Source: ABA Journal
By Ari Kaplan
Ari Kaplan recently spoke with Marc Zamsky and Marla Crawford, the CEO and general counsel, respectively, for Cimplifi, an integrated legal services provider that aligns e-discovery and contract analytics for corporate legal departments and law firms.
Ari Kaplan: Marc, tell us about your background in your role at Cimplifi.
Marc Zamsky: I am the CEO of Cimplifi. I’ve been in the legal services space for the last 27 years and also practiced law as a commercial litigator for four years in Philadelphia. It has been amazing to see the evolution of the legal industry and the growth of legal technology over the last 27 years.
Ari Kaplan: Marla, you’ve practiced in both a large law firm and a large financial services company. What trends do you see driving change in corporate legal departments?
Marla Crawford: When I started practicing law, there was really no place for technology in the law. Now, e-discovery is really embedded into the rules of civil procedure, and from an ethics perspective, lawyers really need to understand technology, whether it’s contract analytics, knowledge management, document management, matter management, e-billing or AI. People who were afraid to use technology-assisted review and e-discovery are now considering ways to use ChatGPT to write their briefs, so the evolution has been astounding. In fact, it has become part of the fabric of the legal department.
Ari Kaplan: Marc, Cimplifi recently published a new market research report on which I was honored to collaborate called The Expanding Influence of Legal Operations: An Inside Look at AI, CLM and Law Department Transformation, a follow-up to a report you released in 2022. What were some of the key findings in this year’s report?
Marc Zamsky: Year over year, we are seeing a continued expansion of legal operations. We looked very specifically at CLM (contract lifecycle management), which encompasses contract analytics that apply to post-signature agreements and pre-signature workflow, and confirmed there is greater…
Read full article: https://www.abajournal.com/columns/article/the-expanding-influence-of-legal-operations
