a plotting process.  There are some early adopters among law firms, but generally speaking, the law firm community is a late adopter to perhaps lagging adopter.  But all of a sudden, we had this pandemic.  And the way we all work just changed.  For some of us, literally overnight.  It was just like we were working one way, and then we learned we weren’t working that way that tomorrow.

(00:10:00)

And or we told our teams we’re not working that way tomorrow.  So, what are you seeing?  How has this shift to working from home and this remote work and remote, you know, dealing with our clients remotely?  How has that transformed the way that legal professionals are interfacing or consuming technology?

Lydia Flocchini: Yes.  Well, I would say it’s interesting because in speaking with members of the SurePoint community, there are so many who will say, “Lydia, we had an 18-month plan to move to the cloud or to acquire these technologies.”  And all of a sudden that happened in 18 hours or someone will say 11 years became 11 hours.  So, it’s very interesting when you think of how rapidly technology had to be adopted to enable law firms and legal professionals to work remotely and to continue being able to do their work and be able to support their clients.  And so, things that we see or that I’ve seen and actually I recently spoke about this at a conference with some key trends for example is just the need to be able to go from manual tasks to automation.

So being able to map out processes that are taking place within your firm, everything from accounts payable, accounts receivable.  How you receive payments, how you think about collecting and gathering data, marketing data about your clients.  The various KPIs, so anything that can be automated is a major trend that we are seeing.  Obviously, the move from on premises solutions to the cloud because of the need to be able to work across distributed teams, have access to your client or your data at anytime and anywhere.

Certainly, while there are people that still use paper, but certainly the move to digital workflows and a lot of this is because of the need to shift from what we might think of as low value work to high value work.  Is it something that if you can shift to high value work for your client, being able to work on drafting, pleadings, being able to consult, being able to meet with them, and strategize about how you’re going to approach a matter, that is going to be much more probably less likelihood, we should say, being written off or it’s work that is not going to be built.  And so just being able to digitize that process is definitely one of the bigger trends.  The rapid adoption of technology though, is something I think that is quite extraordinary that we’ve seen.

Most recently, I read an article about the use of technologies just to help with burnout, being able to support wellbeing is another area where maybe unexpected, but certainly a result.  Now, we all might be zoned out for sure, but I would say that we do see technology being used to just help make life easier and remove the administrative burden that legal professionals face in their everyday.  But also, just to help them find joy in their work and why they wanted to practice law and be part of the legal profession.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah.  It strikes me that one of the things in that recitation, one of the things that is underlying that is that there was already a trend that the move, for instance, this move to higher value work.  I mean, this was being forced by some companies delivering the low value stuff at a better price point or some customers in bringing that onboard because of the automation for it was so easy that there was a lot of pressure on law firms to move their value-added processes up the value chain, if you will.  And then that slow glacial process was like — it’s not like it happened because of the pandemic, but I think there was a lot of acceleration during that time.  Would you agree with that thought?

Lydia Flocchini: Oh, absolutely.  And when you think of alternative pricing models and trying to come up with creative pricing, all of that was accelerated because of the pandemic.  If not, now we see greater demand for financial transparency, being able for firms to think of how do you come up with more creative pricing flexibility?  And this is where having business intelligence data, being able to see the underlying data so that you can understand what are trends or patterns in pricing.  So, when you think of an AFA, you can look at prior matters, understand how many resources were used, understand what the rates were, so that you can actually think about what would be pricing that we should or how should we price this accordingly.  So, this is an area where I think where legal technology has really played into understanding how do you innovate the business and practice of law in that regard, as well as how you offer your services and deliver them.

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I mean, more and more we’re seeing now law firms even creating their own products in technology to be able to deliver more value for their clients.  And so, I think that certainly we here because of the data that our customers use, the financial practice management, marketing data, they’re able to take that information and really think about how are we going to innovate our firm, how are you going to differentiate the way that we position ourselves and really give ourselves a competitive advantage.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah.  That seems to speak to the opportunity I think I’ll say it as the most kind way to say it in the legal tech space for improvement that larger, like that some firms are inventing their own and even like, I’m aware of one personal injury firm that is actually marketing their own case management software that they built in-house, and now they’re marketing it.  But it’s like you know, firms don’t do that if there’s not a gap, right?  So, it’s important that the acceleration is also happening on the vendor side, on the provider’s side.  And I mean, I got to say, like, there’s been more entrance in the past five years that I’ve seen in a long-long time into this space.

Lydia Flocchini: Yeah.  And interesting stuff that I read was last year alone there were 161 deals of legal tech acquisitions and mergers.  This year alone, we’ve acquired two companies.

Christopher Anderson: The two of them.  Yeah.

Lydia Flocchini:  ContactEase and Coyote Analytics, which is for us we really think about how do we keep transforming legal technology to better help law firms succeed and innovate.  And it’s been really great to be part of that.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah, we are talking with Lydia Flocchini, I have had to practice that, but I think I’m getting it mostly right, her last name.  And so far, we’ve been talking about legal technology sort of writ large, sort of the landscape of what’s been happening and how Lydia has interfaced with that and what changes she’s seeing among law firms to adopt this technology and the pressures to do so.  We’re going to take a break here because we’ve got a couple of sponsors who would like to have their messages said.  But when we come back, we’ll be talking with Lydia a little bit more focused on different areas.  So, we’re going to talk about practice management, we’re going to talk about marketing CRM particularly.  But first we’re going to hear a word from the folks who make this show possible.

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Christopher Anderson: We’re back with Lydia Flocchini on the Un-Billable Hour.  We’ve been talking about legal technology, and we’re going to shift our focus now to a couple of specific technologies that I think are really interesting to touch.  Like I mentioned before, they touch the points of the triangle.  The first one that we’re going to talk about production, since I said this show is about production and talk about practice management technology.  But before we do that, I think it’s important because I think that those words are thrown around to mean a lot of different things, and particularly what country you’re in they can mean a lot of different things.  I learned the hard way over in England that practice management really meant the financial end of things.  But so, when we talk about practice management technology here, what are we talking about, Lydia?

Lydia Flocchini: Yeah, in terms of practice management, we’re looking at the front office.  What the workflows technology that attorneys, legal professionals, the timekeepers, if you will, are using.  So being able to enter their time, being able to work on their matters, being able to understand, track the performance of their matters as well as conflicts for example, when a matter comes in and being able to track that.  We also will refer to our mobility applications, for example, and being able to track your time and those matters virtually or in the virtual environment.

(00:20:00)

So that’s just a quick overview as well as Business Intelligence Tools.  So we have it for example Profitability Dashboards, Business Intelligence Dashboards that enable you to track KPIs as you’re working on a matter, as you’re working by client and being able to look at your own data as you are working.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah.  And I think that’s key because, the truth is that practice management software has been around for a while.  You know, it’s been like that you use the words earlier on-prem, but they’ve been server-based that people would have servers in their office and they’d have users.  And then client-server model and then things started to go to the cloud and a lot of vendors started offering their solutions in the cloud, but I think for a long time, these became places to store information.  Like the people would keep time, people would keep client information, people would keep documents, people would keep tasks and task completion, but the tools to — and enormous amount of data would get stored, but the tools to get anything other than knowing your clients’ data was stored and easily retrievable, which let this be honest, that was huge.  I mean, that’s a huge advantage to file cabinets, but the ability to then take this enormous, treasure trove of data and make it actionable for improving how you deliver your services to your clients, the profitability of the firm and how your employees experienced their work.  That really has been kind of weak until recently.

When you say being able to use this for business intelligence, what are you seeing as the opportunity here and how is it being delivered?

Lydia Flocchini: Well, when you are looking, for example at, we have a Profitability Dashboard and you’re able to look at different data points, you know how profitable is a matter, how profitable is a client and when I talked about profitability, it’s really about the growth of the firm, right.  Is this, how are you managing collections on that particular matter client, there’s different dimensions that you can take a look at.  And so what happens is as an attorney I can take a look at these dashboards to really understand are expenses too high, where are we trending with collections, what are our write-offs look like, is there an opportunity to reduce that or to improve that.

For example, you may have associates working on a matter who they may want to reach out to client regarding collections, not only because they’re trying to collect that but to have a conversation to build a relationship.  It really goes beyond just the data but is how are you delivering more value by building that relationship through the data that you see.

And so, when you’re thinking about these numbers in front of you, it’s really trying to think about how do these become more than just that.  Client satisfaction, being able to understand like what did it cost for us to acquire this new client, how does this shape our marketing efforts and be able — I would say specially now in this virtual world to think about being able to look at the last time maybe that you had a touch point and how do you use that as a way to guide your outreach.

So there is multiple dimensions to how the data informs the way that you are going to approach the relationship with your client, get the matter that you’re working on but when I go back to sort of the beginning when you’re talking about the three areas, it’s also how does this help me grow my firm, how does this help me become a better practitioner because I am nurturing those clients that you want to be a lifelong client, right?

And so I think that there is many ways to think about how the data helps you think about your own performance and growth.

Christopher Anderson: Let me put you on the spot.  What would be — because I think a lot of — you talked to a lot of lawyers, they understand the concept of KPIs and they understand how powerful they can be.  But they also understand the pain of the real pain of tracking them.  But so what are some KPIs that law firms really should be tracking and how can their case management software make that or the practice management software make that easier?

Lydia Flocchini: Well, I mean the KPIs can be located in multiple places, right?  And sometimes I mean, I would hate to think that we’re still using spreadsheets in some areas because the data is going to become old.  So really, how do you use technology to bring those data points to bear at one place where you can have accurate, current, real-time data so that you can really see what’s happening.

I mean, one thing that we did learn from the pandemic was that the need to understand cash flow, to be able to predict cash flow, how soon would that cash flow come in.  And so, that’s where I think technology can be very powerful in measuring your KPIs.

(00:24:56)

But for example, if you’re able to have data such as you collected hours, collected fees, direct costs, gross profits, indirect costs and net profits, revenue per hour, cost per hour, all in one place you’re able to see those trends and patterns.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah, I’ll note for the for the listeners because this is a radio show.  Lydia had no notes, those were just right off the top of her head.

Lydia Flocchini: I write a lot about this.  But being able to also see that in different ways, so by the originating attorney, the billing attorney, the responsible attorney, the client, the matter area of law, that’s where then you can start to basically peel the onion and start to look at how do you think about the way you’re approaching these various elements.

It’s very interesting, especially when you think of areas of law because you can start to see is there an area of law at the firm or practice area that maybe isn’t growing where you expected.  And maybe it’s time to think about something, another area, maybe that’s an area that maybe is not an area of growth.  And so it just –

Christopher Anderson: Or sometimes surprising information that like this one’s like way more profitable like this one is growing, but there is other one is profitable.

Lydia Flocchini: Exactly.  But that the only way to know is underlying data otherwise you’re relying on hunches and what anecdata to think about your strategy.

Christopher Anderson: Absolutely.  So let me just turn our attention a little bit from practice management now to CRM.  And let’s start it with because I’ll tell you what, a lot of people use those three initials and they don’t even know what the actual words are under them, never mind what it does.  So let’s first of all Define CRM and then I want you to talk a little bit about how good CRM can contribute to the data that we have and improve the performance of a firm.

Lydia Flocchini: Great.  So yes, so CRM is Client Relationship Management, it’s the data that you use to really think about how you are going to retain your clients, grow your clients and so technology enables you to do that.  So how do you manage your contact list and being able to have those contact lists in one place, being able to track how often you are interacting with that, your clients, being able to track data so that you can see, create automations or touch points so that you can make sure to stay top of mind.  Being able to think of ways to deliver automation such as your marketing, so, if you’re developing newsletters, your email campaigns that the firm is creating, you can use your CRM to do that.

And in addition to that, be able to connect out with your financial management data so that you can ensure to know what are the financials look around that client so that you can, again, it’s really about taking a strategic approach and enabling you to be informed as to new clients to acquire, retention of clients and be able to see what referrals you’re getting, being able to track all that in your CRM.

Yeah.  Can you tell me a little bit about, I know you’re excited about the acquisition of ContactEase, just give about the 60-second version of what that was about and what additional capabilities that brings to your company.

Lydia Flocchini: Sure, we acquired ContactEase earlier this year.  ContactEase is a company that has very similar culture as SurePoint.  ContactEase just widely used across law firms and ContactEase was so interesting is the way that it integrates with Outlook right in your workflow to be able to manage your book of business while you’re working engage with it, without actually having to go somewhere else but as you are in the process and so very high adoption rate, very easy to use and certainly integrated with our financial and practice management software, both LMS as well as Coyote Analytics.  It really just enables a greater depth of insight when you’re thinking about the matters and the clients that you’re working with.

Christopher Anderson: Excellent, so congratulations on that acquisition.  We are talking to Lydia Flocchini, we’ve been talking now about case management, we talked about CRM, Customer Relationship Management software, and our client relationship software, depending on what business you’re in.  But I think it’s also a misnomer though still, because it really deals with potential clients too and that’s really important for that and we’re going to take another break here, and but when we come back, we’re going to turn our attention to timekeeping because that is the technology bane of many of lawyers existence.  And then I want to talk to you a little bit about metrics and tracking metric for in a business intelligence kind of way.  But first, we’ll hear a word from our sponsors and then we’ll be back with Lydia Flocchini, the Chief Marketing Officer of SurePoint Technologies.

(00:30:03)

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Christopher Anderson: And we’re back with Lydia Flocchini talking about legal technology and Ted said that when we came back, we’re going to talk about timekeeping and I because got to ask. I think it’s where all the technology had so many promises and yet it is still one of the most difficult compliance, getting compliance from users and one of the you know, you’re talking about all this wonderful business intelligence but a lot of it really comes from down to what are the inputs like, how much time is going into the work that’s being produced because that’s what we do. So what can you talk about trends that you’re seeing in terms of time management, time keeping and time management? And I know you just talked about this at the ALA, right?

Lydia Flocchini: Yes, actually. I was at the west miss West Michigan chapter of the ALA. I’m doing a presentation on time management and just some strategies for helping drive a culture contemporaneously time keeping. So the first is there’s so much data about how much time is written off if you don’t enter your time contemporaneously.  So I believe that if you don’t enter your time till the end of the day, you lose 10% of that time will most likely be captured.  If you wait till the end of the week I believe it’s 25% and certainly if you wait till the end of the month it’s 50%.

But oftentimes people do that. They will wait to enter their time. So when you think of best practices, or just the trends we’re seeing, mobile timekeeping is enabling timekeepers to capture more time than ever before. There’s actually a firm we worked with that shared that they once they were capturing their time mobile which when people working remotely, their productivity increased from 50%, I think to 95%. And so it’s just extraordinary and a lot of it is because you have that in the palm of your hand and the ability to capture and be able to do it as you’re working. Most recently, we also launched or we have been seeing automatic timekeeping which is time that is being captured as you’re working. It is through Microsoft applications where as you are working, if you’re in PowerPoint or Excel, the time is being captured, and then later, all you have to do is go back and review the time and then tag it but the technology that’s being developed to make it as easy as possible for attorneys and timekeepers to enter it while they work is really the trend but that being said, you still have to get people to do it and to understand why, why it’s important.

So some of the strategies that I shared when I recently met with the Western Michigan in the ALA was number one, creating a culture around timekeeping. So really understanding the why and the impact. So for example, the stats that I shared with you being able to explain, you know how that flows into the revenue of the firm is so important. And I know that there are many customers we work with, who obviously are doing that education with the timekeepers at their law firms, but the more that there is visibility and data around it so that when someone says, “you know what, I need to do this as I’m working more” if the ability is for me to do it as I’m working, it becomes a habit.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah, I think it’s the habit. That’s the key here, right? But I think there’s two problems with the habit, one is people perceive it as being painful and the other is that for better or worse they see that time as wasted, right? So like I can’t bill for the time that I’m entering the bill but I hear it a lot, right? And I think that’s comes more when you do it at the end of the day. But like, how do you build that habit?

Lydia Flocchini: You have to do it in the moment. It’s contemporary. So whether it’s the technology that is enabling it as you’re working, or you’re having it become a habit to a mobile app that you were using, it becomes easier.

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But also because you start to see the impact of it when it comes to your revenue and that is really the piece that you need to think about.  You know what, you start to do that analysis of if — you can start to measure a compare, I would say timekeepers within a firm as a cohort so you can have the group that is entering time when they should contemporaneously versus those that don’t, there’s going to be a marked difference between write-offs between invoicing getting done between it being part of your month-end, but there has to be I would say a champion or someone that is really being able to bring this thought of mine. And so often times, there has to be an individual at the firm and oftentimes we see it’s the accounting team or the finance team that is reminding the attorneys or for example sending reminders through what we call a watch list just being able to be aware that the time has to get in creates those habits.

But I would say that, you know, most importantly you have to think about your client because clients want to know, how much are they being built, being able to explain the work that’s being done for them and there’s actually a firm that comes to mind for me that I remember the controller said to me “Lydia you know, we in our narratives like to explain what we’ve been doing the impact because it’s about building value.” The time, if you really elevate time keeping to building value showing your impact that is where you get to this one of the elements that you brought up your clients. That is really your way to show here’s what we’ve been doing to represent you client. And if you do that within a time that they expect right, clients are demanding more financial transparency. This is a way to do it and so, but the mindset has to change and so it does take steps. But certainly, you have to build a culture around it.  Share the data, have someone show the data, coach someone through the data and then being able to show the impact that you’re having and driving firms, growth, revenue. But also client retention is an important way to create that framework.

Christopher Anderson: Yeah, it seems to tick all those boxes. I think that’s really great. So talking about delivering value. We are coming up to the end of the show. The one thing that I know my listeners would love to hear about and I would give them great value is to take what we’ve been talking about now. And to me, what are these incredibly fascinating trends that have been happening up till now and then let’s cast it forward a little bit. Based on your experience, your knowledge, and what you see in the trends right now. What do you see happening in the near to medium term future?

Lydia Flocchini: I one of the areas that I have just been really inspired and excited about is the way that law firms are taking very actual steps to create data-driven cultures. And the reason that I get excited about that is because I’ve worked in the Silicon Valley, I’ve seen the impact of what data does to create insight growth and innovation and just to see how law firms are taking this approach and really thinking about using their financial, their CRM and practice management data to say we are creating a culture around this. We are showing dashboards, we’re explaining to attorneys how to take the data and think about the way they shape their practice.

I think is really exciting and there’s going to be a lot more that we’re going to see when it comes to automation, AI Prediction. Last year, we could worked on the study with Ari Kaplan on implementing, financial intelligence for competitive advantage. And, one of the questions that we asked, which I really thought was very interesting but actually confirms a suspicion of mine was whether the skill set of a CFO and law firm leaders had changed over the last year and overwhelmingly the respondents said yes and if you look at the results of the research, things that they said was really being the data storyteller, the change agent of the firm, really being the person who’s driving culture around the firm around data. And I just thought that that was so interesting to hear and I just I’m excited about you know what we are going to continue to see in terms of trends and how law firms think about being data and analytics.

Christopher Anderson: I am too and that brings us to the close. It wraps up in fact this edition of the Un-Billable Hour and I want to thank our listeners for listening. So I think they’re going to thank you for sharing because that was fascinating. Our Guest today in case you’ve forgotten has been Lydia Flocchini, she’s the chief marketing officer for SurePoint Technologies.

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Lydia, if people do want to follow up or learn more about SurePoint or you, how can they get in touch with you?

Lydia Flocchini: Sure, I’m on LinkedIn, Lydia Flocchini, F-L-O-C-C-H-I-N-I, so feel free to reach out, and if you’re interested in learning more about SurePoint and Coyote Analytics, you can go to surepoint.com, as well as coyoteanalytics.com, and I’m happy to put you in touch with one of our experts.

Christopher Anderson: Fantastic Lydia. Thank you so much. And of course, this is Christopher T. Anderson and I look forward to seeing and talking with all of you next month with another great guest as we learn more about the topics that help us build a law firm business that works for you. Remember, you can subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com, or on iTunes. Thank you for joining us and we will speak again soon.

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Outro: The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice as always, consult a lawyer.

Thanks for listening to The Un-Billable Hour, the law practice advisory podcast. Join us again for the next edition right here, with Legal Talk Network.

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