eDiscovery Leaders Live: Brad Blickstein of Baretz+Brunelle
Brad Blickstein, a partner and Co-Head, NewLaw Practice, at Baretz+Brunelle LLC, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive.
A legal industry futurist, Brad has developed a national reputation for his insight into the changing ways that legal services are consumed and delivered in the modern marketplace. Brad is co-head of Baretz+Brunelle’s NewLaw practice group. In that role, he helps clients see the future – educating them on the industry’s evolution of legal services and their consumption. He also helps position clients for success by developing novel products, systems, and solutions, which make the delivery of legal services more modern and efficient. In addition, Brad is the founder and principal of Blickstein Group, the leading industry intelligence firm focused on helping legal service providers better understand and serve their clients and providing information about law departments and legal operations.
Brad talking about new service delivery models in the legal arena. He explained what he means by the term, discussed that advantages and challenges for law firms, and gave examples of law firms that have successfully rolled out new service delivery models. Brad also looked at this issues from the vantage points of legal service providers and corporate legal departments, discussed their challenges and opportunities and offering examples on that front.
Key Highlights
- [3:01] Brad’s background.
- [4:05] Helping law firms bring new service delivery models to market.
- [5:58] Delivering what may come next: law firms and new legal service delivery models.
- [6:20] What delivering “new legal service delivery models” means for law firms
- [7:03] Is every lawsuit really different?
- [8:49] The prospect of predictive system for law firms.
- [9:53] The commonalities: Examples of bringing expertise to systems.
- [12:18] Building and automating processes and decision making: The end, or just the beginning?
- [13:50] Law firm examples.
- [15:41] A combined approach: scalable models plus hourly offerings.
- [17:22] For law firms, a challenge and an opportunity.
- [18:36] Starting small – with a single practice group or client – and expanding.
- [20:41] How bringing new service delivery models to market differs for LSPs and corporations.
- [21:56] Law firm versus ALSP: not the best way to frame the discussion.
- [22:38] Getting a pie slice of the pie, or growing the pie itself?
- [24:01] Law firms and ALSPs working together.
- [25:36] Examples of the full triangle: law firm, ALSP, and corporation.
- [27:08] The role of legal departments: pushing firms, developing their own LSPs.
Key Quotes by Brad Blickstein
- “As we do look to the future, I do think a lot more of the legal industry is going to look a lot like the eDiscovery industry looks now.”
- “As the legal world evolves, if you look at it more like engineers do, you’re seeing more and more work that has more commonalities and is appropriate for process and technology….”
- “There’s a lot of work that can be done through better process and technology enablement that lends itself to these new delivery models.”
- “I’m a process guy. I feel like process comes first. You build your process and then other than maybe your leaders you figure out what people and technology you need to support the process you think is best for whatever you need to get done.”
- “The [people at the law firm] weren’t trying to squeeze that thing into an hourly billing model. They’re making more money with a, frankly, more scalable model. It’s hard to break your business in that way but it can be so valuable.”
- “We’ve left this duopoly where the only choices are the firm can do the work or the law department can do it and we’re starting to find new ways to do all this work.”