In his continuing exploration of how buyers and sellers of legal technology create a meeting of the minds, Frank Ready of Legaltech News delves into the role that organizations, like EDRM, ILTA and CLOC, play. From understanding the market landscape to shaping frameworks and standards, legal technology providers play a key role in educating both buyer and seller.
Meeting and collaborating at a professional, special purpose organization creates many benefits for discovering new people, and deepening more surface relationships.
It becomes a little bit less ‘sales-y,’ which I think already particular lawyers appreciate. Lawyers are trained to constantly sniff out B.S. and see through things, and so they are a difficult audience to sell to by nature and by design. And so having a professional organization that can help them do their research in a little bit more of an unbiased way is very, very useful.
In discussing how to approach a professional organization, Frank Ready listed several EDRM operating principles as we seek community consensus. EDRM requests everyone take off their employer hat, including defense/plaintiff, corporation, government, attorney, lit support, IT to enable collaborative advocacy. At EDRM, product pitches are not welcome, unless they are part of a “Product/Service Showcase” and so labeled. Driving too hard to include requirements an organization can fill at the expense of others who cannot, is also discouraged.
When you are selling [tech], sometimes you can’t take your sales hat off and that’s something we insist on at EDRM.
Mary Mack, CEO, EDRM
