LSSO Podcast | Episode 3
How Law Firms Can Identify Business Opportunities in the Age of AI
Edited transcript
Editorial note: Prepared from the supplied audio transcription. Filler words, repeated phrases, and false starts have been removed for readability. This is an edited transcript, not a verbatim or time-coded transcript. Names have been normalized to Litera and Postilize. References to “Proactive” follow the conversation and should be checked against preferred product naming before publication. Statements about capabilities, adoption, performance, and market conditions are the speakers’ views, not independently verified findings.
Introduction
SCOTT LOVE: You’re listening to the Legal Sales and Service Organization podcast, and my name is Scott Love. I’m your host. Thanks for joining us on an exciting and in-depth episode today, where we talk about how law firms can proactively identify business opportunities in the age of AI.
Before we start our conversation, I’m going to share that our guests are putting on a live webinar called “Relationship Capital: Turning Contacts Into a Firm-Wide Asset.” That’s going to be hosted by Litera on Wednesday, October 28, from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Check the show notes for that link directly.
Let me tell you who our two special guests are. First, Bob Beach, Senior Director, GrowthTech Evangelist at Litera. Bob focuses on helping law firms modernize the way they manage relationships, develop business, and deliver client value. Working at the intersection of client needs, market trends, and product innovation, he collaborates with law firm leaders around the world to understand how changing client expectations, data, relationship intelligence, and AI are reshaping the future of growth in professional services.
Our other guest is Jody Glidden, founder and CEO of Postilize. Jody is a seasoned entrepreneur, AI innovator, and the driving force behind Postilize, an AI-powered business development platform for professional services firms. With over two decades in tech, he’s best known as the founder of Introhive, which he scaled to a $500 million valuation, delivering 40-times returns for early investors. Under his leadership, Introhive grew to over 250,000 users at firms like PwC, Deloitte, DLA Piper, and Baker McKenzie. Now he applies his expertise in CRM, ERM, and AI automation to tackle challenges like missing relationship data, manual processes, and inconsistent client engagement.
We’re going to talk about how their expertise can help you identify potential opportunities that your law firm may be missing and how you can get an edge over your competition. Make sure you check out the show notes to register for that webinar. Thank you for your support of LSSO, and thank you so much for listening. Here’s my conversation with Bob and Jody.
Understanding Enterprise Relationship Management
SCOTT: This is Scott Love with the LSSO podcast. We’ve got Jody Glidden and Bob Beach joining us today. Jody and Bob, thanks for joining us on the show.
JODY GLIDDEN: Hey, Scott. Jody here. Nice to meet you.
BOB BEACH: Hi, Scott. This is Bob. Really glad to be here.
SCOTT: I’m excited about this. I know this is an important part of business development that law firms can use to find opportunities in the age of AI. Jody, let me start with a question. I’ve heard the concept of enterprise relationship management, ERM. What’s a good definition for that?
JODY: It’s a system that helps you measure and index all of the relationships for a company. With companies like law firms, relationships are everything that decides what kind of business they’re going to get and what they’re going to get to bid on. Relationships matter a lot.
SCOTT: How is this helpful for them? They’re doing RFPs, and they can source opportunities that get brought to them. How can they find opportunities through this ERM?
JODY: There are really two parts to it. Back in 2010, we created what we called the world’s first ERM, which was indexing relationships for law firms. That allowed them to get better relationships, monitor relationships, and make sure they were hearing about all the RFPs they could hear about.
More recently, we started Proactive several years ago, which is really the idea of what some people call signals now. It’s being able to predict when something happens with a law firm’s customers before it occurs. Maybe a company is going to go bankrupt, raise money, or do acquisitions. We do predictive signals so we can proactively get opportunities before they even go to RFP.
Connecting Intelligence To Action
SCOTT: I’ve heard some people call that inflection marketing. What are the inflection points in the life cycle of an entity that mean there are opportunities there? Bob, maybe you can tell us how Litera’s growth solutions help law firms turn that intelligence into action, using the tools many firms already use.
BOB: One of the ways we think about this is with the concept of client engagement: for firms to understand how engaged their clients and prospective clients are with them. That’s inclusive of all the relationship activity Jody was talking about and the signals that are generated.
But it goes beyond that to bring together things like marketing. What marketing are clients and prospective clients consuming? What events are they attending or not attending? Sometimes most importantly, what work have we done with those clients? How do we bring all of that together so we have context around those relationships and those signals?
SCOTT: I know law firms pretty well, and the one thing in my mind that I’m hearing them all saying right now is, “I’m too busy to do this. I’ve got to serve my clients. I just don’t have time for this.” Tell me where this information exists within their firm already.
BOB: It exists in a lot of places, and that’s part of the problem. There are a lot of disconnected data silos within firms. Law firms are not lacking a lot of this information. It’s bringing it together in really meaningful ways. That’s something solutions like client relationship management, or CRM, are designed to do.
SCOTT: Jody, what can you say about that?
JODY: What the whole world is moving toward is really systems. We had systems of record. Everybody needs a place where the data is going to live and be centralized. Now, with AI, we’re getting to a place where you can have a system of work, where work will be done on behalf of teams to take the load off them and allow them to have more billable hours.
You’re hearing about AI agents and agentic workflows. That’s where the world is going more and more. When people are worried about implementing solutions like these because they think it’s going to put a load on their team, actually it’s the opposite. This is the system that brings the work and allows them to bill more hours.
SCOTT: Can you elaborate? If I’m a law firm leader in the marketing world and you tell me you have a solution that will free me and my team up, what exactly does that mean?
JODY: One of my longtime friends is a partner at a major law firm. The more you go up the ranks and make partner or managing partner, the more your job turns into watching clients, relationship building, and trying to be strategic. They can’t bill because they’re spending all their time doing that.
Do they really need to be doing all of that, or can they focus on parts of it? That’s where solutions like ours come in. We can have AI agents watching the clients and relationships and letting them know when they need to do something: go have coffee with this person, or reach out and talk about this because the company’s lines of credit are starting to draw down and cash is depleting, so there’s probably a bankruptcy risk.
Before, they’d have to spend all their time researching or hiring teams of people to research. That’s no longer going to be the case.
BOB: One thing we’ve talked about for a long time is the concept of the day in the life of a lawyer or partner. What Jody is talking about is being compressed into the hour in the life of a lawyer or partner, because of these tools and AI, and because we can now meet lawyers where they work, in the applications and workflows they’re familiar with. They don’t have to go to other places to do these things.
They’re able to spend less time on business development activities, but it’s much more productive time because they can leverage all the data the firm has through these tools.
JODY: Lawyers didn’t get into the field because they wanted to be sellers. They got into it because they wanted to be lawyers. The more you can let lawyers lawyer, the better. We happen to be in a great time where people, especially in big law and midlaw, can centrally set up AI workflows where the intelligence is brought to the attorney. They can focus on lawyering. It’s very well received.
BOB: I want to pick up on that point. Selling is not a real positive word within most firms and with most lawyers. Because these technologies bring intelligence directly to lawyers when and where they need it, a lot of this is positioned as a client service exercise. They’re actually providing better service to clients because they have this information when and where they need it.
Helping Partners Act On Opportunities
SCOTT: One choke point in any initiative is the partner not being able to execute. I don’t mean that disrespectfully. As you said, they didn’t become lawyers to be salespeople, but now they’re being judged on their ability to do business development, with demands coming from multiple places. How does this help a partner pinpoint opportunities with a high likelihood of bearing fruit?
JODY: I’ve had friends who were associates trying to figure out how to become partners. What they don’t realize is it’s not necessarily the best lawyers who become partners; it’s the best sellers. But they’re not taught how to sell, and nobody really wants to sell.
The best selling is when people just buy. You expose a need they already had, which they might not have known they had, and you don’t really have to sell. It gets purchased.
When a system knows what clients you’ve done work for, how the relationship is trending, with whom at the client, and what’s happening in terms of legal strengths and weaknesses, it becomes easy to connect those dots and notify the right partner that a particular client is having this issue and they should proactively speak to them about it. Those conversations turn into work.
SCOTT: I think that’s one of your unique selling propositions. You don’t have to sell; it gets purchased, because your partner is presenting a solution at the point when that need is felt and obvious. What impediments have you seen to firms implementing this and receiving the full benefit? Organizational or leadership impediments? What should firms be aware of?
Adoption, Change, And Growth Pressures
JODY: It’s usually people getting their heads around what it is. Any time you’re bringing the future now, people have to understand it, and that’s our job. We try to help them see that even though they’ve done it this way for 20 years, they probably won’t be doing it this way next year. We can point to half of the top 10 firms already moving over to this, which puts people at ease and creates urgency.
Most of these big firms have found solutions around the practice of law that let them do contract review, contract editing, and execute legal matters in a fraction of the time. They don’t want revenue to go down, so hourly rates have gone up at a rate we’ve never seen before, in some cases 10 or 15 percent per year. They’re starting to reach a ceiling where they know they probably can’t charge $4,000 an hour in a few years.
What’s the solution when you still need revenue to hold, but can’t raise rates anymore? You need more legal matters and projects. You either staff up massive teams to research clients and relationships manually, with a top-20 or top-100 account team, or you let AI do it.
You ask, “Why do you have a top-100 team and not a top-1,000 team?” They say, “We can’t hire that many people.” You actually don’t have to. Why are there only 20 rainmakers?
SCOTT: Bob, you’re a growth evangelist in tech. How have you seen people get their arms around making this sort of change?
BOB: Because of the ability to deliver work faster and more efficiently, there’s increased focus on business development. We have to drive more matters. There hasn’t been as much of a hyperfocus around business development in the industry.
Part of the impediment is past performance: struggles with similar technologies, or things firms tried several years ago that weren’t capable of delivering what they needed. That’s causing firms to be more cautious about new technologies.
But there’s a pace that’s required. They have to move quickly, because this is becoming existential for a lot of firms. There’s a lot of noise in the technology market, especially with AI, and thousands of providers doing different things. Focusing on the solutions that are really going to move the needle is what will help firms move forward.
JODY: They’re not creating more RFPs. How do you get more legal projects? Up until now, firms have been trying to optimize the RFP win rate. That’s good, but you’re going to hit a maximum. You have to uncover work the client hasn’t raised to you yet.
SCOTT: It’s becoming more competitive. Firms are getting better at business development and filling out RFPs. I think your solution keeps competition out because you appear at the moment the pain is felt by the decision-maker. Economic purchasing decisions are made based on emotional context, not intellectual, even though nobody wants to admit it. If I’m feeling pain and you reach out at the right time, I’m going to take that call.
BOB: Some of that is actually before the pain is felt. The real advantage is when the law firm or relationship partner learns something before their client knows about it.
JODY: Most of this work gets done between a partner and the general counsel, but often the work actually occurs in another department. A mass layoff, bankruptcy restructuring, or money raise may be coming, and the general counsel hasn’t been involved yet. The work is brewing in the background.
We think of RFPs in three ways. What are the ones you can get included in that you wouldn’t have otherwise because you found out without being notified by the client? You know the work exists, reach out, and get included.
Where can you get an advantage because you’ve built the relationship in advance and increased your win rate?
And where can you skip the RFP altogether because you found out before everybody?
You add those three things up. I love the book Atomic Habits, where they talk about a 5 percent advantage stacked three ways being a really big advantage.
SCOTT: It scales the advantage and gives outsized returns. It’s almost like a time-travel machine that takes you 24 hours into the future. You see things nobody else sees and are at the inflection point where a crisis, a decision-maker’s discomfort, and your solution converge. You get the work, have an advantage, or at least get inserted in the RFP process.
JODY: That’s right. You’re at the starting line of the race, and they’re still getting in the car.
Examples From Law Firms
SCOTT: Tell me a story of a firm you worked with. You don’t have to name it. What problems did they have, what did you advise, what action steps did they take, and what were the results?
JODY: Fairly recently, I was dealing with a firm that had 200 business development people researching clients. We tend to think practice area by practice area, because in large firms every practice area is a massive line of business.
Within litigation, they had a big class-action practice. They were trying to find when people were advertising to recruit for class-action lawsuits against their clients. That’s a massive undertaking, but a small undertaking for AI if it’s done properly.
This isn’t something you can just go into ChatGPT and ask, because it isn’t searching these sorts of things or gathering who’s advertising on what platforms and about what. This system connects the dots. It knows who the firm’s clients are and the ads being placed and what they’re trying to advertise. It’s using human-like intelligence and enabled them to do something at a scale that wouldn’t have been possible before.
SCOTT: How about you, Bob? What have you seen that helps firms thrive?
BOB: This is narrower, but a similar theme. A firm we worked with used enterprise relationship management to understand who knows whom and relationship strength. They recognized that was an incomplete picture because other things factor into relationship strength and indicate what and whether a client will buy.
We took the core enterprise relationship intelligence and expanded it to include the work the firm was doing with those clients, how much they were interacting around that work, and the events clients were attending. Even things like the holiday gifting program: how many lawyers were sending gifts and what kinds.
We factored those into a broader picture of relationship intelligence. That gave the firm more intelligence about who was more willing and ready to buy certain legal services.
The Webinar Series And Who Should Attend
SCOTT: Any intelligence you can act on that gives you an edge is worth it. Tell me about the webinar series where this conversation is continuing.
BOB: At Litera, we think about these solutions around Proactive and CRM, but also e-marketing, experience management, and other solutions that come together in a growth technology ecosystem.
The purpose of the webinar series is to talk about how we leverage AI and capabilities like Proactive in the technologies firms use to manage work, relationships, and marketing. It’s about how we bring these things together so firms can start thinking about growth that way.
SCOTT: Who within law firms should listen and be involved in that series?
JODY: Practice leads are always trying to figure out how to get more litigation matters, ECVC or startup M&A matters, or corporate transactional matters. They have a heavy responsibility to deliver a bigger number. They’re extraordinarily interested, but they don’t speak technical. They want to understand how to find and win more opportunities.
Managing partners feel the pressure at the macro level: we can’t raise rates much more, but need to grow the top line.
Then there are CMOs, CMBDOs, and CBDOs, the marketing and business development leaders tasked with solving these problems for practice leads and managing partners. Until now, they’ve primarily solved it with people, asking for 50 more people this year. Now they’re under pressure to do more and cut more, or do more with the same. Burning the candle at both ends is difficult. Those are the primary audiences.
BOB: Jody covered it well, but I want to emphasize managing partners and practice leaders. Historically, and currently, most of this gets outsourced to the marketing and business development team, sometimes the marketing technology team. The closer practice leaders, managing partners, and other firm leaders are to this, the better it’s going to work out.
Closing Thoughts
SCOTT: That’s a compelling argument. Since I started The Rainmaking Podcast seven years ago, I’ve seen more responsibility shift to partners to develop their books and to practice group leaders, not just marketing people. Firms have become more sophisticated in marketing and business development departments. Years ago, there wasn’t even a CBDO person, just a CMO.
It was interesting that Jody first mentioned practice group leaders, and Bob emphasized the partner level. The irony is that’s usually the choke point where partners can’t execute, for whatever reason. We’re not showing disrespect by saying that; they’ll agree. Your system gives them time back and an edge to do what they love: serve clients, win business, and serve those clients well because they knew what the problem was before anybody else.
Clients will appreciate that thoughtful, innovative approach. From the successful partners I know, and I talk to about a thousand new partners each year in my world, those who esteem client service as the ultimate value are the ones who do well. Your solution aligns with that.
Jody and Bob, any final thoughts? For everybody listening, check the show notes to register for the webinar series. Is there anything else you’d like to share?
JODY: I appreciate you having me on the show. It’s been a pleasure, and I’m happy to do it again.
BOB: Same, Scott. It’s really great to be here. This is becoming very doable now. Firms should recognize these aren’t the big heavy lifts some of this used to be. This is doable, achievable, with proven results, and everyone should be looking at it.
SCOTT: Bob, thank you for sharing that and being here today, and Jody as well. A special shout-out to the Legal Sales and Service Organization for hosting this podcast. Thank you all for joining us today.
JODY AND BOB: Thank you. Thanks.
