Breaking Down Barriers: Inclusivity and AI in Legal Tech

Thank you for having me.

That is correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, man. That's one of my fun jobs that I've ever had. I really, really fell in love with teaching.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. When I first stepped into the role, I had no idea what they were doing already. Right? And that was a short conversation.

So I'll just be honest. I'm a very transparent, honest leader, and I really pride myself on being transparent. So that was something that, was a very, very short lived conversation. But in all seriousness, I brought some of my outside, thinking and thought leadership and conversations that I've had.

I've talked with managing partners at AmLaw 100 law firms. I've talked with individuals in the corporate sector to really understand how they were using AI and what they were thinking. And even some of the largest law firms, I mean, they're thinking about not having to hire first year law students right out of a law school because they are incorporating artificial intelligence into their business practices. So that gave me pause coming into CLOC.

So when I did have the opportunity to have those discussions, I wanted to know what we were doing and what we were thinking about. So there are some things that we're thinking about now. We have to walk the walk. Right?

We create the forums for the education and best shared practices to be had, like here at CGI twenty twenty five. But us ourselves, we need to lean into the technology as well. We need to find ways to implement AI technology to help our members be more effective and more efficient with navigating their way around clock, but also pulling out some of the materials and content that they need in order to be successful and being efficient and effective. We pride ourselves off being more efficient and effective at helping to enhance the practice and business of law, so we have to also do that in our business operations.

So that's some of the things that we're at least thinking about from a thought leadership perspective. We got a lot of work to do, and I don't mind admitting that. We have a lot of work to do to incorporate some of the tools that's necessary for us to be a thriving business organization that represents and supports our members.

My thoughts are this, is that I think when we say AI is so broad and general, nobody really knows what we're talking about. If we start and, again, not trying to endorse any specific function tool or company, but when we start thinking about here's a tool that can help you address problem x or here's a tool that can help you address problem y, you then begin to shrink it down a bit to where people can understand, oh, okay. I have that same problem. Let me look into that product.

Are there others that I can compare it to? So when we're talking about AI in general, it's scary. I do think, though, it's important for us to put the fear aside, but also start breaking down to the least common denominator. When we're talking about AI, what are we talking about?

What business solution are we trying to address? That's the first pivotal question that we should be asking. What problems are we trying to solve? And we know this.

As business leaders, we know this, but sometimes we get so caught up in the conversation of AI, we forget to ask the most simple basic question. What problem are we trying to solve? We're not just trying to keep up with the trend. We're not just trying to keep up with the sign of the times.

We need to do that in order to be effective and be competitive. But what business problem are we trying to solve? And then let's find the tool to match with that.

So from your perspective, what is the problem that legal operations professionals are trying to solve with GenAI?

I think it runs the gamut from being able to control and be more efficient in your contract life cycle management, being able to understand how to reduce time into matters and projects, looking at how you can determine insourcing work versus outsourcing work to outside counsel, law firm vendor management, strategic planning, and what issues and matters are most important to your customer base. I mean, there is no shortage. Right? But not every company is the same.

Not every legal team is the same. So it's about that individual legal team or company asking what are the things that we need to be most efficient and effective at in serving our client base and our key stakeholders? What are the specific tools that we need to match with that in order to be effective and most efficient. Right on.

Right? It also happens in the for profit arena as well. And at the top of the food chain of top Fortune fifty, top Fortune ten companies, we all have to go through that bureaucratic chain of command. I'll say this, is that from CLOC's perspective, it's my goal and it's our hope that we're providing the educational resources and access tools that our members need to be able to go to their superiors and tell a better story That's great.

Hopefully, it lessen some of the bureaucratic steps that they need to go through and they're not frustrated.

Yeah. No, thank you for bringing this up. You know, I've been very fortunate in life and very blessed, and I'm very privileged, you know, Brian. I think anybody at our levels is probably privileged in some regard, rather you're black, white, or whatever, right?

And I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a very mixed neighborhood, and I was homeless. Me and my family was homeless for a while. I was taken in by a Jewish foster family and raised that way. So just my upbringing in and of itself, seeing my mom struggle, seeing her work very, very hard to take care of us, my biological mom, to do the best that she could kinda input embedded in me that sense of social justice.

Right? So on one hand, I have this sense of social justice and helping people because I truly think that the more people I help, the better I become. I think the true definition of leadership is how many leaders can I create?

Not necessarily how I can sit at the table and keep getting accolades and awards and boost myself up. That means nothing, but the leaders that you can create is really reflective of what your leadership is. So, you know, diversity and diversification actually used to be a wonderful concept to sit around the table and talk about. Diversification of your portfolio, diversification of business practices. It's the crux of what we tend to do in the business world.

So why is it different when we try to include diverse people or people with diverse backgrounds in order to come together and create business solutions to address problems?

Oh, no question about it. I'll say this piece on this, is that I've been fortunate to not ever have to follow or look to a policy or a mandate or a directive to do the right thing. I'm right. You don't need a policy to tell you to hire the person that's best fit for the job.

I have been fortunate to build up a team and increase it by about fifty percent, and at the end, have that team look like seventy three percent women, sixty three percent of them in leadership, forty five percent people of color with about fifty percent in leadership, and a significant number of representation of individuals who openly classified themselves as part of the LGBTQ plus community, as well as individuals who were differently abled, not necessarily disabled, but differently abled. And throughout that work, it's an intentionality to it. It's a, I'm not just gonna go through a traditional search on Indeed or LinkedIn.

I'm gonna look in other places. I'm gonna look to various job boards at certain schools that carry a large number of demographics to see what comes from those institutions. It's an intentional effort, but it's one that's conscious on my mind every day. What are the leadership skills that I can pass down, but also who are the leaders that I can help create?

And I truly think that if we think about it from that perspective and separate the acronyms into words which actually have meaning, supporting equitable principles is not a bad thing. It means that we're trying to incorporate fairness amongst how we govern ourselves. Inclusivity is including those diverse thinkers into the processes at which you're engaged in. Now belonging is a sense of social construction.

It's about community. Whether or not this is your space, you don't have to force everybody to want to belong in something.

That's your business rather. But at the end of the day, I have been fortunate to center these issues in every role that I have had, and I've been fortunate to have leaders who have let me be me in doing so. And without them, I would not have had as much success as I've had. And I think that even at Clark, I've had the opportunity to have not only my leaders but also my team, support my vision in being inclusive and looking for diverse talent in order to solve business problems.

Yes.

Yeah. I think it's important for when I conference, right, I look for the one thing that I'm taking away. Like now, we have hundreds of sessions going on, brilliant speakers from all over the world. I'm looking for that one takeaway, that one nugget to solve the business problem or at least kick start into what I want to achieve.

So when I leave today or Thursday, my goal is to really sit back and reflect on how we can build a better conference and member experience and key stakeholder experience for those that will join us in Chicago in twenty twenty six, because I think it's important for us to learn from the experience that we've encountered at this CGI, but also incorporate feedback. So for me, it'll be listening, trying to understand from our vendors, from our exhibitors, from our staff, from our volunteer leaders, you know, what were some of the things they have seen and experienced throughout this conference so that we can determine how we can reshape it and incorporate some of that feedback into our conference as we go forward.

So it'll be more of reflection, feedback, listening, and then carrying it forward and getting ready with the team to incorporate some of that feedback as we get prepared for another adventure.

Thank you. I appreciate it.