Empowering Voices in Legal Tech

Thank you. Thank you, Daniel and Jared, for inviting me here. I really appreciate it.

I am Cassie Burns. I am an attorney based in Fort Worth, Texas. I work remotely from home, which is one reason why I started my podcast. I you know, that's how I have coworkers is maybe having thirty minute chunks of interaction when I'm not working.

And I've been working in eDiscovery for, goodness, fifteen years now. I went to Tulane Law School, dealt with Katrina. So anyone in the Houston area dealing with Beryl, I feel, you know, very much apologies that you're having to deal with that. And like so many of us in eDiscovery and legal tech fell into it, and I worked in house right out of law school and ended up being the last employee of a start up company and just desperate to find a job and fell into eDiscovery and doc review.

I didn't even know it was a thing. And I was very happy to have the work after dealing with the stress of a company just falling apart. It was nice just having a steady paycheck. The projects may not be steady, but at least I knew I was getting paid every week.

And then just started following the technology because I really was getting more involved, especially getting, you know, more involved as a project manager as email threading was kind of coming in and tar. And I realized, like, being involved in the technology is where it's at. And so I always made a point to follow it and really intentionally looked for jobs where I could get more exposure to understanding the technology piece of what we do. So and just also enjoy I always feel like it's hunting for buried treasure.

Nothing gets my adrenaline pumping. Like, oh, there's a depo prep going, and this deponent or that we're prepping someone, and they say this email happened around the state, and it's not in the binder. You need to go find it. You know, like, very vague things and, like, yes.

I'm gonna be the one to find it. So in doing those kinds of things or just the joy of figuring out the logic, you know, around how to solve a problem.

And now I'm dabbling in AI governance and things like that because I think it's a great transition for people in eDiscovery.

Mhmm.

You're right. I did have another podcast that it's not done. It's with another person, and we are both similarly busy. And the person who I've done it with, Jerry Buie, he and we both live in the same area, so we really kind of very organically started collaborating together, you know, just from a content creative standpoint.

But I found myself because I didn't know how to do a podcast or I didn't know how to like, the technical setup, it wasn't something that I could do on my own, and then I thought, well, I should learn how to do it. That's part of the process. That's part of being a legal tech type person. Right?

How do you use this software? So then I figured out, like, what software do I need, you know, to record, to maybe edit, to host, to publish, you know, just all that. So doing that in a way that's maybe interesting and not boring. And I'd love to go back to maybe leveraging AI tools because I do like the idea of, like, the juxtaposition of you think visually technology and legal, visually from a marketing standpoint, tend to have consistent color themes and consistent free photos that you can get.

You know? There's a redundancy there. So what can you do that isn't part of that stereotypical light blue and maybe green that's like the du jour color for AI and technology? And how does that, like, set you apart from other people and create some visual variety and maybe help you stick out from other people.

I like the idea of technology and the legal world being fun. Like, you can be smart and be, like, fun and entertaining at the same time and still have credibility, I think. And I do think COVID and people kind of letting their guards down a little bit, maybe a generational shift, I think, allows for an audience who kind of wanted that. And so I think it's being a little savvy to all of that as well.

You know, I think that there are a lot of people who want to share their voice, and they don't know how to. And they're inhibited to doing it. And that's something that I think is great about I try to make an effort of having a diverse mix of people, whether it's, you know, maybe I don't want just people with a big following or anything. I really want, you know, maybe someone has a small following, but we have interesting conversations that I think we don't have to literally talk about how to make a privilege log for someone in eDiscovery to think this is an interesting conversation.

And to me, that's really what it is. It's like people being able to be a fly on the wall where I'm just having a conversation I was honestly having with people. If you put content out there and you engage with people on LinkedIn, that will just happen. People will say, like, hey.

Let's have a call and chat because I think that there are other like minded people. We're we're kinda thinking outside of the box. We wanna find, like, our group, and they maybe are not down the hall. And I think that there are people who want their voice to be heard and, again, maybe have an inhibition to.

And if you can encourage that in any way, that's great because I think it's really important for there to be more of our voices out there and heard because I think there are so many brilliant people in eDiscovery and legal tech that never get any attention because they're really kind of in the weeds and they are working, but they are bloody brilliant. And I do think that, you know, the same people do kind of speak at things, which it makes sense. It's not anyone intentionally being exclusive. I think it is everyone's busy, and they know this person is great on that topic.

But I think it's really important. And I think this comes from managing a lit support department and knowing, like, my team were freaking rock stars, and they were amazing. And they were so much better technically than me. You really wanna create opportunities, I think, for maybe those voices to be heard or other people out there, you know, founders of maybe companies.

I don't just talk to attorneys. I talk to a lot of founders of small companies out there or, you know, people kind of on in other areas of tech that, you know, maybe crypto related, but not like a shady element. So I think it's just kind of telling stories beyond the hype headlines or talking to people beyond the hype headlines. I think that's really important.

I think the skills I learned, not only as an attorney, but a side hobby that I had. I feel like when you engage with clients, you never know what you're gonna get, and you have to be able to roll with the punches. And you have to in a certain degree, if you can be somewhat charming and really kind of, like, redirect energy in a positive way, that makes you a very successful attorney who is acting, in essence, as a project manager. You know? There is an element of being a project manager to any attorney regardless if you're on the service provider side or you're working in the law firm or you're working in house.

And I think being able to stay positive and kind of there's a negative, acknowledging it and, like, solving you know, here's how we're moving forward. It's that forward momentum, I think, that's important. It's nearly like that same kind of thread of having that conversation with someone and hearing something and moving forward with something that thought that might be interesting.

And there's something about that where this idea of reaching out to complete strangers and saying, hey. You wanna collab? Like, let's do this thing together. Reaching out to complete strangers and just chatting, that really taught me to lose my inhibition.

And it's not that the inhibition is there. It's that you build the muscle memory or you build the calluses around your brain that keeps you from putting yourself out there. So being able to talk to people, being able to engage, that's something I learned. Being able to reach out and kinda have a thick skin, that's something I learned, you know, from that.

But then that also kinda goes full circle and then feeds back into my practice. You know, working remotely in a big law firm, not having been there forever, you do have to just, like, reach out to people and build connections. And sometimes, yeah, I get completely ignored. And I know a lot of people think, man, Cassie, you're everywhere.

There are so many emails I send out to people to try to just collaborate, and it is truly just like, hey, partner of this practice. I would love to collaborate, and it's crickets, and I never hear from them. And it could be because they are so busy. It probably is because they're so busy.

But you have to just keep, you know, planting those seeds and getting it out there if that's something you're interested in cultivating. It's not for everybody, and I completely respect that.

But if it is something you want to try and test out, do it, and I will be on the sideline cheering you on because I do think it kind of feeds similarly into discussions of people talking big picture. There aren't enough women in AI. There aren't enough women in tech. And I would argue there are. They just aren't in leadership positions, and they're not getting featured and highlighted.

Like, women have obviously been in technology for a long time.

We help people get to the moon. We helped uncover you know, we helped act in foreign services in World War two at Bletchley Park. We were the first computers.

So the fact that women are involved in technology is not accurate.

And I think it's like, what can we do to change that narrative? And it's getting more voices. So I think that that's part of it.

I'm pretty introverted, actually. Right.

I did have this period of self reflection where I went you know, I've been through a lot, and I've grown in a lot of ways, but it's very stressful not knowing if you're gonna get paid, how long your project's going to last, and to, like, emerge from that. There is just something that helped me kind of have a internal epiphany of you've gone through it. You've become probably less of yourself over time because of that trauma, and how can you get that back? And I think it's like that combined with just, like, years of it.

Sometimes, honestly, it is just time. You do have to, like, work through the stuff. Fortunately, the trauma you're going through, sometimes you really do just have to power through it. And I can step back now and see where I am now and look back and go, all of those things I went through, wow.

Look at what it does for my skill set, my, you know, my ability to deal with risk.

I think, one, acknowledging what you're going through, especially if you're in the height of a rough patch, it's valid. Like, acknowledging that it's valid.

And I think empowering yourself to invest in yourself, and sometimes that investment is money, giving yourself that ability to say it's okay to prioritize yourself in your career. Because I think, especially with eDiscovery and legal tech people, you get very focused and in the weeds, and you get hyper focused on things. And you will, like, go through a week or a month, and you've just been working nonstop. For me, I get very hyper focused in work, and I love that. But I also have to acknowledge that's not good for me in the long run. A, it's not sustainable.

And from a career development standpoint, I have to build connections.

For me, I think there's value, at least what I wanna try and proceed towards.

Like, so writing is important to me and trying to speak and just trying to collaborate, you know, meet these people, make these connections. It doesn't have to be in the way that these people are doing it. You know? And even I've, like, coordinated things here locally in Fort Worth, like going to a museum.

Kind of like lean into your nerdiness. You're gonna find your people. Trust me. And I think people will like that variety.

It's gonna be more memorable.

Yeah. I think able to set boundaries is really important. But I think that management treating you in those ways, that's just more data for you to decide.

That person is telling me something about themselves that will help me make decisions about my professional future. You are giving me data that I can then sit back and analyze and go, okay. That's good to know. Do it in a professional way, of course, but that's what I would say. And, again, I think you really do have to take care of yourself, you know, whether it's making sure you take the vacations, whether it's prioritizing a career path that's really speaking to you and giving yourself the power and permission to do that.

You know, it's funny you say that. I have a group of AI ladies that are they're so smart, and we are very somewhat obsessed on the DL on things like mortality rights, grief tech, and the ethics around that. And then you start looking at, like, the EUAI Act. And I talked about this in my recent podcast episode of one category of unacceptable risk is subliminal techniques. And they don't really define it very well other than saying, well, like, virtual reality could be subliminal because it has control over stimuli in a way, you know, that systems don't have in the real world. So and you hear it in the context again of, like, grief tech, and you think of it like we are in a loneliness epidemic. Everyone you know, people talk about how, like, our society is increasingly lonely.

We have an aging population that's getting older, and they're getting very lonely. You know, what could be done for an aging population but to still keep them, you know, entertained in a way? And I think that there's a lot of potential value for those kinds of tools, but, also, there's a lot of risk of really knowing that the company who is powering that technology is not gonna use that information in any way to try and, like, manipulate you. You know? And so I think it really takes someone who's very aware with a lot of fortitude, you know, to make sure, like, you probably know I'm gonna have this conversation. It's just all fascinating to me.

Mhmm.

I don't have the answer to that. I know that, you know, NIST has created some publications.

They're a little bit more technical, of course, being NIST, about synthetic data. There are a lot of people thinking about it, but it is a legitimate concern. It's like, how do you stop deepfakes? There's no easy answer to that at all.

How do you stop someone from using the dark web? Like, maybe that's a comparable thing. Maybe you're not ever going to be able to. But if a company is out there developing and deploying technology that touches the EU, they may have regulations that they're gonna have to stand by, you know, which would include, you know, risk management system and testing and validation and quality management potentially.

So or it may not be acceptable at all if it falls under the unacceptable risk category. So I think there's a lot of unknown answers to all of this, but I think the concerns are valid. You know, equally valid are people of other cultures that don't speak English because these LLMs think in English.

So what are we doing to ensure there is diversity in these LLMs? There's so much with culture that goes with the language. What are we doing to protect and preserve that? There are a lot of very interesting ethical issues around all of this.

And clearly, obviously, legal issues. And I think it's important Right. To remind the listeners that, obviously, number one, check terms of service. You actually read the terms of service.

Hopefully, we've got an audience that will potentially read terms of service. There's also on some of the LLM models. There's a checkbox there that says don't share my answers and my prompts to be extended out to the rest of the universe. And also, obviously, it's important as a disclaimer, preparatory statement to check with your company guidelines about what's permissible, what's not permissible.