Originally recorded by Technically Legal - June 1, 2018

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.

For Episode 10, we connected with Zach Abramowitz in Las Vegas during the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) conference. We were also lucky enough to snag an interview with Catherine Krow, also an attorney and the founder of Digitory Legal, a cloud based legal budgeting and resource management platform. Digitory Legal is a great tool to help lawyers and their clients craft realistic and more accurate budgets for their legal matters.

To listen to Catherine's piece, skip to 10:59.

I came to the realization that the legal profession really needed to evolve, and what was happening was law departments were and still are under enormous pressure to do more with less, and you could see that pressure in the meteoric rise of legal operations and legal procurement.

Podcast Transcript between Chad and Catherine:

Chad Main
We’re going to step away from our talk with Zach for a few minutes, because now it’s time in the podcast for our legal tech founders segment. This is a time where we sit down and talk to a legal tech founder about the apps they’re developing.

This week we talked to a person so nice, she did this interview twice because we ran into some technical difficulties. We talked to Catherine Krow, the founder of Digitory Legal, another one of these apps that I wish would have been around when I was still practicing.

Digitory Legal permits lawyers to put together realistic budgets for their clients and pulls from real world data. It also permits clients to put together real world budgets for their lawyers. All right, Catherine. Thanks for being here today. Tell us a little bit about Digitory.

Catherine Krow
Digitory Legal is a cost management and analytics platform for law firms and clients that was built to help them succeed in the modern legal market. What I mean by that is a market that is moving more and more to alternative fee arrangements and budget based pricing, even for the most complex matters.

Chad Main
Tell me specifically, what does it do?

Catherine Krow
What Digitory Legal does is deliver a deep understanding of cost, how customers focus on resource management, and provides really clear communications, both internally and externally, around expectations. Internally, it can be used to understand costs at a task and time keeper level, set price benchmarks, create accurate budgets and well scoped alternative fee arrangements, and manage to those numbers, and it can also be used collaboratively, with law firms providing budgets, bids, and forecasts to clients through the platform.

Chad Main
You were formerly in legal practice, correct?

Catherine Krow
I practiced law for 17 years, and was a partner at Orrick Herrington for many of those.

Chad Main
What was the inspiration to create Digitory Legal and leave the practice?

Catherine Krow
A few years ago, while I was practicing law, I came to the realization that the legal profession really needed to evolve, and what was happening was law departments were and still are under enormous pressure to do more with less, and you could see that pressure in the meteoric rise of legal operations and legal procurement.

These are job descriptions that barely existed a few years ago, and now are some of the most powerful forces for change in the legal industry. What was happening is an unprecedented level of business discipline has started to be applied to the legal industry, and if you’re going to succeed in this market, I realized that law firms were going to need to examine their processes, adopt new technology, and make some significant changes to really better meet the business needs of their clients.

That was the inspiration, and it was a moment for me, a decision point where I could try something new and try to solve these business challenges in ways that would bring lawyers and clients together, or continue doing the same thing. I decided to take the leap and focus on the business of law instead of the practice of law.

Chad Main
That’s great. Who’s Digitory best suited for?

Catherine Krow
Our target market is the Global 2000 and the law firms that work with them. We focus on the Global 2000 because I feel like the movement to alternative fees for complex matters is being driven by some of these companies, and the need to respond by the law firms that work with them is very, very powerful. It can be used by anyone doing complex legal work, but we are focused on that target market.

Chad Main
Where can people find you and learn more about the product if they want to?

Catherine Krow
You’re welcome to visit us on the web at DigitoryLegal.com.