This week we are joined by Mirat Dave and Danish Butt of Swiftwater & Co. as they step into the studio to make a simple claim, investigations and legal operations should serve the business, not slow the business. Mirat traces a path across law, technology, and global risk, then explains why a team blending strategy with implementation drew him to Swiftwater. Danish shares a wry origin story from early e-discovery days and outlines Swiftwater’s north star, the seven C’s, connecting, caring, collaboration, creating, curiosity, courage, and confidence. The tone stays pragmatic, no hype, and a few laughs land along the way.
Global scope often triggers the “Germany is different” objection. Mirat acknowledges regional nuances, then reframes the discussion, most of the process is common across borders. The move that matters is standardization plus smart technology, including AI, to shift from linear headcount answers to scalable capacity. The payoff is speed, consistency, and lower risk. The team urges leaders to act like business owners, align processes to growth, margin, assets, and purpose, and resist the reflex to hire without redesigning the work.
Budget hurdles come next. Leaders struggle to win funds for process change or platforms, while headcount requests sail through. The fix is storytelling backed by math, present a structured plan, expected savings, and a clear ROI in the language a CFO or GC uses daily. Danish widens the lens on metrics, many teams still track counts and cycle times, while value measures like revenue protected or reputation preserved sit at the bottom of the list. The guidance is to flip that order, tie decisions to value, and approach AI as a set of pointed use cases with measurable outcomes, not a monolith.
Legal ops gets a moment in the spotlight as the quiet power. Danish reminds listeners that service functions exist to help the organization win, recognition matters, yet trust erodes when tools take center stage over results. Mirat presses the enablement mindset with a memorable image, legal, risk, and investigations are the pit crew, the business is the driver. Faster pits win races. He shares examples, a government contractor lifted renewal success by turning compliance visibility into proactive reminders and playbooks. In investigations, trend analysis by region, level, and timing surfaces fixes that reduce incoming allegations, lighten workloads, and raise quality.
The crystal ball stays practical. Danish advises teams to treat AI as a working style backed by a two-year plan, prepare data, pick targets, and avoid both freeze and frenzy. Mirat expects investigation platforms to evolve from reporting systems into work systems, triage, plan creation, interview guidance, and repeatable playbooks that lift speed and consistency.
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[Special Thanks to Legal Technology Hub for their sponsoring this episode.]
Blue Sky: @geeklawblog.com @marlgeb
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript:
Nikki Shaver (00:00)
Hi everyone, it’s Nikki Shaver here with Legal Tech Hub. Greg and Marlene have asked me to provide a little bit of an overview of Iltacon,
few takeaways for you One, there bit of panic in the market around AI vendors as we see them jostle for position, new vendors come out, so much funding. A bit of insight from one of the bankers is this bubble is not going to burst anytime soon. We are seeing more money than ever in the market and it’s justifiable. The TAM
the total addressable market of legal is bigger than what a lot of outside funders anticipated. So we should expect to see continuing funding rounds in the legal for the next few years at least. Another trend we saw at ILTA was discussion of AI teams. A lot of firms grappling with how to handle AI and actually upskilling internally, but also hiring people specifically.
sometimes sitting within IT, sometimes within innovation, and sometimes creating an entirely new department, spanning the entire firm, sitting independently. The third thing that we really saw this year is a real interest in potentially the rise of new platforms in the market, where previously you really thought of your core platform as Outlook and maybe…
a DMS system where you have the predominant documents, your work product sitting in the firm. Now, maybe we’re thinking about something else as being the core system where you still have your data repositories, but they’re pushing into the system where lawyers will do their work. So there’s a little bit of a notion that things might switch up quite dramatically. And the word on the street from people at ILTA that they expect things to shift quite dramatically.
both at law firms where there’s the potential for pricing changes, a lot of momentum towards looking at the value of legal work, not by the billable hour, although the billable hour will still be essential for calculating alternative fee arrangements, but more about how do you really look at individual workflows and what makes sense from a pricing perspective for those workflows.
based on how much the efficiency gains may be in legal. We’ve also seen a shift from AI being regarded as a pure product to gain an efficiency tool to something that can provide a far higher ROI. So actually greater value from your lawyers, from the client perspective, higher quality output, access to better data, and so on.
then on the vendor side, again, we really think there is a potential shift in the market coming where the players we’ve really seen as mature and enduring may not necessarily be the core vendors in the industry anymore and a shift towards some of the newer players who have entered only recently that may be those enduring platforms to come. So a very interesting ILTACon
and we’ll be writing about that on LegalTechnologyHub.com to find out more. ⁓
Marlene Gebauer (03:29)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gabauer.
Greg Lambert (03:35)
And I’m Greg Lambert. And this week we are joined by Mirat Dave and Danish Butt from Swiftwater and Co, guided legal and compliance leaders to reframe investigations and operations as strategic business enablers and also podcast hosts themselves. So Mirat and Danish, welcome to our show.
Marlene Gebauer (03:57)
Yes.
Mirat Dave (03:59)
Thanks very much. Glad to be here.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (04:02)
Thanks for having us. Excited to have this conversation.
Marlene Gebauer (04:06)
Yeah. So let’s get started. Mirat to your background spans, strategy, technology and risk. So how did that combination lead to your role at Swiftwater and what was the motivation behind Swiftwater and company’s launch and core mission?
Mirat Dave (04:22)
Sure, thanks. Well, know, Swiftwater really launched with a focus on empowering general counsel, risk leaders, compliance officers to really operate what are much more modern business functions. And what Swiftwater did is really bring together a team of professionals, experienced founders, trusted advisors, people who’ve been basically in the industry for a long time that are familiar with serving clients, you know, throughout the world.
And I think the unique part that attracted me was this sort of collective experience that focused on bringing business strategy together with implementation and technology to really modernize functions and a focus on driving business impact. those are the things that really align with me. My background as a lawyer and a technologist, I’ve provided services to global organizations, both as a consultant
with PwC and with EY and others, but also have operational experience leading a global risk function. So to me, it was a great opportunity to bring all that to bear. And it happens to be a whole group of people who actually enjoy what they do, and they also enjoy working with clients. So that was really the shift and the connection that brought me into Swiftwater.
Marlene Gebauer (05:41)
I was gonna say, and I imagine sort of that global experience is very important in the risk space because again, looking in different areas, it’s not always the same evaluation and the same rules that apply.
Mirat Dave (05:56)
Yeah, that is so true Marlene. And I think what it gives me is credibility when we start talking to people across the globe. Very often people focus on the differences that they see. And so we’ll get into a client and someone from their EMEA team will say, but in Germany we’ve got to do this, in Italy we’ve got to do this. It’s completely different than what you guys have to do in the US.
I think in those situations, I’m able to do two things. One, open with an acknowledgement that yes, there are differences and we’ve got to be mindful of those. But then I’m also able to step back and say, while there are differences, often 60, 70, 80 % of things can be done exactly the same. And so let’s focus on how we integrate those differences into a standard process. And I think having that experience allows me to be credible with those audiences.
Greg Lambert (06:48)
Yeah, Danish it looks like you’re chomping at the bit to say something,
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (06:53)
Well, I was roped into it, you know, under false pretenses to kind of come to this field. I was advising corporations on obviously operations and doing…
advisory helping the office of CFO and CEO. And then somebody recruited me and said, hey, we’ve got this big e-discovery client. You know, we’ve been working with them. They’re looking at some operational efficiency. This is like 20 years ago. You should come do it. You’ll enjoy it. You you’re doing the exact work, you know, you’re going to work with lawyers, you know, and they’re going to really appreciate what you’re doing. First six months, nobody listened to me at the client. They’re like, what are you talking about? Like cost savings?
Greg Lambert (07:28)
Ha
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (07:32)
We’ve got these cases going on. So I had to rethink my whole approach of how, you know, within a corporation, would sit with the CFO, they’re like, create great ideas. Let’s go talk to legal. And then they’ll be like, no, no, guys. So it was an interesting time. think the whole operations and effectiveness, efficiency movement was starting back then. So seeing that happen and helping different organizations.
helped establish their operational functions from ground up and kind of building that movement. It was a great experience. So like Mirat said, mean, most of us at Swiftwater have crossed paths with each other and hopefully grown wiser over the years. you know, I think now when we sort of kind of got together, Hassan, probably look at who’s our CEO, kind of got the band together and his sort of mantra was,
talking about, ⁓ let’s talk about operations, let’s talk about efficiency. He was like, you know, here’s our core mission. We believe in the seven C’s. It’s connecting with people, caring, collaboration, and then let’s create something that’s innovative, you know, let’s spark the curiosity and then have the courage and confidence to sort of deliver solutions. Which I think at this stage of sort of experience in life, you know, resonates as we’ve seen that you have to have a mission and a vision to
drive these kind of changes. So it’s been exciting. I’ve worked with a lot of organizations, part of the founding team at Morae I came back, you know, worked with Huron. That was sort of the company that got a lot of us started in this field and now being part of Swiftwater is exciting.
Greg Lambert (09:14)
Well, speaking of kind of mission, know there at Swiftwater, think one of the missions there is talking about the idea that these corporate investigations shouldn’t just be a reactive checklist, but rather there should be a strategy that’s involved in kind of levers that can be pulled along the way. So in a field where I think the default setting is reactive,
How do you convince the clients to reposition the way they think about these investigations so that they deliver a more measurable business value to them?
Mirat Dave (09:52)
Sure. know, and I think one of things that we’re fortunate to see is that today’s business functions and specifically they’re the top tier leaders in the industry are much more about operating their functions as business owners. So they’re not just there to sort of check the box and come in and sort of, you know, just sort of exist and operate, but they really think about it along the business. And that’s been the key is that by aligning their
their strategies, their processes, their teams with what needs to drive the business and how are going to drive performance. That’s been key. Like for example, for investigations, you know, this gets to thinking about things along the lines of business drivers behind things like growth, margin, assets and purpose. Like how do you, how do you take your investigation function and align it to those? Maybe I can elaborate a little bit with an example. Right. So
So we’ve seen investigation functions, for example, asking for more resources, more headcount, because the business is growing, they have more investigation, more allegations coming in, there’s more compliance requirements. Now, adding headcount, that works, it can help alleviate that, but it’s kind of a linear capacity, meaning that if you add one person,
Like, if you have one person, they can handle X number of cases. If you have two, they can generally handle two X. And there’s no end in sight because a number of cases are going to keep growing. So how do you change that dynamic? Now, if you’re just a function, you can keep asking for more headcount. But if you think about it as a business owner, a business leader, you think, well, hang on, this doesn’t work. This just keeps adding costs to my bottom line.
get out of this linear growth into something that’s more exponential from a capacity standpoint. And that’s where things like standardizing processes, and I alluded to that a little bit across the world, instead of having different approaches to investigations for EMEA or for Italy specifically or for Singapore or for Hong Kong, et cetera, how can I align because I recognize 80, 90 % of it is the same and there’s only nuances?
So that standardization by itself adds speed and simplification. But then looking at things like technology and AI, like when you start combining those, you start gaining exponential capacity. And so you’re able to handle that growth without increasing headcount. And not only are you handling the growth without it, but you’re actually probably going to deliver better quality, better consistency, better speed, and you’re going to reduce risk through that. So I think
That’s kind of how people in those sort of leadership positions, whether they’re in investigations and others, really start thinking differently about delivering business value.
Marlene Gebauer (12:52)
curious, I mean, do you ever get any pushback on that? Because, you know, I think the like the the thing that people go to is like, okay, we just need more people, as opposed to thinking about, okay, we have to actually go through the work of and there is work involved in standardization, making sure that you have all the steps and things in place and aligning it with with different areas of your business. And then also
Greg Lambert (13:02)
Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (13:18)
the, the, the hesitancy around, you know, using AI, ⁓ you know, what’s this going to do, you know, to my staffing and, and, know, how is this going to impact in that way?
Mirat Dave (13:28)
Yes, yes, there’s a lot of resistance. the biggest thing always is, I can’t get budget for this. I can’t get budget for an IT project. I can’t get budget for consulting, but I can somehow get budget for more people. And I think a lot of this is in how people ask. So if someone came to this, whoever they’re reporting up to and said, hey, I need to hire one more person because we now have
Greg Lambert (13:40)
Yeah.
Mirat Dave (13:53)
you know, we bought this business or we grew in this market and someone looks at says, okay, yeah, that kind of makes sense. And begrudgingly, they sort of add person. It’s a fixed cost. It’s very understandable. They understand how it works. You understand what hiring a person means and it’s simple. So it’s an easier sell. But when you start thinking about how do you convince that person that says, Hey, we’re going to invest in these process chains. We’re going to invest in systems implementation.
and we’re actually going to grow capacity. A lot of times it’s not that it’s the wrong decision. In fact, it’s the right decision, but it’s something that both the person who’s bringing it to the next level of whoever’s the budget owner to their attention. And it’s about the budget owner understanding what that decision process looks like and how much it’s actually gonna cost, how much it’s actually going to save, what’s the ROI.
When you have that conversation in a way that’s very structured and organized and thought through, it works. But a lot of times people just go in and ask for this and person looking at it like, don’t know this, I’m not as comfortable. I’m not as comfortable. And actually that was an interesting response by Siri, apologies for that. But that’s usually the answer is I don’t understand.
Marlene Gebauer (15:10)
I was like, Siri, what
Greg Lambert (15:10)
Bye.
Marlene Gebauer (15:13)
are you doing here?
Greg Lambert (15:14)
Nice.
Nice Mirat brought props.
Mirat Dave (15:17)
I know, I know.
I wish I had planned that. But that’s exactly it. It says, I don’t understand, so I’m going to just say no, because it’s hard for me to explain. So think having that intelligence behind it, the clients who ask us to help with that often are much more successful in getting that budget and getting that allocation than the ones who simply wait and see if they can just ask and get it. So the answer
to your question really is very much yes, it’s very difficult to go get and drive change.
Marlene Gebauer (15:52)
But it sounds like, you know, communication is key and how you communicate the message so that it’s understandable is really, you know, an area where you guys can, help. Dinesh we’re going to talk about trends. Okay. So you, you have mentioned, you know, you advise general counsel, on legal spend, operational efficiency, technology adoption. So.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (16:03)
Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (16:12)
What sorts of trends are you seeing this year as to where investigation functions ⁓ should be investing to yield the highest ROI and to achieve performance targets such as losses prevented or time to close investigations?
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (16:28)
Yeah, no, it’s interesting. think it fundamentally goes back to legal investigations, compliance being service functions.
goal for that has to be tied to some kind of value to the stakeholders, the company, to the organization, right? And a lot of times we get lost into, it was interesting, Garnadish and Mirat and I were having when we looking at some benchmarks. So somebody had asked a question, okay, what do you measure? So 90 % of the people said number of investigations, 80 % said how long does it take? And then as you went down the line and you looked at the bottom ones like 5%, 10%,
We’re saying, you know revenue saved or you know Reputation saved and things like that and we kind of said if you flip it over you’re like These are the hardest to measure right or these are the most valuable ones to the organization but they’re hardest to measure because you don’t have sort of the systems and the means to put it together because We’ve talked to folks who like yeah, we’re running 12,000 investigations, but like Greg you said it’s
Very reactive. We’re just keeping our Excel sheets from breaking and just managing this So when push comes to shove we’re like, can you give us four people? This is really important But at the end of the year, how do you demonstrate that value back to the organization? How do you position yourself? So I think that’s where the trends are when you look at legal when you look at risk when you look at compliance is that
For example, just as I came into this industry about 20 years ago, sort of shifting from corporate where this concept of value and at the C level, you’re looking at the value provided to stakeholders, legal risk, started thinking about that. Now it’s more from less about, can you do more with less? That sort of is losing its shine. And it’s about how much value are you creating for me? Right? So you have to start thinking about every decision you
whether you’re trying to save cost or whether you’re trying to put a technology in or trying to stretch your headcount is how is this connected to my value? And I have to tell you it’s still very hard whether we look at investigations, whether you look at intellectual property. I know a lot of our clients have trouble when somebody says, okay, you can tell me how many patents you file, you can tell me how many renewals we did and what the budget is. Can you tell me which is my most profitable patent?
And then they’re like, oh, well, we’ve got a great IP system, but we’re not necessarily connected with all the products yet. So I think, I mean, that’s sort of the trend that we are seeing that there’s a mental mind shift that’s needed to look at some of these things. Not only, I can look at the bill, I could cut down all the spend, but what impact does it have downstream? And that’s where we are sort of, I would say in a 3.0 version or a 4.0 version at Swiftwatch.
Marlene Gebauer (19:04)
You
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (19:26)
kind of think about is okay let’s not think about cost savings that I mean the CFO would have a better time understanding what value you’re doing by saving 10 % cost then forcing yourself to save 25 % because there may be some downstream effects there may be some value effects like Mirat talks about tie your corporate investigation if you’re asking for budget or if you need to improve it if you can tie it to your revenue hey we can improve our revenue
leakage. Contracts we can improve our revenue leakage. Investigations we can improve our revenue leakage. IP we can do that.
but a lot of organizations are having trouble because either they don’t have the right systems and information. And I think truly AI, other than like Siri and all those folks listening to us, does have a benefit. But that’s also maybe a longer discussion because I think Greg, I’ve heard you and Marlene sort of talk about it with a lot of other folks in the industry. I think everybody’s trying to come up with that one big idea, but in my mind, and I’m interested to hear your
thought it’s probably going to be like I probably instead of idea I use the word use case is going to be very a lot of very pointed use cases to solve different problems in the next at least four or five years that we’ll see one thing works best for something and another thing works so that’s also a continuous struggle that and I’ll say us as advisors have that to be on top of things of what’s working right now and what’s improving
So that’s what I advise people is don’t go it alone. There’s broader things. Focus on value and focus on, you know, just not doing it faster, better, cheaper. May have worked for certain things, but as you mature as an industry, you know, we have to start thinking more value, thinking more of how the broader organization thinks.
Greg Lambert (20:59)
Yeah.
⁓ Speaking of legal ops, I know you had mentioned Swiftwater CEO Hassan earlier and I’ve read where he’s described the legal ops as the ⁓ quiet power. there’s this idea of influence often comes and enables the others and it’s not necessarily a front line.
visibility that these legal ops folks have. how do you there at Swiftwater embed Hassan’s ethos of that into your work with the legal risk and compliance department so that you can help them really kind of create and show real strategic impact even though they’re not necessarily on the front line?
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (22:06)
Yeah.
Let me take that one. So it’s interesting. We have a lot of these philosophical conversations now that we’re growing like Mirat said, older and wiser, right? So we kind of think through, how are we morphing into this? And that goes back to that whole service mentality, right? Law as a profession is a service business. I mean, we are here to serve the organization, the people, the society. And so,
Greg Lambert (22:09)
All right.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (22:37)
It goes back to the point of how are we presenting the value? Is the value in saying, hey, I came in and I’m now allowing you to do work better, or I’m coming in and I’ve saved costs for you, or is it about as an organization, I have enabled you to generate more shareholder value?
through your contracts or I’ve saved you from risk or we have as a company improved our positioning in our ESG area and things like that. And so the trend or it’s sort of not a trend but a reminder to ourselves and that when we talk with in the legal off space is that we have to be careful in the operations function.
not sort of overshadowing the overall results that we are achieving by saying, okay, great. Yeah, I mean, I think we get to conferences, we get to a lot of the, everybody likes recognition. And I think that is great as long as it’s in context with the results and the value that your organization is achieving. Because here’s what we’re seeing. Like if that sort of the wrong thing gets the spotlight, then the trust starts eroding, not only in the society, but
also with your stakeholders, which might be other lawyers who working in your organization. Because we might say, yeah, I’m just implementing the best technology. You’re going to use it because benchmarks say so. And then you’re seeing miserable faces sitting out there saying, you didn’t improve my life. You may have great benchmarks. And this always reminds me of this thing.
Greg Lambert (24:01)
Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (24:01)
Ha
ha ha ha.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (24:14)
Steve Ballmer was launching some new Windows version and they all decided to kind of come out. Yeah, they’re like, you know, windmill of bones and they kind of start dancing and trying to be hip and everything. I don’t remember which version of what product was launched, but all I remember is there was like all these executives, you know, and their turtle legs coming in and dancing and trying to be very hip and so on. So it takes away from the spotlight. And I have to be very careful in saying this. This is not
Greg Lambert (24:19)
where he’s jumping around.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (24:43)
just legal ops or people or conference or individuals. It happens a lot with the general counsel or leadership as well. What leadership might say, okay well we’re gonna be more efficient and effective, we’re gonna operate more with, you know, we’re gonna achieve more with less and then it doesn’t take into account
your people who may be under stress or you know the the work that you’re producing but somehow you have to sort of tie it back to value and sort of keep that trust and make sure the people so that was sort of the the whole kind of concept that we sort of remind ourselves in saying that we’re a service organization we’re helping make our organization shine we’re helping make our legal team shine and getting the results for the organization for the stakeholders for the community for the board
And as part of that, yes, we should be recognized, we should also celebrate those wins, but keeping in mind the mission and sort of the vision of what needs to be done.
Marlene Gebauer (25:41)
Mirat, you talked about how you’ve talked about how legal risk and compliance functions need to operate with an enablement mindset. So could you elaborate on that, what that means and discuss examples of what investigation functions have done to adopt that?
Mirat Dave (25:59)
Well, this, Marlene, is my favorite topic, bar none. So this is terrific, and I’m glad you’re asking. And I think it builds on the notion that we just talked about before around business value. I think what we see all too often is investigation functions. And, this applies to risk, legal, and compliance functions as well. They tend to operate as this sort of enforcement or rules functions.
Marlene Gebauer (26:02)
Good, let’s hear it.
Mirat Dave (26:25)
They’re here to make sure that everybody does the right thing and doesn’t step out of line. And oftentimes they sort of follow the lines of defense concept that’s been out there for a while. What is the role of line one, line two, line three? And they don’t see themselves as being allowed to enable the business. They think that they’re there to…
look over someone’s shoulder and make sure they’re doing the right thing. And that’s just not true. And I don’t know where exactly that perception came from. Some people say, it’s like auditing my own work. Well, you know what? You’re a line two function. You’re not an auditor. That’s why you have internal audit. They’re the auditors. So you can actually step in and provide solutions. And I think that’s…
a mind shift that has to happen, whether it’s an investigation function or a broader risk and compliance function, is that they should be waking up every day and approaching every interaction they have with a mindset focused on how can I make this better? How can I make this faster? How can I make this easier? Because at the end of the day, they are part of the business.
What issues do I see that I can help simplify? know, Danish has heard me say this before. It’s like, by what I often will talk to clients about is think of your function as a pit crew in an F1 race. Okay. Now the driver that’s out there, you know, that’s your frontline business, right? That’s the one that they’re the people, the driver’s the one that goes through the checkered flag and they’re the ones popping bottles of champagne and drinking milk when they win.
Right? The pit crew is behind the scenes. That’s your legal function, your compliance function, investigation function. The driver’s not getting there without the pit crew. Now, we’ve seen pit crews improve their pit times down to a couple of seconds, right? The world record is below two seconds for, you know, four tire changes, right? So if you’re the pit crew of a driver and you’re taking
three seconds, you think you’re doing great changing four tires for three seconds. But the guy next to you just did it in 1.82 and their driver got out faster than yours. Now it’s a matter of seconds, but you know, when you’re going a hundred, 200 miles an hour, a second is a lot of distance. And that that keeps happening in multiple pits, you’re going to fall further behind. So it’s about this changing dynamic that these functions really need to think about is
How do I get faster? How do I get more agile? How do I get more responsive? And that’s something that not all have tried to take on. All right, so.
Marlene Gebauer (29:08)
think historically
that’s not been the function. The function was like, we’re protecting as opposed to enabling.
Greg Lambert (29:14)
Yeah, and
that’s another thing I was wondering where are the are they rewarded for that or, are the incentives set directly and if not, how do you how do you kind of change that?
Marlene Gebauer (29:22)
Haha.
Mirat Dave (29:27)
So both of you are 100 % right as some of the issues, right? Because that’s not how they’re structured. That’s not sort of the traditional role. And oftentimes the incentives aren’t there. you know, I think what we see kind of people who are being more strategic about this is that they will go and have those conversations with leadership that say, if we make these changes, this is how it affects the company’s growth. This is how it affects
you know, things from a margin or cost standpoint. The functional leaders need to start speaking the language of the C-suite. The C-suite is out there at investor conferences, at shareholder meetings. And what are they talking about? They’re talking about growth. They’re talking about market expansion. They’re talking about innovation. They’re talking about R &D. They’re talking about all these wonderful new things. On the other side, they’re talking about margins and earnings per share.
Right? They’re talking about assets, protecting and leveraging assets. And then more broadly, they may be talking about purpose and achieving a broader purpose, including compliance is one of the things, but they’re talking about when you start aligning your conversation and saying, Hey, here’s how my function today is having an impact on these areas. And here’s how it could operate. You start changing your measures, but then by changing your measures,
You’re also then going to them and saying, this is the investment it’s going to take. Now you’re quantifying that investment in the context of its impact on revenue growth and margin. And it’s a much easier business decision. Doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to get that money because you know, there’s 50 things on the plate and there’s only X amount of money, but you’re much more likely to get it and you’re much more likely to change your performance measures.
about how you’re going to actually be measured at the end of the year and what you’re going to prioritize. So it’s really a ⁓ big mindset shift that has to happen and it’s not easy. It doesn’t happen overnight, right? And it takes someone who’s got this really sort of willingness to step up and say, how do I elevate my game for the next generation?
And we’re going to see it like with anything else. There’s people who are out there who are doing this, who are at the forefront. And at some point we’re going to get to a tipping point where a whole bunch of people are going to be playing catch up to get there. So it’s a matter of where someone wants to be in this. Do you want to be in the first, in the top 20 %? Or do you want to be one of the followers who are going to come later?
Greg Lambert (32:07)
Thank you.
Mirat Dave (32:07)
I mean, and
I can share an example. I mean, I can even go beyond say investigations for a moment. ⁓
Greg Lambert (32:14)
Well,
let me jump in and because I think maybe this is leading into where I was heading. So let’s say you get everything aligned the way that you want it to be or the way.
Mirat Dave (32:17)
Sure.
Greg Lambert (32:30)
So share with us some example of where when you’re aligned correctly, you get everyone doing their part. The pit crew is 2.2 seconds or less. So what are the tangible outcomes that you see that make a big difference in how that service is delivered?
Mirat Dave (32:51)
Sure. Let me give it to you maybe in two different contexts. One outside the context of say investigations and one within the context of investigations. So I had a client as a large government contractor and when you think about where their revenue came from in growth, 20 % of their growth and new revenue came from
existing contracts because that led to new work or to follow on work or expansion of the current work. And so in those scenarios, the contract renewals that came up were extremely important because they impacted not just that project, but future growth. Now, their risk and compliance and legal teams were really good at tactically making sure that all the contract renewal steps were followed.
But, and they had line of sight across the entire business as to what’s going on, but they weren’t invested in the success or failure of those renewals. They were invested in making sure all the correct steps happened. And there was a great disparity between some parts of the business and others in terms of who was succeeding more often on a percentage basis than others. And so it was actually, and they weren’t willing to step in and actually was at the behest of the CFO that we came in.
to take a look at what was going on from a contracting standpoint. And then we worked with them to gather kind of the best practices across the organization and from other sources to really step up what they were doing. And because they had line of sight, because they were touching everything across the organization, they were perfectly positioned to become this function that actually drove reminders out to say, OK.
You’ve got this contract coming up in six months, you need to start thinking about this. Four months out, you need to start thinking about this. Those thinking about things were about connecting with the right people. They were about making sure that you’ve communicated value. Things like that had nothing to do with the actual renewal contract, the tactical steps. And as a result, they saw a tremendous increase in the percentage of contract renewals and the success rate. And that’s an example of a function really not
sort of sticking to the tactics and not thinking about what value they can bring. So that’s one that I think it was very dramatic. But from an investigation standpoint, we’re working with a couple of clients right now and we’re seeing a similar mindset. It’s like, we’re here to, we get these allegations in.
⁓ and then we make sure that we work on them and work on them well and then we sort of get the results out. And fine, that’s the tactics of what you’re responsible for doing. But let’s take a step back. Now let’s start analyzing these things based on where are they coming from? What level of people are they coming from? What business units are they coming from? What geographies are they coming from? Are they related to specific regulations? How is the timing of these allegations happening across the world?
and from a calendaring standpoint. And then you start doing correlations and you’re able to actually go back to the business and say, hey, you here’s what you need to improve. Here’s what you need to change. Here’s what you need to fix. And that kind of insight reduces the amount of it should, reduces the amount of allegations and issues coming in. So you’re reducing your workload, but you’re effectively making the business operate with less risk.
and greater visibility outcome, and the entire organization is spending less time on investigations. So there’s tremendous opportunity across every function to really think beyond the tactics of what you’re doing and to really start stepping up and saying, how do I take what I do and the information I get and convert it into value for the business? Sorry, I can go on and on about this, but I just said it was my favorite, it was stuff there.
Greg Lambert (36:47)
No, it was great.
Marlene Gebauer (36:48)
No, those are great.
Alright guys, so now’s the time for our crystal ball question. So Murat and Dinesh, looking ahead one or two years, what do you expect to be the biggest transformation in how legal departments ⁓ use AI and drive investigation processes and operational improvements and how is Swiftwater positioning clients to benefit?
Mirat Dave (37:12)
Danish, why don’t you start? I’ve just been talking a bunch, but then you go and then I’ll speak specifically on investigation.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (37:14)
Sure, yeah, I would start with my NASCAR analogy
But you’ve got a F1 so I have to give that one up. Now I’m working on like a Texas rodeo analogy. It’s not done yet, but next time
Greg Lambert (37:19)
All right, going from F1 to NASCAR.
There we go.
Marlene Gebauer (37:28)
That’s a good one, we
like that.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (37:29)
Maybe next time, you know, we’ll do that. But I think AI, there’s going to be the fundamental shift in AI. I think we’re still at the stage where we look at AI as a tool and as sort of an aid that we’re using. So we see a lot of folks trying to figure out.
Can I replace my search engine? Can I replace it with my research tool? Hopefully hallucinations will go away and I can just do work better, faster. I can see Marlene going, no. And things like that.
Marlene Gebauer (38:00)
Not for a while.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (38:02)
But I mean, hitting in your podcast and hitting others who are kinda coming at it and what we are sort of also advising our clients is to now think of AI as a lifestyle or as a professional sort of way of working, right? Not just looking at tools and point solutions, but thinking of it in a broader sort of long-term context. Because what’s gonna happen is if you just look at the tools three years down the line, you’re gonna have just like tech.
tools and you’re like, okay, why didn’t we do all of this? Now, nothing makes sense. But now is the time to sort of think through looking at all the different aspects. Some places are ready and you know, you can go in and kind of make an impact. Other places you have to prepare your data or other things to make full take full advantage. I think this is a great opportunity to be more embedded within the enterprise more than ever, because now you can have that data that can inform your claims
processes, your investigations processes, which you couldn’t have done in the past. So I think that’s where I look at it as AI is right now is the time and advising clients to not get excited or dejected. Some people are like, no, no, no, we can’t touch it. I’ve seen, I’ve seen memos go out from CEOs like don’t touch any tool.
And on the other end it’s like, okay, let’s try every tool under the sun and you get mediocre results because there’s no strategy. So I think right now is the time to think about that as an AI factory or AI strategy or what does our two-year timeline look like and where do we want to be and take advantage. And some of it needs preparation steps, whether it’s data or hiring folks that are…
knowledgeable and with that I think congratulations Greg. I mean you’re gonna be you’ve got a newer title I mean would love to hear more from you guys and Marlene you’re sort of taking it to the next level with sort of your knowledge management background. So I mean this is how we sort of grow as an industry as well right I mean looking at how each of us are doing it and collectively making it better.
Greg Lambert (40:10)
We like crystal ball answers that include us in the answer.
Marlene Gebauer (40:13)
Yeah, we
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (40:14)
Is there like a payment schedule of how many times you get to mention people?
Marlene Gebauer (40:18)
Hahaha
Greg Lambert (40:20)
Absolutely. Yeah. Venmo Marlene.
So Mirat, how about you? What’s your crystal ball say for us?
Mirat Dave (40:29)
Well,
with that response, I think the investigation conversation comes right. So I’ll focus a little bit on this one. I’ll focus a little bit more investigations. think everyone’s talking about AI, so we’ve got to talk about AI. But, you know, I’m really struggling with how much AI is going to move the needle, especially in the legal and risk area.
Marlene Gebauer (40:32)
⁓ We can apply it right here.
Greg Lambert (40:32)
I’m
Mirat Dave (40:55)
And the reason is it actually boils down to something very simple. I was talking to a good friend of mine who works at one of the world’s biggest banks. He’s an attorney there. And I asked him, said, what are you doing with AI? And said, well, our general counsel said, use AI. And I said, well, exactly, exactly. And I’m like, well, any context, any specific area? He goes, no. And I said, why is that?
Greg Lambert (41:10)
That’s a strategy.
Marlene Gebauer (41:11)
That’s it.
Mirat Dave (41:19)
Is it they don’t even know what to do with it, but they know they’ve got to use it and he’s like, yeah They don’t know so they’re just saying use it because they can’t have not said at least that and so you know with investigations I Think I have a view on where things can go But I’m really curious to find out how much they’re gonna get there So I think a lot of the opportunity investigations when we if I sort of summarize some of the things we talked about were around
speed, value, consistency, insight. It’s really leveraging AI to bring a lot of that together. So, for example, when an investigation or when an allegation comes in, that’s around bribery, right? Usually the next step in investigation is to sort of triage it and then come up with an investigation plan and then go do it. It’s like, well, when you can start leveraging AI and other tools, and you don’t even need AI, but it makes it easier.
You can start doing is saying, hey, if it’s this type of allegation, read the allegation, read about who’s involved and come up with the plan, right? And you’ll get 70, 80 % of your plan done right there. For interviews, what are the types of questions I should be asking? Because the ones that you’re going to ask for an anti-bribery and corruption one are different than say a sexual harassment one versus something around
you know, some financial, other sort of financial misconduct, like, you know, stealing money or something. So when you start tailoring those, you start reducing the work and you start driving that consistency and you’re able to sort of do more with less and do it faster, better, easier. So I think we’re going to see a lot more of that reality, a lot more of that type of functionality start getting built into, you know, investigations, investigation platforms specifically.
that support these investigations. in talking about those platforms, I think we’re going to see them transform as well. Right now, a lot of investigation platforms are nothing more than a place to go put what you’ve done or report on what you’ve done. They don’t actually facilitate the actual work or enable the actual work.
So think we’re gonna see those two types of transformations come together over next two years.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (43:44)
I think if we can make a plug, that’s what we’re working on is building that next generation sort of tool that can take the work that comes in for your technical lead, your hotlines and other places and sort of take it to how do you get that work done in one place using that sort of investigation centric approach. Somebody wants to learn for it, please go ahead and reach out to us.
Greg Lambert (44:11)
Before we wrap up, I’ve got one off script question for both of you and it’s something that we’ve been testing out so we’ll see how it goes. What do you do to keep up with all the changes? Are there certain resources that you kind of constantly go to to kind of keep on top of your business?
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (44:32)
Good morrow.
Mirat Dave (44:33)
Okay, sure. Well, the short answer is that was that was you stole it. How is that was going to be my first one on my head. Exactly. Exactly. You know, there’s there’s I think it’s key to understanding that there’s so many aspects of it from a consulting standpoint. There’s everything from the marketing and business development to the
Marlene Gebauer (44:35)
Besides the geek in review.
Greg Lambert (44:36)
Yeah, besides us, obviously.
Marlene Gebauer (44:40)
See? I could have gotten another Venmo ⁓
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (44:44)
You
Mirat Dave (44:56)
core sort of, you know, in my case, say investigations and, and, and risk and compliance. So I’m constantly out there looking at different sources for different things, everything from, you know, watching TikTok videos on ads, you can’t skip. Right. I mean, I love those because they give me insight into how do you market, how do you bring people into a conversation? But then there’s a lot of practical things, right? So I’m looking at white papers that are produced across
a variety of different risk management and investigation and compliance organizations. They’ve got, there’s an endless supply of white papers that are being produced there. There’s the normal sort of news cycles and articles. And I’m starting to leverage more and more myself, the AI part of it saying, hey, it’s really hard to keep up. I want to get some of these things summarized, but then…
when I see something interesting, I’m able to actually click in and actually go to the actual source and actually take it a full read. So I don’t think the traditions have changed. I think it’s about really, you know, just keeping up with all the news cycles. And I’ll add one more. I think we’re producing a lot of content and I love the comments and the questions and the feedback that comes in because that to me is a great source of learning.
for myself because it’s either a question we didn’t answer or a question we didn’t think about or a new perspective on the same. So all of those really help benefit us.
Greg Lambert (46:24)
And Danish?
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (46:26)
Yeah, I would start. I you guys know I consume a lot of information through the internet and interactions, so I love.
all the thought leadership podcasts like yours and others, just kind of getting that human condition out, right? And saying, okay, this is what’s happening, not unfiltered business things that we can sort of absorb, not necessarily highly produced pieces where there’s like a white paper in the case study that comes out. We want to know what’s happening, where it’s happening. Conferences have been a great sort of source, but I think post-COVID we’ve gone into
sort of a whiplash of conferences. There’s like a conference, like five conferences for each topic that have started coming up. Pros.
There are more people that are getting engaged. There’s more things to go to, there as a human, can only be in so many. I think the con is that I think you start getting into a little bit of the group think as well. I mean, I feel like there are certain concepts that kind of become fads and they kind of circulate. So, so I think just having a combination of this and I think more people should be taking on podcasting and coming.
up and be guests and sort of share their pieces. I think there’s a big debate around LinkedIn that’s going on. It’s like a lot of people are lurkers. They don’t necessarily sort of add anything to it. They’re just relying on other people to tell. I think it’s a great, even if you don’t call it social media or whatever platform you’re comfortable with, I think there’s opportunity to now sort of share, I mean, what you have as legal.
You don’t necessarily have to share all the things that are happening in your company
Because I think like, yeah, I we can ask a question LinkedIn and put our best thought together. And I see a lot of people say, so how’s your company doing it? Right. And so nobody’s going to say, yeah, we’ve got like 1500 complaints last year, but there is a way if you could share that info of maybe the positive side of how you’re doing it or within lots of platforms that are more chatamouse rules. I think I would encourage people to kind of come up with their, I think that helps us as an industry to share.
Greg Lambert (48:16)
Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (48:17)
No one’s gonna say it.
Greg Lambert (48:32)
All right.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (48:38)
and not having people feel that they’re on an island trying to do it for the first time.
Greg Lambert (48:43)
I’ll extend the challenge that Mirat said about if you’re a listener and you’ve made it to this part of the podcast episode, chime in with a comment. What did we miss or what was your favorite part of it? So let’s get some interaction going. So don’t be a lurker. All right. Well, Mirat, Davi and Danish Butt, want to thank
Marlene Gebauer (49:00)
Don’t be a lurker.
Greg Lambert (49:06)
both of you for taking the time to join us on the Geek in Review. Thank you.
Marlene Gebauer (49:10)
It’s been great.
Thank you.
Mirat Dave (49:12)
Greg, Marlene, thank you very much. Our pleasure.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (49:12)
It’s been a pleasure.
Marlene Gebauer (49:14)
And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners for taking the time to listen to the Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you, so reach out to us on LinkedIn.
Greg Lambert (49:25)
Yeah, and I expect to see comments this week. So Mirat and, from all of you, Mirat and Danish, for our listeners who want to learn more about Swiftwater, about your own podcast or connect with you, what’s the best place for them to go?
Marlene Gebauer (49:27)
Yeah. All of you.
Danish Butt (Swiftwater) (49:42)
The best place is to reach out ⁓ at website, swiftwaterco.com. I mean, you’ll find our blogs, our contact page, more information about our services, and or connect us on LinkedIn. You’ll probably see a lot of material from Mirat’s face and videos and mine, and you’re gonna enjoy that.
Marlene Gebauer (50:03)
And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you so much, Jerry.
Greg Lambert (50:08)
Thanks, Jerry. All right, thanks everybody.
Marlene Gebauer (50:11)
Bye.
Mirat Dave (50:12)
Bye.