Art of the Possible: How Legal Data Intelligence Leaders Create New Opportunities

The word “scientist” owes its origins to William Whewell, a 19th-century English polymath. A Renaissance man who made important contributions to mathematics, astronomy, geology, and minerology, Whewell introduced the term to describe someone whose interests were not limited to a single sphere or specialization. Not a chemist, physicist, or botanist but someone who could apply the scientific method to different types of natural sciences; someone animated by intellectual challenges across a wide swathe of scientific disciplines.

A close corollary exists in the attitudes, traits, and the unique careers forged by many of the founding members of the Legal Data Intelligence project. Whether they started out as contract attorneys, ediscovery professionals, or due diligence attorneys, they have now found ways to parlay their skills and interests into a broad range of practice areas and find new career avenues off the beaten path. As Legal Data Intelligence practitioners, they specialize not in one use case alone but leverage the power of data analysis to solve problems and create value across different types of legal work.

Beyond eDiscovery: How Josh Kreamer Built a New Team at AstraZeneca

Consider Josh Kreamer, a founding member of the Legal Data Intelligence project, who joined AstraZeneca in 2018 as a manager in Legal IT. “I was acting as a bridge between IT and legal,” he told David Cowen in a recent episode of the “Careers and the Business of Law: The Legal Data Intelligence Series” podcast. "I got to see both sides of it.”

Kreamer realized there was an opportunity to increase profitability and generate cost savings by building an in-house eDiscovery team

Building an internal group inside a massive company was like wading into untested waters. “If you want to build a drug franchise within a drugmaker that’s one thing. But if you want to build a new legal team inside a company that’s looking to cut legal costs, that’s quite another,” Kreamer explained.

But Kreamer’s belief in the vision prevailed. “Our team saved over $20 million in its first three years by building services focused on data. We also brought in some AI tools early on that we then showed could be used in other areas of the business. I was able to leverage those wins in support of my next business case and then the next one and so on until we had everyone and everything we needed in place to start generating significant ROI.”

The wins led Kreamer and his team to think of how the eDiscovery services team could be utilized more broadly across the business. “By then, we weren’t just thinking about building a bigger eDiscovery program. Ultimately, we became a shared service organization leveraging Legal Data Intelligence to support functions in different areas all across the business, from HR to M&A."

Earlier this year, Kreamer joined Fileread, a legal startup, as their Chief Strategy Officer and General Counsel.

How Scott Milner Delivers More Value Than Asked For

“I can solve the problem that the client gives me, but my goal is to give them a little bit more,” said Scott Milner, a Legal Data Intelligence founding member and partner and global practice leader of Morgan Lewis’ eData Practice Group.

Milner offered an instructive example. When his team was tasked with routine contract analytics work for a client, they went a step further and identified price escalation clauses that allowed the client to increase prices. Because the client was unaware of the clauses, they were losing out on the opportunity to increase their revenue.

“If you are an in-house legal team, that additional layer of intelligence is power. You are no longer a cost center. You are avoiding revenue leakage,” Milner said.

How Farrah Pepper Created a New Role for Herself

in 2018 Farrah Pepper—then the global discovery counsel at General Electric—was interviewing with Marsh McLennan. Pepper, who was being recruited to build and lead Marsh McLennan’s discovery program, already had considerable discovery experience under her belt.

"The deeper I got into discovery, the more I saw that it could help solve a whole range of problems. You're great with tech. You're great with people. You're basically a Swiss Army knife of skills that can solve problems for a corporation,” she told Cowen during an episode of his podcast.

Instead of accepting another discovery role, Pepper made an altogether different pitch to the hiring manager, who was Marsh McLennan’s general counsel at the time. "I didn’t want to repeat exactly what I had done before. And my vision was an innovation-based role that was broader in remit than discovery. I proposed the idea of having a legal innovation and technology team, not a discovery team.”

The title she coined and the role she was ultimately hired for was chief legal innovation counsel (CLIC). True to its name, Pepper’s role involves a variety of work streams at the intersection of legal, technology, and the innovative use of data. Discovery is but one of these work streams; the rest include projects such as data subject access requests (DSARs), investigations, merger and acquisition due diligence, and a growing list of internal technology tools that she has launched with the help of a team of technologists.

Evolve Your Career with Legal Data Intelligence

Whether the Legal Data Intelligence framework appears to align with the work you’re already doing, or appeals to you as a professional path forward, now is the time to act.

Reach out to us at info@legaldataintelligence.org to share your feedback or find out how you can get involved.