1 00:00:02,216 --> 00:00:04,190 Ben, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,832 --> 00:00:07,628 I am fantastic man, good to be with you. 3 00:00:07,628 --> 00:00:09,150 Looking forward to chatting. 4 00:00:09,864 --> 00:00:11,605 Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. 5 00:00:11,605 --> 00:00:17,209 I've followed your stuff on LinkedIn for a while and um you got an interesting story. 6 00:00:17,209 --> 00:00:24,073 were practicing attorney, now you're like chief growth officer at Nexel. 7 00:00:24,073 --> 00:00:29,456 um Why don't you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background and what you're up to today. 8 00:00:30,350 --> 00:00:32,590 Oh man, where do I begin? 9 00:00:33,110 --> 00:00:39,430 So before I get there, know, I, uh, before I went to law school, like you mentioned, I practiced for a while. 10 00:00:39,430 --> 00:00:44,630 Now I'm working in legal tech, which is kind of like my, my second gig in my thirties. 11 00:00:44,630 --> 00:00:52,430 I sort of went from practicing in my twenties, uh, to, um, to, to into tech into my thirties and I just turned 40. 12 00:00:52,430 --> 00:00:54,170 So let's see what, let's see what I do now. 13 00:00:54,170 --> 00:00:56,030 You know, it seems to be a 10 years. 14 00:00:56,120 --> 00:01:01,852 But before any of that, I'm happy to kind of give my background as a story. 15 00:01:01,852 --> 00:01:12,366 But I always like to say before all of that, I studied biology in college and uh basically I took a bunch of neuroscience classes and basically I forgot everything, obviously. 16 00:01:12,366 --> 00:01:13,797 Sorry, mom and dad, you know what I mean? 17 00:01:13,797 --> 00:01:23,001 But basically I remembered one thing, which is the power of story and how much our brain is actually wired for story. 18 00:01:23,001 --> 00:01:25,678 I bring this up because I hope that it's like, 19 00:01:25,678 --> 00:01:28,350 We're going to be speaking to lot of legal tech people. 20 00:01:28,350 --> 00:01:30,541 I've been in this game for a while. 21 00:01:30,541 --> 00:01:34,004 And we're sort of in this time between worlds and legal. 22 00:01:34,004 --> 00:01:41,928 And I think that the importance of telling good stories about not only where have we been, but where are we going is kind of so critically important. 23 00:01:41,928 --> 00:01:46,872 And I just kind of see a lot of people in our space just thinking about this. 24 00:01:46,872 --> 00:01:49,074 So I'll tell my story really quickly. 25 00:01:49,074 --> 00:01:52,266 So ah it goes something like this. 26 00:01:52,266 --> 00:01:55,470 After undergrad, 27 00:01:55,470 --> 00:01:58,261 ah I decided to get in law school. 28 00:01:58,261 --> 00:02:04,332 went to law school not because I had some burning desire, was mostly like because I didn't know what else to do. 29 00:02:04,332 --> 00:02:16,036 And really I was looking for a profession that was prestigious because at the time I think I was looking for something that I could throw myself into that was performance-based, 30 00:02:16,036 --> 00:02:25,230 prestigious, um and which I thought that that would give me, at least professionally, some sort of degree of security. 31 00:02:25,230 --> 00:02:34,979 uh through some therapy and thinking about other things, I realized that what I was trying to sort of do is I was trying to look for a place that I thought would keep me safe. 32 00:02:34,979 --> 00:02:47,029 Now, uh there's a whole lot to unpack there, but basically by the time I hit 30, uh I realized that neither was I sort of feeling a degree of safety, but actually it ended up 33 00:02:47,029 --> 00:02:48,641 being a bad fit for me, right? 34 00:02:48,641 --> 00:02:51,553 So I was sort of thrown into something that I thought was... 35 00:02:51,553 --> 00:02:52,334 uh 36 00:02:52,334 --> 00:03:02,834 going to do something for me and it ended up being a really bad fit for me, specifically whenever it came to kind of something that I thought was unique about me, which was the 37 00:03:02,834 --> 00:03:08,413 ability to sort of like be creative, think outside the box, of like kind of chase things. 38 00:03:08,413 --> 00:03:10,854 Maybe we would call this entrepreneurship now. 39 00:03:10,854 --> 00:03:18,994 We would call it creativity in some sense to sort of develop new and innovative ways of looking at things. 40 00:03:18,994 --> 00:03:21,878 And that really just didn't jive with 41 00:03:21,878 --> 00:03:29,098 the innovation is with the president-based, partner-based track of what law firms were at that point in time. 42 00:03:29,098 --> 00:03:42,568 I can get in, I get into this all the time in my this legal life, but basically I uh was doing, we were doing this product liability case and we brought in this e-discovery vendor 43 00:03:42,568 --> 00:03:46,478 who had early artificial intelligence and uh 44 00:03:46,478 --> 00:03:48,118 and a light bulb went off, right? 45 00:03:48,118 --> 00:03:53,038 Which was, wow, this is sort of like interesting technology applied to the practice of law. 46 00:03:53,038 --> 00:03:54,498 This is 2015. 47 00:03:54,498 --> 00:03:56,138 So of course there had been practice stuff. 48 00:03:56,138 --> 00:03:57,978 This was the first thing that I saw. 49 00:03:57,978 --> 00:03:59,938 Like that was like a 10 X difference. 50 00:03:59,938 --> 00:04:04,318 And specifically, cause I had been doing all the discovery and all of this kind of stuff. 51 00:04:04,498 --> 00:04:09,078 I sort of saw and I was like, my God, this thing just did in six hours what I couldn't do in six months. 52 00:04:09,078 --> 00:04:11,338 This is like a 10 X different. 53 00:04:11,338 --> 00:04:13,038 It's not that, oh wow. 54 00:04:13,038 --> 00:04:14,909 great at the database with stuff on it. 55 00:04:14,909 --> 00:04:19,340 It was like a 10x difference in terms of the output of what was able to do. 56 00:04:19,340 --> 00:04:22,361 That was to me the writing on the wall, so I fell off my horse. 57 00:04:22,361 --> 00:04:31,063 uh And by that, mean that's a metaphor to uh basically say I packed my bags, told my parents I wasn't going to practice law anymore, moved up to New York. 58 00:04:31,484 --> 00:04:34,265 And this is a much longer story. 59 00:04:34,265 --> 00:04:39,006 But eventually, through the twists and turns of taking a lot of risks, uh 60 00:04:39,006 --> 00:04:48,410 burning a bunch of money, getting down to my last paycheck I managed somehow, some way to get into legal tech and eventually become part of the founding team at Nexol where I am 61 00:04:48,410 --> 00:04:48,970 right now. 62 00:04:48,970 --> 00:04:54,222 And it's just been a lot sort of from there right now. 63 00:04:54,222 --> 00:05:00,734 And that's kind of, that's the abridged version, but we can go into some other stuff for a bit. 64 00:05:00,775 --> 00:05:01,856 Good stuff. 65 00:05:01,856 --> 00:05:10,547 and so you're, you're a podcast host, yourself and it's this legal life and, what, what's the, what's the premise? 66 00:05:10,547 --> 00:05:11,628 Who's your target audience? 67 00:05:11,628 --> 00:05:13,830 What, sort of topics do you discuss? 68 00:05:15,901 --> 00:05:28,154 So basically, the big why behind the whole podcast is whenever I graduated from law school, I basically had zero kind of guidance uh in terms of how to develop a career that 69 00:05:28,154 --> 00:05:33,979 I thought was going to be good for me and develop sort of like an intentional career as a lawyer. 70 00:05:33,979 --> 00:05:36,886 was basically given like three pieces of advice. 71 00:05:36,886 --> 00:05:40,128 go work for a company, go work for the government, or go work for a law firm. 72 00:05:40,128 --> 00:05:43,650 And that was basically it, period. 73 00:05:43,650 --> 00:05:48,553 And that was okay, but there wasn't anything else beyond that, effectively. 74 00:05:48,553 --> 00:05:52,715 Whenever I left to get into tech, there was no guidance whatsoever. 75 00:05:52,715 --> 00:05:57,498 Obviously, just kind of like, you just sort of go into the wilderness and get into the maze. 76 00:05:58,614 --> 00:06:10,517 My big why behind starting this is it's an interview podcast where I ask people how they built their careers and I asked specifically for them to tell it in a story format. 77 00:06:10,557 --> 00:06:14,268 My hope is that when people hear, how did I become an managing partner? 78 00:06:14,268 --> 00:06:15,829 How did I become a practice group leader? 79 00:06:15,829 --> 00:06:18,369 How did I jump from tech into consulting? 80 00:06:18,369 --> 00:06:21,560 How did I jump from lawyer into tech? 81 00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:23,571 How did I get into within tech? 82 00:06:23,571 --> 00:06:24,701 How did I start a company? 83 00:06:24,701 --> 00:06:26,622 How did I scale a company? 84 00:06:26,622 --> 00:06:28,142 How did I get there? 85 00:06:28,214 --> 00:06:40,475 It's less about the specifics and it's more about humanizing these people in their fixed roles and saying, everybody starts from basically zero and everybody usually starts from a 86 00:06:40,475 --> 00:06:44,689 place of fear and builds it up ah as they go. 87 00:06:44,729 --> 00:06:45,830 That's really the point. 88 00:06:45,830 --> 00:06:53,087 And hopefully, with all of this together, building a corpus of what's it like to build a legal career today? 89 00:06:53,087 --> 00:06:54,708 What does it take, really? 90 00:06:55,025 --> 00:06:56,756 Interesting. 91 00:06:56,816 --> 00:07:07,622 you, during our last conversation, you were really talking about how you advocate for the business of law being on equal footing with the practice of law. 92 00:07:07,862 --> 00:07:09,423 Talk a little bit about that. 93 00:07:11,559 --> 00:07:28,507 So, know, personally, where this insight has come from is that after I graduated, sorry, after I left the practice of law, uh I quickly, you know, even to make it, I started to 94 00:07:28,507 --> 00:07:34,604 develop all of my business skills uh to kind of complement all of these practice of law skills. 95 00:07:34,604 --> 00:07:48,200 Now, wasn't working in a law firm specifically that point in time, but what I kind of realized is that I sort of by opening my skill set up to practice management operations, 96 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:55,958 understanding marketing sales, understanding what growth is, understanding pricing, packaging, metrics, all the rest of it really sort of 97 00:07:56,576 --> 00:08:03,272 supporting all of these practice skills, what I had noticed, and even I even tried to run my own firm and put out all of this kind of stuff. 98 00:08:03,272 --> 00:08:17,735 And all of it, what it all came back to was freedom and high agency came from effectively being able to run a practice like a business, being able to set goals, being able to back 99 00:08:17,735 --> 00:08:21,969 those goals out with specific metrics, being more data-driven. 100 00:08:21,969 --> 00:08:23,798 It was just this whole world that 101 00:08:23,798 --> 00:08:28,560 you know, in my 20s trying to practice, I never really had an understanding of it. 102 00:08:28,560 --> 00:08:39,424 And so what I'm ultimately getting at is that today, at an individual level, what really I think distinguishes most lawyers is the ability to sort of run their practice as a 103 00:08:39,424 --> 00:08:40,005 business. 104 00:08:40,005 --> 00:08:45,407 And those skills really give them a competitive advantage in a very, very competitive market. 105 00:08:45,407 --> 00:08:49,409 And we can go into laterals and all of this, but I think you're probably getting what I'm getting at. 106 00:08:49,409 --> 00:08:53,102 Okay, then abstract that one or aggregate that up to 107 00:08:53,102 --> 00:08:56,322 to the law firm. 108 00:08:56,482 --> 00:09:09,962 And today, what you of start to see, and I know we'll get into this, well, is technology driving some sort of parody whenever it comes to the actual practice of law? 109 00:09:09,962 --> 00:09:20,982 And then does that mean that the business of law is ultimately the end differentiator as it relates to both the client experience and or both? 110 00:09:20,982 --> 00:09:29,284 sort of how these practices grow and are able to generate new clients, keep those clients, scale those clients, uh expand those clients. 111 00:09:29,284 --> 00:09:37,987 Obviously, it's two sides of the same coin in terms of the product that you're offering, but there's just, what I'm just saying is, yes, it's the practice and everybody will tell 112 00:09:37,987 --> 00:09:40,628 you, you need to have the basis of practice. 113 00:09:40,628 --> 00:09:48,210 What I'm looking for is, and what I'm seeing is the differentiating factor where there is a Delta is basically in the business of law. 114 00:09:48,210 --> 00:09:49,530 And I think that, 115 00:09:50,006 --> 00:09:59,875 Of course, this sort of pats our own back in terms of what we're doing and Nexon, all of it, but it doesn't, it still remains true that I think relationships and specifically the 116 00:09:59,875 --> 00:10:11,756 idea of engaging relationships in the context of sort of thinking about it from a practice and how to grow is honestly where the interesting innovation ultimately lies. 117 00:10:12,241 --> 00:10:12,951 Yeah. 118 00:10:12,951 --> 00:10:21,755 you the, you had mentioned when we spoke last about how the lawyer, the typical lawyer mindset is plan, then act. 119 00:10:21,815 --> 00:10:27,878 And in the entrepreneurial world, it's, it's act then gain clarity. 120 00:10:27,878 --> 00:10:28,558 Right. 121 00:10:28,558 --> 00:10:29,850 And that, and that's 122 00:10:29,850 --> 00:10:31,353 scale, maybe something like this. 123 00:10:31,353 --> 00:10:32,207 Yeah, right. 124 00:10:32,207 --> 00:10:37,120 So one of our core values at InfoDash, and we actually really use our core values. 125 00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:41,964 They don't just sit up on a dusty uh frame on the wall. 126 00:10:41,964 --> 00:10:43,335 We use them actively. 127 00:10:43,335 --> 00:10:45,616 One of them is called simplify and go. 128 00:10:45,917 --> 00:10:55,363 And um one of the challenges that I've seen, I would assume this probably happens in the legal world too, is we'll get technical guys who are masters. 129 00:10:55,363 --> 00:10:57,464 They are violin makers. 130 00:10:57,505 --> 00:11:01,203 And sometimes you just need a dog house. 131 00:11:01,203 --> 00:11:08,623 And getting a violin maker to build a dog house is a really hard thing to do, but it is 100 % necessary. 132 00:11:08,623 --> 00:11:11,803 And that's why we talk about simplify and go. 133 00:11:11,803 --> 00:11:13,823 Then there's a bunch of sub bullets under that. 134 00:11:13,823 --> 00:11:19,763 But the most memorable one is take a bias towards action, right? 135 00:11:19,763 --> 00:11:23,183 It's, it's act and then figure it out, iterate. 136 00:11:23,183 --> 00:11:24,743 It doesn't have to be perfect. 137 00:11:25,023 --> 00:11:29,344 So, um, is what did you have to make a shift from the 138 00:11:29,344 --> 00:11:30,015 of course. 139 00:11:30,015 --> 00:11:40,243 Yes, right, right, You know, I mean, it's, it's, so let me, you know, uh I do this podcast and it's called, it's called This Legal Life. 140 00:11:40,243 --> 00:11:50,231 And basically I ask everybody the same series of questions, which is uh questions about putting their facts in the context of a story, specifically the hero's journey. 141 00:11:50,231 --> 00:11:58,478 Now the hero's journey, if you've ever seen a Marvel movie, if you've seen any movie about transformation, it's all the same story over and over and over and over and over again. 142 00:11:58,478 --> 00:12:00,278 It's a very famous story. 143 00:12:00,538 --> 00:12:07,338 This guy called it the monomyth, which is it's the myth on which every other myth is sort of thing is sort of built on. 144 00:12:07,338 --> 00:12:17,178 And basically the whole thing is just a big metaphor of you used to think a certain way, then you went through an experience and now you see it in another way. 145 00:12:17,178 --> 00:12:18,578 You see the world in another way. 146 00:12:18,578 --> 00:12:25,966 In my case, in my old life, I was really always trying to plan for things, plan, plan, plan. 147 00:12:25,966 --> 00:12:32,900 because in some sense I was looking for safety, was looking for security, I was looking for some sort of degree of control, let's say, from the environment. 148 00:12:32,900 --> 00:12:36,252 So I was planning, planning, planning, always gathering, gathering, gathering. 149 00:12:36,252 --> 00:12:43,736 And in that sense, yeah, that serves you really well, I think, in a president-based system. 150 00:12:43,736 --> 00:12:52,383 But as soon as I left there, as soon as I left there to sort of hear the calling of creativity, hear the calling of entrepreneurship, hear really my grandfather's voice, 151 00:12:52,383 --> 00:12:54,862 because my grandfather was a pretty successful entrepreneur. 152 00:12:54,862 --> 00:12:55,862 in South America. 153 00:12:55,862 --> 00:13:01,894 uh Once I got in there, I basically realized that that skill set was underserving me. 154 00:13:01,894 --> 00:13:03,363 So I had to flip the entire thing. 155 00:13:03,363 --> 00:13:08,526 So instead of planning and then acting, I had to act and then sort of get clarity from it. 156 00:13:08,526 --> 00:13:12,267 And that's what I inevitably learned to be able to do this. 157 00:13:12,267 --> 00:13:19,610 I mean, I had to basically, you I was burning money and I was down to ah my last like rent check. 158 00:13:19,610 --> 00:13:20,876 uh 159 00:13:20,876 --> 00:13:24,129 whenever all of a sudden, and I was just trying so, so many things, right? 160 00:13:24,129 --> 00:13:31,095 And it was just like every single time the bank account was going more and more and more and more, I got more desperate to do more and more more and more things. 161 00:13:31,095 --> 00:13:38,661 And eventually just so happened that I got a call from Legal Sifter from some flyer that I gave out. 162 00:13:38,661 --> 00:13:41,093 And here's to put a super fine point on it. 163 00:13:41,093 --> 00:13:45,046 I gave a flyer about something about sort of like legal experience. 164 00:13:45,046 --> 00:13:49,410 At that point in time, I was sort of trying to be like a GC for uh 165 00:13:49,410 --> 00:13:50,591 legal tech startups. 166 00:13:50,591 --> 00:13:56,796 was my quote unquote interesting plan to get into tech. 167 00:13:56,837 --> 00:14:02,822 And so they call me and they're like, yeah, we don't want the general counsel service, but we have an opening in sales. 168 00:14:02,822 --> 00:14:09,248 Do you want to come and be a salesperson, like bottom of the floor salesperson, just sort of like work your way sort of up. 169 00:14:09,248 --> 00:14:14,183 So this is the point, the best laid plans of mice and men typically go a foul. 170 00:14:14,183 --> 00:14:15,513 And in that case, 171 00:14:15,756 --> 00:14:23,231 That was my acting, but my acting ended up opening up another door that it wasn't even related to. 172 00:14:23,231 --> 00:14:26,613 in some sense, you just have to trust in that capacity. 173 00:14:26,613 --> 00:14:32,097 And we can get much farther out in terms of acting and what that does. 174 00:14:32,097 --> 00:14:34,718 But anyway, I think you probably sort of get it. 175 00:14:34,823 --> 00:14:38,664 Yeah, I I took a lot of interesting turns myself. 176 00:14:38,664 --> 00:14:42,065 So I did not do well in high school. 177 00:14:42,125 --> 00:14:49,327 And uh my mom put me to work in her restaurant, gave me the crappiest jobs humanly possible. 178 00:14:49,327 --> 00:14:51,658 And I begged to go back to school. 179 00:14:51,658 --> 00:14:55,869 And I went to community college for a couple of years, was on the dean's list the entire time. 180 00:14:55,869 --> 00:15:01,980 um I ended up getting into University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill out of state, which is actually hard to do. 181 00:15:01,980 --> 00:15:04,307 Ended up getting a 182 00:15:04,307 --> 00:15:07,707 uh, studying actuarial science to be an actuary. 183 00:15:07,707 --> 00:15:18,327 And then I started applying for internships and you basically had like, I had to have like a three seven and I didn't, I was working my way through school and I was a good student 184 00:15:18,327 --> 00:15:19,067 by that point. 185 00:15:19,067 --> 00:15:21,787 I had turned it around, but I didn't have a three seven. 186 00:15:21,787 --> 00:15:25,947 So I ended up pivoting and just getting a general math degree. 187 00:15:26,127 --> 00:15:31,772 Um, I started a business part time, a collection agency and um, 188 00:15:31,772 --> 00:15:37,554 My mom was getting bombarded with bad checks, gave them to me to collect, build a business, started it. 189 00:15:37,554 --> 00:15:41,896 um And I learned the skills of entrepreneurship. 190 00:15:41,896 --> 00:15:43,352 And then I went on. 191 00:15:43,352 --> 00:15:53,380 I also acquired so much tech skills, and this is in the late 90s, mid to late 90s, that I ended up going to work for Microsoft. 192 00:15:54,041 --> 00:15:58,963 then I started consulting on the side, and then SideGaG started making more than the day job. 193 00:15:58,963 --> 00:15:59,682 And it's like, 194 00:15:59,682 --> 00:16:00,566 Yes. 195 00:16:00,625 --> 00:16:02,366 your story is not an unusual one. 196 00:16:02,366 --> 00:16:13,446 you, you know, I started off as basically high school dropout going nowhere, then going to one of the best public universities and majoring in math, then owning a collection agency, 197 00:16:13,446 --> 00:16:15,167 then working for Microsoft. 198 00:16:15,167 --> 00:16:17,507 And now I'm like a legal tech guy. 199 00:16:17,509 --> 00:16:27,027 So, you know, it's like, I think, I think there are a lot of stories out there that have a lot of twists and turns that, you know, if you would have told me that I'd be here where I 200 00:16:27,027 --> 00:16:30,489 am today, 30 years ago, I would have laughed. 201 00:16:31,216 --> 00:16:31,817 Yeah. 202 00:16:31,817 --> 00:16:40,245 And the point of that story, and by the way, you know, your story resonates so much, you know, as part of this legal life, I ask everybody the same questions. 203 00:16:40,245 --> 00:16:50,284 And what's amazing is that, you know, this insight about acting, acting first, and then sort of gaining clarity is so, so, so, so powerful. 204 00:16:50,284 --> 00:16:54,067 Once you sort of step into the new world, everybody does this. 205 00:16:54,067 --> 00:16:55,328 And in some sense, 206 00:16:55,394 --> 00:17:03,419 I don't want to get so big out there, but in some sense, life sort of forces you in a way to sort of uh do that. 207 00:17:03,419 --> 00:17:17,948 But the point is, it's just hard to appreciate ah how much the twist and turn uh of the road uh opens up. 208 00:17:17,948 --> 00:17:19,919 But first, you've got to sort of trust. 209 00:17:19,919 --> 00:17:21,814 You've kind of got to act. 210 00:17:21,814 --> 00:17:25,046 And then it'll meet you halfway sort of thing. 211 00:17:25,046 --> 00:17:28,238 And in some sense, it's just not enough to plan in this way. 212 00:17:28,238 --> 00:17:36,964 So to me, that's the big, takeaway of all of these interviews that I've done in this legal life. 213 00:17:36,964 --> 00:17:42,768 I ask everybody the same question, and nobody's life is the same, and yet everybody goes through the same exact thing. 214 00:17:42,768 --> 00:17:45,650 So it's this sort of weird paradox. 215 00:17:45,650 --> 00:17:49,232 Every single person is on the same script, but no script is exactly the same. 216 00:17:49,232 --> 00:17:51,804 No movie is exactly the same, effectively. 217 00:17:51,804 --> 00:17:59,809 Yeah, and well, and so your journey took you to Nexel and Nexel is a CRM for legal. 218 00:17:59,809 --> 00:18:01,140 Is that accurate? 219 00:18:01,522 --> 00:18:02,022 Okay. 220 00:18:02,022 --> 00:18:02,822 accurate. 221 00:18:02,822 --> 00:18:04,663 We'd like to think of CRM plus. 222 00:18:04,663 --> 00:18:10,865 We're really taking the idea of CRM and we're kind of modernizing it for the modern law firm. 223 00:18:10,865 --> 00:18:14,667 em So there's a lot to say in that, but it's CRM plus really. 224 00:18:14,667 --> 00:18:17,568 We do have an email marketing system, collaboration system. 225 00:18:17,568 --> 00:18:20,789 And yeah, the idea is it's not a back office CRM. 226 00:18:20,789 --> 00:18:24,800 It's a front office CRM that's used by the lawyers on a day-to-day basis. 227 00:18:24,965 --> 00:18:25,796 Interesting. 228 00:18:25,796 --> 00:18:35,202 And so you have seen, and I have seen as well, the mess that is often law firm IT environments. 229 00:18:35,202 --> 00:18:44,999 I mean, even at the bigger levels, you've seen historically under investment, there's still a ton of on-prem infrastructure at law firms. 230 00:18:44,999 --> 00:18:47,991 There's a lot of legacy architecture. 231 00:18:48,792 --> 00:18:53,835 Legal tech has been, there's this dynamic where the big players in the space, 232 00:18:53,873 --> 00:18:57,724 buy up the small innovative companies and then they just go there and die. 233 00:18:58,064 --> 00:19:13,568 so there's not been a ton of innovation, but you you have seen the challenges around data and lawyers willingness to check documents in their DMS and profile them and put contacts 234 00:19:13,568 --> 00:19:14,329 in CRM. 235 00:19:14,329 --> 00:19:23,631 Like, you know, how, how do you motivate lawyers to do these things that are necessary to have a robust thing, like a platform, like a CRM? 236 00:19:24,078 --> 00:19:25,058 Sure. 237 00:19:25,159 --> 00:19:42,075 So when we were thinking about the CRM and building up the CRM and thinking about it from the ground up, we sort of knew, of course, the cultural gravity of data input as it stood 238 00:19:42,075 --> 00:19:45,948 in 2020, which is right in Nexil's story. 239 00:19:45,948 --> 00:19:48,350 We had gone through a pivot in everybody else's story. 240 00:19:48,350 --> 00:19:50,478 You try one thing and then you hit it down. 241 00:19:50,478 --> 00:19:55,318 hit a wall and then you try something else and that gives you sort of a spark but not the thing. 242 00:19:55,318 --> 00:19:58,898 So eventually we land on the CRM in 2020. 243 00:19:59,058 --> 00:20:02,318 We're getting pulled by our clients to really sort of build this CRM. 244 00:20:02,318 --> 00:20:05,422 We had started as a referral management company. 245 00:20:05,422 --> 00:20:12,726 uh referral management system, which is, you know, like a subset of CRM specifically for the referral partnership. 246 00:20:12,726 --> 00:20:15,048 And then we had things that we were doing on the back end of that. 247 00:20:15,048 --> 00:20:21,871 But then they just said, just build us a CRM because, you know, the ones that we have here, nobody's using and it's just sitting there like a dead database. 248 00:20:22,032 --> 00:20:27,255 Anyway, in 2020, we were at a state with the technology that really allowed for two things. 249 00:20:27,255 --> 00:20:31,802 One, we were able to link up with the 365 system. 250 00:20:31,802 --> 00:20:33,158 um 251 00:20:33,214 --> 00:20:40,059 and really monitor the data flows specifically across uh email and meeting. 252 00:20:40,059 --> 00:20:45,493 And then the second, which is the most important, is we've all been on the internet for a long time. 253 00:20:45,493 --> 00:20:48,365 Our data is on that internet. 254 00:20:48,365 --> 00:20:57,221 This basically affords, and in 2020, the idea of enrichment, specifically data enrichment through APIs, was really at a point. 255 00:20:57,221 --> 00:21:00,913 So the innovation, of course, was taking those two things. 256 00:21:01,934 --> 00:21:15,350 uh the 365 platform that had been well integrated into law firms and the data flows within that and then combining that with enrichment to basically do something like a passive data 257 00:21:15,350 --> 00:21:27,125 entry system for CRM that was then served up in what we would like to think of as a modern CRM basis built with the lawyer user in mind. 258 00:21:27,125 --> 00:21:30,210 Not the back office database, but the lawyer 259 00:21:30,210 --> 00:21:31,560 the lawyer use in mind. 260 00:21:31,560 --> 00:21:40,723 And I can go into what that looks like, but basically it's like, want them to use it so it has to feel like your iPhone, know, in some form or fashion, you know, because that's 261 00:21:40,723 --> 00:21:48,355 where the gravitational, that's where the bar is and that's where sort of the gravitational use is right now in terms of software. 262 00:21:48,355 --> 00:21:58,668 So we took all of that together and that's how we got over the initial idea of, wow, data is critical, but how do we get the data sort of necessarily in? 263 00:21:59,156 --> 00:22:07,862 So one thing you wrote about is, which I think it might have been my inspiration for reaching out to you, was the law firm CRO. 264 00:22:08,103 --> 00:22:14,688 And I always chuckle when I think about a law firm CRO in big law specifically. 265 00:22:14,688 --> 00:22:16,289 I don't know if it would be any different. 266 00:22:16,289 --> 00:22:17,760 I just know big law well. 267 00:22:17,760 --> 00:22:23,115 So when I try and picture that role, I think about what a CRO does. 268 00:22:23,115 --> 00:22:29,349 A CRO maximizes revenue opportunities and client retention. 269 00:22:29,633 --> 00:22:30,062 Yeah. 270 00:22:30,062 --> 00:22:34,715 success is often a part of the chief revenue officer's remit. 271 00:22:34,755 --> 00:22:38,998 So when I think about well first of all customer success doesn't exist. 272 00:22:40,340 --> 00:22:41,521 It doesn't exist. 273 00:22:41,521 --> 00:22:42,521 I've never seen it. 274 00:22:42,521 --> 00:22:54,510 um But uh okay so that doesn't exist and then when I think about like some of the trade-offs that uh a chief revenue officer in big law would have to try and make and get 275 00:22:54,510 --> 00:22:55,815 buying for like 276 00:22:55,815 --> 00:23:01,898 Hey, you know what, we're doing 5 million a year in business with Coca-Cola, but it's low margin. 277 00:23:01,898 --> 00:23:06,620 And we've got Pepsi, an opportunity with an RFP for Pepsi. 278 00:23:06,620 --> 00:23:10,901 What if we exited that Coke relationship and pursued Pepsi? 279 00:23:10,921 --> 00:23:12,202 And I just laugh. 280 00:23:12,202 --> 00:23:16,684 I chuckle of the conversation with the partner that owns that. 281 00:23:16,684 --> 00:23:17,924 He's out the door. 282 00:23:17,924 --> 00:23:19,185 He's gone. 283 00:23:19,185 --> 00:23:21,246 He's not giving up his book of business. 284 00:23:21,246 --> 00:23:21,826 He's leaving. 285 00:23:21,826 --> 00:23:22,656 He's going down the street. 286 00:23:22,656 --> 00:23:24,207 And maybe that's okay. 287 00:23:24,241 --> 00:23:36,491 But God, just seems like big law specifically has such a hard time empowering the business of law leaders. 288 00:23:36,491 --> 00:23:37,552 It's a real challenge. 289 00:23:37,552 --> 00:23:38,343 I don't know. 290 00:23:38,343 --> 00:23:41,065 How would you see this CRO? 291 00:23:41,065 --> 00:23:44,267 Would it work in legal, in a big law? 292 00:23:44,699 --> 00:23:51,182 you know, so the answer is for all the reasons that you stated, it's incredibly difficult. 293 00:23:51,182 --> 00:24:01,466 And yet, ah and yet I think that there is external forces that are sort of driving a little bit of this evolution. 294 00:24:01,466 --> 00:24:03,097 I don't know what it's going to be like. 295 00:24:03,097 --> 00:24:09,590 And I only use CRO because, you know, work at a tech company and CROs are very sort of like maximalized. 296 00:24:09,590 --> 00:24:15,834 and leveraged in the context of sales organizations within tech companies. 297 00:24:15,834 --> 00:24:17,525 So I don't know what that's going to look like. 298 00:24:17,525 --> 00:24:18,545 I'd be surprised. 299 00:24:18,545 --> 00:24:21,937 mean, there are CROs within law firms. 300 00:24:22,158 --> 00:24:25,249 But let me set something up. 301 00:24:25,249 --> 00:24:36,502 The way that when we think about it at Nexel and specifically the idea of revenue and growth, I would say, in this capacity is, look, at the end of the day, 302 00:24:36,502 --> 00:24:46,666 Step one is really sort of like the data infrastructure because the data infrastructure starts to bring a degree of clarity and at the very least a degree of objectivity whenever 303 00:24:46,666 --> 00:24:49,477 it comes to your Coca-Cola versus Pepsi. 304 00:24:49,477 --> 00:24:55,739 Of course, law firms have traditionally run on the finances, but finances need to be attached to relationships. 305 00:24:55,739 --> 00:24:58,731 Relationships need to be attached to engagements. 306 00:24:58,731 --> 00:25:05,568 Engagements, and I mean engagements, yes, engagements in terms of clients, but it also needs engagements in terms of... 307 00:25:05,568 --> 00:25:08,942 interactions over the course of period of time. 308 00:25:08,942 --> 00:25:16,119 Now, once you get data and you start plotting all of that together, then what you get is the idea of insights. 309 00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:27,220 And insights can be to some lesser extent, to more or lesser extent, insights can start to drive the conversation. 310 00:25:27,220 --> 00:25:29,100 Now, if insights are... 311 00:25:29,100 --> 00:25:36,516 back off as BI sort of tools that never see the light of day and or are fundamentally based on bad data, it's never going to happen. 312 00:25:36,516 --> 00:25:42,680 But we, here, we think that, gee, we sort of figured out the data piece. 313 00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:44,021 Can we solve the insight piece? 314 00:25:44,021 --> 00:25:55,820 And whenever you stack all of those two things together, what you have, you have real-time data insights tied and contextualized and then brought to the fore with things like client 315 00:25:55,820 --> 00:25:56,770 insights. 316 00:25:56,770 --> 00:25:57,580 And what does that mean? 317 00:25:57,580 --> 00:25:59,031 mean, being super practical. 318 00:25:59,031 --> 00:26:11,717 What that means is that the practice group leader on a Monday can have a informed meeting based on real world insights that basically are also contextualized within the context of 319 00:26:11,717 --> 00:26:12,997 all the soft stuff. 320 00:26:12,997 --> 00:26:24,182 That to me is at least a better meeting that encourages questions around what's possible. 321 00:26:24,462 --> 00:26:26,582 based on true evidence. 322 00:26:26,582 --> 00:26:27,962 And evidence is good, right? 323 00:26:27,962 --> 00:26:28,922 And evidence is good. 324 00:26:28,922 --> 00:26:34,082 And to me, somebody asked me one time, what's the best way to convince lawyers to use tech? 325 00:26:34,482 --> 00:26:40,042 And I was like, you kind of have to give it to them a little bit, and they have to use it. 326 00:26:40,042 --> 00:26:41,602 That means it has to be really good. 327 00:26:41,602 --> 00:26:52,002 But if you bring all of this together, insights that are in the hands of every partner, they're all sort of using it, and it's actually trusted, and the evidence is there. 328 00:26:52,118 --> 00:26:58,563 I think that at least starts to have an interesting conversation in terms of what are the trade-offs that we need to make. 329 00:26:58,563 --> 00:27:05,789 Now you bring in the idea of politics and you bring in the idea of culture and you bring in the idea of precedent and that is a difficult problem. 330 00:27:05,789 --> 00:27:07,110 Yes, it is. 331 00:27:07,190 --> 00:27:16,497 But, you know, to me then this gets into what are the driving forces that might be changing that story or changing the incentives. 332 00:27:16,518 --> 00:27:20,801 And we talked about it there, you know, and I'll just lay it up and then I want you to come back in on this. 333 00:27:20,801 --> 00:27:22,262 like, it's like, 334 00:27:22,360 --> 00:27:25,933 Clients, if they say jump, law firms say how high. 335 00:27:25,933 --> 00:27:35,883 ah The margins and the technological revolution that is sort of happening in and of itself right now and who even knows, you know? 336 00:27:35,883 --> 00:27:41,228 And then the last is maybe some sort of like generational shift that's going on. 337 00:27:41,228 --> 00:27:47,174 So you bring in generational shift, you bring in client experience and you bring in reduced margins. 338 00:27:47,174 --> 00:27:47,950 Does that? 339 00:27:47,950 --> 00:28:01,070 lay enough of the incentives combined with the data and the insights and sort of the conversations to actually tee up the idea of, not even chief revenue officers, let's just 340 00:28:01,070 --> 00:28:12,290 talk about empowered business leaders making true big decisions, you know, all the way down to being able to say, Coke, but Pepsi, you know, sort of thing. 341 00:28:12,290 --> 00:28:16,822 I don't know, you know, if I had a crystal ball, you know, it'd be, it'd it'd be, 342 00:28:16,822 --> 00:28:19,185 It'd be pretty, pretty, pretty interesting. 343 00:28:19,185 --> 00:28:27,434 But it just seems to me that even 10 years ago, this whole dynamic wasn't possible. 344 00:28:27,434 --> 00:28:29,567 So the question is, are we getting to a tipping point? 345 00:28:29,567 --> 00:28:30,658 That's the question, you know? 346 00:28:30,658 --> 00:28:32,150 And tipping points are real. 347 00:28:32,150 --> 00:28:34,612 Tipping points happen all the time, you know? 348 00:28:34,651 --> 00:28:40,643 Yeah, well, you know, I think there are some mindsets that really get in the way. 349 00:28:40,643 --> 00:28:48,755 So a big one for me that I have an issue with is that that legal is a profession and not a business. 350 00:28:48,755 --> 00:28:50,295 And that's baloney, man. 351 00:28:50,295 --> 00:28:51,396 That is baloney. 352 00:28:51,396 --> 00:28:52,096 I haven't talked. 353 00:28:52,096 --> 00:28:53,596 I used to talk about it quite a bit. 354 00:28:53,596 --> 00:29:01,158 um So every profession is a business, but not every business is a profession. 355 00:29:01,478 --> 00:29:01,919 Right. 356 00:29:01,919 --> 00:29:02,219 Right. 357 00:29:02,219 --> 00:29:03,648 And and what distinguishes 358 00:29:03,648 --> 00:29:04,159 use that one. 359 00:29:04,159 --> 00:29:05,230 Yeah, right. 360 00:29:05,372 --> 00:29:06,022 Yeah. 361 00:29:06,022 --> 00:29:10,765 a profession from a business are the things that you would think of with legal. 362 00:29:10,765 --> 00:29:15,297 There's, um, you know, there is a standards organization. 363 00:29:15,297 --> 00:29:28,935 are, certifications and requirements and CLEs and ethical guidelines and those sorts of things that starts to paint the picture of profession, but every profession is also a 364 00:29:28,935 --> 00:29:32,907 business because you still have to. 365 00:29:33,086 --> 00:29:39,460 generate revenue and file your taxes and do sales and marketing, all those things. 366 00:29:39,460 --> 00:29:41,982 But lawyers, like there is an article out there. 367 00:29:41,982 --> 00:29:45,163 I'd encourage anyone who really wants to get a good laugh. 368 00:29:45,404 --> 00:29:52,102 the Florida bar association has a manifesto on the difference between a profession. 369 00:29:52,102 --> 00:29:55,913 and a business and honestly, and I think it's a bunch of horse shit. 370 00:29:55,913 --> 00:29:58,353 just, don't, I don't buy into it. 371 00:29:58,364 --> 00:30:00,164 lawyers, you're not special, right? 372 00:30:00,164 --> 00:30:05,035 You're, you, you are, you, you do a very, you, you perform a very important function. 373 00:30:05,035 --> 00:30:07,876 It's no more important than a doctor, right? 374 00:30:07,876 --> 00:30:11,207 Where people's lives are on the line and what, you do is important. 375 00:30:11,207 --> 00:30:19,138 I'm not saying that, but it's not, it doesn't elevate you above a, what qualifies as a business. 376 00:30:19,199 --> 00:30:21,519 And I think that mindset, 377 00:30:21,519 --> 00:30:29,788 starts to get in the way of lawyers think and law firm leadership thinking about like, do we market effectively? 378 00:30:29,788 --> 00:30:31,270 How do we maximize revenue? 379 00:30:31,270 --> 00:30:34,593 How do we drive bottom line performance? 380 00:30:34,593 --> 00:30:36,475 Because those are business conversations. 381 00:30:36,475 --> 00:30:38,928 um So I don't know, man. 382 00:30:38,928 --> 00:30:43,673 Do you see this business and profession distinction getting in the way at all? 383 00:30:44,107 --> 00:30:53,571 Yeah, of course, in some sense, know, whenever, if I could expand that out, you know, this is why I sort of believe so deeply in the idea of stories. 384 00:30:53,571 --> 00:30:58,913 Because mindsets and beliefs are basically functions of worldviews. 385 00:30:58,913 --> 00:31:08,057 And worldviews are basically the, are basically stories built up together in some sort of cohesive sort of like function. 386 00:31:08,057 --> 00:31:09,600 And stories, 387 00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:10,810 What is a good story? 388 00:31:10,810 --> 00:31:18,784 Well, in some sense, I sort of told you, you know, there are deep stories that are basically ingrained in our brains in terms of I just told you one, right? 389 00:31:18,784 --> 00:31:20,835 That the hero's sort of like journey. 390 00:31:20,835 --> 00:31:25,837 One of them, I think, is the idea between profession and business. 391 00:31:25,837 --> 00:31:36,131 However, you know, what you realize if you study stories and if you study stories as like it sort of like goes through time, basically what you kind of realize, and this is a very 392 00:31:36,131 --> 00:31:38,242 big, bold claim, that stories 393 00:31:38,242 --> 00:31:44,345 basically get updated over time as technology sort of changes. 394 00:31:44,345 --> 00:31:45,515 This is such a big topic. 395 00:31:45,515 --> 00:31:54,488 I'm such a nerd, but basically the function of worldviews and technology, is such a, I don't know if anybody's ever thought about this. 396 00:31:54,488 --> 00:31:58,882 If you're crazy like me and you think about these sorts of things, but just think about it. 397 00:31:59,551 --> 00:32:04,233 throughout human history, I'm about to do something that starts with throughout human history. 398 00:32:04,233 --> 00:32:05,810 Think about sort of 399 00:32:05,810 --> 00:32:17,713 Farming inevitably leads to sort of like city infrastructure, city infrastructure inevitably leads to things like the Industrial Revolution, Industrial Revolution leads to 400 00:32:17,713 --> 00:32:21,824 sort of like information technologies, information technologies is now leading. 401 00:32:21,824 --> 00:32:25,796 Every single one of those things had a huge, huge jump, huge, huge jump. 402 00:32:25,796 --> 00:32:29,316 And yes, we can go all the way back to fire, know, fire as a sort of basis. 403 00:32:29,316 --> 00:32:33,718 All of these technologies had a huge, huge societal sort of like shift basically. 404 00:32:33,718 --> 00:32:35,264 And that societal shift, 405 00:32:35,264 --> 00:32:38,537 allowed for the old stories to fundamentally change. 406 00:32:38,537 --> 00:32:47,946 So the open question is, are we in a new, we have a new technology, something sort of happening, is that enough to sort of like change worldviews at some point in time? 407 00:32:47,946 --> 00:32:49,167 That's really the question. 408 00:32:49,167 --> 00:32:58,455 But there is a correlation between technology and the stories that basically we tell and sort of like the worldviews that basically get built up for that. 409 00:32:58,455 --> 00:33:01,752 That's why at the end of the day, it's like, yes, I work in tech. 410 00:33:01,752 --> 00:33:14,128 But what I ultimately think is interesting is the stories that end up building up based on that sort of shift in tech because it just changes the possibility frame basically for 411 00:33:14,128 --> 00:33:16,201 what people can imagine effectively. 412 00:33:16,201 --> 00:33:17,532 And it always has been. 413 00:33:17,532 --> 00:33:19,594 and I have not brought that up. 414 00:33:19,594 --> 00:33:28,141 used to, I long time listeners have, have, have heard me, preach from that soap box before, but it's been a while. 415 00:33:28,141 --> 00:33:38,509 And, know, I think AI, have not until you just really mentioned it, I had not really thought about AI's impact on that distinction between a profession and a business. 416 00:33:38,509 --> 00:33:40,731 It is going to really. 417 00:33:40,986 --> 00:33:42,427 Yes, right. 418 00:33:43,590 --> 00:33:44,004 Sure. 419 00:33:44,004 --> 00:33:52,438 move into, as the billable hour loses ground, and I don't think the billable hour is going away, but I do think it is going to lose a lot of ground very quickly. 420 00:33:52,438 --> 00:34:04,485 um As the billable hour loses ground and alternative fee arrangements start to gain momentum, um they already exist, but they will become more and more prominent in legal 421 00:34:04,485 --> 00:34:05,865 pricing models. 422 00:34:06,066 --> 00:34:08,339 How can you not have 423 00:34:08,339 --> 00:34:21,279 just real business conversations about, if we implement these efficiencies, if we make this investment in technology and we hire these resources to help us generate, improve 424 00:34:21,279 --> 00:34:25,079 productivity and efficiency, that will help drive bottom line performance. 425 00:34:25,079 --> 00:34:26,899 These conversations are going to be unavoidable. 426 00:34:26,899 --> 00:34:30,399 And I don't see how you could stand there and say, well, we're, we're a profession. 427 00:34:30,399 --> 00:34:31,699 We're not a business. 428 00:34:31,699 --> 00:34:33,759 No, you're, you're both. 429 00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:35,699 So that, that's a good point. 430 00:34:35,699 --> 00:34:38,603 I do think that AI is really going to have a. 431 00:34:38,629 --> 00:34:42,733 It's going to really blow that whole argument out of the water, I think. 432 00:34:43,662 --> 00:34:44,422 There's a lot there. 433 00:34:44,422 --> 00:34:47,664 Yeah, totally, totally. 434 00:34:47,664 --> 00:34:57,710 This is why I'm very fond, and I was having a conversation uh with Tom Martin, and I'm very fond of this idea of we're in a time between worlds. 435 00:34:57,710 --> 00:35:04,754 And I test that out with people, and I'm like, how does that intuitively feel, like whenever I say that, time between worlds? 436 00:35:04,754 --> 00:35:11,377 And to me, it makes a lot of sense because we know what we're leaving, but we haven't necessarily got to where we're sort of at. 437 00:35:11,377 --> 00:35:12,490 And this always happens. 438 00:35:12,490 --> 00:35:22,114 You know, the transition from being a Middle Ages, uh Middle Ages king, queens, game of thrones to basically something like the Renaissance, which eventually just led to 439 00:35:22,114 --> 00:35:23,955 basically the Industrial Revolution. 440 00:35:23,955 --> 00:35:33,860 That was like such a crazy time, you know, like basically the whole thing kind of like collapsed to be reconstituted, reconstituted in something like Florence, Italy. 441 00:35:33,860 --> 00:35:37,581 And from there, sort of like the idea of enlightenment sort of like spread from there. 442 00:35:37,581 --> 00:35:39,468 But that was such a crazy time. 443 00:35:39,468 --> 00:35:46,482 Like between these things, if you go back and like read history, it's so insane, you know, the way that that like kind of spurred. 444 00:35:46,482 --> 00:35:49,147 And that's, to me, that's what it feels like right now. 445 00:35:49,147 --> 00:35:52,062 And we have this new sort of like technology. 446 00:35:52,370 --> 00:36:01,186 Yeah, so there's a concept called liminality and the liminal periods are right. 447 00:36:01,186 --> 00:36:06,671 Is that that messy middle between, you know, current state and future state? 448 00:36:06,671 --> 00:36:09,152 And that is exactly where we are. 449 00:36:09,213 --> 00:36:14,646 And anyone, including me, who pretends to know exactly what the future state is going to look like. 450 00:36:14,646 --> 00:36:15,477 We don't. 451 00:36:15,477 --> 00:36:18,449 We have some we have a general kind of. 452 00:36:18,833 --> 00:36:19,833 Right. 453 00:36:20,995 --> 00:36:21,895 Yeah. 454 00:36:23,017 --> 00:36:23,815 Sure. 455 00:36:23,815 --> 00:36:25,997 But we don't have it all figured out. 456 00:36:25,997 --> 00:36:41,018 So um along those lines with respect to AI, you and I talked a little bit about agents um and agentic workflows and how data and agents can lead to lawyers having the right 457 00:36:41,018 --> 00:36:42,989 conversations at the right time. 458 00:36:42,989 --> 00:36:45,471 What are your thoughts on that? 459 00:36:47,158 --> 00:36:58,868 Okay, so this is like to frame this conversation up, it's and to give some context, know, this is what I'm thinking about in terms of the law firm growth stack, basically, uh of 460 00:36:58,868 --> 00:37:05,073 which something like empowered business leaders are sort of like the last in that stack. 461 00:37:05,073 --> 00:37:08,255 So if I could just like sort of like name the stack, it would go like this. 462 00:37:08,255 --> 00:37:09,957 One, you need to have data. 463 00:37:09,957 --> 00:37:13,360 Second, you need to have insights based on that data. 464 00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,558 Third, you need to have sort of tools that 465 00:37:16,558 --> 00:37:21,280 uh that kind of like are used within the context either through people. 466 00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:28,503 Fourth, you can start to of course have agentic workflows that are basically using tools, knowledge uh and data. 467 00:37:28,503 --> 00:37:38,607 And of course a prompt, you know, and I basically have just described the entire agentic sort of like system, but you can also see it as a stack within a firm. 468 00:37:38,687 --> 00:37:45,990 And then lastly, of course, let's say humans in the loop or business leaders in the loop or something like this, you know, so. 469 00:37:47,090 --> 00:37:59,028 It's like when you step back that micro thing, which I just described, a prompt that goes to a knowledge base that uses data, that uses some tools to produce an output that then is 470 00:37:59,028 --> 00:37:59,819 sort of checked. 471 00:37:59,819 --> 00:38:01,920 That's basically the agentic workflow. 472 00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:12,508 You would just take that and say, that's sort of how a law firm would run if it was growing and trying to grow as sort of like a stack, basically, effectively. 473 00:38:12,508 --> 00:38:14,789 So I'm really like, I like this idea a lot. 474 00:38:14,789 --> 00:38:16,162 I like how sort of the... 475 00:38:16,162 --> 00:38:18,604 macro sort of becomes a micro. 476 00:38:18,604 --> 00:38:31,693 But to put a fine point on it as it relates to right conversations at the right time and using that model that I just laid out, basically we see a future where agentic workflows 477 00:38:31,693 --> 00:38:43,641 can go all the way up to basically teeing up conversations for lawyers to have the right to the right person at the right time with the right conversation based on, again, 478 00:38:44,578 --> 00:38:46,139 This is where we want to go. 479 00:38:46,139 --> 00:38:54,743 This is the highest value use of your time as it relates to client and business development because, and I mean, I could go through so many different things. 480 00:38:54,743 --> 00:38:56,053 This client is on fire. 481 00:38:56,053 --> 00:38:59,184 This client opportunity has the opportunity to expand. 482 00:38:59,184 --> 00:39:01,145 This is a new market opportunity. 483 00:39:01,145 --> 00:39:09,619 These are, we have a density with regards to a number of relationships within a certain account. 484 00:39:09,619 --> 00:39:12,118 You should try to engage that right now. 485 00:39:12,118 --> 00:39:16,949 I mean, there is a revenue potential there as it relates to X, Y, and Z. 486 00:39:16,949 --> 00:39:26,642 So all of these things, but of course, trying to get there today based on the current stack of law firms, it stops before it even starts because it's simply too from that 487 00:39:26,642 --> 00:39:27,922 thing, just the prompt. 488 00:39:27,922 --> 00:39:29,623 The prompt is the right question. 489 00:39:29,623 --> 00:39:40,846 The prompt to the data, the tooling, to the knowledge base and insight all the way to until it gets the bottom, which is the lawyer in the loop or let's say the output that 490 00:39:40,846 --> 00:39:41,848 needs to happen. 491 00:39:41,848 --> 00:39:52,404 There's just still so much resistance in there, but today, I think what you're seeing with this agentic idea is the idea that all of this can kind of be aggregated all the way up to 492 00:39:52,404 --> 00:40:04,630 kind of having a CRO or sales conversation, sales coach conversation in a highly contextual way where people are sort of like teeing up those conversations. 493 00:40:04,915 --> 00:40:10,615 You know, we are looking at similar things in the business of law. 494 00:40:10,615 --> 00:40:11,015 you know what? 495 00:40:11,015 --> 00:40:14,335 This is really kind of straddles offense between business of law and practice of law. 496 00:40:14,335 --> 00:40:20,595 So we have a new extranet product and we've our intranet product is already very well established. 497 00:40:20,595 --> 00:40:24,435 We've got like, I don't know, 30 % of the AMLAL use it. 498 00:40:24,435 --> 00:40:33,775 But we just launched our extranet solution and one of our first clients is a labor and employment firm and they have all of this labor and employment data for all 50 States. 499 00:40:33,775 --> 00:40:44,218 in this nice, neat SQL database that powers this portal where their clients pay them to come in and peruse the new regulatory updates in specific states. 500 00:40:44,218 --> 00:40:57,862 And we said, hey, um rather than having your clients log in and peruse updates, what if you took that regulatory data, you've already got all their employment agreements, their 501 00:40:57,862 --> 00:41:03,859 employment contracts in your DMS, and you crawl and index that using Azure AI Search, 502 00:41:03,859 --> 00:41:12,559 And then we take all that regulatory data and we look for exceptions and we flag exceptions like, Hey, non competes in California are now outlawed. 503 00:41:12,559 --> 00:41:17,699 You've got 732 employment agreements and that has to be remediated. 504 00:41:17,699 --> 00:41:21,559 And it allows the law firm to now a be proactive, right? 505 00:41:21,559 --> 00:41:25,099 And tell clients, don't, you're not coming to me telling me you have a problem. 506 00:41:25,099 --> 00:41:27,539 I'm coming to you telling you, you have a problem. 507 00:41:27,979 --> 00:41:30,519 And those are revenue opportunities. 508 00:41:30,519 --> 00:41:33,139 Those are ways lawyers can. 509 00:41:33,896 --> 00:41:37,138 you know, log billable hours, they have to fix the documents. 510 00:41:37,138 --> 00:41:38,889 And it's very agentic. 511 00:41:38,889 --> 00:41:43,611 And I mean, from a technical perspective, know, Microsoft is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. 512 00:41:43,611 --> 00:41:52,286 It's Azure AI search, it's Azure Open AI, and then we build workflows and power automate that get routed to the person who owns the relationship. 513 00:41:52,286 --> 00:41:58,339 And then the client can log into our extranet portal and see all the exceptions that and where they are in the process. 514 00:41:58,339 --> 00:41:59,500 Is this remediated? 515 00:41:59,500 --> 00:42:00,590 Is this in process? 516 00:42:00,590 --> 00:42:02,231 Is this in the backlog? 517 00:42:02,754 --> 00:42:03,373 Yes. 518 00:42:03,373 --> 00:42:06,507 is game changing for this firm. 519 00:42:06,507 --> 00:42:14,565 like that is one of a bazillion stories where uh a a gentic AI can just completely change the model. 520 00:42:15,202 --> 00:42:16,082 Yes, totally. 521 00:42:16,082 --> 00:42:28,589 And you know, when I hear you, basically what I hear as most principled, sorry, the principled leverage point there is the prompt from the perspective of, hey, why don't you 522 00:42:28,589 --> 00:42:31,651 put two and two together and see what that allows you to do? 523 00:42:31,651 --> 00:42:35,002 So it's the prompt, you know, it's the original thing. 524 00:42:35,002 --> 00:42:41,096 You know, we use the word prompt, prompt, prompt all the time now, but it's still the prompt for the entire workflow to sort of like start. 525 00:42:41,096 --> 00:42:44,417 that prompt, you know, thinking in that, 526 00:42:45,528 --> 00:42:52,062 frame of mind is what affords for all of these workflows to still start to, it is not a technical problem. 527 00:42:52,163 --> 00:42:54,584 It's sometimes it's a data problem. 528 00:42:54,724 --> 00:42:59,888 Almost never is it a tooling problem because God, there's more tools than are possible out there. 529 00:42:59,888 --> 00:43:03,500 Knowledge-based that can be built, know, human in the loop. 530 00:43:03,500 --> 00:43:08,874 There's a bunch of, know so many great business of law leaders who are in law firms today. 531 00:43:08,874 --> 00:43:11,956 Really where we're stuck is this idea of prompt. 532 00:43:11,956 --> 00:43:15,348 And of course this sort of relates back to what we were talking about this 533 00:43:15,348 --> 00:43:20,480 relates back to worldview because if your worldview doesn't include these sorts of prompts, then you're not going to get there. 534 00:43:20,817 --> 00:43:21,447 Yeah. 535 00:43:21,447 --> 00:43:22,898 Now that makes sense. 536 00:43:22,898 --> 00:43:32,602 like, what about some of the other, I know we're almost out of time, but I really wanted to touch on this topic with you was like the structural, the structural and cultural 537 00:43:32,602 --> 00:43:45,728 barriers that we see in law firms, you know, that consents that command and control consensus driven decision making and, um, like, how do we, how do we navigate around and 538 00:43:45,728 --> 00:43:49,444 do like, I don't know your system, but it sounds like you. 539 00:43:49,444 --> 00:43:50,184 It's modern. 540 00:43:50,184 --> 00:43:52,026 You guys have thought through it. 541 00:43:52,066 --> 00:43:58,731 How do you overcome the cultural barriers where lawyers have a lone wolf mindset? 542 00:43:58,752 --> 00:44:05,256 They're off the charts oh in terms of autonomy and critical thinking. 543 00:44:05,357 --> 00:44:11,642 And there's a ton of lateral movement between lawyers at law firms, even at the partner level. 544 00:44:11,642 --> 00:44:12,702 How do we 545 00:44:13,660 --> 00:44:20,751 How do you guys think about attacking that problem in order to really make a solution like yours maximize its value? 546 00:44:25,710 --> 00:44:32,714 uh Two of the points that we brought up. 547 00:44:32,714 --> 00:44:46,131 So the first is uh bringing data and insights and making those easily of almost everybody's workflow is critically important. 548 00:44:46,131 --> 00:44:48,094 And that's why we built, that's why 549 00:44:48,094 --> 00:44:57,482 Modern CRM, modern CRM plus modern insights need to be used across the entire firm so that everybody can come prepared with those insights. 550 00:44:57,482 --> 00:45:02,557 Now, that only gets you so far because now everybody has the information, everybody has sort of the evidence. 551 00:45:02,557 --> 00:45:14,657 But to me, it's like once you're having a conversation based on the same data around that meeting, then everybody can at least have that conversation on equal basis whenever it 552 00:45:14,657 --> 00:45:15,534 comes to... 553 00:45:15,534 --> 00:45:16,996 when it comes to information data. 554 00:45:16,996 --> 00:45:28,927 And that's a big jump already from the way that law firms are making decisions right now within the context of, yes, of course, consensus and the partnership, but still it's like, 555 00:45:28,927 --> 00:45:33,412 but there's also, of course, power dynamics underneath that and all the rest of it. 556 00:45:33,412 --> 00:45:40,034 uh Data at least clears or at least levels the playing field whenever it comes to evidence and insights. 557 00:45:40,034 --> 00:45:48,421 And I think giving as many people that sort of access to that data at least allows for the conversation to be on the second foot. 558 00:45:48,421 --> 00:45:50,142 I'm sorry, on the same foot. 559 00:45:50,142 --> 00:45:58,429 And the second part of that is there has to just basically be new stories whenever it comes through the worldview of what's possible. 560 00:45:58,429 --> 00:46:09,940 But if you believe what I'm saying, which is technology affords a new opening of the window, then you should try to tell new stories that basically include 561 00:46:09,940 --> 00:46:22,556 this new data, this new insights, this new everything that you've just heard us talk about as a realm of possibility today and see if these two sorts of things allow for, allow at 562 00:46:22,556 --> 00:46:29,439 least for you to have a conversation that runs up inevitably against the idea of precedent. 563 00:46:29,439 --> 00:46:33,881 Now, it's just going to be a slow, slow hog, at least at the beginning. 564 00:46:33,881 --> 00:46:37,654 But if you believe that having better data, 565 00:46:37,654 --> 00:46:46,238 A lot of people having conversations based on the same data, collective intelligence of a bunch of smart people talking about that and tools that are powered. 566 00:46:46,238 --> 00:46:53,841 If you believe that that firm is going to out-compete other firms, then at the end of the day, it's just going to be a matter of, sorry, evolution. 567 00:46:53,902 --> 00:47:03,966 The strongest, fastest firm is inevitably going to uh win out and then that's going to just basically be a signal to the rest of the market. 568 00:47:04,174 --> 00:47:11,434 I would just then say it's like, there's that, and then there's a story of different client expectations and all the rest of it. 569 00:47:11,434 --> 00:47:13,574 You bring all of these things together. 570 00:47:16,274 --> 00:47:19,774 There's obviously no golden bullet that changes all of this. 571 00:47:19,774 --> 00:47:27,254 I'm just arguing that it feels like we're at a tipping point right now with a lot of different things that are coming together at a lot of different places. 572 00:47:27,610 --> 00:47:32,084 It's still going to be a conversation, but I would say that the future belongs in this time between worlds. 573 00:47:32,084 --> 00:47:40,340 The future belongs to kind of like the storytellers who can tell a story that transcends and includes all of everything that's going on right now. 574 00:47:40,340 --> 00:47:43,512 It's not that precedent is bad, but it's not just precedent. 575 00:47:43,512 --> 00:47:47,566 It's not that law firms are not a profession, but it's also a business. 576 00:47:47,566 --> 00:47:48,827 And what does that look like? 577 00:47:48,827 --> 00:47:49,970 Those are just stories. 578 00:47:49,970 --> 00:47:52,819 Those are just big stories that form worldviews effectively. 579 00:47:52,819 --> 00:47:53,720 It's a great point. 580 00:47:53,720 --> 00:47:54,570 That's so true. 581 00:47:54,570 --> 00:47:56,441 They're just stories. 582 00:47:56,722 --> 00:48:00,665 And the stories are changing and it's an exciting time to be here. 583 00:48:00,665 --> 00:48:02,687 Well, this has been a great conversation. 584 00:48:02,687 --> 00:48:08,031 Before we go, how do people find out more about your podcast or what you do at Nexol? 585 00:48:08,568 --> 00:48:09,058 For sure. 586 00:48:09,058 --> 00:48:11,390 um follow me on LinkedIn. 587 00:48:11,390 --> 00:48:21,118 I post a lot about sort of my own journey, my own career journey from practice into tech and sort of the things that I've kind of, the mindsets that I've had to change and what 588 00:48:21,118 --> 00:48:21,659 I've learned. 589 00:48:21,659 --> 00:48:24,111 I'm still learning so much every single day. 590 00:48:24,111 --> 00:48:28,194 um You can reach out to me about Nexel as well if you're interested in that case. 591 00:48:28,194 --> 00:48:37,422 And you know, if you are somebody who's kind of heard me and loves to tell their own career story, wants to in some ways inspire others based on where you're at, 592 00:48:37,422 --> 00:48:39,683 uh I'd love to have you on the podcast, really. 593 00:48:39,683 --> 00:48:50,477 uh I love to hear stories about people who have gone from, you know, on the traditional beaten path to kind of like turning right and what that inevitably taught them both not 594 00:48:50,477 --> 00:48:52,598 only about the legal initiative, but about themselves. 595 00:48:52,598 --> 00:48:54,829 So definitely reach out to me if that resonates with you. 596 00:48:54,829 --> 00:48:56,300 And Ted, thanks so much, man. 597 00:48:56,300 --> 00:48:57,147 I appreciate it. 598 00:48:57,147 --> 00:48:58,818 Yeah, it's been a blast. 599 00:48:58,818 --> 00:48:59,629 It's been a good time. 600 00:48:59,629 --> 00:49:04,093 I've really enjoyed it and we'll include links in the show notes. 601 00:49:04,093 --> 00:49:11,520 So for those folks that are listening on Apple podcasts or Spotify, we also have a website, legalinnovationspotlight.com. 602 00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:12,701 It's got all the episodes. 603 00:49:12,701 --> 00:49:14,943 It's got show notes and links and all that sort of stuff. 604 00:49:14,943 --> 00:49:19,306 So we'll include your stuff in there and hopefully people reach out and get in touch. 605 00:49:19,790 --> 00:49:20,410 I love it. 606 00:49:20,410 --> 00:49:22,070 Thank you for making the space. 607 00:49:22,070 --> 00:49:23,290 Love what you do. 608 00:49:23,290 --> 00:49:24,290 It's a lot of fun. 609 00:49:24,290 --> 00:49:35,810 We are in such a time between worlds and like, I know it's messy in there, but at the end of the day, it's also, there's a lot of promise, lot of upside here, I think. 610 00:49:35,810 --> 00:49:37,280 So the future's bright. 611 00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:38,233 ton of opportunity. 612 00:49:38,233 --> 00:49:40,549 All right, thanks so much for being on, Ben. 613 00:49:40,712 --> 00:49:43,077 All right, take care. 00:00:04,190 Ben, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,832 --> 00:00:07,628 I am fantastic man, good to be with you. 3 00:00:07,628 --> 00:00:09,150 Looking forward to chatting. 4 00:00:09,864 --> 00:00:11,605 Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. 5 00:00:11,605 --> 00:00:17,209 I've followed your stuff on LinkedIn for a while and um you got an interesting story. 6 00:00:17,209 --> 00:00:24,073 were practicing attorney, now you're like chief growth officer at Nexel. 7 00:00:24,073 --> 00:00:29,456 um Why don't you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background and what you're up to today. 8 00:00:30,350 --> 00:00:32,590 Oh man, where do I begin? 9 00:00:33,110 --> 00:00:39,430 So before I get there, know, I, uh, before I went to law school, like you mentioned, I practiced for a while. 10 00:00:39,430 --> 00:00:44,630 Now I'm working in legal tech, which is kind of like my, my second gig in my thirties. 11 00:00:44,630 --> 00:00:52,430 I sort of went from practicing in my twenties, uh, to, um, to, to into tech into my thirties and I just turned 40. 12 00:00:52,430 --> 00:00:54,170 So let's see what, let's see what I do now. 13 00:00:54,170 --> 00:00:56,030 You know, it seems to be a 10 years. 14 00:00:56,120 --> 00:01:01,852 But before any of that, I'm happy to kind of give my background as a story. 15 00:01:01,852 --> 00:01:12,366 But I always like to say before all of that, I studied biology in college and uh basically I took a bunch of neuroscience classes and basically I forgot everything, obviously. 16 00:01:12,366 --> 00:01:13,797 Sorry, mom and dad, you know what I mean? 17 00:01:13,797 --> 00:01:23,001 But basically I remembered one thing, which is the power of story and how much our brain is actually wired for story. 18 00:01:23,001 --> 00:01:25,678 I bring this up because I hope that it's like, 19 00:01:25,678 --> 00:01:28,350 We're going to be speaking to lot of legal tech people. 20 00:01:28,350 --> 00:01:30,541 I've been in this game for a while. 21 00:01:30,541 --> 00:01:34,004 And we're sort of in this time between worlds and legal. 22 00:01:34,004 --> 00:01:41,928 And I think that the importance of telling good stories about not only where have we been, but where are we going is kind of so critically important. 23 00:01:41,928 --> 00:01:46,872 And I just kind of see a lot of people in our space just thinking about this. 24 00:01:46,872 --> 00:01:49,074 So I'll tell my story really quickly. 25 00:01:49,074 --> 00:01:52,266 So ah it goes something like this. 26 00:01:52,266 --> 00:01:55,470 After undergrad, 27 00:01:55,470 --> 00:01:58,261 ah I decided to get in law school. 28 00:01:58,261 --> 00:02:04,332 went to law school not because I had some burning desire, was mostly like because I didn't know what else to do. 29 00:02:04,332 --> 00:02:16,036 And really I was looking for a profession that was prestigious because at the time I think I was looking for something that I could throw myself into that was performance-based, 30 00:02:16,036 --> 00:02:25,230 prestigious, um and which I thought that that would give me, at least professionally, some sort of degree of security. 31 00:02:25,230 --> 00:02:34,979 uh through some therapy and thinking about other things, I realized that what I was trying to sort of do is I was trying to look for a place that I thought would keep me safe. 32 00:02:34,979 --> 00:02:47,029 Now, uh there's a whole lot to unpack there, but basically by the time I hit 30, uh I realized that neither was I sort of feeling a degree of safety, but actually it ended up 33 00:02:47,029 --> 00:02:48,641 being a bad fit for me, right? 34 00:02:48,641 --> 00:02:51,553 So I was sort of thrown into something that I thought was... 35 00:02:51,553 --> 00:02:52,334 uh 36 00:02:52,334 --> 00:03:02,834 going to do something for me and it ended up being a really bad fit for me, specifically whenever it came to kind of something that I thought was unique about me, which was the 37 00:03:02,834 --> 00:03:08,413 ability to sort of like be creative, think outside the box, of like kind of chase things. 38 00:03:08,413 --> 00:03:10,854 Maybe we would call this entrepreneurship now. 39 00:03:10,854 --> 00:03:18,994 We would call it creativity in some sense to sort of develop new and innovative ways of looking at things. 40 00:03:18,994 --> 00:03:21,878 And that really just didn't jive with 41 00:03:21,878 --> 00:03:29,098 the innovation is with the president-based, partner-based track of what law firms were at that point in time. 42 00:03:29,098 --> 00:03:42,568 I can get in, I get into this all the time in my this legal life, but basically I uh was doing, we were doing this product liability case and we brought in this e-discovery vendor 43 00:03:42,568 --> 00:03:46,478 who had early artificial intelligence and uh 44 00:03:46,478 --> 00:03:48,118 and a light bulb went off, right? 45 00:03:48,118 --> 00:03:53,038 Which was, wow, this is sort of like interesting technology applied to the practice of law. 46 00:03:53,038 --> 00:03:54,498 This is 2015. 47 00:03:54,498 --> 00:03:56,138 So of course there had been practice stuff. 48 00:03:56,138 --> 00:03:57,978 This was the first thing that I saw. 49 00:03:57,978 --> 00:03:59,938 Like that was like a 10 X difference. 50 00:03:59,938 --> 00:04:04,318 And specifically, cause I had been doing all the discovery and all of this kind of stuff. 51 00:04:04,498 --> 00:04:09,078 I sort of saw and I was like, my God, this thing just did in six hours what I couldn't do in six months. 52 00:04:09,078 --> 00:04:11,338 This is like a 10 X different. 53 00:04:11,338 --> 00:04:13,038 It's not that, oh wow. 54 00:04:13,038 --> 00:04:14,909 great at the database with stuff on it. 55 00:04:14,909 --> 00:04:19,340 It was like a 10x difference in terms of the output of what was able to do. 56 00:04:19,340 --> 00:04:22,361 That was to me the writing on the wall, so I fell off my horse. 57 00:04:22,361 --> 00:04:31,063 uh And by that, mean that's a metaphor to uh basically say I packed my bags, told my parents I wasn't going to practice law anymore, moved up to New York. 58 00:04:31,484 --> 00:04:34,265 And this is a much longer story. 59 00:04:34,265 --> 00:04:39,006 But eventually, through the twists and turns of taking a lot of risks, uh 60 00:04:39,006 --> 00:04:48,410 burning a bunch of money, getting down to my last paycheck I managed somehow, some way to get into legal tech and eventually become part of the founding team at Nexol where I am 61 00:04:48,410 --> 00:04:48,970 right now. 62 00:04:48,970 --> 00:04:54,222 And it's just been a lot sort of from there right now. 63 00:04:54,222 --> 00:05:00,734 And that's kind of, that's the abridged version, but we can go into some other stuff for a bit. 64 00:05:00,775 --> 00:05:01,856 Good stuff. 65 00:05:01,856 --> 00:05:10,547 and so you're, you're a podcast host, yourself and it's this legal life and, what, what's the, what's the premise? 66 00:05:10,547 --> 00:05:11,628 Who's your target audience? 67 00:05:11,628 --> 00:05:13,830 What, sort of topics do you discuss? 68 00:05:15,901 --> 00:05:28,154 So basically, the big why behind the whole podcast is whenever I graduated from law school, I basically had zero kind of guidance uh in terms of how to develop a career that 69 00:05:28,154 --> 00:05:33,979 I thought was going to be good for me and develop sort of like an intentional career as a lawyer. 70 00:05:33,979 --> 00:05:36,886 was basically given like three pieces of advice. 71 00:05:36,886 --> 00:05:40,128 go work for a company, go work for the government, or go work for a law firm. 72 00:05:40,128 --> 00:05:43,650 And that was basically it, period. 73 00:05:43,650 --> 00:05:48,553 And that was okay, but there wasn't anything else beyond that, effectively. 74 00:05:48,553 --> 00:05:52,715 Whenever I left to get into tech, there was no guidance whatsoever. 75 00:05:52,715 --> 00:05:57,498 Obviously, just kind of like, you just sort of go into the wilderness and get into the maze. 76 00:05:58,614 --> 00:06:10,517 My big why behind starting this is it's an interview podcast where I ask people how they built their careers and I asked specifically for them to tell it in a story format. 77 00:06:10,557 --> 00:06:14,268 My hope is that when people hear, how did I become an managing partner? 78 00:06:14,268 --> 00:06:15,829 How did I become a practice group leader? 79 00:06:15,829 --> 00:06:18,369 How did I jump from tech into consulting? 80 00:06:18,369 --> 00:06:21,560 How did I jump from lawyer into tech? 81 00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:23,571 How did I get into within tech? 82 00:06:23,571 --> 00:06:24,701 How did I start a company? 83 00:06:24,701 --> 00:06:26,622 How did I scale a company? 84 00:06:26,622 --> 00:06:28,142 How did I get there? 85 00:06:28,214 --> 00:06:40,475 It's less about the specifics and it's more about humanizing these people in their fixed roles and saying, everybody starts from basically zero and everybody usually starts from a 86 00:06:40,475 --> 00:06:44,689 place of fear and builds it up ah as they go. 87 00:06:44,729 --> 00:06:45,830 That's really the point. 88 00:06:45,830 --> 00:06:53,087 And hopefully, with all of this together, building a corpus of what's it like to build a legal career today? 89 00:06:53,087 --> 00:06:54,708 What does it take, really? 90 00:06:55,025 --> 00:06:56,756 Interesting. 91 00:06:56,816 --> 00:07:07,622 you, during our last conversation, you were really talking about how you advocate for the business of law being on equal footing with the practice of law. 92 00:07:07,862 --> 00:07:09,423 Talk a little bit about that. 93 00:07:11,559 --> 00:07:28,507 So, know, personally, where this insight has come from is that after I graduated, sorry, after I left the practice of law, uh I quickly, you know, even to make it, I started to 94 00:07:28,507 --> 00:07:34,604 develop all of my business skills uh to kind of complement all of these practice of law skills. 95 00:07:34,604 --> 00:07:48,200 Now, wasn't working in a law firm specifically that point in time, but what I kind of realized is that I sort of by opening my skill set up to practice management operations, 96 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:55,958 understanding marketing sales, understanding what growth is, understanding pricing, packaging, metrics, all the rest of it really sort of 97 00:07:56,576 --> 00:08:03,272 supporting all of these practice skills, what I had noticed, and even I even tried to run my own firm and put out all of this kind of stuff. 98 00:08:03,272 --> 00:08:17,735 And all of it, what it all came back to was freedom and high agency came from effectively being able to run a practice like a business, being able to set goals, being able to back 99 00:08:17,735 --> 00:08:21,969 those goals out with specific metrics, being more data-driven. 100 00:08:21,969 --> 00:08:23,798 It was just this whole world that 101 00:08:23,798 --> 00:08:28,560 you know, in my 20s trying to practice, I never really had an understanding of it. 102 00:08:28,560 --> 00:08:39,424 And so what I'm ultimately getting at is that today, at an individual level, what really I think distinguishes most lawyers is the ability to sort of run their practice as a 103 00:08:39,424 --> 00:08:40,005 business. 104 00:08:40,005 --> 00:08:45,407 And those skills really give them a competitive advantage in a very, very competitive market. 105 00:08:45,407 --> 00:08:49,409 And we can go into laterals and all of this, but I think you're probably getting what I'm getting at. 106 00:08:49,409 --> 00:08:53,102 Okay, then abstract that one or aggregate that up to 107 00:08:53,102 --> 00:08:56,322 to the law firm. 108 00:08:56,482 --> 00:09:09,962 And today, what you of start to see, and I know we'll get into this, well, is technology driving some sort of parody whenever it comes to the actual practice of law? 109 00:09:09,962 --> 00:09:20,982 And then does that mean that the business of law is ultimately the end differentiator as it relates to both the client experience and or both? 110 00:09:20,982 --> 00:09:29,284 sort of how these practices grow and are able to generate new clients, keep those clients, scale those clients, uh expand those clients. 111 00:09:29,284 --> 00:09:37,987 Obviously, it's two sides of the same coin in terms of the product that you're offering, but there's just, what I'm just saying is, yes, it's the practice and everybody will tell 112 00:09:37,987 --> 00:09:40,628 you, you need to have the basis of practice. 113 00:09:40,628 --> 00:09:48,210 What I'm looking for is, and what I'm seeing is the differentiating factor where there is a Delta is basically in the business of law. 114 00:09:48,210 --> 00:09:49,530 And I think that, 115 00:09:50,006 --> 00:09:59,875 Of course, this sort of pats our own back in terms of what we're doing and Nexon, all of it, but it doesn't, it still remains true that I think relationships and specifically the 116 00:09:59,875 --> 00:10:11,756 idea of engaging relationships in the context of sort of thinking about it from a practice and how to grow is honestly where the interesting innovation ultimately lies. 117 00:10:12,241 --> 00:10:12,951 Yeah. 118 00:10:12,951 --> 00:10:21,755 you the, you had mentioned when we spoke last about how the lawyer, the typical lawyer mindset is plan, then act. 119 00:10:21,815 --> 00:10:27,878 And in the entrepreneurial world, it's, it's act then gain clarity. 120 00:10:27,878 --> 00:10:28,558 Right. 121 00:10:28,558 --> 00:10:29,850 And that, and that's 122 00:10:29,850 --> 00:10:31,353 scale, maybe something like this. 123 00:10:31,353 --> 00:10:32,207 Yeah, right. 124 00:10:32,207 --> 00:10:37,120 So one of our core values at InfoDash, and we actually really use our core values. 125 00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:41,964 They don't just sit up on a dusty uh frame on the wall. 126 00:10:41,964 --> 00:10:43,335 We use them actively. 127 00:10:43,335 --> 00:10:45,616 One of them is called simplify and go. 128 00:10:45,917 --> 00:10:55,363 And um one of the challenges that I've seen, I would assume this probably happens in the legal world too, is we'll get technical guys who are masters. 129 00:10:55,363 --> 00:10:57,464 They are violin makers. 130 00:10:57,505 --> 00:11:01,203 And sometimes you just need a dog house. 131 00:11:01,203 --> 00:11:08,623 And getting a violin maker to build a dog house is a really hard thing to do, but it is 100 % necessary. 132 00:11:08,623 --> 00:11:11,803 And that's why we talk about simplify and go. 133 00:11:11,803 --> 00:11:13,823 Then there's a bunch of sub bullets under that. 134 00:11:13,823 --> 00:11:19,763 But the most memorable one is take a bias towards action, right? 135 00:11:19,763 --> 00:11:23,183 It's, it's act and then figure it out, iterate. 136 00:11:23,183 --> 00:11:24,743 It doesn't have to be perfect. 137 00:11:25,023 --> 00:11:29,344 So, um, is what did you have to make a shift from the 138 00:11:29,344 --> 00:11:30,015 of course. 139 00:11:30,015 --> 00:11:40,243 Yes, right, right, You know, I mean, it's, it's, so let me, you know, uh I do this podcast and it's called, it's called This Legal Life. 140 00:11:40,243 --> 00:11:50,231 And basically I ask everybody the same series of questions, which is uh questions about putting their facts in the context of a story, specifically the hero's journey. 141 00:11:50,231 --> 00:11:58,478 Now the hero's journey, if you've ever seen a Marvel movie, if you've seen any movie about transformation, it's all the same story over and over and over and over and over again. 142 00:11:58,478 --> 00:12:00,278 It's a very famous story. 143 00:12:00,538 --> 00:12:07,338 This guy called it the monomyth, which is it's the myth on which every other myth is sort of thing is sort of built on. 144 00:12:07,338 --> 00:12:17,178 And basically the whole thing is just a big metaphor of you used to think a certain way, then you went through an experience and now you see it in another way. 145 00:12:17,178 --> 00:12:18,578 You see the world in another way. 146 00:12:18,578 --> 00:12:25,966 In my case, in my old life, I was really always trying to plan for things, plan, plan, plan. 147 00:12:25,966 --> 00:12:32,900 because in some sense I was looking for safety, was looking for security, I was looking for some sort of degree of control, let's say, from the environment. 148 00:12:32,900 --> 00:12:36,252 So I was planning, planning, planning, always gathering, gathering, gathering. 149 00:12:36,252 --> 00:12:43,736 And in that sense, yeah, that serves you really well, I think, in a president-based system. 150 00:12:43,736 --> 00:12:52,383 But as soon as I left there, as soon as I left there to sort of hear the calling of creativity, hear the calling of entrepreneurship, hear really my grandfather's voice, 151 00:12:52,383 --> 00:12:54,862 because my grandfather was a pretty successful entrepreneur. 152 00:12:54,862 --> 00:12:55,862 in South America. 153 00:12:55,862 --> 00:13:01,894 uh Once I got in there, I basically realized that that skill set was underserving me. 154 00:13:01,894 --> 00:13:03,363 So I had to flip the entire thing. 155 00:13:03,363 --> 00:13:08,526 So instead of planning and then acting, I had to act and then sort of get clarity from it. 156 00:13:08,526 --> 00:13:12,267 And that's what I inevitably learned to be able to do this. 157 00:13:12,267 --> 00:13:19,610 I mean, I had to basically, you I was burning money and I was down to ah my last like rent check. 158 00:13:19,610 --> 00:13:20,876 uh 159 00:13:20,876 --> 00:13:24,129 whenever all of a sudden, and I was just trying so, so many things, right? 160 00:13:24,129 --> 00:13:31,095 And it was just like every single time the bank account was going more and more and more and more, I got more desperate to do more and more more and more things. 161 00:13:31,095 --> 00:13:38,661 And eventually just so happened that I got a call from Legal Sifter from some flyer that I gave out. 162 00:13:38,661 --> 00:13:41,093 And here's to put a super fine point on it. 163 00:13:41,093 --> 00:13:45,046 I gave a flyer about something about sort of like legal experience. 164 00:13:45,046 --> 00:13:49,410 At that point in time, I was sort of trying to be like a GC for uh 165 00:13:49,410 --> 00:13:50,591 legal tech startups. 166 00:13:50,591 --> 00:13:56,796 was my quote unquote interesting plan to get into tech. 167 00:13:56,837 --> 00:14:02,822 And so they call me and they're like, yeah, we don't want the general counsel service, but we have an opening in sales. 168 00:14:02,822 --> 00:14:09,248 Do you want to come and be a salesperson, like bottom of the floor salesperson, just sort of like work your way sort of up. 169 00:14:09,248 --> 00:14:14,183 So this is the point, the best laid plans of mice and men typically go a foul. 170 00:14:14,183 --> 00:14:15,513 And in that case, 171 00:14:15,756 --> 00:14:23,231 That was my acting, but my acting ended up opening up another door that it wasn't even related to. 172 00:14:23,231 --> 00:14:26,613 in some sense, you just have to trust in that capacity. 173 00:14:26,613 --> 00:14:32,097 And we can get much farther out in terms of acting and what that does. 174 00:14:32,097 --> 00:14:34,718 But anyway, I think you probably sort of get it. 175 00:14:34,823 --> 00:14:38,664 Yeah, I I took a lot of interesting turns myself. 176 00:14:38,664 --> 00:14:42,065 So I did not do well in high school. 177 00:14:42,125 --> 00:14:49,327 And uh my mom put me to work in her restaurant, gave me the crappiest jobs humanly possible. 178 00:14:49,327 --> 00:14:51,658 And I begged to go back to school. 179 00:14:51,658 --> 00:14:55,869 And I went to community college for a couple of years, was on the dean's list the entire time. 180 00:14:55,869 --> 00:15:01,980 um I ended up getting into University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill out of state, which is actually hard to do. 181 00:15:01,980 --> 00:15:04,307 Ended up getting a 182 00:15:04,307 --> 00:15:07,707 uh, studying actuarial science to be an actuary. 183 00:15:07,707 --> 00:15:18,327 And then I started applying for internships and you basically had like, I had to have like a three seven and I didn't, I was working my way through school and I was a good student 184 00:15:18,327 --> 00:15:19,067 by that point. 185 00:15:19,067 --> 00:15:21,787 I had turned it around, but I didn't have a three seven. 186 00:15:21,787 --> 00:15:25,947 So I ended up pivoting and just getting a general math degree. 187 00:15:26,127 --> 00:15:31,772 Um, I started a business part time, a collection agency and um, 188 00:15:31,772 --> 00:15:37,554 My mom was getting bombarded with bad checks, gave them to me to collect, build a business, started it. 189 00:15:37,554 --> 00:15:41,896 um And I learned the skills of entrepreneurship. 190 00:15:41,896 --> 00:15:43,352 And then I went on. 191 00:15:43,352 --> 00:15:53,380 I also acquired so much tech skills, and this is in the late 90s, mid to late 90s, that I ended up going to work for Microsoft. 192 00:15:54,041 --> 00:15:58,963 then I started consulting on the side, and then SideGaG started making more than the day job. 193 00:15:58,963 --> 00:15:59,682 And it's like, 194 00:15:59,682 --> 00:16:00,566 Yes. 195 00:16:00,625 --> 00:16:02,366 your story is not an unusual one. 196 00:16:02,366 --> 00:16:13,446 you, you know, I started off as basically high school dropout going nowhere, then going to one of the best public universities and majoring in math, then owning a collection agency, 197 00:16:13,446 --> 00:16:15,167 then working for Microsoft. 198 00:16:15,167 --> 00:16:17,507 And now I'm like a legal tech guy. 199 00:16:17,509 --> 00:16:27,027 So, you know, it's like, I think, I think there are a lot of stories out there that have a lot of twists and turns that, you know, if you would have told me that I'd be here where I 200 00:16:27,027 --> 00:16:30,489 am today, 30 years ago, I would have laughed. 201 00:16:31,216 --> 00:16:31,817 Yeah. 202 00:16:31,817 --> 00:16:40,245 And the point of that story, and by the way, you know, your story resonates so much, you know, as part of this legal life, I ask everybody the same questions. 203 00:16:40,245 --> 00:16:50,284 And what's amazing is that, you know, this insight about acting, acting first, and then sort of gaining clarity is so, so, so, so powerful. 204 00:16:50,284 --> 00:16:54,067 Once you sort of step into the new world, everybody does this. 205 00:16:54,067 --> 00:16:55,328 And in some sense, 206 00:16:55,394 --> 00:17:03,419 I don't want to get so big out there, but in some sense, life sort of forces you in a way to sort of uh do that. 207 00:17:03,419 --> 00:17:17,948 But the point is, it's just hard to appreciate ah how much the twist and turn uh of the road uh opens up. 208 00:17:17,948 --> 00:17:19,919 But first, you've got to sort of trust. 209 00:17:19,919 --> 00:17:21,814 You've kind of got to act. 210 00:17:21,814 --> 00:17:25,046 And then it'll meet you halfway sort of thing. 211 00:17:25,046 --> 00:17:28,238 And in some sense, it's just not enough to plan in this way. 212 00:17:28,238 --> 00:17:36,964 So to me, that's the big, takeaway of all of these interviews that I've done in this legal life. 213 00:17:36,964 --> 00:17:42,768 I ask everybody the same question, and nobody's life is the same, and yet everybody goes through the same exact thing. 214 00:17:42,768 --> 00:17:45,650 So it's this sort of weird paradox. 215 00:17:45,650 --> 00:17:49,232 Every single person is on the same script, but no script is exactly the same. 216 00:17:49,232 --> 00:17:51,804 No movie is exactly the same, effectively. 217 00:17:51,804 --> 00:17:59,809 Yeah, and well, and so your journey took you to Nexel and Nexel is a CRM for legal. 218 00:17:59,809 --> 00:18:01,140 Is that accurate? 219 00:18:01,522 --> 00:18:02,022 Okay. 220 00:18:02,022 --> 00:18:02,822 accurate. 221 00:18:02,822 --> 00:18:04,663 We'd like to think of CRM plus. 222 00:18:04,663 --> 00:18:10,865 We're really taking the idea of CRM and we're kind of modernizing it for the modern law firm. 223 00:18:10,865 --> 00:18:14,667 em So there's a lot to say in that, but it's CRM plus really. 224 00:18:14,667 --> 00:18:17,568 We do have an email marketing system, collaboration system. 225 00:18:17,568 --> 00:18:20,789 And yeah, the idea is it's not a back office CRM. 226 00:18:20,789 --> 00:18:24,800 It's a front office CRM that's used by the lawyers on a day-to-day basis. 227 00:18:24,965 --> 00:18:25,796 Interesting. 228 00:18:25,796 --> 00:18:35,202 And so you have seen, and I have seen as well, the mess that is often law firm IT environments. 229 00:18:35,202 --> 00:18:44,999 I mean, even at the bigger levels, you've seen historically under investment, there's still a ton of on-prem infrastructure at law firms. 230 00:18:44,999 --> 00:18:47,991 There's a lot of legacy architecture. 231 00:18:48,792 --> 00:18:53,835 Legal tech has been, there's this dynamic where the big players in the space, 232 00:18:53,873 --> 00:18:57,724 buy up the small innovative companies and then they just go there and die. 233 00:18:58,064 --> 00:19:13,568 so there's not been a ton of innovation, but you you have seen the challenges around data and lawyers willingness to check documents in their DMS and profile them and put contacts 234 00:19:13,568 --> 00:19:14,329 in CRM. 235 00:19:14,329 --> 00:19:23,631 Like, you know, how, how do you motivate lawyers to do these things that are necessary to have a robust thing, like a platform, like a CRM? 236 00:19:24,078 --> 00:19:25,058 Sure. 237 00:19:25,159 --> 00:19:42,075 So when we were thinking about the CRM and building up the CRM and thinking about it from the ground up, we sort of knew, of course, the cultural gravity of data input as it stood 238 00:19:42,075 --> 00:19:45,948 in 2020, which is right in Nexil's story. 239 00:19:45,948 --> 00:19:48,350 We had gone through a pivot in everybody else's story. 240 00:19:48,350 --> 00:19:50,478 You try one thing and then you hit it down. 241 00:19:50,478 --> 00:19:55,318 hit a wall and then you try something else and that gives you sort of a spark but not the thing. 242 00:19:55,318 --> 00:19:58,898 So eventually we land on the CRM in 2020. 243 00:19:59,058 --> 00:20:02,318 We're getting pulled by our clients to really sort of build this CRM. 244 00:20:02,318 --> 00:20:05,422 We had started as a referral management company. 245 00:20:05,422 --> 00:20:12,726 uh referral management system, which is, you know, like a subset of CRM specifically for the referral partnership. 246 00:20:12,726 --> 00:20:15,048 And then we had things that we were doing on the back end of that. 247 00:20:15,048 --> 00:20:21,871 But then they just said, just build us a CRM because, you know, the ones that we have here, nobody's using and it's just sitting there like a dead database. 248 00:20:22,032 --> 00:20:27,255 Anyway, in 2020, we were at a state with the technology that really allowed for two things. 249 00:20:27,255 --> 00:20:31,802 One, we were able to link up with the 365 system. 250 00:20:31,802 --> 00:20:33,158 um 251 00:20:33,214 --> 00:20:40,059 and really monitor the data flows specifically across uh email and meeting. 252 00:20:40,059 --> 00:20:45,493 And then the second, which is the most important, is we've all been on the internet for a long time. 253 00:20:45,493 --> 00:20:48,365 Our data is on that internet. 254 00:20:48,365 --> 00:20:57,221 This basically affords, and in 2020, the idea of enrichment, specifically data enrichment through APIs, was really at a point. 255 00:20:57,221 --> 00:21:00,913 So the innovation, of course, was taking those two things. 256 00:21:01,934 --> 00:21:15,350 uh the 365 platform that had been well integrated into law firms and the data flows within that and then combining that with enrichment to basically do something like a passive data 257 00:21:15,350 --> 00:21:27,125 entry system for CRM that was then served up in what we would like to think of as a modern CRM basis built with the lawyer user in mind. 258 00:21:27,125 --> 00:21:30,210 Not the back office database, but the lawyer 259 00:21:30,210 --> 00:21:31,560 the lawyer use in mind. 260 00:21:31,560 --> 00:21:40,723 And I can go into what that looks like, but basically it's like, want them to use it so it has to feel like your iPhone, know, in some form or fashion, you know, because that's 261 00:21:40,723 --> 00:21:48,355 where the gravitational, that's where the bar is and that's where sort of the gravitational use is right now in terms of software. 262 00:21:48,355 --> 00:21:58,668 So we took all of that together and that's how we got over the initial idea of, wow, data is critical, but how do we get the data sort of necessarily in? 263 00:21:59,156 --> 00:22:07,862 So one thing you wrote about is, which I think it might have been my inspiration for reaching out to you, was the law firm CRO. 264 00:22:08,103 --> 00:22:14,688 And I always chuckle when I think about a law firm CRO in big law specifically. 265 00:22:14,688 --> 00:22:16,289 I don't know if it would be any different. 266 00:22:16,289 --> 00:22:17,760 I just know big law well. 267 00:22:17,760 --> 00:22:23,115 So when I try and picture that role, I think about what a CRO does. 268 00:22:23,115 --> 00:22:29,349 A CRO maximizes revenue opportunities and client retention. 269 00:22:29,633 --> 00:22:30,062 Yeah. 270 00:22:30,062 --> 00:22:34,715 success is often a part of the chief revenue officer's remit. 271 00:22:34,755 --> 00:22:38,998 So when I think about well first of all customer success doesn't exist. 272 00:22:40,340 --> 00:22:41,521 It doesn't exist. 273 00:22:41,521 --> 00:22:42,521 I've never seen it. 274 00:22:42,521 --> 00:22:54,510 um But uh okay so that doesn't exist and then when I think about like some of the trade-offs that uh a chief revenue officer in big law would have to try and make and get 275 00:22:54,510 --> 00:22:55,815 buying for like 276 00:22:55,815 --> 00:23:01,898 Hey, you know what, we're doing 5 million a year in business with Coca-Cola, but it's low margin. 277 00:23:01,898 --> 00:23:06,620 And we've got Pepsi, an opportunity with an RFP for Pepsi. 278 00:23:06,620 --> 00:23:10,901 What if we exited that Coke relationship and pursued Pepsi? 279 00:23:10,921 --> 00:23:12,202 And I just laugh. 280 00:23:12,202 --> 00:23:16,684 I chuckle of the conversation with the partner that owns that. 281 00:23:16,684 --> 00:23:17,924 He's out the door. 282 00:23:17,924 --> 00:23:19,185 He's gone. 283 00:23:19,185 --> 00:23:21,246 He's not giving up his book of business. 284 00:23:21,246 --> 00:23:21,826 He's leaving. 285 00:23:21,826 --> 00:23:22,656 He's going down the street. 286 00:23:22,656 --> 00:23:24,207 And maybe that's okay. 287 00:23:24,241 --> 00:23:36,491 But God, just seems like big law specifically has such a hard time empowering the business of law leaders. 288 00:23:36,491 --> 00:23:37,552 It's a real challenge. 289 00:23:37,552 --> 00:23:38,343 I don't know. 290 00:23:38,343 --> 00:23:41,065 How would you see this CRO? 291 00:23:41,065 --> 00:23:44,267 Would it work in legal, in a big law? 292 00:23:44,699 --> 00:23:51,182 you know, so the answer is for all the reasons that you stated, it's incredibly difficult. 293 00:23:51,182 --> 00:24:01,466 And yet, ah and yet I think that there is external forces that are sort of driving a little bit of this evolution. 294 00:24:01,466 --> 00:24:03,097 I don't know what it's going to be like. 295 00:24:03,097 --> 00:24:09,590 And I only use CRO because, you know, work at a tech company and CROs are very sort of like maximalized. 296 00:24:09,590 --> 00:24:15,834 and leveraged in the context of sales organizations within tech companies. 297 00:24:15,834 --> 00:24:17,525 So I don't know what that's going to look like. 298 00:24:17,525 --> 00:24:18,545 I'd be surprised. 299 00:24:18,545 --> 00:24:21,937 mean, there are CROs within law firms. 300 00:24:22,158 --> 00:24:25,249 But let me set something up. 301 00:24:25,249 --> 00:24:36,502 The way that when we think about it at Nexel and specifically the idea of revenue and growth, I would say, in this capacity is, look, at the end of the day, 302 00:24:36,502 --> 00:24:46,666 Step one is really sort of like the data infrastructure because the data infrastructure starts to bring a degree of clarity and at the very least a degree of objectivity whenever 303 00:24:46,666 --> 00:24:49,477 it comes to your Coca-Cola versus Pepsi. 304 00:24:49,477 --> 00:24:55,739 Of course, law firms have traditionally run on the finances, but finances need to be attached to relationships. 305 00:24:55,739 --> 00:24:58,731 Relationships need to be attached to engagements. 306 00:24:58,731 --> 00:25:05,568 Engagements, and I mean engagements, yes, engagements in terms of clients, but it also needs engagements in terms of... 307 00:25:05,568 --> 00:25:08,942 interactions over the course of period of time. 308 00:25:08,942 --> 00:25:16,119 Now, once you get data and you start plotting all of that together, then what you get is the idea of insights. 309 00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:27,220 And insights can be to some lesser extent, to more or lesser extent, insights can start to drive the conversation. 310 00:25:27,220 --> 00:25:29,100 Now, if insights are... 311 00:25:29,100 --> 00:25:36,516 back off as BI sort of tools that never see the light of day and or are fundamentally based on bad data, it's never going to happen. 312 00:25:36,516 --> 00:25:42,680 But we, here, we think that, gee, we sort of figured out the data piece. 313 00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:44,021 Can we solve the insight piece? 314 00:25:44,021 --> 00:25:55,820 And whenever you stack all of those two things together, what you have, you have real-time data insights tied and contextualized and then brought to the fore with things like client 315 00:25:55,820 --> 00:25:56,770 insights. 316 00:25:56,770 --> 00:25:57,580 And what does that mean? 317 00:25:57,580 --> 00:25:59,031 mean, being super practical. 318 00:25:59,031 --> 00:26:11,717 What that means is that the practice group leader on a Monday can have a informed meeting based on real world insights that basically are also contextualized within the context of 319 00:26:11,717 --> 00:26:12,997 all the soft stuff. 320 00:26:12,997 --> 00:26:24,182 That to me is at least a better meeting that encourages questions around what's possible. 321 00:26:24,462 --> 00:26:26,582 based on true evidence. 322 00:26:26,582 --> 00:26:27,962 And evidence is good, right? 323 00:26:27,962 --> 00:26:28,922 And evidence is good. 324 00:26:28,922 --> 00:26:34,082 And to me, somebody asked me one time, what's the best way to convince lawyers to use tech? 325 00:26:34,482 --> 00:26:40,042 And I was like, you kind of have to give it to them a little bit, and they have to use it. 326 00:26:40,042 --> 00:26:41,602 That means it has to be really good. 327 00:26:41,602 --> 00:26:52,002 But if you bring all of this together, insights that are in the hands of every partner, they're all sort of using it, and it's actually trusted, and the evidence is there. 328 00:26:52,118 --> 00:26:58,563 I think that at least starts to have an interesting conversation in terms of what are the trade-offs that we need to make. 329 00:26:58,563 --> 00:27:05,789 Now you bring in the idea of politics and you bring in the idea of culture and you bring in the idea of precedent and that is a difficult problem. 330 00:27:05,789 --> 00:27:07,110 Yes, it is. 331 00:27:07,190 --> 00:27:16,497 But, you know, to me then this gets into what are the driving forces that might be changing that story or changing the incentives. 332 00:27:16,518 --> 00:27:20,801 And we talked about it there, you know, and I'll just lay it up and then I want you to come back in on this. 333 00:27:20,801 --> 00:27:22,262 like, it's like, 334 00:27:22,360 --> 00:27:25,933 Clients, if they say jump, law firms say how high. 335 00:27:25,933 --> 00:27:35,883 ah The margins and the technological revolution that is sort of happening in and of itself right now and who even knows, you know? 336 00:27:35,883 --> 00:27:41,228 And then the last is maybe some sort of like generational shift that's going on. 337 00:27:41,228 --> 00:27:47,174 So you bring in generational shift, you bring in client experience and you bring in reduced margins. 338 00:27:47,174 --> 00:27:47,950 Does that? 339 00:27:47,950 --> 00:28:01,070 lay enough of the incentives combined with the data and the insights and sort of the conversations to actually tee up the idea of, not even chief revenue officers, let's just 340 00:28:01,070 --> 00:28:12,290 talk about empowered business leaders making true big decisions, you know, all the way down to being able to say, Coke, but Pepsi, you know, sort of thing. 341 00:28:12,290 --> 00:28:16,822 I don't know, you know, if I had a crystal ball, you know, it'd be, it'd it'd be, 342 00:28:16,822 --> 00:28:19,185 It'd be pretty, pretty, pretty interesting. 343 00:28:19,185 --> 00:28:27,434 But it just seems to me that even 10 years ago, this whole dynamic wasn't possible. 344 00:28:27,434 --> 00:28:29,567 So the question is, are we getting to a tipping point? 345 00:28:29,567 --> 00:28:30,658 That's the question, you know? 346 00:28:30,658 --> 00:28:32,150 And tipping points are real. 347 00:28:32,150 --> 00:28:34,612 Tipping points happen all the time, you know? 348 00:28:34,651 --> 00:28:40,643 Yeah, well, you know, I think there are some mindsets that really get in the way. 349 00:28:40,643 --> 00:28:48,755 So a big one for me that I have an issue with is that that legal is a profession and not a business. 350 00:28:48,755 --> 00:28:50,295 And that's baloney, man. 351 00:28:50,295 --> 00:28:51,396 That is baloney. 352 00:28:51,396 --> 00:28:52,096 I haven't talked. 353 00:28:52,096 --> 00:28:53,596 I used to talk about it quite a bit. 354 00:28:53,596 --> 00:29:01,158 um So every profession is a business, but not every business is a profession. 355 00:29:01,478 --> 00:29:01,919 Right. 356 00:29:01,919 --> 00:29:02,219 Right. 357 00:29:02,219 --> 00:29:03,648 And and what distinguishes 358 00:29:03,648 --> 00:29:04,159 use that one. 359 00:29:04,159 --> 00:29:05,230 Yeah, right. 360 00:29:05,372 --> 00:29:06,022 Yeah. 361 00:29:06,022 --> 00:29:10,765 a profession from a business are the things that you would think of with legal. 362 00:29:10,765 --> 00:29:15,297 There's, um, you know, there is a standards organization. 363 00:29:15,297 --> 00:29:28,935 are, certifications and requirements and CLEs and ethical guidelines and those sorts of things that starts to paint the picture of profession, but every profession is also a 364 00:29:28,935 --> 00:29:32,907 business because you still have to. 365 00:29:33,086 --> 00:29:39,460 generate revenue and file your taxes and do sales and marketing, all those things. 366 00:29:39,460 --> 00:29:41,982 But lawyers, like there is an article out there. 367 00:29:41,982 --> 00:29:45,163 I'd encourage anyone who really wants to get a good laugh. 368 00:29:45,404 --> 00:29:52,102 the Florida bar association has a manifesto on the difference between a profession. 369 00:29:52,102 --> 00:29:55,913 and a business and honestly, and I think it's a bunch of horse shit. 370 00:29:55,913 --> 00:29:58,353 just, don't, I don't buy into it. 371 00:29:58,364 --> 00:30:00,164 lawyers, you're not special, right? 372 00:30:00,164 --> 00:30:05,035 You're, you, you are, you, you do a very, you, you perform a very important function. 373 00:30:05,035 --> 00:30:07,876 It's no more important than a doctor, right? 374 00:30:07,876 --> 00:30:11,207 Where people's lives are on the line and what, you do is important. 375 00:30:11,207 --> 00:30:19,138 I'm not saying that, but it's not, it doesn't elevate you above a, what qualifies as a business. 376 00:30:19,199 --> 00:30:21,519 And I think that mindset, 377 00:30:21,519 --> 00:30:29,788 starts to get in the way of lawyers think and law firm leadership thinking about like, do we market effectively? 378 00:30:29,788 --> 00:30:31,270 How do we maximize revenue? 379 00:30:31,270 --> 00:30:34,593 How do we drive bottom line performance? 380 00:30:34,593 --> 00:30:36,475 Because those are business conversations. 381 00:30:36,475 --> 00:30:38,928 um So I don't know, man. 382 00:30:38,928 --> 00:30:43,673 Do you see this business and profession distinction getting in the way at all? 383 00:30:44,107 --> 00:30:53,571 Yeah, of course, in some sense, know, whenever, if I could expand that out, you know, this is why I sort of believe so deeply in the idea of stories. 384 00:30:53,571 --> 00:30:58,913 Because mindsets and beliefs are basically functions of worldviews. 385 00:30:58,913 --> 00:31:08,057 And worldviews are basically the, are basically stories built up together in some sort of cohesive sort of like function. 386 00:31:08,057 --> 00:31:09,600 And stories, 387 00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:10,810 What is a good story? 388 00:31:10,810 --> 00:31:18,784 Well, in some sense, I sort of told you, you know, there are deep stories that are basically ingrained in our brains in terms of I just told you one, right? 389 00:31:18,784 --> 00:31:20,835 That the hero's sort of like journey. 390 00:31:20,835 --> 00:31:25,837 One of them, I think, is the idea between profession and business. 391 00:31:25,837 --> 00:31:36,131 However, you know, what you realize if you study stories and if you study stories as like it sort of like goes through time, basically what you kind of realize, and this is a very 392 00:31:36,131 --> 00:31:38,242 big, bold claim, that stories 393 00:31:38,242 --> 00:31:44,345 basically get updated over time as technology sort of changes. 394 00:31:44,345 --> 00:31:45,515 This is such a big topic. 395 00:31:45,515 --> 00:31:54,488 I'm such a nerd, but basically the function of worldviews and technology, is such a, I don't know if anybody's ever thought about this. 396 00:31:54,488 --> 00:31:58,882 If you're crazy like me and you think about these sorts of things, but just think about it. 397 00:31:59,551 --> 00:32:04,233 throughout human history, I'm about to do something that starts with throughout human history. 398 00:32:04,233 --> 00:32:05,810 Think about sort of 399 00:32:05,810 --> 00:32:17,713 Farming inevitably leads to sort of like city infrastructure, city infrastructure inevitably leads to things like the Industrial Revolution, Industrial Revolution leads to 400 00:32:17,713 --> 00:32:21,824 sort of like information technologies, information technologies is now leading. 401 00:32:21,824 --> 00:32:25,796 Every single one of those things had a huge, huge jump, huge, huge jump. 402 00:32:25,796 --> 00:32:29,316 And yes, we can go all the way back to fire, know, fire as a sort of basis. 403 00:32:29,316 --> 00:32:33,718 All of these technologies had a huge, huge societal sort of like shift basically. 404 00:32:33,718 --> 00:32:35,264 And that societal shift, 405 00:32:35,264 --> 00:32:38,537 allowed for the old stories to fundamentally change. 406 00:32:38,537 --> 00:32:47,946 So the open question is, are we in a new, we have a new technology, something sort of happening, is that enough to sort of like change worldviews at some point in time? 407 00:32:47,946 --> 00:32:49,167 That's really the question. 408 00:32:49,167 --> 00:32:58,455 But there is a correlation between technology and the stories that basically we tell and sort of like the worldviews that basically get built up for that. 409 00:32:58,455 --> 00:33:01,752 That's why at the end of the day, it's like, yes, I work in tech. 410 00:33:01,752 --> 00:33:14,128 But what I ultimately think is interesting is the stories that end up building up based on that sort of shift in tech because it just changes the possibility frame basically for 411 00:33:14,128 --> 00:33:16,201 what people can imagine effectively. 412 00:33:16,201 --> 00:33:17,532 And it always has been. 413 00:33:17,532 --> 00:33:19,594 and I have not brought that up. 414 00:33:19,594 --> 00:33:28,141 used to, I long time listeners have, have, have heard me, preach from that soap box before, but it's been a while. 415 00:33:28,141 --> 00:33:38,509 And, know, I think AI, have not until you just really mentioned it, I had not really thought about AI's impact on that distinction between a profession and a business. 416 00:33:38,509 --> 00:33:40,731 It is going to really. 417 00:33:40,986 --> 00:33:42,427 Yes, right. 418 00:33:43,590 --> 00:33:44,004 Sure. 419 00:33:44,004 --> 00:33:52,438 move into, as the billable hour loses ground, and I don't think the billable hour is going away, but I do think it is going to lose a lot of ground very quickly. 420 00:33:52,438 --> 00:34:04,485 um As the billable hour loses ground and alternative fee arrangements start to gain momentum, um they already exist, but they will become more and more prominent in legal 421 00:34:04,485 --> 00:34:05,865 pricing models. 422 00:34:06,066 --> 00:34:08,339 How can you not have 423 00:34:08,339 --> 00:34:21,279 just real business conversations about, if we implement these efficiencies, if we make this investment in technology and we hire these resources to help us generate, improve 424 00:34:21,279 --> 00:34:25,079 productivity and efficiency, that will help drive bottom line performance. 425 00:34:25,079 --> 00:34:26,899 These conversations are going to be unavoidable. 426 00:34:26,899 --> 00:34:30,399 And I don't see how you could stand there and say, well, we're, we're a profession. 427 00:34:30,399 --> 00:34:31,699 We're not a business. 428 00:34:31,699 --> 00:34:33,759 No, you're, you're both. 429 00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:35,699 So that, that's a good point. 430 00:34:35,699 --> 00:34:38,603 I do think that AI is really going to have a. 431 00:34:38,629 --> 00:34:42,733 It's going to really blow that whole argument out of the water, I think. 432 00:34:43,662 --> 00:34:44,422 There's a lot there. 433 00:34:44,422 --> 00:34:47,664 Yeah, totally, totally. 434 00:34:47,664 --> 00:34:57,710 This is why I'm very fond, and I was having a conversation uh with Tom Martin, and I'm very fond of this idea of we're in a time between worlds. 435 00:34:57,710 --> 00:35:04,754 And I test that out with people, and I'm like, how does that intuitively feel, like whenever I say that, time between worlds? 436 00:35:04,754 --> 00:35:11,377 And to me, it makes a lot of sense because we know what we're leaving, but we haven't necessarily got to where we're sort of at. 437 00:35:11,377 --> 00:35:12,490 And this always happens. 438 00:35:12,490 --> 00:35:22,114 You know, the transition from being a Middle Ages, uh Middle Ages king, queens, game of thrones to basically something like the Renaissance, which eventually just led to 439 00:35:22,114 --> 00:35:23,955 basically the Industrial Revolution. 440 00:35:23,955 --> 00:35:33,860 That was like such a crazy time, you know, like basically the whole thing kind of like collapsed to be reconstituted, reconstituted in something like Florence, Italy. 441 00:35:33,860 --> 00:35:37,581 And from there, sort of like the idea of enlightenment sort of like spread from there. 442 00:35:37,581 --> 00:35:39,468 But that was such a crazy time. 443 00:35:39,468 --> 00:35:46,482 Like between these things, if you go back and like read history, it's so insane, you know, the way that that like kind of spurred. 444 00:35:46,482 --> 00:35:49,147 And that's, to me, that's what it feels like right now. 445 00:35:49,147 --> 00:35:52,062 And we have this new sort of like technology. 446 00:35:52,370 --> 00:36:01,186 Yeah, so there's a concept called liminality and the liminal periods are right. 447 00:36:01,186 --> 00:36:06,671 Is that that messy middle between, you know, current state and future state? 448 00:36:06,671 --> 00:36:09,152 And that is exactly where we are. 449 00:36:09,213 --> 00:36:14,646 And anyone, including me, who pretends to know exactly what the future state is going to look like. 450 00:36:14,646 --> 00:36:15,477 We don't. 451 00:36:15,477 --> 00:36:18,449 We have some we have a general kind of. 452 00:36:18,833 --> 00:36:19,833 Right. 453 00:36:20,995 --> 00:36:21,895 Yeah. 454 00:36:23,017 --> 00:36:23,815 Sure. 455 00:36:23,815 --> 00:36:25,997 But we don't have it all figured out. 456 00:36:25,997 --> 00:36:41,018 So um along those lines with respect to AI, you and I talked a little bit about agents um and agentic workflows and how data and agents can lead to lawyers having the right 457 00:36:41,018 --> 00:36:42,989 conversations at the right time. 458 00:36:42,989 --> 00:36:45,471 What are your thoughts on that? 459 00:36:47,158 --> 00:36:58,868 Okay, so this is like to frame this conversation up, it's and to give some context, know, this is what I'm thinking about in terms of the law firm growth stack, basically, uh of 460 00:36:58,868 --> 00:37:05,073 which something like empowered business leaders are sort of like the last in that stack. 461 00:37:05,073 --> 00:37:08,255 So if I could just like sort of like name the stack, it would go like this. 462 00:37:08,255 --> 00:37:09,957 One, you need to have data. 463 00:37:09,957 --> 00:37:13,360 Second, you need to have insights based on that data. 464 00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,558 Third, you need to have sort of tools that 465 00:37:16,558 --> 00:37:21,280 uh that kind of like are used within the context either through people. 466 00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:28,503 Fourth, you can start to of course have agentic workflows that are basically using tools, knowledge uh and data. 467 00:37:28,503 --> 00:37:38,607 And of course a prompt, you know, and I basically have just described the entire agentic sort of like system, but you can also see it as a stack within a firm. 468 00:37:38,687 --> 00:37:45,990 And then lastly, of course, let's say humans in the loop or business leaders in the loop or something like this, you know, so. 469 00:37:47,090 --> 00:37:59,028 It's like when you step back that micro thing, which I just described, a prompt that goes to a knowledge base that uses data, that uses some tools to produce an output that then is 470 00:37:59,028 --> 00:37:59,819 sort of checked. 471 00:37:59,819 --> 00:38:01,920 That's basically the agentic workflow. 472 00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:12,508 You would just take that and say, that's sort of how a law firm would run if it was growing and trying to grow as sort of like a stack, basically, effectively. 473 00:38:12,508 --> 00:38:14,789 So I'm really like, I like this idea a lot. 474 00:38:14,789 --> 00:38:16,162 I like how sort of the... 475 00:38:16,162 --> 00:38:18,604 macro sort of becomes a micro. 476 00:38:18,604 --> 00:38:31,693 But to put a fine point on it as it relates to right conversations at the right time and using that model that I just laid out, basically we see a future where agentic workflows 477 00:38:31,693 --> 00:38:43,641 can go all the way up to basically teeing up conversations for lawyers to have the right to the right person at the right time with the right conversation based on, again, 478 00:38:44,578 --> 00:38:46,139 This is where we want to go. 479 00:38:46,139 --> 00:38:54,743 This is the highest value use of your time as it relates to client and business development because, and I mean, I could go through so many different things. 480 00:38:54,743 --> 00:38:56,053 This client is on fire. 481 00:38:56,053 --> 00:38:59,184 This client opportunity has the opportunity to expand. 482 00:38:59,184 --> 00:39:01,145 This is a new market opportunity. 483 00:39:01,145 --> 00:39:09,619 These are, we have a density with regards to a number of relationships within a certain account. 484 00:39:09,619 --> 00:39:12,118 You should try to engage that right now. 485 00:39:12,118 --> 00:39:16,949 I mean, there is a revenue potential there as it relates to X, Y, and Z. 486 00:39:16,949 --> 00:39:26,642 So all of these things, but of course, trying to get there today based on the current stack of law firms, it stops before it even starts because it's simply too from that 487 00:39:26,642 --> 00:39:27,922 thing, just the prompt. 488 00:39:27,922 --> 00:39:29,623 The prompt is the right question. 489 00:39:29,623 --> 00:39:40,846 The prompt to the data, the tooling, to the knowledge base and insight all the way to until it gets the bottom, which is the lawyer in the loop or let's say the output that 490 00:39:40,846 --> 00:39:41,848 needs to happen. 491 00:39:41,848 --> 00:39:52,404 There's just still so much resistance in there, but today, I think what you're seeing with this agentic idea is the idea that all of this can kind of be aggregated all the way up to 492 00:39:52,404 --> 00:40:04,630 kind of having a CRO or sales conversation, sales coach conversation in a highly contextual way where people are sort of like teeing up those conversations. 493 00:40:04,915 --> 00:40:10,615 You know, we are looking at similar things in the business of law. 494 00:40:10,615 --> 00:40:11,015 you know what? 495 00:40:11,015 --> 00:40:14,335 This is really kind of straddles offense between business of law and practice of law. 496 00:40:14,335 --> 00:40:20,595 So we have a new extranet product and we've our intranet product is already very well established. 497 00:40:20,595 --> 00:40:24,435 We've got like, I don't know, 30 % of the AMLAL use it. 498 00:40:24,435 --> 00:40:33,775 But we just launched our extranet solution and one of our first clients is a labor and employment firm and they have all of this labor and employment data for all 50 States. 499 00:40:33,775 --> 00:40:44,218 in this nice, neat SQL database that powers this portal where their clients pay them to come in and peruse the new regulatory updates in specific states. 500 00:40:44,218 --> 00:40:57,862 And we said, hey, um rather than having your clients log in and peruse updates, what if you took that regulatory data, you've already got all their employment agreements, their 501 00:40:57,862 --> 00:41:03,859 employment contracts in your DMS, and you crawl and index that using Azure AI Search, 502 00:41:03,859 --> 00:41:12,559 And then we take all that regulatory data and we look for exceptions and we flag exceptions like, Hey, non competes in California are now outlawed. 503 00:41:12,559 --> 00:41:17,699 You've got 732 employment agreements and that has to be remediated. 504 00:41:17,699 --> 00:41:21,559 And it allows the law firm to now a be proactive, right? 505 00:41:21,559 --> 00:41:25,099 And tell clients, don't, you're not coming to me telling me you have a problem. 506 00:41:25,099 --> 00:41:27,539 I'm coming to you telling you, you have a problem. 507 00:41:27,979 --> 00:41:30,519 And those are revenue opportunities. 508 00:41:30,519 --> 00:41:33,139 Those are ways lawyers can. 509 00:41:33,896 --> 00:41:37,138 you know, log billable hours, they have to fix the documents. 510 00:41:37,138 --> 00:41:38,889 And it's very agentic. 511 00:41:38,889 --> 00:41:43,611 And I mean, from a technical perspective, know, Microsoft is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. 512 00:41:43,611 --> 00:41:52,286 It's Azure AI search, it's Azure Open AI, and then we build workflows and power automate that get routed to the person who owns the relationship. 513 00:41:52,286 --> 00:41:58,339 And then the client can log into our extranet portal and see all the exceptions that and where they are in the process. 514 00:41:58,339 --> 00:41:59,500 Is this remediated? 515 00:41:59,500 --> 00:42:00,590 Is this in process? 516 00:42:00,590 --> 00:42:02,231 Is this in the backlog? 517 00:42:02,754 --> 00:42:03,373 Yes. 518 00:42:03,373 --> 00:42:06,507 is game changing for this firm. 519 00:42:06,507 --> 00:42:14,565 like that is one of a bazillion stories where uh a a gentic AI can just completely change the model. 520 00:42:15,202 --> 00:42:16,082 Yes, totally. 521 00:42:16,082 --> 00:42:28,589 And you know, when I hear you, basically what I hear as most principled, sorry, the principled leverage point there is the prompt from the perspective of, hey, why don't you 522 00:42:28,589 --> 00:42:31,651 put two and two together and see what that allows you to do? 523 00:42:31,651 --> 00:42:35,002 So it's the prompt, you know, it's the original thing. 524 00:42:35,002 --> 00:42:41,096 You know, we use the word prompt, prompt, prompt all the time now, but it's still the prompt for the entire workflow to sort of like start. 525 00:42:41,096 --> 00:42:44,417 that prompt, you know, thinking in that, 526 00:42:45,528 --> 00:42:52,062 frame of mind is what affords for all of these workflows to still start to, it is not a technical problem. 527 00:42:52,163 --> 00:42:54,584 It's sometimes it's a data problem. 528 00:42:54,724 --> 00:42:59,888 Almost never is it a tooling problem because God, there's more tools than are possible out there. 529 00:42:59,888 --> 00:43:03,500 Knowledge-based that can be built, know, human in the loop. 530 00:43:03,500 --> 00:43:08,874 There's a bunch of, know so many great business of law leaders who are in law firms today. 531 00:43:08,874 --> 00:43:11,956 Really where we're stuck is this idea of prompt. 532 00:43:11,956 --> 00:43:15,348 And of course this sort of relates back to what we were talking about this 533 00:43:15,348 --> 00:43:20,480 relates back to worldview because if your worldview doesn't include these sorts of prompts, then you're not going to get there. 534 00:43:20,817 --> 00:43:21,447 Yeah. 535 00:43:21,447 --> 00:43:22,898 Now that makes sense. 536 00:43:22,898 --> 00:43:32,602 like, what about some of the other, I know we're almost out of time, but I really wanted to touch on this topic with you was like the structural, the structural and cultural 537 00:43:32,602 --> 00:43:45,728 barriers that we see in law firms, you know, that consents that command and control consensus driven decision making and, um, like, how do we, how do we navigate around and 538 00:43:45,728 --> 00:43:49,444 do like, I don't know your system, but it sounds like you. 539 00:43:49,444 --> 00:43:50,184 It's modern. 540 00:43:50,184 --> 00:43:52,026 You guys have thought through it. 541 00:43:52,066 --> 00:43:58,731 How do you overcome the cultural barriers where lawyers have a lone wolf mindset? 542 00:43:58,752 --> 00:44:05,256 They're off the charts oh in terms of autonomy and critical thinking. 543 00:44:05,357 --> 00:44:11,642 And there's a ton of lateral movement between lawyers at law firms, even at the partner level. 544 00:44:11,642 --> 00:44:12,702 How do we 545 00:44:13,660 --> 00:44:20,751 How do you guys think about attacking that problem in order to really make a solution like yours maximize its value? 546 00:44:25,710 --> 00:44:32,714 uh Two of the points that we brought up. 547 00:44:32,714 --> 00:44:46,131 So the first is uh bringing data and insights and making those easily of almost everybody's workflow is critically important. 548 00:44:46,131 --> 00:44:48,094 And that's why we built, that's why 549 00:44:48,094 --> 00:44:57,482 Modern CRM, modern CRM plus modern insights need to be used across the entire firm so that everybody can come prepared with those insights. 550 00:44:57,482 --> 00:45:02,557 Now, that only gets you so far because now everybody has the information, everybody has sort of the evidence. 551 00:45:02,557 --> 00:45:14,657 But to me, it's like once you're having a conversation based on the same data around that meeting, then everybody can at least have that conversation on equal basis whenever it 552 00:45:14,657 --> 00:45:15,534 comes to... 553 00:45:15,534 --> 00:45:16,996 when it comes to information data. 554 00:45:16,996 --> 00:45:28,927 And that's a big jump already from the way that law firms are making decisions right now within the context of, yes, of course, consensus and the partnership, but still it's like, 555 00:45:28,927 --> 00:45:33,412 but there's also, of course, power dynamics underneath that and all the rest of it. 556 00:45:33,412 --> 00:45:40,034 uh Data at least clears or at least levels the playing field whenever it comes to evidence and insights. 557 00:45:40,034 --> 00:45:48,421 And I think giving as many people that sort of access to that data at least allows for the conversation to be on the second foot. 558 00:45:48,421 --> 00:45:50,142 I'm sorry, on the same foot. 559 00:45:50,142 --> 00:45:58,429 And the second part of that is there has to just basically be new stories whenever it comes through the worldview of what's possible. 560 00:45:58,429 --> 00:46:09,940 But if you believe what I'm saying, which is technology affords a new opening of the window, then you should try to tell new stories that basically include 561 00:46:09,940 --> 00:46:22,556 this new data, this new insights, this new everything that you've just heard us talk about as a realm of possibility today and see if these two sorts of things allow for, allow at 562 00:46:22,556 --> 00:46:29,439 least for you to have a conversation that runs up inevitably against the idea of precedent. 563 00:46:29,439 --> 00:46:33,881 Now, it's just going to be a slow, slow hog, at least at the beginning. 564 00:46:33,881 --> 00:46:37,654 But if you believe that having better data, 565 00:46:37,654 --> 00:46:46,238 A lot of people having conversations based on the same data, collective intelligence of a bunch of smart people talking about that and tools that are powered. 566 00:46:46,238 --> 00:46:53,841 If you believe that that firm is going to out-compete other firms, then at the end of the day, it's just going to be a matter of, sorry, evolution. 567 00:46:53,902 --> 00:47:03,966 The strongest, fastest firm is inevitably going to uh win out and then that's going to just basically be a signal to the rest of the market. 568 00:47:04,174 --> 00:47:11,434 I would just then say it's like, there's that, and then there's a story of different client expectations and all the rest of it. 569 00:47:11,434 --> 00:47:13,574 You bring all of these things together. 570 00:47:16,274 --> 00:47:19,774 There's obviously no golden bullet that changes all of this. 571 00:47:19,774 --> 00:47:27,254 I'm just arguing that it feels like we're at a tipping point right now with a lot of different things that are coming together at a lot of different places. 572 00:47:27,610 --> 00:47:32,084 It's still going to be a conversation, but I would say that the future belongs in this time between worlds. 573 00:47:32,084 --> 00:47:40,340 The future belongs to kind of like the storytellers who can tell a story that transcends and includes all of everything that's going on right now. 574 00:47:40,340 --> 00:47:43,512 It's not that precedent is bad, but it's not just precedent. 575 00:47:43,512 --> 00:47:47,566 It's not that law firms are not a profession, but it's also a business. 576 00:47:47,566 --> 00:47:48,827 And what does that look like? 577 00:47:48,827 --> 00:47:49,970 Those are just stories. 578 00:47:49,970 --> 00:47:52,819 Those are just big stories that form worldviews effectively. 579 00:47:52,819 --> 00:47:53,720 It's a great point. 580 00:47:53,720 --> 00:47:54,570 That's so true. 581 00:47:54,570 --> 00:47:56,441 They're just stories. 582 00:47:56,722 --> 00:48:00,665 And the stories are changing and it's an exciting time to be here. 583 00:48:00,665 --> 00:48:02,687 Well, this has been a great conversation. 584 00:48:02,687 --> 00:48:08,031 Before we go, how do people find out more about your podcast or what you do at Nexol? 585 00:48:08,568 --> 00:48:09,058 For sure. 586 00:48:09,058 --> 00:48:11,390 um follow me on LinkedIn. 587 00:48:11,390 --> 00:48:21,118 I post a lot about sort of my own journey, my own career journey from practice into tech and sort of the things that I've kind of, the mindsets that I've had to change and what 588 00:48:21,118 --> 00:48:21,659 I've learned. 589 00:48:21,659 --> 00:48:24,111 I'm still learning so much every single day. 590 00:48:24,111 --> 00:48:28,194 um You can reach out to me about Nexel as well if you're interested in that case. 591 00:48:28,194 --> 00:48:37,422 And you know, if you are somebody who's kind of heard me and loves to tell their own career story, wants to in some ways inspire others based on where you're at, 592 00:48:37,422 --> 00:48:39,683 uh I'd love to have you on the podcast, really. 593 00:48:39,683 --> 00:48:50,477 uh I love to hear stories about people who have gone from, you know, on the traditional beaten path to kind of like turning right and what that inevitably taught them both not 594 00:48:50,477 --> 00:48:52,598 only about the legal initiative, but about themselves. 595 00:48:52,598 --> 00:48:54,829 So definitely reach out to me if that resonates with you. 596 00:48:54,829 --> 00:48:56,300 And Ted, thanks so much, man. 597 00:48:56,300 --> 00:48:57,147 I appreciate it. 598 00:48:57,147 --> 00:48:58,818 Yeah, it's been a blast. 599 00:48:58,818 --> 00:48:59,629 It's been a good time. 600 00:48:59,629 --> 00:49:04,093 I've really enjoyed it and we'll include links in the show notes. 601 00:49:04,093 --> 00:49:11,520 So for those folks that are listening on Apple podcasts or Spotify, we also have a website, legalinnovationspotlight.com. 602 00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:12,701 It's got all the episodes. 603 00:49:12,701 --> 00:49:14,943 It's got show notes and links and all that sort of stuff. 604 00:49:14,943 --> 00:49:19,306 So we'll include your stuff in there and hopefully people reach out and get in touch. 605 00:49:19,790 --> 00:49:20,410 I love it. 606 00:49:20,410 --> 00:49:22,070 Thank you for making the space. 607 00:49:22,070 --> 00:49:23,290 Love what you do. 608 00:49:23,290 --> 00:49:24,290 It's a lot of fun. 609 00:49:24,290 --> 00:49:35,810 We are in such a time between worlds and like, I know it's messy in there, but at the end of the day, it's also, there's a lot of promise, lot of upside here, I think. 610 00:49:35,810 --> 00:49:37,280 So the future's bright. 611 00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:38,233 ton of opportunity. 612 00:49:38,233 --> 00:49:40,549 All right, thanks so much for being on, Ben. 613 00:49:40,712 --> 00:49:43,077 All right, take care. -->