Skyline of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Photo: ESB Professional/Shutterstock.com.

 

When the CEO and founder of LDM Global, a managed e-discovery and cybersecurity provider serving the legal industry, stepped down after over two decades at the helm of the company, the search had been ongoing for some time.

Ultimately, the company could have chosen someone in the e-discovery or cybersecurity field. But instead, it opted for a person from outside the legal technology industry: Conor Looney, the former CEO of Caribbean-based mobile network company Digicel Group.

So how does a relative legal tech newcomer take the reins of an e-discovery and cybersecurity company with global offices and legal clients across Europe, Asia, the United States and the Caribbean?

For Looney, who will work out of Florida after being in the Caribbean for six years, it's about leveraging his international business background and quickly getting up to speed in understanding legal clients' needs. Still, it won't be an easy, hands-off transition. “I'll have a lot to learn, but that energizes me because I'm not afraid to learn,” he said.

To be sure, Looney does have some exposure to the legal tech industry, having sat on the LDM advisory board for the past two years. “I'm familiar with the business, familiar with the founder; I've known him for four years,” he noted.

But there is a fair bit he still needs to learn. “I'm a voracious reader. I read a lot, so I'll be studying,” Looney added.

Of course, knowing the ins and outs of legal technology is only one part to running a large e-discovery and cybersecurity company. What is also needed is an understanding of what most legal clients want out of their tech providers.

But Looney believes he has a leg up in this area. After all, he's worked for decades in consumer technology companies, where he said his main focus was “a mix of technology and what we call customer obsession.”

Suffice it to say, he expects to hit the ground running at LDM. Just a few days after Looney officially becomes the company's new CEO, he will embark on a worldwide tour of LDM's global markets to talk with clients and company employees firsthand.

“I'll be a student of exactly what our clients need, so spending a lot of time with clients, which actually begins straight away and continue very aggressively for the next 100 days. I will be meeting clients across the world as well as our team, really trying to understand what's working and not working,” Looney said.

It can be overwhelming managing and understanding the unique needs of clients across numerous countries with different legal cultures and regulations. But given his work in the Caribbean markets, Looney isn't too worried. The Caribbean economy, after all, is connected to broader global markets, and working at Digicel required Looney to regularly work with a diverse international clientele.

“It has helped that I have lived and worked in the Caribbean for over six years, so in the last year alone I have visited 29 countries,” he said.

What's more, even within the Caribbean itself, he has had to contend with islands whose markets and are very distinct from each other, an experience he hopes to leverage as CEO of LDM.

“From a legal perspective, the Virgin Islands— you would have a lot more shareholder disputes there and also commercial litigation, whereas in the Caymans you wold have a lot of fund litigation.”

His approach to global markets will be guided by the knowledge that every country has distinct opportunities and challenges of their own. “Even within a region, if we could group together different territories they still would have different needs form a client perspective,” he said.