“ROSS is so highly intuitive and easy to use that we were able to introduce it into our workflow seamlessly. Right away that led to a healthy and productive re-evaluation of how we approached legal research at the firm.” “It’s like going from a rotary phone to an iPhone.”
In 2010, Luis Salazar left Greenberg Traurig to start his own firm, Salazar Law. The firm represents clients facing complex commercial litigation and financial issues (bankruptcy, Chapter 11, debtor-side representation, corporate restructuring), government investigations and cybersecurity. They serve the exact same types of clients on the same “bet-the-company” litigation that Salazar handled while in Big Law.
Create a firm that was small, agile, and most importantly, adept at leveraging technology to deliver superior products quicker, faster and better.
From the beginning, Salazar Law focused on streamlining workflows. They moved all of their work to the cloud and implemented state- of-the-art internal communication and workflow management tools. They also adopted ROSS Intelligence’s artificial-intelligence supported legal research tool to home in on relevant passages of law from case law, understand the context of queries and highlight additional parts of a case that may be helpful to the lawyer’s query. “What intrigued me about ROSS was the way it harnessed artificial intelligence. The market had plenty of access points for information, but it needed a tool that could cut through all those piles of information to help us be more efficient at getting to the answers. ROSS quickly became an integral component to our pursuit of efficiency. In fact, it simultaneously became an integral component of our marketing because adopting cutting-edge technology to work smarter, faster and more powerfully is something the clients, especially general counsel, are very interested in.”
“Our clients were increasingly cost-conscious, demanding greater efficiency, by which they often meant lower fees and predictable efficiency, such as flat fees or project-based fees,” said Salazar. “On a very deep level, I believed these were legitimate concerns and that to meet them, our industry needed to adopt a smart, lean and tech-savvy approach to legal work. Yet Big Law seemed intent on maintaining the status quo.”
“Nearly every other industry uses technology to drive efficiency, and it was time to question traditional legal practices. I wanted to establish a firm that quickly identifies the value clients want and delivers that value as quickly and powerfully as possible. I was determined to use as much modern technology as possible,” he said.
Clients quickly saw the benefits of working with Salazar Law. ROSS helps the firm respond to opposing counsel faster and reduces the time it takes to get the precise answers they need to win cases. As their successes piled up, more clients signed on.
“We do the same sophisticated work that I did at Greenberg Traurig. We compete against Big Law to get that work, and we compete against them in the actual matters themselves.”
Because ROSS lets Salazar Law quickly find the most relevant case law for clients, they have no need to support a dedicated research team.
“ROSS is so highly intuitive and easy to use that we were able to introduce it into our workflow seamlessly. Right away that led to a healthy and productive re-evaluation of how we approached legal research at the firm,” said Salazar.
And now that research takes up a much smaller portion of the project fees the firm charges clients, the ROI on individual projects is higher, and so is client satisfaction. Salazar attorneys face no difficulties in logging onto ROSS to ask questions thanks to the tool’s intuitive interface. They no longer need to block off time to set up research queries, which means they spend the time saved doing real research. “It’s like going from a rotary phone to an iPhone,” said Salazar.
“ROSS is so highly intuitive and easy to use that we were able to introduce it into our workflow seamlessly. Right away that led to a healthy and productive re-evaluation of how we approached legal research at the firm.” “It’s like going from a rotary phone to an iPhone.”
