The Legal Data Intelligence Podcast with David Cowen (Episode 6)

One of the defining attributes of Legal Data Intelligence practitioners is to be a continuous learner who’s always open to new ideas and ways of doing things. In this episode of David Cowen’s podcast, Careers and The Business of Law: The Legal Data Intelligence Series, he sits down with Laura Kibbe, VP, Deputy GC, Global Head of Litigation and Legal Operations and Chief of Staff to the GC at Unisys.

In a storied legal career that began with an in-house position at Texaco, followed by stints at Fortune 500 corporations such as Pfizer, Thomson Reuters, IQVIA, and ultimately Unisys, Laura Kibbe has never been shy about surrounding herself with experts and workshopping novel solutions to intractable problems. In this conversation, Kibbe talks about working on a massive class action lawsuit at a time when data was not default electronic; she shares how legal professionals of that vintage organically built a unique skillset that enabled them to run massive projects and find creative solutions to challenging problems.

Listen to the full episode and read a partial transcript below.

David Cowen: Big Data is not one thing—it's more than one thing. Can you deconstruct it? How many types of Big Data are there?

Laura Kibbe: Some people think of Big Data as a big well; as a big data lake where everything's sitting together. That would be nice. And that would be easy. But it's not sitting all together nicely. It's sitting in different parts of the world. It's sitting in different clouds. It's everything from your social media platforms to your large financial databases, to your email, to your OneDrive, to your G Suite. So you've got to go find all the sources, you've got to get them together because they don't live together, and then you've got to kind of turn them into a common language, almost translate everything, and then put the analytics on top of that to get your answers. And yes, it's what we have traditionally done in a litigation context. But like I said, we're doing it for a bunch of different purposes and way, way, way more sources than we ever had before.

If you're interested in how to get from now to next, my suggestion is legaldataintelligence.org. The Legal Data Intelligence folks have done a great job of standing up a framework. I think this is the place to be if you're radically curious, and looking to figure it out, and you're looking to connect with people.

Absolutely. The key is community. There were people who answered all my questions when I was coming up the ranks; everybody made themselves accessible and I think that's very unique. You have LDI members who will answer your questions if you reach out for any reason. Things like career pathways, ideas to bounce off, etc. We're all here for that. And that's how our community is going to expand.

I want to talk to you about figuring it out. Can you just talk about those moments where you thought it wasn’t going to work out, but it did?

What do they say in the management books that the best manager is the one who surrounds themselves with everyone who's smarter than they are? And honestly, that's been my mantra. I know what I know, and I have an intellectual curiosity, and I think I'm capable of learning anything. I don't know everything, but I'm capable of learning almost anything and surrounding myself with those experts and asking why and saying: “Hey, I'm the dumb lawyer in the room”. “Walk me through it”, right? And that's really, I think, what has been so transformative. It's okay. The older I get, maybe, the more mature I get in my career, it's okay to say, I don't know, and learn from it. That vulnerability has allowed me to build relationships.

If you would like to become involved with the Legal Data Intelligence project, please write to us at info@legaldataintelligence.org