Law & Coder Episode 6 – CRM or Chaos? How to Bring Order to Legal Client Relationships (feat. Rachel Shields Williams)

In this episode of Law & Coder, we sit down with Rachel Shields Williams, Director of Product Management for Client Intelligence at Sidley Austin and incoming President of LMA, for a candid and energizing conversation about the evolution of CRM in the legal industry.

What starts as a reflection on Rachel’s accidental—but incredibly successful—entry into legal marketing quickly expands into a powerful discussion on data, trust, change management, and the people behind the systems. Rachel brings decades of insight into how law firms are rethinking the way they manage relationships—not just through tech, but through culture and curiosity.

Key Takeaways:

• CRM success is 80% people, 20% tech: It’s not about replacing a platform—it’s about solving the right business problem and aligning systems with human behavior.
• Incentives drive engagement: Lawyers need clear reasons to share contacts. CRM adoption hinges on value—for both the lawyer and the client.
• Future-ready firms will win by surfacing relationships faster: Technology can accelerate insight, but human context is what builds trust and wins business.

Whether you’re in marketing, BD, legal ops, or IT, this episode offers valuable perspective on why the future of CRM—and legal technology more broadly—requires a renewed focus on people-first strategy.

Episode Transcript

Christina Natale: Welcome back to Law & Coder. I’m Christina Natale, the law of our “Law & Coder” duo. I’ve got, as always, our director of AI practice, Morgan Llewellyn here with me. My co-host, Hey, Morgan?

Morgan Llewellyn: Hey, Christina! Good to see you again.

Christina Natale: Good I was. Gonna say, it’s good to see you again. Yesterday we were in actually days this week we were in New York City for a conference on financial management. Spend management some really cool data stuff yesterday and really excited. I’ve made it back home. I know you’re still in the city. But you had an amazing kind of discussion yesterday

Christina Natale: as part of the agenda at our conference with our guest today. So I’m going to pass it to you to tell our listeners about our topic and our guest for today.

Morgan Llewellyn: Yeah, I am really excited for our guest today. I think she might be one of the most liked people. Kind of in the legal space. Rachel Shields Williams, the product management director of Client intelligence over at Sidley. And I can back up part of that because I you know, I’m really excited and thrilled for her that she’s the incoming president for Lma. You know, I know that’s becoming more and broadly.

Rachel Shields Williams: Known. But you know. Congratulations, Rachel, you know, not just on that, but, you know, on a fantastic career, and just being such a lovely person.

Thank you so much. I feel my family is like laughing somewhere. I’m hearing that, like I’m so friendly because they definitely get the more like pro like manager of me, like, Hey, guys, we need to be here. Here’s the menu. This is these are the matching shirts that we are wearing for the family photo.

Morgan Llewellyn: Okay, I mean.

Christina Natale: We all share a different.

Morgan Llewellyn: Side to the family. But no, I I really enjoy you, and I know so many people do that

Morgan Llewellyn: it’s so well respected.

Rachel Shields Williams: Well, thank you. The feeling is mutual. It’s really stumbling into legal. Is such a happy accident for me, you know. Like many people, I mean, Morgan, you probably never thought you would be so involved in legal Christina. On the other hand, you did go to law school, so this probably was an intentional move in your life, but many of us we just kind of like ended up here for me. I was in grad school, and

I wanted to work in the District of Columbia where I live, and it’s like, Oh, do I want to work in politics, or do I want to work in legal or nonprofit ruled out nonprofit, really fast. And so I was like, Okay, let’s try law firms. And lo and behold, I’m still at the same law firm that I walked into plus years ago.

Christina Natale: Which is amazing. I I feel like that alone is something to to celebrate and acknowledge, I mean, especially in DC. And with like changing, you know, regulations, and the industry has changed so much. It’s very cool that you’ve really built your your niche. There.

Rachel Shields Williams: Yeah, it’s been awesome, like I joined the firm at a time. It was a thousand lawyers, and like offices when I joined, and when I joined as like a DOE-eyed marketing coordinator, I thought legal marketing was so much like marketing and other professional services. And it’s actually way, more relationship driven. And it’s way, more relationship, maintenance and care and feeding, paired with like some Rfps and some rankings and awards and kind of following that. You know the same desire that I have to put my family in matching shirts and make sure that we’re at the reservation at that desire to create order out of chaos has kind of helped me guide my career from, you know, being a Bd manager, a global Bd manager to becoming the product owner of our experience product to becoming a director in Km, and now a director in the data and AI program or department, we’re not even a program anymore. We’re a real live department. This is so, it’s so new and exciting and like watching the firm change. And like almost being at lawyers. Now, I’m like, wow, like, we’ve really grown up a lot over the like. We’ve all grown over the last years.

Christina Natale: I love.

Morgan Llewellyn: Oh, well, I was, gonna say the order out of chaos. I think that.

Christina Natale: Literally, we’re going, Morgan.

Morgan Llewellyn: You know, I think, what that it really brings us like order out of chaos in marketing. And you know what we’re here to talk about today is the CRM. And you know, where has it been, and where do you think it’s going, Rachel? I think you’re, you know, well, equipped to give us not just a historical perspective, right? Based on your experience, but also some insight into where is CRM going for legal? What does CRM mean for legal today. And and how should we be thinking about it in the future with so much disruption happening everywhere, you know, contacts marketing. It’s sort of at the the center of all of that. So, you know, walk us through, you know bringing order out of chaos when you st came in. What was the thought of a CRM. And how has that evolved over your career?

Rachel Shields Williams: It was kind of wild because I came from a financial advisory company

where we had just deployed salesforce, and we supported high net worth individuals. So I mean, I knew everything about these people. I knew their preferred sodas. I knew what kind of wine that they liked. I knew like if they came into the office. Here are their preferences.

We had information about their children, their grandchildren, their pets, their vacations, like we really knew everything about these and like. When was the last time they came in for a meeting? When was the last time someone called them to check in on something like we had all of this information. So you know, I get introduced to our CRM to send out a client update. And I’m like this is just a series of logs about like who sent a client who sent an email and who opened an email. And I was a little perplexed by the CRM. So I asked my supervisor at the time. I’m like, so like, what is the deal with CRMs in law firms? It kind of feels like an electronic rolodex, and she’s like, well, this was like the st technology that really law firms and lawyers embraced. And I was like, hold on what. And this was the st real big change management that came to lawyers as it related to legal marketing. So like back in the day, if there was a fire, someone would grab their rolodex and run out the building and with CRM. And it becoming so relevant in so many law firms, lawyers began to share their contacts. To keep them up to date. And then, as technology evolved, you know, you were able to use different scrapers and different tools to keep your contacts up to date. So there was more of an incentive to share the information and share those relationships.

And over time it’s gotten more sophisticated. We have the Erms, the ability to track the interactivity. I’m a huge fan of Erm. I think that tells us more about behavior and relationships than so many other products that we have out there. But at the end of the day a lot of firms, we use our CRMs as email management tools and we use them as a data management tool for our person record for our clients.

But you know, the yesterday Morgan and I were at, we were all at this conference, and one of the questions was like, What is a client? Is a client, an individual? Is it an entity, is it, you know? And CRMs kind of bring that question up to. So CRM is something that it was really the st technology for marketing that lawyers got used to. And it’s just been around for a long time. But at the same time, I think there’s been a lot of promises about CRM that’s never really come to fruition, because it’s so dependent upon human behavior and people’s contribution and keeping it up to date and interacting with the system and you know, unless people are highly incentivized.

I mean, are you going to put all of your contacts in? I had a really great conversation with another business partner yesterday at the conference, and he was saying, like when he was in a small organization of like people that he’s known for like years. And he was so mad when someone like reached out to one of his contacts without talking to him. He’s like, Oh, my God! I’ve become what I’ve preached against, and he’s like. It’s come full circle. And I’m like yeah. But like, if you knew that you were incentivized to share that contact and like it was all gonna be okay, would you have been okay with it. And he’s like, well, yeah. And I’m like incentives matter.

Morgan Llewellyn: You. You talk about some of the the promises of CRM that maybe haven’t materialized. Can you talk about one or of those, and and maybe like, is there something unique or different about law firms that would cause these promises not to come, you know, to to fruit.

Rachel Shields Williams: I think, people, they want to see the full degree view of how they perceive the client. So you know, to that idea that we were talking about yesterday, that you talked about about the kaleidoscope. Someone might say, my client is the person at the bank.

Another one person might say, my client is the whole bank or another person might say in my client is just this matter at the bank. and so people want to be able to see it the way that they think of it Versus a CRM. You’re pretty much either looking at an entity or a person, and you can see the relationship between the But the ease of pivoting those images isn’t really that easy. They want to be able to go to that place where they can see. Hey! Here are the pitches that I’ve done. Here’s the recent activity. Here are the events that they were invited to.

I’m going to go further and say, here are the documents that have recently been used for this client. Here are, you know, the other timekeepers that are working with this client. They want to be able to see information all in one place that currently is often stored in your experience system, your document management system, your CRM, your Erm and any other.

You know your whatever tool you use to manage your chambers or your pitches. And there’s just information all over the place and the client and I feel like our lawyers really just want a centralized place to understand how they view the client not how the system thinks of a client.

Christina Natale: Yeah. Well, you made me think of earlier. It’s really not an analogy, but it feels like one to me when you said the like what you know, like their buildings on fire. Grab your rolodex and take it, and I think about the analogy to me is like, if any of us a lawyer, whoever in the law firm, whatever their role, is, what is your like? The one thing that you’re going to grab in a fire. And to your point. It’s like, well, maybe you don’t see it all in one place. But like, were you like? If it were your rolodex like, what is the information that is important. Where does it live, I think, is a more interesting question, and like, How are you going to take it with you? If it’s not all in one place, and some of that comes with the moves we’ve made from like on prem to cloud solutions right? But like, if it were physical.

Christina Natale: what would you have in that one place that you could take with you.

Rachel Shields Williams: Right? Well. And you mentioned a really interesting point is the move from on Prem to cloud and whatnot. And it’s the centralization of data that’s happening in the back end. Because if you think about this idea of a person. it’s not just the person like, let’s take, for example, someone who’s an expert witness that expert witness could have also been a former partner, so that makes them alumni. They could have gone to a competitor so that could have made them a related party to a matter. They’re now an expert witness on this matter, and maybe, you know, years from now they’re a judge and you want to be able to capture all of those different relationships and depending on how people are interacting with them. That person profile, could be in so many different systems versus having it in a centralized source where it’s normalized and governed at the heart, and then pushed into these different profiles as needed.

And I think the more I think about like the challenges that we’re facing. And you start hearing more and more people talking about investing in a Lake House structure or larger data structures. I think we’re going to see more changes like instead of saying, I need a CRM, it’s

I need to solve this business problem, and I know that’s of the things that I really advocate for internally here, when I’m talking to my my internal clients, it’s like like we need to replace X. I’m like, no, we don’t actually need to replace anything. What are the business problems we’re trying to solve? We don’t need to replace our CRM like our CRM. Maybe we don’t need it like we need to question as the world continues to evolve. We have to question every product we have and say, do we really need this product? What is the business problem we’re trying to solve?

And then how do we solve it with, you know, wonderful business partners like you all you know. Wonderful vendors do we build in house? Do we work with a business partner? Do we say, you know what this is actually something that’s not ours to solve at all? Do we just walk away from it at this point? Say, that’s not really a data point or an issue that

Rachel Shields Williams: is relevant to our business anymore.

Morgan Llewellyn: I I think you know, when when talking about innovation, right? You know tech is often the last thing to talk about right like the the tech is kind of the least interesting part of innovation. It’s really, what do you want to do? What challenges do you have that you want to solve, which is exactly what you’re saying. It’s not. It’s not a CRM. Can a CRM be part of a solution? Maybe right? Potentially, as you start thinking about either the challenges today or the challenges that you’re excited about, that you think are appropriate for tomorrow. What are some of those challenges that you’re thinking about from the marketing perspective that you know. Maybe traditionally, we would have thought of as a CRM is the solution or at least kind of in that function, that marketing portion of the function. What are those exciting challenges you’re seeing.

Rachel Shields Williams: I think it’s the centralization of activities around the clients like, I think one of the things that we really need to question is like, do we really need to know who’s like opened our emails like, if thought leadership is not one of your major go to market strategies for your organization. Do you really need all of that information like, yes, you need a record of it, for you know, different compliance reasons. But is that really something you want to surface? Or is that something you put in the back end? And starting to actually think about these different activities that go on with the clients.

And what do you surface and bring up to the front versus what are things that you allow us to sit in the back, do you, is it really something you want to surface on the record that you had to send an invitation times before someone opened it and said, Yes, or said no. Or do you just want to say here’s the last date of it. Send. And here’s the status of it. And starting to really kind of question how we’ve collected information and how we’ve presented it, I think, is a really interesting opportunity. And then also the change management around sharing the activity kind of getting people more comfortable with sharing their calendars and their activities. There’s several firms that have done a really great job of saying you’re not getting Bd reimbursement until this activity is logged in interaction in salesforce and whatever platform they’re using to track their client activities. But you know, looking to use AI and scraping and things like that to start pulling those activities over little uncomfortable. A lot of change management to go there. You know, I just had to share my calendar for the st time in years with like people. And I’m like how I feel about sharing my calendar with everyone not doing anything. Sus, it’s just I’m not used to sharing it.

Morgan Llewellyn: No, I I think that’s a that’s a really interesting perspective and and comment around the role of call it the CRM right? Or, as we think about context today, as we think about information today, there is an element of change management in this, because not all firms are fully, you know not. All firms allow a partner to see, you know, another partner’s contacts. And so there is a or even calendar to your point, right? Even sharing something like a calendar internally. And so there’s an element of change management throughout all this, I mean, have you seen, you know. has change management been a central theme within. CRM. From kind of the get go? Or do you have any thoughts on that.

Rachel Shields Williams: I think it’s become more so with the advent of moving to the cloud, more experience systems, more products on the market that aren’t quite traditional legal CRMs. I think Salesforce, entering the marketplace has kind of shifted things, a little bit dynamics but also people kind of moving to. You know what I’m just going to have mail management. And then I’m going to have client management and actually manage activities and really kind of pulling apart. What what are the business problems that they’re trying to solve from it overall. I think, you know when CRMs st came on the scene it was everybody pile in the conference room, eat your sandwich, watch the video you know. The trainer walked the floor and said, click this button and click this button, and everyone kind of went about their day, and we didn’t talk about it a ton. But now, when there’s updates coming every months every months, you constantly have to be feeding people to a certain extent, and I think this is true across all legal technologies. The set it and forget it. Days.

Christina Natale: Yeah.

Rachel Shields Williams: Are pretty much gone, our products the same way. Our users expect care and feeding now. And the products do, too. You know, the iphone. The iphone changed a lot of things in the way that we consume technology.

Christina Natale: Yeah. It feels like I, it’s funny because you’ve reminded me. And I know you’ve listened to some of our podcasts. And usually we sometimes we have these like, ding, ding, ding moments that are just. We really want to highlight for our user, for our listeners. And the st sounds like, really our. It sounds like what you’re saying. The risk to avoid that’s also bled into kind of this risk to consider, or or perhaps embrace. We’ll see as we go. The risk to avoid. Certainly it sounds like is just jumping into. We need a new product. We need to fix this product. We need to get in. You know. What have you just jumping into that selection, this, this change management piece kind of it sounds like, really, which is like you said, like we need for all technology now, right? But is this meeting users where they’re at? And especially, I think, in this context, to your point.

Traditionally, when we think about change management and taking it outside of the context of CRM, we think about like, what are the motivations of these users? What right. And so, as the user, I’m asking myself, what am I getting out of this? What’s in it for me? And what you’re saying right is that you talked a little bit about it earlier, briefly, and I’d love to hear more. But that incentivization has to. We have to understand that and say to your point like, why would I not want to share this information? Is almost you have to get into that layer of what is motivating these users in order to understand why they may just be rejecting change because they don’t understand it, or because they have some other fear that it is.

You know that it’s starting up, and they need to understand. There we have to understand their concerns, and how we can help them understand that, either. It’s not valid. I don’t wanna say that, but that it’s valid. But that’s not what this is about.

Rachel Shields Williams: Exactly like I totally get that. You’re afraid that your dentist is going to end up in the CRM. But there is a way that we can market that the dentist doesn’t flow in. You know, there’s a way to mark your contacts. We’ve trained your secretaries on how to mark the contacts. But again, that doesn’t even address like, why should you share it like what’s in it for you? And it’s got to be more than like, oh, we can easily invite your client to an event, or your client will receive important thought leadership.

I don’t think that’s enough for a lot of folks these days, and there’s so much news and information out there, like how many clients are like man. I would love to have another client update, you know, and you don’t really have a ton of control. Once you put your contact in there and it’s like, Oh, they’re tagged to the energy industry. So we’re going to send the energy updates to them. So I think we really need to put our street ourselves in the in the position of the lawyer to think about like what’s in it for them, but also what’s in it for the client, and help them understand the value that the client gets by being involved in the technology. So if you share your information with the firm, the firm is going to keep this up to date. When your when your client moves firms. We’re going to update that contact information. You don’t need to. So you know what maybe, can you write a script that triggers a notice to that lawyer that says, Hey, your contact has moved. It looks like your contact has moved. Have you said congratulations? You know we have listening on certain key clients. And it looks like this client, based on information from rd party sources, has recently moved to a new role. Have you reached out to them like, you know, if there’s ways that we can add value to the lawyer and to the client and get what we want, because CRM’s been very like I want to communicate with you. I want to like what’s in it for them.

Christina Natale: It’s also kind of twofold right? Because yes, there’s you’re showing them. There’s value for them. You’re showing them there’s value for the client. I I hate to say like, if they’re a good lawyer, right? That’s something I would never say. But like if they, if they care about those client relationships then value to the client is value to them. So it’s kind of a double win.

Rachel Shields Williams: Yeah. So again, you know, we’ve got to think about all the different stakeholders that are involved in the different personas, and what value looks like to each of them, and figuring out how to communicate that and what value levers are worth pulling on, and then also, what are the risks in each one of those people’s personas like, is it exhausting to get more emails? Is it exhaust like, how how does this impact them? Their ability to do their job, their ability to communicate, and then also paying attention when they tell you how they want to be communicated with, like, if a client tells you in client feedback interviews. They only want to be invited to certain types of events. You need to be able to figure out how to code that.

Morgan Llewellyn: I think you’re you’re really touching on kinda I don’t know if I want to call it a sore subject within marketing or just the reality that how do you track? I’ll say, Roi, of marketing and events. But I don’t think that’s exactly like I don’t think anyone’s even saying, hey? We need to get there. But how do we track participation in various events and understand what to do? More of and what to do? Less of not at a global level, not at an industry level, but really, what’s the revealed preference from that? From that contact? And how do we make sure we’re giving them the things that they want to engage with and inundating them with the million emails that just kind of turns them off from the firm altogether.

Rachel Shields Williams: And I feel like every general counsel round or every general counsel panel I’ve ever sat in in my career. I’m like, ask them. you know we have it. There’s this fear of asking the client about like, how do you want to be talked about? How like do you like? Do you like being invited to client dinners, and someone’s like, Nope, you know what? I’ve got young kids at home, and I really want to get home to my kids every night, you know, but every now and again I’d love to have a lunch where you could bring me up to speed on Xyz, or I find value in our relationship when you can offer my team. And IA cle. you know, like, ask people what they value. They might say, I value really good legal work that’s on time and and not legalese in real terms, real words that I can bring to my business stakeholders. And there’s this fear to kind of pick up the phone and call the clients like, we’re very good about talking to the client during matters. But after the matter it’s like, how did it go? What can I do better? How do you want to talk? How do you? How do you want to be communicated with? Because it’s we’re all in a relationship. And I mean, you don’t have to be as awkward as would you like to go to baseball games or dinner circle? Yes or no. And that’s where marketing and BD can really help coach the lawyers on those conversations, and to our conversation yesterday, like there’s so many great reasons to call your clients these days like, Hey, we’re working with some AI things. How do you all feel about that? Do you want to partner with us on this new idea that we’re thinking about and Martech has that same space. And so it’s looking at all the different signals that your clients are giving you. If your top clients aren’t opening your emails, ask them why? You know, if they’re only showing up to certain kinds of events. Be like, hey? Looks like you really love this.

Morgan Llewellyn: I think you know, as we talk about those future challenges, I think you’re really laying out the roadmap of identifying what? What are the things that we should be caring about? And how do we map that back into the CRM into this broader tech stack? Because it’s not just the CRM, right? CRMs got to be, you know, integrated with your email and some of these other, you know, different marketing platforms, etc. How do you put that all together? But it’s all you don’t start with the data. You start with the thing that you’re trying to do, and then map it to. Well, what are the the attitudes, the behaviors, the actions that we want our attorneys to take that make, you know, make an impact on the things that we’re measuring, right? Those those Kpis. And then do we have the data to do that? And if we don’t, let’s go get the data, let’s go clean the data. But really starting from your right hand side and then figuring out what are those activities that are gonna impact? It are are really

Rachel Shields Williams: And also making sure that that aligns with your firm’s go to market strategy. Like all the ragging that I just did on emails. If you are a huge thought leadership firm, and that is a priority for your firm. When we were growing our energy, practice, thought, leadership and speaking and writing. And Pr was a huge part of our campaign. So I was in those emails. And those are really important. So you know, it has to align with the strategy of the practice. You know. So yes, I’m dogging on emails. But for some practice groups it’s really important for them. And other practice groups are like, I don’t write an email. It’s fine. I don’t write client updates. It’s fine. But making sure that the data that you’re collecting and what you’re trying to solve for is still in line with the business strategy, the data strategy, you know. It’s not something that just exists within marketing. You should talk to practice management and pricing and innovation and knowledge, and all these other professional departments, to make sure that you’re rowing in the same direction because they can also help to the change management part, communicate the value, and when the lawyers are hearing the value of contribution and the value of participation, and how them sharing their contacts is actually helping improve your local counsel database for knowledge management. It’s like, Oh, oh, I didn’t realize they were connected. And it’s like, yup.

Christina Natale: While we’ve got about  min left. I like you’ve brought me in this other direction that I love, and I hope we can talk a little bit about it almost goes both ways. A lot of what you’re talking about is the what, how we’re communicating to the lawyers, and how we’re communicating the firm, how they can use the system, how they need to use the system, things like that. But I think there’s also this other direction that. I hope you see where where we’re going with this I’m so excited to, and I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about. I know we were we. I was recently made aware that you wrote a recent article that was published by Ilta, the member article of the year, and where I’m going with this is you’re making me think about. Yes, it’s in right. We’re talking about the direction of the result of it. But how do we help our data teams and our, you know, the teams, our marketing teams, the teams that are helping to implement and utilize this technology? How do we really help them. How do we equip them to know? To ask these questions, to think about these sorts of things that matter to their marketing strategy, their data strategy? So I hope that wasn’t too. What’s the word here? I’m not trying to like force it. I genuinely feel like there’s something to be discussed here about. How can we build teams that understand that can make that impact that can make this a successful piece of technology for affirm.

Rachel Shields Williams: Yeah, I think it really comes down to a lot of the soft skills. I’m not a technologist by any shape or training. I’m a mass communications major, because there wasn’t focuses. When I graduated college. He just communicated to the masses with smoke signals and pigeons and things. And you know those soft skills like growing up in a family business and having a service oriented mindset has done so much for my career and the ability to talk to people and understand. We owned golf courses. And my, you know, when someone came into the clubhouse like they weren’t coming into the clubhouse to just come into the clubhouse. They were on the turn they had, you know,  min to get from the th green to the th tee. They were coming in to solve a problem, and the faster I could kind of evaluate what was going on and get them through, the more the more people were able to play the golf course, play the course that day, and the happier people were because they weren’t stuck waiting for other players, so that ability to anticipate people’s needs, and that spirit of service and curiosity like, you know, I remember being on the beer cart, and people are like, Oh, my God, you’re out of gatorade. It’s so hot, and it’s like, but I have bottled water and peanuts, so if you’re feeling dehydrated, this will give you a similar, it won’t give you the electrolytes you crave, but it will help you with dehydration and rehydrating and retaining water. So you don’t faint in the wonderful Washington heat that we’re all experiencing right now, and looking through those things and having a level of curiosity when someone’s like, you know, I need a button. Well, tell me more. And the same thing like when it goes back to some of our original comments that we started with. When people like I need a CRM, it’s like, tell me more. What are we trying to solve, and that ability to just be comfortable, not knowing the answers and comfortable asking people more questions. And you know, just genuinely. I come to work because I want to help people. I like working in the legal industry because people we’re here to solve hard problems. The easy problems in legal have been solved. All that’s left is like funky, gnarly problems that are impacted by people. And as people, we’re naturally messy. So it’s a funky, hard thing to work on, and it’s cool because I get to work with really smart people who also want to just help and make things better for others.

Morgan Llewellyn: I think that I think that’s really appropriate this idea that, you know. I think back in the day we used to hear, you know, especially in like AI and innovation. Hey, we’re looking for curious people, because to your point, you know, you don’t know the problem yet, but with tech disruption, and where the world is going, and this pace of change, every single function within the organization needs to come with that curiosity, not just for today. But what are the things I’m not even hearing about, like just a continual curiosity to learn and understand. You know, is just everyone has to do it within the.

Rachel Shields Williams: Yeah.

Morgan Llewellyn: Especially when you’re people solvers or or problem solvers. Right? You are. You are.

Christina Natale: Problem, solvers.

Morgan Llewellyn: Well, you’re people solvers. Maybe that’s a nice slip. 

Christina Natale: I was. Gonna say.

Morgan Llewellyn: Yeah. But but your problem solvers. And to your point, you’re paid to solve hard problems. And you’ve got to be curious in today’s world. If you’re going to be able to do that successfully, I think that’s a lovely you know. Kind of summary.

Christina Natale: I think so, too. I was just about to say, I definitely think this is our risk. To embrace for this week is focusing on soft skills as could not have said it better. So I’m just going to use Rachel’s words. But I do. And I think you know again it makes me think of you were talking about. It goes in both directions. When you say the clients maybe don’t want to see. You know this email with this legalese. The same thing is said. I mean, I think, that most of the time the reason that we, you know, we have data. But like we have to understand what it actually is telling us like to your point about solving those problems on the golf course. Like, okay, the data that I’m being given is that I’m out of gatorade, or that, you know this person wants a gatorade, but, like you have to be able to think beyond that and think about what is the root cause of that data problem? What is what is that? And so sometimes it really is just being able to translate and make things, you know whether it’s approachable or helping people see, you know, past the frustration of the moment that they’re in to to a real like you said, circling back to even text solution, text selection. Right? Being able to to ask those questions in real understand? The human needs behind them, I think is, is beyond invaluable, and especially the more that we all have data at our fingertips, the more that you know we people are depending on. We’ve got a lot of emails that are coming through that are just, you know, fully written by AI, or you know, what have you that curiosity, that judgment, ability, that empathy, all of it, are the things that we will never be able to replace with AI, and that we really need people. For in order to make sense of the data and build, you know, solution based on what we’re seeing. So I think that’s awesome. Great way to wrap up kind of. I’m going to pass to Morgan. See if he has any final questions for you, because you guys just do such a great job, and you are so much deeper in some of this than I am. But as a lawyer I love hearing the way that you both think about how data, and especially how relationship intelligence data impacts lawyers and our clients. And before we wrap up we’ll see if either of you have any parting thoughts and really actionable advice for our listeners to take away.

Morgan Llewellyn: So st of all, thank you, Rachel. I mean I love you to death. You know that, and appreciate you, taking.

Rachel Shields Williams: Feelings, mutual.

Morgan Llewellyn: Yeah, but I think you know the the thing I’d love to learn more about, and the questions I do have, and I know we don’t have time today. And maybe this is a future episode is, how do we keep the people right? How do we keep the relationships in the Bd and marketing process in the world of AI today. Because from the AI side I see that as kind of a critical failure that we’re thinking we can automate a lot of these activities. And that’s that’s just, you know, we’re in the people business, right? The people business. And you can’t take the people out of the business.

Rachel Shields Williams: Exactly at the end of the day. Legal is a relationship driven, business.

Morgan Llewellyn: So I would love to talk about. Well, how do we keep people in the CRM. Right? How do we keep the people in the process in the CRM. In the world of AI and automation. Tomorrow I I would love to pick your brain on that cause. I am sure you’ve got a wealth of, you know, kind of thoughts and and knowledge. There.

Christina Natale: Do you want to give us a cliffhanger? Yeah, give us like a sentence summary, and we will. We love having you so by all means. I’m like, yes, we’re about to get on your schedule again for a whole nother episode on this. But what would you say is your kind of like quick, high, level gut reaction, and then we can pick into it a bit deeper. Another time.

Rachel Shields Williams: My gut reaction is that business will continue to be won by who can surface the information about the relationships? The fastest when I look at the competitive set that we look at. Our lawyers have gone to similar schools. We charge similar rates, we have similar clients. What will set us apart is the depth of our relationship and our ability to surface the second jump relationships that that help connect people. And I. And I think that is the true difference that AI AI will help me figure it out faster. But I’ll still need a human to articulate the value of what that jump means, and the value of that.

Morgan Llewellyn: But I think that’s that’s really smart. And we’re gonna find.

Christina Natale: No, I was gonna say perfect, perfect place to end on.

Rachel Shields Williams: Well, it was wonderful talking with you guys. Thank you so much for having me today. This was a really great fun way to spend an afternoon.

Christina Natale: Yeah, thank you. It was a real pleasure, and I know that our listeners are going to be really excited to hear your insights as always, but we’re excited to be able to share with with our listeners as well, and we hope to see you soon. I know we’ve been all over on the conference circuit together. It’s always good to see you in person, but if not, I know we’ll see you in DC. For.

Rachel Shields Williams: In August. We’ve got a preview for the weather.

Christina Natale: That’s right.

Rachel Shields Williams: Want to get ready for what August in DC. Really feels like.

Christina Natale: Yeah, I.

Rachel Shields Williams: For half the country, just to make sure.

Christina Natale: Oh, my! Gosh!

Rachel Shields Williams: You’re welcome.

Christina Natale: Thank you so much, Rachel, as always.

Christina Natale: Thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you to our listeners. Thank you to Morgan’s mom, and we will. We’ll see everybody next time.

Morgan Llewellyn: Bye, bye, Hi! Everyone!