Lora Blum, SurveyMonkey general counsel. (Photo: Jason Doiy / ALM)

The Stanford University COVID-19 Memo Database is important, timely, broad in scope, easy-to-use and helps cut through all the coronavirus "noise," according to several current and former general counsel who have used it.

Created with general counsel in mind—but being searched by law firms, too—Stanford has placed all those COVID-19 memos that have been flooding in-house lawyers' inboxes into its free, searchable database.

Lora Blum, chief legal officer at SurveyMonkey in San Mateo, California, said she was trying to sort the "overwhelming" volume of law firm COVID-19 memos into email folders, reading some now and holding others as issues arose later.

"But the amount of time it took to see where the focus areas were of each memo was too much," she said. "I heard about the database through a couple of networks and checked it out. It was incredibly useful to have so much information categorized in an organized way that is pretty easily searchable."

Blum said she appreciates the Stanford team that put it together and has recommended the database to other in-house counsel.

She explained, "As the crisis evolves, questions come up quickly, and being able to get some even general guidance on things like shelter-in-place orders, how the federal stimulus actions might impact our business, or how privacy and safety concerns will impact our return-to-office planning is super helpful. … Being able to respond quickly can be a very comforting thing for our teams, so they know we are thinking through the important issues."

Another satisfied user was Brian Levey, chief business affairs and legal officer at Upwork Global Inc. in San Francisco. Levey called it "an easy-to-navigate treasure trove of useful COVID-19 information in one place."

He said he uses the memos to "quickly educate and deputize others in the company—for example, the workplace team; the SEC reporting team; the cybersecurity/infosec team; business continuity planning team—on important, timely and cross-functional COVID-related topics."

Levey said the only suggestion he would make is to allow the user to search the memos' text as well as the title. Currently the database contains only the title on each memo and a link to the article on a law firm's website.

So the database is not scraping the article and not violating a law firm's copyright. In fact, it is almost free advertising for the law firm.

Anne Sheehan, former director of corporate governance at the California State Teachers' Retirement System, is now a board member of L Brands and chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Investor Advisory Committee. She used it to prepare for this week's advisory committee meeting.

"Companies this year cannot have annual shareholder meetings in person," she explained. "They must go to virtual annual meetings. Some of the law firms have given their advice on disclosure [and other elements of virtual meetings] … and I found it incredibly easy to use and navigate. I provided a link to other committee members."

Sheehan called the database "one-stop shopping for what the law firms are telling companies about what's going on and how to handle it." She is also a member of the advisory board at Stanford's Rock Center on Corporate Governance, which created the database.

Cutting through the "overwhelming noise" of all the law firm memos lured Matt Fawcett, general counsel of NetApp Inc., to the project.

Fawcett said, "It is difficult to detect the signal from the noise. Especially with rules, regulations and best practices changing and evolving every day and the need to provide in-the-moment guidance across all the countries and geographies where we do business, any resource that can help find the signal through the noise is particularly valuable."

For example, he said, "Week 1 of the coronavirus was force majeure. Week 2 was Zoombombing. This week is Return to Office."

Then he added reluctantly, "The Stanford database, from everything I have seen, is the best tool for that—and it is especially difficult for me to admit that, as a Cal alum."

For Daniel Cooperman, former general counsel of Apple Inc. and now on the board at Oracle Corp., the frequent updating of the memos won his praise.

"This topic has been moving so fast, but you can pretty much rely on that what is in there is current. It is searchable by title," Cooperman said. "And maybe more importantly for in-house counsel, it identifies lawyers in the firm who are working on this topic."

He explained, "Particularly when dealing with large firms, it can be hard to get to the individual who has an answer."

Cooperman agrees that being able to search the text of articles would improve the database. He also being able to limit the search to five or so key firms of the user's choosing would be helpful.

"Using 20 is too many in my view," he said. "They are repeating so much."

The database could allow in-house counsel to select which five firms to get memos from, Cooperman said, letting them choose their own go-to firms.

He thinks the project is so helpful for in-house counsel that he suggests it be done in other areas where the rules are rapidly changing, such as foreign taxation or new rules on transactions with China.

Stanford University law and business professor Joseph Grundfest said the site can and should be improved. "We built this virtually overnight and on a shoestring," Grundfest said. Now that it has been used, and it works, "we plan to add to it."

The site already allows for limiting the number of articles to specific law firms and by date, he said. "Obviously we need to highlight that feature better," he added.

His team also is working with Stanford's computer science department on rolling out some new search approaches, adding new algorithms. That could take a few months, he said.

He also hopes to talk with law firms to obtain permission to allow for full-text searches. Even if he could legally scrape the articles and search them, Grundfest said, "I don't view that approach as 'neighborly' or respectful of the law firms' interests in their intellectual property."

He said the team also is considering adding other topics beyond COVID-19 in time.

Overall, he said, "We've been gratified by the response [to the database], and it's been surprisingly positive."

Read More:

Stanford Law School Creates Free Database of COVID-19 Legal Memos

Reopening Business? In-House Counsel Can Seek Guidance on Stanford's COVID-19 Memo Database