How gwabbit planted TRĒ and the problems with legaltech CRM that we set out to solve with TRĒ

By Todd Miller, TRĒ AI CEO and Founder of gwabbit.

By the time I sold gwabbit to Intapp in 2019, gwabbit was used by over half of the AmLaw 100 and 200 to source new and updated contacts and relationship intelligence from email signatures into companion CRMs like InterAction, ContactEase, and OnePlace. The concept was simple: no one sends an email with an out of date signature. When the sender hits the “SEND” button, that signature is valid.

An odd thing happened along the way. We thought gwabbit would be nothing more than a data quality companion to traditional CRMs, though dozens of our client firms used gwabbit in place of a CRM. These firms found gwabbit’s solid data and relationship intelligence sufficient to meet their firms’ needs. Their lawyers didn’t use CRMs and they had no expectation that would change.

That epiphany planted the seeds for TRĒ. The purpose of TRĒ is to finish the job we started with gwabbit and fix what I believe is fundamentally broken with CRM in legal. Part of that is a tech problem. The other part I see is disorientation about the mission of CRM in legal.

The mission of traditional CRM in legal: traditional legaltech CRMs cram two completely disparate functions into one product that doesn’t do either of those functions well:

• One function is MBD – list management and eMarketing. This is the CRM function that is used, though it’s not used by lawyers. It’s used by MBD professionals

• The second function is rainmaking – the eternal (and expensive) hope is that CRMs will transform lawyers into rainmakers (or Activators). Decades of experience and hundreds of millions of dollars in sunk cost evidence clearly shows that lawyers don’t use CRM. Lawyers don’t use CRM. Lawyers don’t use CRM.

TRĒ focuses on the MBD part of CRM that is used: ERM, list management, eMarketing, and remarkably good data – and jettisons the rest that doesn’t get used. Lawyers are welcome to use TRĒ (a surprising number do use it and it doesn’t cost more if they do) though we didn’t build TRĒ for lawyers. We built it for MBD superheroes to enable them to do their jobs much better and much more easily than they currently can with their current heavy iron solutions.

How is TRĒ better and easier?

• TRĒ deploys same day. A major CRM provider promised to deploy their solution to one of their clients in three months, using an outside service provider. That was over five years ago. The deployment wrapped up a few weeks ago. I’ve never understood why it takes months or years and third-party service providers to deploy a CRM. CRMs aren’t SpaceX rockets. There is no technical reason whatsoever why a CRM shouldn’t deploy same day. There is no technical reason why a CRM shouldn’t be able to deploy and support their own product without outsourced technical services

• TRĒ cleanses and enhances legacy CRM data same day with zero data stewards. In the post-pandemic era, half of attorney address book contacts are out-of date. The notion of filling an expensive CRM with bad data doesn’t make much sense to me. Storing lists of out-of-date contacts on Excel spreadsheets would cost a fraction of the cost of a CRM. Neither CRMs or spreadsheets are used by lawyers, so nothing is lost, and the financial gain in burdened cost recovery to the CRM can be millions of dollars.

The beating heart and soul of TRĒ is its clean, current, and enhanced contact and relationship intelligence data, sourced 100% automatically, with zero data stewards. Upload your legacy CRM lists into TRĒ and you will be astounded at the number of out-of-date contacts that are automatically updated by TRĒ. TRĒ also improves on gwabbit by capturing new and updated email signature contacts 100% automatically with zero data stewards!

TRĒ also enhances contacts with known-by relationships, LinkedIn links, company revenue and headcounts, industry codes, company logos, and (very cool) geo-radius coordinates.

• TRĒ has built-in eMarketing and is 100% turnkey. Turn the key and go.

Does this sound too good to be true? Don’t take our word for it. Take TRĒ for a free 30-day test drive.

Cleanse and enhance your legacy CRM free. We assume 100% of the risk. Worst case is that you walk away with clean and enhanced data having spent $0.

That said, if you’re like our client firms, on day 31, you’ll be a referenceable TRĒ client. TRĒ is the only vendor who can claim that 100% of its clients are referenceable. Every single one.

One last thing. Regarding turning lawyers into rainmakers, TRĒ’s going to do something about that too. That solution isn’t a CRM. It’s something new. Stay tuned.

Todd Miller
CEO, TRĒ AI
Founder and former CEO, gwabbit