UniCourt Employee Spotlight with Marisa Huber, National Account Executive
on Topics: Interviews
Following our first two UniCourt Employee Spotlights with Sarah Park and Simone Spencer, we’re excited to share our third interview in our ongoing series with UniCourt’s National Account Executive, Marisa Huber.
Marisa has extensive and well-rounded experience across the legal industry, having worked at international heavy-weights, such as Thomson Reuters and Gartner. At just Thomson Reuters alone, Marisa has worked as Transformation Delivery Lead, Legal Technology Consultant to Corporate Legal Departments, Client Manager for Large and Medium Law Markets, Government Account Manager, and Special Account Representative. This experience has given her incredible insights into the pain points and challenges big law firms and corporate legal departments face, and a thoughtful understanding of the data and analytics solutions they need to transform their operations and better manage the business of law.
We’re excited to have Marisa as one of the latest all-star additions to UniCourt’s growing Sales team, and we hope you enjoy learning from her perspective as much as we did!
UniCourt: Tell us your story. What is your background, and what led you to what you are doing now?
Marisa Huber: My first real job out of college was working in the wine industry. I grew up around vineyards, horses, and cows. I literally called a friend up and said, “do you think your dad will hire me to work in the tasting room.” I also witnessed first hand how growers could easily get the shaft in purchase agreements and land easements with their vineyards, and thought I’d go into law and practice in that specific area.
Then social justice hit me in law school, like a brick in the face, and I found myself volunteering for TRO clinics, immigration clinics, landlord tenant clinics, you name it, I wanted to help. I clerked for the District Attorney, worked for a small office that gave me litigation experience, which was a love hate relationship, and I thought, maybe transactional work would be better, it wasn’t.
I discovered Thomson Reuters and fell deeply in love with the company and the people. When my mentor retired, I moved on. I was always uncomfortable with conversations around technology, so I went to another research company called Gartner. That’s where the learning began, and I’ve been in love with technology conversations ever since.
What drew me to UniCourt was the people, and the recognition of what an API-first legal data company can do. It’s a very exciting time because we are going to change the market and open minds on how to utilize legal data in ways that the major players have not been able to accomplish. No one wants a locked universe, and if they do, they are digitally ignorant. A wave is coming, and we are on the front end of it.
UC: What’s an interesting fact about yourself?
MH: Most people know that I am an avid swimmer, but that changed a bit when Covid hit. The only place I could swim was the Pacific Ocean or the San Francisco Bay (no thanks). I began to search for other things to do. I loved horses and rode when I was younger, plus, it was outside. My son and I started taking lessons together, and I fell in love with horses all over again. I love everything about it, especially the way some riders make the movements look effortless. Most people see someone on horseback and think it’s easy or requires little to no effort, you just hop on and go. It’s the opposite. It takes a lifetime to learn to ride to honor the horse, and it’s the most difficult sport I have ever participated in. I suppose, in a way, it’s a bit like my job as a sales executive, or even practicing law, there is always learning and room for improvement.
UC: What do you like most about working at UniCourt?
MH: That’s an easy one. People, product, and company culture. The litmus test was spending 9 hours a day with everyone in a 12×20 room and still wanting to hang out with them for dinner and after hours events. I work with highly intuitive and intelligent professionals who deeply care about each other, our impact as a company, and our reputation in the legal tech community.
Our product, how we normalize and structure legal data via APIs will change how law firms and legal departments engage. We have broken the barrier of app based legal data in a closed universe. Law firms and legal departments can leverage legal data for business development and litigation strategy. Structured, normalized legal data is what top law firms have been asking for, and they won’t be limited to just downloading the information into Word or a PDF. They can do anything they want with the data. If they want to see what opposing counsel has done, how many cases this particular law firm has handled, or how many cases an attorney has had in a specific area they can do that, but they can also house the data sets themselves and repurpose it for business development. The options and flexibility with the data is endless, and the bonus is our state court data. No one has been really able to get a handle on state court data, we have.
When it comes to company culture, I suppose the real question for me is why the culture of UniCourt is different. Our values make us different. We are global, and interact with each other daily. Our positive culture and transparency drive our results, and it’s emulated daily by our leadership.
UC: What do you see as the most fascinating use of UniCourt’s data?
MH: The freedom to not be limited by an app or closed universe. Structured, normalized data is what everyone wants for business development, litigation strategy, and docket management. There are no true limitations to the value of legal data delivered via API. We know that 65% of law firms want to use data and analytics to drive better outcomes, pursue business development, and capitalize on talent, but they are locked down with data in closed applications that don’t feed into a hosted cloud environment. We bring normalized and structured data into any environment. Even for those who aren’t quite ready, we partner with companies that can host to deliver the legal data they need in real time.
UC: How do you see UniCourt’s Enterprise APIs impacting law firms in the future?
MH: There will be firms that adopt the use of legal data via API quickly, and they will be ahead of the curve and capitalize on market share quickly. UniCourt’s API-first approach will give law firms insight into who their clients are, what kind of advice they are seeking, who the most valuable paying clients are, gathering competitive intelligence on current clients and competitors, and it can fully automate business development. Our APIs can help with litigation strategies, track cases, really the use cases are endless. What’s the most impactful is that our APIs are plug and play. They are easily handled and integrated. If I can learn how to use them, anyone can. It’s no longer about the largest law firms or corporate legal departments, you don’t need a full IT team to implement our APIs.
UC: As a former practitioner, how do you explain what APIs are to lawyers and legal professionals who have never heard of them before? Why should they care about APIs?
MH: It’s simple, imagine being able to look up opposing counsel and see every case they litigated, when it was litigated and everything the firm has done, with access to the underlying documents. Take it to the next level and imagine being able to see what kind of cases the judge you are appearing in front of and how often, and immediate access to the actual cases. I’ve had access to something similar before, but it was limited to federal content, and coverage was extremely limited at the the local level, and only available in a PDF or downloadable in Word, so I never knew how old the data was, or how long ago opposing counsel had appeared in front of the judge.
From a business development perspective, anything that could accurately automate the entire process of lead generation would be extremely valuable. Having immediate insights into a corporation’s litigation history coupled with their representation in geographical areas would be incredibly valuable. And I speak from experience, we drink our own Kool-Aid here and use our own APIs. If we come knocking on your door, you better believe we will know everything regarding your litigation experience, and we will likely know your competition as well.
Transforming Legal Operations and the Business of Law
One of the key ingredients in bringing about transformation in law firm and legal department operations is better use of data, and we loved hearing Marisa Huber’s perspective on how APIs like the UniCourt Enterprise API can deliver exactly the data needed to elevate the business and practice of law.
Don’t miss the next UniCourt Employee Spotlight, where we talk with UniCourt’s National Account Executive, Sona Hamilton.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for more legal tech updates!