THE BOARD
The founders of the Legal Value Network had an early stake in helping direct the new trajectory of the industry in the early days of its transformation. These seven individuals connected at various early roundtables and other meetings, ultimately joining forces to help produce the content you've grown to know and appreciate since 2012 when industry veteran Toby Brown formed the foundation of an earlier leading industry conference on pricing, project management and process management. This original conference attracted over 120 professionals from across the globe, and started a movement that grew to include a vibrant, cross-functional gathering of over 450 professionals assembling for the annual 2-day conference. Today, this group forms the board of Legal Value Network.
Toby Brown
Board Member
Toby Brown is the CEO of DV8 Legal Strategies. DV8 provides high-level strategic consulting to law firms, legal providers and corporate legal departments. Prior to this Toby served as Chief Practice Management Officer for Perkins Coie (www.perkinscoie.com). In this role Toby worked with firm partners and clients in developing pricing arrangements and service delivery models that drive successful relationships. The role included practice management, pricing, legal project management, lateral partner acquisition, practice innovation and client relationship management. Before Perkins, Toby served as the Chief Practice Officer for Akin Gump (www.akingump.com) and served in pricing roles for both Vinson & Elkins (www.velaw.com) and Fulbright & Jaworski (www.fulbright.com). Before joining Fulbright, Toby served as a Director for the Utah State Bar (www.utahbar.org).
Toby presents nationally on legal pricing, practice innovation, lateral partner acquisition, marketing, technology and law firm management for associations, law firms, legal departments and law schools. He is the founder of the P3 Conference (www.legalmarketing.org/P3Conference) and is a founder of the Legal Value Network (www.legalvaluenetwork.com), which is building a community of pricing, LPM and innovation people. Toby is also the founding President of the Board for SALI (www.sali.org). SALI is the standards body for the legal industry. He has published numerous articles, along with the book, Law Firm Pricing: Strategies, Roles, and Responsibilities. Toby has served on a number of legal services boards, bar association task forces and legal market organizations. He was named to The National Law Journal’s 2013 list of Legal Business Trailblazers & Pioneers and received the Peer Excellence Award, the President’s Award and the Anne Charles Award from the National Association of Bar Executives (NABE – www.nabenet.org). Toby received his BS and MS in Economics from the University of Utah.
Toby maintains the ABA award winning 3 Geeks and a Law Blog with 3 colleagues at: www.geeklawblog.com. He is active on Twitter as @gnawledge and can be found on LinkedIn.
Christopher Ende
Officer, Board Member
As Chief Value Officer, Christopher Ende leads Goulston & Storrs’ strategic initiatives relating to pricing structures, legal project management, practice innovation, and profitability analysis. Chris collaborates across all firm legal practices and professional departments to deliver increased value to clients through innovative fee arrangements, process improvement, and data analytics. He works directly with clients to deliver tailored pricing solutions and service delivery models that align incentives and facilitate successful outcomes. Chris draws on his knowledge gained as an in-house legal operations leader to effectively design win-win solutions.
Chris has deep experience in the business of law and brings a “voice of the client” perspective to the firm. Chris previously led the outside counsel spend management program for a Fortune 15 company where he developed strategies to optimize outside counsel spend, including designing a preferred provider program, building an award-winning, custom application to drive data-driven selection of outside counsel, and designing metrics to measure performance and value. He also held a senior leadership position at an alternative legal services provider where he developed solutions for corporate legal departments to improve operational efficiency and reduce legal costs. Prior to those roles, Chris built and led the global pricing and project management program at an AmLaw 50 law firm.
Keith Maziarek
Officer, Board Member
Keith Maziarek is the Director of Pricing and Legal Project Management at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. In this role he is responsible for developing, implementing and scaling the firm's formal pricing and legal project management functions. The scope of this position includes both internal and client-facing responsibilities focused on establishing institutional best practices related to strategic pricing, service delivery efficiency and maximizing client value.
Prior to joining Katten, Keith served as Senior Director of Client Value for Perkins Coie LLP, where he focused on working closely with the legal operations executives at the firm’s top clients to establish mutually-beneficial financial arrangements and collaborative operational processes. Keith’s career in this field began at DLA Piper LLP, where he served as the firm’s first Head of Strategic Pricing. The scope of this position closely mirrored his current work driving transformative change at Katten.
Keith has authored several published articles on the topics of pricing, client value and collaboration, and he speaks regularly at industry conferences. He is a past co-chair of the annual P3 Conference, past co-chair of the LMA's Client Value Shared Interest Group, and is designated as an Accredited Legal Pricing Professional (ALPP) from the True Value Partnering Institute (TVPI).
Keith holds an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, with majors in Management and Strategy, Managerial Economics, and Analytical Consulting, and a B.S. in Business Management from the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Purvi Sanghvi
Officer, Board Member
Purvi Sanghvi is the Director of Strategic Pricing at Paul Hastings (www.paulhastings.com), which has been ranked one of the five most innovative law firms by The Financial Times. She is responsible for creating the platform upon which pricing strategies are implemented across the firm globally. Her team oversees pricing management, develops and analyzes alternative fee arrangements, and creates budgets for complex client matters. She is responsible for pricing strategies for the firm’s top clients, often interacting with them directly as another face of the relationship. In all of these responsibilities, she works closely with firm clients and partners to develop innovative, efficient, and results-oriented solutions. Ms. Sanghvi has been involved in the creation of law firm pricing strategies since 2007 and has been on the forefront of shaping how they service the legal industry. Prior to Paul Hastings, she launched strategic pricing functions at several law firms. She has written articles on pricing and is often asked to speak on pricing related topics. Purvi has served as a founding member of the P3 community (Pricing, Project Management, and Practice Innovation), which hosts an annual conference for law firm and corporate legal professionals. Purvi is also a Board Member and Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management.
Purvi holds an MBA from The Carroll School of Management at Boston College and an undergraduate degree in Finance and International Management from the Questrom School of Business at Boston University.
Stuart Dodds
Officer, Board Member
Stuart Dodds is co-founder and Principal of Positive Pricing. He was one of the first and longest service pricing and LPM directors in the industry, working firstly with Linklaters and then Baker McKenzie having previously been a Management Consultant for 18 years, and has consulted to many law firms subsequently.
He is an accredited Certified Pricing Professional (CPP), Accredited Legal Pricing Professional (ALPP), and Accredited Legal Project Manager (ALPM). Stuart also sits on a number of industry-related advisory bodies and is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management. He was also the first recipient of the TVPI Legal Pricing and Legal Project Management Educator of the Year (awarded June 2019).
Stuart is a frequent speaker at conferences and is extensively quoted in pricing and project management publication and journals, and is also the author of the first book covering law firm pricing, negotiation and LPM, 'Smarter Pricing, Smarter Profit', published by the American Bar Association in May 2014 (with the second edition due for publication in January 2020), and the editor of, and main contributor to, 'Pricing on the Front Line', published by the American Bar Association in January 2017.
Justin Ergler
Board Member
Justin Ergler is a globally recognized thought leader in developing innovative legal pricing strategies, such as alternative fee arrangements for complex legal matters.
In his current role as Director of Alternative Fee Intelligence and Analytics at GlaxoSmithKline, he works with in-house counsel and law firms to develop non-hourly, value-based alternative fee arrangements for legal engagements worldwide. In addition to achieving the clichéd goal of “killing of the billable hour," the value-based compensation models on which he strategizes to innovate are designed to strengthen partnerships with key firms via risk/reward-sharing incentives. Justin started his career at GSK in central procurement and moved into the legal department in 2013.
He is also undertaking an initiative to develop ROI-style metrics that quantify and capture the value delivered by corporate Legal departments through strategic engagements with outside counsel. This initiative aims to shift the perception of the corporate legal function to a "Value Creation Center" as opposed to a "Cost Center."
Justin is a frequent speaker and author on legal pricing topics. He holds a business degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a veteran of the United States Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinergler/
Kristina Lambright
Board Member
As the Senior Director of Strategic Growth, Kristina Lambright leads the firmwide sourcing and acquisition of lateral partner candidates in alignment with the firm’s strategic plan. She works closely with firm management, practice chairs and industry groups to identify market trends and targeted areas for growth with a specialized focus on profitability and client engagement. Kristina drives the development of lateral partner acquisition strategy and process for the firm ensuring consensus and alignment with the firm’s economic, cultural and strategic goals. She oversees the firm’s lateral on-boarding and integration efforts, managing a team of professionals dedicated to supporting incoming lateral partners to ensure a seamless transition, reflective of a firmwide commitment to their success.
Kristina also has oversight of the firm's strategic pricing function, which specializes in creating innovative and practical pricing solutions aimed at enhancing the overall value provided to clients and improving firm economics. Her role includes internal and client-facing elements involving the development of pricing strategies and firmwide policies and procedures.
Previously, Kristina served as the firm’s Senior Director of Pricing and Practice Economics, responsible for leading the pricing and legal project management teams focused on enhancing the overall value provided to clients and improving firm economics. Prior to joining Perkins Coie, she held strategic pricing and legal project management roles with two AmLaw 50.
Kristina is a past co-chair of the Legal Marketing Association’s (LMA’s) annual P3 Conference, the industry’s largest annual event related to pricing, project management and process improvement. She currently serves as a co-chair of LMA’s Client Value SIG.