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Live From Interact: Day 1 & 2 Gave Us “Something to Think About”

Aneesa Needel |

Our keynotes have been highly anticipated, and our sessions are plentiful, on topics affecting Legal Ops today and tomorrow. Plus, there’s been plenty of fun to be had in between.

First, let’s take a look back at what’s happened on the first and second days of the conference. The focus has been all about how people, processes, and technology are combining to drive success for the Mitratech community.

Day 1: Welcoming the community (and sharing knowledge)

Interact 2019 Lobby SignageEven as we greeted this year’s group of attendees, we were exciting at everything they’d have in front of them. There was a lot of good, hard work put in by everyone connected with Interact 2019 – presenters and partners, Mitratech leaders and team members, and our platinum-grade events team.

That last group, especially, put in incredibly long hours over the past many months to pull this off and make it equal to the very successful Interacts we’ve held in past years.

They really created the ideal setting for people to convene and share their ideas, insights, suggestions, and experiences around Mitratech products. Some of the best examples were in the Product Training track during Day 1.

A set of “Foundations” training sessions let attendees learn the basics of products that included TeamConnect, TAP Workflow Automation, eCounsel, Lawtrac and Secretariat.

In the case of the TAP Foundations session, people could find out how to create a simple workflow, add fields, set up a workflow, use form access, and automate notification and escalations.

For present users and non-users, these were information-rich sessions helping them gain a better grasp of each product’s potential.  Each was led by a member of our team: Ben Bogin (TAP), Landon McCaig (TeamConnect), and Emilie Gangwer (eCounsel), and there was great give-and-take with the audience in each session.

From there, attendees could move on to “Advanced” sessions for each product. The day was closed with our Welcome Reception, held at the JW Marriott’s fabulous Rooftop Terrace.

Day 2: Jason Parkman’s keynote sets the tone

“Change does not have to be destructive…Change can also be constructive, bringing about new ways of doing things, opening up new avenues and new possibilities.”

Addressing more than 150 attendees, Jason pointed out how legal tech adoption has “snowballed” over the past year, and the momentum is supported by co-innovation and collaboration.

Jason took us through the story of how the very catchy song “Old Town Road” came to be a viral sensation, an example of what can happen when people build upon one another’s inspirations.

Legal Ops is at the forefront of change within the organization. This means managing, guiding, driving, and being agents of change. One example he shared of how that’s being accomplished is the award-winning partnership between KP Labs, Mitratech, and NetAPP.

What we’re seeing is that Legal Ops is now past the tipping point, and is instrumental in driving the business changes and innovation within companies. Best practices mustn’t be kept siloed since, as he reiterated, “collaboration drives success all over the business world.”

Other notable Day 2 sessions…

Building the Legal Ops Team of the Future was a fruitful panel discussion that generated a lot of conversations. The role of Legal Ops is a large one, and an organization’s leaders have to put together a team that can do it all.  Based on what our panelists explained, it’s clear Legal Ops is a learned profession, with key expertise in budgeting, change management, and technology implementation being vital to creating a strong Legal Ops team.

The pressures that are driving the growth of Legal Operations aren’t going to subside any time soon, if ever. In an increasingly complex legal and risk environment, legal departments are crucial to future corporate success, even as they’re being told to be more efficient and agile. So drafting the right Legal Ops lineup? It’s going to be vital to future success.

Lean Six Sigma Process Training: Improving Performance & Creating a Culture of Change: What can employing Lean Six Sigma methods do for your organization? Brian McGovern, our Executive Director, Strategic Programs is also a Six Sigma Master Black Belt, and he walked attendees through what potential this discipline can deliver for an organization.

Using Six Sigma to optimize process training maximizes the value a legal department can deliver to its organization,  as it allows you to define, measure, improve, and control processes to improve effectiveness.

Automating the Legal Process: After using a very customized, tedious, and manual process for vendor onboarding, Jazz, a large pharmaceutical company, decided it was time for a change. WIth Mitratech and Keesal Propulsion Labs working in lockstep, the company was able to build a solution to help manage the process throughout the business.

For executives and Legal Ops staff alike, whatever technology was implemented had to be scalable and highly repeatable, providing automation, optimization, and advancement of processes and the overall business.

For executives and Legal Ops staff alike, whatever technology was implemented had to be scalable and highly repeatable, providing automation, optimization, and advancement of processes and the overall business.

The new, automated vendor onboarding process at Jazz uses TAP, and manages all necessary approval tracking, allows for integrated collaborative steps, and pushes easy-to-manage notifications.  This was just one of the many great examples of workflows that were shared, touching on legal, compliance, information security, finance, and procurement.

No matter how many workflows a company creates, the first one is always the hardest to implement. Sierra Budelli (Senior. Manager, Jazz) and Justin Hectus (CIO/CISO at Keesal, Young & Logan and KP Labs) walked through this process with the audience, demonstrating how a solution like TAP makes desiginig and publishing that initial workflow painless and fast.

It’s time to jump on the tour bus!

Austin Interact Party BusHow do you wind up a couple of workdays in the “Live Music Capital of the World”?  You jump on a tour bus designed by none other than Mr. Willie Nelson himself, who knows a thing or two about the night life. We’ll be taking our attendees on a crawl through the best music spots in town, winding up at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar.  What happens then? We expect at least one rendition of “Sweet Caroline” before the night is out.

It felt right to include a snippet of one of Willie’s lyrics in the title of this post, too. Check out the lyric video below. Look for our next post tomorrow, as we’ll be sharing tonight’s adventures, and what went down on Day 3 at Interact 2019!