Speaker Bios

Joan L. Axelroth is the founder and President of Axelroth & Associates (www.axelrothandassociates.com).  She helps corporations and other businesses align their libraries and information centers with the strategic goals of the organization.   As part of that process she evaluates management and staffing structures and recommends new models; conducts financial audits and develops cost-recovery plans; designs and implements expanded reference and technical services systems; evaluates collections and establishes collection development policies; guides automation and technology projects and works with clients to design space that is functional as well as attractive.   She speaks and writes frequently on these and other subjects related to library and information management.  Joan earned an M.A. in library science from the University of Chicago. She is an active member of the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section of AALL, a member of the Special Libraries Association, and several of their chapters.

Scott D. Bailey is the global Director of Research Services at Squire Sanders, one of the world’s leading law firms. He manages a dynamic team of information professionals who provide insightful services throughout the world from offices in 19 countries. The firm strives to understand and meet clients’ needs at whatever level and in whatever location they do business — efficiently, expertly and effectively.  He holds a Master of Information Science from the University of Tennessee and a BA in English from Virginia Tech.  He formerly worked in the law libraries of Paul Hastings, Chambliss Bahner & Stophel and the University of Tennessee.

With over 15 years of experience managing law libraries and research services in three law firms, Scott has faced the challenges and embraced the opportunities of the ever-changing legal landscape to position his teams and promote his profession as an essential part of a strategic and successful law practice. As the current president of the Law Library Society of DC, he sees the visibility of the information professional as critical and collaborating to achieve stronger service and recognition for his colleagues by upper management as the only way forward.

He is a firm believer in the power of our professional network and the capabilities of our peers.  As President of LLSDC, he initiated the LLSDC Showcase, a local chapter outreach event designed to assert and promote the law librarian’s value to management.  Showcases are currently planned for New York and Boston and others are to follow.  Scott has served on the AALL Copyright Committee, has been a member of PLL, SEAALL, LLSDC and SLA for a number of years.  Speaking credits at AALL and Ark focus on the strategic alignment of research services to the firm as a whole and the future of the profession, the topic of his upcoming chapter of Law Libraries in the Digital Age.

Jeffrey Brandt has been the Chief Information and Knowledge Officer for several top 100 US law firms.   He has more than twenty-eight years of experience in the field of legal automation, working with geographically distributed organizations across the globe.  He now consults law firms and professionals on projects as diverse as: green technology, knowledge management, information security, communities of practice, green technologies and processes, IT executive mentoring, electronic workflow management/reengineering, mobile technologies and IT structure/personnel requirements.

Mr. Brandt is the Editor of the PinHawk Legal Technology Digest, a columnist for Legal IT Professionals, blogger for Firmex, a member of the Law Technology News Editorial Board, and is a frequent educational speaker at regional and national user, trade shows and industry conferences.

He has also served on numerous technology advisory boards and in numerous capacities in the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), the most recent being on the Board of Directors.  

Marcia Burris is the Senior Manager of Firm Library Services for Ogletree Deakins, one of the largest labor and employment law firms representing management, with more than 650 lawyers located in 44 offices across the United States and in Europe. Marcia’s team, headquartered in Greenville SC, focuses on supporting the firm’s business objectives by providing high quality legal and business research and access to a full complement of information resources. Prior to Joining Ogletree, Marcia owned and operated a library management service, providing staffing and consulting services to law libraries in the San Francisco Bay Area for over ten years. Marcia holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from University of California, Berkeley.

 

David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law. He also founded Underneath Their Robes, a blog about federal judges, and served as editor of the politics blog Wonkette. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Observer, Washingtonian magazine, and New York magazine, among other publications. David has received several awards for his work on Above the Law, including recognition as an ABA Journal Legal Rebel, a group of innovators within the legal profession, and inclusion as a member of the Fastcase 50, “the fifty most interesting, provocative, and courageous leaders in the world of law, scholarship, and legal technology.”

Prior to his entry into the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

David graduated from Regis High School, Harvard College, and Yale Law School, where he served as book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal. You can find David on Facebook and on Twitter, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.

Kristine  Lloyd is the Associate Director of Library & Information Services at K&L Gates LLP in Seattle. Kristine started her library career as a library assistant in Birmingham, Alabama. She earned her M.L.I.S. degree in May 2005 from the University of Alabama, and shortly thereafter relocated to Atlanta to work as a librarian with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She moved to Seattle in 2006 to begin work as a Reference Librarian at K&L Gates, then Preston Gates & Ellis. In 2012, she became the Firmwide Manager of Research Instruction & Training, and in 2013, she was promoted to Associate Director. Kristine also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Eastern Washington University.

Bruce MacEwen, President of Adam Smith Esq. is a lawyer and consultant to law firms on strategic and economic issues, Bruce is President of “Adam Smith, Esq.” (AdamSmithEsq.com), which provides insights on the business of large, sophisticated law firms. Since the site’s launch in late 2003, nearly 1,500 articles have appeared on “Adam Smith, Esq.” covering such topics as strategy, leadership, globalization, M&A, finance, compensation, cultural considerations, and partnership structures. In early 2013 Bruce published his first book, “Growth Is Dead: Now What?,” outlining the consequences for the legal industry of the great financial reset of 2008. It has received an overwhelmingly positive response in the market, with strong worldwide sales; Bloomberg Law described it as having “immediately become required reading, from the one and only Bruce MacEwen.”

Recent engagements have included developing strategic plans for offices, practice groups, and firms as a whole; pre-merger due diligence and post-merger integration; strategies for re-conceiving associate career paths; alternative and strategic billing; and advising on the consequences of the economic “Great Reset” as well as the trend towards increasing segmentation among firms in every sector of the market.

Bruce has written for or been quoted in: Fortune; The Wall Street Journal; The New York Times; The Washington Post; Bloomberg News/Radio/TV; Business 2.0; The International Herald Tribune; The National Law Journal; The ABA Journal; The Lawyer; and other publications too numerous to mention. He is a sought-after speaker and frequently appears at law firm retreats and legal industry conferences domestically and overseas.

Bruce is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management, “formed to honor and recognize distinguished law practice management professionals [and to] inspire excellence and innovation by honoring extraordinary achievement.”

Previously, Bruce:
• Practiced securities law in-house for nearly ten years at Morgan Stanley/Dean Witter; and
• Practiced litigation and corporate law with Shea & Gould and with Breed, Abbott & Morgan in New York.

Bruce was educated at Princeton University (BA magna cum laude in economics), at Stanford Law School (JD), and at NYU’s Stern School of Business (MBA candidate in finance).

Cheryl Niemeier is Director of Library Services for Bose McKinney & Evans LLP in Indianapolis, Indiana. She received her Master of Science in Library Science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1986 and her Bachelor of Science in Education from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana in 1981.

Cheryl has held multiple professional leadership positions in local, regional, and national library associations and is incoming vice-chair of The Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section of AALL.

She has been a presenter at multiple professional association conferences and continuing legal education courses and has authored several articles and seminar publications. Cheryl writes on technology use for attorneys and researchers for the firm’s Bose Law and Technology Blog at http://lawandtechnologyblog.boselaw.com/.

Robert Oaks, Chief Library and Records Officer, Latham & Watkins. Bob has been a law firm librarian over 35 years, the past 25 years at the 2,100-lawyer firm of Latham & Watkins LLP, where he serves as Chief Library and Records Officer.  Currently he manages the firm’s Department of Information Resources, which includes divisions for Library, Records, Conflicts/New Business Intake, and Litigation Services.  The department totals over 200 people working among the firm’s 32 offices in 17 countries, all of which Bob has visited in a global pursuit of the best research sources and the most passport stamps.  Prior to his service at Latham, he was Legislative Librarian at O’Melveny & Myers.  His library degree is from Catholic University, and his undergraduate degree from George Washington University is in Philosophy. Thoughtfully, he lives in Washington, DC.

Jean P. O’Grady is currently Sr. Director of Research and Knowledge Services at DLA Piper US, LLP. She has over 25 years’ experience developing strategic  information  initiatives for large law firms. She holds a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, an M.L.S. from St. John’s University and a B.A. in History from Fordham University She is a member of the NY State Bar. She has previously held  director positions at WilmerHale in DC and Shea & Gould in NY.  She has been an adjunct faculty member at the graduate schools of Library and Information Science at St. John’s University and Long Island University where she taught legal research courses.

She is Chair Elect of the Private Law Libraries Section of the American Association of Law Libraries and a past President of the Law Library Society of Greater New York.. She is a frequent author and speaker on the transformation of libraries,  digital contract licensing and negotiations, knowledge management, library management issues and legal publishing issues. She has spoken at programs sponsored by the Information Industry Association, the Association of Newsletter Publishers, Practicing Law Institute. West Publishing,  Price Waterhouse, LegalTech, Lexis-Nexis as well as AALL and SLA.

In 2011 she launched a blog “Dewey B Strategic” which focuses on promoting awareness of the strategic importance of librarians , libraries and knowledge managers to the organizations they support.  The blog was recent honored by ABA Magazine as ranking the  ABA Blawg 100 best law related blogs. The blog can be found at: http://deweybstrategic.blogspot.com.

Sally Phillips is best known for her outstanding contributions to top-ranked companies transforming human resources into a strategic business partner, coaching executives, leading transition and reorganization teams for acquisitions of small & large companies and reducing back office costs. With her vast employment law experience, Sally is uniquely able to identify & thereby prevent risk to the companies for which she consults on HR and legal issues. Sally works with both large and small clients in all facets of human resources—from legal and HR strategy and workplace investigations to forming basic human resource policies and executive coaching.

While serving as senior vice president of business affairs for Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Sally put in place strategic performance management systems to enhance the performance of the leadership team. She has orchestrated acquisition transitions, reduced legal costs, aligned strategic, business and operational planning, enhanced organizational development, and created cost controls for risk management, legal, administration and human resources.

Sally has worked with larger companies, serving as chief administrative officer, VP-legal and senior vice president of human resources for Pinkerton, a $2.5 billion services company. She initiated large-scale change for Pinkerton, a global organization that transitioned from a mid-size privately held company, through a public offering, significant organic and acquired growth, sale of the company and the resulting privatization. She played a vital leadership role reshaping the company as it grew with major acquisitions, a diversification of services, and the dramatic expansion of its customer base.

Sally has also held the positions of corporate ethics officer and assistant general counsel. Her prior experience as an employment lawyer with Paul Hastings, allows her to wear several hats in the consulting world, successfully bridging the gap between Human Resources, Executive Management and Legal oversight and compliance.

Sally’s client list includes both large, public corporations, smaller privately held organizations and not-for profit entities. Sally’s speaking engagements have included the Learning Community, ASTD, YEO and Vistage. Sally sits on the Board of the Boys & Girls Club of Malibu.

Sally received her B.S. from NYU and her J.D. Cum Laude, from Georgetown.

Victoria Pynchon is an author, attorney, mediator, arbitrator and negotiation trainer and consultant. Ms. Pynchon is the co-founder of She Negotiates Consulting and Training and of the Forbes She Negotiates blog.

The work of She Negotiates has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and dozens of smaller news outlets. Although Victoria’s focus is now on closing the wage and income gap for women, she has been training lawyers and business people of both genders in mutual benefit negotiation strategies since 2005. She has done so at the Anderson School of Management, UCLA, USC and Pepperdine Schools of Law, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Qwest Communications, Intel Corporation, Kraft Foods, and dozens of AmLaw200 law firms in Los Angeles and around the country.

After a 25-year commercial litigation career, Victoria earned her legal masters degree in dispute resolution from the world-famous Straus Institute at Pepperdine University School of Law. The knowledge, wisdom and skills she gained at Straus can be found in her two books on dispute resolution, The Grownups’ ABCs of Conflict Resolution (Reason Press, 2010) and Success as a Mediator for Dummies (Wiley, 2012).

Victoria is on the Board of Directors for The New Agenda and a member of the American Bar Association Woman Advocate Committee’s Work Life Management SubCommittee.

William P. Scarbrough is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Barnes & Thornburg LLP, where he administrates all aspects of the firm’s personnel function. He oversees the areas of benefits management, diversity and retention, evaluations, orientation and training, pension plan administration, policies, and recruiting.

Mr. Scarbrough has a breadth of experience in law firm management, including most recently as chief operating office of Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge, a 90-lawyer Michigan firm. He also served in similar executive management roles for global law firm Baker & McKenzie LLP and Kirkland & Ellis LLP, as well as in library services and information technology.

Mr. Scarbrough earned his B.A., M.A., and M.L.I.S. degrees from the University of Michigan. He also currently serves as an adjunct instructor of German at Muskegon Community College.

Aaron Schmidt is a principal at Influx Library User Experience Consulting and maintains a library and website usability weblog, walkingpaper. Shortly after completing his MLIS at Dominican University, Schmidt saw the potential of applying new media technology to libraries and launched successful programs at his suburban Chicago public library. Helping the library connect to its community through things such as instant messaging, weblogs and social software led to Aaron publishing articles in Library Journal, School Library Journal, Library High Tech News, Online, and others. He has presented on the topic of library technology and usability throughout the United States, and in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands and Spain. In 2005, Schmidt was named a Library Journal “Mover & Shaker.”

Schmidt moved to Portland, Oregon in 2006 and became the director of a nearby public library. He helped the library grow and gain full membership in the Washington County Cooperative. During this time he continued to write, give presentations and workshops and work for other libraries as a consultant.

Next he acted as the Digital Initiatives Librarian for the District of Columbia Public Library, working from Portland. He helped plan forward thinking projects for the library helping them connect to the community and teach them about the Read/Write Web. He also assisted with website visioning, conducted usability testing, formed library’s Library 2.0 Interest Group and the library’s digital research and development project called DC Library Labs. He created user interfaces for home-brewed self check machines and iPad based neighborhood library dashboards. He was part of the team that created the first iPhone and Blackberry online catalog searching applications.