BDO's Legal Tech TalkImplementing AI
About this episode
Recorded live at Legalweek in New York, Daniel Gold and Jared Crafton talk with Emily Dimond, managing senior counsel for e-discovery at PNC Bank. Emily explains why she comes to Legalweek to connect with a small community, how a regulated bank approaches generative AI and Microsoft Copilot with cautious optimism, and why AI-generated content raises new questions about where data is stored, what gets preserved and how privilege applies.
Key takeaways
- E-discovery is a small community, and conferences are where practitioners compare notes.
- In e-discovery, generative AI will augment review rather than replace the people doing it.
- Regulated institutions have to answer preservation, privilege and retention questions before rolling out AI.
- AI-generated content is a new data source. Teams need to know where it is stored and how to collect it.
- Emily's stance is cautious optimism: exciting technology with a new playbook still being written.
Full transcript
Transcript from BDO's published episode, edited for transcription errors. Speaker labels added by Gold Standard Leadership.
[This transcript is auto-generated]
Welcome to BDO's Legal Tech Talk podcast.
We're joined by judges and legal professionals to discuss emerging trends, regulatory updates, and the latest headlines. We'll provide tips to help your law firms and legal departments make the most out of legal technology.
Hi, everyone. I'm Jared Crafton, BDO's forensic technology practice leader.
And I'm Daniel Gold, forensics principal and leader of the eDiscovery managed services practice.
Let's get started with this episode's exciting topic.
Alright. Welcome back to another BDO Legal Tech Talk podcast. We are here again live at New York Legal Week. Jared, nice to see you again. And we are joined by another guest here in the room. Why don't you go ahead and share with us your name and who you are?
Hi. I'm Emily Dimond. I am currently managing a senior counsel of eDiscovery at PNC Bank in Pittsburgh PA.
Emily, it is great to have you here. And I have to say once again, you know, we were talking earlier with another guest about other fact that we're all in person again, and it's actually nice to do this podcast. Here in person's family. Yeah.
Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us. So we're talking right before the show. How many legal weeks have you been to?
This is my second I was supposed to be here last year and was unfortunately not able to come. So this is the second time.
Second, non consecutive legal week.
What are you hoping to get out of this week?
I really, I love connecting with other people in the industry.
I love hearing.
I think what we do is so specialized that you know, we really are a small community.
So actually getting to talk to people about those really unique problems that only we face is what I hope to get out of it. Keep talking about the new changes to the industry, how other people are tackling problems, you know, the technology is part of a solution. Right? But it's really how how are we thinking about these problems AI being the big one? Right? I think I don't know if there is a session this year that is not geared toward AI, but hearing what other smart people have to say about these things.
Well, AI seems to be what everybody wants to talk about this year. And so do you have some demos set up? Do you are you gonna see some technology?
Yes. We are a Microsoft shop at PNC. So we're really looking at Microsoft co pilot is our yeah.
Have you played with any generative AI yourself?
Not because I'm terrified of it.
So your view on generative AI, personally, but also there's the professional side too. Right? So on professional side. So do you find that generative AI is going to either hurt or augment and help?
I think I think in eDiscovery, it's going to help. And I think we've been using machine learning for a long time now. Right? I think we have learned as an industry how to use technology assisted review as a tool.
And I think that's what we have to get to with these other kinds of AI. They're not gonna solve all of our problems. We're gonna have to learn how to use them and what can really be used for to help us. They're we don't use tar to do an entire review and just hand it over to another side.
Right? We're not gonna use GenAI to just completely do away with someone's job. Right? It'll be part of how we analyze documents, part of how we find information that's relevant, maybe a first draft of something, but we're not gonna completely turnover our jobs to the machines.
I think that's what kind of worries me now, and it's on the beginning side of the EDRM, it's in the creation of Donna. GenAI is gonna be used by people in business all day every day. To create information that will later end up any discovery. Right?
So that's where my brain is too, organizationally, how is this information being created?
And then what do we do with it later when it becomes relevant to a litigation or an investigation is that popping up in your work life already?
People at the bank are using GenAI. They're asking your advice. What do I do with this now? Is it affecting things like confidentiality, privilege, all of that?
It's common. Yep.
So we're a regulated institution.
Right? So We're were looking at all of the options and whatever, but that's the concern. For instance, a tool like Microsoft Copilot, the idea is that it will be used by everybody in a corporation And that's a very powerful tool. So my personal view is we have to figure out how do we train people on it? What is the acceptable use of that kind of really powerful technology that will have consequences when it comes to regulation, litigation, right, all of that when it hits our world. Man.
And you and you have it, a different view of it too because you're a regulated company. So when we talk to other folks who are either at a law firm or a non regulated industry, they have different concerns on you. So your concerns, in some sense, or to say elevated, but they are. Right? They're a little bit elevated because if should there ever question, then the government's gonna be asking you those questions. Right?
Right.
Yeah.
So And we're it's all new.
Right? And so, on the one hand, it's really exciting. It's stuff to play with, and it's, you know, what can this do? You know, we're on the brink of this.
But on the other hand, if you take a step back, it's kinda like, what do we do? We're on the brink of this. Right? You just kinda flip it around.
Cautious optimism. That's right. That's right. Exactly.
And so you're gonna have a lot of conversations about that this week.
Yes.
Yeah. So What are you hoping to get out of this or you'll leave this week? What are you hoping to get out of these conversations? Are you hoping to feel like there's an answer or that we're a little bit closer to the answer? What what are you hoping to get out?
Yeah. I'm I'm hoping to learn a bit more about what the technology really can do and how we can get closer to that solution, get closer to using it as a real tool in our toolbox, and what we do with it. Right? How much do we have to preserve and collect and review in a litigation context?
Where is that all stored? Do we think about it this same way we think about email or chat messages or text messages. All of that, I think, is we're deciding those things right now. We're figuring it So that's what I hope to come out with a little bit more clarity around that.
In in some sense, it's really exciting.
Right? I mean, this this is almost, you know, you reckon back to, you know, we've talked about how we've been doing this for, you know, twenty plus years. We we've talked about this on the other episodes. We created this industry.
By accident, what would happen? We created this, right? We stumbled into it. We figured out shoestring duct tape the whole bit.
Right? In some sense, what you're saying is so fascinating because I haven't heard it through this lens, the way you're saying it is that we're kinda doing this again with generative AI. That's actually really exciting.
Yeah. I heard people say, you know, we used to talk about litigation readiness. There was a period when we could talk about company's data. And where's the data map?
Right? And how do we know for every kind of data that we have in a company sorta knew where it lived, how to get it, what to do with it when we collected it. Right? And now technology is moving so fast that were back in those days of, like, what do we do with email?
What do we do with text messages? Right? What do we do with ephemeral messaging? And that stuff's still going on, of course.
But, like, this isn't by the play. We're we're creating a new playbook.
Amazing. What's the vibe down there right now down at the show? Is it is there skepticism around this, or is it just unbridled enthusiasm?
And everyone's just ready to jump in.
It seems like a lot of enthusiasm. Also, Bryan Cranston spoke, and he was very cool. So that kinda lifted the mood. No. It was excitement. You know, the exhibit hall was packed and everything's on display. You know, lots of new and exciting ideas and technologies, and seems like we're off to a good start.
You know, last year, Legalweek, there was a lot of conversation around generative AI eye also. Personally, it feels different this year. I know you weren't here last year, but where do you think we've gone in the last year, though, generative AI?
I think this past calendar year has been the year that it exploded. Right? It came to everybody's attention. It came to the forefront. So it is front and center in, like, the everyday cultural conversation, whereas, I think, before it was a tech issue, something that we thought about.
But, you know Now it's just ever present.
Now it's here.
So so you're gonna accumulate all those knowledge this week.
Alright? Legalweek. You're a second one. You're gonna get all those knowledge. You're gonna go back to Pittsburgh. How are you gonna share all this knowledge that you've accumulated with everyone else at the bank and also everyone else in the community?
So I think at the bank, it's become we have small eDiscovery team, but what we like to do is try to help educate our own attorneys, so internally to be able to help them understand how our employees are working. Right? What new tools there are that create new data sets, new places, information could be stored that could be relevant, that they wanna sure that they, you know, talk to their custodians about in a case. And then I'm, you know, I'm involved in a couple of different organizations in Pittsburgh, women in eDiscovery is one of them. But, you know, continuing to engage with the community on these these kinds of issues, because like I said before, there's so few of us that really do this. I think it's just important for us to keep ourselves educated and keep keep talking.
That's amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much for stopping by the studio here. We really appreciate. Enjoy the rest of your show.
Thank you.
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Until next time, this has been another episode of BDO's Legal Tech Talk.
Daniel Gold is an attorney and a Principal at BDO USA, where he leads eDiscovery managed services. He hosts BDO's Legal Tech Talk, co-hosts the NeLI Pod and founded Gold Standard Leadership.
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Daniel Gold writes weekly on leadership, legal technology and eDiscovery.
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