1 00:00:02,719 --> 00:00:04,744 Avaneesh, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:05,146 --> 00:00:06,163 You're doing good, Ted. 3 00:00:06,163 --> 00:00:07,115 How are you? 4 00:00:07,351 --> 00:00:08,251 I'm doing great. 5 00:00:08,251 --> 00:00:12,818 Have you recovered from Miami and salvaged your inbox yet? 6 00:00:12,818 --> 00:00:14,259 Are you still underwater? 7 00:00:14,508 --> 00:00:20,699 It is amazing how much it's like a bomb goes off when you're like undercover for three days doing other work. 8 00:00:20,761 --> 00:00:25,810 It did take a while physically and mentally to recover from it. 9 00:00:26,133 --> 00:00:26,684 No doubt. 10 00:00:26,684 --> 00:00:28,867 Yeah, it was a first-class event. 11 00:00:28,867 --> 00:00:31,990 mean, there was, the food was outstanding. 12 00:00:32,352 --> 00:00:33,553 Everything was top shelf. 13 00:00:33,553 --> 00:00:35,465 We had a great time. 14 00:00:36,236 --> 00:00:41,060 I've echoed that super impressed with what Zach and his team have put together. 15 00:00:41,060 --> 00:00:46,084 Every time I talk to folks, even since the event's been over, they're like, yeah, I got invited. 16 00:00:46,084 --> 00:00:48,235 didn't go, I feel like I should have. 17 00:00:48,356 --> 00:00:51,719 That's the appropriate answer for something like this. 18 00:00:51,719 --> 00:00:54,721 We're going to do a lot of work. 19 00:00:54,721 --> 00:00:55,854 The event is great, right? 20 00:00:55,854 --> 00:00:59,310 We're out there as vendors, we're not there to actually book any deals with clients. 21 00:00:59,310 --> 00:01:05,410 You're there to meet other vendors and other technologies and innovation and really think about the industry. 22 00:01:05,782 --> 00:01:10,793 I can't think of another event right now on the calendar that produces that kind of conversation. 23 00:01:10,793 --> 00:01:11,964 I agree. 24 00:01:14,327 --> 00:01:16,209 We went last year. 25 00:01:16,209 --> 00:01:19,223 I went last year and really didn't have an agenda. 26 00:01:19,223 --> 00:01:20,394 I just wanted to check it out. 27 00:01:20,394 --> 00:01:21,876 We weren't raising money. 28 00:01:21,876 --> 00:01:27,592 There were surprisingly a lot of law firms there that we had real productive BD conversations with. 29 00:01:27,592 --> 00:01:29,564 It was completely unexpected. 30 00:01:29,645 --> 00:01:32,317 This time, the same was true as well. 31 00:01:32,536 --> 00:01:34,088 That's great. 32 00:01:34,088 --> 00:01:35,549 That's great to hear. 33 00:01:36,051 --> 00:01:41,858 you've got, he has what, five or six really good advisory firms on his Rolodex. 34 00:01:41,858 --> 00:01:46,234 I think those folks show up and they come for the right mindset to innovate and talk. 35 00:01:46,234 --> 00:01:51,349 So that's great that you get a chance to build some pipeline and hope we grow some deals. 36 00:01:51,349 --> 00:01:53,200 Yeah, absolutely. 37 00:01:53,300 --> 00:01:58,343 Well, um, before we jump into the agenda here, we got a lot of really fun stuff to talk about. 38 00:01:58,343 --> 00:02:00,064 why don't we get you introduced? 39 00:02:00,064 --> 00:02:01,985 I think most people probably know who you are. 40 00:02:01,985 --> 00:02:11,031 Um, your CEO at, Litera and you just kind of retook that role. 41 00:02:11,031 --> 00:02:15,814 You had stepped off for a couple of years, but I didn't realize this until I got your bio. 42 00:02:15,814 --> 00:02:18,165 You were COO at Kino Cozy. 43 00:02:18,490 --> 00:02:23,970 It was, yeah, for three or four years from 2012 to 2016. 44 00:02:25,070 --> 00:02:32,750 was a really great introduction to legal IT consulting and legal software and what's happening in space. 45 00:02:32,750 --> 00:02:36,350 2012, 2016 was a very interesting time, I feel like, for legal technology. 46 00:02:36,350 --> 00:02:41,579 So I got to be in middle of all that, which is a good warmup for Lotterra. 47 00:02:41,579 --> 00:02:42,240 Yeah. 48 00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:46,275 Well, and would imagine, you know, they do a lot of MSP work there. 49 00:02:46,275 --> 00:02:56,638 You probably got a really broad view of all the different, you know, the tech stacks that are deployed in legal and where the, where the gaps are. 50 00:02:56,638 --> 00:03:01,383 would imagine that would have informed some of the work that you did next at Litera. 51 00:03:01,882 --> 00:03:13,912 Yeah, so the MSP part engineering piece definitely right doing large project work with I manage and netdoc and then doing backup infrastructure systems and ISP work. 52 00:03:13,912 --> 00:03:26,602 But then the real part that I think is meaningful for the Terra story is Tier 1 help desk taking 60 to 75,000 phone calls a month from lawyers having help desk issues with their 53 00:03:26,602 --> 00:03:29,626 applications gives you a clear ideation of what 54 00:03:29,626 --> 00:03:33,966 the struggle is and what they're trying to achieve and how you can do better with better software. 55 00:03:33,966 --> 00:03:42,126 So I would say, yeah, then we can because it was a great education and experience for some of the stuff we do today. 56 00:03:42,126 --> 00:03:42,849 100%. 57 00:03:42,849 --> 00:03:46,248 Yeah, and you were a lawyer. 58 00:03:46,248 --> 00:03:47,650 Did you practice? 59 00:03:48,356 --> 00:03:54,971 practiced for two and half, three years after law school at a firm in Chicago and then on my own. 60 00:03:56,632 --> 00:04:02,407 And the reason why that's been valuable for me is most of my friends are still lawyers and partners. 61 00:04:02,407 --> 00:04:04,739 all their partners are firms, they're managing partners. 62 00:04:04,739 --> 00:04:12,184 So I get direct, unrequested feedback from them all times about how they feel. 63 00:04:12,184 --> 00:04:14,926 Yeah, unfiltered, unrequested. 64 00:04:15,343 --> 00:04:19,166 feedback about not just Litera, but everything else that they hate in world. 65 00:04:19,708 --> 00:04:20,975 But they're, they're, it's good, right? 66 00:04:20,975 --> 00:04:25,595 You've like 50, 60 friends that are still working that are just good folks to bounce ideas off of. 67 00:04:25,595 --> 00:04:28,395 And I feel pretty unique in that position, I think. 68 00:04:28,395 --> 00:04:35,163 Yeah, I started my formal tech career at Microsoft in support. 69 00:04:35,264 --> 00:04:38,297 And man, it is a tough gig. 70 00:04:38,297 --> 00:04:45,126 can't imagine having almost exclusively lawyers on the other end of the phone. 71 00:04:45,126 --> 00:04:48,219 That's probably different. 72 00:04:48,556 --> 00:04:52,550 It's a art, but I it's a, it's a skill. 73 00:04:52,550 --> 00:04:57,150 We would spend a lot of time teaching the support analysts what they're dealing with, right? 74 00:04:57,150 --> 00:05:08,043 It could be a third year associate trying to get a filing into court on time and something isn't working or they're going to court tomorrow or there's something happening that's 75 00:05:08,043 --> 00:05:09,334 really important in their life. 76 00:05:09,334 --> 00:05:12,451 And they've already tried to fix it by themselves. 77 00:05:12,451 --> 00:05:15,930 And they worked with the law firm, help that's now they're calling you. 78 00:05:16,346 --> 00:05:18,986 Your job is to fix the problem with a smile on your face. 79 00:05:18,986 --> 00:05:20,326 You will get chewed out. 80 00:05:20,326 --> 00:05:21,356 You will get screamed at. 81 00:05:21,356 --> 00:05:24,036 yeah, remember they're representing clients. 82 00:05:24,036 --> 00:05:25,336 That client could be your family. 83 00:05:25,336 --> 00:05:28,066 That could be the business next door to your house. 84 00:05:28,066 --> 00:05:34,446 I don't know what it is, but our job in health desk is to remove all barriers from their work productivity. 85 00:05:34,446 --> 00:05:34,686 Right? 86 00:05:34,686 --> 00:05:37,446 So when you take that mindset, it allows you to get chewed out. 87 00:05:37,446 --> 00:05:42,826 Otherwise you feel like you're just at the other end of a argument that you're one sided. 88 00:05:42,826 --> 00:05:44,511 So, uh, 89 00:05:44,511 --> 00:05:47,486 helped us in legal is a very difficult job. 90 00:05:48,011 --> 00:05:50,592 Yeah, I would agree with that. 91 00:05:50,692 --> 00:05:58,295 So we got to hang out a little bit in Miami and found out we had a common connection, which is the Tar Heels. 92 00:05:59,356 --> 00:06:02,016 I went to school there undergrad. 93 00:06:02,037 --> 00:06:04,778 My wife and I got married at the Carolina Inn. 94 00:06:04,818 --> 00:06:06,238 We're diehard. 95 00:06:06,238 --> 00:06:09,620 So my wife went to UNC Charlotte where I got my master's degree. 96 00:06:09,620 --> 00:06:10,510 She was an undergrad. 97 00:06:10,510 --> 00:06:16,553 I was in grad school and she kind of became an adopted Tar Heel. 98 00:06:16,553 --> 00:06:17,783 you know, she 99 00:06:17,909 --> 00:06:26,731 She hated Duke because I did, um, you know, but didn't really, the, the rivalry was not deep in her bones. 100 00:06:26,731 --> 00:06:35,344 And then we went to a Duke Carolina game at Cameron the year after Hansborough left, you know, Hansborough indoor stadium. 101 00:06:36,644 --> 00:06:47,229 and we had beaten them four years in a row at home and they were, mean, the fangs were out and we were dressed in full Carolina gear and 102 00:06:47,229 --> 00:06:54,823 After that, the abuse we took was so bad at like midway through the second half, we were getting blown out. 103 00:06:54,823 --> 00:06:57,585 They were destroying us. 104 00:06:57,585 --> 00:07:01,358 We were going to leave and we did, but everybody's like, Hey, where are going? 105 00:07:01,358 --> 00:07:02,847 I was like, we're going to get a hot dog. 106 00:07:02,847 --> 00:07:04,088 We'll be right back. 107 00:07:04,088 --> 00:07:06,909 just went out the side door. 108 00:07:07,350 --> 00:07:09,030 It was brutal. 109 00:07:10,970 --> 00:07:17,610 My ties are, my wife went there, undergrad and two master's degrees. 110 00:07:17,610 --> 00:07:23,450 And then I was born and raised Chicago Jordan fan since he came to the team. 111 00:07:23,450 --> 00:07:26,150 Saw him play all six championships. 112 00:07:26,250 --> 00:07:30,310 So Tar Heels were always part of our story as a kid growing up because of him. 113 00:07:30,310 --> 00:07:35,030 And then once we got married, we were all in, this is a Tar Heel house. 114 00:07:35,030 --> 00:07:39,350 We have a Tar Heel Christmas tree that gets ornaments added to it. 115 00:07:39,350 --> 00:07:40,602 The kids are growing up. 116 00:07:40,602 --> 00:07:44,602 Uh, being fans of the school, think it's a great institution. 117 00:07:44,602 --> 00:07:50,982 was like, were on campus this past weekend doing our annual Christmas shopping and lunch at Sutton's. 118 00:07:50,982 --> 00:07:54,562 And, uh, it's a good, I think it's a great state school. 119 00:07:54,562 --> 00:07:59,542 It's got great tradition, almost feels like a private institution that's run by the state, which is really unique. 120 00:07:59,542 --> 00:08:01,942 And obviously the sports program is top notch. 121 00:08:01,942 --> 00:08:07,490 So we feel pretty fortunate having left the city of Chicago and all the great sports. 122 00:08:07,898 --> 00:08:12,650 that I'm still following to come here and have that kind of repeated in the college atmosphere. 123 00:08:12,650 --> 00:08:22,365 It's great for the kids, it's great for the community, but yeah, it's really ironic that we both have a tie to yours much more deep in the mind, but I feel like I believe 124 00:08:22,365 --> 00:08:25,026 partially you target a little bit as much as you do. 125 00:08:25,111 --> 00:08:35,594 Yeah, I I don't know if I mentioned it, the best, best man in my wedding, JJ Houdock, his dad played for Frank McGuire and Dean Smith on Dean Smith's first team. 126 00:08:35,594 --> 00:08:43,876 And when he passed away, um, he was from a little small town in called Kinston, North Carolina, which is outside of Greenville. 127 00:08:43,876 --> 00:08:51,308 Um, Jerry Stackhouse is also from there and the people who showed up from the program, I mean, there's no direct flights. 128 00:08:51,308 --> 00:08:55,107 You like had to fly into Raleigh and then drive an hour East. 129 00:08:55,189 --> 00:08:56,920 And I was so blown away. 130 00:08:56,920 --> 00:08:58,712 mean, Jawad Williams was there. 131 00:08:58,712 --> 00:09:00,193 Eric Montross was there. 132 00:09:00,193 --> 00:09:02,464 Larry Brown was there. 133 00:09:04,166 --> 00:09:06,407 Billy Cunningham spoke. 134 00:09:07,028 --> 00:09:08,259 It was incredible. 135 00:09:08,259 --> 00:09:11,291 So it really is a tight-knit group. 136 00:09:12,090 --> 00:09:23,050 And I think that, so we're talking about school, I didn't go to, but my wife has that same experience from her time there, the community of graduates that just stick together. 137 00:09:23,050 --> 00:09:26,219 It's a really interesting institution, how well they take care of each other. 138 00:09:26,219 --> 00:09:27,270 Yeah, it's great. 139 00:09:27,270 --> 00:09:34,006 And the reason I brought it up is there's big news in football with, with Belichick taken, um, except in the head coaching role. 140 00:09:34,006 --> 00:09:41,582 And I'm sure our audiences doesn't care that much about the Tar Heels, but if you care about football, this is, this was a big story. 141 00:09:41,582 --> 00:09:45,735 would imagine there's a lot of excitement in, in the area around that. 142 00:09:45,900 --> 00:09:49,822 Yeah, the news is definitely all about, this last night. 143 00:09:49,822 --> 00:09:57,310 was watching the news and 30 minutes of the one hour was about, uh, a bill joining the institution. 144 00:09:57,310 --> 00:09:59,005 I've been looking at the chance here. 145 00:09:59,005 --> 00:10:02,056 finds the diamond, the rough and senior high school quarterbacks. 146 00:10:02,056 --> 00:10:05,198 You know, he found the diamond, the rough and the college quarterback. 147 00:10:05,198 --> 00:10:06,899 Maybe now he's in his art. 148 00:10:06,999 --> 00:10:11,741 He can extrapolate that skill set down market and find the next grade high school athlete to come out. 149 00:10:12,171 --> 00:10:13,161 it's great. 150 00:10:13,161 --> 00:10:14,082 It was bound to happen. 151 00:10:14,082 --> 00:10:14,746 I think with. 152 00:10:14,746 --> 00:10:24,546 the NIL exposure and the competition at the top end of football programs, we're going to start seeing them become semi-pro sports at this point. 153 00:10:24,546 --> 00:10:26,246 So great to have him here. 154 00:10:26,246 --> 00:10:30,603 Excited to see what happens to going to football games now, how hard it is. 155 00:10:30,603 --> 00:10:32,624 Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. 156 00:10:32,665 --> 00:10:34,716 Well, um, getting back to Litera. 157 00:10:34,716 --> 00:10:48,838 So you started your CEO journey years ago and you guys, if I'm, if I read your, your bio, right, you guys were like, went from 16 million to 250 million in revenue under your 158 00:10:48,838 --> 00:10:49,879 leadership. 159 00:10:49,879 --> 00:10:52,961 You took, you did 16 acquisitions. 160 00:10:52,961 --> 00:10:56,374 You took some time off and, and now you're back. 161 00:10:56,374 --> 00:11:00,331 What, what drove the decision to come back and 162 00:11:00,331 --> 00:11:01,448 Take the helm. 163 00:11:03,611 --> 00:11:14,536 there's never the intent, uh, to, come back, but, you know, in our, in our recent meetings that we've had in the fall and late summer around strategy and direction and where we felt 164 00:11:14,536 --> 00:11:21,119 like we were headed, it seemed like getting closer to the customer and to the product, made a lot of sense. 165 00:11:21,279 --> 00:11:27,642 So we had those conversations and, and made that transition a couple of months ago. 166 00:11:28,118 --> 00:11:32,200 And it's been rewarding much more so than the first time here. 167 00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:33,163 It feels different. 168 00:11:33,163 --> 00:11:36,155 It feels more purposeful and more directive. 169 00:11:36,155 --> 00:11:41,490 And there's clear line of sight of a point of view that we have at Latera. 170 00:11:41,490 --> 00:11:46,444 So excited about the second journey at the helm. 171 00:11:46,795 --> 00:11:48,377 Yeah, that's good stuff. 172 00:11:48,377 --> 00:11:51,660 Well, let's talk a little bit about kind of roadmap and strategy. 173 00:11:51,660 --> 00:11:58,086 So I would imagine you guys, you probably have a different MO. 174 00:11:58,186 --> 00:12:02,810 You're bringing a different skillset, a different perspective to the role. 175 00:12:04,172 --> 00:12:07,475 where is Litera heading big picture? 176 00:12:08,474 --> 00:12:15,736 So I see us really moving into becoming the experience company for law firms. 177 00:12:16,376 --> 00:12:26,669 A few years ago, we acquired a business called Foundation Software Group and their product called Foundation, which is the cornerstone of experience management for the largest firms 178 00:12:26,669 --> 00:12:30,131 in the world and doing well as it gets greater exposure. 179 00:12:30,131 --> 00:12:35,242 And what we can do at Foundation is drive and deliver. 180 00:12:35,864 --> 00:12:39,537 just in time valuable information to associates and partners. 181 00:12:40,218 --> 00:12:45,021 With Clocktomizer and Big Square, we can bring in pricing, budgeting, and dashboarding. 182 00:12:45,554 --> 00:12:51,286 In financial data, can drag and we can bring in deal point extraction and value there. 183 00:12:51,367 --> 00:12:56,882 But the real value comes in is how we can give value to the partners of law firms. 184 00:12:56,882 --> 00:13:04,737 So, directly looking where's the terror going, I think we want to make a meaningful impact on how partners and managing partners run their business. 185 00:13:05,678 --> 00:13:13,362 with drafting and transacting Cura, I think we did a great job impacting the first 50 year associates for the last five, six years. 186 00:13:13,843 --> 00:13:23,048 But with drafting going in the cloud next year, and that being one of the big things we want to get done over the next couple of years, that opens up the aperture to have a point 187 00:13:23,048 --> 00:13:24,448 of view in Outlook. 188 00:13:24,769 --> 00:13:30,342 And I think you'll see a successful deployment of drafting a cloud, yielding Gen. 189 00:13:30,342 --> 00:13:34,794 AI features globally, bringing foundation data into Outlook. 190 00:13:36,351 --> 00:13:44,053 being more predictive in the workflow and hopefully driving more use adoption of technology overall. 191 00:13:44,874 --> 00:13:56,218 But if I was to sit back and say, are we trying to do is to become the experienced company for the industry with a hard focus on partners and managing partners of firms. 192 00:13:56,779 --> 00:13:57,129 Yeah. 193 00:13:57,129 --> 00:14:02,064 So InfoDash, I think as you know, we're internet extranet platform. 194 00:14:02,064 --> 00:14:06,087 We've been doing this work in legal for 16 years. 195 00:14:06,087 --> 00:14:12,553 We started the journey as a consulting organization in 2008 called Acrowire. 196 00:14:12,614 --> 00:14:18,178 And we built these solutions bespoke on a time and materials consulting business. 197 00:14:18,319 --> 00:14:20,110 know, the client retained the IP. 198 00:14:20,110 --> 00:14:23,233 We were just a services company and we ended up 199 00:14:23,233 --> 00:14:29,686 partnering with Handshake in the mid 2010s got to understand how they went about things. 200 00:14:29,747 --> 00:14:33,348 When Adderent bought them in 2017, we exited the program. 201 00:14:33,348 --> 00:14:37,490 We started working on a product because we thought we could do a better job. 202 00:14:37,591 --> 00:14:45,543 And we rebranded and launched InfoDash in January, 2022. 203 00:14:45,555 --> 00:14:47,496 And it's been like a rocket ship. 204 00:14:47,736 --> 00:14:50,948 Our timing was just really, we had a lot of wind at our back. 205 00:14:50,948 --> 00:14:52,959 mean, know, intranets aren't 206 00:14:52,959 --> 00:14:54,599 sexy, right? 207 00:14:54,920 --> 00:14:56,920 But our timing was good. 208 00:14:57,139 --> 00:15:11,254 And, you know, with all this remote work, it has really put intranets back on the map a little bit because it's hard for firms to maintain culture when everybody's remote and 209 00:15:11,254 --> 00:15:17,886 hybrid and intranets, they don't solve that problem, but they're one piece of the solution. 210 00:15:18,606 --> 00:15:20,747 How have you guys seen 211 00:15:20,905 --> 00:15:24,823 All of this remote and hybrid work impact your business. 212 00:15:27,490 --> 00:15:32,965 I think the, for Litera as a business, it's been interesting going to this model. 213 00:15:32,965 --> 00:15:37,879 You have to find really purposeful ways to do innovation. 214 00:15:37,879 --> 00:15:50,430 think for the industry, for associates and partners, for the firms that have not gone back a hundred percent in office, or at least three or four days in office, I think the 215 00:15:50,430 --> 00:15:52,071 struggle is always going to be apprenticeship. 216 00:15:52,071 --> 00:15:54,833 Like how do you get the next... 217 00:15:55,884 --> 00:16:02,269 associate up the partner channel and make them productive so that way they're also good at BD work in the future or good at client engagement. 218 00:16:02,269 --> 00:16:07,122 How they learn those skills if they're not right next door to you or down the hall. 219 00:16:07,183 --> 00:16:11,675 How do you distribute work more effectively and efficiently in a remote environment? 220 00:16:11,675 --> 00:16:13,518 I think it's still being solved actively. 221 00:16:13,518 --> 00:16:22,284 And those struggles, I think, will continue in a hybrid environment for period of time. 222 00:16:22,638 --> 00:16:31,586 So this pendulum that we took in COVID of going so remote, think obviously with the phone back, where the industry has seen everybody's kind of coming back to some degree and the 223 00:16:31,586 --> 00:16:41,134 firms and companies that don't, will have to really figure out and be purposeful in apprenticeship, innovation, collaboration, cause it's going to get harder, I think in the 224 00:16:41,134 --> 00:16:42,075 next couple of years. 225 00:16:42,075 --> 00:16:50,042 was easier two years ago, cause we're all remote, but now when it's such a mix of cultures out there, think. 226 00:16:50,042 --> 00:16:54,255 it would be more difficult because now people can say purposely, I don't like being remote. 227 00:16:54,255 --> 00:16:57,467 I want to go back in an office and you may lose good talent. 228 00:16:57,508 --> 00:17:02,962 They want to go back into an office or kids that come out of college that don't want to work remote because that's just not what they want to do. 229 00:17:02,962 --> 00:17:06,034 So we're going to find a new landing pad. 230 00:17:06,134 --> 00:17:12,159 But the solve here for me is still for the industry and for us is apprenticeship, innovation and collaboration. 231 00:17:12,159 --> 00:17:16,992 I don't know how you do that in a way that's as effective as it was in the past. 232 00:17:17,185 --> 00:17:22,818 Yeah, I think AI throws some interesting curve balls there too. 233 00:17:22,818 --> 00:17:35,945 A lot of the lower level work that has historically been done by new associates is, there's some question marks on how AI is going to impact that and how that's going to 234 00:17:35,945 --> 00:17:41,528 ultimately impact how lawyers get trained and mentored. 235 00:17:42,809 --> 00:17:44,390 Yeah, it's interesting stuff. 236 00:17:44,390 --> 00:17:46,591 And we integrate with 237 00:17:46,623 --> 00:17:47,904 several of your products. 238 00:17:47,904 --> 00:17:49,865 pull foundation, especially. 239 00:17:49,865 --> 00:17:55,578 we, you know, for firm directory, we pull a lot of information from a foundation and big square. 240 00:17:55,578 --> 00:18:06,464 You know, we had, we had Haley on the show a couple episodes ago and she was telling us about some of the stuff that you guys did with, with dragon that was really cool and 241 00:18:06,464 --> 00:18:07,155 interesting. 242 00:18:07,155 --> 00:18:15,379 And you guys took a different approach there with almost kind of a startup within an existing business, which was really neat. 243 00:18:15,473 --> 00:18:21,393 And I think innovative, is that a model that's going to continue? 244 00:18:21,916 --> 00:18:25,272 Or was that kind of a right ingredients, right time? 245 00:18:25,272 --> 00:18:28,317 And maybe that was a one-time deal. 246 00:18:29,508 --> 00:18:35,744 We have three models to, um, new innovation coming in out of Litera. 247 00:18:35,744 --> 00:18:39,167 Uh, one is that model we have with Dragon. 248 00:18:39,167 --> 00:18:47,315 We collaborated with HG Capital and had some of their, did a scientist, their, their scientists and their team part of that group. 249 00:18:47,315 --> 00:18:54,792 And we had Haley and some outside folks working together and we had an internal team collaboration. 250 00:18:54,792 --> 00:18:55,522 So. 251 00:18:55,576 --> 00:19:03,212 It was really an outside in view of building a product quickly, bringing it to market and being irref along the way. 252 00:19:03,212 --> 00:19:12,649 One thing we learned in that process, which was very new to me as the board of the time and new for the terror for sure, is that the industry had changed significantly with 253 00:19:12,649 --> 00:19:13,209 Gen.ai. 254 00:19:13,209 --> 00:19:21,525 The industry was okay now taking beta products, taking early releases of stuff that wasn't 100 % complete and playing with it. 255 00:19:21,525 --> 00:19:22,946 And that's new for us. 256 00:19:23,022 --> 00:19:28,884 We've only delivered enterprise grade ready solutions, hardened, completely QA'd, no flaws. 257 00:19:28,884 --> 00:19:33,046 There are always bugs, but no material issues in workflow. 258 00:19:33,126 --> 00:19:40,299 But we had to iterate differently now because the industry is now more open to beta, they're more open to EAP programs and they're working towards the GA. 259 00:19:40,299 --> 00:19:45,841 And so that was a great initial stab at that for us. 260 00:19:45,841 --> 00:19:48,542 And we continue to look at opportunities to do work like that. 261 00:19:48,542 --> 00:19:52,506 The second area of innovation is we internally. 262 00:19:52,506 --> 00:19:56,226 producing spend on R &D. 263 00:19:56,226 --> 00:20:01,686 Historically, a business like ours maintain a certain percent of R &D expenses to revenue. 264 00:20:01,686 --> 00:20:06,896 I think we are now changing that saying it has to increase to allow us to be long-term iterative. 265 00:20:06,896 --> 00:20:11,546 So the business itself is looking for innovation from our own full-time staff. 266 00:20:11,546 --> 00:20:14,866 And the third is going to be acquisitions. 267 00:20:14,866 --> 00:20:18,826 I think we are excited to watch what's happening in the market today. 268 00:20:20,046 --> 00:20:26,108 founders that have ideas that are fringe use cases or things that we really think about and they're building really cool tech. 269 00:20:26,108 --> 00:20:38,363 And so we're much more open now to look at startups that have good usage or showing good signs of success fit into our ecosystem, good philosophies and culture as a road to 270 00:20:38,363 --> 00:20:41,614 increase our innovation pipeline in the long run. 271 00:20:41,655 --> 00:20:50,218 those three levers are new levers for Litera in the last 12 months and all three are producing, I think, great value for us in the long term. 272 00:20:50,453 --> 00:20:51,203 Yeah. 273 00:20:51,203 --> 00:20:51,493 Yeah. 274 00:20:51,493 --> 00:20:57,326 The traditional, you know, buy up the, buy the startup and integrate. 275 00:20:57,326 --> 00:21:08,071 And you know, that model has been around for a long time, but that intrapreneur model, if you will, I really think there's a future there for big firms to innovate. 276 00:21:08,071 --> 00:21:17,897 Like, like us, for example, honestly, I'm not worried about anybody competing with us of any size because we're so lean and nimble and 277 00:21:17,897 --> 00:21:19,568 It's hard for a big company. 278 00:21:19,568 --> 00:21:24,401 know, they're a big oil tanker with an itty bitty rudder in a lot of cases, right? 279 00:21:24,401 --> 00:21:38,259 And this, that model kind of turns that on its head and allows you to kind of pivot quickly and iterate, which is, which is I think necessary to really drive fast innovation. 280 00:21:38,426 --> 00:21:39,126 I think you're right. 281 00:21:39,126 --> 00:21:48,086 look at those, when you're a business of our size and scale, any business of size and scale, sometimes you get stuck in your own belief system of what is the art of the 282 00:21:48,086 --> 00:21:49,086 possible. 283 00:21:49,206 --> 00:21:55,326 And by bringing in someone who's unencumbered by your business restrictions and can just run freely with capital. 284 00:21:55,326 --> 00:22:04,076 Um, a you get to control it and you get to own it when it's done, but B you may end up with something that's completely different than what you set out as the initial thesis. 285 00:22:04,076 --> 00:22:05,074 And I think 286 00:22:05,656 --> 00:22:06,537 you're a hundred percent right. 287 00:22:06,537 --> 00:22:08,948 When you're a big business, sometimes you can get stuck in your own way. 288 00:22:08,948 --> 00:22:15,492 You're just unable to get out of the big day job you have in front of you satisfying your customers with your current product set. 289 00:22:15,532 --> 00:22:22,617 So the model we do with Haley is super, I think long-term, I would be more prone to opportunistic around things like that. 290 00:22:22,617 --> 00:22:31,462 Even with often the dragons at acquisition, it feels like we're going to keep that running by itself and not integrate like we used to. 291 00:22:32,042 --> 00:22:40,995 Sam is a great entrepreneur is thinking of the product really uniquely and I hate to slow him down because he's stuck in latera so The industry will see that acquisition feel 292 00:22:40,995 --> 00:22:46,292 different than our past acquisitions that we've done because it just feels better to keep it running 293 00:22:46,379 --> 00:22:46,939 Yeah. 294 00:22:46,939 --> 00:22:48,080 You know what's interesting? 295 00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:56,894 I don't know how you guys have managed this is the risk reward equation changes a little bit when you're under a big umbrella, right? 296 00:22:56,894 --> 00:23:08,028 Like as a small business, I can take risks that might not be palatable to a bigger organization, right? 297 00:23:08,028 --> 00:23:14,451 And striking that balance, I think is going to be interesting in that model. 298 00:23:15,131 --> 00:23:16,271 that's hard. 299 00:23:16,351 --> 00:23:20,493 I mean, think we the industry doesn't give us much rope to play with. 300 00:23:22,174 --> 00:23:31,998 So we are not, not to our hamstrung by our size and success, but it does require us to give a lot more comfort around what we're doing. 301 00:23:31,998 --> 00:23:34,599 Customer success has to be super strong. 302 00:23:34,599 --> 00:23:39,501 If we do make mistake, which we will, is this owning up to it saying sorry, I'm moving forward. 303 00:23:40,642 --> 00:23:41,902 We adding when you're 304 00:23:41,902 --> 00:23:46,100 bigger, the risk tolerance probably gets smaller from the industry's point of view. 305 00:23:46,100 --> 00:23:47,667 They want you to be much more hardened. 306 00:23:47,667 --> 00:23:48,187 Yeah. 307 00:23:48,187 --> 00:23:50,767 You got a lot more to lose, right? 308 00:23:50,767 --> 00:23:58,287 Um, you know, you've got a tremendous brand and deep pockets and you know, people know that. 309 00:23:58,287 --> 00:24:02,087 So, well, let's talk a little bit about AI in legal. 310 00:24:02,087 --> 00:24:07,647 Cause this is an area that, know, we actually don't do, we're not an AI company. 311 00:24:07,647 --> 00:24:14,017 mean, we, our platform runs in the 365 and Azure tenant of our clients. 312 00:24:14,017 --> 00:24:16,191 So we leverage. 313 00:24:16,191 --> 00:24:22,855 the gen AI capabilities that Microsoft lights up as part of that part of those platforms. 314 00:24:22,975 --> 00:24:25,046 But I'm a enthusiast. 315 00:24:25,046 --> 00:24:27,278 think it's I'm very bullish on it. 316 00:24:27,278 --> 00:24:36,203 I do think that right now marketing has gotten a little bit ahead of where products are in certain circumstances. 317 00:24:37,284 --> 00:24:42,711 But in not just the marketing, it feels like kind of we came out of the gate. 318 00:24:42,711 --> 00:24:52,171 Like right after chat GPT got released and that Goldman study, I've mentioned it a thousand times, know, 44 % of legal tasks are going to be automated by gen AI and people 319 00:24:52,171 --> 00:24:57,171 were, you know, at the XCOM level or like, Whoa, we got to get a handle on this. 320 00:24:57,471 --> 00:25:01,231 And 44 % isn't happening anytime soon. 321 00:25:01,231 --> 00:25:01,671 Right. 322 00:25:01,671 --> 00:25:12,335 That's midterm at best, probably more of a long-term scenario, but how are you seeing AI shape the industry today? 323 00:25:14,618 --> 00:25:25,072 So from what I can tell in the last couple of months of being out in the market and confirming some of the assumptions I had coming back into seat, every firm in the top end 324 00:25:25,072 --> 00:25:26,993 is figuring it out. 325 00:25:26,993 --> 00:25:28,714 They're all, no one's naive to it. 326 00:25:28,714 --> 00:25:30,275 No one is saying, no, we're not going to do it. 327 00:25:30,275 --> 00:25:34,296 They're all willing to say, we've got to figure this out because it's here. 328 00:25:34,296 --> 00:25:41,269 And if we don't figure it out, we're anti-competitive to, potentially anti-competitive to what's happening with firms down the street. 329 00:25:43,276 --> 00:25:49,871 There are definitely some use cases of AI, expanded use case of GenAI that make total sense. 330 00:25:50,532 --> 00:25:55,536 And some of it are light wrappers over a model. 331 00:25:55,917 --> 00:26:04,964 Some of them are really deeply, deeply investigated and designed opportunities that are bespoke to one or two small use cases. 332 00:26:07,146 --> 00:26:12,430 My view on Gen AI is it should augment and assist 333 00:26:12,664 --> 00:26:25,183 the associate and partner with their existing workflows and allow them to focus on more meaningful client value work when possible. 334 00:26:26,574 --> 00:26:31,608 it should, downstream implication of Gen AI is greater than upstream. 335 00:26:31,608 --> 00:26:39,744 That's just, I think the ability to expand access to justice is a much larger use case that we should be focusing on, but. 336 00:26:40,088 --> 00:26:45,500 The use cases for M&A, Pride Equity, VC is where all the attention is going. 337 00:26:45,680 --> 00:27:02,608 But gen AI in my lens has a much larger element down market and with the firms and practitioners that are focused on individual issues and problem statements that exist from 338 00:27:02,608 --> 00:27:07,730 citizens in this country and throughout the world, that is where you can have material. 339 00:27:07,738 --> 00:27:10,739 material improvement for access to justice. 340 00:27:10,979 --> 00:27:13,960 But that's not what we materially talk about day in, day out. 341 00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:14,880 Even with Terra, right? 342 00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:20,351 We focus on our core customers that are doing transactional work or litigation. 343 00:27:20,351 --> 00:27:22,832 So I think it's here to stay. 344 00:27:22,832 --> 00:27:26,603 It's going to have continuous iteration and refinement. 345 00:27:26,603 --> 00:27:29,344 It's not a set it and forget it approach. 346 00:27:29,644 --> 00:27:36,926 As models improve every six to nine months, we have to reassess what that does to our product set and then refine and release. 347 00:27:37,964 --> 00:27:43,416 It's super collaborative or asking questions all the time, what you're doing, how you're doing it. 348 00:27:43,677 --> 00:27:47,338 And sometimes you're behind the eight ball and sometimes we're out of the game. 349 00:27:47,354 --> 00:27:48,459 It just depends. 350 00:27:48,459 --> 00:27:53,021 But having strong conviction that you're on the right track is, it keeps us moving forward. 351 00:27:53,021 --> 00:27:55,462 So it's, I'm optimistic. 352 00:27:55,462 --> 00:27:56,152 I'm super bullish. 353 00:27:56,152 --> 00:28:02,335 don't look, it should improve the amount of work lawyers have to do to, right? 354 00:28:02,335 --> 00:28:06,126 There's so much unbended work that corporates have that now. 355 00:28:06,570 --> 00:28:08,541 an associate can go after, a partner can go after. 356 00:28:08,541 --> 00:28:11,589 So I don't see it ever making the industry smaller. 357 00:28:11,589 --> 00:28:17,268 if anything, I think a good Gen AI use case expands opportunity and growth in this industry. 358 00:28:17,687 --> 00:28:29,067 Yeah, I have a blog post half written that where I went back and looked at the, when spreadsheets came out, which was Lotus one, two, three, and it was in like 1983. 359 00:28:29,067 --> 00:28:32,367 And I happened, my parents were entrepreneurs. 360 00:28:32,367 --> 00:28:34,857 They, they, I'm Greek with that last name. 361 00:28:34,857 --> 00:28:37,637 It's pretty obvious, but I don't look Greek. 362 00:28:37,637 --> 00:28:40,667 got the Irish skin, unfortunately. 363 00:28:40,667 --> 00:28:44,777 Um, so the, um, 364 00:28:45,015 --> 00:28:45,955 I grew up in the restaurant. 365 00:28:45,955 --> 00:28:49,509 We had a CPA who I was, I was a little coder man. 366 00:28:49,509 --> 00:28:59,146 I was 10 years old and mom was working in the restaurant, set me up in the back room with a computer that to babysit me. 367 00:28:59,247 --> 00:29:01,689 And, I remember our CPA coming in. 368 00:29:01,689 --> 00:29:08,173 I don't remember what year it was, but I was probably in fifth, sixth grade and asking me about spreadsheets. 369 00:29:08,334 --> 00:29:11,547 And I, I remember the level of concern. 370 00:29:11,547 --> 00:29:14,909 I had no idea at the time, but looking back on it, 371 00:29:15,019 --> 00:29:19,960 He was, he wanted to learn about it because he was worried about what it was going to do to his industry. 372 00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:32,004 And if you look at the numbers, so in 1983, there were about 850,000 accounting professionals and people were, you know, the chicken little, the sky is falling. 373 00:29:32,004 --> 00:29:34,704 There's 1.5 million today, right? 374 00:29:34,704 --> 00:29:36,265 It's almost doubled. 375 00:29:36,265 --> 00:29:44,687 Granted that it's been almost 40 years, but it didn't destroy the industry and AI is not going to destroy legal work. 376 00:29:44,951 --> 00:29:49,935 To your point, I think there's a huge amount of unmet need in legal services. 377 00:29:49,935 --> 00:30:01,142 And if anything, it's going to take away a lot of the drudgery and hopefully allow people to focus on higher level skills and tasks. 378 00:30:01,142 --> 00:30:02,483 You agree with that? 379 00:30:02,650 --> 00:30:03,250 Yeah. 380 00:30:03,250 --> 00:30:06,500 Um, so Eric Freeman just joined our board. 381 00:30:06,500 --> 00:30:09,900 was the past managing partner, CEO of Skadden. 382 00:30:09,900 --> 00:30:17,080 And we were talking about this, um, and I, and I asked them, are the things you're worried about? 383 00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:19,710 Like, are the things you were concerned with? 384 00:30:19,710 --> 00:30:29,150 And one thing I always saw Litera was focused on since 2016 and let's talk about was can we bring some happiness and joy to lawyers or make them less angry? 385 00:30:30,082 --> 00:30:36,177 but if I made them less angry, I think we did a good job and, uh, keep them in the practice of law longer. 386 00:30:36,177 --> 00:30:44,655 So when I asked him that he said the same thing is like, um, our associates are really valuable to us after like the second and third year, like they're super valuable and to 387 00:30:44,655 --> 00:30:47,807 keep them in the practice of law is super meaningful to us. 388 00:30:47,807 --> 00:30:55,203 If they leave, then our practice law, all the training, all the investment we just made is walked out the door and all that. 389 00:30:55,584 --> 00:30:58,074 That's when they were just about to become like. 390 00:30:58,074 --> 00:31:00,834 great attorneys and providing high value work. 391 00:31:00,834 --> 00:31:09,534 So he views technology as a way like we should be able to keep them in the practice of law longer, doing great work and being happy with the profession. 392 00:31:09,534 --> 00:31:11,094 That's a success story for him. 393 00:31:11,094 --> 00:31:13,814 And I think that resonates with me a hundred percent. 394 00:31:13,814 --> 00:31:20,494 I left the practice of law after a few years and got into entrepreneurship and was very lucky and fortunate along the way. 395 00:31:20,494 --> 00:31:27,234 But I think some folks just leave after three years and went to school, they did all this training and then they just leave because they don't want to do the work that they've been 396 00:31:27,234 --> 00:31:27,780 assigned. 397 00:31:27,780 --> 00:31:36,000 But if AI can replace some of that, maybe we'll keep people in the profession longer and have a much healthier relationship with the practice of law. 398 00:31:36,181 --> 00:31:38,773 Yeah, maybe a little better work-life balance. 399 00:31:38,773 --> 00:31:47,519 I don't know if that's realistic or not, but I know that's a huge gap in the industry and drives a lot of people out and into, I mean, I've had lawyers working for me over the 400 00:31:47,519 --> 00:31:54,683 years just because they wanted to escape that 2000 hour billable quota. 401 00:31:55,845 --> 00:32:05,461 So I know AI is like front of mind with law firms right now and there's a lot of experimentation going on, but I look at survey numbers. 402 00:32:05,503 --> 00:32:20,512 Like the Iltatech survey that just came out and it said that law firms, over 700 attorneys, 70 % were using AI for business workflows. 403 00:32:20,512 --> 00:32:25,435 The question could have been asked better. 404 00:32:25,435 --> 00:32:30,523 does that mean if one lawyer Googles chat GPT, that counts? 405 00:32:30,523 --> 00:32:31,371 Yeah. 406 00:32:31,371 --> 00:32:36,715 I don't know, but my anecdotal observation is it is nowhere near 70%. 407 00:32:36,715 --> 00:32:44,820 There's a lot of experimentation going on, but you guys probably have a better boots on the ground view. 408 00:32:44,820 --> 00:32:49,843 What are you seeing out there with law firms really in AI true adoption? 409 00:32:49,998 --> 00:32:50,898 Yeah, I agree with that. 410 00:32:50,898 --> 00:32:59,226 think depending on the practice area and the client base, you may see a larger attorney population or firm using it. 411 00:32:59,347 --> 00:33:09,737 And then you go to some firms that have a client base that restricts pinging Microsoft's Azure environment for various reasons that don't make sense and they don't get to play 412 00:33:09,737 --> 00:33:10,158 with it. 413 00:33:10,158 --> 00:33:14,902 So I think we do, on a blind average, you probably get a pretty low percentage of 414 00:33:15,308 --> 00:33:17,809 real associates and partners engaging with technology. 415 00:33:17,809 --> 00:33:29,576 would say every 100 % of firms are doing something, testing, playing, but there is a call it 10 % of firms are all in on it and already have are finding ways to embed it more 416 00:33:29,576 --> 00:33:31,567 holistically in their use cases. 417 00:33:32,227 --> 00:33:35,869 And so you have early adopters and then you have the laggers. 418 00:33:35,869 --> 00:33:39,895 And I think the ones that are all in on it, super interesting. 419 00:33:39,895 --> 00:33:44,614 Cause there's firms out there that three years ago, last time I met them were 420 00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:48,521 still filing cabinets, felt like that's what their tech, they weren't doing much. 421 00:33:48,521 --> 00:33:54,923 And then now I'm like, whoa, you are now leading, you are doing the most out of anybody in this space. 422 00:33:54,923 --> 00:33:56,653 You guys have gone all in. 423 00:33:56,653 --> 00:34:05,376 You even look back and you went complete from here to here and you've passed every other like-sized firm in the last 18 months. 424 00:34:05,736 --> 00:34:08,728 I was blown away by that and commended the team. 425 00:34:08,728 --> 00:34:12,318 I'm like, wow, you guys have really pushed it down below here and you're taking it really far. 426 00:34:12,545 --> 00:34:19,899 Yeah, you're seeing this with how I measure that from a distance is who they're hiring. 427 00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:35,739 And I've seen some firms that have had very stodgy images and bringing in real talent that, and I know many of these people, and then surrounding them with even more talent. 428 00:34:35,739 --> 00:34:38,817 And you can tell they're investing and that they're 429 00:34:38,817 --> 00:34:41,008 those purse strings are loosening up a little bit. 430 00:34:41,008 --> 00:34:51,913 And ultimately, think that's going to be good for the industry because law firm clients have a perspective on law firms that's around innovation that's not favorable. 431 00:34:51,973 --> 00:34:54,004 And this is good to see. 432 00:34:54,004 --> 00:34:56,445 I think it's positive for the industry. 433 00:34:56,728 --> 00:35:02,501 Would you ever think that you have a law firm hiring employees from Google, Meta, and Microsoft? 434 00:35:02,501 --> 00:35:04,391 Like, that's what this firm was doing. 435 00:35:04,391 --> 00:35:11,555 They're building a team and bringing in smart folks from Google, Meta, and Facebook to join them as engineers and developers. 436 00:35:11,555 --> 00:35:13,125 Like, that's so genius. 437 00:35:14,086 --> 00:35:14,716 Genius. 438 00:35:14,716 --> 00:35:16,126 I don't know what's more surprising. 439 00:35:16,126 --> 00:35:27,453 The fact that those job offers happened or that the people accepted the roles because I mean, think if you're a rock star, listen, I love the industry. 440 00:35:27,453 --> 00:35:39,409 Like my entire livelihood depends on it, but you know, coming out of Silicon Valley and going to an Amlaw firm is a pretty big shift in term. 441 00:35:39,409 --> 00:35:41,851 mean, big law just got to the cloud. 442 00:35:41,851 --> 00:35:42,791 Like they're 443 00:35:43,383 --> 00:35:44,464 Last week. 444 00:35:45,369 --> 00:35:47,530 I think there's, it's still happening. 445 00:35:47,530 --> 00:35:55,214 So, you know, like people who want to work on the latest and greatest, this is, they don't think, I want to go to a law firm. 446 00:35:55,214 --> 00:36:00,547 But, you know, I feel like a lot of that's starting to change to your point. 447 00:36:00,547 --> 00:36:10,423 We're seeing real, and we're seeing startups like, you know, like deep judge, for example, um, you know, former Google folks, real creative ideas. 448 00:36:10,627 --> 00:36:14,481 And you're seeing real Silicon Valley venture. 449 00:36:14,481 --> 00:36:18,965 Look at the Harvey backers, Google ventures, open AI, a 16 Z. 450 00:36:18,965 --> 00:36:23,159 Like when have they been so interested in legal tech? 451 00:36:23,159 --> 00:36:25,201 You know, until recently they haven't. 452 00:36:25,201 --> 00:36:27,020 Um, so 453 00:36:27,020 --> 00:36:28,535 And for them, it's a long-term bet, right? 454 00:36:28,535 --> 00:36:40,034 It's a long-term, hopeful bet that they can ride away for the next three to five years as the technology evolution continues that they're one of the hopefully handful of folks that 455 00:36:40,034 --> 00:36:43,255 are leading in that data processing space. 456 00:36:43,675 --> 00:36:49,787 And so you've got to place your bets on at least five or six of these and say, one of those five or six should end up being the leader. 457 00:36:49,787 --> 00:36:52,398 And that's high, high value return here. 458 00:36:53,626 --> 00:36:57,910 And, uh, but yeah, it's really interesting to see that that's the owner, how long that lasts. 459 00:36:57,910 --> 00:37:03,265 mean, we're startups can show up and raise that kind of money and get that kind of attention doing the exact same thing. 460 00:37:03,265 --> 00:37:06,826 It'd have to be something that new or some other use case or solving for it. 461 00:37:06,826 --> 00:37:11,584 Cause it feels like the first three or four big brands are all kind of doing this. 462 00:37:11,584 --> 00:37:19,360 They're all tracking towards the same answer and whoever gets there first, I think will be the lion's share of it. 463 00:37:19,361 --> 00:37:20,172 Yeah. 464 00:37:20,172 --> 00:37:21,893 And things move so fast here. 465 00:37:21,893 --> 00:37:25,335 Like you talked about like six months kind of reassessing. 466 00:37:25,335 --> 00:37:26,936 How about six days? 467 00:37:26,936 --> 00:37:37,003 you know, like just this week, like Gemini two got released, like chat open AI had like three announcements, llama three. 468 00:37:37,051 --> 00:37:38,985 I don't know. 469 00:37:38,985 --> 00:37:44,331 Things move so quickly and these, these models are like leapfrogging each other. 470 00:37:44,331 --> 00:37:48,659 Um, Google actually looks like the leader in my opinion, if you 471 00:37:48,659 --> 00:38:02,154 If you look at big picture cost, cost performance, you know, or quality and speed, Google looks like it's starting to lead that race. 472 00:38:02,154 --> 00:38:08,281 And, three months ago, everybody was like, where's Google and just boom out of nowhere. 473 00:38:08,281 --> 00:38:10,683 And they're, they're leading the pack. 474 00:38:11,578 --> 00:38:21,824 had a chat with one of our board members from HG and we're talking about, you know, the AI journey, Litera's on and AI journey, the industry's on and vice versa. 475 00:38:21,824 --> 00:38:29,068 And this notion of those first two products that came to market, took an immense amount of effort to get them out. 476 00:38:29,349 --> 00:38:38,114 That same product to come out today, takes a 10th of the time to build because the model improvement, lessons learned, you can actually build. 477 00:38:38,606 --> 00:38:46,450 whatever someone released in June may have taken them six months, you cannot potentially do it in like you just said, two weeks and build the exact same product high quality with 478 00:38:46,450 --> 00:38:47,220 even better results. 479 00:38:47,220 --> 00:38:50,292 That's because the models have evolved and it's even easier to do. 480 00:38:50,492 --> 00:38:59,717 So it's a challenge to the startup market saying, don't feel like you're losing or like even answer the question. 481 00:38:59,717 --> 00:39:01,108 It's just happening so fast. 482 00:39:01,108 --> 00:39:02,318 Like you were saying. 483 00:39:03,194 --> 00:39:04,874 you can have a second answer right away. 484 00:39:04,874 --> 00:39:08,334 If the first one didn't hit, I think you keep trying as a startup. 485 00:39:08,334 --> 00:39:11,864 even for Litera, if we're not first to market, it's actually okay. 486 00:39:11,864 --> 00:39:17,294 Kind of like Google, we can pick the battle we want to win and then go do it. 487 00:39:17,294 --> 00:39:22,374 And I feel like we're behind the eight ball because it's the speed to development is so much faster now than it was a year ago. 488 00:39:22,374 --> 00:39:24,854 And a year from now it will be even faster. 489 00:39:24,874 --> 00:39:27,804 So I don't think anybody should ever feel like they're behind the eight ball at this point. 490 00:39:27,804 --> 00:39:31,026 You just got to pick your point of view and go do it. 491 00:39:31,061 --> 00:39:33,052 Yeah, I completely agree. 492 00:39:33,092 --> 00:39:40,586 So I wanted to talk a little bit about Co-Pilot and, um, you know, I have a long history with Microsoft having worked there. 493 00:39:40,586 --> 00:39:42,717 That's how this whole thing got started. 494 00:39:42,937 --> 00:39:48,330 Our, our product is married to the M365 and Azure platform. 495 00:39:48,330 --> 00:39:51,362 Like there's no way it could ever run without it. 496 00:39:51,362 --> 00:39:55,684 So I, I'm a big advocate for, for Microsoft. 497 00:39:56,225 --> 00:40:01,187 I, I've been, I've had mixed results with Co-Pilot and, um, 498 00:40:01,515 --> 00:40:10,651 You know, in fact, I just had a call with their, um, some of their folks yesterday with a common client and raised some of the challenges and I know they're going to get it right 499 00:40:10,651 --> 00:40:11,642 in the long run. 500 00:40:11,642 --> 00:40:16,776 There's the, they have too much invested and when, when does Microsoft not get it right eventually? 501 00:40:16,776 --> 00:40:18,326 Yeah. 502 00:40:18,627 --> 00:40:22,570 Well, the browser until like a year ago, right? 503 00:40:22,570 --> 00:40:26,672 Like IE was terrible and so was edge. 504 00:40:27,673 --> 00:40:30,335 I remember the meme that used to go around. 505 00:40:30,511 --> 00:40:34,715 IE Internet Explorer, the best browser to download another browser. 506 00:40:35,937 --> 00:40:38,640 But you know, they eventually figured it out. 507 00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:42,154 It took a little longer than normal, but they always figure it out. 508 00:40:42,154 --> 00:40:51,324 So like our chips are on Microsoft's spot on the table and it sounds like you guys are working on some Copilot integration too. 509 00:40:51,324 --> 00:40:52,295 Is that right? 510 00:40:52,634 --> 00:40:59,594 Yeah, we always had this belief that Litera is here to help make Microsoft more valuable to law firms. 511 00:40:59,654 --> 00:41:03,544 So start with Word and like use, to make Azure more valuable. 512 00:41:03,544 --> 00:41:06,894 It's trying to make OneDrive more valuable. 513 00:41:06,894 --> 00:41:10,914 Try to make every facet of what a law firm may do more valuable to them. 514 00:41:10,914 --> 00:41:13,124 And so we've always been closely embedded with them. 515 00:41:13,124 --> 00:41:18,454 We were one of the first apps in the Microsoft store a few years ago with Contra Companion. 516 00:41:18,594 --> 00:41:22,458 And now we're continuing to work closely hand in glove with them on 517 00:41:22,458 --> 00:41:30,578 on new versions of our technologies and showing how what Microsoft does and how we do is valuable to the end market. 518 00:41:30,918 --> 00:41:32,298 Copilot is super interesting. 519 00:41:32,298 --> 00:41:41,858 I think it opens up the aperture of passive work happening and not actually engaging with a product step, but engaging with the answer you want. 520 00:41:41,858 --> 00:41:44,158 And there's a long runway here. 521 00:41:44,158 --> 00:41:52,722 You can do all the Copilot work integration, so it requires change management with the industry as a whole and say, is a new way of doing work. 522 00:41:52,890 --> 00:41:57,490 It makes, we think it makes sense, but I can see half the population saying, nah, I'm okay. 523 00:41:57,490 --> 00:41:58,890 This could be the icon. 524 00:41:58,890 --> 00:42:01,630 I want to click in and do the job the old way. 525 00:42:01,630 --> 00:42:09,890 So even though we integrate and we want to look at building these cool new ways of working there, we have to respect that there is a certain set of population, a good size of it 526 00:42:09,890 --> 00:42:12,240 that wants to just keep business as usual. 527 00:42:12,240 --> 00:42:16,070 And if that business usual improves on its own, also highly valuable. 528 00:42:16,070 --> 00:42:22,266 So it requires us investing in two or three different ways for the same products that, um, but 529 00:42:22,266 --> 00:42:27,726 I can argue, co-pilot, I started using it when it first came out, wasn't impressed. 530 00:42:28,046 --> 00:42:32,586 Now I'm using it to watch internal videos that I missed a meeting. 531 00:42:32,586 --> 00:42:39,206 I can do it in five minutes with the notes and the summarization features, click the minutes I want to watch and move on. 532 00:42:39,206 --> 00:42:46,606 It's made me much more productive and I'm hearing and learning more about my own business now than if I could have without it. 533 00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:50,123 I think that evolution will be great for Microsoft. 534 00:42:50,123 --> 00:42:51,175 I'm a big believer like you. 535 00:42:51,175 --> 00:42:52,776 My chips are there too. 536 00:42:53,318 --> 00:42:57,132 And it's a long term view on that on that brand. 537 00:42:57,355 --> 00:42:58,455 Yeah, no doubt. 538 00:42:58,455 --> 00:43:01,557 Um, they always win in the, in the longterm. 539 00:43:01,557 --> 00:43:04,559 And I think I'm a big Satya fan. 540 00:43:04,929 --> 00:43:08,701 I think he's been the best CEO they've had by a mile. 541 00:43:08,751 --> 00:43:10,942 I was there under Bill Gates. 542 00:43:11,543 --> 00:43:14,495 and I think he's, he's doing a better job than Bill. 543 00:43:14,495 --> 00:43:19,517 He just got an open mind, you know, and he thinks about things differently. 544 00:43:19,517 --> 00:43:26,131 he's embraced Linux and you know, just, open source and 545 00:43:26,355 --> 00:43:39,357 It's really been fun to watch the company get out of that really kind of fixed mindset that they had for so long and they're thriving as a result. 546 00:43:40,250 --> 00:43:43,750 know, collaboration with the ecosystem you support makes so much sense, right? 547 00:43:43,750 --> 00:43:45,610 It's like, why wouldn't you do that? 548 00:43:45,610 --> 00:43:52,210 And it's approach, I would ask, there's peer vendors or peer firms, like vendors in our industry, right? 549 00:43:52,210 --> 00:43:54,350 That we work, we all have to integrate with and stuff. 550 00:43:54,350 --> 00:43:56,140 I often tell them, we're all in the same ecosystem. 551 00:43:56,140 --> 00:44:00,100 Like, why can't we all just like, why can't you all just be friends with each other and friends with us? 552 00:44:00,100 --> 00:44:00,950 And like, just figure this out. 553 00:44:00,950 --> 00:44:01,990 We're all the common goal. 554 00:44:01,990 --> 00:44:04,290 We're not, we're all non-competitive to some degree. 555 00:44:04,290 --> 00:44:06,910 Like, let's just be super collaborative. 556 00:44:06,910 --> 00:44:09,434 Like the way we all work with Microsoft. 557 00:44:09,466 --> 00:44:13,829 We all engage with them in a really intimate level that's appropriate for our businesses. 558 00:44:13,829 --> 00:44:16,271 And we're all happy on both sides of the equation. 559 00:44:16,271 --> 00:44:19,493 That should work horizontally as well. 560 00:44:19,493 --> 00:44:25,998 We should be able to go to our horizontal partners and say, we're all benefiting the same end user. 561 00:44:25,998 --> 00:44:31,622 I have a partner right now that we work with, not a partner, but an integration partner we work with. 562 00:44:31,622 --> 00:44:38,206 But all of a sudden decide they want to change the relationship and how they engage with all of their partners. 563 00:44:38,586 --> 00:44:40,776 And so it caused huge constraints in the marketplace. 564 00:44:40,776 --> 00:44:44,686 And for them, they think it's a good business decision, but it's to have downstream impact. 565 00:44:44,966 --> 00:44:47,906 And I think you wouldn't expect that from Microsoft, right? 566 00:44:47,906 --> 00:44:49,556 The conversation like, it make sense or not? 567 00:44:49,556 --> 00:44:51,546 This is, so that's where I'm hoping, right? 568 00:44:51,546 --> 00:44:54,286 I think your note on stuff is 100 % spot on. 569 00:44:54,286 --> 00:44:57,626 How do we now get that across the ecosystem and say, can we all be open? 570 00:44:57,626 --> 00:44:58,786 Can we all be collaborative? 571 00:44:58,786 --> 00:45:02,796 Can we all understand that we're all in the same industry? 572 00:45:02,796 --> 00:45:05,606 We're all trying to the common results set out. 573 00:45:05,606 --> 00:45:08,488 If we work together, work together better. 574 00:45:08,664 --> 00:45:13,059 the output, they're actually so much more interesting and the industry moves so much more faster. 575 00:45:13,059 --> 00:45:17,803 It's not what we're excited about, like moving the industry forward and changing the practice of law forever. 576 00:45:18,164 --> 00:45:19,906 Or we are just here to sell a widget. 577 00:45:19,906 --> 00:45:27,974 I think if we all come in line and say, we're trying to change the practice of law forever as a collective industry, we can do a whole lot more. 578 00:45:28,311 --> 00:45:42,275 Yeah, know law firm clients have been frustrated with all the little fiefdoms in the legal tech ecosystem, where there's these walls up and a lot of vendors, there's contractual 579 00:45:42,275 --> 00:45:52,598 limitations to who can touch the systems and if you're not on the approved vendor list and well, I'm glad you feel that way because we integrate with your stuff. 580 00:45:52,878 --> 00:45:54,350 that's good to hear. 581 00:45:54,350 --> 00:45:56,966 Nowhere else, I'll you a letter of student charging for a lot more money. 582 00:45:56,966 --> 00:45:57,607 Don't worry. 583 00:45:57,607 --> 00:45:58,238 It's coming. 584 00:45:58,238 --> 00:45:58,890 It's coming. 585 00:45:58,890 --> 00:45:59,642 I sense it. 586 00:45:59,642 --> 00:46:00,444 I sense it. 587 00:46:00,444 --> 00:46:02,426 in the mail man checks in the mail. 588 00:46:03,348 --> 00:46:04,859 Well, I know we're almost out of time here. 589 00:46:04,859 --> 00:46:07,632 I did want to ask you guys announced a relationship. 590 00:46:07,632 --> 00:46:10,654 I think with Microsoft in May. 591 00:46:11,636 --> 00:46:13,327 What was the nature of that? 592 00:46:13,327 --> 00:46:15,369 Was that copilot related? 593 00:46:16,142 --> 00:46:29,738 Um, it was not just Copile, the general relationship around, um, the industry of illegal and how we can integrate and see early access, some of their products and how we can be 594 00:46:29,738 --> 00:46:31,619 better prepared to innovate on top of it. 595 00:46:31,619 --> 00:46:37,131 Um, so there's a few vendors like us that are working in the space. 596 00:46:37,722 --> 00:46:38,776 it's been super beneficial. 597 00:46:38,776 --> 00:46:45,194 I think we view it as, um, a recognition of our size and scale and our ability to impact. 598 00:46:45,346 --> 00:46:47,567 the 15,000 customers that we have. 599 00:46:48,167 --> 00:46:55,600 But also I think for us, it's talking to my CTO, it's like, we have to take advantage of this partnership and really push the envelope. 600 00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:58,551 Otherwise, what's the purpose of doing it? 601 00:46:58,551 --> 00:47:00,122 So it's from both sides. 602 00:47:00,122 --> 00:47:07,189 I feel like it's meant to push the envelope with what they're working on and what we think we can do with it for the industry. 603 00:47:07,189 --> 00:47:07,921 Yeah. 604 00:47:07,921 --> 00:47:11,517 What's the next, what is 2025 going to look like for Litera? 605 00:47:12,634 --> 00:47:14,584 It's going to be busy. 606 00:47:14,584 --> 00:47:17,144 So there's a few things that we're going to heads down on. 607 00:47:17,144 --> 00:47:27,464 So one is for our entire drafting suite that's been on the desktop apps since the early 2000s, we are moving to the cloud. 608 00:47:27,464 --> 00:47:34,014 And it sounds funny to say that, but you gotta recall most firms were not ready to have any of their environments in the cloud. 609 00:47:34,014 --> 00:47:37,374 So now that they're ready to, we will also be ready to support them there. 610 00:47:37,374 --> 00:47:39,986 So That journey kicks off in Q2. 611 00:47:40,282 --> 00:47:48,902 I'm really bullish on foundation and being the future of Litera so I think you're going see a lot more innovation and integration with foundation next year. 612 00:47:49,022 --> 00:47:54,762 You're going to see us continue to invest in Gen AI and weaving it through our ecosystem. 613 00:47:54,762 --> 00:47:58,182 And that seems super exciting for us. 614 00:47:58,182 --> 00:48:00,982 So should be a pretty busy year. 615 00:48:00,982 --> 00:48:08,626 And one thing that we are doing more of, I think in 2015 in the past is working with the partners around it to think of. 616 00:48:09,018 --> 00:48:12,878 the harbors, the firemen, all the integration partners that exist. 617 00:48:12,878 --> 00:48:18,658 We just feel like what Lotteria offers today is such a big piece of a law firm's environment. 618 00:48:18,658 --> 00:48:24,398 Working with the ecosystems makes a lot more sense than working in parallel. 619 00:48:24,398 --> 00:48:31,998 like I mentioned before, my goal now is to be much more collaborative with all the folks around us and be good stewards of what we're trying to accomplish. 620 00:48:31,998 --> 00:48:36,638 so I'm hopeful that next year feels like a big... 621 00:48:36,748 --> 00:48:46,783 move forward for us as a brand and getting us out of the days of 1,000 different versions of comparison, but moving to the cloud with something that's super unique and innovative. 622 00:48:46,783 --> 00:48:52,226 I think we've prog in this read bit for that space of drafting. 623 00:48:52,439 --> 00:48:54,089 All right, last question. 624 00:48:54,089 --> 00:49:01,219 Do you anticipate 2025 being a active year in &A with? 625 00:49:01,219 --> 00:49:02,319 Yeah. 626 00:49:02,519 --> 00:49:03,266 Okay. 627 00:49:03,266 --> 00:49:16,211 I think wherever you fall on the aisle of US politics, think the end result is an active M &A outlook up and down the spectrum of size. 628 00:49:16,872 --> 00:49:21,324 And that's going to yield a lot more work for law firms in general, right? 629 00:49:21,324 --> 00:49:26,356 So lawyers can be busy, which means we hope that they have banner years of revenue. 630 00:49:26,416 --> 00:49:29,577 And I think for Litera, it's an opportunity to... 631 00:49:31,502 --> 00:49:32,582 We've always been inquisitive. 632 00:49:32,582 --> 00:49:40,627 think we'll have more parties interested in finding ways to enter the ecosystem much more sooner to get exposure to the customer base. 633 00:49:40,627 --> 00:49:43,189 And that's what Lotteria can bring to a business. 634 00:49:43,189 --> 00:49:44,890 So I think it should be busy. 635 00:49:44,890 --> 00:49:49,593 I think it should be busy not just for us, but for law firms and for everybody else that support law firms. 636 00:49:49,593 --> 00:49:51,014 They're going to be busy next year. 637 00:49:51,014 --> 00:49:56,217 They're going to use all of our technologies a lot more than they did this year. 638 00:49:56,217 --> 00:49:58,718 And they're going to be leveraging all of us. 639 00:49:58,842 --> 00:50:03,062 and support and services, customer success to make them happy. 640 00:50:03,062 --> 00:50:06,891 So it will be a busy 25, if I had to guess, for all of us. 641 00:50:06,891 --> 00:50:08,231 Yeah, no, I agree. 642 00:50:08,231 --> 00:50:20,255 We are projecting to more than double and we're at a size now, we're still small, but it's easy to double when you're starting out. 643 00:50:20,255 --> 00:50:26,617 Like our first year we had like 4.3x, but as you get bigger, it's hard to have those multiples. 644 00:50:26,617 --> 00:50:30,278 And we fully anticipate this being a realistic goal. 645 00:50:30,659 --> 00:50:32,346 We're going to do it for sure. 646 00:50:32,346 --> 00:50:34,046 think it's the right time to it. 647 00:50:34,046 --> 00:50:36,126 I think it's the right time to invest and double down on certain ideas. 648 00:50:36,126 --> 00:50:37,388 It's the right time to do it. 649 00:50:37,388 --> 00:50:38,538 yeah, we're excited. 650 00:50:38,538 --> 00:50:40,847 Well, hey, I really appreciate you taking the time. 651 00:50:40,847 --> 00:50:45,772 I hope I don't have to wait till TLTF again next year to see you in person. 652 00:50:45,772 --> 00:50:51,015 I'm overdue for a trip to Chapel Hill, so maybe we can go catch a game or something. 653 00:50:51,638 --> 00:50:52,259 Yep, let's do it. 654 00:50:52,259 --> 00:50:52,684 Let me know. 655 00:50:52,684 --> 00:50:56,917 We'll be happy to get together and enjoy a TARO victory. 656 00:50:56,917 --> 00:50:58,228 Yeah, exactly. 657 00:50:58,228 --> 00:50:59,590 All right, good times. 658 00:50:59,590 --> 00:51:03,893 Appreciate you coming on and we will chat again soon. 659 00:51:04,515 --> 00:51:05,915 All right, thank you. 00:00:04,744 Avaneesh, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:05,146 --> 00:00:06,163 You're doing good, Ted. 3 00:00:06,163 --> 00:00:07,115 How are you? 4 00:00:07,351 --> 00:00:08,251 I'm doing great. 5 00:00:08,251 --> 00:00:12,818 Have you recovered from Miami and salvaged your inbox yet? 6 00:00:12,818 --> 00:00:14,259 Are you still underwater? 7 00:00:14,508 --> 00:00:20,699 It is amazing how much it's like a bomb goes off when you're like undercover for three days doing other work. 8 00:00:20,761 --> 00:00:25,810 It did take a while physically and mentally to recover from it. 9 00:00:26,133 --> 00:00:26,684 No doubt. 10 00:00:26,684 --> 00:00:28,867 Yeah, it was a first-class event. 11 00:00:28,867 --> 00:00:31,990 mean, there was, the food was outstanding. 12 00:00:32,352 --> 00:00:33,553 Everything was top shelf. 13 00:00:33,553 --> 00:00:35,465 We had a great time. 14 00:00:36,236 --> 00:00:41,060 I've echoed that super impressed with what Zach and his team have put together. 15 00:00:41,060 --> 00:00:46,084 Every time I talk to folks, even since the event's been over, they're like, yeah, I got invited. 16 00:00:46,084 --> 00:00:48,235 didn't go, I feel like I should have. 17 00:00:48,356 --> 00:00:51,719 That's the appropriate answer for something like this. 18 00:00:51,719 --> 00:00:54,721 We're going to do a lot of work. 19 00:00:54,721 --> 00:00:55,854 The event is great, right? 20 00:00:55,854 --> 00:00:59,310 We're out there as vendors, we're not there to actually book any deals with clients. 21 00:00:59,310 --> 00:01:05,410 You're there to meet other vendors and other technologies and innovation and really think about the industry. 22 00:01:05,782 --> 00:01:10,793 I can't think of another event right now on the calendar that produces that kind of conversation. 23 00:01:10,793 --> 00:01:11,964 I agree. 24 00:01:14,327 --> 00:01:16,209 We went last year. 25 00:01:16,209 --> 00:01:19,223 I went last year and really didn't have an agenda. 26 00:01:19,223 --> 00:01:20,394 I just wanted to check it out. 27 00:01:20,394 --> 00:01:21,876 We weren't raising money. 28 00:01:21,876 --> 00:01:27,592 There were surprisingly a lot of law firms there that we had real productive BD conversations with. 29 00:01:27,592 --> 00:01:29,564 It was completely unexpected. 30 00:01:29,645 --> 00:01:32,317 This time, the same was true as well. 31 00:01:32,536 --> 00:01:34,088 That's great. 32 00:01:34,088 --> 00:01:35,549 That's great to hear. 33 00:01:36,051 --> 00:01:41,858 you've got, he has what, five or six really good advisory firms on his Rolodex. 34 00:01:41,858 --> 00:01:46,234 I think those folks show up and they come for the right mindset to innovate and talk. 35 00:01:46,234 --> 00:01:51,349 So that's great that you get a chance to build some pipeline and hope we grow some deals. 36 00:01:51,349 --> 00:01:53,200 Yeah, absolutely. 37 00:01:53,300 --> 00:01:58,343 Well, um, before we jump into the agenda here, we got a lot of really fun stuff to talk about. 38 00:01:58,343 --> 00:02:00,064 why don't we get you introduced? 39 00:02:00,064 --> 00:02:01,985 I think most people probably know who you are. 40 00:02:01,985 --> 00:02:11,031 Um, your CEO at, Litera and you just kind of retook that role. 41 00:02:11,031 --> 00:02:15,814 You had stepped off for a couple of years, but I didn't realize this until I got your bio. 42 00:02:15,814 --> 00:02:18,165 You were COO at Kino Cozy. 43 00:02:18,490 --> 00:02:23,970 It was, yeah, for three or four years from 2012 to 2016. 44 00:02:25,070 --> 00:02:32,750 was a really great introduction to legal IT consulting and legal software and what's happening in space. 45 00:02:32,750 --> 00:02:36,350 2012, 2016 was a very interesting time, I feel like, for legal technology. 46 00:02:36,350 --> 00:02:41,579 So I got to be in middle of all that, which is a good warmup for Lotterra. 47 00:02:41,579 --> 00:02:42,240 Yeah. 48 00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:46,275 Well, and would imagine, you know, they do a lot of MSP work there. 49 00:02:46,275 --> 00:02:56,638 You probably got a really broad view of all the different, you know, the tech stacks that are deployed in legal and where the, where the gaps are. 50 00:02:56,638 --> 00:03:01,383 would imagine that would have informed some of the work that you did next at Litera. 51 00:03:01,882 --> 00:03:13,912 Yeah, so the MSP part engineering piece definitely right doing large project work with I manage and netdoc and then doing backup infrastructure systems and ISP work. 52 00:03:13,912 --> 00:03:26,602 But then the real part that I think is meaningful for the Terra story is Tier 1 help desk taking 60 to 75,000 phone calls a month from lawyers having help desk issues with their 53 00:03:26,602 --> 00:03:29,626 applications gives you a clear ideation of what 54 00:03:29,626 --> 00:03:33,966 the struggle is and what they're trying to achieve and how you can do better with better software. 55 00:03:33,966 --> 00:03:42,126 So I would say, yeah, then we can because it was a great education and experience for some of the stuff we do today. 56 00:03:42,126 --> 00:03:42,849 100%. 57 00:03:42,849 --> 00:03:46,248 Yeah, and you were a lawyer. 58 00:03:46,248 --> 00:03:47,650 Did you practice? 59 00:03:48,356 --> 00:03:54,971 practiced for two and half, three years after law school at a firm in Chicago and then on my own. 60 00:03:56,632 --> 00:04:02,407 And the reason why that's been valuable for me is most of my friends are still lawyers and partners. 61 00:04:02,407 --> 00:04:04,739 all their partners are firms, they're managing partners. 62 00:04:04,739 --> 00:04:12,184 So I get direct, unrequested feedback from them all times about how they feel. 63 00:04:12,184 --> 00:04:14,926 Yeah, unfiltered, unrequested. 64 00:04:15,343 --> 00:04:19,166 feedback about not just Litera, but everything else that they hate in world. 65 00:04:19,708 --> 00:04:20,975 But they're, they're, it's good, right? 66 00:04:20,975 --> 00:04:25,595 You've like 50, 60 friends that are still working that are just good folks to bounce ideas off of. 67 00:04:25,595 --> 00:04:28,395 And I feel pretty unique in that position, I think. 68 00:04:28,395 --> 00:04:35,163 Yeah, I started my formal tech career at Microsoft in support. 69 00:04:35,264 --> 00:04:38,297 And man, it is a tough gig. 70 00:04:38,297 --> 00:04:45,126 can't imagine having almost exclusively lawyers on the other end of the phone. 71 00:04:45,126 --> 00:04:48,219 That's probably different. 72 00:04:48,556 --> 00:04:52,550 It's a art, but I it's a, it's a skill. 73 00:04:52,550 --> 00:04:57,150 We would spend a lot of time teaching the support analysts what they're dealing with, right? 74 00:04:57,150 --> 00:05:08,043 It could be a third year associate trying to get a filing into court on time and something isn't working or they're going to court tomorrow or there's something happening that's 75 00:05:08,043 --> 00:05:09,334 really important in their life. 76 00:05:09,334 --> 00:05:12,451 And they've already tried to fix it by themselves. 77 00:05:12,451 --> 00:05:15,930 And they worked with the law firm, help that's now they're calling you. 78 00:05:16,346 --> 00:05:18,986 Your job is to fix the problem with a smile on your face. 79 00:05:18,986 --> 00:05:20,326 You will get chewed out. 80 00:05:20,326 --> 00:05:21,356 You will get screamed at. 81 00:05:21,356 --> 00:05:24,036 yeah, remember they're representing clients. 82 00:05:24,036 --> 00:05:25,336 That client could be your family. 83 00:05:25,336 --> 00:05:28,066 That could be the business next door to your house. 84 00:05:28,066 --> 00:05:34,446 I don't know what it is, but our job in health desk is to remove all barriers from their work productivity. 85 00:05:34,446 --> 00:05:34,686 Right? 86 00:05:34,686 --> 00:05:37,446 So when you take that mindset, it allows you to get chewed out. 87 00:05:37,446 --> 00:05:42,826 Otherwise you feel like you're just at the other end of a argument that you're one sided. 88 00:05:42,826 --> 00:05:44,511 So, uh, 89 00:05:44,511 --> 00:05:47,486 helped us in legal is a very difficult job. 90 00:05:48,011 --> 00:05:50,592 Yeah, I would agree with that. 91 00:05:50,692 --> 00:05:58,295 So we got to hang out a little bit in Miami and found out we had a common connection, which is the Tar Heels. 92 00:05:59,356 --> 00:06:02,016 I went to school there undergrad. 93 00:06:02,037 --> 00:06:04,778 My wife and I got married at the Carolina Inn. 94 00:06:04,818 --> 00:06:06,238 We're diehard. 95 00:06:06,238 --> 00:06:09,620 So my wife went to UNC Charlotte where I got my master's degree. 96 00:06:09,620 --> 00:06:10,510 She was an undergrad. 97 00:06:10,510 --> 00:06:16,553 I was in grad school and she kind of became an adopted Tar Heel. 98 00:06:16,553 --> 00:06:17,783 you know, she 99 00:06:17,909 --> 00:06:26,731 She hated Duke because I did, um, you know, but didn't really, the, the rivalry was not deep in her bones. 100 00:06:26,731 --> 00:06:35,344 And then we went to a Duke Carolina game at Cameron the year after Hansborough left, you know, Hansborough indoor stadium. 101 00:06:36,644 --> 00:06:47,229 and we had beaten them four years in a row at home and they were, mean, the fangs were out and we were dressed in full Carolina gear and 102 00:06:47,229 --> 00:06:54,823 After that, the abuse we took was so bad at like midway through the second half, we were getting blown out. 103 00:06:54,823 --> 00:06:57,585 They were destroying us. 104 00:06:57,585 --> 00:07:01,358 We were going to leave and we did, but everybody's like, Hey, where are going? 105 00:07:01,358 --> 00:07:02,847 I was like, we're going to get a hot dog. 106 00:07:02,847 --> 00:07:04,088 We'll be right back. 107 00:07:04,088 --> 00:07:06,909 just went out the side door. 108 00:07:07,350 --> 00:07:09,030 It was brutal. 109 00:07:10,970 --> 00:07:17,610 My ties are, my wife went there, undergrad and two master's degrees. 110 00:07:17,610 --> 00:07:23,450 And then I was born and raised Chicago Jordan fan since he came to the team. 111 00:07:23,450 --> 00:07:26,150 Saw him play all six championships. 112 00:07:26,250 --> 00:07:30,310 So Tar Heels were always part of our story as a kid growing up because of him. 113 00:07:30,310 --> 00:07:35,030 And then once we got married, we were all in, this is a Tar Heel house. 114 00:07:35,030 --> 00:07:39,350 We have a Tar Heel Christmas tree that gets ornaments added to it. 115 00:07:39,350 --> 00:07:40,602 The kids are growing up. 116 00:07:40,602 --> 00:07:44,602 Uh, being fans of the school, think it's a great institution. 117 00:07:44,602 --> 00:07:50,982 was like, were on campus this past weekend doing our annual Christmas shopping and lunch at Sutton's. 118 00:07:50,982 --> 00:07:54,562 And, uh, it's a good, I think it's a great state school. 119 00:07:54,562 --> 00:07:59,542 It's got great tradition, almost feels like a private institution that's run by the state, which is really unique. 120 00:07:59,542 --> 00:08:01,942 And obviously the sports program is top notch. 121 00:08:01,942 --> 00:08:07,490 So we feel pretty fortunate having left the city of Chicago and all the great sports. 122 00:08:07,898 --> 00:08:12,650 that I'm still following to come here and have that kind of repeated in the college atmosphere. 123 00:08:12,650 --> 00:08:22,365 It's great for the kids, it's great for the community, but yeah, it's really ironic that we both have a tie to yours much more deep in the mind, but I feel like I believe 124 00:08:22,365 --> 00:08:25,026 partially you target a little bit as much as you do. 125 00:08:25,111 --> 00:08:35,594 Yeah, I I don't know if I mentioned it, the best, best man in my wedding, JJ Houdock, his dad played for Frank McGuire and Dean Smith on Dean Smith's first team. 126 00:08:35,594 --> 00:08:43,876 And when he passed away, um, he was from a little small town in called Kinston, North Carolina, which is outside of Greenville. 127 00:08:43,876 --> 00:08:51,308 Um, Jerry Stackhouse is also from there and the people who showed up from the program, I mean, there's no direct flights. 128 00:08:51,308 --> 00:08:55,107 You like had to fly into Raleigh and then drive an hour East. 129 00:08:55,189 --> 00:08:56,920 And I was so blown away. 130 00:08:56,920 --> 00:08:58,712 mean, Jawad Williams was there. 131 00:08:58,712 --> 00:09:00,193 Eric Montross was there. 132 00:09:00,193 --> 00:09:02,464 Larry Brown was there. 133 00:09:04,166 --> 00:09:06,407 Billy Cunningham spoke. 134 00:09:07,028 --> 00:09:08,259 It was incredible. 135 00:09:08,259 --> 00:09:11,291 So it really is a tight-knit group. 136 00:09:12,090 --> 00:09:23,050 And I think that, so we're talking about school, I didn't go to, but my wife has that same experience from her time there, the community of graduates that just stick together. 137 00:09:23,050 --> 00:09:26,219 It's a really interesting institution, how well they take care of each other. 138 00:09:26,219 --> 00:09:27,270 Yeah, it's great. 139 00:09:27,270 --> 00:09:34,006 And the reason I brought it up is there's big news in football with, with Belichick taken, um, except in the head coaching role. 140 00:09:34,006 --> 00:09:41,582 And I'm sure our audiences doesn't care that much about the Tar Heels, but if you care about football, this is, this was a big story. 141 00:09:41,582 --> 00:09:45,735 would imagine there's a lot of excitement in, in the area around that. 142 00:09:45,900 --> 00:09:49,822 Yeah, the news is definitely all about, this last night. 143 00:09:49,822 --> 00:09:57,310 was watching the news and 30 minutes of the one hour was about, uh, a bill joining the institution. 144 00:09:57,310 --> 00:09:59,005 I've been looking at the chance here. 145 00:09:59,005 --> 00:10:02,056 finds the diamond, the rough and senior high school quarterbacks. 146 00:10:02,056 --> 00:10:05,198 You know, he found the diamond, the rough and the college quarterback. 147 00:10:05,198 --> 00:10:06,899 Maybe now he's in his art. 148 00:10:06,999 --> 00:10:11,741 He can extrapolate that skill set down market and find the next grade high school athlete to come out. 149 00:10:12,171 --> 00:10:13,161 it's great. 150 00:10:13,161 --> 00:10:14,082 It was bound to happen. 151 00:10:14,082 --> 00:10:14,746 I think with. 152 00:10:14,746 --> 00:10:24,546 the NIL exposure and the competition at the top end of football programs, we're going to start seeing them become semi-pro sports at this point. 153 00:10:24,546 --> 00:10:26,246 So great to have him here. 154 00:10:26,246 --> 00:10:30,603 Excited to see what happens to going to football games now, how hard it is. 155 00:10:30,603 --> 00:10:32,624 Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. 156 00:10:32,665 --> 00:10:34,716 Well, um, getting back to Litera. 157 00:10:34,716 --> 00:10:48,838 So you started your CEO journey years ago and you guys, if I'm, if I read your, your bio, right, you guys were like, went from 16 million to 250 million in revenue under your 158 00:10:48,838 --> 00:10:49,879 leadership. 159 00:10:49,879 --> 00:10:52,961 You took, you did 16 acquisitions. 160 00:10:52,961 --> 00:10:56,374 You took some time off and, and now you're back. 161 00:10:56,374 --> 00:11:00,331 What, what drove the decision to come back and 162 00:11:00,331 --> 00:11:01,448 Take the helm. 163 00:11:03,611 --> 00:11:14,536 there's never the intent, uh, to, come back, but, you know, in our, in our recent meetings that we've had in the fall and late summer around strategy and direction and where we felt 164 00:11:14,536 --> 00:11:21,119 like we were headed, it seemed like getting closer to the customer and to the product, made a lot of sense. 165 00:11:21,279 --> 00:11:27,642 So we had those conversations and, and made that transition a couple of months ago. 166 00:11:28,118 --> 00:11:32,200 And it's been rewarding much more so than the first time here. 167 00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:33,163 It feels different. 168 00:11:33,163 --> 00:11:36,155 It feels more purposeful and more directive. 169 00:11:36,155 --> 00:11:41,490 And there's clear line of sight of a point of view that we have at Latera. 170 00:11:41,490 --> 00:11:46,444 So excited about the second journey at the helm. 171 00:11:46,795 --> 00:11:48,377 Yeah, that's good stuff. 172 00:11:48,377 --> 00:11:51,660 Well, let's talk a little bit about kind of roadmap and strategy. 173 00:11:51,660 --> 00:11:58,086 So I would imagine you guys, you probably have a different MO. 174 00:11:58,186 --> 00:12:02,810 You're bringing a different skillset, a different perspective to the role. 175 00:12:04,172 --> 00:12:07,475 where is Litera heading big picture? 176 00:12:08,474 --> 00:12:15,736 So I see us really moving into becoming the experience company for law firms. 177 00:12:16,376 --> 00:12:26,669 A few years ago, we acquired a business called Foundation Software Group and their product called Foundation, which is the cornerstone of experience management for the largest firms 178 00:12:26,669 --> 00:12:30,131 in the world and doing well as it gets greater exposure. 179 00:12:30,131 --> 00:12:35,242 And what we can do at Foundation is drive and deliver. 180 00:12:35,864 --> 00:12:39,537 just in time valuable information to associates and partners. 181 00:12:40,218 --> 00:12:45,021 With Clocktomizer and Big Square, we can bring in pricing, budgeting, and dashboarding. 182 00:12:45,554 --> 00:12:51,286 In financial data, can drag and we can bring in deal point extraction and value there. 183 00:12:51,367 --> 00:12:56,882 But the real value comes in is how we can give value to the partners of law firms. 184 00:12:56,882 --> 00:13:04,737 So, directly looking where's the terror going, I think we want to make a meaningful impact on how partners and managing partners run their business. 185 00:13:05,678 --> 00:13:13,362 with drafting and transacting Cura, I think we did a great job impacting the first 50 year associates for the last five, six years. 186 00:13:13,843 --> 00:13:23,048 But with drafting going in the cloud next year, and that being one of the big things we want to get done over the next couple of years, that opens up the aperture to have a point 187 00:13:23,048 --> 00:13:24,448 of view in Outlook. 188 00:13:24,769 --> 00:13:30,342 And I think you'll see a successful deployment of drafting a cloud, yielding Gen. 189 00:13:30,342 --> 00:13:34,794 AI features globally, bringing foundation data into Outlook. 190 00:13:36,351 --> 00:13:44,053 being more predictive in the workflow and hopefully driving more use adoption of technology overall. 191 00:13:44,874 --> 00:13:56,218 But if I was to sit back and say, are we trying to do is to become the experienced company for the industry with a hard focus on partners and managing partners of firms. 192 00:13:56,779 --> 00:13:57,129 Yeah. 193 00:13:57,129 --> 00:14:02,064 So InfoDash, I think as you know, we're internet extranet platform. 194 00:14:02,064 --> 00:14:06,087 We've been doing this work in legal for 16 years. 195 00:14:06,087 --> 00:14:12,553 We started the journey as a consulting organization in 2008 called Acrowire. 196 00:14:12,614 --> 00:14:18,178 And we built these solutions bespoke on a time and materials consulting business. 197 00:14:18,319 --> 00:14:20,110 know, the client retained the IP. 198 00:14:20,110 --> 00:14:23,233 We were just a services company and we ended up 199 00:14:23,233 --> 00:14:29,686 partnering with Handshake in the mid 2010s got to understand how they went about things. 200 00:14:29,747 --> 00:14:33,348 When Adderent bought them in 2017, we exited the program. 201 00:14:33,348 --> 00:14:37,490 We started working on a product because we thought we could do a better job. 202 00:14:37,591 --> 00:14:45,543 And we rebranded and launched InfoDash in January, 2022. 203 00:14:45,555 --> 00:14:47,496 And it's been like a rocket ship. 204 00:14:47,736 --> 00:14:50,948 Our timing was just really, we had a lot of wind at our back. 205 00:14:50,948 --> 00:14:52,959 mean, know, intranets aren't 206 00:14:52,959 --> 00:14:54,599 sexy, right? 207 00:14:54,920 --> 00:14:56,920 But our timing was good. 208 00:14:57,139 --> 00:15:11,254 And, you know, with all this remote work, it has really put intranets back on the map a little bit because it's hard for firms to maintain culture when everybody's remote and 209 00:15:11,254 --> 00:15:17,886 hybrid and intranets, they don't solve that problem, but they're one piece of the solution. 210 00:15:18,606 --> 00:15:20,747 How have you guys seen 211 00:15:20,905 --> 00:15:24,823 All of this remote and hybrid work impact your business. 212 00:15:27,490 --> 00:15:32,965 I think the, for Litera as a business, it's been interesting going to this model. 213 00:15:32,965 --> 00:15:37,879 You have to find really purposeful ways to do innovation. 214 00:15:37,879 --> 00:15:50,430 think for the industry, for associates and partners, for the firms that have not gone back a hundred percent in office, or at least three or four days in office, I think the 215 00:15:50,430 --> 00:15:52,071 struggle is always going to be apprenticeship. 216 00:15:52,071 --> 00:15:54,833 Like how do you get the next... 217 00:15:55,884 --> 00:16:02,269 associate up the partner channel and make them productive so that way they're also good at BD work in the future or good at client engagement. 218 00:16:02,269 --> 00:16:07,122 How they learn those skills if they're not right next door to you or down the hall. 219 00:16:07,183 --> 00:16:11,675 How do you distribute work more effectively and efficiently in a remote environment? 220 00:16:11,675 --> 00:16:13,518 I think it's still being solved actively. 221 00:16:13,518 --> 00:16:22,284 And those struggles, I think, will continue in a hybrid environment for period of time. 222 00:16:22,638 --> 00:16:31,586 So this pendulum that we took in COVID of going so remote, think obviously with the phone back, where the industry has seen everybody's kind of coming back to some degree and the 223 00:16:31,586 --> 00:16:41,134 firms and companies that don't, will have to really figure out and be purposeful in apprenticeship, innovation, collaboration, cause it's going to get harder, I think in the 224 00:16:41,134 --> 00:16:42,075 next couple of years. 225 00:16:42,075 --> 00:16:50,042 was easier two years ago, cause we're all remote, but now when it's such a mix of cultures out there, think. 226 00:16:50,042 --> 00:16:54,255 it would be more difficult because now people can say purposely, I don't like being remote. 227 00:16:54,255 --> 00:16:57,467 I want to go back in an office and you may lose good talent. 228 00:16:57,508 --> 00:17:02,962 They want to go back into an office or kids that come out of college that don't want to work remote because that's just not what they want to do. 229 00:17:02,962 --> 00:17:06,034 So we're going to find a new landing pad. 230 00:17:06,134 --> 00:17:12,159 But the solve here for me is still for the industry and for us is apprenticeship, innovation and collaboration. 231 00:17:12,159 --> 00:17:16,992 I don't know how you do that in a way that's as effective as it was in the past. 232 00:17:17,185 --> 00:17:22,818 Yeah, I think AI throws some interesting curve balls there too. 233 00:17:22,818 --> 00:17:35,945 A lot of the lower level work that has historically been done by new associates is, there's some question marks on how AI is going to impact that and how that's going to 234 00:17:35,945 --> 00:17:41,528 ultimately impact how lawyers get trained and mentored. 235 00:17:42,809 --> 00:17:44,390 Yeah, it's interesting stuff. 236 00:17:44,390 --> 00:17:46,591 And we integrate with 237 00:17:46,623 --> 00:17:47,904 several of your products. 238 00:17:47,904 --> 00:17:49,865 pull foundation, especially. 239 00:17:49,865 --> 00:17:55,578 we, you know, for firm directory, we pull a lot of information from a foundation and big square. 240 00:17:55,578 --> 00:18:06,464 You know, we had, we had Haley on the show a couple episodes ago and she was telling us about some of the stuff that you guys did with, with dragon that was really cool and 241 00:18:06,464 --> 00:18:07,155 interesting. 242 00:18:07,155 --> 00:18:15,379 And you guys took a different approach there with almost kind of a startup within an existing business, which was really neat. 243 00:18:15,473 --> 00:18:21,393 And I think innovative, is that a model that's going to continue? 244 00:18:21,916 --> 00:18:25,272 Or was that kind of a right ingredients, right time? 245 00:18:25,272 --> 00:18:28,317 And maybe that was a one-time deal. 246 00:18:29,508 --> 00:18:35,744 We have three models to, um, new innovation coming in out of Litera. 247 00:18:35,744 --> 00:18:39,167 Uh, one is that model we have with Dragon. 248 00:18:39,167 --> 00:18:47,315 We collaborated with HG Capital and had some of their, did a scientist, their, their scientists and their team part of that group. 249 00:18:47,315 --> 00:18:54,792 And we had Haley and some outside folks working together and we had an internal team collaboration. 250 00:18:54,792 --> 00:18:55,522 So. 251 00:18:55,576 --> 00:19:03,212 It was really an outside in view of building a product quickly, bringing it to market and being irref along the way. 252 00:19:03,212 --> 00:19:12,649 One thing we learned in that process, which was very new to me as the board of the time and new for the terror for sure, is that the industry had changed significantly with 253 00:19:12,649 --> 00:19:13,209 Gen.ai. 254 00:19:13,209 --> 00:19:21,525 The industry was okay now taking beta products, taking early releases of stuff that wasn't 100 % complete and playing with it. 255 00:19:21,525 --> 00:19:22,946 And that's new for us. 256 00:19:23,022 --> 00:19:28,884 We've only delivered enterprise grade ready solutions, hardened, completely QA'd, no flaws. 257 00:19:28,884 --> 00:19:33,046 There are always bugs, but no material issues in workflow. 258 00:19:33,126 --> 00:19:40,299 But we had to iterate differently now because the industry is now more open to beta, they're more open to EAP programs and they're working towards the GA. 259 00:19:40,299 --> 00:19:45,841 And so that was a great initial stab at that for us. 260 00:19:45,841 --> 00:19:48,542 And we continue to look at opportunities to do work like that. 261 00:19:48,542 --> 00:19:52,506 The second area of innovation is we internally. 262 00:19:52,506 --> 00:19:56,226 producing spend on R &D. 263 00:19:56,226 --> 00:20:01,686 Historically, a business like ours maintain a certain percent of R &D expenses to revenue. 264 00:20:01,686 --> 00:20:06,896 I think we are now changing that saying it has to increase to allow us to be long-term iterative. 265 00:20:06,896 --> 00:20:11,546 So the business itself is looking for innovation from our own full-time staff. 266 00:20:11,546 --> 00:20:14,866 And the third is going to be acquisitions. 267 00:20:14,866 --> 00:20:18,826 I think we are excited to watch what's happening in the market today. 268 00:20:20,046 --> 00:20:26,108 founders that have ideas that are fringe use cases or things that we really think about and they're building really cool tech. 269 00:20:26,108 --> 00:20:38,363 And so we're much more open now to look at startups that have good usage or showing good signs of success fit into our ecosystem, good philosophies and culture as a road to 270 00:20:38,363 --> 00:20:41,614 increase our innovation pipeline in the long run. 271 00:20:41,655 --> 00:20:50,218 those three levers are new levers for Litera in the last 12 months and all three are producing, I think, great value for us in the long term. 272 00:20:50,453 --> 00:20:51,203 Yeah. 273 00:20:51,203 --> 00:20:51,493 Yeah. 274 00:20:51,493 --> 00:20:57,326 The traditional, you know, buy up the, buy the startup and integrate. 275 00:20:57,326 --> 00:21:08,071 And you know, that model has been around for a long time, but that intrapreneur model, if you will, I really think there's a future there for big firms to innovate. 276 00:21:08,071 --> 00:21:17,897 Like, like us, for example, honestly, I'm not worried about anybody competing with us of any size because we're so lean and nimble and 277 00:21:17,897 --> 00:21:19,568 It's hard for a big company. 278 00:21:19,568 --> 00:21:24,401 know, they're a big oil tanker with an itty bitty rudder in a lot of cases, right? 279 00:21:24,401 --> 00:21:38,259 And this, that model kind of turns that on its head and allows you to kind of pivot quickly and iterate, which is, which is I think necessary to really drive fast innovation. 280 00:21:38,426 --> 00:21:39,126 I think you're right. 281 00:21:39,126 --> 00:21:48,086 look at those, when you're a business of our size and scale, any business of size and scale, sometimes you get stuck in your own belief system of what is the art of the 282 00:21:48,086 --> 00:21:49,086 possible. 283 00:21:49,206 --> 00:21:55,326 And by bringing in someone who's unencumbered by your business restrictions and can just run freely with capital. 284 00:21:55,326 --> 00:22:04,076 Um, a you get to control it and you get to own it when it's done, but B you may end up with something that's completely different than what you set out as the initial thesis. 285 00:22:04,076 --> 00:22:05,074 And I think 286 00:22:05,656 --> 00:22:06,537 you're a hundred percent right. 287 00:22:06,537 --> 00:22:08,948 When you're a big business, sometimes you can get stuck in your own way. 288 00:22:08,948 --> 00:22:15,492 You're just unable to get out of the big day job you have in front of you satisfying your customers with your current product set. 289 00:22:15,532 --> 00:22:22,617 So the model we do with Haley is super, I think long-term, I would be more prone to opportunistic around things like that. 290 00:22:22,617 --> 00:22:31,462 Even with often the dragons at acquisition, it feels like we're going to keep that running by itself and not integrate like we used to. 291 00:22:32,042 --> 00:22:40,995 Sam is a great entrepreneur is thinking of the product really uniquely and I hate to slow him down because he's stuck in latera so The industry will see that acquisition feel 292 00:22:40,995 --> 00:22:46,292 different than our past acquisitions that we've done because it just feels better to keep it running 293 00:22:46,379 --> 00:22:46,939 Yeah. 294 00:22:46,939 --> 00:22:48,080 You know what's interesting? 295 00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:56,894 I don't know how you guys have managed this is the risk reward equation changes a little bit when you're under a big umbrella, right? 296 00:22:56,894 --> 00:23:08,028 Like as a small business, I can take risks that might not be palatable to a bigger organization, right? 297 00:23:08,028 --> 00:23:14,451 And striking that balance, I think is going to be interesting in that model. 298 00:23:15,131 --> 00:23:16,271 that's hard. 299 00:23:16,351 --> 00:23:20,493 I mean, think we the industry doesn't give us much rope to play with. 300 00:23:22,174 --> 00:23:31,998 So we are not, not to our hamstrung by our size and success, but it does require us to give a lot more comfort around what we're doing. 301 00:23:31,998 --> 00:23:34,599 Customer success has to be super strong. 302 00:23:34,599 --> 00:23:39,501 If we do make mistake, which we will, is this owning up to it saying sorry, I'm moving forward. 303 00:23:40,642 --> 00:23:41,902 We adding when you're 304 00:23:41,902 --> 00:23:46,100 bigger, the risk tolerance probably gets smaller from the industry's point of view. 305 00:23:46,100 --> 00:23:47,667 They want you to be much more hardened. 306 00:23:47,667 --> 00:23:48,187 Yeah. 307 00:23:48,187 --> 00:23:50,767 You got a lot more to lose, right? 308 00:23:50,767 --> 00:23:58,287 Um, you know, you've got a tremendous brand and deep pockets and you know, people know that. 309 00:23:58,287 --> 00:24:02,087 So, well, let's talk a little bit about AI in legal. 310 00:24:02,087 --> 00:24:07,647 Cause this is an area that, know, we actually don't do, we're not an AI company. 311 00:24:07,647 --> 00:24:14,017 mean, we, our platform runs in the 365 and Azure tenant of our clients. 312 00:24:14,017 --> 00:24:16,191 So we leverage. 313 00:24:16,191 --> 00:24:22,855 the gen AI capabilities that Microsoft lights up as part of that part of those platforms. 314 00:24:22,975 --> 00:24:25,046 But I'm a enthusiast. 315 00:24:25,046 --> 00:24:27,278 think it's I'm very bullish on it. 316 00:24:27,278 --> 00:24:36,203 I do think that right now marketing has gotten a little bit ahead of where products are in certain circumstances. 317 00:24:37,284 --> 00:24:42,711 But in not just the marketing, it feels like kind of we came out of the gate. 318 00:24:42,711 --> 00:24:52,171 Like right after chat GPT got released and that Goldman study, I've mentioned it a thousand times, know, 44 % of legal tasks are going to be automated by gen AI and people 319 00:24:52,171 --> 00:24:57,171 were, you know, at the XCOM level or like, Whoa, we got to get a handle on this. 320 00:24:57,471 --> 00:25:01,231 And 44 % isn't happening anytime soon. 321 00:25:01,231 --> 00:25:01,671 Right. 322 00:25:01,671 --> 00:25:12,335 That's midterm at best, probably more of a long-term scenario, but how are you seeing AI shape the industry today? 323 00:25:14,618 --> 00:25:25,072 So from what I can tell in the last couple of months of being out in the market and confirming some of the assumptions I had coming back into seat, every firm in the top end 324 00:25:25,072 --> 00:25:26,993 is figuring it out. 325 00:25:26,993 --> 00:25:28,714 They're all, no one's naive to it. 326 00:25:28,714 --> 00:25:30,275 No one is saying, no, we're not going to do it. 327 00:25:30,275 --> 00:25:34,296 They're all willing to say, we've got to figure this out because it's here. 328 00:25:34,296 --> 00:25:41,269 And if we don't figure it out, we're anti-competitive to, potentially anti-competitive to what's happening with firms down the street. 329 00:25:43,276 --> 00:25:49,871 There are definitely some use cases of AI, expanded use case of GenAI that make total sense. 330 00:25:50,532 --> 00:25:55,536 And some of it are light wrappers over a model. 331 00:25:55,917 --> 00:26:04,964 Some of them are really deeply, deeply investigated and designed opportunities that are bespoke to one or two small use cases. 332 00:26:07,146 --> 00:26:12,430 My view on Gen AI is it should augment and assist 333 00:26:12,664 --> 00:26:25,183 the associate and partner with their existing workflows and allow them to focus on more meaningful client value work when possible. 334 00:26:26,574 --> 00:26:31,608 it should, downstream implication of Gen AI is greater than upstream. 335 00:26:31,608 --> 00:26:39,744 That's just, I think the ability to expand access to justice is a much larger use case that we should be focusing on, but. 336 00:26:40,088 --> 00:26:45,500 The use cases for M&A, Pride Equity, VC is where all the attention is going. 337 00:26:45,680 --> 00:27:02,608 But gen AI in my lens has a much larger element down market and with the firms and practitioners that are focused on individual issues and problem statements that exist from 338 00:27:02,608 --> 00:27:07,730 citizens in this country and throughout the world, that is where you can have material. 339 00:27:07,738 --> 00:27:10,739 material improvement for access to justice. 340 00:27:10,979 --> 00:27:13,960 But that's not what we materially talk about day in, day out. 341 00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:14,880 Even with Terra, right? 342 00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:20,351 We focus on our core customers that are doing transactional work or litigation. 343 00:27:20,351 --> 00:27:22,832 So I think it's here to stay. 344 00:27:22,832 --> 00:27:26,603 It's going to have continuous iteration and refinement. 345 00:27:26,603 --> 00:27:29,344 It's not a set it and forget it approach. 346 00:27:29,644 --> 00:27:36,926 As models improve every six to nine months, we have to reassess what that does to our product set and then refine and release. 347 00:27:37,964 --> 00:27:43,416 It's super collaborative or asking questions all the time, what you're doing, how you're doing it. 348 00:27:43,677 --> 00:27:47,338 And sometimes you're behind the eight ball and sometimes we're out of the game. 349 00:27:47,354 --> 00:27:48,459 It just depends. 350 00:27:48,459 --> 00:27:53,021 But having strong conviction that you're on the right track is, it keeps us moving forward. 351 00:27:53,021 --> 00:27:55,462 So it's, I'm optimistic. 352 00:27:55,462 --> 00:27:56,152 I'm super bullish. 353 00:27:56,152 --> 00:28:02,335 don't look, it should improve the amount of work lawyers have to do to, right? 354 00:28:02,335 --> 00:28:06,126 There's so much unbended work that corporates have that now. 355 00:28:06,570 --> 00:28:08,541 an associate can go after, a partner can go after. 356 00:28:08,541 --> 00:28:11,589 So I don't see it ever making the industry smaller. 357 00:28:11,589 --> 00:28:17,268 if anything, I think a good Gen AI use case expands opportunity and growth in this industry. 358 00:28:17,687 --> 00:28:29,067 Yeah, I have a blog post half written that where I went back and looked at the, when spreadsheets came out, which was Lotus one, two, three, and it was in like 1983. 359 00:28:29,067 --> 00:28:32,367 And I happened, my parents were entrepreneurs. 360 00:28:32,367 --> 00:28:34,857 They, they, I'm Greek with that last name. 361 00:28:34,857 --> 00:28:37,637 It's pretty obvious, but I don't look Greek. 362 00:28:37,637 --> 00:28:40,667 got the Irish skin, unfortunately. 363 00:28:40,667 --> 00:28:44,777 Um, so the, um, 364 00:28:45,015 --> 00:28:45,955 I grew up in the restaurant. 365 00:28:45,955 --> 00:28:49,509 We had a CPA who I was, I was a little coder man. 366 00:28:49,509 --> 00:28:59,146 I was 10 years old and mom was working in the restaurant, set me up in the back room with a computer that to babysit me. 367 00:28:59,247 --> 00:29:01,689 And, I remember our CPA coming in. 368 00:29:01,689 --> 00:29:08,173 I don't remember what year it was, but I was probably in fifth, sixth grade and asking me about spreadsheets. 369 00:29:08,334 --> 00:29:11,547 And I, I remember the level of concern. 370 00:29:11,547 --> 00:29:14,909 I had no idea at the time, but looking back on it, 371 00:29:15,019 --> 00:29:19,960 He was, he wanted to learn about it because he was worried about what it was going to do to his industry. 372 00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:32,004 And if you look at the numbers, so in 1983, there were about 850,000 accounting professionals and people were, you know, the chicken little, the sky is falling. 373 00:29:32,004 --> 00:29:34,704 There's 1.5 million today, right? 374 00:29:34,704 --> 00:29:36,265 It's almost doubled. 375 00:29:36,265 --> 00:29:44,687 Granted that it's been almost 40 years, but it didn't destroy the industry and AI is not going to destroy legal work. 376 00:29:44,951 --> 00:29:49,935 To your point, I think there's a huge amount of unmet need in legal services. 377 00:29:49,935 --> 00:30:01,142 And if anything, it's going to take away a lot of the drudgery and hopefully allow people to focus on higher level skills and tasks. 378 00:30:01,142 --> 00:30:02,483 You agree with that? 379 00:30:02,650 --> 00:30:03,250 Yeah. 380 00:30:03,250 --> 00:30:06,500 Um, so Eric Freeman just joined our board. 381 00:30:06,500 --> 00:30:09,900 was the past managing partner, CEO of Skadden. 382 00:30:09,900 --> 00:30:17,080 And we were talking about this, um, and I, and I asked them, are the things you're worried about? 383 00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:19,710 Like, are the things you were concerned with? 384 00:30:19,710 --> 00:30:29,150 And one thing I always saw Litera was focused on since 2016 and let's talk about was can we bring some happiness and joy to lawyers or make them less angry? 385 00:30:30,082 --> 00:30:36,177 but if I made them less angry, I think we did a good job and, uh, keep them in the practice of law longer. 386 00:30:36,177 --> 00:30:44,655 So when I asked him that he said the same thing is like, um, our associates are really valuable to us after like the second and third year, like they're super valuable and to 387 00:30:44,655 --> 00:30:47,807 keep them in the practice of law is super meaningful to us. 388 00:30:47,807 --> 00:30:55,203 If they leave, then our practice law, all the training, all the investment we just made is walked out the door and all that. 389 00:30:55,584 --> 00:30:58,074 That's when they were just about to become like. 390 00:30:58,074 --> 00:31:00,834 great attorneys and providing high value work. 391 00:31:00,834 --> 00:31:09,534 So he views technology as a way like we should be able to keep them in the practice of law longer, doing great work and being happy with the profession. 392 00:31:09,534 --> 00:31:11,094 That's a success story for him. 393 00:31:11,094 --> 00:31:13,814 And I think that resonates with me a hundred percent. 394 00:31:13,814 --> 00:31:20,494 I left the practice of law after a few years and got into entrepreneurship and was very lucky and fortunate along the way. 395 00:31:20,494 --> 00:31:27,234 But I think some folks just leave after three years and went to school, they did all this training and then they just leave because they don't want to do the work that they've been 396 00:31:27,234 --> 00:31:27,780 assigned. 397 00:31:27,780 --> 00:31:36,000 But if AI can replace some of that, maybe we'll keep people in the profession longer and have a much healthier relationship with the practice of law. 398 00:31:36,181 --> 00:31:38,773 Yeah, maybe a little better work-life balance. 399 00:31:38,773 --> 00:31:47,519 I don't know if that's realistic or not, but I know that's a huge gap in the industry and drives a lot of people out and into, I mean, I've had lawyers working for me over the 400 00:31:47,519 --> 00:31:54,683 years just because they wanted to escape that 2000 hour billable quota. 401 00:31:55,845 --> 00:32:05,461 So I know AI is like front of mind with law firms right now and there's a lot of experimentation going on, but I look at survey numbers. 402 00:32:05,503 --> 00:32:20,512 Like the Iltatech survey that just came out and it said that law firms, over 700 attorneys, 70 % were using AI for business workflows. 403 00:32:20,512 --> 00:32:25,435 The question could have been asked better. 404 00:32:25,435 --> 00:32:30,523 does that mean if one lawyer Googles chat GPT, that counts? 405 00:32:30,523 --> 00:32:31,371 Yeah. 406 00:32:31,371 --> 00:32:36,715 I don't know, but my anecdotal observation is it is nowhere near 70%. 407 00:32:36,715 --> 00:32:44,820 There's a lot of experimentation going on, but you guys probably have a better boots on the ground view. 408 00:32:44,820 --> 00:32:49,843 What are you seeing out there with law firms really in AI true adoption? 409 00:32:49,998 --> 00:32:50,898 Yeah, I agree with that. 410 00:32:50,898 --> 00:32:59,226 think depending on the practice area and the client base, you may see a larger attorney population or firm using it. 411 00:32:59,347 --> 00:33:09,737 And then you go to some firms that have a client base that restricts pinging Microsoft's Azure environment for various reasons that don't make sense and they don't get to play 412 00:33:09,737 --> 00:33:10,158 with it. 413 00:33:10,158 --> 00:33:14,902 So I think we do, on a blind average, you probably get a pretty low percentage of 414 00:33:15,308 --> 00:33:17,809 real associates and partners engaging with technology. 415 00:33:17,809 --> 00:33:29,576 would say every 100 % of firms are doing something, testing, playing, but there is a call it 10 % of firms are all in on it and already have are finding ways to embed it more 416 00:33:29,576 --> 00:33:31,567 holistically in their use cases. 417 00:33:32,227 --> 00:33:35,869 And so you have early adopters and then you have the laggers. 418 00:33:35,869 --> 00:33:39,895 And I think the ones that are all in on it, super interesting. 419 00:33:39,895 --> 00:33:44,614 Cause there's firms out there that three years ago, last time I met them were 420 00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:48,521 still filing cabinets, felt like that's what their tech, they weren't doing much. 421 00:33:48,521 --> 00:33:54,923 And then now I'm like, whoa, you are now leading, you are doing the most out of anybody in this space. 422 00:33:54,923 --> 00:33:56,653 You guys have gone all in. 423 00:33:56,653 --> 00:34:05,376 You even look back and you went complete from here to here and you've passed every other like-sized firm in the last 18 months. 424 00:34:05,736 --> 00:34:08,728 I was blown away by that and commended the team. 425 00:34:08,728 --> 00:34:12,318 I'm like, wow, you guys have really pushed it down below here and you're taking it really far. 426 00:34:12,545 --> 00:34:19,899 Yeah, you're seeing this with how I measure that from a distance is who they're hiring. 427 00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:35,739 And I've seen some firms that have had very stodgy images and bringing in real talent that, and I know many of these people, and then surrounding them with even more talent. 428 00:34:35,739 --> 00:34:38,817 And you can tell they're investing and that they're 429 00:34:38,817 --> 00:34:41,008 those purse strings are loosening up a little bit. 430 00:34:41,008 --> 00:34:51,913 And ultimately, think that's going to be good for the industry because law firm clients have a perspective on law firms that's around innovation that's not favorable. 431 00:34:51,973 --> 00:34:54,004 And this is good to see. 432 00:34:54,004 --> 00:34:56,445 I think it's positive for the industry. 433 00:34:56,728 --> 00:35:02,501 Would you ever think that you have a law firm hiring employees from Google, Meta, and Microsoft? 434 00:35:02,501 --> 00:35:04,391 Like, that's what this firm was doing. 435 00:35:04,391 --> 00:35:11,555 They're building a team and bringing in smart folks from Google, Meta, and Facebook to join them as engineers and developers. 436 00:35:11,555 --> 00:35:13,125 Like, that's so genius. 437 00:35:14,086 --> 00:35:14,716 Genius. 438 00:35:14,716 --> 00:35:16,126 I don't know what's more surprising. 439 00:35:16,126 --> 00:35:27,453 The fact that those job offers happened or that the people accepted the roles because I mean, think if you're a rock star, listen, I love the industry. 440 00:35:27,453 --> 00:35:39,409 Like my entire livelihood depends on it, but you know, coming out of Silicon Valley and going to an Amlaw firm is a pretty big shift in term. 441 00:35:39,409 --> 00:35:41,851 mean, big law just got to the cloud. 442 00:35:41,851 --> 00:35:42,791 Like they're 443 00:35:43,383 --> 00:35:44,464 Last week. 444 00:35:45,369 --> 00:35:47,530 I think there's, it's still happening. 445 00:35:47,530 --> 00:35:55,214 So, you know, like people who want to work on the latest and greatest, this is, they don't think, I want to go to a law firm. 446 00:35:55,214 --> 00:36:00,547 But, you know, I feel like a lot of that's starting to change to your point. 447 00:36:00,547 --> 00:36:10,423 We're seeing real, and we're seeing startups like, you know, like deep judge, for example, um, you know, former Google folks, real creative ideas. 448 00:36:10,627 --> 00:36:14,481 And you're seeing real Silicon Valley venture. 449 00:36:14,481 --> 00:36:18,965 Look at the Harvey backers, Google ventures, open AI, a 16 Z. 450 00:36:18,965 --> 00:36:23,159 Like when have they been so interested in legal tech? 451 00:36:23,159 --> 00:36:25,201 You know, until recently they haven't. 452 00:36:25,201 --> 00:36:27,020 Um, so 453 00:36:27,020 --> 00:36:28,535 And for them, it's a long-term bet, right? 454 00:36:28,535 --> 00:36:40,034 It's a long-term, hopeful bet that they can ride away for the next three to five years as the technology evolution continues that they're one of the hopefully handful of folks that 455 00:36:40,034 --> 00:36:43,255 are leading in that data processing space. 456 00:36:43,675 --> 00:36:49,787 And so you've got to place your bets on at least five or six of these and say, one of those five or six should end up being the leader. 457 00:36:49,787 --> 00:36:52,398 And that's high, high value return here. 458 00:36:53,626 --> 00:36:57,910 And, uh, but yeah, it's really interesting to see that that's the owner, how long that lasts. 459 00:36:57,910 --> 00:37:03,265 mean, we're startups can show up and raise that kind of money and get that kind of attention doing the exact same thing. 460 00:37:03,265 --> 00:37:06,826 It'd have to be something that new or some other use case or solving for it. 461 00:37:06,826 --> 00:37:11,584 Cause it feels like the first three or four big brands are all kind of doing this. 462 00:37:11,584 --> 00:37:19,360 They're all tracking towards the same answer and whoever gets there first, I think will be the lion's share of it. 463 00:37:19,361 --> 00:37:20,172 Yeah. 464 00:37:20,172 --> 00:37:21,893 And things move so fast here. 465 00:37:21,893 --> 00:37:25,335 Like you talked about like six months kind of reassessing. 466 00:37:25,335 --> 00:37:26,936 How about six days? 467 00:37:26,936 --> 00:37:37,003 you know, like just this week, like Gemini two got released, like chat open AI had like three announcements, llama three. 468 00:37:37,051 --> 00:37:38,985 I don't know. 469 00:37:38,985 --> 00:37:44,331 Things move so quickly and these, these models are like leapfrogging each other. 470 00:37:44,331 --> 00:37:48,659 Um, Google actually looks like the leader in my opinion, if you 471 00:37:48,659 --> 00:38:02,154 If you look at big picture cost, cost performance, you know, or quality and speed, Google looks like it's starting to lead that race. 472 00:38:02,154 --> 00:38:08,281 And, three months ago, everybody was like, where's Google and just boom out of nowhere. 473 00:38:08,281 --> 00:38:10,683 And they're, they're leading the pack. 474 00:38:11,578 --> 00:38:21,824 had a chat with one of our board members from HG and we're talking about, you know, the AI journey, Litera's on and AI journey, the industry's on and vice versa. 475 00:38:21,824 --> 00:38:29,068 And this notion of those first two products that came to market, took an immense amount of effort to get them out. 476 00:38:29,349 --> 00:38:38,114 That same product to come out today, takes a 10th of the time to build because the model improvement, lessons learned, you can actually build. 477 00:38:38,606 --> 00:38:46,450 whatever someone released in June may have taken them six months, you cannot potentially do it in like you just said, two weeks and build the exact same product high quality with 478 00:38:46,450 --> 00:38:47,220 even better results. 479 00:38:47,220 --> 00:38:50,292 That's because the models have evolved and it's even easier to do. 480 00:38:50,492 --> 00:38:59,717 So it's a challenge to the startup market saying, don't feel like you're losing or like even answer the question. 481 00:38:59,717 --> 00:39:01,108 It's just happening so fast. 482 00:39:01,108 --> 00:39:02,318 Like you were saying. 483 00:39:03,194 --> 00:39:04,874 you can have a second answer right away. 484 00:39:04,874 --> 00:39:08,334 If the first one didn't hit, I think you keep trying as a startup. 485 00:39:08,334 --> 00:39:11,864 even for Litera, if we're not first to market, it's actually okay. 486 00:39:11,864 --> 00:39:17,294 Kind of like Google, we can pick the battle we want to win and then go do it. 487 00:39:17,294 --> 00:39:22,374 And I feel like we're behind the eight ball because it's the speed to development is so much faster now than it was a year ago. 488 00:39:22,374 --> 00:39:24,854 And a year from now it will be even faster. 489 00:39:24,874 --> 00:39:27,804 So I don't think anybody should ever feel like they're behind the eight ball at this point. 490 00:39:27,804 --> 00:39:31,026 You just got to pick your point of view and go do it. 491 00:39:31,061 --> 00:39:33,052 Yeah, I completely agree. 492 00:39:33,092 --> 00:39:40,586 So I wanted to talk a little bit about Co-Pilot and, um, you know, I have a long history with Microsoft having worked there. 493 00:39:40,586 --> 00:39:42,717 That's how this whole thing got started. 494 00:39:42,937 --> 00:39:48,330 Our, our product is married to the M365 and Azure platform. 495 00:39:48,330 --> 00:39:51,362 Like there's no way it could ever run without it. 496 00:39:51,362 --> 00:39:55,684 So I, I'm a big advocate for, for Microsoft. 497 00:39:56,225 --> 00:40:01,187 I, I've been, I've had mixed results with Co-Pilot and, um, 498 00:40:01,515 --> 00:40:10,651 You know, in fact, I just had a call with their, um, some of their folks yesterday with a common client and raised some of the challenges and I know they're going to get it right 499 00:40:10,651 --> 00:40:11,642 in the long run. 500 00:40:11,642 --> 00:40:16,776 There's the, they have too much invested and when, when does Microsoft not get it right eventually? 501 00:40:16,776 --> 00:40:18,326 Yeah. 502 00:40:18,627 --> 00:40:22,570 Well, the browser until like a year ago, right? 503 00:40:22,570 --> 00:40:26,672 Like IE was terrible and so was edge. 504 00:40:27,673 --> 00:40:30,335 I remember the meme that used to go around. 505 00:40:30,511 --> 00:40:34,715 IE Internet Explorer, the best browser to download another browser. 506 00:40:35,937 --> 00:40:38,640 But you know, they eventually figured it out. 507 00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:42,154 It took a little longer than normal, but they always figure it out. 508 00:40:42,154 --> 00:40:51,324 So like our chips are on Microsoft's spot on the table and it sounds like you guys are working on some Copilot integration too. 509 00:40:51,324 --> 00:40:52,295 Is that right? 510 00:40:52,634 --> 00:40:59,594 Yeah, we always had this belief that Litera is here to help make Microsoft more valuable to law firms. 511 00:40:59,654 --> 00:41:03,544 So start with Word and like use, to make Azure more valuable. 512 00:41:03,544 --> 00:41:06,894 It's trying to make OneDrive more valuable. 513 00:41:06,894 --> 00:41:10,914 Try to make every facet of what a law firm may do more valuable to them. 514 00:41:10,914 --> 00:41:13,124 And so we've always been closely embedded with them. 515 00:41:13,124 --> 00:41:18,454 We were one of the first apps in the Microsoft store a few years ago with Contra Companion. 516 00:41:18,594 --> 00:41:22,458 And now we're continuing to work closely hand in glove with them on 517 00:41:22,458 --> 00:41:30,578 on new versions of our technologies and showing how what Microsoft does and how we do is valuable to the end market. 518 00:41:30,918 --> 00:41:32,298 Copilot is super interesting. 519 00:41:32,298 --> 00:41:41,858 I think it opens up the aperture of passive work happening and not actually engaging with a product step, but engaging with the answer you want. 520 00:41:41,858 --> 00:41:44,158 And there's a long runway here. 521 00:41:44,158 --> 00:41:52,722 You can do all the Copilot work integration, so it requires change management with the industry as a whole and say, is a new way of doing work. 522 00:41:52,890 --> 00:41:57,490 It makes, we think it makes sense, but I can see half the population saying, nah, I'm okay. 523 00:41:57,490 --> 00:41:58,890 This could be the icon. 524 00:41:58,890 --> 00:42:01,630 I want to click in and do the job the old way. 525 00:42:01,630 --> 00:42:09,890 So even though we integrate and we want to look at building these cool new ways of working there, we have to respect that there is a certain set of population, a good size of it 526 00:42:09,890 --> 00:42:12,240 that wants to just keep business as usual. 527 00:42:12,240 --> 00:42:16,070 And if that business usual improves on its own, also highly valuable. 528 00:42:16,070 --> 00:42:22,266 So it requires us investing in two or three different ways for the same products that, um, but 529 00:42:22,266 --> 00:42:27,726 I can argue, co-pilot, I started using it when it first came out, wasn't impressed. 530 00:42:28,046 --> 00:42:32,586 Now I'm using it to watch internal videos that I missed a meeting. 531 00:42:32,586 --> 00:42:39,206 I can do it in five minutes with the notes and the summarization features, click the minutes I want to watch and move on. 532 00:42:39,206 --> 00:42:46,606 It's made me much more productive and I'm hearing and learning more about my own business now than if I could have without it. 533 00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:50,123 I think that evolution will be great for Microsoft. 534 00:42:50,123 --> 00:42:51,175 I'm a big believer like you. 535 00:42:51,175 --> 00:42:52,776 My chips are there too. 536 00:42:53,318 --> 00:42:57,132 And it's a long term view on that on that brand. 537 00:42:57,355 --> 00:42:58,455 Yeah, no doubt. 538 00:42:58,455 --> 00:43:01,557 Um, they always win in the, in the longterm. 539 00:43:01,557 --> 00:43:04,559 And I think I'm a big Satya fan. 540 00:43:04,929 --> 00:43:08,701 I think he's been the best CEO they've had by a mile. 541 00:43:08,751 --> 00:43:10,942 I was there under Bill Gates. 542 00:43:11,543 --> 00:43:14,495 and I think he's, he's doing a better job than Bill. 543 00:43:14,495 --> 00:43:19,517 He just got an open mind, you know, and he thinks about things differently. 544 00:43:19,517 --> 00:43:26,131 he's embraced Linux and you know, just, open source and 545 00:43:26,355 --> 00:43:39,357 It's really been fun to watch the company get out of that really kind of fixed mindset that they had for so long and they're thriving as a result. 546 00:43:40,250 --> 00:43:43,750 know, collaboration with the ecosystem you support makes so much sense, right? 547 00:43:43,750 --> 00:43:45,610 It's like, why wouldn't you do that? 548 00:43:45,610 --> 00:43:52,210 And it's approach, I would ask, there's peer vendors or peer firms, like vendors in our industry, right? 549 00:43:52,210 --> 00:43:54,350 That we work, we all have to integrate with and stuff. 550 00:43:54,350 --> 00:43:56,140 I often tell them, we're all in the same ecosystem. 551 00:43:56,140 --> 00:44:00,100 Like, why can't we all just like, why can't you all just be friends with each other and friends with us? 552 00:44:00,100 --> 00:44:00,950 And like, just figure this out. 553 00:44:00,950 --> 00:44:01,990 We're all the common goal. 554 00:44:01,990 --> 00:44:04,290 We're not, we're all non-competitive to some degree. 555 00:44:04,290 --> 00:44:06,910 Like, let's just be super collaborative. 556 00:44:06,910 --> 00:44:09,434 Like the way we all work with Microsoft. 557 00:44:09,466 --> 00:44:13,829 We all engage with them in a really intimate level that's appropriate for our businesses. 558 00:44:13,829 --> 00:44:16,271 And we're all happy on both sides of the equation. 559 00:44:16,271 --> 00:44:19,493 That should work horizontally as well. 560 00:44:19,493 --> 00:44:25,998 We should be able to go to our horizontal partners and say, we're all benefiting the same end user. 561 00:44:25,998 --> 00:44:31,622 I have a partner right now that we work with, not a partner, but an integration partner we work with. 562 00:44:31,622 --> 00:44:38,206 But all of a sudden decide they want to change the relationship and how they engage with all of their partners. 563 00:44:38,586 --> 00:44:40,776 And so it caused huge constraints in the marketplace. 564 00:44:40,776 --> 00:44:44,686 And for them, they think it's a good business decision, but it's to have downstream impact. 565 00:44:44,966 --> 00:44:47,906 And I think you wouldn't expect that from Microsoft, right? 566 00:44:47,906 --> 00:44:49,556 The conversation like, it make sense or not? 567 00:44:49,556 --> 00:44:51,546 This is, so that's where I'm hoping, right? 568 00:44:51,546 --> 00:44:54,286 I think your note on stuff is 100 % spot on. 569 00:44:54,286 --> 00:44:57,626 How do we now get that across the ecosystem and say, can we all be open? 570 00:44:57,626 --> 00:44:58,786 Can we all be collaborative? 571 00:44:58,786 --> 00:45:02,796 Can we all understand that we're all in the same industry? 572 00:45:02,796 --> 00:45:05,606 We're all trying to the common results set out. 573 00:45:05,606 --> 00:45:08,488 If we work together, work together better. 574 00:45:08,664 --> 00:45:13,059 the output, they're actually so much more interesting and the industry moves so much more faster. 575 00:45:13,059 --> 00:45:17,803 It's not what we're excited about, like moving the industry forward and changing the practice of law forever. 576 00:45:18,164 --> 00:45:19,906 Or we are just here to sell a widget. 577 00:45:19,906 --> 00:45:27,974 I think if we all come in line and say, we're trying to change the practice of law forever as a collective industry, we can do a whole lot more. 578 00:45:28,311 --> 00:45:42,275 Yeah, know law firm clients have been frustrated with all the little fiefdoms in the legal tech ecosystem, where there's these walls up and a lot of vendors, there's contractual 579 00:45:42,275 --> 00:45:52,598 limitations to who can touch the systems and if you're not on the approved vendor list and well, I'm glad you feel that way because we integrate with your stuff. 580 00:45:52,878 --> 00:45:54,350 that's good to hear. 581 00:45:54,350 --> 00:45:56,966 Nowhere else, I'll you a letter of student charging for a lot more money. 582 00:45:56,966 --> 00:45:57,607 Don't worry. 583 00:45:57,607 --> 00:45:58,238 It's coming. 584 00:45:58,238 --> 00:45:58,890 It's coming. 585 00:45:58,890 --> 00:45:59,642 I sense it. 586 00:45:59,642 --> 00:46:00,444 I sense it. 587 00:46:00,444 --> 00:46:02,426 in the mail man checks in the mail. 588 00:46:03,348 --> 00:46:04,859 Well, I know we're almost out of time here. 589 00:46:04,859 --> 00:46:07,632 I did want to ask you guys announced a relationship. 590 00:46:07,632 --> 00:46:10,654 I think with Microsoft in May. 591 00:46:11,636 --> 00:46:13,327 What was the nature of that? 592 00:46:13,327 --> 00:46:15,369 Was that copilot related? 593 00:46:16,142 --> 00:46:29,738 Um, it was not just Copile, the general relationship around, um, the industry of illegal and how we can integrate and see early access, some of their products and how we can be 594 00:46:29,738 --> 00:46:31,619 better prepared to innovate on top of it. 595 00:46:31,619 --> 00:46:37,131 Um, so there's a few vendors like us that are working in the space. 596 00:46:37,722 --> 00:46:38,776 it's been super beneficial. 597 00:46:38,776 --> 00:46:45,194 I think we view it as, um, a recognition of our size and scale and our ability to impact. 598 00:46:45,346 --> 00:46:47,567 the 15,000 customers that we have. 599 00:46:48,167 --> 00:46:55,600 But also I think for us, it's talking to my CTO, it's like, we have to take advantage of this partnership and really push the envelope. 600 00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:58,551 Otherwise, what's the purpose of doing it? 601 00:46:58,551 --> 00:47:00,122 So it's from both sides. 602 00:47:00,122 --> 00:47:07,189 I feel like it's meant to push the envelope with what they're working on and what we think we can do with it for the industry. 603 00:47:07,189 --> 00:47:07,921 Yeah. 604 00:47:07,921 --> 00:47:11,517 What's the next, what is 2025 going to look like for Litera? 605 00:47:12,634 --> 00:47:14,584 It's going to be busy. 606 00:47:14,584 --> 00:47:17,144 So there's a few things that we're going to heads down on. 607 00:47:17,144 --> 00:47:27,464 So one is for our entire drafting suite that's been on the desktop apps since the early 2000s, we are moving to the cloud. 608 00:47:27,464 --> 00:47:34,014 And it sounds funny to say that, but you gotta recall most firms were not ready to have any of their environments in the cloud. 609 00:47:34,014 --> 00:47:37,374 So now that they're ready to, we will also be ready to support them there. 610 00:47:37,374 --> 00:47:39,986 So That journey kicks off in Q2. 611 00:47:40,282 --> 00:47:48,902 I'm really bullish on foundation and being the future of Litera so I think you're going see a lot more innovation and integration with foundation next year. 612 00:47:49,022 --> 00:47:54,762 You're going to see us continue to invest in Gen AI and weaving it through our ecosystem. 613 00:47:54,762 --> 00:47:58,182 And that seems super exciting for us. 614 00:47:58,182 --> 00:48:00,982 So should be a pretty busy year. 615 00:48:00,982 --> 00:48:08,626 And one thing that we are doing more of, I think in 2015 in the past is working with the partners around it to think of. 616 00:48:09,018 --> 00:48:12,878 the harbors, the firemen, all the integration partners that exist. 617 00:48:12,878 --> 00:48:18,658 We just feel like what Lotteria offers today is such a big piece of a law firm's environment. 618 00:48:18,658 --> 00:48:24,398 Working with the ecosystems makes a lot more sense than working in parallel. 619 00:48:24,398 --> 00:48:31,998 like I mentioned before, my goal now is to be much more collaborative with all the folks around us and be good stewards of what we're trying to accomplish. 620 00:48:31,998 --> 00:48:36,638 so I'm hopeful that next year feels like a big... 621 00:48:36,748 --> 00:48:46,783 move forward for us as a brand and getting us out of the days of 1,000 different versions of comparison, but moving to the cloud with something that's super unique and innovative. 622 00:48:46,783 --> 00:48:52,226 I think we've prog in this read bit for that space of drafting. 623 00:48:52,439 --> 00:48:54,089 All right, last question. 624 00:48:54,089 --> 00:49:01,219 Do you anticipate 2025 being a active year in &A with? 625 00:49:01,219 --> 00:49:02,319 Yeah. 626 00:49:02,519 --> 00:49:03,266 Okay. 627 00:49:03,266 --> 00:49:16,211 I think wherever you fall on the aisle of US politics, think the end result is an active M &A outlook up and down the spectrum of size. 628 00:49:16,872 --> 00:49:21,324 And that's going to yield a lot more work for law firms in general, right? 629 00:49:21,324 --> 00:49:26,356 So lawyers can be busy, which means we hope that they have banner years of revenue. 630 00:49:26,416 --> 00:49:29,577 And I think for Litera, it's an opportunity to... 631 00:49:31,502 --> 00:49:32,582 We've always been inquisitive. 632 00:49:32,582 --> 00:49:40,627 think we'll have more parties interested in finding ways to enter the ecosystem much more sooner to get exposure to the customer base. 633 00:49:40,627 --> 00:49:43,189 And that's what Lotteria can bring to a business. 634 00:49:43,189 --> 00:49:44,890 So I think it should be busy. 635 00:49:44,890 --> 00:49:49,593 I think it should be busy not just for us, but for law firms and for everybody else that support law firms. 636 00:49:49,593 --> 00:49:51,014 They're going to be busy next year. 637 00:49:51,014 --> 00:49:56,217 They're going to use all of our technologies a lot more than they did this year. 638 00:49:56,217 --> 00:49:58,718 And they're going to be leveraging all of us. 639 00:49:58,842 --> 00:50:03,062 and support and services, customer success to make them happy. 640 00:50:03,062 --> 00:50:06,891 So it will be a busy 25, if I had to guess, for all of us. 641 00:50:06,891 --> 00:50:08,231 Yeah, no, I agree. 642 00:50:08,231 --> 00:50:20,255 We are projecting to more than double and we're at a size now, we're still small, but it's easy to double when you're starting out. 643 00:50:20,255 --> 00:50:26,617 Like our first year we had like 4.3x, but as you get bigger, it's hard to have those multiples. 644 00:50:26,617 --> 00:50:30,278 And we fully anticipate this being a realistic goal. 645 00:50:30,659 --> 00:50:32,346 We're going to do it for sure. 646 00:50:32,346 --> 00:50:34,046 think it's the right time to it. 647 00:50:34,046 --> 00:50:36,126 I think it's the right time to invest and double down on certain ideas. 648 00:50:36,126 --> 00:50:37,388 It's the right time to do it. 649 00:50:37,388 --> 00:50:38,538 yeah, we're excited. 650 00:50:38,538 --> 00:50:40,847 Well, hey, I really appreciate you taking the time. 651 00:50:40,847 --> 00:50:45,772 I hope I don't have to wait till TLTF again next year to see you in person. 652 00:50:45,772 --> 00:50:51,015 I'm overdue for a trip to Chapel Hill, so maybe we can go catch a game or something. 653 00:50:51,638 --> 00:50:52,259 Yep, let's do it. 654 00:50:52,259 --> 00:50:52,684 Let me know. 655 00:50:52,684 --> 00:50:56,917 We'll be happy to get together and enjoy a TARO victory. 656 00:50:56,917 --> 00:50:58,228 Yeah, exactly. 657 00:50:58,228 --> 00:50:59,590 All right, good times. 658 00:50:59,590 --> 00:51:03,893 Appreciate you coming on and we will chat again soon. 659 00:51:04,515 --> 00:51:05,915 All right, thank you. -->