As promised, here’s the full video of Conan discussing (perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek), LegalTech, Brightleaf, and how legal documents get done in the land of multimedia megastars. Or maybe how they should get done.
Check out the whole story…and visit LegalTech booth #1504 for more interviews and analysis. Stayed tuned here for a MAJOR product announcement later today!
Brightleaf Corporation just released a preview of its video “What Conan O’Brien knows about legal document processes…and what he thinks about LegalTech. The preview, available below, features a quick (and perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek) overview of the talk show host/comedian/contract imbroglio veteran’s view of this weeks gathering at the New York Hilton.
The full video (and much more) will be available at booth 1504 when LegalTech kicks on Monday morning. Stay tuned here for more.
At Brightleaf we’re big Trinity Law Group fans: they’re super-sharp, well-connected, deeply experienced business lawyers with a model that perfectly suits entrepreneurial tech companies. Nice guys, too. Also, TLG co-founder Walter Wright co-hatched the idea that became Brightleaf and in our early days patiently raised and fed the fledgeling company until it was ready to leave the nest and take to the skies. So you know that: (a) they really “get” technology companies, and (b) they aggressively pursue cutting-edge solutions on behalf of their clients. To our mind, they’re a perfect mix of experience and innovation.
In this video, Trinity’s Dan Ryan talks a bit about the firm and its philosophy. It’s worth watching, especially if you’re in the market for some business lawyering. Also, check out Dan’s writings at (Lexis-Nexis Top 25-rated) The Business Law Blog here.
We privately offered congratulations to our friends at The Foundry Group a few months back when they raised their new fund. That’s testament to their record, their investment philosophy, their insanely hard work, and their overall coolness. As further evidence of that coolness, check out how their website has gotten a sweet makeover, going from ”Reservoir Dogs” to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (Feld McFadden Mendelson Levine???) in one take. We’re still not sure how they got Brad into a suit, but it’s a damn good look, and we’re glad they didn’t take us up on our “Jersey Shore” suggestion.
Really nice job guys. Now the pressure’s on us to come up with a similarly hot-and-identifiable pop culture reference for our next site re-spin. Hmmm…gotta go pitch the boss on a “Real Housewives of Bevery Hills” theme. Wish me luck…
Now that we’re done shoveling snow, we can turn to this interesting article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. The theme suggested by its title, “Big Law Firms Keep Lid on Associate Bonuses,” is hardly new or suprising. Given the overall economic climate, nobody really expected associate compensation to skyrocket. What’s worth noting however is this little graph from the Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group:
![[LAWBONUS]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BI619_LAWBON_NS_20101226160908.jpg)
Basically, there are 6.7% fewer associates than there were a year ago. And each of the remaining associates is billing just over 7% more hours that they were a year ago. Cool. Let’s do the math. If you have 93.3% as many associates now as you did in 2009, and if each of those associates is doing 7% more work, then that’s (93.3% workforce) x (107% of your baseline utilization rate) = 99.85% of 2009′s total production billed in 2010. So, despite all the upheavals in the industry, despite the layoffs and the client demands and the loss of transactional work, associate hours at the 50 highest-revenue firms ended up exactly where they had been the year before. Within fifteen-hundredth’s of a percentage point, anyway.
Neat, huh? Like much of the rest of the economy, large law firms contracted their work forces and are now trying to squeeze additional productivity out of their remaining employees…except in this case, “squeeze additional productivity” seems to exactly equal “make them work longer.” And last year they managed to do so in such a way that they ended up with the exact same aggregate productivity as the year before. Which begs this question: how sustainable is this? While those with jobs are certainly glad to have them, the article suggests that the associates are less than thrilled with the new math. Associate job satisfaction is at its lowest point in six years (despite the just-be-glad-you-have-a-job effect) and fell last year at 109 of 124 surveyed firms. That indicates that another 6.7% de-leveraging probably won’t lead to another 7% increase in associate utliization. Further deleveraging will likely impact revenue.
So, assuming that firms may be approaching their maximum utilization rate for associates, here’s the question that they face: as the economy recovers and client work picks up, will these firms re-leverage their way back towards previous, full employment levels? Or, like other businesses, will they explore technological innovation and process efficiencies and other new ways to become more productive?
Stay tuned…
Automatically draft all your deal documents at the same time!
If you’re a corporate lawyer whose life involves deal work for growing companies, chances are you’re intimately familiar with the National Venture Capital Association’s model legal documents. This set of eight documents is immediately recognizable to most firms that practice in this space, and whether firms use the documents in their original form or modify them to suit their preferences, most would agree they are the gold standard for venture capital investment transactions.
The NVCA says these documents “are intended to reflect current practices and customs, and . . . one of our goals in drafting these documents is also to reflect “best practices” and avoid hidden legal traps.” The documents contain explanatory footnotes and are widely believed to present a fair balance between VC- and company-favorable terms. According to the NVCA, use of these documents is also intended to “reduce transaction costs and time.”
And that’s where we come in. At Brightleaf, our goal is to bring intelligent document automation to lawyers everywhere. For law firms, this means helping them respond to client demands for increased value and efficiency in the way they produce documents. And the NVCA’s data shows that firms are producing a LOT of their documents. Even in 2009, an admittedly slow year, law firms drafted documents for deals representing over $15 billion in venture capital investments. And most people agree that the current production method for these documents is inefficient at best. According to the NVCA, “our industry on a daily basis goes through an expensive and inefficient process of ‘re-inventing the flat tire.’” The NVCA responded to this problem by drafting form legal documents everyone could use, and we’re taking the next logical step: automating the NVCA documents.
How did we do this? Our team of experienced corporate lawyers reviewed and identified each of the substantive questions and structural possibilities in the NVCA documents. They then used our Microsoft Word-based Template Factory to turn these documents into automated templates for law firms to use. There was no programming involved and the process took days, not months. The result? With just a couple hours of training, lawyers can now log into Brightleaf and draft the NVCA financing documents in a way that’s more intelligent and efficient. That makes the lawyers AND their clients happy. And we think this is pretty exciting.
Online newsmagazine Slate checked in yesterday with this story about how law schools acting in their own financial interest are creating an oversupply of debt-laden grads who cannot find jobs in the legal profession. While the article doesn’t contain much in the way of shocking new revelations, it very nicely summarizes the disconnect between how prospective J.D.’s view the market for their services…and what that market actually is. It also suggests–perhaps less stridently than it should–that law schools and student loan companies and even the American Bar Association have vested near-term interests in continuing to create this oversupply. The basics:
Supply:
1. The number of JD’s awarded by schools is up 11.5% over the past ten years.
2. The number of newly accredited law schools is up 9% over the same period.
3. The number of LSAT takers is up 20% since 2007.
Demand:
1. The number of law jobs available has fallen by 7.8% since 2007.
2. This represents a 50% steeper decline in jobs than that seen in the general economy.
3. This trend is expected to continue.
4. In an effort to preserve their rankings and continue the flow of incoming students, schools report job placement and salary stats that they have to know are misleading, making the supply look richer than in actually is.
On this last point: it has become increasingly clear that schools are fudging the post-graduate employment rates and salary figures that they send to U.S News and World Report and the National Association of Legal Placement. When they report that “88% job placement,” what they really mean to say is “since those students who have jobs are way more likely to repond to our questionnaire than those who don’t have jobs, and since we include temporary and part-time jobs as ‘employment,’ and since we’ve created thousands of make-work fellowships to keep our employment numbers up, we’re guessing that the percentage of our recent grads who are fully employed might be closer to 40%…but we’re going to call it 88% because that keeps the applications flowing in.” Also, when schools report a mean salary of $80,000 for first-year grads, they may technically be accurate, but only because the small percentage of grads who land high-paying BigLaw associateships disproportionately elevate that mean. The median salary–what the typical grad might reasonably expect to earn–is definitely much, much lower and so (surprise!) goes unreported by the schools.
The article concludes that there will have to be a contraction among the nation’s law schools in the future, with the better schools and the schools that are better equipped to handle new market realities surviving while the weaker schools fail. The logic seems irrefutable.
Or, if you’re Massachusetts, you could choose this time to launch a brand new state law school.
Watch this. I did. Then I laughed so forcibly that the bad, tepid coffee I was trying to choke down spit-sprayed all over my computer. Now I have to call IT. They will not amused. But you will be amused. If you watch this.
We’ve written before about Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plan to market a coca leaf-based soft drink called Coca-Colla. We’ve even suggested some trademark strategies that Evo might pursue as he follows this dream. Because what’s the point of working your way up to head of state if you can’t use the position to infringe on the word’s best known trademark? It’s good to be El Presidente, after all.
So, imagine our delight when we saw this week that during a friendly soccer match, our pal Evo intentionally kneed an opposing player in a, um, politically sensistive area.
Our minds literally reeled under the weight of all the jokes that occured to us immediately upon viewing this. Sadly, none of them are fit for publication on a work blog. Let’s just say that as election season fast approaches here in the U.S., we’d all like to see this sort of thing added to the stale debate format we’re currently stuck with.
You go Evo. Sit next to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at your next UN visit and recreate this act. You’ll be the most beloved leader in the world.
Jeff Zucker announced today that he was leaving NBC upon completion of the Comcast merger in a few months. This surprised nobody. Comcast isn’t ponying up almost $14B so that it can leave the network in the hands of the man who oversaw its precipitous dive from #1 to #4 in the ratings. And it isn’t letting its flagship be captained by the man whose handling of the Olympics and Leno debacles alone had the peacock hemorrhaging nearly a quarter billion in losses last year.
Still, if you read Jeff Zucker’s own comments in the press release, you might actually for a minute believe that this was somehow Jeff Zucker’s decision, or that it was done out of the deep goodness of the altruistic heart of Jeff Zucker. And that might confuse you, or confound your sense of how the world should work.
Fear not. Thanks to our homegrown Interpreter technology, our backgrounds in law and marketing–and to an intensive Berlitz tutorial–we at Brightleaf speak fluent Pressrelease. Please…allow us to translate for you:
————————————————–
[This means "September 24th, 2010, a little bit before lunchtime. Mmmmm....lunchtime."]
["Co" as used here means "company" and not "country." Or "cosmos." Pity. It would be cool if he were actually forced to leave the cosmos. Like those bad guys in Superman II *sigh*]
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[The above are a list of social media and social media tools. Despite the fact that they are used daily by several hundred million users and profoundly impact his industry's operating model, Jeff Zucker barely knows what these things are. He believes them to be worthless.]
By Nat Worden
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
[Nat Worden is a writer. Jeff Zucker barely knows what these things are either. And he believes them to be worthless too. If he had his way, he'd replace them all with reality show producers. Or, maybe, out of blind panic, he'd replace the network's entire script-written 10PM line-up with a lame talk-show that re-hashes the same three two tired schticks over and over and over to a rapidly aging audience. Oh...wait...he did do that.]
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker confirmed widespread speculation that he will leave the media giant after its corporate parent, General Electric Corp. (GE), completes a deal to sell a majority stake of the company to Comcast Corp. (CMCSA), the nation’s largest cable provider.
[The door is closing Jeffrey. Be on the other side of it, please.]
The move was Comcast’s call, according to a person familiar with the matter.
[Hello...Jeff? Comcast calling. Get. Out. Now. Seriously dude...what did you expect? When you took over the network's programming, it was #1. Now it's #4. One of the three networks now ahead of us was barely in existence when you took over. And the friggin' CW is about one Gossip Girl spin-off from overtaking us too. At the rate you're going, we'd be behind the DuMont Network by May sweeps. So we repeat. Get. Out. Now.]
In a memo to employees, Zucker said the deal’s closing is still months away, and he will remain in his job until then, and he will continue to approach his job “with the long-term interest of the company in mind.”
["If I leave now, I won't be able to negotiate as much severance. So I will cling to my desk like a baby koala to its milk-laden mama."]
“Now, it is clear to me that this is the right decision for me and for the company,” said Zucker, who has spent his entire 24-year career at NBC. “Comcast will be a great new steward, just as GE has been, and they deserve the chance to implement their own vision.”
["My vision? When I took over the network I added another hour of the Today Show, expanded thirty-minute sitcoms into forty-minute sitcoms, and dumped a truckload of money onto the cast of "Friends" so they'd do one last season that nobody would watch because their premise had long since run out. My entire tenure is one long string of cloning things that already exist and force-feeding more of those things to the public. In my career-defining move, I put Jay Leno into five primetime slots a week, creating what Entertainment Weekly would call the absolute worst show of 2009. I once ran four primetime episodes of Deal or No Deal in a six-day period. Wall-to-wall Howie Mandel... that's my vision. THAT'S...MY...VISION. Deal with it.]
He added that he has yet to contemplate what his next career move will be, but he “wanted to be honest with you about this news as soon as I could.”
["Even I can't see anyone ever hiring me again...but I wanted to pretend that my departure was at least a little bit voluntary so I'm releasing this news before anyone else does. But if I'm still here in February, they will bury me under the ice at the Rockefeller Plaza rink."]
Comcast’s chief operating officer, Steve Burke, a former Disney executive, is expected to take the reins at NBCU. Previously, the companies said Zucker would report to Burke, who would oversee the merger.
[Comcast: "You didn't really think we were serious when we said that, did you? C'mon...he programmed four primetime hours of Howie Mandel into six days. That's practically a war crime."]
Comcast’s landmark deal to control NBCU has been held in limbo since it was announced last year, subject to a regulatory approval process in Washington, D.C., that has grown heated at times amid controversy over the consolidation of media. For his part, Zucker had assumed an awkward position, since many observers have expected him to lose his job.
["Why would everyone expect me to lose my job? Just because a New York Times article called me "the most destructive media executive to ever exist?" That's a reason?]
Zucker presided over a difficult period for the company as prime-time ratings for its broadcast network plummeted to last place, while the rise of digital media and the decline of the U.S. advertising market has weighed on its overall business.
["So, I completely missed the boat on this Interwebs thing. Big deal. It's a fad--the CB radio of its generation. But I made it so you can watch entire episodes of Minute to Win It online. Hey--idea storm--maybe I'll supersize Deal or No Deal and Minute to Win It and use 'em to replace the Thursday night sitcoms. Three hours of Mandel and Fieri--that's what America wants."]
For his part, Zucker turned NBCU into a company largely comprised of cable networks, which have been the most profitable and resilient businesses in media, and he famously commented that the broadcast television model was “broken.”
["...And I should know: I broke it when I greenlighted "Joey".]
-By Nat Worden, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2472; nat.worden@dowjones.com