Legal Leaders Exchange - Podcast episode 26

The journey to LegalVIEW^® DynamicInsights

LegalVIEW^® DynamicInsights is the new interactive legal rate benchmarking solution from ELM Solutions that empowers corporate legal and claims departments, as well as law firms, with unparalleled insights. By revealing law firm rate trends, supporting data-driven budgeting, and transparency in rate negotiations, DynamicInsights brings a new level of clarity to legal pricing.

For this episode, Jennifer McIver, Associate Director of Legal Operations & Industry Insights for ELM Solutions, is joined by two ELM Solutions colleagues: Rich Stoll, Vice President of Finance, and Brian Jorgenson, Vice President of Product Management. In it, they discuss the transformation of the industry’s leading source of hourly rate trends and benchmarks into LegalVIEW DynamicInsights.

Listen to this episode to hear about:

• The importance of data transparency and the benefits of a data-driven approach in the legal industry
• The legal department and law firm needs that promoted a shift from static reports to a dynamic benchmarking platform and the benefits it yields
• How cross-functional teams moved from the idea stage, through development and testing, to launch in under a year
• The behind-the-scenes data work that powers trustworthy, anonymized insights
• How DynamicInsights is already transforming the way legal departments and law firms make data-driven decisions

Be sure to follow Legal Leaders Exchange on:

Apple Podcast | Spotify | Audible | iHeart Radio

Transcript

Greg Corombos

Hi, I am Greg Corombos. Welcome to another episode of Legal Leaders Exchange: The Journey to LegalVIEW DynamicInsights. This episode will take you behind the scenes of Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions' new AI-powered legal data platform. Join Jennifer McIver and guests from the company: Rich Stoll, leading finance for ELM Solutions, will share his background in finance and the importance of data transparency, and Brian Jorgenson, with extensive product management experience, will highlight the product's client-focused and data-driven approach. LegalVIEW DynamicInsights transforms legal spend management by equipping both corporate legal departments and law firms with powerful, data-driven insights, leveraging the largest dataset of over 200 billion dollars in real, invoice-backed data. Jen, the floor is yours!

Jennifer McIver

Thank you, Greg. I'm so excited to be here today, and I have to say, it's a whirlwind. We're in the middle of conference season, and not only that, Wolters Kluwer has introduced a new product, LegalVIEW DynamicInsights. So today, I'm really excited to have Rich Stoll and Brian Jorgenson with us so we can talk a little bit more about what is LegalVIEW DynamicInsights, and really dive into the data as well as the importance of industry benchmarking in everyday work. So let's get going, and let's do it. And I'm really going to start right now by thanking Rich and Brian. Thank you so much for being here. And normally I wouldn't ask you to give background. Normally, we don't do that, but I think today it's really important, because your roles are a little bit different. I'm not talking to someone from an in-house legal department today, but rather, we're diving in internally here at Wolters Kluwer, and we're looking at product and finance. So what I'd love to do, Rich is, if you wouldn't mind, is to start and talk to us a little bit about the fact that you lead finance for ELM Solutions here at Wolters Kluwer, and I really want to know if you always wanted to be in finance, and whether you carried a briefcase and a calculator when you grew up.

Rich Stoll

Not exactly from an early age, I recognized I was very good at math. It took me some time to move to a calculator, as I always enjoyed, and still enjoy, doing math in my head. Fast forward to how I got interested in finance after college: I was working in sales, which will probably be shocking to many people that work with me, and was living with a friend who was working in FP&A, or what we refer to as financial planning and analysis, and after talking to him for some time about his job, it fit well with my interests. And at that point, I made it my goal to find a job in finance, and somehow landed at Northrop Grumman in my first finance role. I've now been in finance or finance-related roles for more than 20 years, including a short stint in sourcing. I landed in this role about five years ago as I was looking to expand my career. Previously, I had worked in finance at WK, supporting more of a services business, where I learned how to work with business leaders to manage a P&L. Also in my previous role to this one, I worked in sourcing, working with some of the largest technology and companies in the world, where I needed to navigate both the internal environment and an external relationship to find a common outcome. ELM was a nice blend of my past experiences and presented a new challenge. So I went for it.

Jennifer McIver

So it's kind of funny, Rich. I had to laugh when you said that people would be surprised that you were in sales. And that's probably because, I mean, let's be honest, whenever sales is trying to get a deal done, finance is the blocker, right?

Rich Stoll

Absolutely.

Jennifer McIver

We always have to laugh. You know, legal operations, you hear the “department of no” is what legal is. But sometimes I wonder if that's really finance. That's the “department of no.”

Rich Stoll

I would say in this role, we are known for that, but that's not what we intend to be. We intend to work with the business, obviously.

Jennifer McIver

I love it. You know, Rich, I've had a great time getting to know you over this last year, since I've been at Wolters Kluwer and I'll be honest, I did a little LinkedIn stalking, because that's what we all do. And you know, something that really jumped out to me when I was looking at your past work that you've done, and some of the items is that you mentioned that you leverage relationships across finance, sales and operations, and that you partner with senior technology leadership to re-engineer technology by driving transparency. Can you talk a little bit about your philosophy on building relationships and creating that transparency across an organization, because I think that's really key for those, especially in legal, and then really reaching out as they work with the rest of their business and corporate operations.

Rich Stoll

In every role, it's important to build relationships, both in and out of work. You can relate it to a neighborhood. In many instances, you become close to the people that live near you, because one, they live next to you, so what they do impacts you, and what you do impacts them. Second, it's also most likely that you are in the neighborhood for similar reasons. For instance, you move to a town to be in a good school district, or the town is close to a major city where a lot of people work, so you have similar interests and priorities.

Jennifer McIver

Okay, you kind of losing me though.

Rich Stoll

Sorry, I'm coming back. I'm coming back to relating that back to a business relationship. The people you work with are like your neighbors. These could be people that work in the same business, customers, vendors, or people in the same company, at some level, their priorities align with yours. You rely on them, and they rely on you, just like in every relationship, it needs to be two-way street where both of you provide something back to that relationship.

Jennifer McIver

I got it, okay, yeah.

Rich Stoll

To answer the second part of your question around creating transparency, as I work in Finance, my role is not just to support the business but be a part of the business to help solve everyday challenges and bring information and data closer to the business, so we can collectively drive opportunity for our customers, the business, and Wolters Kluwer. I think we do that through several ways, but one thing that I've done twice at Wolters Kluwer that's been effective at driving more transparency is by building a data lake. This is where we bring data from multiple systems, ERP, product platform, Salesforce, and sometimes external market data together in one data repository. This allows us to build reports and do quick analysis, leveraging tools like Power BI or Tableau to provide visualization to that data, both at a summary level and detail level. We work closely with key business leaders, including the ones working directly with customers, to share those dashboards and build new ones that help bring them the data transparency they need to their fingertips so they can provide more value back to the people they work with.

Jennifer McIver

I think that's great. And really what resonates with me here, and we'll dig into this more today, is the fact that you're getting the data and that you're using the data, and that's what you're doing to lead to our transparency, and that's really what we're trying to do with DynamicInsights for our corporate clients, or for, frankly, any corporate legal organization, but also for law firms, as well as putting everybody out there on that transparent playing field. So, we'll come back to you on that Rich but I want to, I feel like Brian's getting a little antsy here in his chair, so I want to turn it over to him and ask kind of a similar question. You know, looking back 10 or 15, years ago, I kind of imagined leading a legal technology product wasn't necessarily on your radar. Am I correct?

Brian Jorgenson

No, it wasn't. You're right. It wasn't on my bingo card, but it's been a great time. And actually, even more relevant, my son was recently admitted to law school. So I'll have some very direct feedback here in the next few years about the products we're creating. But now, my entire career, I've been in product management, created a couple award winning business to business and business to consumer products. You know, I was at 18 years at Fiserv, so think financial services, as a general manager and head of product for two global product lines. One was specializing in, think physical cash management, so the amount of money in ATMs and branches. And the other was in enterprise document management. So we did a lot in lending and banks, just moving them to paperless technologies. I then joined Sabre as head of their product marketing and operations group. And so, think hotel technologies. And there, if you ever booked a room at a Wyndham, a Mandarin Oriental, or Rosewood – I think we had about 40,000 hotels around the world that used the technology – that was what my team created. And then I joined Toyota Financial Services as their Chief Business Information Officer, and then was also the CIO of Toyota Bank, and led all their technology. So from the moment you got a loan at a Toyota dealership to you're paying your loan online or on their mobile app. That was the systems my teams created.

Jennifer McIver

I'm realizing, Brian, as you're talking, maybe I should ask you if you're the one that carried the calculator in the briefcase, because you have a lot of financial in your background as well.

Brian Jorgenson

I do. Yeah, I was also a finance graduate, so I think Rich likes talking to me because I do want to make sure we're meeting the bottom line.

Rich Stoll

It’s news to me.

Jennifer McIver

I love it. I love it. We're learning more about each other, and I think it's great. Like I said, normally, we don't talk a lot of background on a podcast like this, but I think it's really important, because that goes to the depth of our understanding of what we're working on when we're talking about industry benchmarks. Brian, though, one of the things that I've really enjoyed in our conversations over the last few months, is really your focus on customers, specifically customer experience, customer success. Brian, can you talk about your philosophy on delivering a leading product team with those things in mind?

Brian Jorgenson

Yeah, absolutely. The core of everything we do in product management is the customer. If we don't deeply understand their needs, their challenges, and goals, we're not going to deliver the products they need. So, this means we now need to get out of the office more to meet them, talk to them, get them in their environment, and watch them work. And once we can do that, we can build great products. The other thing we're doing is, I'm really being data-led. So, we are implementing a product called Pendo, and that will help us measure customer interactions within our products. We'll be able to understand how long it takes to get through each workflow if there's problems in those workflows, the adoption of new feature functionalities. Are customers using all the great things that we've developed, and if not, what do we need to change? Is it better training? Is it a better user interface? Is it more marketing to let people know we've got new products, and really, that data driven approach helps us stay accountable to delivering the best products on the market to our customers?

Jennifer McIver

Yeah. So maybe moving something from, say, PDF, to a different interface that's a little bit more modern might fall into that right exactly, with that regard?

Brian Jorgenson

Exactly.

Jennifer McIver

With regard to data, Brian, and using data, let's talk about the data that we're sitting on. When you joined Wolters Kluwer, did you know what kind of a gold mine of data that was going to be under your purview?

Brian Jorgenson

No, I was surprised. I knew we'd have data. Everybody's got data. Everybody's got something out there. A lot of industries I've been in, there’s a lot of reluctance to share data, and that was that's not the case here. You know, our LegalVIEW dynamic database has $210, probably $211 billion now of legal spend and growing at about five to ten billion a year, and it was started 15 years ago. So it's a tremendous amount of data we have the ability to take advantage of

Jennifer McIver

So going back to the whole idea of customer experience, customer success, what value do you think working with such a large data set can actually bring, not only really Wolters Kluwer clients, but also more broadly to the industry as a whole.

Brian Jorgenson

The data has allowed us to produce things like LegalVIEW dashboards that provide those benchmark insights into legal spend and operational performance. Our customers can compare themselves against their industry peers, how they're doing to optimize their claims and legals departments. But it also empowers organizations to be data-driven and make more informed decisions about how to become more efficient and cost effective. It also helped us create Predictive Insights. So, predicting matter and budgeting cycle times, helping clients forecast expenses and timelines more accurately, and really just allowing better resource allocation and strategic planning. And our plan is to bring total spend data into this as well, and I think that's where we really unlock a significant marketing opportunity for law firms in particular, helping them identify the right industries, the right matter areas where they can go and focus their efforts to really guide and create strategic growth opportunities for firms to go and target their services and market presence in competitive positioning overall. And finally, this kind of data set, we are becoming an AI-first, I'd say, technology platform. And it allows us to create the best AI models at a scale that's unmatched in the industry. And through that we can deliver, I'd say, a competitive edge to our customers that no one else in the industry can provide.

Jennifer McIver

I think that's interesting. And we're saying the word “data” quite a bit And so really flipping it over, even though you are a finance person, Brian, flipping it over to Rich from your finance perspective, how important is it to be able to not only look at internal data, so, data maybe that your own organization is creating, but also to being able to have a wider visibility into an industry as a whole?

Rich Stoll

In finance, I would say we live in data and have access to many data sources, both internal and external, to do our jobs, we need that access our internal data, whether that be financial or some other business source. It tells us about the health of the business, including our customers, but it can also give us some customer and industry-level trends. External data gives us a sense of market trends. We look at both macro and more specific trends. For example, we look at GDP growth and future expected GDP growth to tell us about the health of the economy and expected future health of the economy. We read analyst reports about legal spend, both historical and forecasted, to give us more specific market trends. Bringing both internal and external data together gives us a full picture of where we are and what we think the future looks like, so we can guide our customers, the business leadership and shareholders. It's also an ever-evolving process, so you need to look at it continually and assess the viability of other data sources, both quantitative and qualitative as they come available.

Jennifer McIver

So you've hit some high things, and now we are really going to turn the conversation now and dive in and talk a little bit more about LegalVIEW DynamicInsights. And to do that, I want to set the stage with little bit of context. You know, we've had at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions, the Real Rate Report since 2010 it's a PDF. It provides real rates. And when we say real rates, we mean approved rates from the data contributors, from our ELM Solutions clients. And it provides it by industry, practice area, Am Law tier, the role, whether it's a partner, an associate. So all of this great information about how much corporate legal departments are paying for their law firm services. I have to be honest, Real Rate Report, you mentioned earlier about an ever-evolving process that also makes me think of, you know, being updated. And the Real Rate Report has been really important. And it has, you know, 260 pages, 240 pages. Some people call it even “the book.” I've heard that recently, keep it on the corner of their desk, and they use it because they love to see that information from the industry. So, I'm kind of curious. Rich as we talk about the Real Rate Report, and we're moving it to more modern, LegalVIEW DynamicInsights. I'm curious, though, did you ever use “the book?”

Rich Stoll

I would confirm I looked at it.

Jennifer McIver

A lot of data rows right?

Rich Stoll

Yes. And I could see how it was useful to corporate legal departments and law firms, I would say we used it at a from a high-level perspective of what's happening with legal spend. But I wanted something more dynamic. And when I saw we had this information, we built our own DynamicInsights, plugging into the Real Rate Report engine that was already in place. My needs were very specific. I would say I wanted to help guide the business and senior leadership about what's happening with legal rates and volumes at the industry, client, timekeeper, and matter level. I was looking for insights so we could better understand legal spend trends, both to analyze what has happened and help us predict what's going to happen. So, the forecasting element to our job not just at the macro level, but looking deeper to understand trends, for example, within claims and corporate legal departments. I like to say it was early days of LegalVIEW DynamicInsights, but it was much more basic than what has been built.

Jennifer McIver

Oh, I don't know, Rich. I kind of call you the godfather of LegalVIEW DynamicInsights.

Rich Stoll

I will spread that rumor.

Jennifer McIver

So Brian, just know that this is where it came from. In all seriousness, I love this Rich because I know you were working on that, and at the same time I was definitely working on LegalVIEW Insights, where we did take a look at the data from the Real Rate Report, and I actually saw what you were using, and was like, hang on, we could use this too. This is going to be a better way to see trends. This is going to be a better way to have visibility into the data, rather than just strolling along a bunch of data tables. And really it was the use of the tool that you had internally built that really bloomed into LegalVIEW DynamicInsights, gave us a really, really good foundation and an understanding of how you were using it. So I love the fact that we've developed a product with really a lot of the finance side in mind, even though it is definitely a tool more for corporate legal operations or law firm legal operations as well. And it went fast. So I have to say that Rich, I've been here just over a year now, and it was about last June where I was really digging in and looking at that data and looking at Power BI. So Brian, your thoughts on that timeline? I said, this was June, and here we are. I mean, it's not even a year later, and we've launched a product. What are your thoughts on how ELM Solutions was able to recognize this opportunity, create a plan and already have it to market?

Brian Jorgenson

This is by far one of the fastest products we've ever built, launched, and been so successful with so quickly. As you said, the Real Rate Report’s been around since 2010 in that PDF format. More customers were coming to us, saying, hey, is there other formats available? We need to get the data out. What's an easier way to extract the data? And in parallel, we're also embedding Power BI within T360 and Passport. And those two kind of coincided, and this became a very good, logical next step to build a Real Rate Report within Power BI. And that's how DynamicInsights came about. And so what we did is we created a… we had a small tiger team led by Manish Sharma, and his sole focus was to bring this product to market as quickly as possible. And his team did that. So we would set up small user group meetings with customers. We brought law firms into the process. We brought our customers in the process very early on, asking them the questions, how would you want to see this differently? What would bring value to you? And so, we create a set of dashboards, drill through you can ask it questions. It's incredible, the value it's providing to those customers. And really, we did in record time. The customer feedback and adoption has been super exciting.

Jennifer McIver

Yeah, I had the pleasure of being part of the group with Manish, and we'll talk a little bit about Haemi as well. She did an amazing job with the database and the data, but the pilot program, to me, was by far one of my favorite experiences, because we had Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions clients there, which are always great to work with. But we also had law firms join in, for major law firms, and it was really fun to hear their side and to make sure that we were creating something that truly is leading the industry and providing data. It was amazing. So I loved being a part of that. I do want to dive in a little bit more about DynamicInsights, Brian, and not only its purpose, but the data work that we're doing to go back to that great customer experience.

Brian Jorgenson

Yeah, a product like this, it is all about the data. As you know, we have a full-time data curation team, and being from Texas, I like to call them data wranglers. So, they're responsible for really refining and enhancing all that data that we work with. You know, we get the data from all these different customers. It doesn't come in perfect by any means, and so we have to invest a significant amount of resources in really cleaning it, organizing it, and optimizing it for use. And you brought up Haemi Jung. She's our world class legal data expert leading that team, and so under her guidance, she's partnered with our AI experts, our machine learning experts and some people in data rules to really help classify that data effectively. And the big thing is matter classifications. And so we have pretty advanced matter mapping techniques that take subsets of matter descriptions and create standardized matter areas. And then we've created a benchmark taxonomy, grouping those matters really to create those clear and actionable insights, and this standardization really helps the customers and our clients really easily understand and leverage the data for that strategic decision making that they need to have.

Jennifer McIver

Brian, I'm going to jump in right there, because I think that's really important. You know, I've worked with several solutions, and data is really important. In getting that data in, it's really difficult to have every single corporate legal team want to classify something the same. And so the fact that we spend so much time after the fact really looking at that and leveraging top of the line technology, I think that's just it speaks a lot to the work that you and your team are doing.

Brian Jorgenson

Like you said, it’s the critical part. So, the other big thing is data anonymity and that integrity, right? And so we've got things like we require a minimum of 10 timekeepers in three organizations at all levels. So, an easy example is from city to states. We also track timekeepers over the last three years to monitor the growth as their careers progress, and the rates as well. And all of these rules, they've really been popular amongst customers as they really provide that true benchmarking without compromising confidentiality, which is critical in this process.

Jennifer McIver

I think that's great. And not only are we leveraging that AI behind the scenes, as we were working with the data. You know, even in LegalVIEW, DynamicInsights, we do have a little bit of AI hidden there in the in the summary dashboard, which I think is great looking at key highlights and making it dynamic. When you're looking at, say, a certain city or a certain country, you absolutely can see really, really quickly, what are the top highlights for those rates. So, I think that's great that we're starting to bring that into the product as well.

Brian Jorgenson

Yep, absolutely.

Jennifer McIver

So let's talk a little bit about future predictions. You know, we're starting a journey. As you mentioned earlier, Brian, we have a lot of data, and a lot of solutions really aren't giving that data to the industry, right? And so we're really starting that. I feel like we're one of the few that are out there and are really providing that data and being willing to do so. I'm curious, what are you excited about as we continue that journey?

Brian Jorgenson

I'm excited to see more about how law firms are going to utilize DynamicInsights. So during that development process, we've discovered about 80% of the Real Rate Report purchasers were firms, law firms, and this, I think, presents a great opportunity to understand what their unique needs really are, so we can further tailor solution to meet their needs. While DynamicInsights, we know it's great for that competitive rate analysis, we're by far the industry leader in that. But, as I said earlier, as we bring in that total spend data, I think it becomes a huge tool for marketing and sales for law firms, and I think it could be a game changer.

Jennifer McIver

I agree with you. Like I said, it's conference season. I opened it upt at Legalweek last week, and one of the things that was brought out is a lot of folks are looking to, you guys have the rates, but what about the spend? What about the volume of matters? Is that something that we're thinking about?

Brian Jorgenson

Yeah, exactly, bringing that all in, yeah. And then, so imagine being a firm now, being able to understand, am I targeting the right verticals? What are those industries I should really be going after? Are there cities and states where I could expand to that my expertise is really needed? And then those matters, where is the biggest money being spent on matters? And go and apply my marketing and resources to that you could, you could get substantial growth and just those kinds of shifts. So, I think it really is going to provide a competitive edge to law firms.

Jennifer McIver

We always talk a lot, I mean we're ELM Solutions. We do a lot of e-billing, and that's always, oh, it's the law firms that are creating the problem. Oh, it's the corporate legal departments that are creating the problems. And I love the fact that we're doing something here that's really, in my opinion, bringing the ecosystem together and letting us work together. And to me, that's what I'm most excited about. But Rich, I'd also like to know as we've launched DynamicInsights you've been involved in numerous updates, you've been involved in a lot of discussions, which I love, because we're bringing in that aspect of, we know that this can be used across an entire business. So what are some things you know that you think that we can look forward to?

Rich Stoll

First, I've really enjoyed the conversations leading up to DynamicInsights, as it brought to light that there are other people in the organization, such as you, Jen, that we as finance should be talking to. I mean, there are other experts out there around our data, right? I know finance, we think of ourselves as kind of the data gatekeepers of these things, but it really brought to light some of the folks that could really give us more information around our data and help us understand our data. Now, going back to your question, as I look at what others, at least others in similar roles to mine, would be interested in looking at it. It would be to tell me about how volumes are trending and deeper insights into rates, not just at the highest level, and then tell me where we're seeing changes in trends across both rates and volumes, such as within matter areas and within timekeeper roles, then also tell me why. That is probably the most difficult, but this is where we can leverage our customers and law firm relationships that tell us what they're seeing. I know that this isn't that far away, and I'm excited for when I can get that information. I'm sure there are many others out there in the legal space that would love to see it as well.

Jennifer McIver

Okay, Brian, I promise I did not pay Rich to say that, but that's kind of note to Product, a little nudge there. I appreciate that, and I think that we are really just scratching the surface of what we can do here with the data. And, yet again, I was at Legalweek, and DynamicInsights definitely got a lot of rave reviews, a lot of folks wanting to see it. And we're just really surprised and excited that we were bringing a very usable experience to the market that provided the ability for folks to find their own story. We're not an ELM solution provider now that's defining the story or telling the story. We're actually letting folks dig in and find what they need to look for and how it's going to benefit them and their organization. So thank you, Rich, like I said, godfather of LegalVIEW DynamicInsights. And thank you, Brian, for leading such an amazing team to work and to get this. And again, Manish and Haemi, as we've mentioned before, did such an amazing job working on this product. So thank you both for being on today and for sharing the journey and sharing a little bit about yourselves. It was really fun to hear.

Brian Jorgenson

Thank you so much.

Rich Stoll

Thank you, Jen.

Greg Corombos

Those were the words of Jennifer McIver, Rich Stoll and Brian Jorgenson. Legal Leaders Exchange is hosted by Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions, the market-leading provider of enterprise legal spend and matter management, and legal analytics solutions. For more information and additional guidance, please visit www.WoltersKluwer.com or call 1-713-572-3282. Please join us for future podcasts on optimi