Challenges and Opportunities in Legal Technology

Thanks, Daniel. I'm thrilled to be here.

Certainly. I am thrilled to be here. Thanks so much. My background, I've been in legal legal tech for ten years, always in a CIO role. Prior to that, I've had the opportunity always on the technology side of the house to work in a variety of different industries, life sciences, telecom, environmental services, financial, and I think in those industries within technology, a variety of different roles rate I've been on the kind of the traditional infrastructure side of the house, the application side of the house, project management, vendor management. So presumably, almost everything that there's an opportunity to do throughout the course of my career.

I've had the opportunity. I actually started my career in IT on a help desk way back when you were actually tethered to a phone on a help desk.

And a large financial services institution that you were waiting for the phone to ring so that you could help people with their modem strings pre internet way back in the dark ages, but I think that was actually a great way to start a career in tech. Because it gives you a real appreciation for the customer service aspect.

Started my career at a help desk So I understand that. And it's true. I mean, you really do get to learn a lot through that customer service lens and hearing people's issues and challenges and Really to me, it was the stress, right, the stressing people's voices as they called you when they couldn't print something or they couldn't access their data, and they needed help right away. That taught me a lot.

And now ten years in the legal space. And I know those industries from a technology perspective work at very different paces. What struck you right away when you got the legal space and you started working with attorneys every day and you got to kinda see where we were at with technology.

When you talk about some of those other kinds of industries, The focus is very much oftentimes on how's the transaction? What does it do? We have these big systems in the background that processing thousands of transactions. Right?

I supported an e commerce site that was eight hundred million dollars in revenue a year. So if it was down for thirty minutes, Right? You knew exactly how much money that cost the bottom line. So there was so much work on these big systems.

When you come to Legal, although we've got practice management systems and things like that, so much of the work product we produce is at the desk. It's an attorney, right, who's strategizing. What are we going to do with our clients? How do we help them?

How do we help them achieve their business goals? And through that, it's the here's the documents that we're creating. Here's how we're communicating and things like that. So the shift on technology moves somewhat from these big behemoth systems kind of behind the curtain into something that's very real and very personable at a desk.

So if that attorney can't get that done, it's not getting done. Whereas, oh my goodness, if you've got on a big transactional shop, one person can't work, and the person that's sitting beside them can pick up that work. That doesn't work that way in legal. It's a very, very kind of silo insular approach that you have to have an individual working.

I think it's really important. Regardless of the industry, actually, most of us are human beings and we're like, what's in it for me? Right? So we need to be able to articulate.

Here's how it's going to benefit you as an attorney and it could be. It makes you more efficient and allows you find information faster. It allows you to collaborate with your clients. More effectively, it helps the firm and large.

So this is how it helps you if it's helping the firm. So it really is trying to identify and articulate what the value is doing that for an attorney. And there's things now that we have to do that may not have a direct personal impact for attorney but can really help. You know, a lot of security things quite honestly that we do.

People see those as barriers, but we're not doing them to do them. We're doing them because they're going to protect our client's data that we're gonna protect the firm's data. So does it mean you have to take an extra step? Yeah.

But the benefit for that is it's helping to protect us that long term has huge benefits, but I think it's super important to be able to articulate.

This is why that we're making these changes. This is why we're doing this. Whatever that change may happen to be.

Yeah. Absolutely. I see a big part of my role is that kinda communication, evangelist sales, marketing. This is all what it is.

And for me, it's super important to be trans parent about what we're doing. Here's what we're planning to do. Here's kind of the process we're going to get there. This is why we think it's the right place to go in the right direction for the firm.

Here's how it's going to help you. And that way, if there is something that we feel like isn't quite right, you know, we've got opportunity to course correct because if it's all hidden and you just present it de facto, nobody's bought into it along the way and you won't be as successful.

I do wanna position it that it's gonna be less irritating for you, and it's easier for you to get things done, and it's not as frustrating and things like that. So what you can do is I want you to spend those billable hours, but I want it to be on like the strategic thought in the high value work that the attorneys like to do. And quite honestly, for the vast majority of attorneys, that's the part they really like to do anyway. They don't wanna do this other like more administrative stuff.

They don't enjoy a few of us do anyway.

But if I can get them spending more of their time on that high value work, I think that gives them more job satisfaction. I think that enhances the relationship with the client. It builds stronger relationships with our clients and things like that. So I think it really from a big picture perspective, has the opportunity to help us.

So you have to do it, but you can't ignore the business model when you walk into these conversations and these decisions and things like that. That was a truly excellent pivot zone. And in that vein, I mean, you knew it was gonna come up. Right?

We are getting some questions. I think, like, many law firms and other kinds of organizations. She've kinda got two ends of the spectrum and some of everybody in between There's some. No.

No. No. No. No. And there's some but the heck has taken you so long. Why don't we have it yet?

And then there's the variety of people in between I think it's super important to understand it, to learn about it. A lot of it still knew quite honestly, I think the products are still relatively immature. They're very, very young yet, so understanding what they can do. And I think we need to be able to approach it in a very thoughtful manner.

Something that's really important to us and will continue to be important is protecting our client information.

So we need to understand what these models are and things like that. So we're adequately protecting that information and making sure that our clients under and what's happening, why it's happening, things like that. But I think focusing it on the use cases, where can we use these new technologies to create value for us to help us. This is how we want to move forward is really important.

And I think we need to be thoughtful. About that. There is certainly, like with many in the press right now, people are afraid oh my goodness. It's going to produce jobs and things like that.

Every major shift in technology if we actually look back over time has actually increased jobs. Neither jobs may be different. We may need help people develop different skills and expertise and things like that. But these shifts have actually ended up in more work for us.

So I don't know that why I think this would be different. It may be, oh my gosh, we suddenly are gonna have skills in prompt writing, which is not something to date that we've actively talked about. I don't know that any firm has actually talked about it prior than about six months ago. But I think there's gonna be new skills that we develop in these spaces is we understand what these technologies can do and how we can use them to help us provide value to our clients and I think as the products become a lot more mature, what it looks like in five years, I think, is going to be very different than what we're seeing today.

I think all of the work we do as we look at and embrace new technology, whether it's AI or, you know, a new tool for templating or You know, a new research platform, what problem are we trying to solve? I think that's really important, especially in our world, because I think that's helped ground us and make sure we understand why we're doing something and how we truly expect to achieve the business value from that because these projects, all of these projects are a lot more expensive than just, statement of work that you get from the vendor. There's a lot of internal time commitment from a lot of people to make them successful, and you have to understand what value, you know, what pain point?

Are we taking a way to make things better for you? Where are we truly enabling you to do something that you haven't been able to do before or to be able to do it more efficiently than you did before, so it's less irritating. How do we does it impact our quality? Can it make it easier for us to work together across offices and things like that.

So we need to understand what that value is, and there really should be a what problem are we trying to solve because there's always going to be some cool tech that you're going to say, that's awesome. We love it, but you're never going to use it. Oftentimes, when you go buy a new car and they're like, oh, look at this feature and you're like, oh, that's awesome. And then, oh, three years later, I've never actually used that particular feature.

I think you need to ground it because We also have in our IT organization, we have constrained resources, and we need to make sure we are doing the work that's the highest value for the organization.

And it'll be a combination of that. Right? Some of it's the work that we have to do to keep the railroad running. You know, all these systems require care and feeding and regular maintenance and things like that.

So we have to do work. There's work that we have to say, okay. What's coming down the road, right? We're gonna have to update our data work.

We need to update these particular systems or solutions, things like that to stay current. And then there's a bucket. Oh, what's out there? What do we need to be evaluating, looking at, considering?

So we need to be doing work in all three of those kind of buckets or areas.

But at that further out one, who was out there, what it is, you still have to ground that, and how does that provide value for the organization Otherwise, you're just kind of throwing money away, which is never a good thing, but you're definitely throwing time, capacity, things like that. Right? You're doing one thing, which means you're not doing something else.

So you need to make sure what we are doing are the highest and best value for the organization.

There's some things that it looks like some of the solutions are interesting. Right? They can help you with some of the research. They can help you with deposition prep. You know, there's some interesting solutions out there that can do summarizations and comparisons and things like that that I think are pretty interesting and could potentially provide value A lot of those, I don't know that I'd say they provide value across the entire organization. I think there's probably pockets.

Within the organization where those types of tools can provide a lot of value.

And right now, so much of that we're looking at is kind of an independent package solution. I think it gets really interesting when a lot of the education platforms and things that we use start to incorporate AI. So you're in doing work that you do already. It may help you do it as opposed to here's something new, a new place I have to go, but let me incorporate it into here's how I'm doing research, here's how we're doing document automation, things like that.

I think it gets pretty interesting. And I think that it'll start to incorporate into a lot of places where we do work. Along the way. And for everybody, I don't necessarily think we're unique.

I think that'll be for a lot of companies in a lot of law firms.

We have talked about it. I don't know that we've necessarily come up with a whole comprehensive strategy around it, but it definitely something that we're talking about. I do think it's super important to educate people on this because way back when you'd say it was you know, whatever the headline was on the airplane magazine, which no longer exists, but it is definitely the hot topic on all your kind of business media and things like that. So it's here.

So you need to educate people exactly what it is. People read this year, the number of people talked about large language models was a very, very, very small number around the world, and now it's something that you hear a lot of people talking about or trying to understand. And I think defining that, is it closed? Is it open?

How are you using it? The technology even on kind of the LLMs is continuing to shift. I've listened to some pretty interesting conversations around truly the underlying technology behind it. You know, I don't know that a lot of people realize that they're actually talking about different kinds of computers to do all of this analysis different chipsets than we've had because the volume is such the traditional chipsets can't keep up with it.

So I think it's pretty interesting, but I do think that there is a really important aspect to make sure we do educate our workforce so they understand what it is so that they can make good decisions as we go or understand here's an opportunity to look at something or no, that's not. We should be going that way. Or this is interesting, but I need to engage more people in the conversation before we make those certain decision. So I think that's an ongoing exercise, and I think the firm definitely has a role to play in that, to help kind of level set and establish here's the baseline around what it is because I do think it'll become part of this norm.

Right? And when you talk about educating the workforce, I'm curious, why do you think that some topics, like, something that can literally save millions of dollars? For your clients has had such a hard time with adoption over a decade now, but generic AI is like, boom, let's go. That's an interesting question to ask and to think about.

So I think part of it may be that it is so accessible.

Across the board, but that's an interesting question to think about why people are so hungry for it when other technologies have been much, much more difficult.

I think having the collaboration technologies available to us through the pandemic was huge. I can't imagine what our firm or many companies would look like if we could not have had, right, the ease of hopping on a video call and things like that regardless of which platform you use. Right? So I think those types of platforms kept business running over the course of the three years of the pandemic.

So I think now the key is how do we balance the in person and the collaboration and things like that. I think these platforms are a great compliment to in person and it can be awesome when it's like, oh, I don't have time to fly to a different city or something like that to have a conversation with somebody or does it make sense? From a time perspective or cost perspective or things like that, having these tools available to you, I think, is hugely important. And I don't think we ever go away from that. I think it's great. I love meeting people in person because then I think the virtual conversations are a much more rich experience.

After you've had the in person conversation and really get to know people. But I do think as we go, they continue, it's how do we make sure that we use it effectively. How can we make it the best experience possible for everybody involved?

AI seeping into these platforms as well. There's a, oh, if you're late to the meeting, there's tools that can give you a summary for the part you missed and things like that, which is fascinating to really think about and pretty cool. But I think they're here and I think anything from a term perspective things that we can do to help us cement those relationships with our clients and be accessible and supportive and things like that to our clients. I think that's all good work for us to be doing. I think it helps us in the long run because it feels like to me That the speed of business has just increased over the last few years with the pandemic. I don't know if it's because we'd think back to when it all started way back in twenty twenty, and we were all working twelve fourteen hours a day because there was nothing else to do.

You couldn't go anywhere else. I don't know if that kind of set the tenor for here's the amount we're gonna get done during the day or here's what's going on. And it's just now that we've got other parts of our lives are back to normal. We still feel like, oh my gosh, we've had to have that kinda immediacy.

In terms of responsiveness and accessibility and things like that. So I think it's interesting. I don't know if it's gonna calm down. Or not.

I think it's here to stay in some form or fashion. Yeah. Well, I know we've certainly settled into a new normal as consultants. In terms of responsiveness and flying around the country, you know, is it something that you're now either constantly reevaluating or now three and a half years into the pandemic?

Cause it used to be I think in general, a lot of people are liking to get back together a little bit. I think, you know, we as human beings like to be around one another, so we're kinda missing that, so trying to pull people. Back together, but it's the balance now. I think we're striving for a much more balance than we were before between work and home and home and work.

And that kinds of things and how can you create environments that your people are happy and engaged because typically then they're more productive employees and things like that. If you can find that line to balance, I think it's great.

I think a lot of companies are having a hard time finding it. It's a challenge because just like many companies, we've got people. No. I love being in the office every day, or I never ever wanna walk in an office again.

But I think there's just things you miss not being in the office. Right? I like the conversation going to get a cup of coffee. Because you learned something about somebody you wouldn't have run into.

Right? It's a conversation with somebody that you may never schedule a meeting with. So it's a whole conversation that you'd have and get to know somebody. This is what's in my world this is working.

This is not what's working. Hey. How about this that or the other, and all of that feedback in my role is super important to me. I get a lot of value out of that, and I want that.

And I also want the organization at large to see that IT is here to support you and what the work you're doing. It's interesting what you said just now. The feedback about, you know, we're all human. We like to have those conversations.

That's a hard question. You know, my role, right, is to support from a firm perspective as the firm decides which way we want to go. Right? How do I port and enable that I personally am a lead by example person.

So if I'm asking people on my team to do something, I'm going to be doing it for the most part. So there's that aspect, but also how can we enable people and just give my opinion. Right? This is where I think we can create value.

Oftentimes, when I'm talking to my team, I feel comfortable that we're getting, like, individual tasks. Done. I don't necessarily, but what I feel like we've missed is people are more dispersed as you know, sometimes there's the chatter that's back and forth via email or chat and I'm like, you know, if those people were six feet apart, This would have been a three minute conversation and we would have moved on or it's a lot of chatter. Oh, I didn't know that was happening.

Well, the people right there you could have picked up on things. So I think there's things we miss by not being together that way. And the work we do oftentimes On the IT side, there's rarely something we do that truly is one person by themselves.

Most of the work we do needs interaction support from other people, whether it's I'm doing x and I need you to do y, whether it's, hey, I wanna this. Is that right? What about this, that, or the other? But almost everything we do requires interaction from other people and how do you bring people together?

You know, it's a challenge. My team's a bit spread out in multiple locations and things like that. So how do you build that kind of comfort and ease with picking up the virtual phone, be it chat, text, whatever. You know, hey, what about this?

What about that? It's a challenge. Right? How do you build culture across a dispersed organization?

And that's not a new question for my team or the firm. That's a question that I think most companies are dealing with right now because I think that's a really important who we are as an organization is really, really important.

Legal is very interesting to me because we will oftentimes work much more interactively or share information than perhaps others because it's not any client information, but oftentimes the big systems that support law firms, there's a couple document management systems. There's a couple practice management systems. There's a couple templating options and things like that. So people, a lot of us are dealing from a software suite perspective.

Dealing with similar kinds of instances, how you're tackling AI as a topic, what are you doing in terms of data? That's a big topic. The workforce is certainly a topic of conversation security is always a topic of conversation, data security.

Those kinds of things are the topics that come up and sometimes it's nice to have the conversation like, oh, thank god. I'm not alone. It's not just me, which in itself can be a nice point that you think, oh, I'm not alone in the wild. There's somebody else with the same challenges that I have. But I also try to stay connected with a lot of CIOs outside of legal because you never know where the good idea is going to come from. And sometimes some of the flexibility that they have in a company of a different organizational structure or things they're focusing on can be super interesting for work that we're doing or barriers that we're experiencing and things like that. So I think it's important to stay connected and understand what's happening at large from a technology perspective.

Where do you see the benefits? Where do you see the value for your firm? I agree with you, right? I think technology is not gonna slow down.

I think it's gonna keep speeding up, and I think the adoption will continue that. I do think in addition, right, as we bring young lawyers and things into the firm, the young lawyers grew up a Google world and a search world. Right? Their relationship with technology is different when I was a kid in second grade.

I didn't do second grade on a tablet or things like that. And now all our kids are doing second grade on a tablet. Right? So they're a dot and comfort level, things like that.

The whole relationship with technology is much different for people starting their career in legal over is people that have been in the career and legal for a while. So I actually think that helps us with adoption because they're gonna be What the heck is this piece of paper thing that you want me to sign something? What is going on with that? I think we'll get pressure from that side.

And I think actually we need to keep up with it to be competitive on the recruiting process. Right? Cause they're not gonna wanna come to a firm that they feel like the technologies behind the time. So I think that will help drivers, but I do think there's going to be more value from the tech.

I think our clients are going to expect us to have more tech, I think, in terms of collaboration, content sharing, how do we work much more interactively with our clients before it was Way back when it would have been here's pieces of paper to review this contract and now it's email it to us and it'll be we're just gonna do the review online and things like that. I think we'll be pushed that way and actually client requirements are a great driver to get attorneys to change, because we wanna be super responsive to our clients, and that can actually be a really good way to help us drive change on that side, but I do think it's gonna go faster.

I think tech is going to become expected and required, and we're gonna have to make sure we've got the right competency around it. Right? We've gotta educate people. They understand what's happening, how it's happening.

So even if it is an algorithm to help them get there, if we can help them understand how that algorithm functions what it's actually doing, it gets them more comfortable with the technology so that they can use it more moving forward. But ideally, we do. We get away with that work that They all have to do that's the more administrative, repetitive, not as high value add, and how can we keep you thinking about that? Higher value strategic work?

Thanks, Jared and Daniel. This was great fun. I love the conversation.