IGHS45 - Key Takeaways from Corporate Legal Day at ILTACON2024, a General Counsel's perspective

Jim Merrifield (00:01.203)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat. I'm your host, Jim Merrifield and with me today is Marla Crawford, General Counsel at Cimplifi Welcome, Marla

Marla Crawford (00:10.722)
Hey Jim, thanks for having me.

Jim Merrifield (00:12.753)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat. I know we met about, was about a month ago at ILTACon It was great to meet you at corporate legal day. And, we're going to get into that information a little later, but, let's kick this, podcast off and, get to know you a little better. Can you tell us a brief introduction of yourself, your current role and one fun fact about yourself?

Marla Crawford (00:35.79)
Yes, let's see. Okay, so I am the General Counsel of Cimplifi Cimplifi is a services provider in the legal technology community, e -discovery, managed review, contract analytics. I've had this job almost four years now. Before that, I was 22 years at the law firm, 11 years in -house. So I think basically I just deserve this great job now. And I'm having

the greatest time. been a real pleasure working with the team at Cimplifi. So my fun fact is going to be related to ILTA. So my fun fact is that I actually love country music. And when I was at ILTA, I went to the Grand Old Opry two nights. Bucket list. Loved it.

Standing, screaming, hooting, loved it.

Jim Merrifield (01:36.462)
Awesome. Did you see so you saw Post Malone.

Marla Crawford (01:39.85)
I did, yes. I did, and he's my favorite. On my Spotify, he's my number one most listened to artist.

Jim Merrifield (01:41.573)
And did you see Luke Combs too? Wow.

Jim Merrifield (01:50.039)
that's great. That's great. I just interviewed obviously on the ILTA recap, the CEO from Jylo and he actually went to both nights as well. Yeah, so you have something in common with some ILTA, ILTANS fellow ILTANS

Marla Crawford (02:08.354)
Yeah, I think there are a few of us who really took advantage of the proximity to the Opry and it was fantastic.

Jim Merrifield (02:16.989)
Yeah, that's awesome. I like country music myself. My, I took my wife with me down to ILTA was her first time in Nashville. We got to go downtown and go to some honky tonk bars and listen to some live music. So when we did the tour, the Grand Ole Opry, that was, that was pretty exciting. So that's an awesome, fun fact. So, awesome. let's talk about ILTA a little bit. your key takeaways from corporate legal day. I know we met.

a corporate legal day for that full day instruction seminar. So what were your key takeaways from that day?

Marla Crawford (02:54.604)
I love those partnerships where a conference partners with another group to create like a smaller space. That's my favorite part of a lot of the different conferences that sort of synergy together. And I thought for corporate legal day partnering the corporates in the ILTA conference was really eye opening.

people were talking kind of about two different things. But the one that I'll talk about that relates to the corporate day as opposed to just general ILTA was these concepts of career development, mentorship, sponsorship. People are generally self -interested, right? We work to make money to live. And so it was...

fascinating to see how people were considering their job trajectories, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence.

Jim Merrifield (04:02.057)
Yeah, for sure. And you have a great background, as you mentioned in the beginning, right? You were inside a law firm, in -house, and now you're on the business partner side. So I think your perspective in that day probably resonated with alot of people. You're able to make some nice connections.

Marla Crawford (04:20.582)
Yeah, I mean, I've seen now the three points of the triangle. And of course, the best thing to do is to collaborate. So when I was at the law firm, was really when eDiscovery was just starting, and there was a lot of collaboration because we as lawyers had no idea what we were doing. And then,

as e -discovery became more prevalent, it was unfortunate that a lot of the movement there was in, you know, kind of having a place to blame for mistakes. So law firms would blame service providers and...

corporate, their corporate clients would be confused and, know, it really then I think moved toward a more consulting paradigm where all three parts of the triangle really need to work together. And I think AI is moving that even further along toward the collaboration. I'm very happy to see that.

Jim Merrifield (05:33.513)
Yeah, I 100 % agree. I mean what AI can do for e -discovery and document review and contracts and things is pretty amazing. So we'll see. We'll see. It's already making some inroads now, but I'm sure at the next ILTACon the next Corporate Legal Day, we'll have some more takeaways for sure. So let's talk about ILTACon in general. Was there anything that kind of stuck out for you?

the conference itself.

Marla Crawford (06:05.634)
Yeah, people to me were talking about a lot of AI, obviously, but in terms of ethical considerations of AI, in terms of how do you create a safe kind of recurring repeatable process, maybe some easy wins, how can you show that you're an adopter without taking big risk? And also that kind of leads into the issues of security.

the security about your information, about your data, security and privacy issues, using AI. But then of course, everything in legal technology comes back to security. Because if you don't have that, you can't go to any of the other building blocks. So I thought those were kind of the fundamental issues that were discussed, but

Everything is interrelated.

Jim Merrifield (07:04.403)
Yeah, for sure. There's that term AI governance now that's out there. I know IAPP has been talking about they have an AI governance certification. obviously ARMA talks about AI governance. it's affected my life with governance and security. I'm going go and find out how that relates to AI technology with our clients. And I've seen that on a few AI.

Jim Merrifield (07:33.117)
I guess, AI questionnaires from clients, right? Talking about AI governance. So we'll see how that plays out in the days ahead there. guess it's kind of a balancing act there. So speaking about the information governance, I know we have an event coming up or a webinar coming up, right? In about a month. Do you care to kind of give the audience a preview of that webinar?

Marla Crawford (07:59.67)
Yeah, we're having a webinar. think it's October. I'm just going to double check my calendar. Is it October 18th? Is that right?

Jim Merrifield (08:08.923)
I think so. I put you on the spot. that's It is the hot, it is the hot seat

Marla Crawford (08:11.266)
Yeah, no, it's October 18th at three o 'clock Eastern time. We're gonna be talking about information governance with you, Julie Heller, Emily Collins, and it's gonna be exciting because, you know, sometimes we talk about things as if everybody's already done them and people are a little embarrassed to say,

I really haven't started or my program's not that great, or I still have like a hundred thousand boxes in a repository somewhere in a basement of some building in the middle of our country. So we're going to talk about some easy wins. What can you do to get started, to maybe get a little bit of control, no shame, no blame, just how do you start your game?

Jim Merrifield (09:06.358)
I like it. I like it. It's a judgment free zone.

Marla Crawford (09:10.328)
Judgment free zone because honestly, I've had clients who are embarrassed to say we don't have a program and no one should be embarrassed about that. It's a very difficult program to achieve as you know better than anyone.

Jim Merrifield (09:28.841)
Yeah, listen, it was a hot topic 20 years ago and it's still a hot topic today. So very relevant. Looking forward to that conversation with yourself and the fellow panelists. So that'll be fun next month. Now I know Marla, we talked about a lot here. Is there anything else you wanted to share with the audience before we let you go?

Marla Crawford (09:50.296)
Well, I see you're wearing your Jets gear. So I gotta say, Jets, Jets, Jets.

Jim Merrifield (09:52.478)
haha

Jim Merrifield (09:56.499)
That's right. That's right. I love it. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully Rogers can play more than four plays tonight. That would be really wonderful. I think by the time I released this, this podcast will either be a W or a big, a big loss, but whether it's a win or a loss, hopefully Rogers plays the whole game and we have a future season.

Marla Crawford (10:16.928)
I hope so. I'm on your team.

Jim Merrifield (10:19.911)
Yeah, no, that's great. Well, listen, it was great to have you, Marla, spending some time here on the hot seat with me. I look forward to seeing you again at ILTACon, of course, but then I'll see you virtually on the webinar next month. So thanks so much for taking the time with us and giving us your takeaways from Corporate Legal Day and ILTACon and look forward to collaborating with you. Yeah, that's great. So that's awesome. So listen, yeah, it's been great.

Marla Crawford (10:41.879)
Thanks Jim

It's been fun.

Jim Merrifield (10:47.753)
For our audience, thanks so much for attending today's episode. And if you'd like to be a guest on the InfoGov Hot Seat like Marla here, please submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat .com. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.