Ari Kaplan recently spoke with Keao Caindec, the co-founder and CEO of Clarra, a case management platform.
They discussed how law firms are leveraging case management, ways that it can help global enterprises track litigation, the benefits of using reporting and analytics to measure and forecast, and how artificial intelligence is affecting the way that firms and legal departments manage their dockets.
Ari Kaplan: Tell us about your background and the genesis of Clarra.
Keao Caindec: My background is in technology and a variety of [software as a service] cloud and hosting companies. My business partner—an attorney—and I met three years ago, and sitting under some redwood trees in Marin, California, decided to start a company. He had built software to help him run his plaintiff’s firm, and we decided to bring it to market. Our focus was on building a modern, cloud-first and easy-to-use integrated application for law firms. Now, we’re working with plaintiff’s firms, defense litigation practices and in-house counsel.
Ari Kaplan: How are law firms leveraging case management today?
Keao Caindec: There is a wide and varied set of use cases across law firms. Some are using older technology from the ’80s and ’90s, trying to migrate to newer platforms. Others have deployed all-in-one platforms that have changed the way they manage their practices, but many are just using spreadsheets, Google Docs and Google Calendar to manage their cases. The challenge is in taking advantage of where technology is headed and where AI is going vis-à-vis their older, more siloed set of technologies.
Ari Kaplan: How can a case management platform help enterprises of different sizes track their litigation?
Keao Caindec is the co-founder and CEO of Clarra, a case management platform.
Keao Caindec: Clarra is optimized for litigation and designed to follow a litigation process, but it is very different tracking a case for a smaller firm that might be managing personal injury cases compared to a larger firm handling class action matters. Smaller firms need a tool that is simple to use and gives them the visibility that they need, including controls to manage docketing, calendaring, timekeeping and billing. Larger firms have more complexity because the sheer volume of cases is larger, and they’re using several other systems they need to integrate, such as document management and billing. For larger firms, it is as much about integration into their processes and systems as it is about the case management. In-house counsel in large enterprises struggle with global contingent liability as their settlements and estimated damages extend worldwide, which are very hard to track. It is compounded by the fact that the tools that they’re using, such as spreadsheets and proprietary applications, vary by country, so consolidating all of that information has been very difficult. We are working with some of the largest consulting companies, global risk management companies, large law firms and enterprises to address these issues. For example, we’re working with a financial services firm in the U.K. managing securities litigation to offer a unified view of their litigation across Europe, and to understand exactly where there cases are, and the costs per case relative to the estimated damages or liability that they would have, to help them make better manage that overall liability, and determine the amount of cash they need to keep in reserves to meet regulatory requirements.
Ari Kaplan: How are law firms and legal departments using reporting and analytics to measure and forecast their businesses?
Keao Caindec: Many are using Power BI and analytics tools to perform their analysis. While law firms have a lot of accounting, timekeeping and other data, they struggle with consolidating that information together for budgeting or pricing for a new client or looking at profitability by practice area. With Clarra, we have a very robust analytics and business intelligence platform built with Domo, and we can assemble that information within Clarra, as well as other systems, and create rich charts and interactive BI systems to help them answer questions about utilization across the firm, efficiency levels within specific practice areas, or profitability by matter. Law firms often fail to properly assess their profitability by matter or by practice area. It gets masked by a few large cases. We help law firms to take a portfolio management approach to understanding which practice areas and types of cases are driving profitability and are optimally efficient, which are not, and which should be cut because their expenses exceed the recovered amount based on the damages.
Ari Kaplan: How is artificial intelligence affecting the way law firms and legal departments manage their litigation dockets?
Keao Caindec: We were very excited about AI initially, and many technology companies and law firms adopted it quickly, especially in e-discovery for summarization, extraction and analysis. We are now seeing a slight pullback from firms struggling to do more with AI and integrate it into their systems, which they are finding are older and more siloed, making it difficult to use effectively. Law firms are in the midst of a collision between old and new tech. AI will provide a lot of opportunities for reducing the amount of time spent on nonbillable activities and also in using AI to draw better insights around strategy for cases, as well as moving beyond the initial summarization and extraction use cases.
Ari Kaplan: Where do you see litigation headed?
Keao Caindec: Litigation is increasing. In the U.S., there’s the overturn of the Chevron doctrine, making it easier for companies to pursue class actions in some areas because it overturned the ability to force companies to go to the agencies to rule. In Europe, the Representative Action[s] Directive forms more of a structure for class action cases. Different countries like Thailand are now growing in that area. So litigation in general is increasing, and enterprises see more uncertainty in class action or employment litigation. AI is now forcing litigation firms to come up with other ways of thinking about how they bill their clients, ways they track their overall contribution, and opportunities to offer more contingency-based and outcome-based billing models. AI will dramatically change the face of certain aspects of litigation, but it will take more time than we are expecting.
Listen to the complete interview at Reinventing Professionals.
Ari Kaplan regularly interviews leaders in the legal industry and in the broader professional services community to share perspective, highlight transformative change and introduce new technology at his blog and on Apple Podcasts.
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
