August 6, 2025 • 38 mins
This year’s ILTACON, which starts later this week, marks the second anniversary of Harbor, a global expert services company formed through the merger of three long-established legal consulting firms: HBR Consulting, LAC Group, and Wilson Allen, and that formally launched at ILTACON in 2023.
The company, which counts among its clients some 80% of the 200 largest global law firms and 50% of the Fortune 500, has been making waves ever since, further expanding its services, making additional acquisitions, and scoring some notable hires to its executive team, all culminating in the news in June that it had received a majority investment from BayPine LP, a private investment firm devoted to driving digital transformation in market-leading businesses.
Part of what makes Harbor particularly interesting is that it sits at the intersection of corporate law departments, law firms, and technology providers – helping all three get more value from their partnerships. A key focus of the company’s consulting services has been artificial intelligence and on helping organizations prepare their data and infrastructures to support the use of AI.
Our guest today is the CEO of Harbor, Matt Sunderman, who before the merger was CEO of HBR Consulting and, earlier, president of its advisory services. In their conversation, Matt and host Bob Ambrogi explore Harbor's mission to provide legal departments with end-to-end solutions that span strategy, legal technology, operations, and intelligence.
They also discuss the current state of digital transformation in legal – from the opportunities and obstacles around generative AI adoption to the surprising reality that many firms are still only 10 to 40 percent cloud-enabled, and Sunderman offers his perspective on what law firms and corporate legal departments should be doing today to prepare for the next decade.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
you
Welcome to Law Next.
This year's Ilticon, which starts later this week, marks the second anniversary of Harbor,a company formed through the merger of three long-established legal consulting firms, HBR
Consulting, LAC Group, and Wilson Allen, and that formally launched at Ilticon in 2023.
(00:22):
The company's been making waves ever since, culminating in the news in June that itreceived a majority investment from Bay Pine LP,
private investment firm devoted to driving digital transformation in market leadingbusinesses.
Part of what makes Harbor particularly interesting is that it sits at the intersection ofcorporate law departments, law firms, and technology providers, helping all three get more
(00:47):
value from their relationships.
My guest today is the CEO of Harbor, Matt Sunderman.
In our conversation, Matt and I explore Harbor's mission to provide legal departments withend-to-end solutions that span strategy,
legal technology, operations, and intelligence.
We also talk about the current state of digital transformation in legal, from theopportunities and obstacles around generative AI adoption, to the surprising reality that
(01:13):
many firms are still only 10 to 40 % cloud enabled.
And Matt offers his perspective on what law firms and corporate legal departments shouldbe doing today to prepare for the next decade.
As for me, I'm Bob Ambroci, and you're listening to Law Next, the podcast that featuresthe innovators and entrepreneurs
who are driving what's next in law.
(01:34):
Before I get to any of that, please take a moment to hear from the sponsors who sogenerously support this podcast.
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Now let's get to today's conversation.
Matt Sunderman, welcome to Law Next.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me today,
forward to speaking to you.
I feel like there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't see some news about Harborsomewhere going on in the world.
(03:07):
uh For a sort of two-year-old company, you guys have been awfully busy and doing a lot ohlately.
And we'll get to why I say sort of two-year-old company, I guess.
But I wonder if we could just kind of start with, for those who might be unfamiliar withHarbor, can you describe what it is Harbor does and what makes it distinct in the
kind of legal services and technology landscape.
(03:30):
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
And I like that you picked up on the two year old company because that's how we identifyourselves and we can double click on that.
um So Harbor is uh focused on really the legal ecosystem.
So what we describe that as is corporate law departments, law firms, and then sitting inthe center, the providers, oftentimes tech, but it can be non-tech providers that engage
(03:51):
with either of those two constituencies.
And really at the highest level, we fundamentally focus on two different things for bothcorporate law departments and global law firms.
One, an overly used word, but I'll use it today, is digital transformation.
And what that means for us is a whole host of things we can get into.
And the second piece is operational transformation.
(04:12):
So really what we're focused on is helping our clients both operationally and throughtechnology.
improve the ways in which they work, improves the ways in which they interact with eachother, quite frankly, because that's where we feel like we're a little bit unique is that
we sit between both parts, law firms, corporate law departments and technology providers.
(04:33):
And can ideally help each of the three within that constituency get more value out oftheir partnerships.
Let's go back to that point you mentioned double clicking on, Harbor was formed in 2023through a merger of HBR Consulting, Lack Group, and Wilson Allen.
Can you kind of talk about how that came to be and why that happened?
(04:55):
Yeah.
So I was preparing for, Ilta this morning.
Actually we've had an internal call and we launched it Ilta two years ago.
And so Ilta is in, think about three weeks.
I might be slightly off.
Um, so it'll be our official two year anniversary.
Um, and what we were thinking about then was, you know, each of those three organizationshad spent somewhere between 15 and 30 years in legal services.
(05:18):
So I grew up in the HBR part of the, the three that you just referenced and
The founders of that organization go back to the mid seventies.
so Brad Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, those are two kind of institutional longstanding legalfocus consultancies.
That's the HBR are those three and similar for LAC group and Wilson Allen, like deephistory and legal.
(05:40):
Um, and when we were looking at how our clients were interacting with third partyproviders, we saw a huge opportunity for our clients to get a deeper, wider.
um, expertise set to help them solve what they were looking to accomplish.
So that sounds great, but the why is probably more important.
Um, as we were looking at what clients needed, like there's assessment work, youtraditional consulting, there's implementation work, and then there's post-school life
(06:06):
support.
How do you support a client after you've implemented?
And each of those three businesses had different focal points.
Like I would say.
HBR was more of an assessment implement.
Wilson Allen was more of an implementation.
LAC group was more of a managed services provider.
And we looked at our client base, we felt like there was an opportunity to one, providemore end-to-end integrated solutions, partnerships with our clients, and then two, help
(06:30):
them on a holistic journey of assess, implement, manage, as opposed to just solving one ofthose discrete opportunities.
Yeah, and you mentioned Assess Implement Manage.
Looking at your website, and I keep seeing the phrase several times, strategy, legaltechnology, operations, and intelligence.
I mean, does that kind of sum up the overall scope of your mission?
(06:53):
Yeah, you what we're trying to do and this maybe isn't the aspirational tagline that youknow that we as strive to but tactically is that right?
How do we bring to bear those four things that you just hit Bob?
So strategy, legal ops, intelligence, some of those different dimensions.
The other piece that I didn't hit in the first part was global and the global is animportant part of that equation.
(07:16):
uh Each of those three heritage businesses that I just referenced that you asked aboutwere all predominantly North American focused.
And we saw another opportunity, our client base was starting over the past decade, becomemore global, become more complex, have operations, have more scale, have more headcount,
have more attorneys outside of North America.
And so in addition to, you know, assess, implement, manage across those four differentpieces that you hit, we wanted to have a global delivery and global sales and global
(07:45):
integrated offering to help those organizations as they continue to expand theirfootprint.
How do we match that with them?
As you're coming on this two year uh anniversary uh and as we talk about kind of yourformation and organization, you just had news last month of majority investment from
private investment firm Bay Pine LLP.
(08:08):
So what does that mean for you, for where you're headed, your clientele and yourcustomers?
Yeah, I had, um I can't be too obvious in who it is.
So let's say a CIO of a global 10 firm asked me this exact question yesterday.
So I haven't had a chance to get to everybody, you know, post transaction.
I won't answer the question first, cause I'll say how I responded it to him, Bob.
(08:31):
And then I will answer the question directly.
um So a couple of things that we think are really important is that mission that I set outat the onset still holds true.
So like, we're still focused on the legal vertical.
We're still trying to bring the bear offerings to corporate law departments and law firms.
oh We're still trying to round out our global capabilities.
um So that's kind of the North Star of the organization.
(08:53):
similarly direction, because sometimes when this happens, um find organizations say, well,now we want to go focus in on accounting and consulting, or isn't government interesting,
or there's large insurance companies that have similar needs to law departments and lawfirms.
So oh one of the things that our management team was most excited about Bay Pine isthere's high alignment around continuing the journey of focus around
(09:16):
serving the client base that we have.
The second part is, and we've been really intentional about this throughout our journey,is hyper-focus on the client-centric nature of when we've brought other acquisitions into
Harbor, making sure that our clients didn't feel the pain of another company going througha transition, right?
So when we acquire a company, they have to come get integrated.
(09:37):
You've got tactical things like billing and systems, and you've got strategic things likerelationship management.
And we want to make sure we stay focused on that for the benefit of the client.
So kind of where we're going and how we're thinking about our client base is consistent.
I would say the three things that we're focused on in working with and why we're excitedabout the Bay Pine investment capital are one, they are a private equity firm that is
(10:01):
focused on helping organizations navigate the digital transformation that the rest of theeconomy has to go through over the next.
We could say one year, could say 10 years and we'll both be wrong.
So what they mean by that is, know, historically Bay Pine has been technology investorsfrom a management team, not necessarily, not Bay Pine.
(10:22):
um The folks that are part of Bay Pine have historically been technology investors.
As Bay Pine, they have a different thesis.
And if you look at the market cap of all companies, I'm going to quote their quotes, sodon't fact check me on this one, but uh only 10 % of the market cap is actually technology
companies.
And the other 90 % of industries and markets organizations also have to go through thistransition that all professional services firms do harbor our clients, corporate law
(10:51):
departments, law firms.
And their thesis is how do they help based on their technology expertise clients and theirinvestments navigate this period of time.
So one is we've been on this journey for a number of years on our side, but we believe theexpertise that they bring and the focus that they have around
the digital transformation both internally that we need to go through and externally whatour clients need to go through is like where they're hyper-focused uniquely outside of
(11:18):
traditional tech organizations.
So they're not looking to make this investment in, I'll pick on legal tech, not that theywouldn't love these organizations, but you know, the lateras or elites or in taps or how
you might think about a technology legal based in the Harvey based investment.
it's how can they help organizations like us navigate this, this time one.
um Two is, so there's expertise, two is just growth capital.
(11:43):
So we had a prior investor that was a great partner of ours, but also just lower middlemarket and had less access to capital for us to make those internal investments and think
about the external.
The third is, if you think about Harbor, I talked a lot about global and I talked a lotabout two end markets.
We've been less focused on the corporate end market for us outside of North America.
(12:05):
So how do we...
accelerate and think about where those growth opportunities both might be in NorthAmerica, but outside North America, our global expansion has been predominantly law firm
focused.
So how do we work with, you know, Bay pine and leverage some of the growth capital tothink about that both organically and inorganically.
And then finally underpinned on all that is just tech enablement.
(12:26):
um So investments on how we interact with clients, investments on how we deliver solutionsto our clients, investments, how we continue to
work on making our delivery be more consistent and less human centric.
So all of those things are kind of underpinning, you know, how we think about the growthopportunities.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you talked about Brad Hildebrandt in the early days ofkind of a more of a management consulting focus firm.
(12:54):
But given the kinds of expertise you now have and the kinds of services, I imagine yourclients are looking for, whether it's through a spanning strategy or operations or
whatever else, it's all tech enabled, right?
I mean, it's all driven by tech.
It's not a separate category at this point.
No, that like early in, so I was a colleague of Brad's when I first started at the H part.
(13:19):
So it was very much separate, right?
Like very much separate.
You had like a records group that was responsible for like information governance and thena team that managed the boxes and then another team that managed the technology.
And today to your point, every initiative is either underpinned or accelerated oraugmented by technology.
So there's no bifurcation of that in any of the things that we do, whether it's thestrategy, the operations, legal tech.
(13:42):
or intelligence, it all has a technology enablement component.
You've said that your client base is law firms, corporate legal departments.
But could you kind of break that down in terms of who are the firms and departments thatare coming to you?
What are the kinds of challenges that they're facing when they're sending you an email orpicking up the phone and giving you a call?
(14:09):
Yeah, yeah.
So when we talk about those two just orient like who within the constituency, it'sgenerally about fortune 1000 organizations.
So scaled corporate law departments on one size, we definitely work with smallerorganizations, but it's usually some of the larger and then on the law firm side, it's
typically the global three or 400, which are predominantly North American based, you know,both by headcount and in revenue, as you know.
(14:33):
So it's a good question.
And one of the things that we try to
be pretty intentional about is like, you should think about calling us and pick up thephone to call us.
The extent people pick up the phone to call us, email or text.
But you know, if people ever did call, I say the only time anyone ever calls you anymoreis to deliver bad news.
That's the only time anyone picks up the phone.
Otherwise it's email or text or teams.
(14:55):
But we try to operate at three different points of the organization and then I'll hit theways in which.
So one is we try to hit help at the enterprise level.
So that's
managing partners, executive director conversations around things like how should we bethinking about at a macro our digital transformation?
(15:15):
And if we are thinking about how does that change our organizational structure?
And when we do that, what should our headcount and tech budgets look like?
So that might be at the enterprise level on a law firm conversation.
And how does AI play into that?
How does data play into that?
How does getting to the cloud play into that?
How does tech rationalization play into that?
So it's, you know, kind of at the
(15:36):
the management level of the firm.
um The second place that we try to position ourselves for is what we would call like thedepartmental or the domain.
So we also interact a lot with just a CIO or just a CFO or just a CEO around a discretething.
So I'm a CFO at a global 10 and we're thinking about upgrading our financial system.
(15:57):
That's another place that we might play.
And then also we've tried to position the organization one click below that where evenwithin you've got
managing partners and executive directors, CFO.
But within the CFO, obviously you've got a lot of functional directors, technologies,nuanced processes.
We also want to be able to support, I've got a billing issue, client X, and we are havinga problem with our tech companies and how do we solve for the billing process technology
(16:23):
and issues.
So how we're trying to think about Harbor's journey is we want to be able to interact withour clients at top of the house, functional heads.
and then also solve very discrete problems.
And I kind of, work pretty fluidly between those points.
So I was going to ask you if you could give me an example of kind of a success story, butit sounds like from what you're saying that the success story would depend a whole lot on
(16:46):
what the mission was in the first place.
and who the primary point person is initially.
Because it's a little bit of like meet them where they're at, right?
Sometimes it's a really discreet billing problem.
Sometimes it's a finance system or organizational problem.
sometimes it's an enterprise technology roadmap opportunity, right?
And so each of those three play out in different ways, depending on where the firm's at,what their priorities are.
(17:11):
Still a lot of organizations, as I'm sure you know, do still kind of drive decision-makingat the functional or departmental level.
but we're starting to do more and more of how are we setting enterprise a vision andexecuting against it.
I'm speaking with Matt Sunderman, the CEO of Harbor, who has been describing how Harborworks with clients at different levels, from enterprise strategy down to discrete
(17:38):
operational issues.
Fossil touched on the idea of digital transformation.
When we come back, I want to explore what digital transformation really means in practiceand how Harbor is helping law firms and legal departments fundamentally rethink the way
they work.
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(19:20):
Welcome back to Law Next.
I'm speaking with Matt Sunderman, CEO of Harbor.
Before the break, we were talking about how Harbor engages with clients at multiple levelswithin their organizations.
He's alluded several times to working with clients to help them strategize about andachieve digital and operational transformation.
But what exactly do we mean by that?
(19:40):
Is it about innovating?
Is it rethinking how they do and what
they do.
As we return to the conversation, that's where we pick up.
Let's get back to it.
You've talked a couple of times about digital transformation.
(20:02):
I don't know if, that sort of synonymous with innovation at a law firm or a legaldepartment?
Are you working with customers to kind of really help them rethink how they do what theydo?
Absolutely.
If I were to tell you that was a hundred percent of the work, I would be fabricating thereality, but we do spend a lot of time on that.
um We're still also in addition to that.
(20:24):
So we're thinking about how do you transform the way in which maybe you deliver a specificarea of law.
Like that's a practice of law transformation.
We're helping clients think about how do we deploy modern technologies.
And I'm using that word intentionally.
not AI necessarily always, sometimes it's just good old fashioned, you business processautomation.
um And we help clients think about what technologies should they use and how do they,should they deploy it for the purposes of practice of law and business of law.
(20:51):
And then we also help clients just modernize their systems, infrastructure and data.
Kind of all of that would fall into, you know, transformation for us.
um And, you know, oftentimes there's a lot more work than some of our clients stillappreciate on that last rung, just modernize their data and systems to allow them to fully
enable or take advantage of
(21:12):
the new technologies or the new potential that is in front of them to transform.
Again, you didn't just appear out of nowhere two years ago.
You had long histories of the three different organizations that came together to formHarbor.
But you did create this new entity in the early days of the generative AI transformationwithin the legal industry.
(21:36):
So I'm uh curious how you as a business, not you personally, but you as a business,
incorporating generative AI into the work that you do and then how are you helping yourclients incorporate generative?
both.
we, before, whenever it was in 2022, like the official, the official launch, we alreadyhad an internal team, uh, November.
(22:02):
Yes.
We had an official team internally that was focused on 80%.
How are we doing it internally for ourselves?
One two is probably 10 to 15 % for clients.
So we already thinking about the service delivery.
Um,
And then third is like net new solutions that we're bringing to market.
And so the individual who leads that for us, know, history with IBM history with WilliamBlair doing, you know, advanced technologies, and then, you know, teaches the master's
(22:30):
program at University of Chicago here and based where our headquarters are.
so things that we're thinking about doing is, know, we've built things to make ouronboarding process more seamless.
We've done things to make so that when people query just internal.
procedures, standard operating procedures we have, how do you access information so that,you know, traditionally you might've had to call a representative in talent or legal or
(22:52):
IT.
And we've deployed that kind of at scale across different facets of our business.
We've also on service delivery, we've tried to standardize and automate kind of how we doassessments.
So we do a lot of assessments for different areas, but how do we leverage moderntechnology, particularly when it's, you know, interview based and there's a lot of
information to create more standardized outputs.
(23:12):
And then also we've leveraged the new technologies, particularly in the area ofintelligence.
So you, you you hit that in terms of one of the things that we're thinking about, butobviously the technology is very, very powerful for accessing public, private, proprietary
information and data when we're providing intelligence, you know, reports or informationfor our clients.
(23:33):
and we leverage that technology in that space.
So those are kind of three examples, some of which are operational in nature, internal forour talent or legal functions.
Some are.
for the whole business assessments and others were for discrete parts of our business, ourintelligence practice.
And so we've tried to deploy that expertise across the business in each of thosedimensions to date.
(23:54):
I think a lot of the go forward partnership with Bay Pine and just continued investmentwe're making at Harbor on this front will be around those things, those three pieces of
how do we make it easier for our employees to engage with the enterprise?
How do we make it easier for our employees or our consultants or professional servicesmembers to
create deliverables for clients?
And then how do we modernize our deliverables that maybe historically weren't delivered insuch a tech enabled way?
(24:19):
Yeah.
And what about on the client side?
I what are you seeing in terms of the opportunities and obstacles to adopting generativeAI in law firms and corporate legal departments?
all the huge opportunities and obstacles, as I'm sure you're acutely aware of as well.
And again, some of it depends on like who we're talking to in an organization and wherethe organization is at, right?
(24:40):
So, you know, conversation with managing partner that only reads the American lawyerheadlines believes that they're decades behind a technology that's only existed for a
couple years because, you know, there's a lot of puffery potentially in some of the, youknow, what it can do and or how it's being deployed.
So when we're talking to like,
senior executive, it's a little bit around what is happening in the market that is makingmeaningful impact versus the headlines.
(25:06):
One, two is what technology have you already invested in that there's an opportunity todeploy in a different way than you need a new technology to do something?
Because oftentimes there's, you know, we did a recent inventory for a global 30 and foundthere were north of seven technologies that the organization already had.
that could do some or most of the functionality of the net new technology that they wantedto bring into the organization.
(25:30):
So it's a little bit of just, you know, what do you have and what haven't you maybedeployed successfully that you could leverage and or assess something new.
And then most importantly is, are you ready?
And what is the specific use case?
So the, you ready is, is your information organized?
Do you know what you're pointing it at?
Is your back end infrastructure cloud enabled?
(25:51):
Do you have the right security provision set up?
Do you have a training program?
Have you thought about governance?
just all of these, are you ready kind of conversations, but more importantly, what are youpointing it at and what's the benefit?
Are you looking to automate something?
Are you looking to innovate something?
Are you looking to eliminate something?
So, you know, why are you deploying this new technology in the business of law or thepractice of law?
(26:14):
So a lot of different conversations that happen across what I just, what I just hit, butI'm trying to help organizations navigate and effectively.
deploy these technologies, you know, is a key focus of ours on both the corporate side andthe law firm side.
I'd say corporations probably are a little bit more advanced and because, you know, theyhave the enterprise of a fortune 10 or a fortune 100 has a lot of AI advanced technology
(26:40):
initiatives that the general counsel's office is participating in and or they've alreadymade investment in enterprise technologies at scale that they can take advantage of versus
I'd say law firms are,
less sophisticated necessarily as it relates to the enterprise investment in some of thesetechnologies.
When you're having those conversations with the senior partners or the senior executivesand you're doing a little bit of level setting, I guess, in terms of what's happening with
(27:06):
this technology, there's been so much, as you say, puffery, you said, might say hype aboutthe transformative nature of generative AI uh in its impact on legal practice and the
legal profession over the coming years.
What's your own perception on that, having been in this industry for a number of years?
Yeah, we're really bullish on the opportunity, right?
(27:28):
So like the potential of impact in automation, innovation, know, elimination of thingsthat could be used to hire is like, we're pretty bullish both for both corporations and
law firms.
So I always go back to, let me think about how many, there's been three or four liketechnology transitions, all of which we thought, I thought that both the law firms and the
(27:50):
amount of legal work as well as maybe the services organizations around them might beimpacted, right?
And so there was, this is just where I started.
There's, I mentioned the boxes, the bankers boxes that were sent in offsite facilitiesthat weren't even indexed, right?
Like step one was, can we find the boxes?
Can we index them so we can find a proper matter file?
Step two is, could we scan them?
(28:11):
Step three was, could we host them?
Step four was, can we actually host and find the information?
Step five is, can we stick it in the cloud and make it even more efficient?
Step six is, let's build some workflow.
And now step seven is we're on to, let's deploy the new technology to continue to enhancethat.
um And what we've found over the past three decades is just legal demand through all ofthese technology changes continues to outstrip the humans that the supply of humans that
(28:38):
are available to do it.
So like our point of view, and we're bullish on the legal end market, clearly Harbor as anorganization, and we're here to support our clients is that this is a way to get at and or
improve some of the legal service delivery and there will be disruption versus eliminate.
um
Cause we study this there, you know, the corporate side, the number one obstacle for themgetting to what they can do is just too much work, not enough people should help solve it.
(29:06):
And then, know, you and I have studied law firm growth over the past decade and it's beenpretty good.
And, but there's still a supply demand issue.
I think the last time I looked, we talked to lawyers a lot.
We assume everybody's a big law partner.
Maybe, maybe you don't assume that, but you you talk to more big law partners than theaverage person.
And
The last time I looked, there's 35,000 big law partners in the AmLaw 100.
(29:30):
So there is a little bit of a supply and demand of if you want an expert in a specifictopic that isn't conflicted, there aren't hundreds of thousands of experts walking around.
So I do this a lot, think it allows the experts to get to more matters.
thinking of legal technology, are there other trends or particular kinds of technology orplatforms that have you kind of excited right now?
(29:55):
Are there other things you're interested in besides generative AI that you think aremaking some change or having an impact on the industry?
Yeah, I mean, still some stuff that, you know, we talked about Ilta.
So Ilta will produce its report, but there's still a ton of work and ton of opportunity inthe foundational pieces on the technology front.
So data, host of systems, enterprise, legal specific, practice specific, business areaspecific.
(30:19):
We still think there's a lot of good old fashioned just process improvement, you know,workflow, which oftentimes, you know, is confused with AI.
Sometimes it's just workflow.
um And then third is just, what do you, um
predictive.
So how do you get a bit more predictive in your analytics and data sets?
uh And then underpinning all that is there's still a tremendous cloud adoption that has tohappen in legal.
(30:44):
Depending on the application that you're talking about, our client base is somewherebetween 40 % and 10 % in the cloud still.
There's a lot of not as exciting, not as new technologies that still have to be adopted atscale that are enablers to the things that the managing partners want to see deployed.
I continue to be surprised by that.
(31:05):
don't know why, but every time we have a conversation with somebody at a law firm aboutwhy they're not in the cloud, I continue to find it surprising.
They're getting there.
They're definitely getting there.
They're getting forced to get there.
think some of the providers are discontinuing their support for on-premises platforms, orleast announcing their plans to do that.
(31:27):
Yes, that'll be part of it.
And you don't get, you don't get access to the new modern emerging technologies if youdon't.
Yeah, especially the AI stuff is really driving a need to be in the cloud.
Curious on a kind of a personal level, you have now led, you even though you were with HBRfor many years, you've now led this new company through a real juncture, a transition
(31:52):
point, bringing together these three organizations.
What have been the challenges for you?
What have you learned about leadership that you didn't know two and a half years ago, say?
That's a good one.
Off script maybe a bit.
um I think number one is, I think the thing that early on I think was important aroundleadership in the formation of Harbor was an aligned mission vision strategy and like
(32:19):
where are we going after, right?
And so I referenced that relative to Bay Pine um specifically, but our team was excitedabout them as a potential partner because we all have spent.
we had a management meeting with like 10 of us at one point in time.
And we said, you know, had 300 years of legal experience in that meeting.
So obviously there's a lot of commitment, connection, passion and energy around that.
(32:43):
So it's just, you know, how do we, how do we, you know, have a, have a center of gravityand, and force, you know, towards, towards that common goal that we all saw as an
opportunity early on.
Um, but then more importantly, as we've brought, also integrated seven other organizationstoo.
So we've been fairly inquisitive outside of the initial three is that the number one mostimportant thing is just building relationships.
(33:08):
So I was in client service delivery and I felt like the important part when you're movingup, like it's domain expertise.
Sure.
It's working hard.
Yeah.
You know, being like, you know, all these things, but just building relationships as we'vetried to build Harbor.
Um, as we've added new companies to Harbor, as we've added new people, we've added newleaders, uh, C-level leaders, know, layer one leaders.
(33:32):
It's just the relationships.
And I think that's really the DNA of Harbor and why we've to the extent folks have felt,feel, feel like we've been successful.
Why we've been successful is because of that.
Like it's a very relationship centric organization that hopefully our clients feel and howwe interact with them and our commitment to the space and each other.
You wrote.
blog post about the Bay Pine investment in which you said, we're just getting started.
(33:56):
uh So what's ahead for Harvard?
Yeah, so we do feel like it was pretty, as you said, two years, right?
Two years from the launch of Harvard.
We're both an old and a new company, which is good and bad, right?
The old part is it's hard maybe to change some things that are institutionalized.
The new is we feel like we're just scratching the surface on our mission.
(34:18):
that mission being like, how can we create the premier end-to-end services provider forthe largest, most complex organizations that we want to do business with?
I mentioned some of those pieces, Bob, like we're early on our corporate law departmentjourney.
We're even earlier on our non-North American.
On the law firm side, we've got a lot more work to do in concert with helping our clientson their digital transformation, AI deployment journeys over the next five to 10 years.
(34:48):
And we see a lot of upside and opportunity and continuation of the direction that we'vebeen in to help support.
Yeah.
Just, I guess, just to wrap up, know we're short on time, but what do think are the kindof the biggest opportunities over the next decade for the customers that you serve, the
clients that you serve, law firms, corporate in-house legal departments?
And what should law firms be doing today to prepare for those opportunities?
(35:13):
So on the law firm side, yeah, I mean, cause it's a little bit different to what dependingon, you when we talk to corporate law department clients, you know, they're responsible
for risk mitigation and cost management, right?
Like managing their risk profile and their costs.
And when we're talking to law firms, their primary responsibility obviously is to practicelaw and deliver high quality, but they're trying to grow revenue and grow careers and same
(35:37):
as any, you know, business that's out there.
So on the law firm side, we think the biggest opportunity is to, you I'll focus on thebusiness services side first and then I'll go into the practice of law.
On the business services side is rethinking about, you know, how you're organized and howyou're thinking about service delivery.
(36:00):
So service delivery for business services is to predominantly your internal stakeholders,sometimes clients.
You hit this early on.
mean, I don't know if you meant to, but.
everything's tech enabled, right?
So there's no such thing as anything strategic or imperative at a firm now is crossfunctional in nature by design.
That was not the case seven years ago.
(36:20):
Less so the case five, never the case anymore.
So how do they rethink about, you know, organizationally, how are they thinking aboutinnovation transformation less in a traditional sense where there's a CHRO and a head of
innovation and a head of finance got to be embedded into the way in which they arethinking about working and
you know, kind of deploying their capital and talent on the law firm side.
(36:42):
I think it's this balance of the thing that we track pretty closely is, you know, there'sa lot of thought around the disruption of technologies being embedded into legal services
and a desire for the pricing models to change, which we've been talking about for theentirety of the 25 years that, you know, going back to the boxes that were in the offsite
(37:03):
storages.
Well, we measure very closely is what's the actual demand for that.
And so for the past 25 years, we have a corporate law department survey.
Some years it's 19, some years it's 26%.
But on average, right now, the demand from the buyer of legal services is to continue tobuy them in the same way on average.
(37:23):
So I think the challenge for law firms will be how do you time that switch?
Because I always say the buy side has to want to change as much as the sell side has towant to change their service delivery.
So I think that's going to be a really interesting thing to see play out.
I've been asking you questions for a half an hour now.
Anything else that you'd like to say about Harbor that we haven't touched on?
(37:44):
No, I think you hit good things around history, what we've tried to be thinking about thelast two years, what's upcoming, particularly given the new growth capital that we've got.
So these are spot on.
Good.
congratulations on two years.
I didn't realize that ILTA was your kind of birthday.
So this will probably be out just ahead of ILTA at some point.
(38:06):
So that'll be well timed.
We will have a little bit of a celebration.
It's good.
was, I was surprised.
think we launched on like the Friday before Ilta two years ago and we fully expected noone to even live looked at it and seen it.
And you know, we had our branding and we had our room and I was surprised that like a bigchunk of our client base already had, you know, recognized it and thought about it.
(38:27):
So it was, it was good.
And it's kind of, will always be the spot that it was the, you know, the official launchbecause of that.
That's great.
Well, Matt, thanks so much.
been a real pleasure to speak with you.
Again, sorry about some of the tech issues and I won't hang up.
Yeah, don't hang up yet.
ah
(38:48):
Thanks for joining us for today's show.
Hope you enjoyed it.
If you'd like to share your own thoughts or comments, can do so by messaging me onLinkedIn or other social media.
Just email me, ambroji at gmail.com.
If you're a fan of the show, leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts.
Law Next is a production of Law Next Media.
I'm your host, Bob Ambroji.
Please join us again next time for another episode of Law Next.
you
Welcome to Law Next.
This year's Ilticon, which starts later this week, marks the second anniversary of Harbor,a company formed through the merger of three long-established legal consulting firms, HBR
Consulting, LAC Group, and Wilson Allen, and that formally launched at Ilticon in 2023.
(00:22):
The company's been making waves ever since, culminating in the news in June that itreceived a majority investment from Bay Pine LP,
private investment firm devoted to driving digital transformation in market leadingbusinesses.
Part of what makes Harbor particularly interesting is that it sits at the intersection ofcorporate law departments, law firms, and technology providers, helping all three get more
(00:47):
value from their relationships.
My guest today is the CEO of Harbor, Matt Sunderman.
In our conversation, Matt and I explore Harbor's mission to provide legal departments withend-to-end solutions that span strategy,
legal technology, operations, and intelligence.
We also talk about the current state of digital transformation in legal, from theopportunities and obstacles around generative AI adoption, to the surprising reality that
(01:13):
many firms are still only 10 to 40 % cloud enabled.
And Matt offers his perspective on what law firms and corporate legal departments shouldbe doing today to prepare for the next decade.
As for me, I'm Bob Ambroci, and you're listening to Law Next, the podcast that featuresthe innovators and entrepreneurs
who are driving what's next in law.
(01:34):
Before I get to any of that, please take a moment to hear from the sponsors who sogenerously support this podcast.
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Now let's get to today's conversation.
Matt Sunderman, welcome to Law Next.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me today,
forward to speaking to you.
I feel like there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't see some news about Harborsomewhere going on in the world.
(03:07):
uh For a sort of two-year-old company, you guys have been awfully busy and doing a lot ohlately.
And we'll get to why I say sort of two-year-old company, I guess.
But I wonder if we could just kind of start with, for those who might be unfamiliar withHarbor, can you describe what it is Harbor does and what makes it distinct in the
kind of legal services and technology landscape.
(03:30):
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
And I like that you picked up on the two year old company because that's how we identifyourselves and we can double click on that.
um So Harbor is uh focused on really the legal ecosystem.
So what we describe that as is corporate law departments, law firms, and then sitting inthe center, the providers, oftentimes tech, but it can be non-tech providers that engage
(03:51):
with either of those two constituencies.
And really at the highest level, we fundamentally focus on two different things for bothcorporate law departments and global law firms.
One, an overly used word, but I'll use it today, is digital transformation.
And what that means for us is a whole host of things we can get into.
And the second piece is operational transformation.
(04:12):
So really what we're focused on is helping our clients both operationally and throughtechnology.
improve the ways in which they work, improves the ways in which they interact with eachother, quite frankly, because that's where we feel like we're a little bit unique is that
we sit between both parts, law firms, corporate law departments and technology providers.
(04:33):
And can ideally help each of the three within that constituency get more value out oftheir partnerships.
Let's go back to that point you mentioned double clicking on, Harbor was formed in 2023through a merger of HBR Consulting, Lack Group, and Wilson Allen.
Can you kind of talk about how that came to be and why that happened?
(04:55):
Yeah.
So I was preparing for, Ilta this morning.
Actually we've had an internal call and we launched it Ilta two years ago.
And so Ilta is in, think about three weeks.
I might be slightly off.
Um, so it'll be our official two year anniversary.
Um, and what we were thinking about then was, you know, each of those three organizationshad spent somewhere between 15 and 30 years in legal services.
(05:18):
So I grew up in the HBR part of the, the three that you just referenced and
The founders of that organization go back to the mid seventies.
so Brad Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, those are two kind of institutional longstanding legalfocus consultancies.
That's the HBR are those three and similar for LAC group and Wilson Allen, like deephistory and legal.
(05:40):
Um, and when we were looking at how our clients were interacting with third partyproviders, we saw a huge opportunity for our clients to get a deeper, wider.
um, expertise set to help them solve what they were looking to accomplish.
So that sounds great, but the why is probably more important.
Um, as we were looking at what clients needed, like there's assessment work, youtraditional consulting, there's implementation work, and then there's post-school life
(06:06):
support.
How do you support a client after you've implemented?
And each of those three businesses had different focal points.
Like I would say.
HBR was more of an assessment implement.
Wilson Allen was more of an implementation.
LAC group was more of a managed services provider.
And we looked at our client base, we felt like there was an opportunity to one, providemore end-to-end integrated solutions, partnerships with our clients, and then two, help
(06:30):
them on a holistic journey of assess, implement, manage, as opposed to just solving one ofthose discrete opportunities.
Yeah, and you mentioned Assess Implement Manage.
Looking at your website, and I keep seeing the phrase several times, strategy, legaltechnology, operations, and intelligence.
I mean, does that kind of sum up the overall scope of your mission?
(06:53):
Yeah, you what we're trying to do and this maybe isn't the aspirational tagline that youknow that we as strive to but tactically is that right?
How do we bring to bear those four things that you just hit Bob?
So strategy, legal ops, intelligence, some of those different dimensions.
The other piece that I didn't hit in the first part was global and the global is animportant part of that equation.
(07:16):
uh Each of those three heritage businesses that I just referenced that you asked aboutwere all predominantly North American focused.
And we saw another opportunity, our client base was starting over the past decade, becomemore global, become more complex, have operations, have more scale, have more headcount,
have more attorneys outside of North America.
And so in addition to, you know, assess, implement, manage across those four differentpieces that you hit, we wanted to have a global delivery and global sales and global
(07:45):
integrated offering to help those organizations as they continue to expand theirfootprint.
How do we match that with them?
As you're coming on this two year uh anniversary uh and as we talk about kind of yourformation and organization, you just had news last month of majority investment from
private investment firm Bay Pine LLP.
(08:08):
So what does that mean for you, for where you're headed, your clientele and yourcustomers?
Yeah, I had, um I can't be too obvious in who it is.
So let's say a CIO of a global 10 firm asked me this exact question yesterday.
So I haven't had a chance to get to everybody, you know, post transaction.
I won't answer the question first, cause I'll say how I responded it to him, Bob.
(08:31):
And then I will answer the question directly.
um So a couple of things that we think are really important is that mission that I set outat the onset still holds true.
So like, we're still focused on the legal vertical.
We're still trying to bring the bear offerings to corporate law departments and law firms.
oh We're still trying to round out our global capabilities.
um So that's kind of the North Star of the organization.
(08:53):
similarly direction, because sometimes when this happens, um find organizations say, well,now we want to go focus in on accounting and consulting, or isn't government interesting,
or there's large insurance companies that have similar needs to law departments and lawfirms.
So oh one of the things that our management team was most excited about Bay Pine isthere's high alignment around continuing the journey of focus around
(09:16):
serving the client base that we have.
The second part is, and we've been really intentional about this throughout our journey,is hyper-focus on the client-centric nature of when we've brought other acquisitions into
Harbor, making sure that our clients didn't feel the pain of another company going througha transition, right?
So when we acquire a company, they have to come get integrated.
(09:37):
You've got tactical things like billing and systems, and you've got strategic things likerelationship management.
And we want to make sure we stay focused on that for the benefit of the client.
So kind of where we're going and how we're thinking about our client base is consistent.
I would say the three things that we're focused on in working with and why we're excitedabout the Bay Pine investment capital are one, they are a private equity firm that is
(10:01):
focused on helping organizations navigate the digital transformation that the rest of theeconomy has to go through over the next.
We could say one year, could say 10 years and we'll both be wrong.
So what they mean by that is, know, historically Bay Pine has been technology investorsfrom a management team, not necessarily, not Bay Pine.
(10:22):
um The folks that are part of Bay Pine have historically been technology investors.
As Bay Pine, they have a different thesis.
And if you look at the market cap of all companies, I'm going to quote their quotes, sodon't fact check me on this one, but uh only 10 % of the market cap is actually technology
companies.
And the other 90 % of industries and markets organizations also have to go through thistransition that all professional services firms do harbor our clients, corporate law
(10:51):
departments, law firms.
And their thesis is how do they help based on their technology expertise clients and theirinvestments navigate this period of time.
So one is we've been on this journey for a number of years on our side, but we believe theexpertise that they bring and the focus that they have around
the digital transformation both internally that we need to go through and externally whatour clients need to go through is like where they're hyper-focused uniquely outside of
(11:18):
traditional tech organizations.
So they're not looking to make this investment in, I'll pick on legal tech, not that theywouldn't love these organizations, but you know, the lateras or elites or in taps or how
you might think about a technology legal based in the Harvey based investment.
it's how can they help organizations like us navigate this, this time one.
um Two is, so there's expertise, two is just growth capital.
(11:43):
So we had a prior investor that was a great partner of ours, but also just lower middlemarket and had less access to capital for us to make those internal investments and think
about the external.
The third is, if you think about Harbor, I talked a lot about global and I talked a lotabout two end markets.
We've been less focused on the corporate end market for us outside of North America.
(12:05):
So how do we...
accelerate and think about where those growth opportunities both might be in NorthAmerica, but outside North America, our global expansion has been predominantly law firm
focused.
So how do we work with, you know, Bay pine and leverage some of the growth capital tothink about that both organically and inorganically.
And then finally underpinned on all that is just tech enablement.
(12:26):
um So investments on how we interact with clients, investments on how we deliver solutionsto our clients, investments, how we continue to
work on making our delivery be more consistent and less human centric.
So all of those things are kind of underpinning, you know, how we think about the growthopportunities.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you talked about Brad Hildebrandt in the early days ofkind of a more of a management consulting focus firm.
(12:54):
But given the kinds of expertise you now have and the kinds of services, I imagine yourclients are looking for, whether it's through a spanning strategy or operations or
whatever else, it's all tech enabled, right?
I mean, it's all driven by tech.
It's not a separate category at this point.
No, that like early in, so I was a colleague of Brad's when I first started at the H part.
(13:19):
So it was very much separate, right?
Like very much separate.
You had like a records group that was responsible for like information governance and thena team that managed the boxes and then another team that managed the technology.
And today to your point, every initiative is either underpinned or accelerated oraugmented by technology.
So there's no bifurcation of that in any of the things that we do, whether it's thestrategy, the operations, legal tech.
(13:42):
or intelligence, it all has a technology enablement component.
You've said that your client base is law firms, corporate legal departments.
But could you kind of break that down in terms of who are the firms and departments thatare coming to you?
What are the kinds of challenges that they're facing when they're sending you an email orpicking up the phone and giving you a call?
(14:09):
Yeah, yeah.
So when we talk about those two just orient like who within the constituency, it'sgenerally about fortune 1000 organizations.
So scaled corporate law departments on one size, we definitely work with smallerorganizations, but it's usually some of the larger and then on the law firm side, it's
typically the global three or 400, which are predominantly North American based, you know,both by headcount and in revenue, as you know.
(14:33):
So it's a good question.
And one of the things that we try to
be pretty intentional about is like, you should think about calling us and pick up thephone to call us.
The extent people pick up the phone to call us, email or text.
But you know, if people ever did call, I say the only time anyone ever calls you anymoreis to deliver bad news.
That's the only time anyone picks up the phone.
Otherwise it's email or text or teams.
(14:55):
But we try to operate at three different points of the organization and then I'll hit theways in which.
So one is we try to hit help at the enterprise level.
So that's
managing partners, executive director conversations around things like how should we bethinking about at a macro our digital transformation?
(15:15):
And if we are thinking about how does that change our organizational structure?
And when we do that, what should our headcount and tech budgets look like?
So that might be at the enterprise level on a law firm conversation.
And how does AI play into that?
How does data play into that?
How does getting to the cloud play into that?
How does tech rationalization play into that?
So it's, you know, kind of at the
(15:36):
the management level of the firm.
um The second place that we try to position ourselves for is what we would call like thedepartmental or the domain.
So we also interact a lot with just a CIO or just a CFO or just a CEO around a discretething.
So I'm a CFO at a global 10 and we're thinking about upgrading our financial system.
(15:57):
That's another place that we might play.
And then also we've tried to position the organization one click below that where evenwithin you've got
managing partners and executive directors, CFO.
But within the CFO, obviously you've got a lot of functional directors, technologies,nuanced processes.
We also want to be able to support, I've got a billing issue, client X, and we are havinga problem with our tech companies and how do we solve for the billing process technology
(16:23):
and issues.
So how we're trying to think about Harbor's journey is we want to be able to interact withour clients at top of the house, functional heads.
and then also solve very discrete problems.
And I kind of, work pretty fluidly between those points.
So I was going to ask you if you could give me an example of kind of a success story, butit sounds like from what you're saying that the success story would depend a whole lot on
(16:46):
what the mission was in the first place.
and who the primary point person is initially.
Because it's a little bit of like meet them where they're at, right?
Sometimes it's a really discreet billing problem.
Sometimes it's a finance system or organizational problem.
sometimes it's an enterprise technology roadmap opportunity, right?
And so each of those three play out in different ways, depending on where the firm's at,what their priorities are.
(17:11):
Still a lot of organizations, as I'm sure you know, do still kind of drive decision-makingat the functional or departmental level.
but we're starting to do more and more of how are we setting enterprise a vision andexecuting against it.
I'm speaking with Matt Sunderman, the CEO of Harbor, who has been describing how Harborworks with clients at different levels, from enterprise strategy down to discrete
(17:38):
operational issues.
Fossil touched on the idea of digital transformation.
When we come back, I want to explore what digital transformation really means in practiceand how Harbor is helping law firms and legal departments fundamentally rethink the way
they work.
Before we get to any of that,
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(19:20):
Welcome back to Law Next.
I'm speaking with Matt Sunderman, CEO of Harbor.
Before the break, we were talking about how Harbor engages with clients at multiple levelswithin their organizations.
He's alluded several times to working with clients to help them strategize about andachieve digital and operational transformation.
But what exactly do we mean by that?
(19:40):
Is it about innovating?
Is it rethinking how they do and what
they do.
As we return to the conversation, that's where we pick up.
Let's get back to it.
You've talked a couple of times about digital transformation.
(20:02):
I don't know if, that sort of synonymous with innovation at a law firm or a legaldepartment?
Are you working with customers to kind of really help them rethink how they do what theydo?
Absolutely.
If I were to tell you that was a hundred percent of the work, I would be fabricating thereality, but we do spend a lot of time on that.
um We're still also in addition to that.
(20:24):
So we're thinking about how do you transform the way in which maybe you deliver a specificarea of law.
Like that's a practice of law transformation.
We're helping clients think about how do we deploy modern technologies.
And I'm using that word intentionally.
not AI necessarily always, sometimes it's just good old fashioned, you business processautomation.
um And we help clients think about what technologies should they use and how do they,should they deploy it for the purposes of practice of law and business of law.
(20:51):
And then we also help clients just modernize their systems, infrastructure and data.
Kind of all of that would fall into, you know, transformation for us.
um And, you know, oftentimes there's a lot more work than some of our clients stillappreciate on that last rung, just modernize their data and systems to allow them to fully
enable or take advantage of
(21:12):
the new technologies or the new potential that is in front of them to transform.
Again, you didn't just appear out of nowhere two years ago.
You had long histories of the three different organizations that came together to formHarbor.
But you did create this new entity in the early days of the generative AI transformationwithin the legal industry.
(21:36):
So I'm uh curious how you as a business, not you personally, but you as a business,
incorporating generative AI into the work that you do and then how are you helping yourclients incorporate generative?
both.
we, before, whenever it was in 2022, like the official, the official launch, we alreadyhad an internal team, uh, November.
(22:02):
Yes.
We had an official team internally that was focused on 80%.
How are we doing it internally for ourselves?
One two is probably 10 to 15 % for clients.
So we already thinking about the service delivery.
Um,
And then third is like net new solutions that we're bringing to market.
And so the individual who leads that for us, know, history with IBM history with WilliamBlair doing, you know, advanced technologies, and then, you know, teaches the master's
(22:30):
program at University of Chicago here and based where our headquarters are.
so things that we're thinking about doing is, know, we've built things to make ouronboarding process more seamless.
We've done things to make so that when people query just internal.
procedures, standard operating procedures we have, how do you access information so that,you know, traditionally you might've had to call a representative in talent or legal or
(22:52):
IT.
And we've deployed that kind of at scale across different facets of our business.
We've also on service delivery, we've tried to standardize and automate kind of how we doassessments.
So we do a lot of assessments for different areas, but how do we leverage moderntechnology, particularly when it's, you know, interview based and there's a lot of
information to create more standardized outputs.
(23:12):
And then also we've leveraged the new technologies, particularly in the area ofintelligence.
So you, you you hit that in terms of one of the things that we're thinking about, butobviously the technology is very, very powerful for accessing public, private, proprietary
information and data when we're providing intelligence, you know, reports or informationfor our clients.
(23:33):
and we leverage that technology in that space.
So those are kind of three examples, some of which are operational in nature, internal forour talent or legal functions.
Some are.
for the whole business assessments and others were for discrete parts of our business, ourintelligence practice.
And so we've tried to deploy that expertise across the business in each of thosedimensions to date.
(23:54):
I think a lot of the go forward partnership with Bay Pine and just continued investmentwe're making at Harbor on this front will be around those things, those three pieces of
how do we make it easier for our employees to engage with the enterprise?
How do we make it easier for our employees or our consultants or professional servicesmembers to
create deliverables for clients?
And then how do we modernize our deliverables that maybe historically weren't delivered insuch a tech enabled way?
(24:19):
Yeah.
And what about on the client side?
I what are you seeing in terms of the opportunities and obstacles to adopting generativeAI in law firms and corporate legal departments?
all the huge opportunities and obstacles, as I'm sure you're acutely aware of as well.
And again, some of it depends on like who we're talking to in an organization and wherethe organization is at, right?
(24:40):
So, you know, conversation with managing partner that only reads the American lawyerheadlines believes that they're decades behind a technology that's only existed for a
couple years because, you know, there's a lot of puffery potentially in some of the, youknow, what it can do and or how it's being deployed.
So when we're talking to like,
senior executive, it's a little bit around what is happening in the market that is makingmeaningful impact versus the headlines.
(25:06):
One, two is what technology have you already invested in that there's an opportunity todeploy in a different way than you need a new technology to do something?
Because oftentimes there's, you know, we did a recent inventory for a global 30 and foundthere were north of seven technologies that the organization already had.
that could do some or most of the functionality of the net new technology that they wantedto bring into the organization.
(25:30):
So it's a little bit of just, you know, what do you have and what haven't you maybedeployed successfully that you could leverage and or assess something new.
And then most importantly is, are you ready?
And what is the specific use case?
So the, you ready is, is your information organized?
Do you know what you're pointing it at?
Is your back end infrastructure cloud enabled?
(25:51):
Do you have the right security provision set up?
Do you have a training program?
Have you thought about governance?
just all of these, are you ready kind of conversations, but more importantly, what are youpointing it at and what's the benefit?
Are you looking to automate something?
Are you looking to innovate something?
Are you looking to eliminate something?
So, you know, why are you deploying this new technology in the business of law or thepractice of law?
(26:14):
So a lot of different conversations that happen across what I just, what I just hit, butI'm trying to help organizations navigate and effectively.
deploy these technologies, you know, is a key focus of ours on both the corporate side andthe law firm side.
I'd say corporations probably are a little bit more advanced and because, you know, theyhave the enterprise of a fortune 10 or a fortune 100 has a lot of AI advanced technology
(26:40):
initiatives that the general counsel's office is participating in and or they've alreadymade investment in enterprise technologies at scale that they can take advantage of versus
I'd say law firms are,
less sophisticated necessarily as it relates to the enterprise investment in some of thesetechnologies.
When you're having those conversations with the senior partners or the senior executivesand you're doing a little bit of level setting, I guess, in terms of what's happening with
(27:06):
this technology, there's been so much, as you say, puffery, you said, might say hype aboutthe transformative nature of generative AI uh in its impact on legal practice and the
legal profession over the coming years.
What's your own perception on that, having been in this industry for a number of years?
Yeah, we're really bullish on the opportunity, right?
(27:28):
So like the potential of impact in automation, innovation, know, elimination of thingsthat could be used to hire is like, we're pretty bullish both for both corporations and
law firms.
So I always go back to, let me think about how many, there's been three or four liketechnology transitions, all of which we thought, I thought that both the law firms and the
(27:50):
amount of legal work as well as maybe the services organizations around them might beimpacted, right?
And so there was, this is just where I started.
There's, I mentioned the boxes, the bankers boxes that were sent in offsite facilitiesthat weren't even indexed, right?
Like step one was, can we find the boxes?
Can we index them so we can find a proper matter file?
Step two is, could we scan them?
(28:11):
Step three was, could we host them?
Step four was, can we actually host and find the information?
Step five is, can we stick it in the cloud and make it even more efficient?
Step six is, let's build some workflow.
And now step seven is we're on to, let's deploy the new technology to continue to enhancethat.
um And what we've found over the past three decades is just legal demand through all ofthese technology changes continues to outstrip the humans that the supply of humans that
(28:38):
are available to do it.
So like our point of view, and we're bullish on the legal end market, clearly Harbor as anorganization, and we're here to support our clients is that this is a way to get at and or
improve some of the legal service delivery and there will be disruption versus eliminate.
um
Cause we study this there, you know, the corporate side, the number one obstacle for themgetting to what they can do is just too much work, not enough people should help solve it.
(29:06):
And then, know, you and I have studied law firm growth over the past decade and it's beenpretty good.
And, but there's still a supply demand issue.
I think the last time I looked, we talked to lawyers a lot.
We assume everybody's a big law partner.
Maybe, maybe you don't assume that, but you you talk to more big law partners than theaverage person.
And
The last time I looked, there's 35,000 big law partners in the AmLaw 100.
(29:30):
So there is a little bit of a supply and demand of if you want an expert in a specifictopic that isn't conflicted, there aren't hundreds of thousands of experts walking around.
So I do this a lot, think it allows the experts to get to more matters.
thinking of legal technology, are there other trends or particular kinds of technology orplatforms that have you kind of excited right now?
(29:55):
Are there other things you're interested in besides generative AI that you think aremaking some change or having an impact on the industry?
Yeah, I mean, still some stuff that, you know, we talked about Ilta.
So Ilta will produce its report, but there's still a ton of work and ton of opportunity inthe foundational pieces on the technology front.
So data, host of systems, enterprise, legal specific, practice specific, business areaspecific.
(30:19):
We still think there's a lot of good old fashioned just process improvement, you know,workflow, which oftentimes, you know, is confused with AI.
Sometimes it's just workflow.
um And then third is just, what do you, um
predictive.
So how do you get a bit more predictive in your analytics and data sets?
uh And then underpinning all that is there's still a tremendous cloud adoption that has tohappen in legal.
(30:44):
Depending on the application that you're talking about, our client base is somewherebetween 40 % and 10 % in the cloud still.
There's a lot of not as exciting, not as new technologies that still have to be adopted atscale that are enablers to the things that the managing partners want to see deployed.
I continue to be surprised by that.
(31:05):
don't know why, but every time we have a conversation with somebody at a law firm aboutwhy they're not in the cloud, I continue to find it surprising.
They're getting there.
They're definitely getting there.
They're getting forced to get there.
think some of the providers are discontinuing their support for on-premises platforms, orleast announcing their plans to do that.
(31:27):
Yes, that'll be part of it.
And you don't get, you don't get access to the new modern emerging technologies if youdon't.
Yeah, especially the AI stuff is really driving a need to be in the cloud.
Curious on a kind of a personal level, you have now led, you even though you were with HBRfor many years, you've now led this new company through a real juncture, a transition
(31:52):
point, bringing together these three organizations.
What have been the challenges for you?
What have you learned about leadership that you didn't know two and a half years ago, say?
That's a good one.
Off script maybe a bit.
um I think number one is, I think the thing that early on I think was important aroundleadership in the formation of Harbor was an aligned mission vision strategy and like
(32:19):
where are we going after, right?
And so I referenced that relative to Bay Pine um specifically, but our team was excitedabout them as a potential partner because we all have spent.
we had a management meeting with like 10 of us at one point in time.
And we said, you know, had 300 years of legal experience in that meeting.
So obviously there's a lot of commitment, connection, passion and energy around that.
(32:43):
So it's just, you know, how do we, how do we, you know, have a, have a center of gravityand, and force, you know, towards, towards that common goal that we all saw as an
opportunity early on.
Um, but then more importantly, as we've brought, also integrated seven other organizationstoo.
So we've been fairly inquisitive outside of the initial three is that the number one mostimportant thing is just building relationships.
(33:08):
So I was in client service delivery and I felt like the important part when you're movingup, like it's domain expertise.
Sure.
It's working hard.
Yeah.
You know, being like, you know, all these things, but just building relationships as we'vetried to build Harbor.
Um, as we've added new companies to Harbor, as we've added new people, we've added newleaders, uh, C-level leaders, know, layer one leaders.
(33:32):
It's just the relationships.
And I think that's really the DNA of Harbor and why we've to the extent folks have felt,feel, feel like we've been successful.
Why we've been successful is because of that.
Like it's a very relationship centric organization that hopefully our clients feel and howwe interact with them and our commitment to the space and each other.
You wrote.
blog post about the Bay Pine investment in which you said, we're just getting started.
(33:56):
uh So what's ahead for Harvard?
Yeah, so we do feel like it was pretty, as you said, two years, right?
Two years from the launch of Harvard.
We're both an old and a new company, which is good and bad, right?
The old part is it's hard maybe to change some things that are institutionalized.
The new is we feel like we're just scratching the surface on our mission.
(34:18):
that mission being like, how can we create the premier end-to-end services provider forthe largest, most complex organizations that we want to do business with?
I mentioned some of those pieces, Bob, like we're early on our corporate law departmentjourney.
We're even earlier on our non-North American.
On the law firm side, we've got a lot more work to do in concert with helping our clientson their digital transformation, AI deployment journeys over the next five to 10 years.
(34:48):
And we see a lot of upside and opportunity and continuation of the direction that we'vebeen in to help support.
Yeah.
Just, I guess, just to wrap up, know we're short on time, but what do think are the kindof the biggest opportunities over the next decade for the customers that you serve, the
clients that you serve, law firms, corporate in-house legal departments?
And what should law firms be doing today to prepare for those opportunities?
(35:13):
So on the law firm side, yeah, I mean, cause it's a little bit different to what dependingon, you when we talk to corporate law department clients, you know, they're responsible
for risk mitigation and cost management, right?
Like managing their risk profile and their costs.
And when we're talking to law firms, their primary responsibility obviously is to practicelaw and deliver high quality, but they're trying to grow revenue and grow careers and same
(35:37):
as any, you know, business that's out there.
So on the law firm side, we think the biggest opportunity is to, you I'll focus on thebusiness services side first and then I'll go into the practice of law.
On the business services side is rethinking about, you know, how you're organized and howyou're thinking about service delivery.
(36:00):
So service delivery for business services is to predominantly your internal stakeholders,sometimes clients.
You hit this early on.
mean, I don't know if you meant to, but.
everything's tech enabled, right?
So there's no such thing as anything strategic or imperative at a firm now is crossfunctional in nature by design.
That was not the case seven years ago.
(36:20):
Less so the case five, never the case anymore.
So how do they rethink about, you know, organizationally, how are they thinking aboutinnovation transformation less in a traditional sense where there's a CHRO and a head of
innovation and a head of finance got to be embedded into the way in which they arethinking about working and
you know, kind of deploying their capital and talent on the law firm side.
(36:42):
I think it's this balance of the thing that we track pretty closely is, you know, there'sa lot of thought around the disruption of technologies being embedded into legal services
and a desire for the pricing models to change, which we've been talking about for theentirety of the 25 years that, you know, going back to the boxes that were in the offsite
(37:03):
storages.
Well, we measure very closely is what's the actual demand for that.
And so for the past 25 years, we have a corporate law department survey.
Some years it's 19, some years it's 26%.
But on average, right now, the demand from the buyer of legal services is to continue tobuy them in the same way on average.
(37:23):
So I think the challenge for law firms will be how do you time that switch?
Because I always say the buy side has to want to change as much as the sell side has towant to change their service delivery.
So I think that's going to be a really interesting thing to see play out.
I've been asking you questions for a half an hour now.
Anything else that you'd like to say about Harbor that we haven't touched on?
(37:44):
No, I think you hit good things around history, what we've tried to be thinking about thelast two years, what's upcoming, particularly given the new growth capital that we've got.
So these are spot on.
Good.
congratulations on two years.
I didn't realize that ILTA was your kind of birthday.
So this will probably be out just ahead of ILTA at some point.
(38:06):
So that'll be well timed.
We will have a little bit of a celebration.
It's good.
was, I was surprised.
think we launched on like the Friday before Ilta two years ago and we fully expected noone to even live looked at it and seen it.
And you know, we had our branding and we had our room and I was surprised that like a bigchunk of our client base already had, you know, recognized it and thought about it.
(38:27):
So it was, it was good.
And it's kind of, will always be the spot that it was the, you know, the official launchbecause of that.
That's great.
Well, Matt, thanks so much.
been a real pleasure to speak with you.
Again, sorry about some of the tech issues and I won't hang up.
Yeah, don't hang up yet.
ah
(38:48):
Thanks for joining us for today's show.
Hope you enjoyed it.
If you'd like to share your own thoughts or comments, can do so by messaging me onLinkedIn or other social media.
Just email me, ambroji at gmail.com.
If you're a fan of the show, leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts.
Law Next is a production of Law Next Media.
I'm your host, Bob Ambroji.
Please join us again next time for another episode of Law Next.
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