Intapp’s highly-regarded VP of market development, Norm Mullock, has left the Palo Alto-headquartered company to become VP of strategy at Wilson Legal Solutions, as it looks to drive law firm adoption of BI and analytics and further build out its Ideate software range. The move by Mullock comes as Intapp’s VP of marketing Dan Bressler also departs the company, with his destination yet to be confirmed.
Mullock (pictured), who starts at Wilson Legal tomorrow (6 September), reporting directly to founder and CEO Bruce Wilson, was a co-founder and chief strategy officer of business intelligence software and services pioneer Redwood Analytics, which was acquired by LexisNexis in 2008 and subsequently by Aderant in 2014.
His role at Wilson Legal will be similar to the one he took on at Intapp in 2010, where he is credited widely with helping to drive the success of the likes of Integration Builder and Intapp’s time recording apps by steering individual product strategies and marketing.
Founded in 2009, Wilson Legal is best known for its services business, where it is a certified partner of both Elite and Intapp. It is less well known as a software company and the move by Mullock can be expected to coincide with a push by Wilson Legal to develop and promote its own IP as the fast-growing company looks to take its growth to the next level. (Legal market geeks will remember that Bruce Wilson started Wilson Technology in 1987, sold to Elite in 2005 and launched Wilson Legal in 2009 as the demand for software services grew.)
Mullock told Legal IT Insider: “Bruce is an icon and his company has been around a long time, serving the legal market with a heavy focus on services systems integration, especially around Elite where it’s very well known. Less well known is that Wilson Legal is also a software company and one of the interesting things for me is that getting that software company better well known and getting the direction of that product – which focusses heavily on BI and analytics – better understood by the market and keeping the product road map aligned with industry needs is very much part of my role.”
Wilson Legal now has 76 staff, with 60 in the US, seven in Canada, and nine based in the UK.
Mullock’s return to his BI roots coincides with an increased drive by law firms to use BI and analytics for competitive advantage, albeit law firms have been slow in the uptake. Mullock said: “When I moved to Intapp my world changed and my focus changed but what we ended up recognising is that there has been a shift in the market. BI and analytics focussed on practice management information: what did we bill and collect and what is the profit of that work? But the market has different needs now and business development is a much greater focus. There are data sets outside of the PMS that have really important information about ‘who are our lawyers and what is their relationship with clients?’ and the challenge for firms and BI providers is much greater. My contribution to the market through Redwood was the content of the analysis.”
He adds: “I will be very focused on the software piece. Some will be Wilson designed software and some will be Wilson designed solutions on top of other platforms.”
Wilson is keen to stress that the move has been received well by Intapp, where Mullock, who remains a shareholder at Intapp, was already transitioning between go to market projects or ‘sprints’.
Mullock said: “For someone entrepreneurial by nature, the number of projects that lend themselves to that are not as prevalent in a big company as a small company, so when we were talking about the next project I decided I wanted to take a look around. Wilson gave me the opportunity to pull in the same direction as Intapp, where I’m still a shareholder, but return to my BI routes and tackle at an entrepreneurial level some of the opportunities that will ultimately support some of Intapp’s long term success.”
Mullock’s departure from Intapp comes as high profile fellow marketing VP Dan Bressler also works out his notice period, which is set to conclude at the end of September.
Bressler has been at Intapp for 13 years and Mullock said: “The two things are completely unrelated, we could not be more separate in what we are looking to do.”
At Intapp, Bressler declined to comment on his own behalf but there were dubious rumours of uncertain origin circulating at ILTA in August that he would become the new CEO of Uber or retreat to Tibet to refresh his skills, much like Bruce Wayne in Batman.
