| Summer job leads to trendsetting title career
A career in title and real estate began with a summer job and spark of natural curiosity for attorney Calvert Stone, managing partner at Baton Rouge, La.-based Commerce Title.
 Calvert's journey into the title insurance sector began at age 14 when he took on a summer job at a local tax assessor's office. Little did he know this experience would lay the foundation for his future career.
“I went to work there that summer, and then I went back the next two summers to work there,” Calvert says. “I liked working with the maps, books, and even a dot matrix printer. Just the general work fascinated me; it laid the groundwork for a real love of real estate and the business. My father worked as an abstractor and that kind of added another layer to my learning.”
This path continued into college, where he secured a position as a courier for Commerce Title.
“(Becoming a courier) just sort of built upon my knowledge,” Calvert explains. “I’m sure a lot of people that go to law school don’t have that kind of direct industry experience before doing that. It really helped me a lot, that type of hands-on work. I learned stuff then and even going back to when I was 14 that I’m still using.
“I still remember typing these tax bills on this big, really old typewriter. It was the only extra typewriter they had available for the summer worker, and I wanted to show them I could make do. Then there was a lot of hard work to get to where I’m at now.”
After graduating from Louisiana State University (LSU) in 1997 with a bachelor of arts in history with minors in French and political science, Calvert earned his juris doctorate degree from Louisiana State University Law Center in 2001.
 In 2009, he attended the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) University of Shopping Centers at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, concentrating on retail and commercial leasing.
Educational duties taken on by Calvert include seminar work for the Louisiana Bankers Association, acting as a lecturer at LSU Law Center and as an instructor for the Louisiana Real Estate Commission.
Beyond the corridors of work, Calvert has built a family with his wife Neila and three children: Camille, Andrew and Ollie.
Even when trying to separate work and recreation, Calvert says his love of real estate manages to rear its head.
“I like to cook and garden and I’m into historic homes and buildings, which fits in well with the job,” he says. “I pretty much like any old building or house, just digging into the architectural history and the work that went into putting it together.”
As the interview delved into intricacies of the title insurance industry, Calvert touched upon advancements he has witnessed. Among these, the digitization of clerk’s offices and transition from paper to digital files stood out as significant milestones.
“The advent of the clerk’s offices going online, that’s been huge,” he says. “Then we’ve gone from paper files to digital files. That’s also huge. Then you have automated communications like text message reminders for closing times. It’s all helped streamline a lot of our processes and minimize human error. Now, we can’t live without it. We don’t even think about it anymore. It’s just a given.”
Discussing the current landscape and future trajectory of the industry, Calvert acknowledges challenges posed by economic uncertainties.
“I think the consensus, and I certainly feel that way, is that we’ve got some lean times for the foreseeable future,” he said. “You’re always going to have the up and down times in the market when rates rise or fall and that has an impact on (real estate transactions). Then things go back to being relatively stable for a while. During times like this, you need to think about what you replace (a lack of volume) with, to fill the gap. I think that’s what we’re all trying to do is to find a replacement.
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"The advent of the clerk’s offices going online, that’s been huge. Then we’ve gone from paper files to digital files. That’s also huge. ... It’s all helped streamline a lot of our processes and minimize human error."
Calvert Stone
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“It’s probably not going to be as easy as just going out and scooping up a large number of a certain kind of transaction. It’s going to be much more retail based, one here and one there.”
When asked about the real estate industry’s future and how to best adjust to changing times, Calvert stresses the importance of embracing emerging technology like artificial intelligence (AI) but doing so in a way that fits your business rather than “one size fits all.”
“I think using AI to do a few things, manage some data and some documents, is a good thing,” he says. “I’m not 100 percent sure what the future is going to look like, but I think we all feel like it’s (the onset of AI) is going to happen and it’s doable and it’s going to make us more efficient and save time.”
Calvert also cites the continued need for a human touch in title work, even amid exciting technological leaps.
“The natural reaction from someone can be, ‘Well, if we’re doing this with technology then I won’t have a job,’” he says. “I think that’s a big concern, but we’ve learned very clearly and I think the staff now understands that they don’t lose their job. We get more work because we’re doing better work, more efficient work, so they have more work to do. They’re just not doing some of the more mundane tasks. They’re delivering more and better service, which is obviously what we set out to do every day here.”
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