TR’s Carlos Gamez Joins Frontline, a LexFusion Member – In-depth Interview

Carlos Gamez, most recently Senior Director, Legal Platform for Thomson Reuters, has joined US-based Frontline Managed Services, which is a member of the LexFusion collective. He joins the company as Chief Revenue Officer.

Frontline was until recently known as Intelliteach and covers managed services in areas such as admin, finance and IT. The move follows the recent departure of Andy Wishart, the co-creator of Contract Express and a senior member of the Thomson Reuters legal tech team, who has joined Agiloft – which is another founding member of the LexFusion group of primarily legal tech companies.

Artificial Lawyer caught up with Gamez to find out some more about the move from Thomson Reuters, (which this site first reported last month), and what he will be doing now at Frontline.

Why did you decide to make this move?

First and foremost, because I deeply believe in Frontline’s mission, and wanted to be its vector in the market, helping my many friends in Big Law and beyond.  When I met Seelin Naidoo, CEO of Frontline Managed Services, and listened to his energy and vision, I knew this was my move.  

After nearly a decade at Thomson Reuters (TR) doing a wide variety of strategic and operational roles in ‘Legal’, I had been thinking about getting back into a general management career track and leveraging my newfound skills and network. I felt that doing this at a well-capitalised and quickly growing organisation, would be the best fit for me.

A little trip down memory lane: I joined TR through a leadership development program aimed at developing executive talent. One of the best things about a rotational program is that you become part of a pool of individuals who can tackle different challenges and projects. That ethos and reputation followed me when I graduated from the program to be the Chief of Staff to the General Counsel and lead of legal department operations. In my next role, I was given the opportunity to lead multimillion dollar deals in the corporate development group. When the company decided they would no longer be doing 30-40 corporate acquisitions a year, I was asked to start and lead an innovation program for the Legal business.

This job, and its evolution into other roles, was unique and genuinely fun. I was allocated funding to build a strategy, assemble and join expert teams, and spin up projects aimed at accelerating growth.  We worked on wide-ranging projects, from applying machine learning techniques to contract analytics, to piloting new product-platform, go to market and account management strategies, or even turning around business operations.

Through these projects, I had the opportunity to work closely with customers, third-party consultants, technology partners and multidisciplinary leaders. After a few years, and over 50 projects under my belt, I developed a deep understanding of the legal industry, legal technologies and, most importantly, friendships and relationships in the global legal ecosystem. Without planning it, I became increasingly active in thought leadership. Customers from law firms and corporate legal departments were seeking my advice on different aspects of their business operations.

This is a long-winded way of saying that after many years of rotating in various roles at the largest legal tech company in the world and after such extensive project work, I was ready to take accountability for a team and an ongoing business concern. Doing this at a large and matrixed organization, like Thomson Reuters, would be difficult given the levels of specialization across teams.  However, the level of influence and customer impact I sought was available at Frontline Managed Services.

I was invited to join Frontline Managed Services to help drive the company’s growth journey. The timing could not be better for me. The company is on a path to change the service delivery model for law firms. They are growing by all measures. The value proposition to customers is compelling and easy to understand. They have the resources, people, technologies and partners to enhance almost every operation of a law firm that is not directly tied to the performance of legal work. From Administrative Services, like conflicts management and client onboarding, to IT services such as Service Desk and Information Security, to Financial Management such as e-billing and increasing realization rates; they can do this at scale. And they are continually investing to improve and innovate their technology and grow the business to better serve firms with the latest, state of the art technology platform.

With the resources available within the Company, and a client-centric focus, I feel empowered to use my training and expertise to help deliver demonstrable value for law firm clients and personally impact the Company’s growth.

What will your role be at Frontline? 

My title is Chief Revenue Officer. Essentially, I am responsible for all activities tied to revenue-generation and strategy.  These include overseeing the sales organisation, marketing and partner channels to execute company strategy in line with evolving service needs at every front of our clients’ business.

How does LexFusion connect to your new role? 

We are very excited about our partnership with LexFusion, and how it will enable us to help our clients with ‘all things’ legal innovation.

Personally, as head of partner channels and the sales team, I will be working hand-in-glove with LexFusion’s growing team, including their partners and their amazing advisors.

I had the good fortune to work with Joe Borstein and Paul Stroka when we were all part of Thomson Reuters. They are extremely strategic and effective sales leaders who care about their clients and the market before anything else.  I know I’ll get friendly access to the market, but more importantly I will get honest feedback about our work and ways we can improve. Joe even supported me voluntarily in my innovation role at TR because he has always wanted to play a role in bringing ideas and people together.  We share a passion for innovation and finding creative ways to leverage resources to exponentiate outcomes.  

But I think most people miss what’s even more deeply exciting at LexFusion, and that’s the network of exciting, innovative companies that brings the world of legal tech and innovation to our clients via a single vector.  There is nothing else like that in the market (that I’m aware of). 

Over the years, I have had the chance to work with many of the leaders at the LexFusion network. LexFusion has done an incredible job in curating membership so that offerings are complementary, and there is inherent trust built into the network. I am firm believer of LexFusion’s mission and plan to leverage them (and reciprocate as much as I can) to power our growth and customer delight flywheel.

– With the rebrand is there also a change in strategy for the company, and if so, how does your role play into that? 

More than a change in strategy, I think the rebranding is indicative of an increased customer-centric focus that will enable the company’s next growth spurt. For context, Frontline Managed Services is the new brand for Intelliteach, which was already the leading provider of Financial, Administrative and IT managed services for law firms.

The company’s offering portfolio has grown and diversified over time, especially through acquisitions, such as the recent acquisition of Hilltop Consultants (an IT services provider and technology consulting firm). But, it has also grown through organic investment from aggressive hiring in global locations, and in technology that enables our associates to deliver analysis and manage the work.  My job is to help harness all of this, provide focus, and target our team and resources towards opportunities where we’ll deliver most value to existing customers, while putting us in the best position to be an attractive partner to law firms we don’t currently serve.  

What next for the company? Expansion, M&A deals..?

As I mentioned, the company is poised for growth. Managed service organizations are traditionally great consolidation candidates, especially where they are focused on the same client segments and deliver complementary services. So, I would expect that Frontline Manages Services will continue seeking to accelerate talent acquisition and geographic presence expansion through corporate acquisitions. In addition to inorganic growth, the company is accelerating hiring in on-shore and off-shore locations, such as in Toledo and in India with our Goa office and a new office in Hyderabad.

What is perhaps most attractive for me is that the company has made multimillion dollar investments in technology partnerships with leading providers, such as ServiceNow, even as it continues to develop its own proprietary technologies to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, security and scalability of our services. Customers of Frontline Managed Services are able to leverage these investments without having to commit Capex that can be best deployed elsewhere at their firms, or in some cases, that is not available to them given their scale.

As you can probably tell, I am extremely excited about the things we can do at Frontline Managed Services. I am very grateful for the opportunity I’ve been given to lead a team of extremely talented individuals to serve our customers and execute on our growth aspirations.

Thank you, Carlos, and good luck with the new role!