Originally recorded and published on Orrick.

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.

CEOs Leila Banijamali (Symbium), Catherine Krow (Digitory Legal) and Olga Mack (Parley Pro) discuss the foundations and applications of legal technology with Orrick’s Chief Client Officer, Catherine Zinn, in a conversation that explores the power of computational law, data, AI, collaboration, diversity and inclusion in advancing the legal industry.

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Video Transcript:

Catherine Zinn: 
Good morning and welcome to our program this morning, it is The Future is Female: How Female CEOs are Building Legal Technology that is Revolutionizing Law. My name is Catherine Zin and I'm the Chief Client Officer at Orrick. And for those of you who are not familiar with Orrick, we focused in three sectors, a large global law firm focused on tech and innovation, energy, and finance.

I am deeply honored and humbled to be joined by three very accomplished CEOs who are also lawyers. They are Leila Banijamali of Symbium, Catherine Krow of Digitory Legal, and Olga Mack of Parley Pro. They're going to share their experience of creating legal technologies that solve problems to support people and to streamline processes, and a whole lot of other great ideas that they have for you.

And speaking of you before I turn it over to the panelists to introduce themselves and their company. I would like to let you all know and thank you for joining us this morning. It is a remarkable collection of individuals who have chosen to join us as participants today. There are more than 100 of you and you seem to follow along sort of a 50/50 split, between lawyers, most of you are in-house lawyers, many general counsel, senior and house lawyers. Of course, many law firm lawyers have joined us as well, including a great group from Orrick, and we thank you. There's a significant number of legal operations professionals. 

And then a special welcome, by the way, there are quite a few law students on the line, and we welcome you and we wish you well during this unusual time.

As far as the business people joining us, the majority of you have the title of CEO and or founder. So this is just awesome and really meaningful that you've chosen to take this time to hear from our esteemed panel. Given all of the experience that's represented on this program today, we really hope that you'll avail yourself of the Q&A feature, which is on the right-hand side of your screen. We do intend to pause just a little bit after 10:00 AM to begin to take your questions and conclude right around 10:15.

So with that, I've asked the CEOs to introduce themselves and their companies, and we're going to start with Catherine Krow of Digitory Legal.

Catherine Krow: 
Thank you, Catherine, so much for that introduction. Thank you all for joining us here today and a very special thank you to Orrick for hosting this event. So I'm Catherine Crowe, I'm the founder of Digitory Legal. Digitory is a cost analytics platform and service focused on bringing data-driven cost prediction and practice management to law. And we do it by leveraging data from E-billing or practice management systems. Data that is often very dirty or unstructured and transforming it into actionable insights, that our customers, law firms, and legal departments use to understand what complex legal work should cost and why. Create very, very accurate, well-scoped budgets and fee arrangements. Project manage, communicate around cost, managed budget extremely effectively, and generally excel at the business of loss.

Now, as Catherine mentioned, I am also a lawyer. I did complex litigation and trial work for 17 years before founding Digitory. I started off at Simpson Thatcher based in New York and then I was a founding member of their Palo Alto office before I joined the great firm of Orrick, where I was a partner for many years in San Francisco. And it was really that experience of becoming a partner and having to answer that how much question in the context of very, very thorny complex litigation that really is the passion, the why behind what we do. Because getting this right, is very, very difficult, but it is also absolutely mission-critical, not just for law firms, but also for legal departments.

Once Upon a time, maybe when I started practicing, the law was sort of exempt from the business discipline that was applied to other business units, but that is really no longer the case. Law firms and legal departments ultimately serve the business. The business needs numbers. It needs those numbers, right? And it doesn't like surprise bills. So we, and this really is much more true, even more, true now as we face and navigate the current crisis. We leverage data to help law firms and legal departments succeed in that world.

So you know that I am a lawyer. You know that I am a founder, but to really know what you're in for in this talk, I should probably share with you this. I am a data geek. A complete card carrying 100% nerd and I am that way because, through this entrepreneurial journey, I have come to see that nothing moves the needle faster or more effectively in law than actionable data.

And that term actionable is really, really important. Not all insight is created equal. So actionable data and actionable insight are the decision gray stuff. And when we talk about providing actionable insight at Digitory, we have a very specific meaning for qualities. We're talking about information that is task-level and well-labeled, to give you insight into staffing efficiencies, scope, unit cost, and value. It is accurately and consistently coded and that means it tells the truth, you can rely on it, and it is tethered to context, the why behind the numbers. Because if you're going to use data for cost prediction, you really need to be comparing apples to apples. And that actionable data is the beating heart of what we do at Digitory and it is the reason that we are able to answer questions about cost and value that have eluded the industry for decades.

So I want to close with actually a question that Catherine had asked us. What word would people use to describe you? And the first one that came to mind was determined. The more somebody tells me I can't do it, the more harder it is, the more I'm underestimated, and the harder I fight. And that's really important in what we do because the problems that we're solving are the black box of legal bills. The problem isn't new, but to really crack it, it took perseverance and looking at it in a whole new way.

So, to female founders out there, everywhere, who may be listening. I just want to say, find your determination, find that deal in your veins, and don't let anybody tell you what you can't do.

So with that, I thank you for your time and I pass it back to Catherine.

Catherine Zine:
That's great, Catherine Krow, the determined data geek who's been wildly successful. Thank you for that.

And before I pass, it over to Leila to introduce herself, I did want to take this moment to congratulate her and her team on a recent award. Symbium has been awarded the ivory prize in housing affordability for its work in mechanizing the rules and regulations of planning codes, making it quicker and easier for homeowners to build accessory dwelling units. And the ivory prize, this is just super cool, because it's very ambitious, but to create scalable solutions with a particular focus on housing affordability. Which is something that is on a lot of our minds, really all the time. So Leila again congratulations and tell us a little bit about you and more about Symbium.

Leila Banijamali: 
I keep unmuting myself and then someone is muting me. Thanks so much, Catherine, I really appreciate that. We're excited to be an award recipient. I'm more excited though to be on this panel with Olga Mack and Catherine Krow, both of whom I'm friends with. We act as advisors to each other. We've known each other stories, and we support each other, and that's a lot of what this is about. Yes about the technology, but it's largely about the people that you know and you work with.

And with that, I can't say that I'm more proud of our work with Orrick. Orrick is our law firm at Symbium. We have been with Orrick since day one, I should say Orrick has been with us since day one since our launch. Took us through a major round of funding seamlessly and is there every day for support. And they've been really, really wonderful to work with. So, I would highly encourage any of the founders out there at the early stage of starting a company. Even if you are further along, especially, is to build a relationship with Orrick, come to their events, and do more of these. It's been wonderful.

OK, so with that, I'm going to talk about Symbium. So I started Symbium with my two co-founders. We met at Stanford actually, when we were all there. I was a Stanford fellow a few years ago. I met my co-founders at the Computer Science Department and the AI lab working on a technology we weren't sure how to commercialize it. And you know, talk to a lot of companies, did a lot of research, some use cases. And then figured out how to commercialize it and launched it as a company a year and a half ago. We raised a large round, which we closed early last year. And now we just hit the hit, the ground running.

So what does Symbium do? So we call Symbium, the computational law company. And what complaw means is we mechanize the rules and regulations that are out there, we turn them into really intuitive, beautiful web applications. So that anyone can interact with them and understand how the law applies to their particular situation. So legal analysis on the law, that's completely mechanized.

And an example of a comp loss system that everyone is aware of is TurboTax. How do they take the IRS tax code and they create a web application out of a workflow, that you can use to understand, you know, what are my tax obligations? We do something very similar, but the difference is that it may be taken into six months a year maybe, to develop all of TurboTax, we could build a system like that in a matter of days with our technology. So the implications are rather staggering, because it's not just a matter of actually building the technology or building the web application that marries the solution to the problem, but it's also maintaining that service as the laws and regulations change over time, which surely they will. And to be able in a very lightweight manner to update those systems.

All right, so we have this technology, we have an understanding of what's possible. Where do we start? We decided to launch in the largest industry on the planet, which is government, and within government planning departments because that's the core of every city's activity. So essentially what we do is we have these complaw enabled planning applications that have the planning rules built right into them. So anyone, a homeowner, a city planner, developer, designer, or architect, can understand instantly with just a few clicks what's possible on a given property in a given jurisdiction.

And that reduces a significant amount of bottlenecks in the planning department. It reduces the processing times, it reduces you know from multiple weeks, sorry multiple months to weeks or clicks or days. And what it does in turn is it reduces the cost of construction, the cost to the homeowners. So this is a platform that enables us to really support this affordable housing initiative. And we've done so with the launch of our tools which streamline the development of accessory dwelling units. We've done that in partnership right now with about eight or nine California cities, which have been encoded on our map and available to the public at build.symbium.com. And that enables anyone to understand whether an accessory dwelling unit or also known as a second unit, is allowed on a property. What development standards apply, meaning how big can it be? Where does it need to be set back? How tall can it be and what the processes are that apply to actually get one built? And you can also drop a design right on your parcel, move it around and see what that looks like, and if you're happy, you can connect right there with the developer to actually get it built.

So this streamlined way of developing homes is our vision of the future. Everything should have that experience, whether it's construction, financial services, or insurance, every interaction with the law should be that easy. And with that, I'm going to hand it off back to you Catherine.

Catherine Zinn: 
I love that every interaction with the law should be that easy. That was a really beautiful phrase. So certainly last but not least, it is my privilege to introduce Olga Mack and before I do so, though, I strongly encourage everybody who's joined us today to follow Olga on LinkedIn and your other preferred social media outlets. I know personally, I look forward to every day to see what she has content to inspire us and to educate us. So Olga, thank you for your leadership in the community and over to you.

Olga Mack: 
Thank you, Catherine, and thank you, Orrick. Orrick has supported my career, and before I joined Parley Pro, and has supported Parley Pro throughout the life that we've had. And this is a beautiful event. Thank you for organizing it and making it happen.

It is an absolute privilege to be among my friends. These three women and myself, we have supported each other for a long time as a practice law, as we open businesses, and I did not start this business, but I joined a business to take it forward and this is the most supportive woman I know. And so I want to thank you for all your support to the community and frankly to me.

My name is Olga Mack. I'm the CEO of Parley Pro. Parley Pro is an easy-to-use, very modern, and highly collaborative contract lifecycle management platform. We have pioneered this technology called online negotiations. And online negotiations, in a nutshell, what E-signature companies did to the contract execution, we are doing to contract negotiations. We are essentially digitizing what I call a last-mile problem.

Everyone knows that negotiation is the most time-consuming and resource-consuming exercise in contracts and we are digitizing and streamlining and making a whole lot more efficient this entire process. In the process will also help legal departments and increase new law firms and procurement departments, to create, negotiate and manage contracts in a way that builds relationships within a company. That empowers everybody in the business and most importantly gives you actionable insights. So you can have an advantage in operating your business.

Before joining Parley Pro as their CEO, I was a very happy lawyer. A very proud lawyer. I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was 13 and worked very hard to become one. I'm a tech lawyer by design. I worked at Wilson Sonsini. I worked at Visa Inc. and I worked at numerous startups including ClearSide, where I was a General Counsel. I also had the privilege to work at a smart contract company, to build the ecosystem of blockchain applications. So I love being on the cutting edge of technology. I like having impacts and most importantly I love the legal community.

The reason I joined part of Parley Pro is that I saw a distinct opportunity to serve the community as people that I care about. I very much care about the in-house Council. I think this is the group of people that every day that's impossible and helps companies, and frankly the world to make the right decisions and propel companies forward. 

And in joining Parley Pro, I see myself as having an opportunity to really hold hands and for all of us to use modern tools and embrace the bright future.

I'm going to end on the last note that we are in the middle of a crisis and we as leaders can take this crisis in many ways. And what will happen when this is over, where we embrace a new future, there will not be a recovery. There will be a reconstruction. This is not a little event. This is a major disruption in our lives and that forces us to rethink how businesses are run and how we live our lives. And my invitation to the legal community is to reassess what tools you use, how you do business, and what impact do you have in the world. And really if you had complaints about your past. Reconstruction is the opportunity for you to build the future, and my prediction is that in-house counsel and lawyers will have a huge opportunity to have an impact on that reconstruction, the future of law, and frankly the future of the world.

Back to you, Catherine.

Catherine Zinn: 
Although this is just fantastic and listening to you, but really all three of you, and to hear you speak about your path to CEO, about your incredibly cool companies. Honestly, I'm reminded of how I felt when you, when you all first so kindly reached out to me and to Orrick to see if we would be willing to host and my first thought was, are you kidding me? Of course, we would, and frankly somewhat selfishly. But on behalf of Orrick, to us what we're focused on today, what you do every day, is really the perfect storm. It's what we care about most. It's tech and innovation. It's diversity and inclusion and it's community leadership that Olga, you touched on, and really all three of the panelists are heavily engaged in every day.

And we are like to feel that we are part of the solution with you and making the law better, making the community better. And it's in that spirit that we're going to dive into some of the additional substance of our topics today.

And Leila I'm going to go to you first and ask you to speak a little bit more about how technology is being applied in the practice to make law better. And specifically, I think you were going to share some thoughts on the practical application of computational law and AI and just give us a few concrete examples perhaps.

Leila Banijamali: 
Yea, sure, I'm happy to do that.  So I suppose you know, when we talk about AI, it's such a hot topic right now and I think it can be largely a misused one. It's not clear to a lot of people what AI actually means. There are different types of AI out there, and two, that I'm aware of. That I have spent quite a bit of time learning about thanks to my co-founder and CTO Abhijeet Mohapatra, is the learning-based AI, which is actually what's most popular right now, this concept of machine learning.

Which does really well when there are large troves of data in advance, so that we can have, we can make sure that the car is able to differentiate between the blue truck next to it and the sky. And so, it doesn't result in the unfortunate accident that we have seen in the past. That's not the kind of AI that we're focused on at Symbium. We're focused on a knowledge-based AI. And so with this type of AI, what we're doing is we're actually encoding the regulations, there is some manual component to it, but we're encoding them in a very compact format. And it works really particularly well when there are non-discretionary regulations to encode. So some things that are clearly black and white. If this then that. And then when they're discretion involved, we can hand it off.

Now let me give you an example of a world with complaw in it. A world with complaw in it might look like something that my third co-founder, Michael Genesereth, who's a professor still at Stanford CS, wrote about it in one of his papers whereas a cop in the backseat example, you're driving your car across the border, for example, from California to Nevada, and the car should tell you that you're going too fast. You know the speed limit in California was 65. In Nevada, it's 45. So you should slow down now and do it now. At the moment where you need to understand the law where you need it the most, that's when the law should come to. The car should also tell you things like, you should throw out your you know your a joint because it's not legal to smoke that in Nevada.

So those are a type of experience, a complex experience, one might have. Another that we deal with regularly has to do with planning situations. Currently, you have the planning scenario, I want to renovate my kitchen. You know, Catherine Krow went through this, I'm sure she understands the pain. You have to go to the planning department. You have to send someone, a consultant, to the planning department for you. Take a number, sit down, and talk to a planner, one planner at one window will give you a different response than the planner from another window. And then they'll tell you, Yes, you have to do this and go back, and here are the forms that fill. But these types of questions, Can I do it? Which form do I fill out? How much does it cost? These are not the kinds of questions that we found planners want to spend their time on anyways, and the feedback is that thanks to your complaw system, you've made our job more important. We're spending our time now on the discretionary portions of the advice, the code that we are imparting upon the constituents that come to the counter.

So those are two examples of complaw I can give and a little overview of the type of AI that we're working on and that's out there.

Catherine Zinn:
Those are great examples, and again thank you for your work. I like that you make it all sound so simple. So, Catherine, I think you had one more example. You were going to give in the application of AI in the business of law.

Catherine Krow: 
Can you hear me now; can you hear me now? All right, I hope you're all old enough to understand that Verizon commercial, it was funny then.

So we use artificial intelligence, and various artificial intelligence techniques, including expert systems, natural language processing, and machine learning, and we apply it data to unlock insight into what has historically been considered a kind of useless mess. And the use case that we use it for, that comes up most often, is cost prediction. I call it the snowflake problem. And I call it that because many lawyers really believe, and this did include me for a long time, that because every complex legal matter is unique, like a snowflake, it's really impossible to predict the cost.

Well, it turns out that when you apply these techniques to data and you are able to transform it into insight, even snowflakes follow patterns and those patterns start to emerge. And with a combination of artificial intelligence and data. We can predict costs in really complex situations with an unprecedented degree of accuracy and understand the activities that will be happening and the unit costs around those matters. So that's the use case that I wanted to talk about.

Catherine Zinn: 
Thanks, Catherine. So Olga, let's continue with this theme of these fundamental underlying technologies and their impact on the practice of law. Talk to us a little bit about legal service delivery versus legal practice etcetera.

Olga Mack:
Yea, so let's talk about impact because the impact is really, getting into the heart of what's in it for me and what's in it for the world and how will our lives change and should I be anxious about it. I want to talk about three items. I would like to talk about collaboration. I would like to touch on AI and I would like to touch on data. What’s in it for me and how will my life change?

So collaboration, collaboration is not new. We've had numerous technologies that help us to collaborate and work together. What is new and what's evolving and what collaboration means, and it's probably going to take a while to unfold. Our collaboration is quickly welding from sequential collaboration where we take turns working on documents, to something of simultaneous. Everybody in the organization contributes at the same time and reconciles various disputes and works together. It is, as you can imagine, when people work simultaneously as opposed to sequentially, without even putting much technology on it, you gain quite a lot of efficiency. And we see the trend in technology outside of legal and definitely in legal is that collaboration is increasing, increasingly simultaneous, and that is where the future is going.

The other part about collaboration is that our definition of collaborative behavior is expanding. We understand what collaboration means inside the organization, but what technology allows us to do is to collaborate outside of our organization. It allows us to see counterparties as collaborators and increasingly as simultaneous collaborations. So, this definition of collaboration is shifting and changing and how we practice law will be affected by that.

Let's talk a little bit about AI. I really like Leila’s description of how we all have a very dysfunctional relationship with the law. We assume that the law does not serve us. We may or may not know the speed limits. We may or may not know basic rights in the jurisdiction as we cross the border, and we are OK with this. Technology shows us that our standards are a little too low. We should expect the law to serve us. And we'll take this thought a little bit further, just like we have a dysfunctional relationship with the law in our daily life, we do not know the speed limit or we do not know how big is the building I can build, or what I can't smoke. Can I smoke? What can I drink and how much?

Knowledge of the law we know is not an excuse, but we also know that similarly in the company, folks have a dysfunctional relationship with contracts, for example. Meaning everybody, contracts are not a small thing, contracts in many companies valuable relationships and assets are almost always contractual ones. Yet with the exception of a few lawyers in the company, nobody knows what's in the contract. And contracts contain numerous business terms and most importantly, they are not operational and business people are impacted by contracts all the time and they have no idea why. And so that is not surprising why the legal department is seen as a black box. It's not surprising that everybody is confused and highly frustrated. What things like AI allow us to do and the cutting edge technology that Parkely Pro is developing is a different relationship with law and a much more functional relationship with the contract. Contracts should work for us, just like the law is supposed to serve us.

Let me talk about data, because I think the work that Catherine Krow is doing is fantastic and I love the snowflake example. What data shows us is that first of all we at this time, I think about contracts because I am deeply knee deep and we can talk about the value and risk of contrast at a contract level. You know, if you come to me all the as a lawyer and ask me, Olga, is this contract risky? You will give some meaningful, hopeful, somewhat profound answer about your risks and obligations and the value creation. But if you ask me, Olga, can you help me decrease the risk of all of our contracts by 10% every year? I will not be able to have an intelligent conversation with you. I will fumble and stumble and give you some sort of theory and some sort of generic answer about how all of that is possible, but it's not going to be an operational answer. What I will do when I go back to my desk is I will likely ask a paralegal or a junior member of my team to go through all my contracts, create something in an Excel spreadsheet, and then somehow with some voodoo, I will try to give you a somewhat of an answer on how to do it.

What data allows you to do is to manage your assets on a scale? All of the assets, whether they're contractual assets, where their cost assets, or your providers, whether it's litigation, it allows you to manage risk scale, but most importantly, it also allows you to manage the volume of scale because many legal creations are not just risk management creation, their volume creation. So it allows leaders at a company, at a law firm to have conversations with these C-Suite and board members that are appropriate, that are at scale. It gives them a seat at the table and they start speaking their language and that kind of predicts that corporate lawyers and lawyers generally will have a much more important seat at the table. They will speak the language of the C-Suite and board members, and they will manage assets, contractual assets, and legal assets and their risks and value at scale in moving forward to have a much more appropriate conversation.

So all of that to say is that technology allows us to have a much higher impact on lawyers. It changes our relationship with the law. It changes the way how the law is consumed. It changes the way it's delivered and how we empower others in the organization. So the impact is huge and it is my invitation for everybody, to really learn the tool and what's possible, and then ask the question how can you impact the organization you're in?

Catherine Zinn: 
No question in my mind from what I observed having been in this industry of business and law for over 25 years, is that the role of the lawyer has moved to the center of the business, regardless of his or her title, but it's certainly something that I've observed and will continue to happen. And right into the middle of the boardroom, as you've said, Olga, another a topic for another day, for us to talk about together.

Leila, before we move on to Catherine, did you have anything you wanted to add?

Leila Banijamali:
You know, actually, I prefer to move to Catherine. I think that was great. And yeah, I want to leave sometime, maybe for Q&A.

Catherine Zinn:  
OK, cool. Thank you. So, Catherine, I know from our time together and specifically we've spent a lot of time and you've been one of the leaders in the dialogue and the corporate Legal Operations Consortium and just in the industry in general. So I hang on to your every word to the answer to this multipart question. What do you see as the greatest impediment to the adoption of technology, and how can we best overcome the challenges to maximize the impact of innovation? Kind of riffing off of and picking up on some of the themes that Olga has laid out for us.

Catherine Krow: 
So no pressure. All right, so it is a multi-part question and I'm going to start with that impediment piece.

Why or what is stopping legal tech from taking off? Or really, there are ultimately the answer to that question comes down to fear. Whether it's fear of change, fear of it not being perfect, or fear of the cloud. Fear of not being able to send your answer. It really does, ultimately, come down to fear. For each one of those kinds of fears, there is an answer. But I think the best way to encapsulate the answer from all of them is to hear the voice of the client.

So I'm going to quote Jason Barnwell, who is one of the smartest people I have met. He's an assistant general counsel and head of modern legal at Microsoft, and if you want to talk about somebody I hang on their every word, he's one of those people. And when he speaks about this, he says, and I'm looking down because I'm quoting here lawyers run don't walk towards technology. And the reason he says that is because it's an opportunity to differentiate, to deliver more value, and to be what he calls a superhero because humans with some good machine equals a superhuman. So, there is so much more you can do. Do not be afraid of it, the clients are not afraid of it, and they want you to embrace it.

But the second part is, all right so how? And I'm going to start with what not to do. Do not shock technology and think you're going to push a button and all your problems are going to be solved. Technology alone is not a strategy. A real innovation strategy requires a combination of people and processes and technology all working in a complementary together towards achieving the same goal.

And the case I want to focus on is around diversity and inclusion because that's incredibly important to me and I know that's incredibly important to Orrick. And this came to me because we hosted a podcast from Diversity Lab. I'm sure you're familiar with Diversity Lab and the great work they do to advance the role of women in law. Orrick is one of the five firms who funded the move the Needle Fund. And one of the things they spoke about was work allocation. One of the biggest challenges that women have in advancing a law is the unfair allocation of career-advancing work. They get less opportunity to get it and they get more of the less career-advancing work. Work that is valued less by law firms and clients. So it's unfair.

Our technology data can show you who is really doing what. We can make that black and white so you can see if the work allocation is fair, but that by itself isn't going to work. You have to start with people understanding why it's important to write down what they're doing. Don't pay attention to matters. Say, I was writing checklists for four hours. It has to add on to that process where there's an intervention and people understand what career-advancing work is and what it isn't. A process for solving the problem and the data that tells you in black and white what is really happening. And when you put all of those three things together, now you're making magic. And now you're changing the law for the better.

I think that's it.

Catherine Zinn: 
That's almost, I want to end on that, but we can't. Before we go to Q&A, Olga, and Leila, anything you'd like to add? 

Olga Mack: 
I don't know if I can add any more to that. Magic is magic. 

Catherine Zinn: 
So I'm going to pause for a moment and just remind our participants of the Q&A panel to feel free to post questions to our panelists. And we will shift now to our first question, which goes to, if they will, each panelist hopefully would respond to this question. Which is, why is it important in your view, to have women involved in building legal tech? Who wants to take it?

Olga Mack: 
I can start. Since I come in as a former practitioner, a former General Counsel, and a former in-house lawyer, I can tell you, I do not know the number of hands, but I can tell you that this department has many women. They do. Many are in leadership roles, many are in decision-making roles, and many are in influencer roles. Yes, as I had a very interesting and successful career. I have received many emails and pictures from various providers. I can tell you there were a few Olga’s. And I'll just leave it that. And that's a bummer. That just means that the builders and consumers of the tools are not the same people, and they may be disconnected. And while empathy is a skill that many have perfected and can put themselves in the shoes of another. I would challenge anyone to imagine what it's like to be Olga, and what it means to practice law and lead the department from the experiences that Olga has had.

And so I do think that the point of view of the community, the point of view of a consumer, of the two, has to come through and it comes through empathy, yes. And it also comes through building by people that are, to some extent have something in common with the consumer. So I strongly believe that we will not go to a good place unless at least part of those of us who build the technology processes and the providers of services share common experiences. Know what it's like, for example, in the case of Olga immigrated to the United States when she was 13, did not speak English at the time, being a mother of two, and on and on and on. And that's a very different profile than an average profile of a builder. And so I think there's a huge need to make sure that technologies can serve the community and population at large, that the builders request consumers.

Catherine Zinn: 
I agree. Leila, what would what's your thinking?

Leila Banijamali: 
Yeah, I think you know, if you ask any woman who's been a mother and has tried to have a career. You know, two of us on this three-person panel, not me, but the other two have experienced this. So I've seen my friends go through it. It's really not on a fair footing. I'll put it that way. I can even admit I have a competitive advantage in those situations. Or if you talk to any woman who's had to find the opportunity to negotiate an equal salary, a salary that's at least as good as her male counterpart. Those are situations that in themselves speak to why it's important for women to be in these leadership roles and to lead these companies and to have these opportunities.

You can ask the same question about why is it important for any person, any disadvantaged person or any individual to do the same thing, and the response is because that's the reality of life. That's how we live and those perspectives are important and we need to be inclusive in that in that manner. So the alternative, where we don't have inclusive systems built into place for our work, for our leadership, are not reflective of what society actually, how society actually lives.

Catherine Zinn: 
Right. If the panel will indulge me for just a moment, I can't resist but to share, we agree here at work that you have to build in that diversity that reflects the diversity of the companies and communities, and consumers that we serve. And although we still have work to do in this area, I do want to just share three statistics that I'm particularly proud of and I know that work partners joining me in this that 50% of our leaders, senior leadership here at Orrick running the firm, are diverse people. 39% of our partnerships is diverse and that's pretty good actually, quite good compared to our peers, and really proud to say 60% of the 2020 partner class at Orrick is diverse.

So I think it's a commercial, but an important one for everybody to hear because we're really proud of it. Catherine, your thoughts on this subject?

Catherine Krow: 
First of all my first thought is that you should be proud of it, that’s fantastic. And one of the reasons that I was so grateful to be included in this panel is because of the work that Orrick does to advance diversity and inclusion. So, I'm glad you gave me a springboard to say that because it's a very hard sell.

So I'm going to start with why this is important with the data. The geek that I am, the business case for making sure that women are included in the C-suites is very clear. The success rates for female founders are very high. The success rates for companies that have women in the C-Suite are very high. And yet the numbers for access to funding and women and boards are abysmal. Women, female founders get less than 2% of the funding available, and frankly, in legal tech, it's less than 1% and that is absolutely terrible. So, the business case for making sure it is happening is absolutely there.

Companies are going to do better and yet the numbers are awful. And until we have more women in tech succeeding and opening doors and supporting each other, the way this panel supports each other, that's not going to change. Because pretty clearly the folks who left to their own devices are not doing a great job at diversity inclusion, particularly in the tech industry, and in access to funding.

And the second piece, is something that was touched on by the other panelists, is this empathy. You had asked us what words would you use to describe yourself. You know, I do think that empathy is one of them. I've worked very hard on that and that is so important in building technology, because having the ability to put yourself in the shoes of your user, especially if the user has different stakeholders in different positions, you're going to build better tech. And all of the women I know who are female founders are really empathetic and incredibly good at this. So, you know, as a business matter, as a technology matter, and then as a fairness matter, we're in law for heaven’s sake, justice is a big part of what our entire profession is about. And having more women involved in technology companies is just the right thing to do.

Catherine Zinn: 
Thank you, Catherine, and all of you for your responses and I hope I'm not being too greedy, but I want to just put out a sort of a public service announcement that I think ties to a theme that each one of you shared. So at Orrick, I work closely with our partners and this goes, Catherine, back into the changing the composition of the leadership and specifically boardrooms that you mentioned. So I just want to put out an invitation to every CEO or chair of NAGov, who's listening now, or to individuals who see themselves serving on, who are currently serving on boards or see self-serving on boards. We at Orrick focused with a particular emphasis on diversity, and I personally am quite involved in placing directors on both public and private company boards. It's something we do as a courtesy to help match. And I can't do it without the three of you, and particularly Olga, that has written on the subject a great deal. I encourage you to look at her books on effectiveness in the board room, etc.

So, I now want to go to some of the questions, additional questions from our participants. And Leila, this one was to you in particular and I'm going to read it as it is because it's really a lovely testament to you. It says that you speak so effortlessly and clearly in explaining technology so cogently and this questioner wants to hear pointers from you, and for the rest of the founders out there who sort of don't feel as comfortable explaining their concepts to others and just sort of general advice on maybe sort of that plain English way of talking about what you do so successfully.

Leila Banijamali: 
Yea, so I think first of all, it's a great question. I think that how to speak about complex, and the first thing you need to do is you need to understand what that concept is yourself. You need to understand it intimately. One thing I do a lot of is, I read. I'm reading all the time I read so much. I read whatever I can get my hands on a on a topic that interests me, it could be any topic.

And the next thing I do is I try and explain that back to people. And depending on who I talk to, and I'm not talking about explaining it back to my CTO or even some of our more sophisticated customers. I mean, I'm explaining it back to people who I know may not be so sophisticated or may not be in front of these issues on a day-to-day basis and see if they understand and can they explain it back to me.

So that's one way of knowing how to talk about things, is to try and understand how to explain a concept or communicate about it, come to have a conversation about it. It’s not just a one-way thing with someone who is not an expert in the field. Now generally, the advice I think to founders, and if I can just zoom out for a second, is that it's important to empathize with problems. So, I always tell founders, especially when I was a startup lawyer, is trying to empathize with the problem that you're trying to solve. Or founders asked me, well, you know, I want to start a company where do I start? I said, well, what are the problems that you have? And just kind of even if you have to carry a notebook around with you and write down all the problems that you encounter on a daily basis. That's really, really important.

And then and it's not just you absorbing that information, but it's also communicating it back. So OK, so now I know that society, I have this issue that I can fix with this widget. So now you take the widget and you go out and talk to people and see, OK, so here's the problem, do you have that problem too? Oh, you do, but yours seems to be different from mine. Or do you have this? You don't have a problem? Well, maybe the markets are not big.

So I think when you talk about something enough and to be as diverse an audience as possible, you will understand the commonalities that need to be addressed in a succinct recap of what the problem actually is and how to solve it. So that would be my advice is to absorb as much as possible, empathize, and speak to a diverse group as possible to understand, and make sure that they understand you.

Catherine Zinn: 
Yea, yea! Fortunately, this program is going to be, it's being, recorded because I want to listen to that again. That was great advice and actually, you know, it's interesting because I think.

Leila Banijamali: 
You can always call me and I'll just tell you again.

Catherine Zinn: 
You know, I think some of these questions have some, that are coming in, have some similar themes actually and going further, and I think you've already touched on this Leila and maybe one of our other panelists would like to pick up further on. I'm going to try to phrase it as sort of this balance between empathy, I'll call it maybe EQ, and the importance of taking staying in touch with the customer but also being objective in building the tech utilizing AI and these other foundational technologies, sort of. Would anyone else on the panel like to further explicate the sort of thinking on that balance between empathy and data in what you do?

Olga Mack:
I can talk a little bit about it, but.

Catherine Krow:
Go ahead, Olga. No, you first.

Olga Mack:
Well, this is what happens when two polite ladies talk.

So, you know, I think it's important to emphasize and it's important to understand the technology. But I think you have to be very careful not to digitize existing processes right away and instead ask yourself a question. How can we do it better to help our constituency, our respective clients to do what they want to do even better than they can imagine? I do historically worried about the number of real tech projects that I have observed and I've made tips for many and I advised many, that their need-jerk reaction is to look at a paper process and digitize. And I say it's equivalent to taking a buggy putting a motor on it and saying look, it runs a little faster, but I invite founders to build the Tesla. Yes, you can put a motor on the buggy, but why do that when you can do it that way? And the way to do that is to really understand your client, be highly empathetic, and then ask how can we do that better. And your client will likely not be the source of that idea. You're going to have to come up with a few and tell them and test it relentlessly, relatively, and most importantly, hold their hands as they cross the street to help them see the why. Because the great ideas at the end of the day of how to combine their problem with technology should come from you.

Catherine Zinn: 
Catherine, before we go to our very last question and close out the panel. Anything further to add?

Catherine Krow:
You know, I think…data will tell you things in black and white, but it's only as powerful as the willingness to act on it. So, you know, there's always got to be an understanding of how it can be used. So objective facts and an understanding of how people are going to react to those facts, they work in tandem. And so it's important to not lose sight of both, but if you hold up a mirror to somebody who is not ready to see the reflection, you're wasting your time.

So your technology without empathy isn't going to be adopted and your process. Also, the concept that AI is completely objective. There's, you know, AI the Golden Rule is garbage in, garbage out. So it's very important how data sets are, how the machine is trained, and what the data sets look like. There is a person in there built into the system and how that person attacks, how they solve problems, matters.

So, we tell our customers and we tell people to really focus on results and stop focusing on the word AI. In fact, I don't use it very much because it leads to a lot of judgment and it's misinterpreted a lot of times. To really focus on what are the outcomes that you're trying to achieve and why.

Catherine Zinn: 
So thank you for that, Catherine. And we have come to nearly the end with one more minute dedicated again to our panel with gratitude of course to all of our participants today, but particularly to the panel. I imagine our participants are feeling the way that I do. I admire you greatly and would appreciate hearing from each of you a sentence or two to leave us with. If we are leaders ourselves because we all are whatever stage we are in, in our careers. Advice that you have for leaders of organizations and maybe for those of you who are founders on our panel, maybe a word of advice to somebody who's just started a company or thinking about it.

So, Olga, I'm going to go to you first.

Olga Mack:
My only advice is work on your imagination, because if you can imagine you actually have a shot of building it and changing it. If you can't imagine, that's not going to happen. So imagination is going to be your big friend and ally in all your ventures.

Catherine Zinn: 
OK. Catherine, back to you.

Catherine Krow: 
So founding a company is very, very hard. I found the only thing harder to do than trying cases for corporate America is this. So you need to have passion. It's the deep well. You have to believe in why you are doing what you're doing very deeply because you're going to come back to that and need it to fuel you again and again. And with that passion, really anything is possible.

Catherine Zinn: 
Love it! Leila no pressure, but you're going to take us home.

Leila Banijamali: 
Yea, I would say listen to understand the bottleneck or the crisis at hand and be the first to offer to help instead of pitching and selling your solution.

Catherine Zinn: 
Thank you for that reminder. Great advice to us all. My thanks to the panel. My thanks to all of the participants and to Orrick for our colleagues here for joining us as well and for hosting. And so with that, we conclude our program. Have a great day.