Kermit Wallace, Chief Information Officer, Day Pitney Kermit Wallace, Chief Information Officer, Day Pitney. Courtesy photo.
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If your information technology function is in a silo, you're doing 21st century tech wrong. Increasingly, IT personnel—and especially the heads of IT—have increasingly been called upon to make business decisions in law firms. This means that not only must IT professionals learn the value of the data they hold, but the converse as well: the firm at large must learn the potential of what IT can provide. Bridging this gap has necessarily been a crucial topic among law firm leaders in recent years, and as we enter 2020, the conversation shows no signs of slowing down.

As part of the run-up to Legalweek 2020, Legaltech News is chatting with a number of speakers from this year's sessions to know. Today's Q&A is with Kermit Wallace, chief information officer of Day Pitney. His LegalCIO session "Reimagining IT as a Business Intelligence Asset" will take place on Wednesday, February 5, at 3 p.m.

What do you think legal tech looks like in 10 years? What will be the biggest opportunities and challenges?

I may be going against the grain with this answer, but I'm not convinced legal tech will look all that different than it does now. I think there's some interesting things on the horizon—you can't have a legal discussion in the last couple of years without talking about artificial intelligence and machine learning—but the promise of those technologies is still to be fully defined before it can be realized.

What is the biggest misconception you think still persists about legal technology?

The idea that technology people don't understand the business. A person may join one firm in a certain position then change positions or change firms, so there's legal-industry knowledge that typically gets acquired along the way and helps inform their technology decisions. Those of us that have made a career of legal technology have an obligation to do what we can to become well-versed in how a law firm operates and share that knowledge with those less experienced. It helps everyone.

How have data analytics capabilities expanded in even the past 2-3 years that has allowed IT to play a larger role?

Tools that were previously not used in legal have made their way in and are growing to help decision-makers get more information out of the data. IT helping to tie all that data together and bring other systems and processes online will help the decision-makers make better decisions.

What is an example of a piece of data that IT may not realize it has, but can help the organization?

In line with information governance efforts, there is likely data stored in unstructured datasets (file shares or other "transient" repositories) that could be analyzed and ingested into other systems, or destroyed—assuming retention policies are adhered to. This can either help improve the data sources for business intelligence systems and processes or, in the case of destruction, reduce the data footprint and risk associated with holding data unnecessarily.

How should IT begin the process of reaching out to other organization stakeholders with this information?

I always say identifying and connecting with champions from other areas in the firm for technology efforts is the first step. Helping a non-IT person recognize the value in taking the steps to identify the locations, the data, and the appropriate disposition will ultimately go a long way to letting everyone sleep better at night.

What do you hope attendees take away from your Legalweek session?

Attorneys and legal administrators are becoming more aware of the value of the data firms hold. I hope this session helps them realize the future value of good data-hygiene practices and how it can inform more profitable decisions around the work we do.