The Changing Landscape of Legal Technology

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here today. Well, this is great. We're excited to have you here.

Sure. Absolutely.

My names Nicole Tineo. And I have been in the legal tech industry for just over twenty five years. My mom was a paralegal in pulled me in as a young lad, for every summer and spring break to come in and work at her law firm. It was a lot of fun.

I learned a lot, and I'm here today because of it. I started out my career as a trial seat, trial hot seat, back in, like, two thousand and three. And then I just kind of dove into eDiscovery when it became a thing because back then, it was all paper boxes. Right?

We were coding, bibliographic coding, and stamping and, you know, back in the old days. So, I worked my way through the eDiscovery realm, spent some time in DC, made my way up to New York, and I was there for a while, all kind of living in the eDiscovery space. And figuring it out, right, consulting with clients, consulting with attorneys. I've had a blast in doing it, but also part of my, experience in the industry has really been working with clients and attorneys in an advisory standpoint on kind of process improvement eDiscovery best practices, different things like that.

So it's been a fun journey so far.

We recently expanded into France and also Australia, and we've had a recent presence past two or three years in, in London. So that's been a big overhaul, but a lot of fun. Again, just kind of like working with the rest of the firm, meeting new attorneys globally.

And then also for our department, we pivoted from a previous document review platform to occur one. No names mentioned. And through that process, that's kind of a bit where my experience has been, is in that platform. So I came in and really helped the firm just, step best practices within that review platform processes, protocols, templates, different things like that and just helping kind of educate the attorneys and then also our team.

It has to say since then tech aside is diversity and inclusion.

The industry is not where it needs to be yet, but the strides it has taken, from two thousand three to now is just vastly different.

I think the people are, and I think clients are. And, you know, sad to say, I think the clients have a bigger impact than the people. There's the people in the industry who are trying to make the change but I feel like when clients drive it through that RFP process to say who's working on this matter, who's showing up in court who's billing on this matter. They're really driving the diversity and inclusion and making sure by following up on those bills that clients are doing what they or what law firms are doing, what they say they're doing in the RFP that they're really showing up. So I think that people try to drive the change, but the clients are really helping with the, you know, kind of with that adoption and with that change.

I it's still a mixture of both.

And the people that that you and I don't know if there's any on your team, but the folks that are coming in or you're you're involved in the, community, folks that are coming in that you're seeing in the younger generation that are choosing. Is it because they're fascinated with legal technology? Is it they're fascinated with eDiscovery or just they really like, you know, they like lawyers. I mean, I don't know against the latter.

You know, and you know what? That was my reason for coming in. It was funny. I always say, like, I never wanted to be a lawyer, but I always wanna work Like, that's my enjoyment in life is working with attorneys and supporting them.

There's not many of me out there though, and I think I'm a weird kind of bucket. But, think for the people coming in, you do see a interesting of the people that come in. They either have a tech background or they came in because they were an attorney or they are an attorney, but they just don't want to practice anymore. They enjoy the tech side of it.

And so they really wanna be on that side. So I feel like you can get a little bit of a combo of both.

Uh-huh. The boxes didn't appeal to people twenty years ago?

And even eDiscovery at the beginning, like, everything was a manual process of how you manipulated data, and now we have all these fancy tools and buttons that they can just press. And it makes the job a little bit easier. But a lot more fun too.

So I think people absolutely see that they see the technology that's out there, all the software that we have for legal automation and just where the industry is going in terms of AI. And I think that draws even more candidates into our industry.

Sure.

Yeah, before COVID, I'm the type of person that I'm always in an attorney's office. I just kinda go down the hallway and say hi to everyone, bopping, ask how a case is going that I know they're working on, if they have any challenges, if they need help, or just to talk and have a conversation, right, because we need that too. We need to step away from what we're working on in our screen to just have a conversation with someone.

So the education portion of that was much easier when you're in office. And then once we hit COVID, Baking those connections and having those conversations was much more challenging because you have the people dealing with the stress of that time of the last couple of years. Right? So they don't wanna be on a phone call.

They don't wanna be on Zoom. They don't wanna show their camera. And so making connections with people is even harder. And I think that's where a lot of our kind of separation, anxiety, mental health issues came into play too because we really isolated.

Right? So it's like, how do you get those people out of isolation? So you can remake those connections and help them and educate them.

So just over the past couple of years, it's just really continuing to show up and to show up whether it's in their inbox. Or if it's on their phone.

I do a lot of online courses. We just finished an attorney training series here at Quinn. We're getting ready to do a global one as well. All actual.

But again, it's educating our attorneys on, the platforms and the technology that they're using. So they can be successful. It's following up to make sure that, you know, do they have any feedback? What else is coming down the pipes?

It's lunch and learns from your desk. Emails on the inbox with, you know, a two minute snippet video that they can watch and come back to, or they can just watch when they want to. Right? And they're not, like, tied to a specific time frame.

So it's really being flexible and finding what works for them and you just have to, like, navigate different avenues. I haven't done it yet here, but at some of my previous companies, I've had, open office hours. And I really enjoyed that too, just like, hey, These dates and times, I'm gonna be online. Here's my Zoom link.

Pop on. Ask me some questions. Have a conversation.

And, you know, I never knew if somebody was gonna show up or not, but they did. And it was a lot of fun. We just ended up, like, you know, having conversation or diving into specific areas of tech. And it was really good because other people in that open office hours also learned from the questions that they were asking because so many people are fearful of asking questions.

And there's really never a dumb question. People say that over time, and it's really the truth Because even if it's a question that everyone should know or answered, that doesn't mean that everyone in the audience knows the answer to it. So you're helping educate others by even asking the questions that you may be embarrassed of. So I really like the open office hours though.

Just to start to get comfortable as long as as as soon as you start as soon as you start empowering attorneys, to know and understand technology, they'll come back to you for questions. And then you start building that relationship, And I love that because every time, you know, my attorney will have a call with a client, and then I'll just kinda, you know, jump in. You need me on the call. Do you need me to prep you?

Here's some information about the topic that you're covering. And you can, like, feed him that information. And if you're an introvert, you can do that, you know, through email. You can send them the links.

You can again go back to the video. If you don't wanna talk to them, send them a little video because you can review it and redo the recording before you send it to them. It at least allows a little bit of that flexibility. But if you're comfortable on email, stay in email.

If you are not comfortable getting on the phone yet, bring in a buddy. Right? I always tell my team. I'm just like, listen, if you're not comfortable talking to an attorney, get someone else on the team, get me, you know, on the team on a call with them, it will help you.

Like, if you're not comfortable with confrontation or complicated, you know, topic or something like that, just get somewhere on the phone to help you. You know, I think people are also afraid to ask for help, or to look like they don't know.

I'm not. If I if I need somebody else on the phone with me, I'll be the first one to say, Hey, I am not well versed in this topic. Can you help on the phone with me to, you know, cover this This particular aspect of it, people are always willing to help you out. You just have to ask. Jared, I think I've met my match here.

Sure. One of my favorite things to do. So I have my day job. Right? And then so that doesn't really enable me to work with attorneys as much as I want to for, like, one on one. And so I'll get a call that's, like, Nicole, I'm kicking off, you know, technology assisted review or, wanting to use these analytics, and I know nothing about it. And so, you know, I get on the phone with the attorney.

Or two hours, however long you need me to get us to understand it. And we got to a point that both of us got stuck, actually. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna bring on the platform at work. You know, one of the consultants that works at the platform. You'll try not to say name.

And I got them on the phone. It's not as easy as it seems.

I got that person on the phone. And you know what? They educated both of us, but that's the thing is that you gotta put your ego down. And, you know, bring in those other people because it's about the lawyer, it's about the attorney that's being educated that they're properly educated rather than just me kind of like saying what I know or what I don't know.

But at the end of that, effort, she came out and she was just so stoked to use analytics on her for future cases and to really showcase the tools that she had to the partners, and she's been extremely successful at that. She's going for a certification, and she's just she's really excelling. So, I really enjoyed her journey and kind of like, watching from behind and watching her succeed. I think it's awesome.

And that's what I want for all my other attorneys too, though. All the ones that I work with, I want them to have the same path. Like, let's make you shine and let's really, like, allow you to have the conversations that you need to with the partners or whomever that you're working with in order for you to, like, come to the table comfortable and confident because that's a that's a big part of our job too, I feel like, and lawyers is not having the technical knowledge or experience or expertise to come to a conversation with confidence. It it takes a lot to get there.

I mean, right now, even with the whole AI discussions, somebody opens that up with me and it's like talking about politics. I'm like, man, if I say the wrong word, if I say this, if I don't mention this tool, like, I get a little nervous around AI discussions because I'm telling you it's like a landmine with those conversations right now, but I think will I get to it. I hope so. I'm gonna keep doing my, you know, my research and educating myself.

But I think that's what everyone needs to do. Just educate themselves and have patience. But, you know, you can't ask ChatGPT for talking points about ChatGPT.

Right. I mean, that's a great question. It's not one that I touch on often because I more focus on the education component of it. Because even if I'm on a call with them and I educate them, I will follow-up with, links to supporting materials to help them learn more.

And if I know if they're prepping for a conversation with a partner or a client, I'll even send them an email that kind of forward ready, if you will. So they can just copy and paste it and, like, send it along. But it I think it's helping them, and I'm trying to and maybe, you know, this definitely might be something that I need to start implementing in my conversations with them because I try to remove a lot of the pressure. And even though that does add some pressure to them, I think it's a positive and a good pressure to apply because that's what's going that's what's gonna protect them.

And that's what I'm I'm trying to do is protect them. Right? So I actually think that's a great thing that I should even be implementing in my conversations going forward.

I would I would see the the boundaries of the conversation definitely fall within that. Yeah. Makes sense. Well, and the good news is that What you've established is that you're really their partner, right, that they'd actually don't need to know the ins and outs Yeah.

Right. And and is that you and your team or is that is that what you do? Well, me and Mike Seem, our global director well as the rest of our team and the managers. We all get on the phone with the clients.

I've got the client. The, the attorneys and have these conversations And we also empower our team to do that. We're really trying to educate our team. So everyone is well versed in those conversations, but I mean, sometimes they have to say, you get into such deep conversation on even email threading.

And there's a lot of trickery in email threading. Right? And so it how you explain what your process is and what that actually means in terms of your result. That's very important.

So it's a whole lot to learn. So we do have people on their team who are specialized in certain areas that even sometimes I go to, they're my go to person. They say, hey, you jump off this call with me. They're gonna ask a lot of difficult questions, and they're prepared for it.

There's like there's a lot of trust there amongst the team, which is great.

Yeah. Yeah. The team's been, they've been with the firm a lot of them fifteen years. The majority of them ten to fifteen years.

So They really have the institutional knowledge and built the relationships. And I've only been, with the firm for just over a year now. So it's been really cool to come into a forum where they already had these relationships established, and to see such a, you know, rock solid team. I've always kind of been on the opposing party of this firm, and so it's really interesting to be in it now because we always wanted to beat them for, like, calls and productions and stuff like that.

That that's another thing that I really liked with joining our team too. Being the beast that our firm is. It is extremely challenging to create that balance. Right?

The firm is very supportive. They have the people in place. They have the resources and the tools in place in order to help anyone going through, you know, with their help and wellness. Let's just say.

For me personally with my team and then also with the other managers, and again, our global director, they're very aware. Again, open Zoom policy. We'll jump on a phone with you. We'll give you resources.

What do you need? Do you need time off? And we really try to have those conversations with everyone to make sure that they don't get to the point of burnout. We're very aware of the hours that they're working.

We have the conversation to say you've worked this many hours, you know, do we need to do a workflow, workload reevaluation or anything like that? And I think it's the responsibility of whether your managers, directors, leadership, whoever it is, to be aware of that because the level of burnout that you get is like professionals and then also as lawyers is beyond anything that I've seen before. And I've been in this, a different community, an online community, and I hear their conversation, legal and procurement, and I hear their conversations about health and wellness, and I'm just, like, weak.

This doesn't exist anywhere, like, other places. And this is just legal, like, what we go through and endure on a daily basis, And we choose to be in this industry. Like, I hear about theirs and they're telling stories that there are, like, you know, rainbows and unicorns, and I'm like, Really, your leadership just like they really they really are invested in the health and well-being of their their team, and I love to see that. And I just I really wish and hope for our industry that one day it'll get like that.

But again, it's not there's there has to be a big impact and big change in order to really make that change.

But another thing that I do for our team, I like it just because, again, I'm big into health and wellness.

I do, like, oh, and, like, I try to do it on a biweekly basis, but I'll send out a, like, a wellness email. Just kind of thinking of ways to, you know, whether you're doing meditation or ways to take a break, ways that you can set boundaries and kind of like reset yourself in a stressful situation, how do you do a conflict, different things like that. And I just try to go through, different iterations of advice that I can give them and whether they take my email and delete it or they store it for another day to say you know what? Nicole's email didn't hit home before, but it is now and they go back and read it.

Whatever I can do to prevent them from having burnout or getting to a state of depression or mental, like, you know, mental health issues, I will do. It is so refreshing to hear you say all this. I might take you up, I might copy you if you allow me to. Your your your well biweekly wellness email.

This isn't gonna be a favorable response.

But unless you're honest change will not happen. Right?

It needs to come from leadership.

It needs to come from the partners. And and it just doesn't come from budget and saying, okay. We'll we'll, you know, take a portion out of this, you know, bucket and put it into health and wellness. It really comes from the partners driving it. It comes from leadership, driving it. It's just not like we have this available. It it's really hard to say we have these resources available, but I want you to work on this for the next four days and not flee, not being seeing the signs and not having the conversation.

One thing that I wish they would teach in law school right before they get out during the whole time in law school, I don't care when it is. But be mindful of your mental health because I think what happens and again, I'm not an attorney, but what I've seen happen is a tree's get out of law they pass the bar or, you know, they're just, you know, working in whatever capacity. And they get in it. They think everything's going to be roses.

And then they start hating reality. And whether you can handle the stress your first, what, first year, the first five years, you will get to a point in your career that is going to bring on the stress. And if you don't know how to be aware of your mental health, and you don't know how to prevent yourself from getting into a depressed state or not handling it in the right way, it's gonna catch up to you. And then you're gonna get to the point that says, wow, I am just like, I don't know how I got here.

I don't know how I'm this upset, and then you burnt out. And You're just in a sometimes unrecoverable state, and then people absolute the industry. And it's like that we need to do a better job with educated the legal professionals and the attorneys entering the market, and then also the attorneys that are already in the market to understand mental health issues. And how we can pro prevent that from happening.

So I'm sorry. I've kinda went on a tangent there, but I'm so very passionate about that. And there's so many resources. I feel like they're not said enough.

I feel like you get hired at a firm. You're seven years in, you know, eight years then. Maybe you don't make partner and you've had this expectation? How do you handle that?

Where do you go? What's my path? Do I have mentorship? Do I have resources?

And, like, I feel like it's not set enough. I always think that that needs to be a continuous conversation of what are our resources, especially things, like, I don't know if I could say I'm definitely gonna give them a shout out is the lawyer's assistance program because I think it's really important that the state by state support hotline and I feel like legal professionals and lawyers get to a place that they say, I can't speak up about this, and you can on a hotline. You know, you could jump on that hotline and have a secure and private conversation, and I think that's really important for everyone to know. So But I think that's wonderful. I mean, do you find attorneys coming to you for advice when they don't have anywhere else to go?

Sometimes, I say sometimes I definitely built relationships because I I press those conversations. Use see when they get to that kind of stressful point, or I know we're all up against the same deadline. And I go by the office, hey, you wanna go grab a coffee? I'm gonna go grab a coffee.

It's not pointing it out. It's recognizing it and finding ways to critically take them out of that moment and maybe talk about things that I'm doing. Right? So, like, man, I've had a stress stressful week.

I started meditating. This is how it's made me feel better. This is how it's changed. And sometimes people will just pick up on that.

Or sometimes, you know, you can just drop little hints, little bombs of ways that I am either doing something or somebody else's, but we'll make them think, hey, maybe I should try that because I'm sitting at that's completely stressed out about this deadline. Maybe I should take a minute to meditate or Google what that means. You know?

I believe in twenty years ago, we weren't having any of these conversations in any work place scenario, not just the legal industry. Right? And so I think it does point to some progress. Obviously, we have a long way to go, I think, but You know, we I think we're all making progress. Right?

Check your ego at the door. Show what for other people, be a great human and treat other people the same way. And just leave a legacy that you're proud of. Like, that's what we're all here to do.

Right? Leave a legacy that you're proud of, that that you can look back on and say, even if I didn't make a change or if I didn't make a wave, I was a pebble in the sand, and I made a change, you know, I tried or I impact in one person's life. That's just that's kind of my goal of how I can just kind of, like, throw in a noble pebble to change somebody's life. And through that, you really have to have humility.

You have to have passion.

And excitement, just the love for people that's really really what it comes down to. The law is so difficult because were bred in an industry that has opposing parties, and that is built around an argument Right? And so it's really finding compassion and grace and love within this industry to really still treat each other like humans. And help each other out rather than bring each other down. So What a message?

No. Honestly, let me gosh.

I just love it. I love being here, and I'm really grateful for being on the podcast today too. And to meet you guys at the conference a few months ago, and Stephanie as well. It was just I had a great conversation with you guys, and that's what I love about the industry too.

Whatever the top is really in a very positively state in a, you know, leaking out with somebody else, whether it be about legal tech, whether it might be about you know, law, whether it be about just us people in the industry and going talking about back in the paper days. Amazing. Like, stop and talk to people. And this is awesome.

I got to meet you guys out of it. It's great. That's another perk to be in an extrovert because I've never always been this way. So I'm definitely, you know, with that expansion, I mean, to meet people like you.