[00:00:00] Bradley, how are you this evening your time? Morning my time. Hey Ted. Uh, very good. Very good. It's good to chat. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you guys have been doing some impressive stuff in the legal tech space and I've been amazed at the momentum you've been able to generate in such a short period of time. Having spent two decades in this space, I've seen. Very few, uh, be able to create the splash that you guys have in such a short time. Um, which we're gonna talk about that a lot because mm-hmm. It's a really interesting story. But before we get into that, um, why don't you just do a quick intro, who you are, what you do, where you do it. Thanks. Tha uh, make me blush a little. I dunno if you can see my rosy cheeks. Um, I'm, I'm Bradley Collins, uh, co-founder of Legal Tech Talk, and been around in the event space for quite a few years. Hopping around different sectors, and I've been quite lucky to be in sectors [00:01:00] as they're going through quite a big shift, um, typically around digital transformation. Um, and have sort of followed that in, into legal. Yeah. Um, I don't know that most law firms could spell digital transformation. Um, three years ago there's, there was very little, very little in the legal market has. Disrupted, especially on the practice of law, very little. Like you might be able to make an argument about email and legal research being game changers in the practice of law. Um, but aside from that, there's been very little in my time. Um, but yeah. So your timing with Legal Tech talk, and for those that don't know, tell us what Legal Tech Talk is and what your, a little bit about your focus. Yeah, I was just laughed when you said email. When I was doing some research calls coming into legal tech, I was speaking to some CTOs and CIOs of different law firms and, uh, [00:02:00] you know, a a medium to large size law firm in the UK said, oh, it doesn't really exist. The biggest innovation we've had is we can put emails into folders automatically. Um, so that, yeah, you just, you just made me Google there, but, um. Yeah, we, we timed it incredibly well because that's how it was three years ago. That call was literally three years ago, and things have evolved hugely since, since then. Uh, but yeah, legal tech talk. We have built the biggest event in the legal, um, industry in, in Europe, and we're centered around, uh, being a catalyst for innovation, digital transformation, and, and generally positive change within the legal sector. And, and outside of that. Doing a lot of like digital news and, and insights and to, to, to keep the legal industry up to date with everything that's going on. Yeah. It's, um, yeah, your timing was super interesting because, you know, three years ago and some change, uh, right. I think that was 2022, um, [00:03:00] November, 2022. Was that coincidence or did you anticipate something big happening? To be honest, there was a bit of, it was skill and luck, I would say. So when choosing a sector, so before this I was in the insurance tech space. Prior to that was involved with the company that runs the biggest FinTech show and sort of seeing the trends of investment in startups. If you look at FinTech maybe 15, 20 years ago to now, there's maybe been about a thousand unicorns born in, in that time, and intech about 300 now. And, and when we launched intech Insights, so, uh, when, when intech Insights launched a I was at prior, I was there from the beginning. Um, we've seen about 300 unicorns now. So like it was what's next, what industry is, is next, and I saw. There was a couple, maybe two or three unicorns in legal tech and, uh, thought, and there was a big investment boom between 2017 and 2020. It, it had grown. [00:04:00] I read a report that investment in legal tech had grown by a hundred percent versus history of humankind. So hedge, hedge, hedge up bets. That surely legal evolution then of. We've, we've hit the nail here in, in terms of timing and Yeah, the momentum has been pretty crazy since, yeah, there's been very few legal unicorns, um, pre. Generative ai, um, Le LegalZoom, which is a B2C, uh, relativity, very recently, Clio. Um, and then of course we have the Harvey's and LARAs of the world and, and, and others that are reaching kind of unicorn status. But, you know, legal tech has historically been a quiet little suburb with, um, where everybody knows each other. Uh, the, the. ICP or ideal [00:05:00] customer profile that we sell into is like knowledge management and innovation professionals in large law firms. So we work exclusively with law firms, hundred attorneys and up, um, info Dash is a intranet extranet platform, um, that helps firms collaborate internally and externally with their clients. So we're a. We're a, we, we call ourselves on the extranet side, kind of a HighQ replacement. Um, a much more modern architecture and approach to that. And in those 18 years, since we got started in 2008, we've seen, um, a, the status quo in legal, in legal is very sticky. Um, you know, lawyers and law firms are built on tradition and, um. Technology has never been a differentiator. You can go to All am Law 200 public facing websites for the firms and you won't find a single one [00:06:00] who, uh, highlights technology as their key differentiator. Uh, they talk about, um, or at least a very short time ago, 'cause we, we. Did an informal exercise, a sampling, and there were none. Uh, they talk about the things you would expect them to talk about, about trust, about their people, um, about the outcomes that they deliver. And we're now entering into an era where technology is going to be part of the strategic differentiator equation, and that hasn't been historically the case. So are you finding that, um. That dynamic, that shift from, you know, tech is kind of in the background. It's really our people first and our, our 150 year tradition. Um, as we kind of transition where, uh, and you know, this transition will take some time, but as we transition into this post AI era, are [00:07:00] you seeing law firm leaders and the people who attend your events them shift focus a little bit? It's been a big shift, I would say since year one, and it may have, part of that may have been, we were the on in year, so difficult senior leaders. I also think they just didn't care about this innovation event. There was some innovation people at law firms that we were talking to, and they were just quite open, like, I'm sure my job here is just a marketing thing. You know, we don't actually get remit to do any innovation. It's quite frustrating for many of them trying to implement change and, and nobody internally. Cares about it. They can't, they can't get people on board. Whereas now we, we are getting managing partners and CEOs of big firms reaching out to us saying, Hey, I need to be at your event for how do we get involved? So the dynamic has, has shifted quite a lot, I would say in, in, in the last few years. Interesting. And so you were in insurance tech. Tech, which. What I think [00:08:00] of when I hear those two words, I think like mainframes, you know, and like, uh, I've always viewed, uh, so I spent some time in financial services as well. I spent 10 years at Bank of America in a variety of roles, but all tech related and, um, yeah, financial services, government. Um, insurance, you know, I still think there, they still have some COBOL guys that are probably 90 years old that, um, they need to help manage their infrastructure. Has that, have there been some parallels to, did, did they go through a transformation of kind of mainframe Yeah. To different paradigm. The, it was an interesting time. I think my second year there, year and a half in COVID happened. So how did these huge companies of hundreds of thousands of employees transition from computers in the office to then everybody working remote? Right? So that sort of like sped up [00:09:00] innovation I think within, um. Insurance industry, you have these huge behe of incumbents. If you look at the average turnover of a big insurer, let's say generally, or uh, AXA, like the a hundred billion dollar turnover company. So if they can improve profits by no 0.1%, that's a huge, huge gains. But there's a lot of cool stuff like infrastructure stuff happening, um, within. Insurance. It's similar to, to legal that it's very slow move in when, when you have a hundred thousand employees, like implementing changes is incredibly tough. As as, as well. So I, I see a lot of synergies with it, but there's a lot of cool stuff happening there. Like you scan your car after an accident and it automatically detects and the make the model, the damage, how much you should get paid can automatically pay things out the next day. There's satellite stuff that's predicting earthquakes and getting people to move. Out of the location if something's about to happen. So yeah, there's a lot of call innovation happening, I would say in insurance. Every time I enter new sector, I'm surprised by the cool stuff [00:10:00] that's happening. Yeah. So what, um, what lessons did you learn when, in your insurance days that you've been able to bring forward in the catering to the, to the legal market? Like and creating a world class event? Like what, what translated. I think the first thing is getting the right dynamic of of, of people. So in insurance there are similarities actually, which is quite unique to both insurance and, um, legal is, is the dynamics when insurance, you have the insurers, the brokers, the reinsurers, and then the, the tech innovators, both the startup and the, the more established tech players. You have tech players that are selling to the brokers and the insurers, the brokers are there selling to insurers. So there's this. Dynamic. The reinsurers are serving the insurers as well. In in legal you have tech players that are serving either in-house or or law firms, but the law firms are also serving in-house. [00:11:00] So getting the percentages right of people is incredibly important. I think if you wanna be successful in building a big event, you know. At, at any one time you want, if you've got 6,000 people there to be 3000 meetings that could take place between two people that are interested to talk to each other. So yeah, getting that right dynamic of in-house law firm, um, solution provider and tech players, regulators is, is really important. I'd say that's the, the first learning. That's the main learning. I think that translates from, from one sector to, to another. Um, but I think under duress a little bit. So what, what, yeah. Could you say the question again? Yeah, I was just curious, like learning, learning wise, like what did you, what did you learn building out a world class event, um, for, in the insurance world that that helped you cater to the, the audience you're, you're focused on now? I would say big learnings is not necessarily just from, from that I learned. The main [00:12:00] thing I learned in that company was building something from the ground up. I'd been in events that are much, uh, you know, event companies that are much bigger before that, you know, part of essential, which is now during pharma, runs the biggest FinTech show in the world with Money 2020, the biggest, uh, advertising show in the world with, with, with Canne Lions. So I've seen all of these big events, um, and learned a lot from them. Particularly in, in, in the intro tech world, it's like how do you get this from zero to something very quickly? Um, that's, that's very difficult. And, and not many people can do that very well. Uh, it starts with getting amazing speakers, so having a track record, I've done this before and another industry helped. You know, some senior people believe that we can do it and you need, that's the hardest part to get, to get up and running. You know, how do we get the CIOs, CTOs, managing Partners, GCs? At our first event we struggled to get the big GCs. We had assistant general counsel and you know, so that's, uh, that was super tough at the beginning. Then convincing sponsors. At the beginning, I'm just telling you how, like, [00:13:00] how difficult it's to get up and running. We had some sponsors saying, oh, get two of my competitors and then I'll be there. And they were all saying the same thing. So it's like, how, how do you get one of them to commit? Because if you get that, the ball's rolling. So like. Yeah, those, those things are super tough. Um, once you get up and running, you need to deliver an amazing experience. Like, let's not care about making profit. Let's reinvest everything back into the show. Premium coffee and wine and champagne and the production. Let's make it a theater. Let's have a lot of entertainment after party. Um, five star hotel. The, the experience through the app and people being up to book meetings with one another, you know, coming out of the train station and being greeted by, uh, volunteers who are, it's a lot of small detail. I could go on and on and on with this, so sorry to go on. No, it's good. But I, I, I, I would say it's a lot of small things that have to go right, that make the end result. Quite seamless and, and, and people don't even know what it is, why they like it so much, if that makes [00:14:00] sense. Yeah, it does. And you know, I'm, uh, I've been to a lot of events in my, my days. In fact, I went to 14 events last year, um, which was a lot for me. Like I was talking to Kat Casey, who she said she did something like 40, which blows my mind. Like I don't even know how that's possible, but, um. So I've been to a lot of events over the years. I've been to probably, I've been to more than 15 LTAs and Ilta Cons and, um, I've seen that event grow and grow. And last year they were over 4,000 people and I would imagine this year they'll probably might even break 5,000. And us, the US is such a bigger legal market than. The eu, like in totality, um, the US really dominates from a, um, a legal revenue perspective. So how, um, it's again, surprising that you've got ILT Con, which is the biggest [00:15:00] legal tech event here in the us. Um, I would assume maybe, maybe Legal Week's a closed second. I, I, I don't know what their attendee numbers are. It's a different kind of vibe there, but. Like, um, how were you able to build something so big so quickly when, you know, ILTA that's been around for 30 years has in the biggest market has taken, it's taken them a really long time. Yeah. I don't know how much these events concentrate on growing attendee numbers or that being the primary focus. I, I think some of the events have more focus on, um, how many tickets they sell. I, I, I don't. I, I, I don't know, but we managed to get to 4,000 people in our second year, and we're on track to five and a half thousand people now in our, our third year in, in Europe. And there are less big events, I think in terms of like competition, like the, the, the big events are definitely the us. You also have Clark and, um, some other big, big shows in the us [00:16:00] so maybe a bit more crowded on the event front than than Europe, but. I guess if we do at some point come into the us, um, you know, if we can do what we did in Europe, who knows how big it could get. Right. You know, big events in other sectors. I was out checking out a, a retail event not long ago, a a health event, both in Vegas. They're at 12,000 attendees now. And you can question, is it the market? Is it because of the event? It's, uh, it's, it's an interesting one. The addressable market is, is very big. I, I would say that some of these events have a bit more of a niche focus than ours. We're a bit broader, um, by, by design. So like Legal Week has, uh, e-discovery, heritage and Litigation Heritage. Mm-hmm. Um, alter has a. It, I would say mm-hmm. Focus, whereas we try and serve all senior people within the legal world. Whether you're in-house, whether you are in a law firm [00:17:00] on the As A-C-T-O-A-C-I-O-A-C-O-O, um, we're trying to serve the CFO. We haven't got there yet. They, we can't seem to get those guys. But, um, whether it's intellectual property regulation, we, we have a very broader van, so the addressable market, I think might be a bit bigger. Yeah. You know, and your timing was really good to, to for, to make that happen. Um, historically, five years ago, you would've had very limited success getting, you know, executive committee members at large law firms to, to invest the time. So your your, your timing was good. Um, you know, the, uh, you and I talked a little bit last time about. Alternative business structures. And, you know, the UK market is way ahead. It's, it's really interesting. It's like the UK and US market are, um, both ahead and behind each other depending on which slice of the pie that you look at, what lens you look through. So for [00:18:00] example, uh, and this is anecdotal, I don't have data to back this up, but I'm pretty dialed into the market. Um, and I, so I believe this to be true. Law firms in the UK are kind of behind the US in terms of, um, cloud adoption. So, um, the US has been very aggressively moving in. Big law has been very aggressively moving into the cloud, starting around COVID, and it seems like it's a little bit, um, the UK's a little bit behind, but in innovation, legal innovation, I would say that function is more mature in the EU market. And, um. I would also say an interesting dynamic that we are way, be clearly way behind on is alternative business structures. So, uh, in Utah and Arizona, they have, they have created, uh, in the Utah, they had a sandbox experiment I think that has now sunset. Um, in, in an Arizona, they have an ongoing alternative business structure. [00:19:00] Program where, you know, basically non-lawyers can participate in the ownership and fee sharing of a law firm. And I believe that's gonna be the future. Um, in fact, I would bet large amounts of money that the law firm partnership model is dead. It's going to die a very quick death as we, uh, transition from bespoke hourly work to tech enabled legal service delivery that's going to require investment. Um, the models that we're using to, to get external capital in the law firms are really. There's something called an MSOA Managed Service Organization that's very much a backdoor to get around, uh, what in the us', A BA model Rule 5.4 that prevents non-legal ownership. Mm-hmm. So the U mm-hmm. The UK is way ahead. The Legal Services Act has been around almost 20 years. Um, what is your read on, um, [00:20:00] how much of what the A BS. Rules and what they allow has contributed to maybe some of the increases in innovation. I, like I said, I think the, the, the EU is ahead of the US in that function. Yeah. Is, is there any relationship there? Yeah, I'm not a, an expert on the rules per se, and, and, and, and what they are, but I'm seeing this is definitely becoming an increasingly hot topic. You know, I was speaking to two of the, the, the big four who, um, consult with law firms on this, and we had Les, uh, managing partner at DWF. Alongside Elliot Port, who was the global CEO at Dentons on a fireside chat on this exact topic at the, the, the previous event. And yeah, the, the previous sort of structure, I say previous, it's, I think still the current structure of, of, of law firms, the partnership model, the, you know, the incentives we have in, in place are not fit for where we're going. And I think getting sort of pe backing of law firms [00:21:00] will provide a. It means for big law firms to stay ahead or, or, or keep up if, if, if others sort of start to take their place in, in, in the future. Um, but yeah, not, not an expert on, on the rules, but we're definitely gonna see a lot more of this from what I can see. Yeah. And then of your audience. Your current attendees that attend these events, how much of it is, and you know, you can just gimme broad brush strokes, like what is the, what is the, um, pie chart look like in terms of what percentage or in-house, what percentage are it people from law firms, innovation people, um, leadership, like just. Gimme, give us a rough picture of what that looks like. Roughly speaking it's 30, 30 30, um, between law firm, in-house solution provider, and the solution provider is split between the startups and more established players, and then 10% would fall into [00:22:00] others. So it could be regulators, media partners, and journalists and yeah, just, just various other, uh, parts of the ecosystem. Inhouse. We, you know, if you look at the speaker lineup, you'll see a lot of GCs and group GCs. We're starting to see more legal ops. I think legal ops has been a title that was much more common in, in the us It's becoming more common now, starting to become more common now in, in Europe as well. Um, and then any, anybody under the sort of GC function will, uh, be be there. Um, from law firms, we, it's a real mix. It's, it's very broad. Uh, so we see a lot of heads of innovation, chief innovation officers. You'll see, um, quite a lot of managing partners now, which we didn't really have in, in year one, and we saw a little bit more in year two, but that's, that's growing quite a bit. Um, it's, it's all C-suite functions as heads of different practice areas. We're seeing it, knowledge management. Um, so I don't have exact percentages of that now. I do somewhere in an Excel spreadsheet, [00:23:00] but. It's, it's, it's very broad and, you know, the way we see it, it takes more than one person in a law firm to make a decision or to put this sort of job on the line at risk to make a big implementation, right? So we, we try and get five, 10 people or more from a big law firm to, to come so they can sort of make group decisions on, you know, how they wanna go forward. That's, yes. So the, and I, you know, that's, I, I often cite, my listeners have heard me talk many times about all of the friction points to innovation in at least the US model partnership, uh, the partnership model operating on a cash basis. There's very little. Very little, almost no r and d like law firms don't do r and d. You know, you have the consensus driven decision making that happens as a result of the partnership model. Um. They have a very different client engagement model than what I think is going to be needed. [00:24:00] Um, post transformation here in the us, I don't know if it's true in the uk, but in the US partners can pick up and move firms and take their entire book of business with them and that creates a very transactional, again, even partners who are have ownership stakes in the business. Move. Uh, sometimes entire practice areas will move from one firm to another. And when you're thinking about, alright, we need to make long-term investment in the firm infrastructure, that creates, um, a dilemma, um, or a tension. If I'm a voting member, um, of the partnership, and I don't know if I'm gonna be here in five years, am I gonna vote? To invest in infrastructure that might have a 10 year break even. Um, yeah, so there, or if you're getting paid by profit at the end of every year, like what incentives do you have to do? Anything that benefits you in two years? You know, you might be retiring in a few years, so like, what's the point? Let's, let's [00:25:00] keep things as they are for as long as possible. And that has always been the mentality as far as I can see. But. There's a big danger now for law firms survival if, if, if it stays like that. Because there's gonna be players that come and innovate and take market share and can do things quicker. You know, we talk about the Kodak moment and, you know, blockbuster, Netflix, like Airbnb is coming, Uber is coming. There are players coming, um, to, to take market share. So I think law firms are realizing they have no choice. To innovate. Yeah. Uh uh Yep. And what you said earlier resonated in terms of kind of the remit of the innovation function has historically been a little bit of marketing involved in there. I think that has changed in a very dramatic way in the, in the past couple of years. But, you know, even, um, how. Law firms [00:26:00] recruit, like so for example, here in the US you can't offer stock options to, let's say you want to go pluck. Key I AI tech talent out of Silicon Valley. Um, you can't dangle the stock options carrot in order to get 'em to your firm here in the us. That's a problem. Like that's how things get done, um, in the tech world. So law firms are gonna have a very difficult time competing for tech talent at a time where I think it's really crucial that they get the best and brightest. Yeah. Is that gonna increase the need of law firms to work with their tech vendor partners, do you think? Because the talent will be with the tech companies? You know, it's a really good question. I think there's a lot of risk to firms not investing in their own infrastructure, simply because, like, for example, how do they, how do they differentiate themselves? So it, you can't buy off the shelf tools like Harvey and LA. [00:27:00] And say you're different because your competitors down the street can do the same thing. Mm-hmm. So how do you make yourself different? I think you have to invest and leverage all of the documents and knowledge that created winning outcomes for your clients that exist in internal systems. That, um, I mean, honestly, that's where we're placing our chips on the table. Mm-hmm. Is we believe that law firms, in order to differentiate effectively, are going to have to do more than just buy off the shelf. The museum has talent and it is difficult for them to attract these, these people who understand tech and understand more because they need to be able to speak both languages and, and that's a very small pool of people. It is. That can do it well. Yeah. And um, you know, another challenge here in the us, I don't know if this is true in the UK market, but business professionals, what some people refer to as non-lawyers, um, don't love that language, [00:28:00] but. Um, business professionals have really been under empowered relative to the practice. So, for example, bringing in a a c-level, uh, chief innovation officer. Many firms, not all, will pick a former practicing lawyer, just so they have the credibility. With the practice because there's very much a, you know, you don't have the golden ring, uh, the jd, um, to, so that also has to change because if you're gonna pull people from, like here in the US there's been a wave of hiring where they've, some law firms at the top of the AM law have pulled. Partners from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and put them in innovation functions. And what I have heard, this is anecdotal, but I know some of these people, they've gotten frustrated because they can't mm-hmm. Affect change the way that they [00:29:00] were promised when they were brought in because the practice, um, maybe. You know, somebody with a McKinsey resume is gonna have credibility. I don't care if you're a lawyer or not. It's more of a, there's just so much cultural baggage that slows down, um, the, the appetite for change. Why do you think that? Is it because they don't come from a, a lawyer background that they're not being received well internally? Well, like you, you've not practiced law. You're not as smart as I am, and probably they understand business better than a lawyer and actually how the business runs like, but. What, what, what do you think about it? Yeah, no, that's a really good question and uh, this may piss some lawyers off, but I think the reality is that there is a little bit of, I'm the smartest guy in the room mentality. Um, because you may think about how law firm leaders have risen through the ranks. It's been largely by being the best at lawyering. Not necessarily because they're the best leader, it's because [00:30:00] they're the rainmakers in the firm. They know how to priority. Spillable hours and production and origination. Here in the US we call it, you know, origination, how much new business are you bringing to the firm? Um, and somebody coming from outside. So they sometimes do think they're the best at running a business, even though. Somebody with an MBA who came from a consulting company may be able to do it better. Mm-hmm. It's, uh, yeah, there's a little bit of that hubris in the equation. Um, and I think just historically, this may be a little controversial too. Um, I have known C CIOs, for example, chief um, information officers who have been brought in specifically with the mandate of. Spend as little money as possible and keep the lights on. I don't want any downtime security breaches, and I don't wanna spend more money. Alright, [00:31:00] so what type of per they, they were literally handpicked for their resistance to change, right? Because change costs money. They were handpicked and now we're asking these people, I have a, I have a, a name for it. I call it deep admin. Um, there is. There is a resistance within this world of deep admin. That can be finance, that can be um, hr, that can be marketing, that can be it where you, you literally selected people to minimize cost and maximize profit at the end of the year for the partnership, which isn't mm-hmm. A rational thing. But now all of a sudden you're asking these people, Hey, we need to change and change quickly. How, how are you gonna navigate that? There's a lot of cultural inertia going in the opposite direction, so that's a big behavioral shift that we're asking of. Of people. Right. And yeah, coming into the space, I felt like, I don't wanna offend any lawyers or or law firms, but it's [00:32:00] quite blinkered, it's quite insular. It's, we see our own world and we don't really see everything that's going on outside of it. And looking at these big seismic shifts that are happening in other sectors, like, that's never gonna happen to us. This is how we've always done it. Um, so how do you change the habits that are quite deeply ingrained? Um, but yeah, from, from where I'm sitting, I, I just don't think. These companies have a choice now, and uh, I think they're starting to realizing it. Like they, they do realize it, you know, the fact that managing partners are coming to us now and wanna be part of it. Everyone is realizing it, but it's a whole nother thing to then do it. Yeah. And, and do the cultural shift. Like, you know, another, another, I guess friction point, uh, in terms of cultural change is I mentioned earlier that law firms are built on legacy. So, um, where'd you go to law school? Where have you practiced? What high profile wins? How much have you originated? Like, these have been the measures that the [00:33:00] yardstick through which leaders within the law firm have been measured. And I think in the post transformation law firm model, um, you pulling a CEO out of maybe it's insurance who has, who had gone through a massive digital transformation and empowering that person. To tell the practice what to do and how to implement technology like that. That is a my, like I, mm-hmm. I almost laugh out loud when I think about how that would work in that traditional law firm culture, there has to be a real shift that that law firm leaders have to, um, adopt challenge. So I think some will do it successfully and some won't. Mm-hmm. What, what, what are, what are your thoughts about the alternative legal service providers? So like. When I was brand new into this space, I [00:34:00] always thought there must be a different type of business model that can come because we saw it in insurance. When we spoke of intra tech. We had the challenger insurers that were competing with the big insurers. I mean, in the end, the big insurers just bought them all and embedded them into, so what they did. Um, but they, they were competing and taking market share off the, the big insurers and those. Served the, the, the big insurers. Now we're starting to see these, a LSPs that are competing in specific areas, um, of, of law and taking market share in within different niches. But collectively, that can adapt to a lot of business that can be lost to, to these smaller players. Um, do think that will force law firms to respond when they start taking more and more like these young, nimble, agile AI native, cloud native startups that are serving. The clients of the law firms. Yeah, that's a such a, a good question and I am glad you asked. Um, so I do think that the AI native law firms represent a, uh, I call 'em challenger firms. I think [00:35:00] these challenger firms will make a lot of headway in a lot of different areas of law to a it to your A LSP question, do you know how, what percentage of legal work goes to a LSPs in the us? I have no idea. 4%. Four. And, um, I know that because I'm friends with, uh, somebody who owns a really big A LSP. Mm-hmm. And we, uh, we commiserate a little bit and he has such a good framing around this. He's like, look, your bet the company matters, represent probably 5%, maybe 10. The total legal work that your firm needs to execute on the, the other 90, 95%. It's not bet the company work. It's operate the company work and within that operate the company huge slice of the, the pie chart. Only 4% of the work is getting sent to a LSPs and it's, it's, it's mind blowing for [00:36:00] me because I know how much pressure boards. Are putting on management to reduce external legal spend. Mm-hmm. And why this isn't happening, why there's not more of that operate the company work that's going to SSPs. I think part of it is a, um, a matter of convenience. Um, and again, it's, we, we get back into the legacy mindset of lawyers. You know, like I, I went to school with Bradley, I went to law school. I trust Bradley. You know, um, we may have practiced together at Davis Polk, and you know, I know the type of work he delivers. There's a lot of relationship components. Um, that I think also create friction towards moving to more efficient delivery models. But I fully expect this is why change is slow and it, yeah, I think it will continue while, whilst it's getting quicker, it's still gonna be pretty slow. Yeah, it's such a good question. You know, a LSPs really were make, there was a lot of noise, uh, about [00:37:00] 15 years ago in the early 2010s about a LSPs. And um, it really seems, it's kind of like, um. AFAs, like alternative fee arrangement structure, basically, you know, flat or success fee, non hourly bill of work. And you know, these were all the rage to talk about 10 years ago, 10, 15 years ago. But very little of it actually materialized. And again, I think it goes back to just the legacy mindset on both the buy side. Like within the inside teams and on the sell side, um, lawyers, law firms, typically when they have a gun against their head, that's when they change. And that gun, that proverbial gun is when a client demands something different and they haven't demanded a. These things. Um, a lot have talked about it and like you, you mentioned clock and a CC, they're starting to kind of come together and really push the industry collectively, which is a good [00:38:00] thing and will, will make efficiency a key focus. But, um, yeah. Historically it's, we have not always leveraged the most efficient delivery channel, and I think that's gonna change. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, you mentioned like the proverbial country had coming from clients and it's, it's, it's interesting, right? You know, we get GCs talking about, oh, I want a fat fee. Why am I paying by the hour? AI's making law firms more efficient. Then they get a fat fee and they're like, how many hours did this take? Am I paying more or less for like, they're still stuck in their ways as buyers as well. A hundred percent they want shadow billing. Um, yes. And again, I law firms get beat up about the lack of innovation, but I think the reality is that the inside legal teams are, have just as much accountability into why this market has not evolved. And, um, I do think it will change because now corporate boards. Are [00:39:00] really starting to demand efficiencies. Uh, there's a company here in the US called Block, um, just laid off 40% of their workforce. Uh, this is just within the last three or four days. Uh, late last week, the announcement, their share price went up 20%, 25%. Wow. As a result, so like corporate boards are going to start with ai. Delivering mandates, deliver savings now and mm-hmm. It feels like external legal spend would be one of the first places they look. Yeah. Well, they can take more and more of it in-house now, and they've got so many providers, you know, many of our sponsors are helping law, uh, legal departments take stuff in house and, and do it way more efficiently and at a lower cost. Um. Yeah. What interested about that dynamic on pricing? Like [00:40:00] how, how, how do we do it? Like if, if a law firm can do something quicker with AI and perhaps better because they've had more time then to think about it and, um, you know, do better quality work, should that cost more or, or less, you know, you can argue the work is getting done quicker, so I should. Pay more for the same work, or you spend less time on it, so I should, I should pay less. And for different types of, you know, work, maybe it's different, different answers. But, uh, this is, it's obviously a big topic and, and something tricky to get right. Yeah. You know, nobody has really good answers about this. There's way more questions than there is answers in terms of how, what will the future pricing model look like for, for legal services? Um, you know, I think the reality is that the, the billable hour isn't going to die a quick death. It will happen over time and, and there will be areas of, of law that it never dies because it really is, there's a lack of predictability that makes.[00:41:00] Scoping, you know, because one thing that clients, this is true not just inside of legal, but in our world too. Flat fee requires, uh, fixed fee, requires fixed scope. And can you define parameters such that scope can be defined and for certain matters? Yeah, patent applications, immigration matters. There's a whole area, many areas of law where the answer to that question is yes. But there are also many areas where the answer to that is no. And what I think is gonna happen is there's gonna be an unbundling. Of services in that, in those areas where scope is much harder to define and the individual tasks are going to be delivered on a fixed cost basis, but the hourly time involved, it's gonna be a hybrid model for many areas it feels like. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's the first time I've heard. Um, fixed fee requires fixed scope. [00:42:00] So yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that one. Yeah. It's, um, we run into it quite a bit in the, um, in the, in the technology world. You know, customers, Hey, we want a fixed fee. This like, okay, can you, can you define scope and then stay within the, uh, perimeter? And the answer is almost always no. Um, so yeah, and there are always wild cards and, and, um, x factors that can get in the way of that. Um. But yeah, it's interesting. I don't know what the percentage is in, in the UK in terms of a LSPs, uh, and market share, but I do think that there are other advantages to, besides cost that I don't know if you call an AI native firm an A LSP. Um, I, I, I think in certain circumstances. You, you don't like, for example, Crosby is, is a, is one where they're, they are [00:43:00] admitted and licensed by the New York bar and they have a lawyer sitting next to, in the same cube as a, or in the office next door, uh, to an engineer and they deliver their value proposition. I don't have no idea what their pricing is, but I've listened to a couple of podcasts that they've done and they can turn around a, um. A data privacy agreement or a master services agreement in, in an hour. And the value that that creates in their target audience, which is so smart, is, uh, SaaS companies. So think about if you can. Shorten the, um, redlining, you know, the point from the customer says yes until you can recognize that revenue, if you can cut that in half, can do you imagine what the implications are to your revenue recognition? Well, well, maybe you could cut it in half and half again. Um, and I, I was on a podcast with Alison GC [00:44:00] Dentsu, obviously huge. Um, company and, and she would say speed to contract is speed to cash. You know, we've, we've gone from being a bottleneck and, uh, a cash center to now a business enabler. And, uh, you know, increasing profit, increasing speed to, to, to money. The business can move quicker. Um. So, yeah, that, that, that world is definitely changing. I, I don't know what the percentages of a LSPs, but I, I think, um, right now they're serving more the SME market. Uh, there's, there's a big sort of, um, I think untapped market of startups that can't afford lawyers. It's too expensive. And, and, uh, I've heard quite a few times recently about increasing capacity increases demand. So there's, there's a huge. Like market share up for grabs that just isn't being served currently. That I think these, a LSPs can, can fill and, and, and serve a market that that wasn't there before. Yeah, I, I think you're exactly right. That's Java's [00:45:00] paradox in motion. Um, well this has been a, this has been a really good conversation, Bradley. How do, how do people who are interested in finding out more about legal tech talk, where's the best place for them to go? Well, legal tech, uh, I always get told by the marketing team, not to forget the dash, um, legal tech talk.com wasn't available when we started off. I have to see how much it cost to get that one now. Um, but yeah, if you type in legal tech talk, you'll, you'll find us, uh, LinkedIn. We're, we're very big on LinkedIn, so you can drop me a message, uh, Bradley Collins. Uh, so yeah, feel free to reach out. Awesome. And then the event is, what was it, second week of June in London. Yeah, 17th, 18th of June. There's a lot of stuff happening on the days before, the day after as well. So there's a whole week of stuff. I think there's gonna be about 40, 50 side events happening around the event, so, so do get there early if you can. Uh, but yeah, middle of June, it's, it's a good time to be in London. It's, it's the only time we get a bit of sun. Yeah. I won't, uh, my [00:46:00] team is coming to, to, to the event, so we are sponsors this year. Mm-hmm. I'll be in London the following week for the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer event. Yes. Um, so we'll have, I'm chatting to Rena actually about, um, doing them on the same week next year. Yes. So, you know, hopefully people can get to go to both in 2027. I really would've enjoyed to been able to participate in both. Um. But Rita's, uh, I, it would be awesome. You know, we sort of got the, uh, vision of the legal tech week where these other events, like the FT event and, and others, and, you know, we just talking about a partnership with Clark, for example, or hosting an event the day before in London. And just like, if there's one week a year to come to London and you're in law, law, this is it. You know, we talk about cutting costs on travel. You know, this, this is the week to come to London. So that, that's sort of what we're trying to build. I think that would be absolutely fantastic and you could count on me being there for that. I have to be selective. Um, I'm six foot 5, [00:47:00] 265 pounds. Me fitting in a little airplane seat and flying across the pond is pretty miserable and I don't sleep well on planes. So I'm selective about, uh, when I, when I do make that trip. But I would absolutely make it over there if you guys were able to align. That would be great. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, uh, that's the plan. And yet thank you for supporting the event. I know your team's out there. Uh, there'll be a few of you guys and Yep. Uh, I heard that you've got these branded trainers, which are hot property right now. Yes. Someone was bragging to me last week that they got themselves a pair, so hopefully we see some of them around at the event as well. You absolutely will. We made a big splash with 'em. We had eight people, eight, nine people at Tic Con last year, and we all had on our, uh. Uh, bright Green info dash Jordans and, um, they made a big splash, so, uh, we'll, uh, we'll, you should start selling them. I know, I know. Well, you know what's funny is my wife and kids want 'em. I got my wife a pair, but I'm like. Look kids, you're not in our ICP, like you can't, [00:48:00] I'll buy 'em from, for a law firm person. But, uh, yeah, and if, well, we're thinking about having a swag wall with lots of cool branded stuff. Oh, so we, we, we should put some, you know, up on the swag wall. I would love that. I have a pair right here that got ordered from the wrong size that I will send if we, uh, if we can do that. So let's keep in touch on that. There we go, Ted. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming by and hope, uh, hope, hope to see you in June. Likewise. Alright, take care. Thanks for listening to Legal Innovation Spotlight. 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