Originally recorded by On The Road - Legal Talk Network - Feb. 25, 2019

Catherine Krow, former founder of Digitory Legal, is now the Managing Director of Diversity and Impact Analytics at BigHand. Digitory Legal is now BigHand Impact Analytics. To learn more about Impact Analytics click here.

Women helping women advance in legal technology – from Global Legal Hackathon 2019 in New York City, Laurence Colletti hosts Glynna Christian and Catherine Krow, both part of the GROWL initiative. They discuss their roles as GROWL mentors and talk about the initiative’s worldwide involvement in this year’s GLH.

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Glynna Christian is Partner, Head Global Technology Transactions of Holland & Knight LLP

Catherine Krow is the former Founder of Digitory Legal, an award-winning data analytics and cost management platform that helps customers understand and predict legal costs.

To me, GROWL is about women helping women advance in legal technology.

Podcast Transcript:

Laurence Colletti
Hello from the 2019 Global Legal Hackathon in New York City, NY. My name is Laurence Colletti. I'm the host for today's show and joining me now all the way from, I think it's San Francisco or on the way to San Francisco. I have two wonderful guests. I have Glynna Christian and Catherine Krow. Welcome to the show ladies.

Glynna Christian 
Thank you, thank you for having us.

Catherine Krow
Thank you so much.

Laurence Colletti 
Well, before we get to your bios, please explain to me the confusing logistics of the GROWL program. We'll get into the GROWL and what it's all about in the second, there's been a worldwide GROWLing going on and we'll get into what GROWLing means. But Glynna and Catherine, I know you guys have been traveling, and there have been some attendants in one location, then another. Can you guys explain to me, where you are right now?

Catherine Krow 
I am going to let Glynna go first because her travel has been much more confusing.

Glynna Christian 
Sure, I'm actually based out of our New York office, so I was there on Friday with the kickoff at our New York office, meeting with the team in advance. Then I hopped on a plane to be in our San Francisco office and I was in the office yesterday for mentoring and I'll be going up later today to help mentor and be there for the presentations and the judging.

Catherine Krow 
And I started, I'm in the San Francisco location, I was at Orrick San Francisco on Friday just to meet some of the hackathon, introduced myself. I'm about to head back to Orrick San Francisco to see where they are on their business pitches and help get them as ready as possible for the judging.

Laurence Colletti 
So ships passing in the night join up again, is that what you're saying?

Glynna Christian and Catherine Krow 
Pretty much, exactly.

Laurence Colletti 
Well, Orrick is beautiful. That was our first day at the hackathon in New York and we're sitting right now at the Microsoft Office in Times Square, which confused me somewhat. I was asking around because I couldn't find 11 Times Square and what they told me it wasn't the street so much; it was a square. So, I had to walk around the square, but anyway, I digress. Orrick is a beautiful, beautiful law firm in New York, where it was very nice to meet everyone over there. And you guys put on a really nice spread, I gotta say like it was top-notch. So congrats on that and thank you so much for getting involved in Global Legal Hackathon.

Glynna Christian 
Thank you. We love it and we like to eat, so we're always more than happy to put on food.

Laurence Colletti 
Well before we get into the GROWLing aspect of what's been going on all over the world. Let's get your bios. So Glynna and Catherine, you guys obviously work for Orrick, but what do you do as you're as your work there.

Glynna Christian 
Catherine, do you want to go?

Catherine Krow 
Yeah, I'm actually a former Orrick. I'm currently the Founder of Digitory Legal. We're a cost analytics and management platform using artificial intelligence to transform unstructured billing data into actionable data. But I was, for many years, an Orrick Litigation Partner. So, the San Francisco office of Orrick feels like going home because I worked there for many, many years and I missed the Orrick cookies. I've been very excited to try those again.

Laurence Colletti 
OK.

Glynna Christian 
Honestly, that's why I'm coming into the office today, it's all about the food.

Laurence Colletti 
I missed those cookies, so that's too bad. That's too bad. How about you, Glynna? 

Glynna Christian 
Sure, I am the Co-head of our Global Technology Transactions practice and I'm also a Co-lead of the auto tech and mobility working group. And very involved with our blockchain and AI working groups too, just by virtue of the types of deals that we do. As I mentioned on base in the New York office, but my personal home is actually here in California. So I go back and forth. I really enjoy both our Silicon Valley office and the San Francisco office too, so it's great to be able to visit multiple offices and see all the folks there.

Laurence Colletti 
Excellent, excellent. So we've been talking about GROWLing and that's a little teaser. So obviously GROWL stands for, it's an acronym, it stands for Global Rise of Women in Legal Tech. So, let's just start from the basics, there may be some people tuning into this episode. We did another one covering GROWL, but they may get to this one first. So, Glynna and Catherine, who wants to go first on this, what is GROWL all about?

Catherine Krow 
I can speak to that if that's alright.

To me, GROWL is about women helping women advance in legal technology. And when it was put out there, it came from some of the women I respect most in legal technology as a way to give back to the Community and provide advice to those just starting out and trying to make a difference in applying technology to law. So, it's an exciting initiative to help women help other women. For me, that is something that is a huge commitment that I as a took seriously as a partner and I take incredibly seriously as a technology founder.

Laurence Colletti 
Great! So we heard there was some GROWLing going on in Tel Aviv and what I read on the site was that there was going to be some GROWL mentorship all over the world at every location that was participating in the Global Legal Hackathon is that right?

Glynna Christian
Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, I think there was a GROWL award in Israel, and we've had mentors there. I know there are mentors that were in London today. For example, we had mentors in the New York office as well, and they're coming in and making themselves available throughout the weekend. Not only just to help the women's teams but absolutely, to help any of the women-led teams. But just to be there and be available generally as well.

Laurence Colletti 
And so from the perspective of mentors, and you've seen some teams come up and both of you have been mentoring attendees and participants in the Global Legal Hackathon. What kind of questions have come up and what have been some of the things that you've discussed?

Catherine Krow 
So, there was forming the ideas and who should do what and how to incorporate blockchain. There's just a lot of exciting discussion around where to start, and that was what I saw at the beginning, what bouncing ideas off of each other and trying to figure out all right, what's the problem to solve? And that's the starting point and one of the most exciting ones. Now we're going to be talking about how to make the business case around solving those problems, how to show your customer what the value is and that's an entirely different skill set. And it's putting all of that together and having it be multi-disciplinary is going to be really fun.

Laurence Colletti 
Excellent. Well, I've got a double barrel-loaded question for both of you coming up here. So the first one is this, what is the most treasured moment in mentorship that you've had at the 2019 Global Legal Hackathon? And the second part, so that's putting you on the spot number one, putting you on the spot number two is, what team do you think is going to win from your location?

Catherine Krow 
I cannot answer that question quite yet because I'm just at the beginning of the mentorship for me. My role starts in a few minutes of really, really coaching, but from what I've heard being discussed first, I have some preliminary ideas, but I am not going to jinx myself by giving an answer to that one, I'm afraid, Laurence.

Glynna Christian 
I guess I'm glad I'm not judging. I would not want to have to pick one.

I don't know who it would be. I agree, I think there are some really interesting ideas and I think it'll just be interesting to see what the final presentations look like and their business cases. I think they all came up with some really interesting ideas and like I said, I'm really glad I'm not judging.

Laurence Colletti
Well, how about a favorite mentorship moment?

Glynna Christian 
A favorite mentorship moment. You know, it's interesting that by the time I went to mentor yesterday and the teams were already sort of well in scott yesterday and just working through what they wanted to put together, and so they were extremely focused. So, it was really interesting to see. I think they kind of go through these phases on the initial Friday night kick-off where Catherine was there and saw all the idea generation and the sorting out what they really want to focus on. And then yesterday was like that day to be deep in thought and really focusing on what they want to do and start executing. Then what I'm expecting today is really to have more of those questions around the business case and how to make sure that what they're putting together is actually something that's workable.

So, there were fewer questions than I think I was expecting yesterday because everybody was just so focused on pulling it all together and making it all happen. So it was just great to be there to support that and be there if they had any questions. And a few things came up, but I think the exciting part is really the coming up with the ideas and helping to sort of guide, ‘Yeah, that's an interesting idea or that's really a problem or it's not. Then I think really putting together the business case will be where a lot of questions are. Whereas yesterday was just a pure head down, working really hard day.

Laurence Colletti 
All right, last question, so if our listeners, they want to reach out, they want to volunteer for GROWL, they want to be a mentor. How can they find you?

Glynna Christian 
Sure, I can be found on the Orrick website. You can also find information about GROWL on Twitter and on their website as well under GROWL. Catherine?

Catherine Krow
Yeah, and you can always reach out to me directly by email and find me on Twitter at CMKROW. That's my handle.

Laurence Colletti 
Well, thank you, ladies, for joining us today, and also thank you for volunteering for GROWL.

Catherine Krow 
Thank you for having us. We're so excited to see who wins this amazing competition.

Laurence Colletti 
Yeah, I know it's going to be really exciting and the finals will be exciting as well. We're looking forward to that.

Well, we've reached the end of the road for today's episode. I want to thank our guests for joining us today and I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you like what you heard, please subscribe, rate, and review us and Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, or your favorite podcasting app.

I’m Laurence Colletti, signing off from the 2019 Global Legal Hackathon. Till next time, thank you for listening.

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