Law Firms of the Future

But long time, neither of us had gray hair or any wrinkles when we met. So we'll put it that way. That's right. I like to think, though, Meredith, that I age like a fine wine though, so I'm gonna go with that.

I you know what I like to say, I'm well preserved. I'm well preserved, Steve.

Sure. So I am Meredith Williams-Range, my official title is Chief Knowledge and Client Value Officer with Shearman & Sterling based in New York City. But a little bit of my background has it's been a little bit all over the place. So I am a lawyer of almost twenty one years, and I have a very interesting background.

I started the practice because my undergrad was in accounting and tax and auditing. And so tax law was something that drove me very, very passionately, and what point in time, and I don't think any person has ever said tax law drove them passionately. But now you have that on record. I moved from that a number of years into practice to really focused on operations of my prior firm at Baker Donelson.

And you know, at the time, the word knowledge management didn't exist. The words legal operations didn't exist or those job titles and things like that. So it was just focused on operations and how do we become kind of better at what we do more efficiently. And so that was kind of a start to that path.

And I became their first director of knowledge management and their first CTO.

And during my tenure at Baker, I also spent a number of years volunteering with IELTA, the International Legal Technology Association. I spent two years running their very large international conference and kind of driving education and bringing that to the masses because Ulta is to the masses. And then in twenty eighteen, I made a pivot and joined Shearman & Sterling here in New York City. And I've been here almost five years, which is strange to say.

Oh, gosh. The legal industry itself? Oh, my gosh. Well, the past few years, it's been a really interesting dynamic.

The change associated with the legal industry is driven by the individuals in it. And if you think about, you know, awesome lawyers. We are probably the most risk adverse human beings that you will ever meet. And that's drained into our brains.

I mean, it's just placed in there, and that's how we're trained. Is to not change, to not move anything forward because anytime you change something, it brings risk associated with that. And so a lot of times, you will still see firms, I reference this that are one hundred and fifty years old and still act as if they're one hundred and fifty years old. But the problem with that, is law firms themselves may not want to change, but clientele does.

Clients have to do things differently because they are not gonna necessarily serving another business, they may be serving individuals, and different generations drive change very rapidly. And they want to consume things very rapidly or very differently, I should say, than others. And I think about my young daughter, you know, during COVID did play dates virtually in VR headsets. That's never something that as the age that I am that I would have ever thought would have happened.

But what has happened over the past three years, I would say, actually, since two thousand and eight, when the crash really happened and the last economic downturn of the world. We're kind of in another at this precise moment. You have a lot of introspection. Happen with a lot of different organizations.

And you have the tightening of the belt, but you also have, can we do this differently? And you have a lot of people jump on that bandwagon. So what you saw in two thousand eight, two thousand nine is you saw the finance world completely have to change because they were forced to. The clients no longer were going to, you know, allow rates at whatever they wanted. And this this speaks not only for the US, but I would say this speaks around the globe is really what this speaks on that finance area. What you saw after two thousand nine is you saw that creep into litigation heavily And what they were looking for is outcome based pricing, outcome based conversation, partnership in the path, and not just a lawyer. A risk analysis individual.

And so COVID and the way we work the simple town of how you close a deal now can simply be done virtually as we're doing right now looking at each other from random places around the globe. So the change in legal, a lot of times, happens because of the forces around them. Because legal in and of themselves, lawyers, and I speak for myself, we are not the first people to jump to change.

But over the past you know, fifteen years now, it's been really forced upon us to really focus on the client and to do things differently.

What I saw specifically is that And it was interesting.

I saw cases no longer being worked the way they had been worked for decades prior, which were sitting in conference rooms with bankers boxes and dying a slow tragic death going through paper after paper after paper where the human was trying to do it at almost impossible task.

And what I saw with the technology is even though it was clunky at the time, you know, that we're talking you know, eighteen years ago or so. It was still light years better than the humans physically going through those components. And what I thought about at the time is there just has to be a better way. And when I saw the eDiscovery components, that's when I saw that there is a better way.

And what I saw with that is that I even though eDiscovery was leading the pack, deals were gonna come and you weren't gonna do it the same way. Diligence was gonna change. It was not gonna be done the same way. The generation of documents were not gonna be done the same way.

It to me was kind of the cornerstone of impacting the actual kind of the contextual work that we do, the critical thinking work that we do, so much up until that point had been administrative tasks that were being taken away by technology, email, taking over from the letters, and digital signatures taking over, you know, a lot of that had been around the administrative task. What eDiscovery really was, it was taking some of the critical initial thinking of young lawyers and pivoting that to technology. And I thought, this is the first of many areas. That this is gonna happen in, and I wanna be a part of that.

I don't wanna be a luddite in this. I wanna actually push the change.

My career didn't exist -- Yeah. -- at that time, and I had studied my entire life to be a lawyer. I will never forget when I was eight years old, my brother said to me, my older brother said to me, you have to be a lawyer because you will argue with a wall. And he was accurate.

And so that stuck with me throughout my entire life And so becoming a lawyer had been my dream is I wanted to do this. And so to make a pivot to say, I still want to us, but I wanna do it differently. And I was very young at the time and convincing people that that was a good path. And I don't know what you wanna call me.

I don't know what the title is. I wanna change the way we work, was a hard sell at first.

And not to mention you're taking at the time that thinking was you're taking billable hours out of attorney's hands, right? Correct. And I always spend billable hours such an interesting concept because the bill of our technically, I think, didn't even really exist until like the 60s. Because prior to that, and I know this, because I recently wrote a chapter of a book that's coming out on law firms and legal, and I wrote the chapter on the history of legal.

So if you think about if you go back to how lawyers began, can, and think about that we did things on others behalf for a specific fee. It was an outcome based fee. So we, as lawyers, looking to make more money, created the billable hour in order to accomplish that. And so, depend on them always swings both ways.

You know, I believe it was the ACC a number of years ago, and you're talking about this outcome base. They had this value challenge. Right? And I think it was other before right after, I think, that the downturn.

Right? Yeah. And and there were so many law firms that were hesitant about jumping on to this outside of improving client satisfaction from a law firm perspective. Right?

What what is that thing that's happening right now in legal? In law firms, specifically, that the pendulum is now at this place where we're saying, You know what? Maybe that outcome's based how we did it in the sixty's, before the sixty's, it was much better.

I don't know if it'll ever go fully away, because there are some areas Like, you guys know this, that it's so risky, like, going to trial. You just have no idea what that's going to bring. There are certain things that are incredibly risk based that you have to kind of leave room for the error and for that kind of conversation to happen. But I would say The pendulum started swinging back as we talked about in the two thousand five, two thousand five to two thousand nine, that pendulum was starting to be forced.

Is really what it was. And a lot of it was driven because of technology coming down the pike. It was Again, eDiscovery was the -- was the very first area going after the non just administrative task based components. And once that was a part of that conversation and the clients had the idea of that, they were no longer gonna say that it's okay to run the hours.

It's no longer to do that. But that's when it started.

It's continued since then, because if you think about the progression of innovation of legal technology over the past twenty years in particular since two thousand and five. And, you know, it is almost twenty years ago when you say it out loud. It's amazing how many pockets of different types of tech exist. And think about the diligence area.

Think about how that's been revolutionized. Now, which really mimics what happened in the eDiscovery space. Think about document drafting and how that's now kind of really been taken over depending upon the area that you're in, but think about the production of documents. These are all things now.

Technology is pushing that envelope.

And, you know, as lawyers, we're we still wanna be here. We still wanna do the critical work. We wanna do that bespoke, that critical thinking for you, and being your partner with that, But no one really wants to live and breathe in a conference room for a weekend going through documents. I don't care if the diligence or discovery work, and no one wants to do that.

No young lawyer wants to do that. What we always have to be careful of in the replacement of those hours is how do we educate. Had we how do we bring young lawyers along in the journey of understanding what is made up of a deal? What do you learn from this process?

And You know, what I like to say often is the technology's not here to replace what we do. It's here to augment what we do. And where you're most successful is when you hold the hand of the technology, and your partners with it, versus it being your adversary or your replacement.

The contract drafting will wait a second. That's I do as a lawyer. No, we're gonna give you critical thinking, that's what's gonna stay, right? Now you can type into Chad GDP, write me a motion for summary judgment and a product's liability action in the jurisdiction of New Hampshire, whatever it is.

Right? And it's amazing what will happen. Saw in a BDO presentation yesterday about JUD GDP, and it was fascinating to me. And and so where do you think that's gonna go because this is uncharted territory.

I've never seen anything like this in all my life about you could ask a chatbot to type something and it literally types it. I mean, there's no plagiarism, you know, restrictions, there's there's nothing. Like, we It takes all the critical thinking away. What do we do as lawyers?

If this becomes unregulated, right? So I find that interesting. I was having a conversation literally yesterday about a high school student and how they use this specific technology to write papers. And is it plagiarism an entire philosophical conversation?

I mean, we've seen now for a number of years some of the legal tech providers already, especially in, like, the tour area, the labor employment area, the auto generation based upon your filings. And which which I based upon what I've seen, are more accurate in their auto drafting than what has been happening over the past few days. Now granted, The chat did not pass Bardsam, just to be clear. But that is That's right.

So, the it was the multi choice portion did not get passed. So, We know that it's not there yet. But here's the thing. Again, it's about the partnership with the technology.

I also think about this in like thought leadership.

Why would I want to start with a blank sheet of paper if I can get something auto generated that then I am going to make certain as accurate. That's how I always look at it is get the initial outline out there that is pulling together all of this information for you. There's no difference than using the AI of our research providers now. Twenty years ago, we had to know the specific issues and go run searches for those specific issues.

You don't know any longer. You can go to, like Westlaw decision right now and type in a general question, and it's gonna instantly know the issues that you need to be looking for. There's no difference in the auto generation. It's generating research for us automatically.

It's generating keynotes automatically, which used to be done by humans. So there's not really a ton of difference of that we, as humans, still have to make certain it's right.

We still have to critically think and make certain that the final product that we are producing encompasses the empathy that may be needed in certain trials, in certain briefings, that may -- what does -- what needs to speak to some other human out there. We have to make certain that it's not biased because a lot of the data that it's feeding upon is biased data because you know, decisions that sometimes in the past have been biased simply because the humans that we're making them were biased. So as a human, we still have to make certain that those things are not happening. And so, even though it didn't pass the bar exam, but it still may have a good first draft, is what it may have, but then we have to add the human element to that.

The critical thinking, the high level thinking, that's the piece that we, as humans, need to add to that?

I know we are. And there's a certain percentage. I mean, I could give you hours at Sherman, and I can tell you what the general public of most firms are. It's it's usually around the twenty five to forty percent depending upon the area of law and what you're in.

But think about it like this, even with value based billing. If you have to draft a brief or if you have to draft a memo, whatever it may be, that cap is there. When you want to make that and make the most margin you can off of that work, that's the thing to think about. And so, again, it's no different than starting from a precedent.

It's the same thing. We are a precedent based organization. We're a precedent based industry. There's no difference in that.

So we start from precedent all the time. This is the same thing as starting from a piece of precedent. It's what it is. But in doing so, not allowing it to overtake, using it to start, using it as not a blank sheet of paper, but to help guide you a little bit, And then using the critical thinking allows you to bring the most value, large swaths of thinking, because a lot of people go into creating precedent, A lot of this is going into the AI piece of this with the chat.

And then focus on the margin. What's gonna bring most value to the firm that you're working for? That's the best way. You bring the most quality you can with the most expertise from not just your brain but every other brain that are going into all of that.

And you're bringing the most profit margin to the organization in which you're working. Well, that's the value right there. Right? Right there.

Oh, man.

The the pushback in every situation is always people. You know, the human element of change is difficult at best. Okay. Now I wanna decide our clients.

Our our clients you know, I think about it like this. When you speak to clients, they've been wanting to do things differently for a long time. They weren't in the driver's seat to do that. They have been, you know, ever since two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, that's not gonna change.

So they have been doing things different. So I set that aside and leave that there.

But in law firms, in particular, it's always the human element to that. And anytime you're bringing change, you have to think of it's the grief diagram.

Okay? You have to go through all all the elements of grief to get to acceptance of the new.

Every lawyer goes through that path every time you make a change in their world. That change can be something as simple as as going to Office three sixty five and co collaboration.

To changing a document management system or changing this provider. It can be something really simplistic or really complex.

Every person at their core has to go through that grief that grief path. And and some get there much faster than others is what I will say. You know, but usually the sadness is there and the loss, the anger is absolutely there. But then at some point, they get to that, oh, okay, see what this can do for me. And for some, that's easier said than done. Like I said, you know, I do think generational changes play a major role in that.

A couple of things. I never offer advice but I offer experience. That's what I like to say, because my advice can my my advice only matters to me, but my experience may help someone from making the same mistakes that I have made. Lean into who you are and the innovator inside you.

Because just because someone else doesn't believe what you're doing doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. And I can tell you early in my career that was absolutely something that was there is a lot of naysayers. This is never going anywhere. You're this career path that you're choosing those types of things, and what you're trying to push is not gonna matter.

Yes, it does. And I think it's a little bit different today than what it was. But lean into that innovator that you have and disruptor that you have to make change, be resilient. The answer is going to be no a lot more than it's going to be yes.

And you have to be okay with living in the know is what I will say to a lot of people. But also, the third piece, I would say, is you are not alone in this industry Make connections. Find the kindred spirits. For me joining IELTA early on in this career path, and then volunteering and and meeting as many wonderful people, you know, like Daniel and I have been friends for decades.

And when you meet those people, that think similarly to you and that you can lean on and ask questions of, do it, you know, be become a member of those organizations and lean on the ones that come before you. So many of them are here to pass along the mistakes that we've made and how to do it and how not. But that's what I'd say is lean into who you are, be resilient, and find your kindred spirits that are gonna help push you along and hold you up sometimes when you need it.