Trial Lawyer View Podcast
Eric Sanchez
Episode 88
Eric Sanchez
Maestro Strategic Partners Managing Partner | Enhancing Efficiency, Innovation, Revenue and Profit within Plaintiffs’ firms.
From U.S. Marine to Legal Delivery Systems Architect, Eric holds over 25 U.S. patents and was a key contributor to a $1.25B class action settlement.
Eric Sanchez is a seasoned professional with an impressive track record. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Eric developed strong leadership skills and a solid work ethic that has fueled his success in the years to come.
Eric founded Maestro Strategic Partners to get back to his “first love” of law firm operations and using data to improve law firms. He is available for a wide range of consulting services, ranging from nearly anything confronting the modern personal injury firm, from operations to marketing and technology.
“I love problems, and I love solving them.” – Eric Sanchez
For over two decades, he led one of the largest and most successful plaintiffs’ practices in the Southeast. He was the chief architect for many of the firm’s core systems. His greatest work was in “In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation,” Case No. 08-mc-0511 (PLF) (D.D.C.).
In addition to overseeing the firm’s client outreach, legislative, and administrative operations on this case, Eric served as class counsel’s point person for many issues including data analysis, technology, and client communication. His work was specifically cited in the Court’s opinion, which resulted in a settlement of $1.25 billion and a maximum fee award of nearly $100 million.
Eric’s unique approach to problem-solving, coupled with his passion for technology, led him to launch the legal technology company GrowPath. As a proven innovator, he holds over 25 U.S. patents.
Prior to his work in legal services and technology, Eric was a licensed pastor in a church in California’s Silicon Valley. During his five years of service, he worked with youth and adults and oversaw the church’s administrative affairs.
He holds an M.A. in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Criminal Justice Administration from California State University, Hayward (East Bay).
Eric Sanchez on why AI will not fix a broken firm
Eric Sanchez is managing partner at Maestro Strategic Partners, and he thinks a lot of firms are asking what to buy before they have worked out what is broken.
AI can genuinely improve how a personal injury firm runs. It reduces administrative drag, speeds up decisions and helps a team work with more leverage. What it does not do is supply operational clarity, and in plenty of firms it simply exposes the absence of it.
Where workflows are inconsistent, accountability is vague and nobody knows where the time goes, adding software multiplies the disorder. The firms that get the most out of this over the next two years will be the ones that did the operational work first.
People, then process, then technology
Eric frames adoption around three pillars in that order, and firms want to start with the third one because technology feels tangible and fast.
The trouble is that a tool only works when the people using it understand why it matters and the process underneath it has been defined. Take something ordinary inside a personal injury firm, like ordering records or opening a claim. In many firms three people do that task three different ways. Dropping a tool into that situation does not solve one problem, it tries to solve several versions of the same problem at once, and that is where implementations fall apart.
The sequence that works is deciding what good looks like, writing it down, then using technology to accelerate it.
The valuable use cases are unglamorous
Public conversation about AI in law tends toward fully autonomous intake and replacing staff. The near-term return sits somewhere much duller.
Opening claims faster, verifying treatment and records status, routing follow-up communication, summarising information for internal use, surfacing where a workflow is jamming, supporting marketing execution, and helping staff manage task volume. None of it is impressive in a conference talk, and all of it removes friction from the working day so legal professionals spend less time on administration and more on the client.
Deciding from the top down rarely works
The usual pattern is leadership picking a product, announcing it and expecting everyone to fall in line. Eric’s experience is that adoption succeeds when it starts closer to the ground, because the people doing the work every day already know which tasks waste time and where errors happen.
Involving them early does two things. Leadership gets better information about where a tool would actually help, and the team is more likely to use it because it addresses a problem they recognise.
People do not hate change on principle. They resist change that makes their work harder, ignores how the job really runs, or lands with no explanation attached.
The question underneath the tool question
Asking whether to buy a particular platform is too narrow. The real question is what kind of firm you are trying to build.
A high-volume pre-litigation practice needs different tools, workflows and pricing from a litigation-heavy firm. A firm that runs on centralised control will implement differently from one with a collaborative culture. A firm with strong operational maturity absorbs new systems far better than one still running on institutional memory and workarounds.
There is no universal stack. The firms that struggle tend to be the ones copying someone else’s setup without understanding why it works there.
People become more valuable, not less
The common fear is that technology makes staff less important. Eric’s read is the opposite for the right people, though the nature of the value changes. The strong legal professional in a few years will combine operational judgment, comfort with the tools, adaptability and emotional intelligence.
That last part carries weight in plaintiff work, where the client experience stays intensely human. Software can support communication and improve responsiveness and consistency. It cannot supply empathy or judgment at the moments those are what the client needs.
The cost of waiting
Plenty of firms still treat this as a future issue to monitor. That window is closing, and the advantage will not come from having access, since nearly everyone will. It will come from how well a firm folds it into operations, culture and how decisions get made.
We get into all of this on the episode. Watch it on YouTube, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
