1 00:00:02,375 --> 00:00:04,583 Anastasia, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,834 --> 00:00:06,848 I am great, how are you? 3 00:00:06,965 --> 00:00:07,657 I'm doing good. 4 00:00:07,657 --> 00:00:09,532 I appreciate you joining me today. 5 00:00:10,158 --> 00:00:12,017 and it's going to be a good conversation. 6 00:00:12,017 --> 00:00:12,978 It is. 7 00:00:12,978 --> 00:00:13,418 is. 8 00:00:13,418 --> 00:00:28,047 You and I had a chance to chat and we had some really good dialogue about law schools and how lawyers get prepped and how that prep prepares them or doesn't for legal practice and 9 00:00:28,047 --> 00:00:30,249 how it shapes their entrepreneurial thinking. 10 00:00:30,249 --> 00:00:33,351 So yeah, we got a lot of good conversation to have. 11 00:00:33,471 --> 00:00:35,733 Before we jump into that though, let's get you introduced. 12 00:00:35,733 --> 00:00:36,633 So 13 00:00:36,829 --> 00:00:40,701 You are a legal futurist, which I love that title. 14 00:00:40,701 --> 00:00:43,071 I like to think about the future as well. 15 00:00:43,432 --> 00:00:46,853 And you've done a lot of work in the legal innovation space. 16 00:00:46,853 --> 00:00:51,745 And I think you were uh most recently at the Utah Law School. 17 00:00:51,745 --> 00:00:56,307 Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and what it means to be a futurist. 18 00:00:57,023 --> 00:01:00,225 Yeah, it's actually like a circuitous path there. 19 00:01:00,225 --> 00:01:08,071 um I think I sort of Goldilocks through my career and thought I was gonna be a litigator, like a big litigation partner. 20 00:01:08,071 --> 00:01:11,894 And then I got to law school, I realized I didn't like the work of litigation. 21 00:01:11,934 --> 00:01:19,328 And then I started on my path to figuring out what to do with this really expensive degree, which I almost quit because I thought this is not going to make any sense and they 22 00:01:19,328 --> 00:01:20,718 convinced me to stay. 23 00:01:20,779 --> 00:01:24,290 But that really set up a conversation about what I should do with my skills. 24 00:01:24,290 --> 00:01:27,322 And we really don't have any tools to figure that out when we're in law school. 25 00:01:27,322 --> 00:01:33,795 And so for me, I knew I really liked working with people and I wanted to have some control and autonomy over my schedule. 26 00:01:33,795 --> 00:01:36,206 So I started out in wills and trusts. 27 00:01:36,362 --> 00:01:42,248 but then was seeing so much fun activity happening around hedge funds and different kinds of investment vehicles in the Wall Street Journal. 28 00:01:42,248 --> 00:01:44,330 And so I pivoted into corporate tax. 29 00:01:44,330 --> 00:01:54,971 And what was interesting in my practice as a lawyer was these are traditionally service departments in many firms, but the firms that I chose deliberately were revenue generating 30 00:01:54,971 --> 00:01:56,022 departments. 31 00:01:56,022 --> 00:02:00,238 And so to be in what is a traditional service uh function. 32 00:02:00,238 --> 00:02:08,978 but then be in a firm that has grown those departments to be large was a very different experience, including hovering our own corporate group underneath the tax group. 33 00:02:08,978 --> 00:02:12,698 And I think that probably also framed my thinking about the legal industry, right? 34 00:02:12,698 --> 00:02:20,078 We have these preconceived notions about what law practice looks like, what certain lawyers do, but there are different ways to practice. 35 00:02:20,078 --> 00:02:23,498 As many lawyers as there are, there are different ways to organize this. 36 00:02:23,498 --> 00:02:24,430 And so... 37 00:02:24,430 --> 00:02:25,890 I'd practiced for four years. 38 00:02:25,890 --> 00:02:28,270 It didn't feel quite right. 39 00:02:28,270 --> 00:02:32,290 And I found myself really obsessed about how lawyers operated. 40 00:02:32,290 --> 00:02:33,490 Like how do we train lawyers? 41 00:02:33,490 --> 00:02:35,610 How do we develop business with clients? 42 00:02:35,610 --> 00:02:38,930 Just the general operations of legal services delivery. 43 00:02:39,070 --> 00:02:48,930 And so I went into a legal tech company called Practical Law, which at the time was selling know-how, which is a whole other conversation we can have around unauthorized 44 00:02:48,930 --> 00:02:52,590 practice of law and legal advice and what is legal information. 45 00:02:52,622 --> 00:03:01,329 but they had lawyers creating content for other lawyers to get up to speed, whether they were junior or just looking at different uh practice areas. 46 00:03:01,329 --> 00:03:11,437 And what that allowed me to do was work with all the MLOT 200, uh other smaller firms, as well as in-house departments to understand how they train their lawyers, but essentially 47 00:03:11,437 --> 00:03:12,798 how they operate, right? 48 00:03:12,798 --> 00:03:20,565 Like, how do you take on this task of creating a professional services firm to deliver client value? 49 00:03:20,565 --> 00:03:22,306 And training is a piece of it. 50 00:03:22,306 --> 00:03:24,187 but it touches everything else. 51 00:03:24,187 --> 00:03:35,614 ah And I saw from that point just how broad and varied our industry was, as well as the many patterns of entrenchment that we have around the way that we practice, how skeptical 52 00:03:35,614 --> 00:03:42,237 we are about innovation and new products, how reluctant we are to efficiency, right, to get our time back. 53 00:03:42,718 --> 00:03:44,859 And I found it to be a really fascinating exercise. 54 00:03:44,859 --> 00:03:49,898 Simultaneously on the legal tech business side, I was developing uh 55 00:03:49,898 --> 00:04:00,148 narratives and pitches and value propositions are really like developing a sales enablement role while also having a product evangelist role, which it wasn't called that 56 00:04:00,148 --> 00:04:10,578 at the time, but I was doing a lot of thought leadership and evangelizing about how great this product was to the market and different m industry associations. 57 00:04:10,578 --> 00:04:14,762 I also got to understand different industry associations in the lab, which is fascinating. 58 00:04:15,258 --> 00:04:19,991 And I also led law firm marketing there and then built out our own internal training university. 59 00:04:19,991 --> 00:04:30,906 So really got to wear a lot of hats and realized that within a legal tech or innovation environment, there's a lot more autonomy, agility, creativity, which I wasn't getting or 60 00:04:30,906 --> 00:04:34,528 seeing in my law practice and my two experiences. 61 00:04:34,729 --> 00:04:41,732 And so from there, after we were acquired by Thomson Reuters, I decided I wanted to apply those principles into the business side of a law firm. 62 00:04:41,732 --> 00:04:44,704 So I went to the practice management business development side. 63 00:04:44,704 --> 00:04:54,661 of a firm to help grow the actual strategy of the practice areas that I was covering, which was about half of the firm, mostly transactional and international practices. 64 00:04:54,661 --> 00:05:02,247 And I learned that we love to talk about change, but it's much harder to change, especially from the inside of a firm. 65 00:05:02,247 --> 00:05:06,450 Even as lawyers, we like to have other lawyers who know our experience. 66 00:05:06,450 --> 00:05:12,046 We still struggle to do the really difficult aspects of change management within. 67 00:05:12,046 --> 00:05:12,986 law firm structures. 68 00:05:12,986 --> 00:05:17,826 know you write about about those structures as well and the challenges of change there. 69 00:05:17,826 --> 00:05:20,186 And so was eager to get back into innovation. 70 00:05:20,186 --> 00:05:25,286 I went to Axiom, which is a flex talent player for in-house talent. 71 00:05:25,286 --> 00:05:28,626 And my job is to figure out how we commercialize the talent function. 72 00:05:28,626 --> 00:05:30,766 I've never let a talent function. 73 00:05:30,782 --> 00:05:40,265 And so learning about what works and what doesn't work as far as attorney development, what people want in their work experiences, how do you structure something that works in a 74 00:05:40,265 --> 00:05:45,622 more flexible environment, what people have choice, how do you help them understand their trade-offs. 75 00:05:45,842 --> 00:05:47,664 I also manage recruiting. 76 00:05:47,664 --> 00:05:55,630 having conversations with lawyers who know they want to do something different, but having them get comfortable about what that could look like was a fascinating discussion. 77 00:05:55,630 --> 00:06:02,755 And so I oversaw about 500 lawyers, which is half the global business of Axiom at the time, but really integrated with the business, right? 78 00:06:02,755 --> 00:06:11,384 Trying to figure out how we anticipate client needs for coverage, how we get our lawyers ready for that, how I have the right lawyers ready. 79 00:06:11,384 --> 00:06:20,143 for the needs that are coming up, which is a fascinating way to connect talent and business operations, which we don't do very well in legal services. 80 00:06:20,283 --> 00:06:22,285 That could be a whole hour conversation. 81 00:06:22,426 --> 00:06:23,827 So I had done that. 82 00:06:23,827 --> 00:06:28,674 I had done a sabbatical to become a yoga teacher and try to build a wellness business that didn't work out how I wanted. 83 00:06:28,674 --> 00:06:30,508 I went back into corporate. 84 00:06:30,508 --> 00:06:35,311 Simultaneously, there's a parallel track running for me where I was very involved with my law school. 85 00:06:35,311 --> 00:06:40,224 And so although I didn't love my law school experience at Yale, I very much loved my Yale community. 86 00:06:40,224 --> 00:06:44,186 And so I did a lot of volunteering, a lot of student mentorship. 87 00:06:44,186 --> 00:06:53,371 um I was on the board for our fund uh board at the law school and we had a new dean and she said, hey, you know, like we offer this sort of all purpose learning degree, but it's 88 00:06:53,371 --> 00:06:54,372 like a leadership degree. 89 00:06:54,372 --> 00:06:56,013 It's a thinking degree. 90 00:06:56,013 --> 00:06:58,774 And I said, well, I've Goldilocks my career. 91 00:06:59,018 --> 00:07:03,781 through what lawyers can do, what skills they need, how to develop those things. 92 00:07:03,781 --> 00:07:05,262 I love to be a sounding board. 93 00:07:05,262 --> 00:07:07,763 And she said, actually, I want you to move here and build it. 94 00:07:07,763 --> 00:07:17,078 And so I architected this leadership program from scratch, worked a lot with students and alumni and faculty to figure out where the gaps were and what we were offering, and also 95 00:07:17,078 --> 00:07:19,289 fundraised a record amount for the institution. 96 00:07:19,289 --> 00:07:26,673 But what I really loved about that role is I was doing innovation and entrepreneurship inside a static institution inside academia. 97 00:07:26,673 --> 00:07:28,334 But it allowed me to see 98 00:07:28,366 --> 00:07:41,683 all the things I had seen in law practice and the operation of law to see some of the root causes, where some of our lack of imagination, our sort of uh complex way to problem 99 00:07:41,683 --> 00:07:44,635 solving begin in the academy. 100 00:07:44,635 --> 00:07:53,990 And I do think, m I think the kinds of patterns we Yale reverberate through the rest of the academy because so many of our graduates become faculty, right? 101 00:07:53,990 --> 00:07:58,062 So a lot of that culture transcends into the rest of that industry. 102 00:07:58,134 --> 00:08:02,675 And so then I was also the chief innovation officer at the University of Utah Law School and come full circle. 103 00:08:02,675 --> 00:08:08,777 I am now a legal futurist and a product evangelist back in legal technology. 104 00:08:08,777 --> 00:08:16,679 I was really excited to see what the promise for change management meant for our profession with the advent of generative AI. 105 00:08:16,679 --> 00:08:21,060 And as I told that very long-winded story, I think the threads come together, right? 106 00:08:21,060 --> 00:08:28,061 Like, how do we change the way that we deliver legal services given the tools that we have in a more holistic way? 107 00:08:28,061 --> 00:08:28,882 Yeah. 108 00:08:28,882 --> 00:08:34,507 So innovating within legal challenging for a whole host of reasons. 109 00:08:34,507 --> 00:08:43,055 Innovating within a law school, within a university, like, I mean, that sounds like a big hill to climb. 110 00:08:43,055 --> 00:08:48,029 How, how challenging was it to really get things done? 111 00:08:48,029 --> 00:08:51,122 Because when I think of innovation, there's a lot of trial and error. 112 00:08:51,122 --> 00:08:54,865 Um, you kind of have to, you know, un 113 00:08:54,865 --> 00:08:58,537 Unchain the handcuffs and really let people roam free. 114 00:08:58,537 --> 00:09:01,278 And, you know, there's lots of examples. 115 00:09:01,278 --> 00:09:11,772 Uh, I talked about one at the inside practice event, where I saw you in Chicago a few months ago and, uh it was the, it was IBM's wild ducks. 116 00:09:12,072 --> 00:09:21,616 And I've mentioned it once before on the podcast, the CEO at the time, Thomas Watson, um, created a team of about six. 117 00:09:21,756 --> 00:09:23,917 He, I think they called him fellows. 118 00:09:23,981 --> 00:09:30,385 And they were informally known as the wild ducks and they had, uh, they dress differently. 119 00:09:30,385 --> 00:09:32,246 They played by different rules. 120 00:09:32,246 --> 00:09:33,787 They basically had a blank check. 121 00:09:33,787 --> 00:09:36,649 could go in and steal resources from a team. 122 00:09:36,649 --> 00:09:46,615 could bypass processes and you know, they basically had a blank check to go in and conduct experiments within the organization. 123 00:09:46,615 --> 00:09:50,345 And there were lots of interesting innovations that came out of that. 124 00:09:50,345 --> 00:10:00,463 Like I can't see that model working in a law firm or a university where there's so much structure and politics and like, how do you, how do you innovate in that sort of 125 00:10:00,463 --> 00:10:01,433 environment? 126 00:10:01,932 --> 00:10:04,783 Yeah, so I think about innovation as doing things better. 127 00:10:04,783 --> 00:10:08,624 ah And I think doing things better is a function of change management. 128 00:10:08,624 --> 00:10:12,666 And it depends on how large of an impact you want to have. 129 00:10:12,666 --> 00:10:13,036 Right? 130 00:10:13,036 --> 00:10:19,128 At Yale, I was building a transformative program that would change how we did things for 200 years. 131 00:10:19,128 --> 00:10:23,869 It would be the largest program that we had done to date. 132 00:10:23,869 --> 00:10:26,080 And what was interesting is I had 133 00:10:26,196 --> 00:10:28,008 the support of my dean, right? 134 00:10:28,008 --> 00:10:31,992 So I had the most senior person gave me support to do something. 135 00:10:31,992 --> 00:10:41,181 I had very willing and interested students and alumni who knew that there were gaps and wanted to bridge those gaps and create something better for themselves and future 136 00:10:41,181 --> 00:10:42,201 students. 137 00:10:42,201 --> 00:10:50,478 I had really engaged colleagues across other parts of the university, including the business school and the SAI Center for Innovation. 138 00:10:50,478 --> 00:11:00,665 um And so I was able to pull all of those pieces together and my general resourcefulness and hunger allowed me to leverage my resources among the alumni community and among the 139 00:11:00,665 --> 00:11:05,068 Yale community to be able to do that with the political backing of my dean. 140 00:11:05,068 --> 00:11:12,954 That said, it's still really, really difficult to do because change management is actually in the day to day, right? 141 00:11:12,954 --> 00:11:15,135 It doesn't matter how much money you have. 142 00:11:15,135 --> 00:11:19,578 It actually doesn't matter how much political backing you have if the structure itself 143 00:11:19,636 --> 00:11:23,027 is impervious to change, it's very difficult to do these things. 144 00:11:23,027 --> 00:11:33,780 So you can create a really great structure, you can endow a program, but if the people who are in there day to day are not bought into the mission and are not constantly striving 145 00:11:33,780 --> 00:11:42,562 and hungry to improve the processes and review what they're doing in every single iteration, it won't change, right? 146 00:11:42,562 --> 00:11:48,414 And the only place where I saw that done extremely well from a culture perspective was Axiom. 147 00:11:48,494 --> 00:11:52,954 I always tell people, it's like the few years that I was there were just absolutely magic. 148 00:11:52,954 --> 00:12:04,754 And the reason why they were magic is because everybody agreed on what the values were and every decision we made from the smallest to the largest was made with those values in the 149 00:12:04,754 --> 00:12:05,554 background, right? 150 00:12:05,554 --> 00:12:11,834 So as we were trying to decide what we would do, we would look at our values and say, does it align with what this is? 151 00:12:11,834 --> 00:12:16,930 And there was a lot of space to be able to call out senior managers, you know, 152 00:12:16,930 --> 00:12:21,874 top down and bottom up and vertically and diagonally, hey, this doesn't align with our values. 153 00:12:21,874 --> 00:12:22,745 And they would listen. 154 00:12:22,745 --> 00:12:33,513 And so I think this is the part of change management that is not sexy, that's really hard to talk about, which is how you get a large group of people with different motivations to 155 00:12:33,513 --> 00:12:35,925 move toward the same goal. 156 00:12:35,925 --> 00:12:38,427 And there are a lot of facets in that. 157 00:12:38,427 --> 00:12:42,786 But if you don't have mechanisms to hold people accountable, 158 00:12:42,786 --> 00:12:49,258 and you don't have people who are intrinsically motivated and bought in to the mission of what you're doing, you will always struggle. 159 00:12:49,258 --> 00:12:52,859 And I think that's part of what we see in law firms, right? 160 00:12:52,859 --> 00:12:54,970 They're large partnerships. 161 00:12:54,970 --> 00:13:07,753 And so motivating and incentivizing people who are trained, trained in law school and trained in law practice to look out for themselves, feed a team and service clients is 162 00:13:07,753 --> 00:13:11,094 very individual contributor minded. 163 00:13:11,200 --> 00:13:22,526 And so it's really hard to get them to shift and change the way that they operate unless you have a firm that has shared values and your partners all believe in those and are 164 00:13:22,526 --> 00:13:24,849 motivated to move toward those. 165 00:13:24,849 --> 00:13:28,764 And that could be just a function of scale, but I think it's also a function of culture. 166 00:13:29,215 --> 00:13:30,006 For sure. 167 00:13:30,006 --> 00:13:30,726 Yeah. 168 00:13:30,726 --> 00:13:37,830 And innovation has not historically been a part of law firm culture DNA. 169 00:13:37,830 --> 00:13:47,786 It's just not for a number of reasons that we could probably spend a lot of time talking about, but I posted something on LinkedIn, an article recently, it was a bit of a 170 00:13:47,786 --> 00:13:52,958 manifesto on a blueprint, a transformation blueprint for big law. 171 00:13:53,039 --> 00:13:57,245 I'm of the opinion that as we enter into a 172 00:13:57,245 --> 00:14:09,919 a marketplace where we have diminishing marginal costs of legal output and we have increasing capital expenditure, which I'm not talking about buying Harvey and co-counsel 173 00:14:09,919 --> 00:14:10,619 licenses here. 174 00:14:10,619 --> 00:14:18,691 I'm talking about CapEx to create differentiating technology that's going to require funding. 175 00:14:19,551 --> 00:14:25,363 I talk through a bit of a uh radical model, but it's essentially where 176 00:14:25,491 --> 00:14:36,047 you know, a law firm would stand up a standalone entity that would be basically a C Corp, not a partnership where you have different governance models. 177 00:14:36,047 --> 00:14:48,775 um This would necessitate the um rollout of alternative business structures because I think that external capital is not only going to be required from a capital perspective to 178 00:14:48,775 --> 00:14:53,279 really make this next leap into 2.0. 179 00:14:53,279 --> 00:14:57,641 but all the operational discipline that comes with external capital, right? 180 00:14:57,641 --> 00:15:09,095 You've got a board that management is held accountable to, and you have government, governance structures and management is empowered to do things without all the friction 181 00:15:09,115 --> 00:15:12,437 and consensus driven decision-making that happens in law firms. 182 00:15:12,437 --> 00:15:23,501 Like I struggle to, to uh paint a picture in my mind of a, the existing structure creating a, 183 00:15:23,519 --> 00:15:33,514 tech enabled legal services delivery machine and leveraging that as a core piece of infrastructure delivery infrastructure. 184 00:15:33,635 --> 00:15:44,601 There's still going to be plenty of opportunity for humans in the loop, but you know, for the blocking and tackling of legal work, there's a huge opportunity to leverage this tech. 185 00:15:44,601 --> 00:15:52,465 And I just look at how, you know, with a partnership model, there's such a focus on short term profit taking. 186 00:15:52,693 --> 00:15:59,828 And all the, again, the, the friction in the consensus driven decision making, there's very little accountability. 187 00:15:59,828 --> 00:16:07,163 You mentioned it earlier, like willingness to change and listen and divergent interest, having to come together and get aligned. 188 00:16:07,513 --> 00:16:12,697 you know, the partnership model amplifies divergence because it makes it really hard. 189 00:16:12,697 --> 00:16:21,473 And, know, as far as like accountability, like, you know, I've seen it firsthand where, you know, partners that are rainmakers. 190 00:16:22,005 --> 00:16:25,870 played by different rules and you know, the lateral mobility. 191 00:16:25,870 --> 00:16:28,396 That's another interesting dynamic. 192 00:16:28,396 --> 00:16:30,137 also creates toxic workplaces, right? 193 00:16:30,137 --> 00:16:35,290 If you look at the indicators for toxic workplaces, lack of integrity, right? 194 00:16:35,290 --> 00:16:43,344 Rules not applying to everybody in the same way creates real problems in the environment that people work in. 195 00:16:43,344 --> 00:16:44,595 They don't want to work there. 196 00:16:44,595 --> 00:16:45,065 Yeah. 197 00:16:45,065 --> 00:16:55,233 And the most important, I think, aspect of it is not everybody's rowing in the same direction when you don't have a consistent set of processes, rules, and values. 198 00:16:55,233 --> 00:17:01,437 And in order to scale an organization, and I've said this many times on the podcast, there's not one law firm that would qualify for the Fortune 500. 199 00:17:01,437 --> 00:17:08,392 I don't know what K &E's 2025 AMLaw numbers are, but they're 2024 numbers. 200 00:17:08,392 --> 00:17:13,173 They're at like 7.3 billion and the floor on the Fortune 500 is about 7.6. 201 00:17:13,173 --> 00:17:22,373 So it's extremely fragmented, very and KNE is an outlier, you know, most firm average revenue at AML 100 is 1.4 billion. 202 00:17:22,373 --> 00:17:28,713 So how, do we, how do we create the structure necessary for scale? 203 00:17:28,713 --> 00:17:36,153 And I don't see the current model as being, um, uh, a good foundation to lay that on. 204 00:17:36,153 --> 00:17:36,293 don't know. 205 00:17:36,293 --> 00:17:37,709 What is your take on that? 206 00:17:38,254 --> 00:17:41,994 So I spent a lot of time in the weeds of the business of law, right? 207 00:17:41,994 --> 00:17:48,294 I could spend days or an eternity talking about the business factors and levers. 208 00:17:48,294 --> 00:17:54,993 And I don't find that conversation to be interesting because it doesn't compel people enough to actually change. 209 00:17:55,034 --> 00:17:57,754 And what we end up doing is we say, this is the original model. 210 00:17:57,754 --> 00:18:00,054 These are the financial concepts. 211 00:18:00,054 --> 00:18:03,754 And what we need to do to make it better is bring in better people, right? 212 00:18:03,754 --> 00:18:05,294 But I actually don't think that's true. 213 00:18:05,294 --> 00:18:08,102 I think what we need to do is we need to change who we are. 214 00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:15,113 We have to find similarly minded lawyers who know what the mission of lawyering is for them, right? 215 00:18:15,113 --> 00:18:25,458 That'll be different for everybody, but who are aligned about what they're trying to deliver and to whom and the values that they share and then build a business structure 216 00:18:25,458 --> 00:18:26,418 around that. 217 00:18:26,418 --> 00:18:28,299 Because that part's not that hard. 218 00:18:28,299 --> 00:18:34,412 But when you take a container that was meant for a different kind of practice a long time ago, 219 00:18:34,614 --> 00:18:37,806 And then you're just saying, well, if I get better people in it, it'll work. 220 00:18:37,806 --> 00:18:40,898 And I was like, no, there are problems with our system and the container. 221 00:18:40,898 --> 00:18:45,290 And we can talk all day about the billable hour and we can talk all day about the partnership model. 222 00:18:45,290 --> 00:18:47,141 And I think your solution is a good one. 223 00:18:47,141 --> 00:18:51,203 em And I think it is an option to try to make that better. 224 00:18:51,203 --> 00:18:56,506 But fundamentally, we as lawyers have to ask ourselves, what are we doing? 225 00:18:56,506 --> 00:18:56,916 Right? 226 00:18:56,916 --> 00:18:59,788 We have a fiduciary duty to our clients. 227 00:18:59,788 --> 00:19:03,820 We are given this right to practice law. 228 00:19:03,948 --> 00:19:07,940 with an obligation to serve the legal needs of people. 229 00:19:07,940 --> 00:19:11,101 And we have a monopoly for it, right? 230 00:19:11,101 --> 00:19:14,663 And instead we're gonna create a model where we're miserable. 231 00:19:14,663 --> 00:19:23,707 Like you look at the wellness numbers of lawyers and any other profession that had such harm would not be in existence. 232 00:19:23,707 --> 00:19:31,330 But we allow that high rate of harm among our population and that's just normal to accept. 233 00:19:31,564 --> 00:19:33,946 And then we go back to saying it's the billable hour. 234 00:19:33,946 --> 00:19:39,640 So I think the form is broken, which is why I like your approach of like, let's start with something else. 235 00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:46,144 Let's figure out who should be making management decisions, how that should be structured, what accountability should look like. 236 00:19:46,144 --> 00:19:51,758 But I think also fundamentally, we need to ask ourselves what we're doing in legal services. 237 00:19:51,758 --> 00:19:53,890 Like what kind of services are we trying to deliver? 238 00:19:53,890 --> 00:19:54,991 Who are we trying to help? 239 00:19:54,991 --> 00:19:58,293 We have a 92 % access to justice gap, right? 240 00:19:58,293 --> 00:19:59,822 In what other profession? 241 00:19:59,822 --> 00:20:04,222 If we didn't meet 92 % of people's needs, would we be around again? 242 00:20:04,442 --> 00:20:12,382 So we've been lucky for a really long time, but I think what technology starts to do is make us have this conversation about our model. 243 00:20:12,382 --> 00:20:14,842 Like does our model actually serve its purpose? 244 00:20:14,842 --> 00:20:16,702 The answer is no, right? 245 00:20:16,702 --> 00:20:23,142 A lot of people are getting very wealthy in that model, but most people are actually pretty miserable in that model. 246 00:20:23,142 --> 00:20:26,162 And that forces us to ask what we do. 247 00:20:26,182 --> 00:20:26,552 And 248 00:20:26,552 --> 00:20:35,534 Part of what we also get to ask is how can we achieve the goals of helping people navigate their lives, whether they're business lives or their personal lives, in a more efficient 249 00:20:35,534 --> 00:20:36,085 manner? 250 00:20:36,085 --> 00:20:38,265 And now we have chat GPT, right? 251 00:20:38,265 --> 00:20:47,358 We now have large language models that allow us to start thinking about know-how, advice, legal information, right? 252 00:20:47,358 --> 00:20:51,362 Who is entitled to know how the laws that govern their lives work? 253 00:20:51,362 --> 00:20:52,399 I would say everybody. 254 00:20:52,399 --> 00:20:55,850 I think everybody should know how the laws around them 255 00:20:55,850 --> 00:21:06,616 impact them and how to navigate these complex systems because we neither have enough lawyers nor enough uh lawyers doing the kind of work to help people do that. 256 00:21:06,616 --> 00:21:16,301 But I do think looking at all of these factors that are changing at the same time, we get to ask what we as a profession want and then we get to build businesses to support that 257 00:21:16,301 --> 00:21:19,272 for those of us who want to build businesses in the profession. 258 00:21:19,315 --> 00:21:19,715 Yeah. 259 00:21:19,715 --> 00:21:36,070 The big constraint for, guess The big roadblock for the, the Big Law 2.0 model is the ABS rules and, and what, eight, the ABA model rule 5.4 that, you know, prohibits non-legal 260 00:21:36,070 --> 00:21:37,050 ownership. 261 00:21:37,050 --> 00:21:49,203 And I have talked to many really smart people in the space and one school of thought is that, well, the ABA is not going to change that rule willingly. 262 00:21:49,257 --> 00:21:54,370 because it's creating a protection mechanism for the industry and lawyers run the ABA. 263 00:21:54,370 --> 00:21:56,771 So I actually have a different perspective on that. 264 00:21:56,771 --> 00:21:59,383 I'd be curious about your thoughts on this. 265 00:21:59,383 --> 00:22:02,774 I think lawyers are going to be the ones who drive this change. 266 00:22:02,774 --> 00:22:12,189 And I think the switch is going to flip when people realize, when lawyers realize that the current model is incompatible. 267 00:22:12,189 --> 00:22:19,073 The current business model is incompatible with what the future state needs to look like in order to create the scale. 268 00:22:19,143 --> 00:22:22,336 necessary to create that level of differentiation. 269 00:22:22,336 --> 00:22:32,084 You know, if you want to niche down and hyper focus, that's, uh, then you can, you can apply, you can take the current model and apply it. 270 00:22:32,084 --> 00:22:38,069 If you want to achieve a level of scale where you can truly create differentiation. 271 00:22:38,069 --> 00:22:42,953 Um, I think, I think lawyers are going to have an aha moment and go, you know what? 272 00:22:42,953 --> 00:22:44,014 We, need to change this. 273 00:22:44,014 --> 00:22:44,844 So I don't know. 274 00:22:44,844 --> 00:22:48,349 What do you think about the sentiment out there with 275 00:22:48,349 --> 00:22:50,172 respect to alternative business structures. 276 00:22:50,172 --> 00:23:00,859 And we have two states, one of which is yours, that are experimenting here, but this would need to accelerate in order for the model I propose to get traction. 277 00:23:01,140 --> 00:23:06,701 Yeah, my hot take is that we already have a non-lawyer ownership. 278 00:23:06,701 --> 00:23:16,444 Because if you're going to measure ownership by debt or equity, we have plenty of litigation funders who have outstanding debt with many of the cases that are happening. 279 00:23:16,444 --> 00:23:19,145 There are other creative ways to do this, right? 280 00:23:19,145 --> 00:23:24,366 ah But debt is a form of ownership, I think. 281 00:23:24,366 --> 00:23:26,377 And again, that's a personal personal opinion. 282 00:23:26,377 --> 00:23:34,189 And so I think we have folks who are investing in firms or partially owning firms who are not just lawyers. 283 00:23:34,189 --> 00:23:39,210 And I think there have been delicate decisions coming down to parse out why that's OK. 284 00:23:39,210 --> 00:23:43,431 ah I think there needs to be space to have this kind of iteration. 285 00:23:43,431 --> 00:23:45,912 So Utah was the first mover in this. 286 00:23:45,912 --> 00:23:50,729 They created five different kinds of structures which could come through the sandbox. 287 00:23:50,729 --> 00:23:52,783 So the Utah sandbox was a pilot. 288 00:23:52,783 --> 00:24:04,003 that was led by our Utah Supreme Court, essentially seeing just the volume of legal needs that were coming in and just realizing in our traditional system, there's not really a way 289 00:24:04,003 --> 00:24:05,863 to address this effectively. 290 00:24:05,863 --> 00:24:13,663 So they said, you know, there are here are five different ways that you could do this, including fee sharing, right, with non-lawyers. 291 00:24:13,663 --> 00:24:15,403 And they put up a structure. 292 00:24:15,403 --> 00:24:20,974 They've since changed that last year to minimize those buckets down to three. 293 00:24:20,974 --> 00:24:27,456 uh and also narrow that focus toward Utah uh and Utah access to justice kind of benefits. 294 00:24:27,456 --> 00:24:37,279 uh I'm on the Innovation Committee, which looks at general innovation in Utah, but I spent a lot of time around the sandbox entities and having conversation with leadership uh 295 00:24:37,279 --> 00:24:38,907 around what the objectives are. 296 00:24:38,907 --> 00:24:45,954 And I think some of our challenges as the first mover in this is we wanted to have adequate regulation and reporting and vetting. 297 00:24:45,954 --> 00:24:54,709 which depending on who you ask, some folks think that our levels are too high as far as reporting requirements and uh qualification requirements. 298 00:24:54,709 --> 00:25:01,783 And so I think you look at like Arizona and they've chosen one lane uh and they have slightly different requirements. 299 00:25:01,783 --> 00:25:07,797 so in our committees, we're always having conversations with other states to see what they're doing, right? 300 00:25:07,797 --> 00:25:12,769 Minnesota is looking at AI um and potential sandbox pieces there. 301 00:25:12,769 --> 00:25:13,009 So. 302 00:25:13,009 --> 00:25:14,134 uh 303 00:25:14,134 --> 00:25:17,275 A lot of interesting things are coming that way. 304 00:25:17,275 --> 00:25:27,960 And I think that we are rightly concerned as a profession to have non-lawyers have any sort of leverage or business interest in our entities. 305 00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:35,072 And there are ways to structure this um to make sure that we're following all of our needs. 306 00:25:35,072 --> 00:25:43,885 we meet like, it's just, I feel like it's negligent as a profession to not meet the majority of the legal needs. 307 00:25:43,885 --> 00:25:44,765 out there. 308 00:25:46,057 --> 00:25:49,938 Yeah, well, how much I mean, this has been done in other countries, right? 309 00:25:49,938 --> 00:25:51,611 You the Legal Services Act in the UK. 310 00:25:51,611 --> 00:25:53,622 That was like 10, 15 years ago. 311 00:25:53,802 --> 00:25:56,984 I know not a lot has changed as a result of that. 312 00:25:56,984 --> 00:26:09,752 I think now that the means of legal production are shifting rapidly, the likelihood for change is much higher now than when the Legal Services Act was first put in place. 313 00:26:09,752 --> 00:26:10,913 But how much 314 00:26:10,929 --> 00:26:19,485 Are Utah and Arizona, I'm not sure if you know the answer to this question, but are we leveraging the learnings there to help figure out? 315 00:26:19,485 --> 00:26:22,537 It sounds like we're kind of starting from scratch. 316 00:26:23,848 --> 00:26:31,320 I think we're, I mean, I don't know who everybody's perspectives when they had first initially put this together, there were a lot of smart people involved. 317 00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:34,051 And so I know they looked at a lot of international resources. 318 00:26:34,051 --> 00:26:36,462 I just don't know exactly to what extent. 319 00:26:36,462 --> 00:26:43,703 I know that there are a lot of conversations that the committees across states wanting to do things like this are having, right? 320 00:26:43,703 --> 00:26:48,955 There's a real desire to share learnings and best practices state to state. 321 00:26:48,955 --> 00:26:53,186 And I think Utah leading the pack really gave permission. 322 00:26:53,186 --> 00:27:00,648 to a lot of other states to at least em investigate what they should do to be able to help needs. 323 00:27:00,648 --> 00:27:09,351 I think we focus in the UPL discussion and the ABS discussion, we focus a lot on lawyers and the way that lawyers have done what they're doing. 324 00:27:09,351 --> 00:27:14,532 We don't focus as much on clients, what they actually need. 325 00:27:14,532 --> 00:27:21,894 Can we bridge the gap of what they actually need, which is practical guidance, not necessarily legal advice. 326 00:27:21,974 --> 00:27:29,158 And we forget that WebMD gave us a lot of information on how to navigate conversations with our doctors. 327 00:27:29,178 --> 00:27:41,585 That GPT and Google are now giving us much better ways to navigate the legal system and the laws that govern us and the practical guidance we need to navigate our lives. 328 00:27:41,585 --> 00:27:47,428 And I'm in no way saying that people should be getting legal advice from a large language model, right? 329 00:27:47,428 --> 00:27:50,754 But it does help us give a contextual window. 330 00:27:50,754 --> 00:27:51,872 It gives us 331 00:27:51,872 --> 00:27:54,645 and ability to have a higher level conversation. 332 00:27:54,645 --> 00:28:03,382 It gives people an understanding about how the rules generally apply and what considerations they should make as they're choosing legal counsel, whether they're 333 00:28:03,382 --> 00:28:09,248 choosing legal counsel, whether they want to em engage in some sort of adversarial process, right? 334 00:28:09,248 --> 00:28:17,548 Like there's a big gap between what I need to know before I find a lawyer and em what I'm gonna get from. 335 00:28:17,548 --> 00:28:20,840 that lawyer and we just don't have that conversation often enough. 336 00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:32,266 And many of the people who are engaging some of the most sophisticated and intelligent lawyers out there, those people have sophisticated subject matter expertise, right? 337 00:28:32,266 --> 00:28:35,768 They're able to ask the kinds of questions that they need to ask. 338 00:28:35,768 --> 00:28:38,029 They have a context for it. 339 00:28:38,069 --> 00:28:39,990 I think when we discuss 340 00:28:40,074 --> 00:28:48,329 UPL and ABS and these different structures, we have to think about all of those other legal needs and figuring out how we can just share information. 341 00:28:48,329 --> 00:28:51,631 There will be, excuse me, virtual law firms, right? 342 00:28:51,631 --> 00:29:04,428 And alternative structure small firms who will be able to leverage the current existing technology to be able to provide specific like subject matter expertise with that, as well 343 00:29:04,428 --> 00:29:08,736 as educating the populations, excuse me, in their communities. 344 00:29:08,736 --> 00:29:10,737 about what they provide, right? 345 00:29:10,737 --> 00:29:15,690 Like I think you and I talked about this a little bit in our previous conversation, like where the opportunities are. 346 00:29:15,690 --> 00:29:18,288 There's always gonna be things happening on the fray. 347 00:29:18,288 --> 00:29:27,916 There are also gonna be big firms who gonna be adopting huge innovations by whether creating something in-house or acquiring some sort of innovation or tech tool like we've 348 00:29:27,916 --> 00:29:29,116 seen many firms do. 349 00:29:29,116 --> 00:29:32,618 um That will be a harder change. 350 00:29:32,694 --> 00:29:37,225 management process because they're so large and because they've been around for a while, right? 351 00:29:37,225 --> 00:29:49,329 So there are norms that need to be overcome, but there are a lot of small players who I think can come in and really leverage this data, have a smaller portfolio or a more narrow 352 00:29:49,329 --> 00:29:58,542 portfolio of offerings and really specialize in what they're offering, where like, how are we going to define the technology as an additional employee? 353 00:29:58,542 --> 00:29:59,852 Is it an employee? 354 00:29:59,950 --> 00:30:04,172 ah Is it, know, does it, it's not going to have an ownership stake. 355 00:30:04,172 --> 00:30:08,455 How does that come into UPL and ABS? 356 00:30:08,455 --> 00:30:19,731 So I'm really excited about the smaller players who know that this is just a time to restructure the model that hasn't worked for them and hasn't worked for their clients, who 357 00:30:19,731 --> 00:30:28,962 take a client first view and try to create a solution and a service option that helps those people while also 358 00:30:28,962 --> 00:30:31,200 following the laws that currently exist. 359 00:30:31,315 --> 00:30:35,468 It's an exciting time for challenger firms in this space right now. 360 00:30:35,468 --> 00:30:39,371 It really is the ones that really think long-term. 361 00:30:39,371 --> 00:30:41,752 You know, I'm doing a little experiment. 362 00:30:41,752 --> 00:30:53,160 So we hired someone recently from another company who had a non-compete and we wanted to make sure that we uh steer clear of any sort of infringement on that. 363 00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:55,362 So we hired a labor and employment attorney. 364 00:30:55,362 --> 00:30:56,403 He did a great job. 365 00:30:56,403 --> 00:30:58,154 Well, we recorded all the calls. 366 00:30:58,154 --> 00:31:00,275 We documented all the questions we asked. 367 00:31:00,275 --> 00:31:03,056 And then this, this experiment is still in process. 368 00:31:03,056 --> 00:31:14,079 So I don't have any results yet, but, I'm basically going to take, uh, all of the documentation and I'm going to put it into the generic AI models and I'm going to compare 369 00:31:14,079 --> 00:31:17,410 the output and the answers to those questions. 370 00:31:17,410 --> 00:31:20,911 And, know, we're, not a big buyer of legal services. 371 00:31:21,121 --> 00:31:29,535 and I'm doing it not because I don't want to go hire a labor and employment attorney for important matters, but I'm doing it really just as a, 372 00:31:29,535 --> 00:31:33,647 comparison, like how good is the output and the questions? 373 00:31:33,647 --> 00:31:45,333 Now, if I were a big buyer of legal services, I would be doing this with maybe some different intentions and you have to think that this is happening already on the buy side. 374 00:31:45,934 --> 00:31:58,120 So, you know, I think it's just a matter of time before we're going to, and who knows, maybe we're already there, reach parity in terms of output on certain types of matters. 375 00:31:58,120 --> 00:31:59,291 um 376 00:31:59,291 --> 00:32:05,303 or maybe even, you know, superior output, um, certainly at a much lower cost. 377 00:32:05,303 --> 00:32:14,956 So it's going to be interesting to see how the buy side, because so much of what law firms do is driven by the buy side, right? 378 00:32:14,956 --> 00:32:18,177 It's that's when law firms change their practices, right? 379 00:32:18,177 --> 00:32:20,928 It's when the gunny client says you're going to do this. 380 00:32:20,928 --> 00:32:23,568 Um, or I'm going to take my business elsewhere. 381 00:32:23,568 --> 00:32:25,799 So yeah, I think 382 00:32:26,376 --> 00:32:31,139 I just think there needs to be a bigger conversation about what is the valuable work that we do, right? 383 00:32:31,139 --> 00:32:38,362 This is where the conversation is getting pushed on LinkedIn and among our groups, like what is value added service? 384 00:32:38,526 --> 00:32:50,087 And I would argue that much of the value added service outside of a few discrete situations is general business advice with regard to how the legal structures exist. 385 00:32:50,087 --> 00:32:52,219 It's not necessarily legal advice. 386 00:32:52,219 --> 00:32:56,272 I've been doing this for 20 years and I've watched the same transaction over and over again. 387 00:32:56,272 --> 00:32:58,544 Here are some best practices. 388 00:32:58,645 --> 00:33:02,588 Just like in your case, I labor employment lawyer who's seen this play out many times. 389 00:33:02,588 --> 00:33:04,710 Here's some best practices. 390 00:33:04,726 --> 00:33:12,159 and how you guys should operate in your interview process to make sure that you have done everything correctly, right? 391 00:33:12,159 --> 00:33:13,590 Belt and suspenders. 392 00:33:13,590 --> 00:33:15,510 Is that legal advice? 393 00:33:16,291 --> 00:33:18,992 I don't think in many cases it is. 394 00:33:18,992 --> 00:33:23,314 I think it's a function of these are smart people who know how the rules work. 395 00:33:23,314 --> 00:33:26,895 They've seen people inside and outside the lines. 396 00:33:26,895 --> 00:33:30,976 I'd like them to tell me how I don't fall outside the lines. 397 00:33:31,657 --> 00:33:34,718 I just want to follow the rules and do this correctly. 398 00:33:35,394 --> 00:33:43,691 And I think there's a real interesting model around that as people just want to agree on how to operate through something together. 399 00:33:43,691 --> 00:33:48,566 I was having a conversation with a lawyer about this who was in my yoga class, cause I teach yoga on Saturdays. 400 00:33:48,566 --> 00:33:57,784 And I was saying, you know, like I'm happy to get a chat GPT contract on something where I know I'm not going to dispute, like I'm not going to go into litigation with someone. 401 00:33:57,784 --> 00:34:00,536 We just agree on these general terms. 402 00:34:00,536 --> 00:34:03,238 And what it is, it's a way of holding each other accountable. 403 00:34:03,702 --> 00:34:14,660 And so I think oftentimes looking at some of the ways that we operate in business and asking what is the function of these things and are our clients, especially our 404 00:34:14,660 --> 00:34:27,979 non-lawyer, non-JD clients, are those clients comfortable enough using the documentation they get for many of these, these technology solutions over going to a lawyer and spending 405 00:34:27,979 --> 00:34:28,930 that kind of money. 406 00:34:28,930 --> 00:34:32,598 And I think we're going to get to a place where they are going to get comfortable. 407 00:34:32,598 --> 00:34:33,810 And then what happens, right? 408 00:34:33,810 --> 00:34:37,185 When there are risk tolerances, this is good enough for us. 409 00:34:38,248 --> 00:34:39,389 Where do we go from there? 410 00:34:39,389 --> 00:34:39,849 Yeah. 411 00:34:39,849 --> 00:34:43,191 So, uh, my wife and I own five gyms here in St. 412 00:34:43,191 --> 00:34:44,640 Louis and we've moved one. 413 00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:46,952 So we've signed six commercial leases. 414 00:34:47,072 --> 00:34:53,114 Commercial leases are massively long and verbose and there's all sorts of potential gotchas in them. 415 00:34:53,535 --> 00:35:04,719 Our process for, with these leases is I would sit down with my broker and we would highlight who's negotiated hundreds, not thousands or, you know, been on the, on the buy 416 00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:07,981 side and the sell side, probably hundreds, if not thousands. 417 00:35:07,981 --> 00:35:08,893 And we would 418 00:35:08,893 --> 00:35:11,194 like pick the low hanging fruit. 419 00:35:11,194 --> 00:35:12,015 You know what I mean? 420 00:35:12,015 --> 00:35:24,882 uh, just the, the, real easy stuff before it, the, last iteration would always get, um, reviewed by an attorney just to make sure we didn't miss something or there wasn't some, 421 00:35:24,882 --> 00:35:27,123 but that was pre chat GPT. 422 00:35:27,123 --> 00:35:31,393 If I were doing that now, I would leverage chat GPT in a big way. 423 00:35:31,393 --> 00:35:37,961 I just would say it's right, wrong, UPL, not like that's what I would do as a small business person. 424 00:35:37,961 --> 00:35:40,321 to, to minimize my legal costs. 425 00:35:40,472 --> 00:35:41,112 and you know what? 426 00:35:41,112 --> 00:35:42,502 I think it would be damn effective. 427 00:35:42,502 --> 00:35:51,915 You know what I do now in all transparency, when I get an NDA as I don't even read it, like if it's not ours, I put it in chat, between say what's, know, cause they're usually 428 00:35:51,915 --> 00:35:53,545 low risk documents. 429 00:35:54,406 --> 00:35:56,506 and they, they never go in front of a lawyer. 430 00:35:56,506 --> 00:35:59,757 have our director of business operations look for stuff that doesn't make sense. 431 00:35:59,757 --> 00:36:02,448 They're two pages, but that's usually my first step. 432 00:36:02,448 --> 00:36:06,973 And I know I'm not alone and people can furrow their brow and 433 00:36:06,973 --> 00:36:12,742 wave their finger at me, but that's how, as a small business person, you get things done. 434 00:36:12,944 --> 00:36:19,014 In big corporations where there's more at stake, you can't do what I'm doing, but that's how small businesses are doing it. 435 00:36:19,014 --> 00:36:20,831 So it's just a matter of time. 436 00:36:20,831 --> 00:36:22,752 and it's like, it's good enough, right? 437 00:36:22,752 --> 00:36:25,018 It's good enough, and that's how people are gonna make their decisions. 438 00:36:25,018 --> 00:36:35,702 I would argue that even in large corporations, there are oftentimes decisions being made without the scrutiny of the smartest lawyer, subject matter expert on that decision, 439 00:36:35,702 --> 00:36:36,302 right? 440 00:36:36,302 --> 00:36:44,428 corporate decisions being made, their employment decisions being made, their sales decisions being made that have legal consequences, right? 441 00:36:44,428 --> 00:36:52,676 That do have some legal adjacency, but because of how large organizations are, how bureaucratic they are, how siloed they are, right? 442 00:36:52,676 --> 00:36:54,287 There's not going to be a lawyer. 443 00:36:54,287 --> 00:36:58,110 There are judgment calls being made every single day about this. 444 00:36:58,110 --> 00:37:04,295 And this is why anytime we talk about these big conversations, I always want to pull us back and say, like, what is our mission, right? 445 00:37:04,295 --> 00:37:05,858 What is our mission as lawyers? 446 00:37:05,858 --> 00:37:07,529 What is our mission as law firms? 447 00:37:07,529 --> 00:37:09,820 What is our mission as legal departments? 448 00:37:09,820 --> 00:37:12,362 What are we trying to achieve? 449 00:37:12,362 --> 00:37:15,694 And let's make decisions according to those principles. 450 00:37:15,694 --> 00:37:20,087 It becomes much easier because what our tendency is to do is to issue spot. 451 00:37:20,087 --> 00:37:22,268 We love going down rabbit holes. 452 00:37:22,268 --> 00:37:23,068 What if? 453 00:37:23,068 --> 00:37:26,120 The number of people, if I have one more person tell me about hallucinations. 454 00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:29,092 was like, why are you looking over there? 455 00:37:29,092 --> 00:37:31,613 Yes, yes, we will figure out hallucinations. 456 00:37:31,613 --> 00:37:33,054 It'll keep getting better. 457 00:37:33,410 --> 00:37:37,734 The technology will keep getting better and also PS humans make mistakes constantly. 458 00:37:37,734 --> 00:37:40,976 Our memories are very fallible, right? 459 00:37:40,976 --> 00:37:53,257 And so it drives me crazy when such smart people trained to problem solve and think logically and communicate effectively when turned on themselves and turned on their 460 00:37:53,257 --> 00:38:02,304 businesses really struggle to use that kind of inquiry that's more directed and organized. 461 00:38:02,345 --> 00:38:03,225 Yeah. 462 00:38:03,446 --> 00:38:09,589 Well, one thing I wanted to talk to you about, we've been riffing here, which has been really good. 463 00:38:09,610 --> 00:38:12,111 I wrote a nice agenda. 464 00:38:12,312 --> 00:38:13,833 There was a couple of things on here. 465 00:38:13,833 --> 00:38:17,515 No, I'm the host, it's on me. 466 00:38:17,555 --> 00:38:19,306 But this has been really good conversation. 467 00:38:19,306 --> 00:38:21,538 And it always is when we riff. 468 00:38:21,538 --> 00:38:27,261 But I wanted to get your perspective, and you and I talked about it a little bit the last time, like the disconnect. 469 00:38:27,649 --> 00:38:32,363 I don't think you were in the session, but I did a presentation at that inside practice event that I mentioned earlier. 470 00:38:32,363 --> 00:38:42,762 And I talked about how there's been a 2000 % increase in innovation resources in the last 10 years, 20 X, the number of people that there were 10 years ago in innovation roles and 471 00:38:42,762 --> 00:38:44,103 big law. 472 00:38:44,103 --> 00:38:51,078 And there was a, the law department operation survey by the Blixstein group, which is very reputable. 473 00:38:51,078 --> 00:38:56,433 Um, one of the questions was, is your law firm partner innovative? 474 00:38:56,433 --> 00:38:57,109 And. 475 00:38:57,109 --> 00:39:00,149 almost two thirds either disagreed or strongly disagreed. 476 00:39:00,149 --> 00:39:01,289 And so we have this disconnect. 477 00:39:01,289 --> 00:39:04,969 So I always like to get people's perspective on what's driving that. 478 00:39:04,969 --> 00:39:09,409 I have my own theories and my listeners are probably tired of hearing innovation theater. 479 00:39:09,829 --> 00:39:13,869 But what do you feel like is driving that disconnect? 480 00:39:14,634 --> 00:39:16,364 Lack of relationships. 481 00:39:17,319 --> 00:39:18,639 Explain what you mean. 482 00:39:18,639 --> 00:39:30,145 this all comes down to the fact that we as a profession have not continued our best practices around the relationships with our clients. 483 00:39:30,145 --> 00:39:40,430 ah There's an amazing post David Wang had about some of the work they're doing about Cooley's AI principles and how they're having a dialogue with their clients. 484 00:39:40,570 --> 00:39:47,834 And a lot of what's missing in this client lawyer disconnect is actual conversations. 485 00:39:47,894 --> 00:39:50,555 about what clients want and need. 486 00:39:50,615 --> 00:39:54,687 Regular sit downs where I'm not going to bill you, right? 487 00:39:54,687 --> 00:40:03,320 Where I genuinely want to understand your business, your business objectives, your long-term strategy and where I can help. 488 00:40:03,380 --> 00:40:08,882 Not how much of that can I take to make billable, but where can I actually help? 489 00:40:09,203 --> 00:40:17,226 And so I think the actual disconnect comes that in-house lawyers will come to their outside counsel when there's a big problem. 490 00:40:17,762 --> 00:40:23,936 but they're not having regular discourse around what's happening with their business most of the time, right? 491 00:40:23,936 --> 00:40:34,232 Like these seem like discrete issues, they're very expensive to fix, but the relationship itself isn't one where I proactively as outside counsel regularly sit down with my client 492 00:40:34,232 --> 00:40:37,854 and figure out what's going on quarter to quarter in their business. 493 00:40:37,854 --> 00:40:44,780 And I share best practices and I give them general advice and then I figure out where we can help to get ahead of problems. 494 00:40:44,780 --> 00:40:48,593 And then we sit down and we talk about what technology solutions we're using, right? 495 00:40:48,593 --> 00:40:50,105 Have you even started working on this? 496 00:40:50,105 --> 00:40:52,237 What part of your work are you doing it in? 497 00:40:52,237 --> 00:40:57,861 Instead, we're receiving RFPs with extensive questions that ask every single technology you have. 498 00:40:57,861 --> 00:41:02,064 Are you going to explain the entire Microsoft Office suite in the RFP? 499 00:41:02,325 --> 00:41:02,635 Right? 500 00:41:02,635 --> 00:41:05,888 Like that, that, that is circumventing the conversation. 501 00:41:05,888 --> 00:41:13,044 So whenever I see inefficiencies like that in our profession, my immediate answer is like, we're not having the real conversation. 502 00:41:13,442 --> 00:41:22,291 We're not having the relationship discussion of what I'm here to do for you and how much I'm invested in your business and positive outcomes about what's happening. 503 00:41:22,291 --> 00:41:23,982 We're not having proactive discussions. 504 00:41:23,982 --> 00:41:26,354 not having scheduled regular meetings. 505 00:41:26,655 --> 00:41:30,698 I'm not coming to you when I see something new and interesting that I think could benefit you. 506 00:41:31,139 --> 00:41:33,201 I'm just calling, responding, right? 507 00:41:33,201 --> 00:41:34,602 I'm reactionary. 508 00:41:35,029 --> 00:41:36,030 That's a really good point. 509 00:41:36,030 --> 00:41:36,440 Yeah. 510 00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:39,813 You know, this really, this makes me think of a very recent story. 511 00:41:39,813 --> 00:41:46,378 Like yesterday, this week, um, we are, my CFO and I are shopping for a new bank. 512 00:41:46,438 --> 00:41:57,207 we're starting to grow and outgrow our existing bank and, um, our, our, one of our investors, TLTF put us in touch with several, several banks that, that fund venture backed 513 00:41:57,207 --> 00:41:58,288 startups. 514 00:41:58,408 --> 00:42:02,392 Well, I had a bank yesterday who asked for all sorts of stuff. 515 00:42:02,392 --> 00:42:04,319 Their intake process is incredible. 516 00:42:04,319 --> 00:42:06,270 They wanted our pitch deck. 517 00:42:06,270 --> 00:42:09,381 They wanted a video of me presenting the pitch deck. 518 00:42:09,381 --> 00:42:13,833 couldn't, I was so flattered that they actually wanted to understand my business. 519 00:42:13,833 --> 00:42:17,514 They want to understand our, they want to look at our contracts. 520 00:42:17,514 --> 00:42:23,777 And now a lot of this is risk mitigation, but the investor deck is very like strategic. 521 00:42:23,777 --> 00:42:25,288 That's not going to help them mitigate risk. 522 00:42:25,288 --> 00:42:29,820 That's going to help them understand our business and our full potential. 523 00:42:29,820 --> 00:42:30,790 So yeah, you know what? 524 00:42:30,790 --> 00:42:31,590 I've never had a lawyer. 525 00:42:31,590 --> 00:42:33,865 I've been an entrepreneur for 32 years. 526 00:42:33,865 --> 00:42:36,546 I started my first business before I was old enough to drink. 527 00:42:36,546 --> 00:42:40,508 I've never heard, had a law firm ask me for anything like that. 528 00:42:40,508 --> 00:42:44,511 Um, as part of their intake process, what a good first step. 529 00:42:44,511 --> 00:42:45,401 was totally impressed. 530 00:42:45,401 --> 00:42:48,872 These guys are probably going to win our business because they want to understand us. 531 00:42:50,058 --> 00:42:56,720 Yeah, and this is again, this is what's coming if you if you talk to the folks who are in pricing, right, like Toby Brown and I have been dear friends for a really long time. 532 00:42:56,720 --> 00:42:58,920 We talk about profitability and pricing. 533 00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:09,203 And it never ceases to amaze me the miraculous reactions that he gets when he tells people that he would go out and meet with clients, right, as as a member of the firm who wasn't a 534 00:43:09,203 --> 00:43:16,825 billing lawyer, to have proactive discussions about what their strategic vision was, right, where they were going, what the hurdles were. 535 00:43:16,825 --> 00:43:20,226 These are very human relationships. 536 00:43:20,226 --> 00:43:21,927 things to do. 537 00:43:21,927 --> 00:43:25,748 These people pay us lots of money as lawyers. 538 00:43:25,748 --> 00:43:29,640 And the way that we approach them is like, we almost like feel bothered, right? 539 00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:38,994 Like it's like, because we have so much on our plates, we oftentimes don't even realize the tone that we have with clients or how quickly we're getting back to them, right? 540 00:43:38,994 --> 00:43:41,855 There's not even room for the proactive behavior. 541 00:43:41,855 --> 00:43:46,117 And I think this is where AI is so useful because it helps to shift that. 542 00:43:46,117 --> 00:43:48,778 And a lot of the time intensive 543 00:43:49,292 --> 00:43:56,694 things that take us away from client service and client management and being proactive and to your point, asking these questions, right? 544 00:43:56,694 --> 00:43:58,105 Like, help me learn about your business. 545 00:43:58,105 --> 00:44:09,207 Imagine you went with a lawyer who's trying to pitch you and they've done full research on your industry, everything you've said, every podcast you've done, all of your competitors, 546 00:44:09,328 --> 00:44:09,728 right? 547 00:44:09,728 --> 00:44:17,910 And they've come in and they've told you what they think they understand about your industry and your business and asked how you can help or what they're missing. 548 00:44:18,454 --> 00:44:20,405 What would that do to your experience? 549 00:44:20,969 --> 00:44:23,398 It would make them stand out tremendously. 550 00:44:26,687 --> 00:44:29,358 Yeah, it's a well, mean it. 551 00:44:29,358 --> 00:44:40,154 I hope we're trending in that direction because I feel like with all the transformation that's taking place in the industry right now, what you're describing is going to be more 552 00:44:40,154 --> 00:44:41,625 and more important. 553 00:44:41,625 --> 00:44:47,108 You know, I have to say as a, we are info dash is a legal collaboration platform. 554 00:44:47,108 --> 00:44:52,791 We use the term intranet and extranet because the market knows what those, but there's such dated terms. 555 00:44:52,892 --> 00:44:55,849 Um, I honestly dislike them, but 556 00:44:55,849 --> 00:45:03,112 You know, our extra net offering is a mechanism through which law firms can share information with their clients. 557 00:45:03,152 --> 00:45:07,464 And this it's a bit, it's very different than it gets deployed in their environment. 558 00:45:07,464 --> 00:45:12,816 So they could share things like financial analytics, legal project management, status and tasks. 559 00:45:12,816 --> 00:45:20,740 They could share information about the legal team that's billing time to the matters that the clients are paying for very, very easily. 560 00:45:20,740 --> 00:45:22,290 And now we're just starting this journey. 561 00:45:22,290 --> 00:45:24,531 So I can't put a stake in the ground and say, 562 00:45:24,531 --> 00:45:28,423 Law firms aren't interested in that because that that's not true exactly. 563 00:45:28,423 --> 00:45:39,473 But when we were preparing for this, we wanted, we did a survey of 40, we hired a firm, talked to 40 global 100 firms and the questions that they asked, there was very low 564 00:45:39,473 --> 00:45:46,809 appetite for law firms to share anything other than past invoices, but like all those other things. 565 00:45:46,809 --> 00:45:52,864 And I understand why you wouldn't want to, um, you know, your whip time entries that have to be massaged. 566 00:45:52,864 --> 00:45:54,335 And I get that. 567 00:45:54,335 --> 00:46:02,010 But why not share financial analytics about and the feedback that we got was, well, we don't want to give our clients something they can use against us. 568 00:46:02,010 --> 00:46:03,892 Say, look how much money we're spending with you. 569 00:46:03,892 --> 00:46:08,085 And I'm thinking, they know, they know already how much money they're spending. 570 00:46:08,085 --> 00:46:09,996 You're not giving them anything they don't know. 571 00:46:09,996 --> 00:46:16,560 You're making it easier for them and you're presenting it at a consumable way where they can drill down lots of interesting options. 572 00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:17,307 I don't know. 573 00:46:17,307 --> 00:46:18,418 a broken relationship. 574 00:46:18,418 --> 00:46:19,899 It's a broken relationship, right? 575 00:46:19,899 --> 00:46:29,177 If you're trying to withhold data from a partner because you don't want them to leave you because they might realize that you're taking advantage of them, you don't have a 576 00:46:29,177 --> 00:46:31,449 relationship, right? 577 00:46:31,449 --> 00:46:33,070 You're manipulating them. 578 00:46:33,491 --> 00:46:39,736 And in any relationship, personal or professional, like people want to trust one another. 579 00:46:39,817 --> 00:46:42,098 They want to know that you have their back. 580 00:46:42,934 --> 00:46:51,461 And people, lawyers who approach it in that way will draw people because it's basic psychology. 581 00:46:52,023 --> 00:46:53,614 We all want to feel appreciated. 582 00:46:53,614 --> 00:46:55,705 We all want to be a priority. 583 00:46:56,206 --> 00:46:58,749 We all want to feel like we're being heard, right? 584 00:46:58,749 --> 00:47:08,758 Like these are basic human EQ fundamentals, but they've also been proven time and time again in business analytics, right? 585 00:47:08,758 --> 00:47:10,569 and strategy case studies. 586 00:47:10,569 --> 00:47:14,660 I am not saying anything that's just my opinion. 587 00:47:14,660 --> 00:47:18,161 All of this is validated in the business research. 588 00:47:18,321 --> 00:47:23,702 And I think if we as lawyers really took the time to reflect and ask, what are we doing? 589 00:47:23,702 --> 00:47:25,003 What are we providing? 590 00:47:25,003 --> 00:47:26,963 What kind of firm do we wanna have? 591 00:47:26,963 --> 00:47:30,884 And operate from those principles, we will do well, right? 592 00:47:30,884 --> 00:47:36,118 And we will stop chasing how much money are here at a different firm. 593 00:47:36,118 --> 00:47:39,442 is making, but we might actually have fulfilling careers. 594 00:47:39,442 --> 00:47:42,184 And our clients PS might actually like us. 595 00:47:43,046 --> 00:47:50,804 But what kind of world would it be if your if your client actually liked you and wanted to spend time with you versus have to call you during a storm? 596 00:47:50,825 --> 00:47:53,187 Yeah, that is a great point. 597 00:47:53,187 --> 00:47:54,727 That is a great point. 598 00:47:54,808 --> 00:47:59,071 Well, we've run out of time and this is a, this is a record. 599 00:47:59,071 --> 00:48:07,957 Um, I'm over 70 episodes in and I've never followed a, um, an agenda less than we did today, but this was really good. 600 00:48:07,957 --> 00:48:09,468 This is really good dialogue. 601 00:48:09,468 --> 00:48:13,721 So, I really appreciate you joining me and sharing your insights. 602 00:48:13,721 --> 00:48:18,165 And I do feel like you cut against the grain a little bit and tell it like it is. 603 00:48:18,165 --> 00:48:19,027 And I think 604 00:48:19,027 --> 00:48:26,269 We need more of that in this space right now because the path forward is not entirely clear. 605 00:48:26,269 --> 00:48:31,317 And I really think we need to bring our A game if we're going to come out the other side of this successful. 606 00:48:31,317 --> 00:48:33,981 So thank you very much for your insights. 607 00:48:34,325 --> 00:48:35,656 Thank you for having me. 608 00:48:35,656 --> 00:48:42,260 And I think this is an opportunity for lawyers to actually look at themselves and chart a better path forward. 609 00:48:42,535 --> 00:48:43,565 Agreed. 610 00:48:43,806 --> 00:48:44,267 Awesome. 611 00:48:44,267 --> 00:48:45,948 All right, we'll have a good rest of your day. 612 00:48:45,948 --> 00:48:47,139 And thanks again. 613 00:48:47,139 --> 00:48:49,651 All righty. 00:00:04,583 Anastasia, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,834 --> 00:00:06,848 I am great, how are you? 3 00:00:06,965 --> 00:00:07,657 I'm doing good. 4 00:00:07,657 --> 00:00:09,532 I appreciate you joining me today. 5 00:00:10,158 --> 00:00:12,017 and it's going to be a good conversation. 6 00:00:12,017 --> 00:00:12,978 It is. 7 00:00:12,978 --> 00:00:13,418 is. 8 00:00:13,418 --> 00:00:28,047 You and I had a chance to chat and we had some really good dialogue about law schools and how lawyers get prepped and how that prep prepares them or doesn't for legal practice and 9 00:00:28,047 --> 00:00:30,249 how it shapes their entrepreneurial thinking. 10 00:00:30,249 --> 00:00:33,351 So yeah, we got a lot of good conversation to have. 11 00:00:33,471 --> 00:00:35,733 Before we jump into that though, let's get you introduced. 12 00:00:35,733 --> 00:00:36,633 So 13 00:00:36,829 --> 00:00:40,701 You are a legal futurist, which I love that title. 14 00:00:40,701 --> 00:00:43,071 I like to think about the future as well. 15 00:00:43,432 --> 00:00:46,853 And you've done a lot of work in the legal innovation space. 16 00:00:46,853 --> 00:00:51,745 And I think you were uh most recently at the Utah Law School. 17 00:00:51,745 --> 00:00:56,307 Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and what it means to be a futurist. 18 00:00:57,023 --> 00:01:00,225 Yeah, it's actually like a circuitous path there. 19 00:01:00,225 --> 00:01:08,071 um I think I sort of Goldilocks through my career and thought I was gonna be a litigator, like a big litigation partner. 20 00:01:08,071 --> 00:01:11,894 And then I got to law school, I realized I didn't like the work of litigation. 21 00:01:11,934 --> 00:01:19,328 And then I started on my path to figuring out what to do with this really expensive degree, which I almost quit because I thought this is not going to make any sense and they 22 00:01:19,328 --> 00:01:20,718 convinced me to stay. 23 00:01:20,779 --> 00:01:24,290 But that really set up a conversation about what I should do with my skills. 24 00:01:24,290 --> 00:01:27,322 And we really don't have any tools to figure that out when we're in law school. 25 00:01:27,322 --> 00:01:33,795 And so for me, I knew I really liked working with people and I wanted to have some control and autonomy over my schedule. 26 00:01:33,795 --> 00:01:36,206 So I started out in wills and trusts. 27 00:01:36,362 --> 00:01:42,248 but then was seeing so much fun activity happening around hedge funds and different kinds of investment vehicles in the Wall Street Journal. 28 00:01:42,248 --> 00:01:44,330 And so I pivoted into corporate tax. 29 00:01:44,330 --> 00:01:54,971 And what was interesting in my practice as a lawyer was these are traditionally service departments in many firms, but the firms that I chose deliberately were revenue generating 30 00:01:54,971 --> 00:01:56,022 departments. 31 00:01:56,022 --> 00:02:00,238 And so to be in what is a traditional service uh function. 32 00:02:00,238 --> 00:02:08,978 but then be in a firm that has grown those departments to be large was a very different experience, including hovering our own corporate group underneath the tax group. 33 00:02:08,978 --> 00:02:12,698 And I think that probably also framed my thinking about the legal industry, right? 34 00:02:12,698 --> 00:02:20,078 We have these preconceived notions about what law practice looks like, what certain lawyers do, but there are different ways to practice. 35 00:02:20,078 --> 00:02:23,498 As many lawyers as there are, there are different ways to organize this. 36 00:02:23,498 --> 00:02:24,430 And so... 37 00:02:24,430 --> 00:02:25,890 I'd practiced for four years. 38 00:02:25,890 --> 00:02:28,270 It didn't feel quite right. 39 00:02:28,270 --> 00:02:32,290 And I found myself really obsessed about how lawyers operated. 40 00:02:32,290 --> 00:02:33,490 Like how do we train lawyers? 41 00:02:33,490 --> 00:02:35,610 How do we develop business with clients? 42 00:02:35,610 --> 00:02:38,930 Just the general operations of legal services delivery. 43 00:02:39,070 --> 00:02:48,930 And so I went into a legal tech company called Practical Law, which at the time was selling know-how, which is a whole other conversation we can have around unauthorized 44 00:02:48,930 --> 00:02:52,590 practice of law and legal advice and what is legal information. 45 00:02:52,622 --> 00:03:01,329 but they had lawyers creating content for other lawyers to get up to speed, whether they were junior or just looking at different uh practice areas. 46 00:03:01,329 --> 00:03:11,437 And what that allowed me to do was work with all the MLOT 200, uh other smaller firms, as well as in-house departments to understand how they train their lawyers, but essentially 47 00:03:11,437 --> 00:03:12,798 how they operate, right? 48 00:03:12,798 --> 00:03:20,565 Like, how do you take on this task of creating a professional services firm to deliver client value? 49 00:03:20,565 --> 00:03:22,306 And training is a piece of it. 50 00:03:22,306 --> 00:03:24,187 but it touches everything else. 51 00:03:24,187 --> 00:03:35,614 ah And I saw from that point just how broad and varied our industry was, as well as the many patterns of entrenchment that we have around the way that we practice, how skeptical 52 00:03:35,614 --> 00:03:42,237 we are about innovation and new products, how reluctant we are to efficiency, right, to get our time back. 53 00:03:42,718 --> 00:03:44,859 And I found it to be a really fascinating exercise. 54 00:03:44,859 --> 00:03:49,898 Simultaneously on the legal tech business side, I was developing uh 55 00:03:49,898 --> 00:04:00,148 narratives and pitches and value propositions are really like developing a sales enablement role while also having a product evangelist role, which it wasn't called that 56 00:04:00,148 --> 00:04:10,578 at the time, but I was doing a lot of thought leadership and evangelizing about how great this product was to the market and different m industry associations. 57 00:04:10,578 --> 00:04:14,762 I also got to understand different industry associations in the lab, which is fascinating. 58 00:04:15,258 --> 00:04:19,991 And I also led law firm marketing there and then built out our own internal training university. 59 00:04:19,991 --> 00:04:30,906 So really got to wear a lot of hats and realized that within a legal tech or innovation environment, there's a lot more autonomy, agility, creativity, which I wasn't getting or 60 00:04:30,906 --> 00:04:34,528 seeing in my law practice and my two experiences. 61 00:04:34,729 --> 00:04:41,732 And so from there, after we were acquired by Thomson Reuters, I decided I wanted to apply those principles into the business side of a law firm. 62 00:04:41,732 --> 00:04:44,704 So I went to the practice management business development side. 63 00:04:44,704 --> 00:04:54,661 of a firm to help grow the actual strategy of the practice areas that I was covering, which was about half of the firm, mostly transactional and international practices. 64 00:04:54,661 --> 00:05:02,247 And I learned that we love to talk about change, but it's much harder to change, especially from the inside of a firm. 65 00:05:02,247 --> 00:05:06,450 Even as lawyers, we like to have other lawyers who know our experience. 66 00:05:06,450 --> 00:05:12,046 We still struggle to do the really difficult aspects of change management within. 67 00:05:12,046 --> 00:05:12,986 law firm structures. 68 00:05:12,986 --> 00:05:17,826 know you write about about those structures as well and the challenges of change there. 69 00:05:17,826 --> 00:05:20,186 And so was eager to get back into innovation. 70 00:05:20,186 --> 00:05:25,286 I went to Axiom, which is a flex talent player for in-house talent. 71 00:05:25,286 --> 00:05:28,626 And my job is to figure out how we commercialize the talent function. 72 00:05:28,626 --> 00:05:30,766 I've never let a talent function. 73 00:05:30,782 --> 00:05:40,265 And so learning about what works and what doesn't work as far as attorney development, what people want in their work experiences, how do you structure something that works in a 74 00:05:40,265 --> 00:05:45,622 more flexible environment, what people have choice, how do you help them understand their trade-offs. 75 00:05:45,842 --> 00:05:47,664 I also manage recruiting. 76 00:05:47,664 --> 00:05:55,630 having conversations with lawyers who know they want to do something different, but having them get comfortable about what that could look like was a fascinating discussion. 77 00:05:55,630 --> 00:06:02,755 And so I oversaw about 500 lawyers, which is half the global business of Axiom at the time, but really integrated with the business, right? 78 00:06:02,755 --> 00:06:11,384 Trying to figure out how we anticipate client needs for coverage, how we get our lawyers ready for that, how I have the right lawyers ready. 79 00:06:11,384 --> 00:06:20,143 for the needs that are coming up, which is a fascinating way to connect talent and business operations, which we don't do very well in legal services. 80 00:06:20,283 --> 00:06:22,285 That could be a whole hour conversation. 81 00:06:22,426 --> 00:06:23,827 So I had done that. 82 00:06:23,827 --> 00:06:28,674 I had done a sabbatical to become a yoga teacher and try to build a wellness business that didn't work out how I wanted. 83 00:06:28,674 --> 00:06:30,508 I went back into corporate. 84 00:06:30,508 --> 00:06:35,311 Simultaneously, there's a parallel track running for me where I was very involved with my law school. 85 00:06:35,311 --> 00:06:40,224 And so although I didn't love my law school experience at Yale, I very much loved my Yale community. 86 00:06:40,224 --> 00:06:44,186 And so I did a lot of volunteering, a lot of student mentorship. 87 00:06:44,186 --> 00:06:53,371 um I was on the board for our fund uh board at the law school and we had a new dean and she said, hey, you know, like we offer this sort of all purpose learning degree, but it's 88 00:06:53,371 --> 00:06:54,372 like a leadership degree. 89 00:06:54,372 --> 00:06:56,013 It's a thinking degree. 90 00:06:56,013 --> 00:06:58,774 And I said, well, I've Goldilocks my career. 91 00:06:59,018 --> 00:07:03,781 through what lawyers can do, what skills they need, how to develop those things. 92 00:07:03,781 --> 00:07:05,262 I love to be a sounding board. 93 00:07:05,262 --> 00:07:07,763 And she said, actually, I want you to move here and build it. 94 00:07:07,763 --> 00:07:17,078 And so I architected this leadership program from scratch, worked a lot with students and alumni and faculty to figure out where the gaps were and what we were offering, and also 95 00:07:17,078 --> 00:07:19,289 fundraised a record amount for the institution. 96 00:07:19,289 --> 00:07:26,673 But what I really loved about that role is I was doing innovation and entrepreneurship inside a static institution inside academia. 97 00:07:26,673 --> 00:07:28,334 But it allowed me to see 98 00:07:28,366 --> 00:07:41,683 all the things I had seen in law practice and the operation of law to see some of the root causes, where some of our lack of imagination, our sort of uh complex way to problem 99 00:07:41,683 --> 00:07:44,635 solving begin in the academy. 100 00:07:44,635 --> 00:07:53,990 And I do think, m I think the kinds of patterns we Yale reverberate through the rest of the academy because so many of our graduates become faculty, right? 101 00:07:53,990 --> 00:07:58,062 So a lot of that culture transcends into the rest of that industry. 102 00:07:58,134 --> 00:08:02,675 And so then I was also the chief innovation officer at the University of Utah Law School and come full circle. 103 00:08:02,675 --> 00:08:08,777 I am now a legal futurist and a product evangelist back in legal technology. 104 00:08:08,777 --> 00:08:16,679 I was really excited to see what the promise for change management meant for our profession with the advent of generative AI. 105 00:08:16,679 --> 00:08:21,060 And as I told that very long-winded story, I think the threads come together, right? 106 00:08:21,060 --> 00:08:28,061 Like, how do we change the way that we deliver legal services given the tools that we have in a more holistic way? 107 00:08:28,061 --> 00:08:28,882 Yeah. 108 00:08:28,882 --> 00:08:34,507 So innovating within legal challenging for a whole host of reasons. 109 00:08:34,507 --> 00:08:43,055 Innovating within a law school, within a university, like, I mean, that sounds like a big hill to climb. 110 00:08:43,055 --> 00:08:48,029 How, how challenging was it to really get things done? 111 00:08:48,029 --> 00:08:51,122 Because when I think of innovation, there's a lot of trial and error. 112 00:08:51,122 --> 00:08:54,865 Um, you kind of have to, you know, un 113 00:08:54,865 --> 00:08:58,537 Unchain the handcuffs and really let people roam free. 114 00:08:58,537 --> 00:09:01,278 And, you know, there's lots of examples. 115 00:09:01,278 --> 00:09:11,772 Uh, I talked about one at the inside practice event, where I saw you in Chicago a few months ago and, uh it was the, it was IBM's wild ducks. 116 00:09:12,072 --> 00:09:21,616 And I've mentioned it once before on the podcast, the CEO at the time, Thomas Watson, um, created a team of about six. 117 00:09:21,756 --> 00:09:23,917 He, I think they called him fellows. 118 00:09:23,981 --> 00:09:30,385 And they were informally known as the wild ducks and they had, uh, they dress differently. 119 00:09:30,385 --> 00:09:32,246 They played by different rules. 120 00:09:32,246 --> 00:09:33,787 They basically had a blank check. 121 00:09:33,787 --> 00:09:36,649 could go in and steal resources from a team. 122 00:09:36,649 --> 00:09:46,615 could bypass processes and you know, they basically had a blank check to go in and conduct experiments within the organization. 123 00:09:46,615 --> 00:09:50,345 And there were lots of interesting innovations that came out of that. 124 00:09:50,345 --> 00:10:00,463 Like I can't see that model working in a law firm or a university where there's so much structure and politics and like, how do you, how do you innovate in that sort of 125 00:10:00,463 --> 00:10:01,433 environment? 126 00:10:01,932 --> 00:10:04,783 Yeah, so I think about innovation as doing things better. 127 00:10:04,783 --> 00:10:08,624 ah And I think doing things better is a function of change management. 128 00:10:08,624 --> 00:10:12,666 And it depends on how large of an impact you want to have. 129 00:10:12,666 --> 00:10:13,036 Right? 130 00:10:13,036 --> 00:10:19,128 At Yale, I was building a transformative program that would change how we did things for 200 years. 131 00:10:19,128 --> 00:10:23,869 It would be the largest program that we had done to date. 132 00:10:23,869 --> 00:10:26,080 And what was interesting is I had 133 00:10:26,196 --> 00:10:28,008 the support of my dean, right? 134 00:10:28,008 --> 00:10:31,992 So I had the most senior person gave me support to do something. 135 00:10:31,992 --> 00:10:41,181 I had very willing and interested students and alumni who knew that there were gaps and wanted to bridge those gaps and create something better for themselves and future 136 00:10:41,181 --> 00:10:42,201 students. 137 00:10:42,201 --> 00:10:50,478 I had really engaged colleagues across other parts of the university, including the business school and the SAI Center for Innovation. 138 00:10:50,478 --> 00:11:00,665 um And so I was able to pull all of those pieces together and my general resourcefulness and hunger allowed me to leverage my resources among the alumni community and among the 139 00:11:00,665 --> 00:11:05,068 Yale community to be able to do that with the political backing of my dean. 140 00:11:05,068 --> 00:11:12,954 That said, it's still really, really difficult to do because change management is actually in the day to day, right? 141 00:11:12,954 --> 00:11:15,135 It doesn't matter how much money you have. 142 00:11:15,135 --> 00:11:19,578 It actually doesn't matter how much political backing you have if the structure itself 143 00:11:19,636 --> 00:11:23,027 is impervious to change, it's very difficult to do these things. 144 00:11:23,027 --> 00:11:33,780 So you can create a really great structure, you can endow a program, but if the people who are in there day to day are not bought into the mission and are not constantly striving 145 00:11:33,780 --> 00:11:42,562 and hungry to improve the processes and review what they're doing in every single iteration, it won't change, right? 146 00:11:42,562 --> 00:11:48,414 And the only place where I saw that done extremely well from a culture perspective was Axiom. 147 00:11:48,494 --> 00:11:52,954 I always tell people, it's like the few years that I was there were just absolutely magic. 148 00:11:52,954 --> 00:12:04,754 And the reason why they were magic is because everybody agreed on what the values were and every decision we made from the smallest to the largest was made with those values in the 149 00:12:04,754 --> 00:12:05,554 background, right? 150 00:12:05,554 --> 00:12:11,834 So as we were trying to decide what we would do, we would look at our values and say, does it align with what this is? 151 00:12:11,834 --> 00:12:16,930 And there was a lot of space to be able to call out senior managers, you know, 152 00:12:16,930 --> 00:12:21,874 top down and bottom up and vertically and diagonally, hey, this doesn't align with our values. 153 00:12:21,874 --> 00:12:22,745 And they would listen. 154 00:12:22,745 --> 00:12:33,513 And so I think this is the part of change management that is not sexy, that's really hard to talk about, which is how you get a large group of people with different motivations to 155 00:12:33,513 --> 00:12:35,925 move toward the same goal. 156 00:12:35,925 --> 00:12:38,427 And there are a lot of facets in that. 157 00:12:38,427 --> 00:12:42,786 But if you don't have mechanisms to hold people accountable, 158 00:12:42,786 --> 00:12:49,258 and you don't have people who are intrinsically motivated and bought in to the mission of what you're doing, you will always struggle. 159 00:12:49,258 --> 00:12:52,859 And I think that's part of what we see in law firms, right? 160 00:12:52,859 --> 00:12:54,970 They're large partnerships. 161 00:12:54,970 --> 00:13:07,753 And so motivating and incentivizing people who are trained, trained in law school and trained in law practice to look out for themselves, feed a team and service clients is 162 00:13:07,753 --> 00:13:11,094 very individual contributor minded. 163 00:13:11,200 --> 00:13:22,526 And so it's really hard to get them to shift and change the way that they operate unless you have a firm that has shared values and your partners all believe in those and are 164 00:13:22,526 --> 00:13:24,849 motivated to move toward those. 165 00:13:24,849 --> 00:13:28,764 And that could be just a function of scale, but I think it's also a function of culture. 166 00:13:29,215 --> 00:13:30,006 For sure. 167 00:13:30,006 --> 00:13:30,726 Yeah. 168 00:13:30,726 --> 00:13:37,830 And innovation has not historically been a part of law firm culture DNA. 169 00:13:37,830 --> 00:13:47,786 It's just not for a number of reasons that we could probably spend a lot of time talking about, but I posted something on LinkedIn, an article recently, it was a bit of a 170 00:13:47,786 --> 00:13:52,958 manifesto on a blueprint, a transformation blueprint for big law. 171 00:13:53,039 --> 00:13:57,245 I'm of the opinion that as we enter into a 172 00:13:57,245 --> 00:14:09,919 a marketplace where we have diminishing marginal costs of legal output and we have increasing capital expenditure, which I'm not talking about buying Harvey and co-counsel 173 00:14:09,919 --> 00:14:10,619 licenses here. 174 00:14:10,619 --> 00:14:18,691 I'm talking about CapEx to create differentiating technology that's going to require funding. 175 00:14:19,551 --> 00:14:25,363 I talk through a bit of a uh radical model, but it's essentially where 176 00:14:25,491 --> 00:14:36,047 you know, a law firm would stand up a standalone entity that would be basically a C Corp, not a partnership where you have different governance models. 177 00:14:36,047 --> 00:14:48,775 um This would necessitate the um rollout of alternative business structures because I think that external capital is not only going to be required from a capital perspective to 178 00:14:48,775 --> 00:14:53,279 really make this next leap into 2.0. 179 00:14:53,279 --> 00:14:57,641 but all the operational discipline that comes with external capital, right? 180 00:14:57,641 --> 00:15:09,095 You've got a board that management is held accountable to, and you have government, governance structures and management is empowered to do things without all the friction 181 00:15:09,115 --> 00:15:12,437 and consensus driven decision-making that happens in law firms. 182 00:15:12,437 --> 00:15:23,501 Like I struggle to, to uh paint a picture in my mind of a, the existing structure creating a, 183 00:15:23,519 --> 00:15:33,514 tech enabled legal services delivery machine and leveraging that as a core piece of infrastructure delivery infrastructure. 184 00:15:33,635 --> 00:15:44,601 There's still going to be plenty of opportunity for humans in the loop, but you know, for the blocking and tackling of legal work, there's a huge opportunity to leverage this tech. 185 00:15:44,601 --> 00:15:52,465 And I just look at how, you know, with a partnership model, there's such a focus on short term profit taking. 186 00:15:52,693 --> 00:15:59,828 And all the, again, the, the friction in the consensus driven decision making, there's very little accountability. 187 00:15:59,828 --> 00:16:07,163 You mentioned it earlier, like willingness to change and listen and divergent interest, having to come together and get aligned. 188 00:16:07,513 --> 00:16:12,697 you know, the partnership model amplifies divergence because it makes it really hard. 189 00:16:12,697 --> 00:16:21,473 And, know, as far as like accountability, like, you know, I've seen it firsthand where, you know, partners that are rainmakers. 190 00:16:22,005 --> 00:16:25,870 played by different rules and you know, the lateral mobility. 191 00:16:25,870 --> 00:16:28,396 That's another interesting dynamic. 192 00:16:28,396 --> 00:16:30,137 also creates toxic workplaces, right? 193 00:16:30,137 --> 00:16:35,290 If you look at the indicators for toxic workplaces, lack of integrity, right? 194 00:16:35,290 --> 00:16:43,344 Rules not applying to everybody in the same way creates real problems in the environment that people work in. 195 00:16:43,344 --> 00:16:44,595 They don't want to work there. 196 00:16:44,595 --> 00:16:45,065 Yeah. 197 00:16:45,065 --> 00:16:55,233 And the most important, I think, aspect of it is not everybody's rowing in the same direction when you don't have a consistent set of processes, rules, and values. 198 00:16:55,233 --> 00:17:01,437 And in order to scale an organization, and I've said this many times on the podcast, there's not one law firm that would qualify for the Fortune 500. 199 00:17:01,437 --> 00:17:08,392 I don't know what K &E's 2025 AMLaw numbers are, but they're 2024 numbers. 200 00:17:08,392 --> 00:17:13,173 They're at like 7.3 billion and the floor on the Fortune 500 is about 7.6. 201 00:17:13,173 --> 00:17:22,373 So it's extremely fragmented, very and KNE is an outlier, you know, most firm average revenue at AML 100 is 1.4 billion. 202 00:17:22,373 --> 00:17:28,713 So how, do we, how do we create the structure necessary for scale? 203 00:17:28,713 --> 00:17:36,153 And I don't see the current model as being, um, uh, a good foundation to lay that on. 204 00:17:36,153 --> 00:17:36,293 don't know. 205 00:17:36,293 --> 00:17:37,709 What is your take on that? 206 00:17:38,254 --> 00:17:41,994 So I spent a lot of time in the weeds of the business of law, right? 207 00:17:41,994 --> 00:17:48,294 I could spend days or an eternity talking about the business factors and levers. 208 00:17:48,294 --> 00:17:54,993 And I don't find that conversation to be interesting because it doesn't compel people enough to actually change. 209 00:17:55,034 --> 00:17:57,754 And what we end up doing is we say, this is the original model. 210 00:17:57,754 --> 00:18:00,054 These are the financial concepts. 211 00:18:00,054 --> 00:18:03,754 And what we need to do to make it better is bring in better people, right? 212 00:18:03,754 --> 00:18:05,294 But I actually don't think that's true. 213 00:18:05,294 --> 00:18:08,102 I think what we need to do is we need to change who we are. 214 00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:15,113 We have to find similarly minded lawyers who know what the mission of lawyering is for them, right? 215 00:18:15,113 --> 00:18:25,458 That'll be different for everybody, but who are aligned about what they're trying to deliver and to whom and the values that they share and then build a business structure 216 00:18:25,458 --> 00:18:26,418 around that. 217 00:18:26,418 --> 00:18:28,299 Because that part's not that hard. 218 00:18:28,299 --> 00:18:34,412 But when you take a container that was meant for a different kind of practice a long time ago, 219 00:18:34,614 --> 00:18:37,806 And then you're just saying, well, if I get better people in it, it'll work. 220 00:18:37,806 --> 00:18:40,898 And I was like, no, there are problems with our system and the container. 221 00:18:40,898 --> 00:18:45,290 And we can talk all day about the billable hour and we can talk all day about the partnership model. 222 00:18:45,290 --> 00:18:47,141 And I think your solution is a good one. 223 00:18:47,141 --> 00:18:51,203 em And I think it is an option to try to make that better. 224 00:18:51,203 --> 00:18:56,506 But fundamentally, we as lawyers have to ask ourselves, what are we doing? 225 00:18:56,506 --> 00:18:56,916 Right? 226 00:18:56,916 --> 00:18:59,788 We have a fiduciary duty to our clients. 227 00:18:59,788 --> 00:19:03,820 We are given this right to practice law. 228 00:19:03,948 --> 00:19:07,940 with an obligation to serve the legal needs of people. 229 00:19:07,940 --> 00:19:11,101 And we have a monopoly for it, right? 230 00:19:11,101 --> 00:19:14,663 And instead we're gonna create a model where we're miserable. 231 00:19:14,663 --> 00:19:23,707 Like you look at the wellness numbers of lawyers and any other profession that had such harm would not be in existence. 232 00:19:23,707 --> 00:19:31,330 But we allow that high rate of harm among our population and that's just normal to accept. 233 00:19:31,564 --> 00:19:33,946 And then we go back to saying it's the billable hour. 234 00:19:33,946 --> 00:19:39,640 So I think the form is broken, which is why I like your approach of like, let's start with something else. 235 00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:46,144 Let's figure out who should be making management decisions, how that should be structured, what accountability should look like. 236 00:19:46,144 --> 00:19:51,758 But I think also fundamentally, we need to ask ourselves what we're doing in legal services. 237 00:19:51,758 --> 00:19:53,890 Like what kind of services are we trying to deliver? 238 00:19:53,890 --> 00:19:54,991 Who are we trying to help? 239 00:19:54,991 --> 00:19:58,293 We have a 92 % access to justice gap, right? 240 00:19:58,293 --> 00:19:59,822 In what other profession? 241 00:19:59,822 --> 00:20:04,222 If we didn't meet 92 % of people's needs, would we be around again? 242 00:20:04,442 --> 00:20:12,382 So we've been lucky for a really long time, but I think what technology starts to do is make us have this conversation about our model. 243 00:20:12,382 --> 00:20:14,842 Like does our model actually serve its purpose? 244 00:20:14,842 --> 00:20:16,702 The answer is no, right? 245 00:20:16,702 --> 00:20:23,142 A lot of people are getting very wealthy in that model, but most people are actually pretty miserable in that model. 246 00:20:23,142 --> 00:20:26,162 And that forces us to ask what we do. 247 00:20:26,182 --> 00:20:26,552 And 248 00:20:26,552 --> 00:20:35,534 Part of what we also get to ask is how can we achieve the goals of helping people navigate their lives, whether they're business lives or their personal lives, in a more efficient 249 00:20:35,534 --> 00:20:36,085 manner? 250 00:20:36,085 --> 00:20:38,265 And now we have chat GPT, right? 251 00:20:38,265 --> 00:20:47,358 We now have large language models that allow us to start thinking about know-how, advice, legal information, right? 252 00:20:47,358 --> 00:20:51,362 Who is entitled to know how the laws that govern their lives work? 253 00:20:51,362 --> 00:20:52,399 I would say everybody. 254 00:20:52,399 --> 00:20:55,850 I think everybody should know how the laws around them 255 00:20:55,850 --> 00:21:06,616 impact them and how to navigate these complex systems because we neither have enough lawyers nor enough uh lawyers doing the kind of work to help people do that. 256 00:21:06,616 --> 00:21:16,301 But I do think looking at all of these factors that are changing at the same time, we get to ask what we as a profession want and then we get to build businesses to support that 257 00:21:16,301 --> 00:21:19,272 for those of us who want to build businesses in the profession. 258 00:21:19,315 --> 00:21:19,715 Yeah. 259 00:21:19,715 --> 00:21:36,070 The big constraint for, guess The big roadblock for the, the Big Law 2.0 model is the ABS rules and, and what, eight, the ABA model rule 5.4 that, you know, prohibits non-legal 260 00:21:36,070 --> 00:21:37,050 ownership. 261 00:21:37,050 --> 00:21:49,203 And I have talked to many really smart people in the space and one school of thought is that, well, the ABA is not going to change that rule willingly. 262 00:21:49,257 --> 00:21:54,370 because it's creating a protection mechanism for the industry and lawyers run the ABA. 263 00:21:54,370 --> 00:21:56,771 So I actually have a different perspective on that. 264 00:21:56,771 --> 00:21:59,383 I'd be curious about your thoughts on this. 265 00:21:59,383 --> 00:22:02,774 I think lawyers are going to be the ones who drive this change. 266 00:22:02,774 --> 00:22:12,189 And I think the switch is going to flip when people realize, when lawyers realize that the current model is incompatible. 267 00:22:12,189 --> 00:22:19,073 The current business model is incompatible with what the future state needs to look like in order to create the scale. 268 00:22:19,143 --> 00:22:22,336 necessary to create that level of differentiation. 269 00:22:22,336 --> 00:22:32,084 You know, if you want to niche down and hyper focus, that's, uh, then you can, you can apply, you can take the current model and apply it. 270 00:22:32,084 --> 00:22:38,069 If you want to achieve a level of scale where you can truly create differentiation. 271 00:22:38,069 --> 00:22:42,953 Um, I think, I think lawyers are going to have an aha moment and go, you know what? 272 00:22:42,953 --> 00:22:44,014 We, need to change this. 273 00:22:44,014 --> 00:22:44,844 So I don't know. 274 00:22:44,844 --> 00:22:48,349 What do you think about the sentiment out there with 275 00:22:48,349 --> 00:22:50,172 respect to alternative business structures. 276 00:22:50,172 --> 00:23:00,859 And we have two states, one of which is yours, that are experimenting here, but this would need to accelerate in order for the model I propose to get traction. 277 00:23:01,140 --> 00:23:06,701 Yeah, my hot take is that we already have a non-lawyer ownership. 278 00:23:06,701 --> 00:23:16,444 Because if you're going to measure ownership by debt or equity, we have plenty of litigation funders who have outstanding debt with many of the cases that are happening. 279 00:23:16,444 --> 00:23:19,145 There are other creative ways to do this, right? 280 00:23:19,145 --> 00:23:24,366 ah But debt is a form of ownership, I think. 281 00:23:24,366 --> 00:23:26,377 And again, that's a personal personal opinion. 282 00:23:26,377 --> 00:23:34,189 And so I think we have folks who are investing in firms or partially owning firms who are not just lawyers. 283 00:23:34,189 --> 00:23:39,210 And I think there have been delicate decisions coming down to parse out why that's OK. 284 00:23:39,210 --> 00:23:43,431 ah I think there needs to be space to have this kind of iteration. 285 00:23:43,431 --> 00:23:45,912 So Utah was the first mover in this. 286 00:23:45,912 --> 00:23:50,729 They created five different kinds of structures which could come through the sandbox. 287 00:23:50,729 --> 00:23:52,783 So the Utah sandbox was a pilot. 288 00:23:52,783 --> 00:24:04,003 that was led by our Utah Supreme Court, essentially seeing just the volume of legal needs that were coming in and just realizing in our traditional system, there's not really a way 289 00:24:04,003 --> 00:24:05,863 to address this effectively. 290 00:24:05,863 --> 00:24:13,663 So they said, you know, there are here are five different ways that you could do this, including fee sharing, right, with non-lawyers. 291 00:24:13,663 --> 00:24:15,403 And they put up a structure. 292 00:24:15,403 --> 00:24:20,974 They've since changed that last year to minimize those buckets down to three. 293 00:24:20,974 --> 00:24:27,456 uh and also narrow that focus toward Utah uh and Utah access to justice kind of benefits. 294 00:24:27,456 --> 00:24:37,279 uh I'm on the Innovation Committee, which looks at general innovation in Utah, but I spent a lot of time around the sandbox entities and having conversation with leadership uh 295 00:24:37,279 --> 00:24:38,907 around what the objectives are. 296 00:24:38,907 --> 00:24:45,954 And I think some of our challenges as the first mover in this is we wanted to have adequate regulation and reporting and vetting. 297 00:24:45,954 --> 00:24:54,709 which depending on who you ask, some folks think that our levels are too high as far as reporting requirements and uh qualification requirements. 298 00:24:54,709 --> 00:25:01,783 And so I think you look at like Arizona and they've chosen one lane uh and they have slightly different requirements. 299 00:25:01,783 --> 00:25:07,797 so in our committees, we're always having conversations with other states to see what they're doing, right? 300 00:25:07,797 --> 00:25:12,769 Minnesota is looking at AI um and potential sandbox pieces there. 301 00:25:12,769 --> 00:25:13,009 So. 302 00:25:13,009 --> 00:25:14,134 uh 303 00:25:14,134 --> 00:25:17,275 A lot of interesting things are coming that way. 304 00:25:17,275 --> 00:25:27,960 And I think that we are rightly concerned as a profession to have non-lawyers have any sort of leverage or business interest in our entities. 305 00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:35,072 And there are ways to structure this um to make sure that we're following all of our needs. 306 00:25:35,072 --> 00:25:43,885 we meet like, it's just, I feel like it's negligent as a profession to not meet the majority of the legal needs. 307 00:25:43,885 --> 00:25:44,765 out there. 308 00:25:46,057 --> 00:25:49,938 Yeah, well, how much I mean, this has been done in other countries, right? 309 00:25:49,938 --> 00:25:51,611 You the Legal Services Act in the UK. 310 00:25:51,611 --> 00:25:53,622 That was like 10, 15 years ago. 311 00:25:53,802 --> 00:25:56,984 I know not a lot has changed as a result of that. 312 00:25:56,984 --> 00:26:09,752 I think now that the means of legal production are shifting rapidly, the likelihood for change is much higher now than when the Legal Services Act was first put in place. 313 00:26:09,752 --> 00:26:10,913 But how much 314 00:26:10,929 --> 00:26:19,485 Are Utah and Arizona, I'm not sure if you know the answer to this question, but are we leveraging the learnings there to help figure out? 315 00:26:19,485 --> 00:26:22,537 It sounds like we're kind of starting from scratch. 316 00:26:23,848 --> 00:26:31,320 I think we're, I mean, I don't know who everybody's perspectives when they had first initially put this together, there were a lot of smart people involved. 317 00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:34,051 And so I know they looked at a lot of international resources. 318 00:26:34,051 --> 00:26:36,462 I just don't know exactly to what extent. 319 00:26:36,462 --> 00:26:43,703 I know that there are a lot of conversations that the committees across states wanting to do things like this are having, right? 320 00:26:43,703 --> 00:26:48,955 There's a real desire to share learnings and best practices state to state. 321 00:26:48,955 --> 00:26:53,186 And I think Utah leading the pack really gave permission. 322 00:26:53,186 --> 00:27:00,648 to a lot of other states to at least em investigate what they should do to be able to help needs. 323 00:27:00,648 --> 00:27:09,351 I think we focus in the UPL discussion and the ABS discussion, we focus a lot on lawyers and the way that lawyers have done what they're doing. 324 00:27:09,351 --> 00:27:14,532 We don't focus as much on clients, what they actually need. 325 00:27:14,532 --> 00:27:21,894 Can we bridge the gap of what they actually need, which is practical guidance, not necessarily legal advice. 326 00:27:21,974 --> 00:27:29,158 And we forget that WebMD gave us a lot of information on how to navigate conversations with our doctors. 327 00:27:29,178 --> 00:27:41,585 That GPT and Google are now giving us much better ways to navigate the legal system and the laws that govern us and the practical guidance we need to navigate our lives. 328 00:27:41,585 --> 00:27:47,428 And I'm in no way saying that people should be getting legal advice from a large language model, right? 329 00:27:47,428 --> 00:27:50,754 But it does help us give a contextual window. 330 00:27:50,754 --> 00:27:51,872 It gives us 331 00:27:51,872 --> 00:27:54,645 and ability to have a higher level conversation. 332 00:27:54,645 --> 00:28:03,382 It gives people an understanding about how the rules generally apply and what considerations they should make as they're choosing legal counsel, whether they're 333 00:28:03,382 --> 00:28:09,248 choosing legal counsel, whether they want to em engage in some sort of adversarial process, right? 334 00:28:09,248 --> 00:28:17,548 Like there's a big gap between what I need to know before I find a lawyer and em what I'm gonna get from. 335 00:28:17,548 --> 00:28:20,840 that lawyer and we just don't have that conversation often enough. 336 00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:32,266 And many of the people who are engaging some of the most sophisticated and intelligent lawyers out there, those people have sophisticated subject matter expertise, right? 337 00:28:32,266 --> 00:28:35,768 They're able to ask the kinds of questions that they need to ask. 338 00:28:35,768 --> 00:28:38,029 They have a context for it. 339 00:28:38,069 --> 00:28:39,990 I think when we discuss 340 00:28:40,074 --> 00:28:48,329 UPL and ABS and these different structures, we have to think about all of those other legal needs and figuring out how we can just share information. 341 00:28:48,329 --> 00:28:51,631 There will be, excuse me, virtual law firms, right? 342 00:28:51,631 --> 00:29:04,428 And alternative structure small firms who will be able to leverage the current existing technology to be able to provide specific like subject matter expertise with that, as well 343 00:29:04,428 --> 00:29:08,736 as educating the populations, excuse me, in their communities. 344 00:29:08,736 --> 00:29:10,737 about what they provide, right? 345 00:29:10,737 --> 00:29:15,690 Like I think you and I talked about this a little bit in our previous conversation, like where the opportunities are. 346 00:29:15,690 --> 00:29:18,288 There's always gonna be things happening on the fray. 347 00:29:18,288 --> 00:29:27,916 There are also gonna be big firms who gonna be adopting huge innovations by whether creating something in-house or acquiring some sort of innovation or tech tool like we've 348 00:29:27,916 --> 00:29:29,116 seen many firms do. 349 00:29:29,116 --> 00:29:32,618 um That will be a harder change. 350 00:29:32,694 --> 00:29:37,225 management process because they're so large and because they've been around for a while, right? 351 00:29:37,225 --> 00:29:49,329 So there are norms that need to be overcome, but there are a lot of small players who I think can come in and really leverage this data, have a smaller portfolio or a more narrow 352 00:29:49,329 --> 00:29:58,542 portfolio of offerings and really specialize in what they're offering, where like, how are we going to define the technology as an additional employee? 353 00:29:58,542 --> 00:29:59,852 Is it an employee? 354 00:29:59,950 --> 00:30:04,172 ah Is it, know, does it, it's not going to have an ownership stake. 355 00:30:04,172 --> 00:30:08,455 How does that come into UPL and ABS? 356 00:30:08,455 --> 00:30:19,731 So I'm really excited about the smaller players who know that this is just a time to restructure the model that hasn't worked for them and hasn't worked for their clients, who 357 00:30:19,731 --> 00:30:28,962 take a client first view and try to create a solution and a service option that helps those people while also 358 00:30:28,962 --> 00:30:31,200 following the laws that currently exist. 359 00:30:31,315 --> 00:30:35,468 It's an exciting time for challenger firms in this space right now. 360 00:30:35,468 --> 00:30:39,371 It really is the ones that really think long-term. 361 00:30:39,371 --> 00:30:41,752 You know, I'm doing a little experiment. 362 00:30:41,752 --> 00:30:53,160 So we hired someone recently from another company who had a non-compete and we wanted to make sure that we uh steer clear of any sort of infringement on that. 363 00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:55,362 So we hired a labor and employment attorney. 364 00:30:55,362 --> 00:30:56,403 He did a great job. 365 00:30:56,403 --> 00:30:58,154 Well, we recorded all the calls. 366 00:30:58,154 --> 00:31:00,275 We documented all the questions we asked. 367 00:31:00,275 --> 00:31:03,056 And then this, this experiment is still in process. 368 00:31:03,056 --> 00:31:14,079 So I don't have any results yet, but, I'm basically going to take, uh, all of the documentation and I'm going to put it into the generic AI models and I'm going to compare 369 00:31:14,079 --> 00:31:17,410 the output and the answers to those questions. 370 00:31:17,410 --> 00:31:20,911 And, know, we're, not a big buyer of legal services. 371 00:31:21,121 --> 00:31:29,535 and I'm doing it not because I don't want to go hire a labor and employment attorney for important matters, but I'm doing it really just as a, 372 00:31:29,535 --> 00:31:33,647 comparison, like how good is the output and the questions? 373 00:31:33,647 --> 00:31:45,333 Now, if I were a big buyer of legal services, I would be doing this with maybe some different intentions and you have to think that this is happening already on the buy side. 374 00:31:45,934 --> 00:31:58,120 So, you know, I think it's just a matter of time before we're going to, and who knows, maybe we're already there, reach parity in terms of output on certain types of matters. 375 00:31:58,120 --> 00:31:59,291 um 376 00:31:59,291 --> 00:32:05,303 or maybe even, you know, superior output, um, certainly at a much lower cost. 377 00:32:05,303 --> 00:32:14,956 So it's going to be interesting to see how the buy side, because so much of what law firms do is driven by the buy side, right? 378 00:32:14,956 --> 00:32:18,177 It's that's when law firms change their practices, right? 379 00:32:18,177 --> 00:32:20,928 It's when the gunny client says you're going to do this. 380 00:32:20,928 --> 00:32:23,568 Um, or I'm going to take my business elsewhere. 381 00:32:23,568 --> 00:32:25,799 So yeah, I think 382 00:32:26,376 --> 00:32:31,139 I just think there needs to be a bigger conversation about what is the valuable work that we do, right? 383 00:32:31,139 --> 00:32:38,362 This is where the conversation is getting pushed on LinkedIn and among our groups, like what is value added service? 384 00:32:38,526 --> 00:32:50,087 And I would argue that much of the value added service outside of a few discrete situations is general business advice with regard to how the legal structures exist. 385 00:32:50,087 --> 00:32:52,219 It's not necessarily legal advice. 386 00:32:52,219 --> 00:32:56,272 I've been doing this for 20 years and I've watched the same transaction over and over again. 387 00:32:56,272 --> 00:32:58,544 Here are some best practices. 388 00:32:58,645 --> 00:33:02,588 Just like in your case, I labor employment lawyer who's seen this play out many times. 389 00:33:02,588 --> 00:33:04,710 Here's some best practices. 390 00:33:04,726 --> 00:33:12,159 and how you guys should operate in your interview process to make sure that you have done everything correctly, right? 391 00:33:12,159 --> 00:33:13,590 Belt and suspenders. 392 00:33:13,590 --> 00:33:15,510 Is that legal advice? 393 00:33:16,291 --> 00:33:18,992 I don't think in many cases it is. 394 00:33:18,992 --> 00:33:23,314 I think it's a function of these are smart people who know how the rules work. 395 00:33:23,314 --> 00:33:26,895 They've seen people inside and outside the lines. 396 00:33:26,895 --> 00:33:30,976 I'd like them to tell me how I don't fall outside the lines. 397 00:33:31,657 --> 00:33:34,718 I just want to follow the rules and do this correctly. 398 00:33:35,394 --> 00:33:43,691 And I think there's a real interesting model around that as people just want to agree on how to operate through something together. 399 00:33:43,691 --> 00:33:48,566 I was having a conversation with a lawyer about this who was in my yoga class, cause I teach yoga on Saturdays. 400 00:33:48,566 --> 00:33:57,784 And I was saying, you know, like I'm happy to get a chat GPT contract on something where I know I'm not going to dispute, like I'm not going to go into litigation with someone. 401 00:33:57,784 --> 00:34:00,536 We just agree on these general terms. 402 00:34:00,536 --> 00:34:03,238 And what it is, it's a way of holding each other accountable. 403 00:34:03,702 --> 00:34:14,660 And so I think oftentimes looking at some of the ways that we operate in business and asking what is the function of these things and are our clients, especially our 404 00:34:14,660 --> 00:34:27,979 non-lawyer, non-JD clients, are those clients comfortable enough using the documentation they get for many of these, these technology solutions over going to a lawyer and spending 405 00:34:27,979 --> 00:34:28,930 that kind of money. 406 00:34:28,930 --> 00:34:32,598 And I think we're going to get to a place where they are going to get comfortable. 407 00:34:32,598 --> 00:34:33,810 And then what happens, right? 408 00:34:33,810 --> 00:34:37,185 When there are risk tolerances, this is good enough for us. 409 00:34:38,248 --> 00:34:39,389 Where do we go from there? 410 00:34:39,389 --> 00:34:39,849 Yeah. 411 00:34:39,849 --> 00:34:43,191 So, uh, my wife and I own five gyms here in St. 412 00:34:43,191 --> 00:34:44,640 Louis and we've moved one. 413 00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:46,952 So we've signed six commercial leases. 414 00:34:47,072 --> 00:34:53,114 Commercial leases are massively long and verbose and there's all sorts of potential gotchas in them. 415 00:34:53,535 --> 00:35:04,719 Our process for, with these leases is I would sit down with my broker and we would highlight who's negotiated hundreds, not thousands or, you know, been on the, on the buy 416 00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:07,981 side and the sell side, probably hundreds, if not thousands. 417 00:35:07,981 --> 00:35:08,893 And we would 418 00:35:08,893 --> 00:35:11,194 like pick the low hanging fruit. 419 00:35:11,194 --> 00:35:12,015 You know what I mean? 420 00:35:12,015 --> 00:35:24,882 uh, just the, the, real easy stuff before it, the, last iteration would always get, um, reviewed by an attorney just to make sure we didn't miss something or there wasn't some, 421 00:35:24,882 --> 00:35:27,123 but that was pre chat GPT. 422 00:35:27,123 --> 00:35:31,393 If I were doing that now, I would leverage chat GPT in a big way. 423 00:35:31,393 --> 00:35:37,961 I just would say it's right, wrong, UPL, not like that's what I would do as a small business person. 424 00:35:37,961 --> 00:35:40,321 to, to minimize my legal costs. 425 00:35:40,472 --> 00:35:41,112 and you know what? 426 00:35:41,112 --> 00:35:42,502 I think it would be damn effective. 427 00:35:42,502 --> 00:35:51,915 You know what I do now in all transparency, when I get an NDA as I don't even read it, like if it's not ours, I put it in chat, between say what's, know, cause they're usually 428 00:35:51,915 --> 00:35:53,545 low risk documents. 429 00:35:54,406 --> 00:35:56,506 and they, they never go in front of a lawyer. 430 00:35:56,506 --> 00:35:59,757 have our director of business operations look for stuff that doesn't make sense. 431 00:35:59,757 --> 00:36:02,448 They're two pages, but that's usually my first step. 432 00:36:02,448 --> 00:36:06,973 And I know I'm not alone and people can furrow their brow and 433 00:36:06,973 --> 00:36:12,742 wave their finger at me, but that's how, as a small business person, you get things done. 434 00:36:12,944 --> 00:36:19,014 In big corporations where there's more at stake, you can't do what I'm doing, but that's how small businesses are doing it. 435 00:36:19,014 --> 00:36:20,831 So it's just a matter of time. 436 00:36:20,831 --> 00:36:22,752 and it's like, it's good enough, right? 437 00:36:22,752 --> 00:36:25,018 It's good enough, and that's how people are gonna make their decisions. 438 00:36:25,018 --> 00:36:35,702 I would argue that even in large corporations, there are oftentimes decisions being made without the scrutiny of the smartest lawyer, subject matter expert on that decision, 439 00:36:35,702 --> 00:36:36,302 right? 440 00:36:36,302 --> 00:36:44,428 corporate decisions being made, their employment decisions being made, their sales decisions being made that have legal consequences, right? 441 00:36:44,428 --> 00:36:52,676 That do have some legal adjacency, but because of how large organizations are, how bureaucratic they are, how siloed they are, right? 442 00:36:52,676 --> 00:36:54,287 There's not going to be a lawyer. 443 00:36:54,287 --> 00:36:58,110 There are judgment calls being made every single day about this. 444 00:36:58,110 --> 00:37:04,295 And this is why anytime we talk about these big conversations, I always want to pull us back and say, like, what is our mission, right? 445 00:37:04,295 --> 00:37:05,858 What is our mission as lawyers? 446 00:37:05,858 --> 00:37:07,529 What is our mission as law firms? 447 00:37:07,529 --> 00:37:09,820 What is our mission as legal departments? 448 00:37:09,820 --> 00:37:12,362 What are we trying to achieve? 449 00:37:12,362 --> 00:37:15,694 And let's make decisions according to those principles. 450 00:37:15,694 --> 00:37:20,087 It becomes much easier because what our tendency is to do is to issue spot. 451 00:37:20,087 --> 00:37:22,268 We love going down rabbit holes. 452 00:37:22,268 --> 00:37:23,068 What if? 453 00:37:23,068 --> 00:37:26,120 The number of people, if I have one more person tell me about hallucinations. 454 00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:29,092 was like, why are you looking over there? 455 00:37:29,092 --> 00:37:31,613 Yes, yes, we will figure out hallucinations. 456 00:37:31,613 --> 00:37:33,054 It'll keep getting better. 457 00:37:33,410 --> 00:37:37,734 The technology will keep getting better and also PS humans make mistakes constantly. 458 00:37:37,734 --> 00:37:40,976 Our memories are very fallible, right? 459 00:37:40,976 --> 00:37:53,257 And so it drives me crazy when such smart people trained to problem solve and think logically and communicate effectively when turned on themselves and turned on their 460 00:37:53,257 --> 00:38:02,304 businesses really struggle to use that kind of inquiry that's more directed and organized. 461 00:38:02,345 --> 00:38:03,225 Yeah. 462 00:38:03,446 --> 00:38:09,589 Well, one thing I wanted to talk to you about, we've been riffing here, which has been really good. 463 00:38:09,610 --> 00:38:12,111 I wrote a nice agenda. 464 00:38:12,312 --> 00:38:13,833 There was a couple of things on here. 465 00:38:13,833 --> 00:38:17,515 No, I'm the host, it's on me. 466 00:38:17,555 --> 00:38:19,306 But this has been really good conversation. 467 00:38:19,306 --> 00:38:21,538 And it always is when we riff. 468 00:38:21,538 --> 00:38:27,261 But I wanted to get your perspective, and you and I talked about it a little bit the last time, like the disconnect. 469 00:38:27,649 --> 00:38:32,363 I don't think you were in the session, but I did a presentation at that inside practice event that I mentioned earlier. 470 00:38:32,363 --> 00:38:42,762 And I talked about how there's been a 2000 % increase in innovation resources in the last 10 years, 20 X, the number of people that there were 10 years ago in innovation roles and 471 00:38:42,762 --> 00:38:44,103 big law. 472 00:38:44,103 --> 00:38:51,078 And there was a, the law department operation survey by the Blixstein group, which is very reputable. 473 00:38:51,078 --> 00:38:56,433 Um, one of the questions was, is your law firm partner innovative? 474 00:38:56,433 --> 00:38:57,109 And. 475 00:38:57,109 --> 00:39:00,149 almost two thirds either disagreed or strongly disagreed. 476 00:39:00,149 --> 00:39:01,289 And so we have this disconnect. 477 00:39:01,289 --> 00:39:04,969 So I always like to get people's perspective on what's driving that. 478 00:39:04,969 --> 00:39:09,409 I have my own theories and my listeners are probably tired of hearing innovation theater. 479 00:39:09,829 --> 00:39:13,869 But what do you feel like is driving that disconnect? 480 00:39:14,634 --> 00:39:16,364 Lack of relationships. 481 00:39:17,319 --> 00:39:18,639 Explain what you mean. 482 00:39:18,639 --> 00:39:30,145 this all comes down to the fact that we as a profession have not continued our best practices around the relationships with our clients. 483 00:39:30,145 --> 00:39:40,430 ah There's an amazing post David Wang had about some of the work they're doing about Cooley's AI principles and how they're having a dialogue with their clients. 484 00:39:40,570 --> 00:39:47,834 And a lot of what's missing in this client lawyer disconnect is actual conversations. 485 00:39:47,894 --> 00:39:50,555 about what clients want and need. 486 00:39:50,615 --> 00:39:54,687 Regular sit downs where I'm not going to bill you, right? 487 00:39:54,687 --> 00:40:03,320 Where I genuinely want to understand your business, your business objectives, your long-term strategy and where I can help. 488 00:40:03,380 --> 00:40:08,882 Not how much of that can I take to make billable, but where can I actually help? 489 00:40:09,203 --> 00:40:17,226 And so I think the actual disconnect comes that in-house lawyers will come to their outside counsel when there's a big problem. 490 00:40:17,762 --> 00:40:23,936 but they're not having regular discourse around what's happening with their business most of the time, right? 491 00:40:23,936 --> 00:40:34,232 Like these seem like discrete issues, they're very expensive to fix, but the relationship itself isn't one where I proactively as outside counsel regularly sit down with my client 492 00:40:34,232 --> 00:40:37,854 and figure out what's going on quarter to quarter in their business. 493 00:40:37,854 --> 00:40:44,780 And I share best practices and I give them general advice and then I figure out where we can help to get ahead of problems. 494 00:40:44,780 --> 00:40:48,593 And then we sit down and we talk about what technology solutions we're using, right? 495 00:40:48,593 --> 00:40:50,105 Have you even started working on this? 496 00:40:50,105 --> 00:40:52,237 What part of your work are you doing it in? 497 00:40:52,237 --> 00:40:57,861 Instead, we're receiving RFPs with extensive questions that ask every single technology you have. 498 00:40:57,861 --> 00:41:02,064 Are you going to explain the entire Microsoft Office suite in the RFP? 499 00:41:02,325 --> 00:41:02,635 Right? 500 00:41:02,635 --> 00:41:05,888 Like that, that, that is circumventing the conversation. 501 00:41:05,888 --> 00:41:13,044 So whenever I see inefficiencies like that in our profession, my immediate answer is like, we're not having the real conversation. 502 00:41:13,442 --> 00:41:22,291 We're not having the relationship discussion of what I'm here to do for you and how much I'm invested in your business and positive outcomes about what's happening. 503 00:41:22,291 --> 00:41:23,982 We're not having proactive discussions. 504 00:41:23,982 --> 00:41:26,354 not having scheduled regular meetings. 505 00:41:26,655 --> 00:41:30,698 I'm not coming to you when I see something new and interesting that I think could benefit you. 506 00:41:31,139 --> 00:41:33,201 I'm just calling, responding, right? 507 00:41:33,201 --> 00:41:34,602 I'm reactionary. 508 00:41:35,029 --> 00:41:36,030 That's a really good point. 509 00:41:36,030 --> 00:41:36,440 Yeah. 510 00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:39,813 You know, this really, this makes me think of a very recent story. 511 00:41:39,813 --> 00:41:46,378 Like yesterday, this week, um, we are, my CFO and I are shopping for a new bank. 512 00:41:46,438 --> 00:41:57,207 we're starting to grow and outgrow our existing bank and, um, our, our, one of our investors, TLTF put us in touch with several, several banks that, that fund venture backed 513 00:41:57,207 --> 00:41:58,288 startups. 514 00:41:58,408 --> 00:42:02,392 Well, I had a bank yesterday who asked for all sorts of stuff. 515 00:42:02,392 --> 00:42:04,319 Their intake process is incredible. 516 00:42:04,319 --> 00:42:06,270 They wanted our pitch deck. 517 00:42:06,270 --> 00:42:09,381 They wanted a video of me presenting the pitch deck. 518 00:42:09,381 --> 00:42:13,833 couldn't, I was so flattered that they actually wanted to understand my business. 519 00:42:13,833 --> 00:42:17,514 They want to understand our, they want to look at our contracts. 520 00:42:17,514 --> 00:42:23,777 And now a lot of this is risk mitigation, but the investor deck is very like strategic. 521 00:42:23,777 --> 00:42:25,288 That's not going to help them mitigate risk. 522 00:42:25,288 --> 00:42:29,820 That's going to help them understand our business and our full potential. 523 00:42:29,820 --> 00:42:30,790 So yeah, you know what? 524 00:42:30,790 --> 00:42:31,590 I've never had a lawyer. 525 00:42:31,590 --> 00:42:33,865 I've been an entrepreneur for 32 years. 526 00:42:33,865 --> 00:42:36,546 I started my first business before I was old enough to drink. 527 00:42:36,546 --> 00:42:40,508 I've never heard, had a law firm ask me for anything like that. 528 00:42:40,508 --> 00:42:44,511 Um, as part of their intake process, what a good first step. 529 00:42:44,511 --> 00:42:45,401 was totally impressed. 530 00:42:45,401 --> 00:42:48,872 These guys are probably going to win our business because they want to understand us. 531 00:42:50,058 --> 00:42:56,720 Yeah, and this is again, this is what's coming if you if you talk to the folks who are in pricing, right, like Toby Brown and I have been dear friends for a really long time. 532 00:42:56,720 --> 00:42:58,920 We talk about profitability and pricing. 533 00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:09,203 And it never ceases to amaze me the miraculous reactions that he gets when he tells people that he would go out and meet with clients, right, as as a member of the firm who wasn't a 534 00:43:09,203 --> 00:43:16,825 billing lawyer, to have proactive discussions about what their strategic vision was, right, where they were going, what the hurdles were. 535 00:43:16,825 --> 00:43:20,226 These are very human relationships. 536 00:43:20,226 --> 00:43:21,927 things to do. 537 00:43:21,927 --> 00:43:25,748 These people pay us lots of money as lawyers. 538 00:43:25,748 --> 00:43:29,640 And the way that we approach them is like, we almost like feel bothered, right? 539 00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:38,994 Like it's like, because we have so much on our plates, we oftentimes don't even realize the tone that we have with clients or how quickly we're getting back to them, right? 540 00:43:38,994 --> 00:43:41,855 There's not even room for the proactive behavior. 541 00:43:41,855 --> 00:43:46,117 And I think this is where AI is so useful because it helps to shift that. 542 00:43:46,117 --> 00:43:48,778 And a lot of the time intensive 543 00:43:49,292 --> 00:43:56,694 things that take us away from client service and client management and being proactive and to your point, asking these questions, right? 544 00:43:56,694 --> 00:43:58,105 Like, help me learn about your business. 545 00:43:58,105 --> 00:44:09,207 Imagine you went with a lawyer who's trying to pitch you and they've done full research on your industry, everything you've said, every podcast you've done, all of your competitors, 546 00:44:09,328 --> 00:44:09,728 right? 547 00:44:09,728 --> 00:44:17,910 And they've come in and they've told you what they think they understand about your industry and your business and asked how you can help or what they're missing. 548 00:44:18,454 --> 00:44:20,405 What would that do to your experience? 549 00:44:20,969 --> 00:44:23,398 It would make them stand out tremendously. 550 00:44:26,687 --> 00:44:29,358 Yeah, it's a well, mean it. 551 00:44:29,358 --> 00:44:40,154 I hope we're trending in that direction because I feel like with all the transformation that's taking place in the industry right now, what you're describing is going to be more 552 00:44:40,154 --> 00:44:41,625 and more important. 553 00:44:41,625 --> 00:44:47,108 You know, I have to say as a, we are info dash is a legal collaboration platform. 554 00:44:47,108 --> 00:44:52,791 We use the term intranet and extranet because the market knows what those, but there's such dated terms. 555 00:44:52,892 --> 00:44:55,849 Um, I honestly dislike them, but 556 00:44:55,849 --> 00:45:03,112 You know, our extra net offering is a mechanism through which law firms can share information with their clients. 557 00:45:03,152 --> 00:45:07,464 And this it's a bit, it's very different than it gets deployed in their environment. 558 00:45:07,464 --> 00:45:12,816 So they could share things like financial analytics, legal project management, status and tasks. 559 00:45:12,816 --> 00:45:20,740 They could share information about the legal team that's billing time to the matters that the clients are paying for very, very easily. 560 00:45:20,740 --> 00:45:22,290 And now we're just starting this journey. 561 00:45:22,290 --> 00:45:24,531 So I can't put a stake in the ground and say, 562 00:45:24,531 --> 00:45:28,423 Law firms aren't interested in that because that that's not true exactly. 563 00:45:28,423 --> 00:45:39,473 But when we were preparing for this, we wanted, we did a survey of 40, we hired a firm, talked to 40 global 100 firms and the questions that they asked, there was very low 564 00:45:39,473 --> 00:45:46,809 appetite for law firms to share anything other than past invoices, but like all those other things. 565 00:45:46,809 --> 00:45:52,864 And I understand why you wouldn't want to, um, you know, your whip time entries that have to be massaged. 566 00:45:52,864 --> 00:45:54,335 And I get that. 567 00:45:54,335 --> 00:46:02,010 But why not share financial analytics about and the feedback that we got was, well, we don't want to give our clients something they can use against us. 568 00:46:02,010 --> 00:46:03,892 Say, look how much money we're spending with you. 569 00:46:03,892 --> 00:46:08,085 And I'm thinking, they know, they know already how much money they're spending. 570 00:46:08,085 --> 00:46:09,996 You're not giving them anything they don't know. 571 00:46:09,996 --> 00:46:16,560 You're making it easier for them and you're presenting it at a consumable way where they can drill down lots of interesting options. 572 00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:17,307 I don't know. 573 00:46:17,307 --> 00:46:18,418 a broken relationship. 574 00:46:18,418 --> 00:46:19,899 It's a broken relationship, right? 575 00:46:19,899 --> 00:46:29,177 If you're trying to withhold data from a partner because you don't want them to leave you because they might realize that you're taking advantage of them, you don't have a 576 00:46:29,177 --> 00:46:31,449 relationship, right? 577 00:46:31,449 --> 00:46:33,070 You're manipulating them. 578 00:46:33,491 --> 00:46:39,736 And in any relationship, personal or professional, like people want to trust one another. 579 00:46:39,817 --> 00:46:42,098 They want to know that you have their back. 580 00:46:42,934 --> 00:46:51,461 And people, lawyers who approach it in that way will draw people because it's basic psychology. 581 00:46:52,023 --> 00:46:53,614 We all want to feel appreciated. 582 00:46:53,614 --> 00:46:55,705 We all want to be a priority. 583 00:46:56,206 --> 00:46:58,749 We all want to feel like we're being heard, right? 584 00:46:58,749 --> 00:47:08,758 Like these are basic human EQ fundamentals, but they've also been proven time and time again in business analytics, right? 585 00:47:08,758 --> 00:47:10,569 and strategy case studies. 586 00:47:10,569 --> 00:47:14,660 I am not saying anything that's just my opinion. 587 00:47:14,660 --> 00:47:18,161 All of this is validated in the business research. 588 00:47:18,321 --> 00:47:23,702 And I think if we as lawyers really took the time to reflect and ask, what are we doing? 589 00:47:23,702 --> 00:47:25,003 What are we providing? 590 00:47:25,003 --> 00:47:26,963 What kind of firm do we wanna have? 591 00:47:26,963 --> 00:47:30,884 And operate from those principles, we will do well, right? 592 00:47:30,884 --> 00:47:36,118 And we will stop chasing how much money are here at a different firm. 593 00:47:36,118 --> 00:47:39,442 is making, but we might actually have fulfilling careers. 594 00:47:39,442 --> 00:47:42,184 And our clients PS might actually like us. 595 00:47:43,046 --> 00:47:50,804 But what kind of world would it be if your if your client actually liked you and wanted to spend time with you versus have to call you during a storm? 596 00:47:50,825 --> 00:47:53,187 Yeah, that is a great point. 597 00:47:53,187 --> 00:47:54,727 That is a great point. 598 00:47:54,808 --> 00:47:59,071 Well, we've run out of time and this is a, this is a record. 599 00:47:59,071 --> 00:48:07,957 Um, I'm over 70 episodes in and I've never followed a, um, an agenda less than we did today, but this was really good. 600 00:48:07,957 --> 00:48:09,468 This is really good dialogue. 601 00:48:09,468 --> 00:48:13,721 So, I really appreciate you joining me and sharing your insights. 602 00:48:13,721 --> 00:48:18,165 And I do feel like you cut against the grain a little bit and tell it like it is. 603 00:48:18,165 --> 00:48:19,027 And I think 604 00:48:19,027 --> 00:48:26,269 We need more of that in this space right now because the path forward is not entirely clear. 605 00:48:26,269 --> 00:48:31,317 And I really think we need to bring our A game if we're going to come out the other side of this successful. 606 00:48:31,317 --> 00:48:33,981 So thank you very much for your insights. 607 00:48:34,325 --> 00:48:35,656 Thank you for having me. 608 00:48:35,656 --> 00:48:42,260 And I think this is an opportunity for lawyers to actually look at themselves and chart a better path forward. 609 00:48:42,535 --> 00:48:43,565 Agreed. 610 00:48:43,806 --> 00:48:44,267 Awesome. 611 00:48:44,267 --> 00:48:45,948 All right, we'll have a good rest of your day. 612 00:48:45,948 --> 00:48:47,139 And thanks again. 613 00:48:47,139 --> 00:48:49,651 All righty. -->