In this episode of How They Scaled It, host Courtney sits down with Rick Clark, VP of Strategic Partnerships at CloudNine and Co-Founder of The Masters Conference. If you’ve ever wondered how text messages, Slack threads, and metadata are changing the legal game, this is the story behind the man that’s helping to make it happen.
From Door-to-Door Sales to Legal Tech Visionary
Rick Clark’s career began in an unexpected place: selling books door-to-door after college. That hustle and persistence carried over into his leap into the legal discovery industry in the early 2000s, before eDiscovery was even a buzzword. What started as paper exchanges between law firms quickly evolved into a digital frontier, and Rick was right there at the tipping point.
By 2006, Rick founded Wave Software just as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure formally recognized electronic evidence. His knack for timing and technical acumen helped him straddle both the business and engineering sides of the company. As he put it, “I wore hats in sales, marketing, and support. I had to speak the language of forensic experts and lawyers alike.”
The Power of Niche: Launching The Masters Conference
It’s not every day you hear a founder casually say, “So we just started a conference.” But that’s exactly what Rick and his team did over coffee and napkins at Panera. Born as a grassroots way to support their software business, The Masters Conference grew into one of the leading eDiscovery thought leadership events in the U.S.
Unlike massive legal trade shows that try to be everything to everyone, The Masters Conference stayed hyper-focused. By serving markets like Denver and Miami, places often overlooked by the bigger players, Rick built not just a conference, but a thriving community. “We packed a big punch into a single-day format,” he explained, “and tailored each event to regional needs.”
Anticipating the Shift: Building ESI Analyst Before the Pandemic
In 2018, Rick and his co-founder saw where legal evidence was heading—into texts, Slack, and Teams. Even though the industry was slow to adapt, they launched ESI Analyst to organize and make sense of this “short message” data. When the pandemic hit, remote work turbocharged demand for tools that could process chat logs and mobile data.
Their system didn’t just convert messages into static documents—it wove together data across platforms and timelines. “We built it like humans talk,” Rick said. “You might start on email, switch to Slack, and then text. We could reconstruct the whole narrative.”
A Strategic Exit and a New Chapter at CloudNine
After a period of fast growth, Rick’s lean team was reaching its limit. Enter CloudNine, who acquired ESI Analyst and brought Rick on as VP of Strategic Partnerships. The transition, he shared, was smooth. “I had to unlearn a lot of founder habits—project management, demos—and focus on my highest and best contribution.”
Now, Rick channels his energy into expanding CloudNine’s reach, strengthening strategic partnerships, and continuing to elevate The Masters Conference. His ethos is simple: find your people, build lasting relationships, and be good to everyone because legal tech may be vast, but it’s also incredibly interconnected.
Want to hear the full conversation?
Listen to Episode 18 of How They Scaled It on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/493sbo8fKIFxk9kY1wbVO4
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To learn more about The Masters Conference, visit Masterslegalconference.com.
