Meet Gatsby - A New Approach to Client and Prospect Intelligence for Law Firms
Law firms have access to more information about their clients, prospects and key contacts than ever before. The challenge is getting the right information to the right people in a form they can use.
That challenge affects meeting preparation, account planning, pitch research, cross-selling and follow-up. Important details are often scattered across company websites, news sources, firm systems and individual relationships. Gathering everything can take hours, and someone still needs to determine which information matters to the lawyer receiving it.
I recently spoke with Matt Rizzo and Olly Sanusi Bartlett about Gatsby, an intelligence product designed to help law firms address these challenges. We discussed why Gatsby was created, how its products work and what firms can consider when evaluating intelligence tools.
What Is Gatsby, and What Does It Help Law Firms Do?
Gatsby helps law firms research clients, prospects and key individuals so lawyers can prepare for important conversations and identify relevant business development opportunities.
It supports activities including meeting preparation, pitch research, priority account monitoring, professional profiles and follow-up.
The information needed for these activities is often scattered across multiple sources. A business development professional might need to research a company's operations, review recent announcements, understand the people attending a meeting and identify relevant relationships before preparing a briefing.
Gatsby gathers and organizes relevant intelligence into a more focused format, helping teams spend less time collecting information and more time determining how to use it.
What Problems Led to the Creation of Gatsby?
Law firm marketing, business development and research professionals often work under significant time pressure.
A request for a client briefing may arrive with little notice, requiring someone to move between multiple tools and sources. Even after the research is complete, the information must be reviewed, organized and tailored to the meeting.
Another challenge is maintaining momentum after a promising conversation. An initial meeting may go well, but follow-up can become a generic check-in when the team lacks a timely, relevant reason to reconnect.
Gatsby was developed to support both stages: preparing for the conversation and providing context for what happens afterward.
What Makes Gatsby Different From a Traditional Research Platform?
Traditional research platforms provide access to valuable information. Gatsby focuses on organizing relevant intelligence around a specific meeting, relationship, account or business development situation.
A user may need more than a company profile or a collection of recent articles. They may want to understand what's changed at a company, which developments could affect an upcoming conversation, who will attend and where relevant professional relationships may exist.
Gatsby provides an organized starting point that can be reviewed and supplemented with the firm's internal knowledge.
It also preserves an important role for the professionals who understand the client and the relationship. Their judgment determines which information belongs in the final briefing and how it can be used appropriately.
What Does Gatsby Intel Provide Before an Important Meeting?
Gatsby Intel delivers focused, on-demand research about companies, individuals, prospects and priority accounts.
Depending on the assignment and available information, a briefing may include company background, recent developments, leadership information, professional history and other context relevant to the upcoming conversation.
The research can also help identify developments that warrant attention, questions worth considering and potential reasons for follow-up.
The scope varies by situation. An introductory meeting may call for a concise company and individual briefing, while a major pitch may require a broader assessment of the organization, its decision makers, recent activity and business considerations.
The research is organized around the assignment instead of treating every meeting as if it requires the same information.
How Does Gatsby Aware Help Firms Monitor Clients and Priority Accounts?
Gatsby Aware provides ongoing monitoring of selected clients, prospects and strategic accounts.
It organizes relevant developments into scheduled email briefings so relationship partners and business development teams can stay informed without conducting the same research repeatedly.
For example, a client might announce an acquisition, appoint a new executive, enter a market or change its business strategy. These developments may affect an upcoming conversation, connect to another practice's experience or warrant an internal account discussion.
Aware helps recipients understand which developments may merit attention and why. It offers a more manageable approach to account monitoring than relying on a growing collection of individual alerts.
What Is Person Intel, and When Is It Useful?
Person Intel provides a more detailed professional profile when an important meeting or relationship requires additional context.
A standard biography may identify someone's current position and previous employers. A fuller profile can include relevant career history, board roles, professional organizations, public speaking, published interviews and other verified professional information.
This context can help lawyers prepare for executive meetings, pitches, events and other high-value conversations.
For example, a profile might identify a shared professional connection, a topic the individual has discussed publicly or experience that provides insight into their current responsibilities.
The information needs to be relevant to the professional interaction. The purpose is to support thoughtful preparation, not to collect unrelated personal details.
Who Inside a Law Firm Can Benefit From Gatsby?
Different teams can use Gatsby for different purposes.
Marketing and business development professionals can prepare meeting briefings, support pitches, monitor priority accounts and develop more relevant follow-up.
Client teams can use ongoing intelligence to stay current on important developments and prepare for account discussions.
Research and knowledge teams may be interested in how the product gathers, organizes and presents information. Innovation and AI leaders may evaluate Gatsby as part of the firm's broader approach to applying technology to business problems.
Lawyers are often the recipients of the final intelligence, even when another team operates the product.
A practical workflow might involve Gatsby gathering and organizing external information, a marketing or business development professional reviewing and supplementing it and the lawyer receiving a tailored briefing.
How Does Gatsby Support Marketing and Business Development Teams Without Replacing Their Judgment?
Marketing and business development professionals bring knowledge that external research alone cannot provide.
They understand the firm's capabilities, the lawyers involved, the history of the client relationship and the sensitivities surrounding particular opportunities.
Gatsby can reduce the time required to collect and organize information. The professional reviewing the output can then focus on adding internal context, assessing relevance and tailoring the briefing.
Human review remains important. A company development may be relevant without being appropriate to raise with a client. A potential connection may require confirmation. A suggested discussion topic may need to be adjusted based on the relationship.
Gatsby provides information and context. The people who understand the firm and its clients determine how to apply it.
How Does Gatsby Address Sources and Information Verification?
Source visibility helps users understand where important information originated, verify details and assess how much weight to give them.
Gatsby uses available and approved information to prepare its outputs. The precise sources may vary by product, client arrangement and use case.
During an evaluation, firms can establish which public, licensed or firm-approved sources will be used and how the information will be reviewed.
They can also assess how the product handles incomplete information, what source references are provided and where human verification belongs in the workflow.
These considerations are especially important when intelligence will inform a client conversation, competitive pitch or consequential business development decision.
What Makes an Effective Gatsby Pilot?
An effective pilot starts with a specific business problem.
A firm might want to improve meeting preparation, monitor a defined group of strategic accounts or provide better professional profiles before executive conversations.
The firm and Gatsby can then agree on the use cases, participants, information sources, pilot duration and feedback process.
Participants need real work to test. A group preparing for upcoming meetings or managing priority accounts can provide more useful feedback than users who receive access without a defined purpose.
The pilot can include both the professionals preparing the research and the lawyers receiving it.
Evaluation criteria might include:
- Time saved during research and briefing preparation.
- Relevance and usefulness of the information.
- Source quality and ease of verification.
- Adoption by participating professionals and lawyers.
- Business development actions taken after receiving the intelligence.
These measures help the firm assess the product against actual workflows and determine where broader use may be appropriate.
Which Gatsby Use Cases Are Generating Interest Among Law Firms?
Meeting preparation is a natural starting point because marketing and business development teams understand the time required to produce a useful briefing, particularly when requests arrive with little notice.
Priority account monitoring is another area of interest. Firms want to keep client teams informed about relevant developments without adding to the volume of alerts they already receive.
Person Intel also supports uses beyond traditional pitch preparation, including executive meetings, events, alumni programs, recruiting and other professional relationship-building activities.
Buyers are also interested in how Gatsby fits into existing workflows. Questions about information sources, human review, data, adoption and the usefulness of the final output are central to evaluating the product.
Where Is Client Intelligence Headed?
Law firms will continue to have access to growing amounts of information. The value of intelligence tools will increasingly depend on their ability to help people understand what's relevant to a particular client, prospect or conversation.
Meeting preparation, account planning and follow-up can become more closely connected. Instead of researching a company only when someone requests a briefing, firms can maintain a current view of priority accounts and use that information when important developments arise.
Marketing and business development professionals will remain central to the process. Technology can make research and monitoring more efficient, while experienced professionals contribute relationship knowledge, firm context and judgment.
Firms are also likely to become more specific about how they evaluate intelligence products, focusing on the workflows being improved, the people using the output and the evidence needed to justify a broader investment.
For law firms considering Gatsby, a focused pilot tied to actual meetings, accounts and business development responsibilities provides a practical way to evaluate its usefulness.