1 00:00:02,893 --> 00:00:05,056 Don Fuchs, how are you this morning? 2 00:00:05,686 --> 00:00:06,619 I'm doing great, Ted. 3 00:00:06,619 --> 00:00:07,571 How are you doing? 4 00:00:07,571 --> 00:00:08,480 Thanks for having me. 5 00:00:08,480 --> 00:00:09,140 Yeah, man. 6 00:00:09,140 --> 00:00:10,561 Thanks for coming. 7 00:00:10,561 --> 00:00:18,367 You and I have talked a lot about the topics that we're going to discuss today, and I think it's going to be a great conversation. 8 00:00:18,708 --> 00:00:23,071 But before we jump into that, I want to get you properly introduced. 9 00:00:23,192 --> 00:00:32,169 You've been around the legal tech space for a really long time as a founder and then working with Opus 2 and Hi-Q and 10 00:00:32,887 --> 00:00:37,649 I'd say you're probably one of the more knowledgeable people on the planet about legal extranets. 11 00:00:38,010 --> 00:00:42,952 So it's going to be a treat to dig into some of your knowledge and experience today. 12 00:00:44,153 --> 00:00:49,494 Why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, your background and, and what you're up to these days. 13 00:00:50,114 --> 00:00:51,174 Yeah, thanks, Ted. 14 00:00:51,174 --> 00:00:52,815 Appreciate that. 15 00:00:53,335 --> 00:00:54,695 Yeah, gosh. 16 00:00:54,695 --> 00:01:07,018 I graduated from law school back in the late 90s and pretty soon after that got into extranets really early on with LegalAnywhere. 17 00:01:07,159 --> 00:01:19,476 And LegalAnywhere was sort of a multifaceted journey with different ownership where we sold early and then ended up buying it back after the dot com era. 18 00:01:19,476 --> 00:01:21,647 ended long time ago. 19 00:01:22,747 --> 00:01:33,102 But yeah, it's been it's been fun to see extra nets and legal collaboration from its infancy all the way on through to where it is today. 20 00:01:33,102 --> 00:01:39,654 It's, it's really amazing because back in the 90s law firms, lot of law firms didn't even have public websites. 21 00:01:39,654 --> 00:01:48,718 So this whole concept of sharing confidential information on the internet with clients was sort of crazy got laughed out of 22 00:01:48,718 --> 00:01:52,558 more than a few law firms at that time. 23 00:01:52,798 --> 00:01:56,558 So it's really neat to see that this has really become a standard. 24 00:01:57,138 --> 00:02:04,718 so Legal Anywhere kind of worked there through 2018 and then Haikyuu acquired Legal Anywhere at that point. 25 00:02:05,378 --> 00:02:13,478 And I was with Haikyuu through their acquisition or their acquisition from TR. 26 00:02:13,810 --> 00:02:19,736 And then I joined Opus 2 and was with Opus 2 for about four years as well. 27 00:02:19,736 --> 00:02:31,424 So yeah, it's fun to see a product like this grow from infancy to maturity where it is today and what great things are being done because the market has changed. 28 00:02:31,424 --> 00:02:32,314 Yeah. 29 00:02:32,314 --> 00:02:39,478 So by the time this airs, we will have fully launched press release and we'll be full kind of go to market with, with extra net. 30 00:02:39,478 --> 00:02:42,730 We've been working on the product for a really long time. 31 00:02:42,730 --> 00:02:56,738 So regular listeners probably know the story, but we started off a consulting organization back in 2008 called Acrowire and we fell down the legal rabbit hole very early and we 32 00:02:56,738 --> 00:03:00,480 built a lot of bespoke intranets and extranets. 33 00:03:00,608 --> 00:03:04,021 Mostly intranets, but we built some, extra net solutions as well. 34 00:03:04,021 --> 00:03:16,311 You know, primarily on SharePoint and you know, that was back in the on-prem days where you stood up a DMZ and pushed a SharePoint farm out public facing and you had to manage 35 00:03:16,311 --> 00:03:18,492 users and muddy up your active directory. 36 00:03:18,492 --> 00:03:26,338 And there was no single sign on and it was just unpleasant to say the least. 37 00:03:26,919 --> 00:03:30,562 So we have those battle scars and a lot of those learnings. 38 00:03:30,915 --> 00:03:43,161 And yeah, we're super excited about what we're bringing to market because we feel like it's different than what's available today, which we're going to talk a little bit about. 39 00:03:43,161 --> 00:03:53,746 But, you know, I really want to tap into just your, your perspective on the evolution of extra nets because you've been around it as long as anyone. 40 00:03:53,907 --> 00:04:00,290 And, you know, it seems like from where I sit and you predate me by probably 10 years. 41 00:04:01,044 --> 00:04:12,982 It seems like, you know, things started off with basic, basic document sharing and, know, morph their way into more sophisticated use cases. 42 00:04:12,982 --> 00:04:20,428 Um, but when I look really at, at the landscape, it's still a lot of document collaboration. 43 00:04:20,428 --> 00:04:27,632 Um, you know, clients sync, uh, IQ is the, is the predominant player in the space for now. 44 00:04:28,493 --> 00:04:29,570 and you know, 45 00:04:29,570 --> 00:04:39,771 Client sync documents from the DMS during the life cycle of a matter, do their thing and then archive the site. 46 00:04:39,771 --> 00:04:47,855 A lot of times those sites end up living on for a very, very long time, which can make things expensive. 47 00:04:48,556 --> 00:04:55,658 yeah, give us kind of a overview of the evolution as you've seen it over these last, God, what is it? 48 00:04:55,658 --> 00:04:57,484 It's probably 25 years. 49 00:04:57,686 --> 00:04:58,847 Yeah, it is. 50 00:04:58,847 --> 00:04:59,107 Yeah. 51 00:04:59,107 --> 00:05:01,406 Maybe going on 30 actually. 52 00:05:01,406 --> 00:05:03,109 I hate to say it. 53 00:05:04,871 --> 00:05:05,241 Yeah. 54 00:05:05,241 --> 00:05:13,597 So back in the early days, know, mid nineties, you know, this worldwide web thing was pretty new law firms, you know, were a little late to the game. 55 00:05:13,597 --> 00:05:17,059 Um, you know, no surprise back then. 56 00:05:17,066 --> 00:05:22,294 Um, but, know, there was a fundamental problem of, you know, sharing information with clients. 57 00:05:22,294 --> 00:05:26,446 So they were doing it, you know, through a lot of FedEx and couriers back then. 58 00:05:26,446 --> 00:05:27,126 in 59 00:05:27,278 --> 00:05:42,114 So really, extranets really kind of started with really large litigations and transactions where you've got your discovery process and your whole jumble of documents that you need 60 00:05:42,114 --> 00:05:43,524 to provide to a client. 61 00:05:43,524 --> 00:05:51,028 So back in those days, they started giving them on CDs rather than boxes of paper. 62 00:05:51,028 --> 00:05:55,470 And so really the first extranets were focused around those large 63 00:05:55,566 --> 00:06:07,568 cases, litigations, or transactions where there's lots of due diligence documents, lots of discovery documents, and there is a problem giving multiple remote people access to all of 64 00:06:07,568 --> 00:06:08,358 them. 65 00:06:08,719 --> 00:06:11,401 So that's really where it was born because it solved that problem. 66 00:06:11,401 --> 00:06:15,746 It made it inexpensive and easy to transmit those documents. 67 00:06:15,746 --> 00:06:20,470 And then it kind of evolved from there where, you 68 00:06:20,622 --> 00:06:22,833 Clients really liked getting online access. 69 00:06:22,833 --> 00:06:32,527 So the more innovative law firms figured out, well, gosh, I can differentiate myself if my clients can have a login and they just get basic access to the workspaces and the 70 00:06:32,527 --> 00:06:34,728 documents that I'm drafting for them. 71 00:06:35,148 --> 00:06:46,433 Law firms that were less innovative were concerned about, well, gosh, I can't give my clients access to these documents because then they might start drafting them themselves. 72 00:06:46,433 --> 00:06:49,184 I mean, which is sort of like, you know, 73 00:06:49,270 --> 00:06:50,291 I hated hearing that. 74 00:06:50,291 --> 00:06:55,574 cringe that whenever I hear that because that's not the value proposition of a lawyer. 75 00:06:55,574 --> 00:07:03,558 Lawyer, it's not the document, it's the expertise that goes into the document to make sure that everything that's in it is right. 76 00:07:03,558 --> 00:07:07,340 And I think today lawyers pretty much, most lawyers get that. 77 00:07:07,340 --> 00:07:11,402 They give the documents away and it's the expertise. 78 00:07:11,483 --> 00:07:15,244 And then it evolved further as the tool set evolved. 79 00:07:15,325 --> 00:07:17,630 Clients kind of liked having access. 80 00:07:17,630 --> 00:07:20,001 ongoing access to their information. 81 00:07:20,001 --> 00:07:32,978 sure, know, large, you know, transactions and litigations continued to be a focal point, but now law firms started figuring out, well, gosh, if my clients, you know, can, can 82 00:07:32,978 --> 00:07:39,442 continually come to my website and log in and access the documents I've drafted for them previously. 83 00:07:39,442 --> 00:07:45,075 So maybe a more sophisticated corporate client, they can access all their entity documents. 84 00:07:45,075 --> 00:07:47,532 And then when it's time for all their renewals. 85 00:07:47,532 --> 00:07:55,144 and their board meeting minute updates and all those things, we can quickly facilitate that and it kind of locks in the relationship. 86 00:07:55,244 --> 00:08:03,486 And I think the struggle that lawyers have had for a long time is how do I differentiate myself from my competitors? 87 00:08:03,486 --> 00:08:08,368 There's a lot of smart lawyers out there, a lot of lawyers that know what they're doing. 88 00:08:08,488 --> 00:08:14,639 And I think most consumers of law firms are maybe not that sophisticated. 89 00:08:14,639 --> 00:08:17,166 How do you know if a lawyer is better than another lawyer? 90 00:08:17,166 --> 00:08:27,806 So really what you have to do is you have to focus on how do I deliver my legal services to my clients along with the relationship and the service. 91 00:08:27,806 --> 00:08:33,486 And one of the biggest complaints that lawyers or law firms get is my lawyer's not available enough. 92 00:08:33,486 --> 00:08:40,566 An extranet or a client portal is a way of maintaining that availability even if you're not really available. 93 00:08:40,566 --> 00:08:46,954 Because the client can come in and interact with the information, make comments and whatnot. 94 00:08:46,954 --> 00:08:48,535 even while you're not there. 95 00:08:48,535 --> 00:08:54,419 So that's really, that really became a big, you know, selling proposition of Externet. 96 00:08:54,419 --> 00:09:00,684 And I think, you know, why they kind of took off is because they were so popular with customers, with, with clients. 97 00:09:00,684 --> 00:09:07,869 And then as it evolved further, we start going from just document, transmittal to redlining back and forth. 98 00:09:07,869 --> 00:09:16,192 So now my client and I are redlining back and forth and I can have, you know, five or six or seven different people working in the document at same time. 99 00:09:16,192 --> 00:09:19,604 a lot more efficiently than emailing documents around. 100 00:09:19,604 --> 00:09:30,652 And then, you know, if you fast forward to today, you know, we're seeing law firms, you know, doing all sorts of things because they're building in workflows that are customized 101 00:09:31,393 --> 00:09:37,896 to how a practice area works, or you can customize how you work with an individual client. 102 00:09:37,997 --> 00:09:45,762 And that's really the killer application is now the law firm is adding value to the client beyond just the legal services. 103 00:09:45,830 --> 00:09:49,713 because of how they're delivering the information and providing the information. 104 00:09:49,713 --> 00:09:58,759 So the workflow piece and the law firms that are really becoming innovative are really adapting how they work with the technology. 105 00:09:58,759 --> 00:10:11,488 The exciting thing about, know, extranet technology is that it's become very adaptable where you can configure it rather than having to put software developers in to go build a 106 00:10:11,488 --> 00:10:14,070 custom tool every time you want to 107 00:10:14,254 --> 00:10:16,734 to do something unique with a client. 108 00:10:16,754 --> 00:10:26,722 And so it allows the innovative law firms to be very creative and very quick to market with some of these unique solutions that they provide different clients. 109 00:10:26,722 --> 00:10:27,742 Yeah. 110 00:10:27,782 --> 00:10:34,962 And to your point about differentiation, the law firm market is extremely fragmented. 111 00:10:35,002 --> 00:10:41,762 If you add up the total revenue of the entire Amlaw 100, you're at about $140 billion. 112 00:10:42,042 --> 00:10:48,242 That's not even a Fortune 100 company if you were to combine the entire Amlaw 100. 113 00:10:48,342 --> 00:10:54,122 So there's not a single law firm that would qualify revenue wise for the Fortune 500. 114 00:10:54,262 --> 00:10:55,413 K &E is the closest. 115 00:10:55,413 --> 00:11:01,747 They're just outside of the floor of the Fortune 500, which is about 7.6 billion last time I looked. 116 00:11:01,747 --> 00:11:05,009 And I think K &E is in the low sevens. 117 00:11:05,089 --> 00:11:12,464 So extremely fragmented, which means, yeah, differentiating yourself is key. 118 00:11:12,464 --> 00:11:22,922 yeah, it's interesting that law firms decide to do that. 119 00:11:22,922 --> 00:11:24,160 I mean, we see 120 00:11:24,160 --> 00:11:29,733 We have one client who, they've been public about this, so I'm not speaking out of school. 121 00:11:29,934 --> 00:11:31,725 They have a law firm portal. 122 00:11:31,725 --> 00:11:35,598 It's Ogletree Deacons and they, they're an L and E firm. 123 00:11:35,598 --> 00:11:45,044 So they share, you know, 50 state surveys and employment law updates for each state, uh, through their client portal. 124 00:11:45,044 --> 00:11:50,058 Um, it's, it's not your traditional extra net where you're exchanging documents. 125 00:11:50,058 --> 00:11:53,869 It's kind of a outward facing almost e-commerce platform. 126 00:11:53,869 --> 00:11:57,921 but it's revenue generating and they're not public with the number. 127 00:11:58,041 --> 00:12:05,705 But it is a seven, it's north of seven figures that a KM group is actually revenue generating, which is unusual. 128 00:12:05,705 --> 00:12:08,327 Those are usually cost centers, not revenue centers. 129 00:12:08,467 --> 00:12:18,232 So it is a great way to not only differentiate, keep your relationship sticky, but also, you know, generate revenue. 130 00:12:18,232 --> 00:12:21,524 Did you see any of that sort of stuff in your day? 131 00:12:22,658 --> 00:12:26,409 Yeah, I saw a lot of examples of that. 132 00:12:26,409 --> 00:12:33,041 had a client in Illinois that, you Illinois passed some laws. 133 00:12:33,041 --> 00:12:47,285 This is quite a while ago, but they regulated what public schools or public education systems, sort of a priority order if they were doing layoffs for teachers. 134 00:12:47,285 --> 00:12:52,630 And it was based on seniority or tenure and then performance. 135 00:12:52,630 --> 00:13:01,577 And so there is this sort of calculation that you had to follow in order to maintain compliance with respect to who you lay off. 136 00:13:01,577 --> 00:13:11,185 So with our tool at Legal Anywhere, we helped them build essentially a management tool that would help. 137 00:13:11,906 --> 00:13:20,413 The law firm would sell to their clients in public education that would kind of calculate out the order from which they would have to make layoffs. 138 00:13:20,413 --> 00:13:22,594 So it would rank the teachers. 139 00:13:23,146 --> 00:13:25,247 for the layoffs in that fashion. 140 00:13:25,247 --> 00:13:29,649 So that's an example and they sold it and they did really well with it. 141 00:13:30,869 --> 00:13:38,643 You know, I had other examples where maybe the firms didn't monetize it quite so much, but it was like a big differentiator. 142 00:13:38,643 --> 00:13:44,355 So I had a customer that had a very large real estate portfolio. 143 00:13:44,355 --> 00:13:52,268 So it was a retail, the law firms client was a retailer with literally thousands of retail locations. 144 00:13:52,395 --> 00:13:58,080 And so the law firm historically was helping renewing all the leases every year. 145 00:13:58,080 --> 00:14:08,768 And you can imagine managing it back in the early 2000, it's all manual via spreadsheets, emails, which leases are up for renewal this year, know, who on the team is working and 146 00:14:08,768 --> 00:14:11,330 what lease is after coordinate with the client. 147 00:14:11,330 --> 00:14:17,174 So they basically built a tool, kind of a lease management tool, LMT. 148 00:14:17,515 --> 00:14:21,778 And the client could log in, they had access to all their lease 149 00:14:21,778 --> 00:14:25,021 locations, all the legal documents around it. 150 00:14:25,021 --> 00:14:34,668 And then there was dates and reminders and ticklers in advance of a lease coming up for renewal. 151 00:14:34,668 --> 00:14:45,596 So that's an example of how it's really like an early contract management tool or portfolio management tool that the law firm created before there was even that category of 152 00:14:45,596 --> 00:14:47,177 product existed. 153 00:14:48,866 --> 00:15:00,074 particular customer was not going to go to another law firm for a savings of $10 per hour because this tool added so much value to the relationship. 154 00:15:00,074 --> 00:15:12,374 And so we've seen a lot of examples, large litigation where you create kind of a litigation portfolio where the client can see kind of a heat map of where their litigation 155 00:15:12,374 --> 00:15:15,986 is occurring from and they click on the state that's 156 00:15:15,986 --> 00:15:20,170 Maybe it's California, it's the red state that has a lot of litigation. 157 00:15:20,170 --> 00:15:26,727 click on it and then they can sort of start seeing the sources of the litigation. 158 00:15:26,727 --> 00:15:39,869 So in some cases, this kind of data, the way that you provide the data to your client, the law firm is showing the client, if it's a large construction company, for example. 159 00:15:40,962 --> 00:15:49,229 the client can see, well, gosh, I'm getting a lot of litigation in these two sub-developments, and it looks like it's this sub-contractor that's causing me most of my 160 00:15:49,229 --> 00:15:50,330 problems. 161 00:15:50,330 --> 00:16:00,638 So again, there's a lot of value around that, and it has really very little to do with the legal services, but it's the law firm adding additional value within the relationship. 162 00:16:01,314 --> 00:16:03,328 So what happened to Legal Anywhere? 163 00:16:03,328 --> 00:16:05,472 I know you guys got bought by HiQ. 164 00:16:05,472 --> 00:16:11,473 Did they leverage the technology or just kind of end of life and roll everybody into HiQ? 165 00:16:13,324 --> 00:16:18,015 Yeah, Legal Anywhere, we were HiQ's biggest competitor. 166 00:16:18,015 --> 00:16:24,987 HiQ obviously started in London, wanted to work its way over to the United States. 167 00:16:24,987 --> 00:16:28,318 And I think we were sort of impeding their growth. 168 00:16:28,318 --> 00:16:36,700 So they acquired us with the intention of converting our client base onto the HiQ platform. 169 00:16:36,700 --> 00:16:41,862 And I think they were pretty successful doing that over the course of three or four years. 170 00:16:42,616 --> 00:16:50,769 There may be, there actually may be still a couple of customers out there that have self-hosted sites of Legal Anywhere. 171 00:16:50,769 --> 00:16:52,390 I know there was a few years ago. 172 00:16:52,390 --> 00:17:04,444 I haven't really looked recently, but yeah, the intent for Haikyuu was to absorb the Legal Anywhere customer base and convert them onto the Haikyuu platform. 173 00:17:04,546 --> 00:17:05,466 Gotcha. 174 00:17:05,907 --> 00:17:17,418 So, I've heard a lot about firms that leverage extranets in more advanced ways, building workflows. 175 00:17:17,418 --> 00:17:23,854 What's an example of a custom workflow that a specific practice area might leverage on their extranet? 176 00:17:23,854 --> 00:17:25,876 What does that picture look like? 177 00:17:27,148 --> 00:17:29,298 Yeah, that's a great question. 178 00:17:29,298 --> 00:17:36,241 And I always like to take a step back and let's really talk about what is a law firm? 179 00:17:36,241 --> 00:17:38,521 Is a law firm a single business? 180 00:17:38,521 --> 00:17:41,202 think a lot of people think it's a single business. 181 00:17:41,202 --> 00:17:43,262 I don't really view it that way. 182 00:17:43,343 --> 00:17:51,165 I kind of look at a law firm as sort of a portfolio of different businesses within a single entity. 183 00:17:51,165 --> 00:17:55,936 And the reason why I like to look at it that way from a technology standpoint, 184 00:17:57,004 --> 00:18:07,617 You know, you can't really take technology and just apply it the same way across a law firm because your litigators have significantly different needs than your transactional 185 00:18:07,617 --> 00:18:14,099 lawyers and your &A lawyers are a lot different than your general corporate lawyers, trust in estates, real estate. 186 00:18:14,099 --> 00:18:16,119 They all have different needs. 187 00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:25,090 And I guess at the end of the day, know, firms kind of break it down between litigation and transactional and maybe throw in regulatory, but. 188 00:18:25,090 --> 00:18:29,811 But I think you kind of have to look at it as a collection of individual business units. 189 00:18:29,811 --> 00:18:41,434 And so when you think about technology, law firms can go by a whole bunch of point solutions and they can accommodate a lot of their needs that way. 190 00:18:41,434 --> 00:18:52,878 But I think from an end user experience or from an internal user experience within a law firm, I think law firms have been really searching for, you know, sort of what I'll call 191 00:18:52,878 --> 00:18:54,658 the perfect solution. 192 00:18:54,658 --> 00:19:01,744 I think back in the early 2000s, everybody thought, you know, maybe SharePoint, enterprise SharePoint was the answer. 193 00:19:01,744 --> 00:19:05,027 But you touched on some of the issues that they had with enterprise SharePoint. 194 00:19:05,027 --> 00:19:19,509 was a heavy lift for a law firm, a lot of custom development, not fantastic security wise, you know, allowing external users in, you know, now that we hosted, we've got hosted 195 00:19:19,509 --> 00:19:23,562 SharePoint, every law firm on the planet has team SharePoint. 196 00:19:23,790 --> 00:19:36,316 It's really, think Microsoft has stepped up and provided a platform that, you know, players like you can come in and provide a platform that's pre-built and customized for 197 00:19:36,316 --> 00:19:36,856 law firms. 198 00:19:36,856 --> 00:19:44,819 So that, that I think sets the stage for an innovative law firm to create a unified client experience. 199 00:19:44,819 --> 00:19:51,072 So if they have a client that is using them across different practice areas, and let's face it. 200 00:19:51,540 --> 00:19:58,762 Every every AMLA firm in the world is trying to grow and diversify across practice areas into the client base. 201 00:19:58,762 --> 00:20:01,393 So clients aren't just using them for one piece. 202 00:20:01,393 --> 00:20:05,794 They want them to use them for litigation, corporate, real estate, the whole works. 203 00:20:06,014 --> 00:20:14,276 If your client has to log into different point solutions with different login interfaces, that's not a great user experience. 204 00:20:14,737 --> 00:20:20,238 So I think having that unified client interface for a client to log into 205 00:20:20,362 --> 00:20:22,844 with a law firm that's branded for the law firm. 206 00:20:22,844 --> 00:20:25,925 And now I'm getting to answer your question. 207 00:20:25,925 --> 00:20:32,389 They can provide solutions that are specific to different use cases or practice areas. 208 00:20:32,389 --> 00:20:34,890 So some additional examples. 209 00:20:35,571 --> 00:20:43,295 During COVID, I had a client that had a trust in the state's practice and they built an automated tool. 210 00:20:43,295 --> 00:20:49,498 Again, this kind of came up during COVID because, know, trust in the state's practices 211 00:20:49,538 --> 00:20:55,822 You know, there's a lot of client meetings, you know, to build the estate plan for a simple estate plan. 212 00:20:55,823 --> 00:20:58,064 You can pretty much automate it. 213 00:20:58,184 --> 00:21:04,489 So it allowed that firm to create, we'll call it a rudimentary estate plan with maybe a will to trust. 214 00:21:04,489 --> 00:21:05,680 It's kind of a menu. 215 00:21:05,680 --> 00:21:10,673 get certain things and the client, they built in document automation. 216 00:21:10,673 --> 00:21:16,748 They had the portal and then they had, they built in sort of an E signature component to it. 217 00:21:16,748 --> 00:21:17,548 So. 218 00:21:17,986 --> 00:21:28,033 Virtually the client they have a meeting with the client to talk about the client's needs what they need client fills out the form on the portal through a document automation 219 00:21:28,033 --> 00:21:32,516 Process, it actually builds the initial estate plan. 220 00:21:32,516 --> 00:21:43,344 It's reviewed by a paralegal and then a quick meeting between the lawyer and the client virtually Signed digitally and then delivered via the portal and they could do it for a 221 00:21:43,344 --> 00:21:46,678 finite amount of money because they're not spending a whole bunch of time on 222 00:21:46,678 --> 00:21:49,340 So they use the technology to facilitate that. 223 00:21:49,340 --> 00:21:50,751 So I think that's an example. 224 00:21:50,751 --> 00:21:57,968 We've seen a lot of examples, I think, on the young company side. 225 00:21:57,968 --> 00:22:12,429 if you've got a startup company and you need to go set up your organizational documents, your cap table, all your shareholder agreements or LLC member agreements, no entrepreneur 226 00:22:12,429 --> 00:22:14,861 in the world is interested in spending. 227 00:22:16,713 --> 00:22:20,094 $100,000 to go just set the table and make sure everything's right. 228 00:22:20,094 --> 00:22:26,234 So a lot of them kind of do it ad hoc, make a mess of it, and then later on they clean it up if they're successful. 229 00:22:26,234 --> 00:22:27,854 That's not ideal either. 230 00:22:27,854 --> 00:22:35,714 So I think a lot of law firms have, you know, sort of created their own mini ALSPs, know, so alternative legal service provider. 231 00:22:36,014 --> 00:22:37,934 Those came into play. 232 00:22:37,934 --> 00:22:43,884 That's really kind of a third party extranet that's just not sponsored by a law firm. 233 00:22:43,884 --> 00:22:53,512 that's filling a need within the marketplace because law firms with their, you know, typical hourly billing approach, they weren't meeting that need. 234 00:22:53,512 --> 00:22:56,344 So you have these technology provisions that come up. 235 00:22:56,344 --> 00:23:01,839 I think law firms have become smart and they started building their own internal ALSPs. 236 00:23:01,839 --> 00:23:11,967 So now you have large law firms that have, you know, founders workbench, or they have those, those spinoffs where an entrepreneur can come in and they get their initial 237 00:23:11,967 --> 00:23:13,618 documents for free. 238 00:23:14,478 --> 00:23:20,698 They're high quality and they sort of embed them now into the relationship with the law firm. 239 00:23:20,698 --> 00:23:22,718 So the law firm is creating a net. 240 00:23:22,718 --> 00:23:25,658 They're not spending a lot of lawyer time on it. 241 00:23:25,658 --> 00:23:36,078 And they're bringing people into the fold and those customers, you know, as their needs grow, then they'll likely use that law firm to continue doing the work when it becomes 242 00:23:36,078 --> 00:23:37,398 interesting. 243 00:23:38,278 --> 00:23:42,978 So, you know, once you start raising, you know, your series A, 244 00:23:43,426 --> 00:23:46,148 you know, now the legal work becomes more interesting. 245 00:23:46,148 --> 00:23:50,691 And I think the law firms have become smart about using that as a business development tool. 246 00:23:50,691 --> 00:23:52,372 So those are a couple of examples. 247 00:23:52,372 --> 00:23:59,197 There's really, what I love about extranets is there's really, you're limited by your imagination as a law firm. 248 00:23:59,197 --> 00:24:06,782 If you understand your client, you can build a solution that's unique to that particular client and be very nimble with it. 249 00:24:07,316 --> 00:24:08,206 Yeah. 250 00:24:08,446 --> 00:24:12,968 I know Wilson Sincini has Neuron, Cooley has Go. 251 00:24:12,968 --> 00:24:22,870 Those are both, I think, exactly what you described and fill that gap really well. 252 00:24:23,449 --> 00:24:26,481 what about leveraging financial data? 253 00:24:26,481 --> 00:24:36,790 I've always felt like law firms were hesitant to share too much financial data on 254 00:24:36,790 --> 00:24:46,014 their extra nets, you know, they don't want to make it too easy for clients to see how much they're spending over long periods of time. 255 00:24:46,014 --> 00:24:58,600 Um, so I, I think that, I think that competitively there is an advantage up for grabs there for firms that, because look, clients aren't stupid. 256 00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:04,192 Like they, they, have a finance people on their side that can go run the numbers. 257 00:25:04,214 --> 00:25:11,621 So they're going to get to the information, whether you make it easy for them or hard is, you know, potentially impacts your relationship. 258 00:25:11,621 --> 00:25:25,583 But, um, you know, I was thinking like, you know, transparency on budgets around matters and scope and like LPM, like has, is that, are those use cases that you've seen in your 259 00:25:25,583 --> 00:25:26,594 journeys? 260 00:25:27,574 --> 00:25:30,076 Yeah, absolutely. 261 00:25:30,096 --> 00:25:32,238 you're right, clients are not dumb. 262 00:25:32,238 --> 00:25:39,123 And to your point earlier about the legal market being, you know, finite and scattered, and it's also low growth. 263 00:25:39,123 --> 00:25:45,689 So I think law firms have figured out that if they're going to grow, it means they have to steal clients from other law firms. 264 00:25:45,689 --> 00:25:48,951 So that means the differentiation is super important. 265 00:25:48,951 --> 00:25:51,994 The problem is, is they don't know how to differentiate themselves. 266 00:25:51,994 --> 00:25:57,708 think technology has become a very strategic and key part of that. 267 00:25:57,708 --> 00:26:01,709 And then the other thing that you have to look at is why do clients leave law firms? 268 00:26:01,709 --> 00:26:04,440 It's for perceived lack of value. 269 00:26:06,201 --> 00:26:10,522 So if you're a law firm, you know, in your combating this, I want to grow. 270 00:26:10,522 --> 00:26:19,585 I'm having difficulty differentiating myself from my neighbors and you know, the biggest risk that we have is perceived lack of value. 271 00:26:19,785 --> 00:26:22,045 So how do we combat that? 272 00:26:22,626 --> 00:26:24,086 And you know, 273 00:26:24,322 --> 00:26:31,864 And your bigger clients, let's face it, they're going to make law firms participate on their spend management programs, you legal tracker. 274 00:26:31,864 --> 00:26:34,385 And I mean, there's, there's a bunch of them out there. 275 00:26:34,585 --> 00:26:40,307 And now the law firm has to feed all that data into the client system. 276 00:26:40,887 --> 00:26:49,169 I think really what, and that's not going to change your, your big super consumers of, lots of, of law firm services. 277 00:26:49,169 --> 00:26:52,152 They're going to be able to dictate how law firms work. 278 00:26:52,152 --> 00:27:03,296 But I think in the absence of that, think law firms that are more proactive, that provide clients with really good solutions are going to be able to control that process a little 279 00:27:03,296 --> 00:27:06,548 bit better and develop that transparency. 280 00:27:06,548 --> 00:27:20,283 And I think one of the big drivers for this sharing of financial information, I think we're seeing a lot of strain on the hourly billing model. 281 00:27:20,283 --> 00:27:22,178 So you're seeing a lot more fixed. 282 00:27:22,178 --> 00:27:23,139 fee billing. 283 00:27:23,139 --> 00:27:30,405 So I would say 15, 20 years ago, there's a handful of firms that occasionally might do it on an M &A deal. 284 00:27:30,405 --> 00:27:39,362 Today, I think you're seeing a majority of firms that are being forced to provide fixed fee work for transactions. 285 00:27:39,362 --> 00:27:44,016 But it kind of started there because I think they're a little more controllable. 286 00:27:44,016 --> 00:27:46,418 But you're seeing it in litigation now. 287 00:27:46,879 --> 00:27:51,276 So that forces law firms to move out of this, you know, cost plus 288 00:27:51,276 --> 00:27:55,789 mind frame into, okay, how do I grow my margins? 289 00:27:55,789 --> 00:28:03,074 So if I have a fixed fee, how do I grow my margin and reduce my delivery costs? 290 00:28:03,214 --> 00:28:11,140 And as part of that fixed fee, have to really understand the cost of them doing a litigation, but they also have to scope it. 291 00:28:11,140 --> 00:28:14,341 What's the scope of work that I'm doing for the customer? 292 00:28:15,382 --> 00:28:16,603 And put a box around it. 293 00:28:16,603 --> 00:28:20,856 And that's where I think a lot of firms struggle is, okay, we'll litigate this. 294 00:28:20,856 --> 00:28:23,527 for you for a million dollars or whatever. 295 00:28:24,487 --> 00:28:26,358 But then, you know, the scope grows. 296 00:28:26,358 --> 00:28:30,129 So think the firms that are really good at it, they put a budget in place. 297 00:28:30,129 --> 00:28:37,691 And then the transparency in the relationship means that every month they're updating the actual to the budget. 298 00:28:37,691 --> 00:28:43,973 And the client can see on a portal, they can see how much of the budget has been consumed. 299 00:28:43,973 --> 00:28:48,258 And I think what's even more important is when you tie that, tie... 300 00:28:48,258 --> 00:29:00,982 the progress of the work that we're doing around the financial information, it becomes really apparent to the customer, like are we on budget, under budget, over budget? 301 00:29:00,982 --> 00:29:11,245 And I think where it makes sense is on a litigation if we've agreed as part of our budget scope to review a million documents, but through discovery, it turns into two million 302 00:29:11,245 --> 00:29:12,345 documents. 303 00:29:12,345 --> 00:29:16,822 Well, now you've just put the client on notice early on in the case. 304 00:29:16,822 --> 00:29:19,023 We've just exceeded scope. 305 00:29:19,284 --> 00:29:28,129 So you're not waiting until the litigation is done and the client gets a big bill that's beyond the budget. 306 00:29:28,129 --> 00:29:32,352 And I think that's where a lot of law firms get in trouble on fixed fee billing. 307 00:29:32,712 --> 00:29:42,036 And that's where I think the value of sharing financial information along the way, as long as you embed the scope of the work in. 308 00:29:42,036 --> 00:29:47,153 and the progress involved so they can map the progress and the scope along with the bill. 309 00:29:47,515 --> 00:29:51,922 I think the firms that are doing that are the ones that are really succeeding with it. 310 00:29:51,922 --> 00:29:57,940 And it also allows them to find ways to reduce their own internal margins through the use of technology. 311 00:29:58,103 --> 00:29:58,353 Yeah. 312 00:29:58,353 --> 00:30:00,223 And this really isn't a law firm problem. 313 00:30:00,223 --> 00:30:03,895 I mean, we have the same problem in our professional services group. 314 00:30:03,895 --> 00:30:10,388 We don't do much fixed bid work, but we provide detailed estimates that we try and stay in line with. 315 00:30:10,388 --> 00:30:21,372 And when we encounter things, even if it's not a scope change, it could be an engineering challenge where we made some assumptions about an approach that might work, you know, 316 00:30:21,372 --> 00:30:25,494 approach a, and then we get in there and go, wow, we got to do approach B that's 317 00:30:25,686 --> 00:30:32,091 three X the cost, you know, we, we have, we make sure to have those conversations as early in the process as possible. 318 00:30:32,091 --> 00:30:33,512 Cause nobody likes surprises. 319 00:30:33,512 --> 00:30:45,603 Um, so one thing I wanted to make sure we spend a little bit of time on is the innovation of, of legal extra nets throughout the years. 320 00:30:45,603 --> 00:30:52,087 So from my perspective, not much has changed in the last, I mean, maybe it was since the acquisition. 321 00:30:52,087 --> 00:30:54,870 mean, high cube dominates the marketplace today. 322 00:30:55,118 --> 00:31:07,782 Um, you know, and I don't know if that's a function of just stabilized requirements, you know, some like CRMs, what big advancement in CRMs has there been in the last five years? 323 00:31:07,782 --> 00:31:08,462 Not many. 324 00:31:08,462 --> 00:31:16,465 can tell you, we've been using CRMs for 25 years in various ventures and, um, not much has changed there. 325 00:31:16,465 --> 00:31:20,666 Uh, so I don't know if it's that, or if it's 326 00:31:20,790 --> 00:31:24,536 just because there's been almost a monopoly in the marketplace? 327 00:31:24,536 --> 00:31:29,532 Or if you even agree that there hasn't been a lot of innovation, what is your take on that? 328 00:31:31,032 --> 00:31:34,248 Well, I think there's been a lot of innovation. 329 00:31:36,802 --> 00:31:49,312 But I think we're not hearing about it as much because I think law firms have sort of figured out that how they do things is becoming part of their intellectual property. 330 00:31:49,312 --> 00:31:57,879 So they're less likely to go out into the market and broadcast like, hey, we're doing this because they're using it competitively. 331 00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:05,585 whereas I think 15, 20 years ago firms were really super willing to share best practices across the board. 332 00:32:06,926 --> 00:32:17,690 So I think if law firms come up with a very unique service offering, they really don't want to broadcast it out because they're using it to compete more effectively. 333 00:32:18,651 --> 00:32:24,026 Whether you and I call it innovative versus whether a law firm thinks it's innovative. 334 00:32:24,026 --> 00:32:31,816 I they're doing a lot of things that you're like, of course, but it's innovative in the sense that it's not really being done across the market. 335 00:32:31,816 --> 00:32:37,034 And I think with the onset of workflow, I think that's 336 00:32:37,034 --> 00:32:43,700 allowing law firms to become more innovative with how they deliver. 337 00:32:44,441 --> 00:32:50,847 I think the things that have held firms back is really, you know, it's the technology or the platform. 338 00:32:50,847 --> 00:32:56,652 So, you know, early on it was, you know, enterprise SharePoint. 339 00:32:56,652 --> 00:33:04,108 Well, there were firms doing some innovative things, but it didn't really hit the whole market because most firms weren't willing to spend. 340 00:33:04,654 --> 00:33:16,177 $3 million to build a client portal system and then spend expensive development time chasing after one offs for large clients. 341 00:33:16,177 --> 00:33:17,478 That's a barrier. 342 00:33:17,478 --> 00:33:28,081 So with Legal Anywhere, we came on, we sort of democratized the ability for firms to be innovative without having them to do a lot of software development. 343 00:33:28,081 --> 00:33:29,881 But then they're limited by the platform. 344 00:33:29,881 --> 00:33:32,576 I think Haikyu came along, they added 345 00:33:32,576 --> 00:33:34,286 more functionality over time. 346 00:33:34,286 --> 00:33:48,210 So there's workflow, there's more integrations, but limitations with HiQ, I think there hasn't been a lot of innovation in that platform over the last five, six, seven years. 347 00:33:48,210 --> 00:33:50,291 It's pretty static. 348 00:33:50,291 --> 00:33:58,593 Doesn't mean firms aren't doing interesting things with it, but it's also a pretty heavy lift and it's a proprietary platform. 349 00:33:58,593 --> 00:34:01,994 So there's a skillset involved. 350 00:34:02,190 --> 00:34:07,170 You know, it's not an easy lift for somebody to learn how to be really good with IQ. 351 00:34:07,350 --> 00:34:13,290 Not hard to spin up basic sites, but you can spin up basic sites on anything pretty easily these days. 352 00:34:13,290 --> 00:34:21,490 But now I think with, you know, with Microsoft 365 and every law firm in the world has Microsoft 365. 353 00:34:21,490 --> 00:34:32,030 They've got Teams, they've got hosted SharePoint and they're, you know, it's a platform now that has become more democratized because the architecture behind it's easier. 354 00:34:32,994 --> 00:34:34,745 and they're trying to figure out how to use it. 355 00:34:34,745 --> 00:34:49,159 So I think the platforms are evolving and I think as the platform evolves and I think what you guys are doing, sort of democratizing for law firms, What you're able to do on top of 356 00:34:49,419 --> 00:34:59,892 Microsoft 365 and Teams and tapping into all this great platform technology that Microsoft has made available that, let's face it. 357 00:34:59,974 --> 00:35:05,516 a High Q is not going to be able to compete with Microsoft on underlying platform capabilities. 358 00:35:05,516 --> 00:35:14,200 So you're just making it really easy in providing highly valuable functionality on top of this platform that law firms already own. 359 00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:18,712 And that's going to further enhance the law firms ability to innovate. 360 00:35:18,712 --> 00:35:22,583 So I think what's really held law firms back, well, there's two things. 361 00:35:23,564 --> 00:35:27,459 There's a lot of law firms that aren't really innovative within their culture. 362 00:35:27,459 --> 00:35:29,240 And so they follow the pack. 363 00:35:29,240 --> 00:35:31,961 I mean, they're not gonna be the early adopters. 364 00:35:31,961 --> 00:35:39,213 They're gonna be dragged along because their clients demand it because they're getting these services from other law firms. 365 00:35:39,213 --> 00:35:41,273 So those firms get dragged along. 366 00:35:41,493 --> 00:35:50,246 But you've got the innovative law firms and there's a growing number of innovative law firms that now are going to be able to do more because the platforms make it easier for 367 00:35:50,246 --> 00:35:50,876 them to do more. 368 00:35:50,876 --> 00:35:53,376 I think they've been limited by the platform. 369 00:35:54,357 --> 00:35:59,158 Even if they had the creativity and the innovative culture. 370 00:35:59,354 --> 00:36:05,101 there's a cost to having to use platforms that are limited and do custom development. 371 00:36:05,101 --> 00:36:13,738 I think the platforms as they evolve, they're making it a lot easier for law firms to be more innovative and to be really nimble with it. 372 00:36:13,738 --> 00:36:16,959 Yeah, so I mean, that's where we're putting our chips on the table. 373 00:36:16,959 --> 00:36:30,075 So for those that don't know, Info dash is built entirely on M 365 and Azure, and we deploy in the client's tenant and the advantage to that there's advantages and 374 00:36:30,075 --> 00:36:31,465 disadvantages. 375 00:36:32,106 --> 00:36:35,237 You know, from our perspective, I'll talk about the disadvantages first. 376 00:36:35,237 --> 00:36:37,828 It's harder to push updates, right? 377 00:36:37,828 --> 00:36:39,699 We've really nailed it down to a science. 378 00:36:39,699 --> 00:36:42,572 It's pretty painless now when we first started out, 379 00:36:42,572 --> 00:36:44,423 there was a big learning curve there. 380 00:36:44,423 --> 00:36:55,311 But you know, at end of the day, we have hundreds of clients with all, we still have to push those updates into their tenant where if you host it, then you can, you have control. 381 00:36:55,311 --> 00:36:59,314 Um, That's the main downside on the, on the upside. 382 00:36:59,314 --> 00:37:03,417 However, we think far outweighs the downsides. 383 00:37:03,417 --> 00:37:11,254 We, we, because we deploy in the client's tenant, have tentacles into all of their infrastructure and systems, which means that 384 00:37:11,254 --> 00:37:24,850 they can surface data from any data source that they want and not only push that information into an extra net or intranet, but they can enable Power Automate and build 385 00:37:24,850 --> 00:37:27,271 workflows on, that data. 386 00:37:27,271 --> 00:37:35,354 So if you want a new matter intake process, you want to provision sites, a team site, anytime a new matter is open. 387 00:37:35,354 --> 00:37:39,327 Well, we stand up our integration hub in your environment. 388 00:37:39,327 --> 00:37:42,089 It talks to your practice management solution. 389 00:37:43,030 --> 00:37:48,454 Power automate places a trigger anytime a new matter is provisioned. 390 00:37:48,454 --> 00:37:52,416 It goes off in complete steps one through X. 391 00:37:52,737 --> 00:38:02,264 You can use power apps if you want to build low code applications on top of your line of business data. 392 00:38:02,264 --> 00:38:03,935 You have complete control. 393 00:38:03,935 --> 00:38:06,102 It's within your security perimeter. 394 00:38:06,102 --> 00:38:11,665 So you no longer have to worry about a third party hosting your data. 395 00:38:13,387 --> 00:38:18,110 And you control the risk as well. 396 00:38:18,110 --> 00:38:30,278 we really push our clients to leverage sound change management practices and separating environments where you're not making changes in prod. 397 00:38:30,278 --> 00:38:35,898 You're doing it in dev and pushing it into QA and then in the, you know, so 398 00:38:35,898 --> 00:38:48,211 Um, a tremendous amount of control access to a lot of the on-prem data and then some other things that, that you alluded to is, okay, now you can leverage all your line of business 399 00:38:48,211 --> 00:38:55,213 data with Azure, uh, Azure open AI or Azure AI search or co-pilot, right? 400 00:38:55,213 --> 00:38:59,024 Because we are integration hub enables that. 401 00:38:59,024 --> 00:39:05,896 So the types of experiences that you can deliver to clients becomes almost infinite. 402 00:39:06,334 --> 00:39:10,257 And it really puts firms in the driver's seat. 403 00:39:10,698 --> 00:39:17,204 You know, with building customizations in high queue, the deployment is rough, right? 404 00:39:17,204 --> 00:39:27,873 And with the way we've architected InfoDash, you know, we have modular solutions that once you deploy them through our admin center, it's drag and drop on any page that you want. 405 00:39:27,873 --> 00:39:30,896 You can build templates with them and deploy them. 406 00:39:30,896 --> 00:39:33,888 So, and then lastly, 407 00:39:34,219 --> 00:39:44,862 something called B2B sharing that Microsoft enables, which is a, I think is going to be a total game changer where if law firms enable B2B sharing with some of their clients, they 408 00:39:44,862 --> 00:39:47,662 enable essentially single sign on. 409 00:39:47,662 --> 00:39:56,185 if I, if I share a channel, a team's channel with a client, that client in their native teams, tenant goes to the channel. 410 00:39:56,185 --> 00:39:57,885 They no longer have to log in. 411 00:39:57,885 --> 00:40:02,060 no separate set of credentials, no separate URL, no separate user interface. 412 00:40:02,060 --> 00:40:04,791 Cause every high Q site looks different that I've seen. 413 00:40:05,131 --> 00:40:15,075 you've got a consistent interface and now any notifications associated with that channel are coalesced into the notifications that I see every day. 414 00:40:15,075 --> 00:40:26,080 So like, and you know, if you want to enable, your clients to ping you directly with an instant message, you have that ability and see your presence and everything else talking 415 00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,861 about making your lawyers more available. 416 00:40:28,861 --> 00:40:30,092 Some of them won't like that. 417 00:40:30,092 --> 00:40:31,062 And I get it. 418 00:40:31,062 --> 00:40:36,487 but that's one way to really grease the skids on client collaboration. 419 00:40:36,487 --> 00:40:40,040 we're super excited about it and we think it's going to absolutely change the game. 420 00:40:40,652 --> 00:40:41,833 Yeah, absolutely. 421 00:40:41,833 --> 00:40:54,148 mean, the, I think a fundamental advantage that you have is that you're actually able to tap into the actual data sources within your client organizations where, you know, with 422 00:40:54,368 --> 00:41:05,513 other, other products out there, they can integrate, but you're really grabbing information and pulling it, sinking it into like a high Q database. 423 00:41:05,513 --> 00:41:08,254 And then you're, and then you're sharing it out. 424 00:41:08,300 --> 00:41:14,692 So there's another step in there and that requires work and it's something that can break. 425 00:41:14,733 --> 00:41:27,708 So I think the Microsoft platform being able to tie into all these different data sources directly and then build in the automation around that between the different tools that law 426 00:41:27,708 --> 00:41:29,950 firms use commonly every day. 427 00:41:29,950 --> 00:41:33,320 I think that's a really big value proposition. 428 00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:37,472 And then to be candid, mean, the other thing that 429 00:41:37,486 --> 00:41:49,686 I think made extranets not difficult, but maybe a little less friendly to cut to clients is that, gosh, there's another, there's another place I have to go log into and remember 430 00:41:49,686 --> 00:41:51,706 my credentials and all this. 431 00:41:51,706 --> 00:42:01,146 And that's, that's been an Achilles heel of, you know, the, we'll call it, you know, the platform limitations that we've talked about a few minutes ago is that that's a, that's a 432 00:42:01,146 --> 00:42:02,326 change in user behavior. 433 00:42:02,326 --> 00:42:07,270 And again, I think one of the big advantages that you have is that 434 00:42:07,338 --> 00:42:09,999 everybody in the world has Microsoft, right? 435 00:42:09,999 --> 00:42:18,401 So now they can interact with the law firm through their own user interface and their own Microsoft stack. 436 00:42:18,401 --> 00:42:21,022 So their users aren't having to do anything differently. 437 00:42:21,022 --> 00:42:28,344 That's a game changer because it makes that collaboration just easier between the entities. 438 00:42:28,344 --> 00:42:37,058 And the other nice thing is that the client organization controls who has access to the information. 439 00:42:37,058 --> 00:42:48,184 That's another limitation that we've struggled with on the extranet side for years is, you know, law firm doesn't always know when people leave the client organization and now they 440 00:42:48,184 --> 00:42:52,066 have access to this confidential information. 441 00:42:52,166 --> 00:42:58,230 And there has to be a manual process between the law firm and the client organization to remove access. 442 00:42:58,230 --> 00:43:06,504 So that's a, you know, that's a bit of a security risk and, and, and an administrative issue that I think is solved. 443 00:43:07,226 --> 00:43:12,514 with the sort of the SharePoint and Teams platform model. 444 00:43:12,514 --> 00:43:14,280 So it's really pretty exciting. 445 00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:20,962 And those things are, even though we think they're small from a user standpoint, they're actually fairly big. 446 00:43:20,962 --> 00:43:21,442 Yeah. 447 00:43:21,442 --> 00:43:38,149 I mean, I can't imagine being a GC with 40 panel firms and having 40 High Q sites and 40 sets of credentials and 40 different user interface because each one of my panel firms 448 00:43:38,149 --> 00:43:40,020 customizes it a little differently. 449 00:43:40,020 --> 00:43:50,614 I feel like it will reduce the friction dramatically in the client law firm relationship, which 450 00:43:51,221 --> 00:44:01,647 Historically, there's been a lot of friction there and anything you can do to grease those skids is going to add value and ultimately improve the customer journey, which is a key 451 00:44:01,647 --> 00:44:03,068 retention metric. 452 00:44:05,182 --> 00:44:08,624 It's, you know, I think it's a very key retention metric. 453 00:44:08,624 --> 00:44:16,648 and again, we've sort of, you know, talked about how, you know, some law firms have less innovation in their culture, less imagination. 454 00:44:16,648 --> 00:44:24,883 But one thing you saw, he's drive me nuts is, you know, marketing within law firms is often, you know, well, what have we always done? 455 00:44:24,883 --> 00:44:26,744 There's two questions. 456 00:44:26,744 --> 00:44:27,845 What have we always done? 457 00:44:27,845 --> 00:44:31,937 You're in a partner's meeting and what's everybody else in town doing? 458 00:44:31,937 --> 00:44:32,662 Right? 459 00:44:32,662 --> 00:44:34,368 I mean, I'm like, 460 00:44:34,414 --> 00:44:37,994 I've been saying this for 20 years, like that's not marketing. 461 00:44:37,994 --> 00:44:42,034 You guys need to do something different and better than everybody else. 462 00:44:42,034 --> 00:44:51,794 But that's how a lot of law firms make decisions because we in the legal community are sort of raised up through law school to look at precedents. 463 00:44:51,834 --> 00:44:57,594 And so, yeah, think being innovative and different is crucial. 464 00:44:57,594 --> 00:45:04,174 And I think more and more firms are understanding that and the ones that do are going to be the ones that... 465 00:45:04,174 --> 00:45:08,494 really focus on adding that value into the client relationship. 466 00:45:08,914 --> 00:45:19,134 the client doesn't care that they charge $20 more an hour because all this other value that they're getting in service makes it worth it. 467 00:45:19,134 --> 00:45:25,954 That's where law firms get in trouble, lack of perceived value for the price that's being charged. 468 00:45:25,954 --> 00:45:29,604 And the firms that really focus on service in 469 00:45:29,986 --> 00:45:39,633 innovation in how they deliver the legal services are going to be the winners and the ones that grow their revenue at the expense of the firms around them. 470 00:45:39,633 --> 00:45:42,074 I mean, that is super key. 471 00:45:42,659 --> 00:45:43,259 Yeah. 472 00:45:43,259 --> 00:45:47,381 The, think listening to your customers is, is, is really important. 473 00:45:47,381 --> 00:45:54,514 We have a, we have a customer advisory panel that informs our product roadmap that meets with us. 474 00:45:54,514 --> 00:46:08,889 think we're every other month now and man, the insights that we get from them as part of that process are absolutely invaluable and allow us to serve them better and ultimately 475 00:46:08,889 --> 00:46:11,520 improve product market fit and 476 00:46:11,682 --> 00:46:16,286 product market fit is without it, you're dead, right? 477 00:46:16,286 --> 00:46:18,708 With it, you've got a chance. 478 00:46:18,708 --> 00:46:20,690 You got to do a lot of other things, right too. 479 00:46:20,690 --> 00:46:31,058 You have to execute market yourself well, but step one is, is product market fit and listening to your customers is a, is a key ingredient to that. 480 00:46:32,278 --> 00:46:33,858 Yeah, that is exactly right. 481 00:46:33,858 --> 00:46:45,265 And you know you're doing it right when you have customers that are actively involved in product development and providing feedback because they're engaged and because they know 482 00:46:45,265 --> 00:46:55,971 you're listening to them and you're delivering those features that are providing that unique value that they're asking for. 483 00:46:56,291 --> 00:46:57,232 That's number one. 484 00:46:57,232 --> 00:47:01,664 Then number two, when you do that right, then your customers become your best sales force. 485 00:47:01,874 --> 00:47:13,100 Um, I mean, nothing in legal marketplace is better than a customer telling another law firm that, know, wow, info dash is amazing. 486 00:47:13,100 --> 00:47:17,003 We use their product, does all sorts of things and they're fantastic to work with. 487 00:47:17,003 --> 00:47:22,485 That's, mean, that's really the recipe and it's gold and it's so simple. 488 00:47:22,485 --> 00:47:31,030 Um, and it's just, and it's, it's so fun when you can execute that way and you develop those great client relationships that last for 489 00:47:31,030 --> 00:47:32,713 years and years and years. 490 00:47:32,795 --> 00:47:34,356 That's where everybody wins. 491 00:47:34,356 --> 00:47:35,097 A hundred percent. 492 00:47:35,097 --> 00:47:37,498 We have multiple award winners. 493 00:47:37,979 --> 00:47:45,163 We have firms, two firms who won, who have won Ilta's Tramps transformative project of the year. 494 00:47:45,503 --> 00:47:56,240 We have another one who won step to intranet gold, which is a non-legal award program. 495 00:47:56,240 --> 00:47:59,472 Like it's across all verticals and they won gold. 496 00:47:59,553 --> 00:48:02,170 So, you know, making your client successful. 497 00:48:02,170 --> 00:48:04,671 is a key ingredient. 498 00:48:04,671 --> 00:48:04,982 All right. 499 00:48:04,982 --> 00:48:08,053 We're almost out of time, but I wanted to bounce one last thing off of you. 500 00:48:08,053 --> 00:48:16,738 And this is something new and it's something that we're calling unified collaboration. 501 00:48:16,738 --> 00:48:18,589 I hate the terms internet and extranet. 502 00:48:18,589 --> 00:48:21,281 They actually no longer make sense, right? 503 00:48:21,281 --> 00:48:28,675 They did when we had a firewall and we had on-prem infrastructure and intra, but everything's in the cloud now for the most part. 504 00:48:28,675 --> 00:48:31,656 So everything is an extranet essentially. 505 00:48:31,702 --> 00:48:34,583 But what do you think about? 506 00:48:34,784 --> 00:48:43,519 So with info dash, you will have one system to manage both your internal collaboration, IE intranet and external collaboration, extranet. 507 00:48:43,519 --> 00:48:51,453 It'll all be, so there will be one interface to learn one product to license and one system to manage. 508 00:48:51,453 --> 00:48:58,817 So bringing those together and not, instead of having high Q and handshake, you know, you have, you have one system. 509 00:48:58,817 --> 00:49:00,770 How, how important 510 00:49:00,770 --> 00:49:02,451 Do think that is gonna be? 511 00:49:03,578 --> 00:49:18,326 I think for adoption within a law firm, user experience, frankly outside the law firm, because I think that same concept as we talked about a few minutes ago extends outside the 512 00:49:18,326 --> 00:49:19,127 law firm as well. 513 00:49:19,127 --> 00:49:23,379 But let's focus on inside of a law firm. 514 00:49:23,379 --> 00:49:27,911 Your lawyers come in, they've got their desktop and their user interface. 515 00:49:27,911 --> 00:49:33,344 And really what an extranet is versus an internet to your point is, 516 00:49:33,344 --> 00:49:43,418 is really which of this information am I extending out beyond my organization to include clients and other parties outside of the law firm? 517 00:49:43,418 --> 00:49:50,401 I mean, it really should be the same system from a UI standpoint inside the law firm. 518 00:49:50,401 --> 00:49:52,562 I'm not having to do anything different. 519 00:49:52,562 --> 00:50:02,136 Whereas I think with the other tools and the limitations of some of the other platforms, well, now I have my internal tool. 520 00:50:02,136 --> 00:50:09,748 that I go work on and it syncs with the extranet and now I gotta go do stuff on the extranet to separate place. 521 00:50:09,748 --> 00:50:11,209 It's another activity. 522 00:50:11,209 --> 00:50:15,050 It's less efficient and it's less desirable for an end user. 523 00:50:15,050 --> 00:50:18,611 You you're more innovative users in the law firm. 524 00:50:18,611 --> 00:50:24,642 Okay, sure, they're gonna do that because they know the value they're giving their clients and they'll have their paralegal go do that. 525 00:50:24,642 --> 00:50:30,926 But to the degree that they don't have to do anything different, they're within one user interface, I think it's a 526 00:50:30,926 --> 00:50:38,926 It's a really big deal and I think it will help a law firm successfully implement the technology. 527 00:50:39,126 --> 00:50:47,506 So there's a lot of great tools that law firms have purchased over the years that their end users don't adopt because they're not user friendly, right? 528 00:50:47,506 --> 00:50:56,566 That's really, if I'm a CIO or a KM person or an innovation person in a law firm, what am I really worried about when I go buy something? 529 00:50:56,566 --> 00:50:58,686 Is it going to be successful? 530 00:50:58,686 --> 00:50:59,960 Now there's a lot of 531 00:50:59,960 --> 00:51:05,232 There's a lot of aspects that define what makes a project successful within a law firm. 532 00:51:05,472 --> 00:51:09,614 But usability is one of the key features. 533 00:51:09,614 --> 00:51:20,058 And again, if you're just using the same platform that they're using every day anyway, and you're adding some additional killer functionality on top of it. 534 00:51:20,058 --> 00:51:21,969 And then same thing with the client. 535 00:51:21,969 --> 00:51:29,666 Now the client can interact with the law firm through the same user experience that they're used to inside, but now they 536 00:51:29,666 --> 00:51:34,447 you've just extended access to information to them within their system. 537 00:51:34,447 --> 00:51:35,648 That's a game changer. 538 00:51:35,648 --> 00:51:40,139 That's not something that we've been able to effectively, I think, see before. 539 00:51:40,139 --> 00:51:44,671 It's been a limitation of the platforms that have evolved over the years. 540 00:51:44,671 --> 00:51:46,301 And now we're in a new state. 541 00:51:46,301 --> 00:51:56,364 And I think it's pretty exciting because I think it will accelerate the success law firms can have rolling out these solutions to their users. 542 00:51:56,471 --> 00:51:56,971 Yeah. 543 00:51:56,971 --> 00:51:59,022 And they've, they've always been separate. 544 00:51:59,022 --> 00:52:06,656 at least in the U S high Q has pretty much zero market share on the internet side, handshake, which was the predominant player. 545 00:52:06,656 --> 00:52:08,317 think we've taken that role. 546 00:52:08,317 --> 00:52:19,513 Um, you know, they have zero presence in, even though they had a product at one point, um, they, they, never, it never went anywhere. 547 00:52:19,513 --> 00:52:24,562 So it's been tried before, but I think the timing wasn't quite right. 548 00:52:24,562 --> 00:52:26,824 Um, the timing is right now. 549 00:52:26,824 --> 00:52:34,610 So we think bringing these things together, uh, you know, and not having specialized skill sets like, and specialized teams. 550 00:52:34,610 --> 00:52:42,297 know so many law firms that have two, three, sometimes five people managing their high Q environment. 551 00:52:42,297 --> 00:52:54,396 And if, if, and that's best case scenario, it costs more, but if you've got one person managing your high Q solution and that person leaves, you're in a world of hurt. 552 00:52:54,980 --> 00:52:55,302 Yeah. 553 00:52:55,302 --> 00:52:58,243 hard to find people who really know how to manage that. 554 00:52:58,243 --> 00:53:01,914 So yeah, we're thinking that these are commodity skills. 555 00:53:01,914 --> 00:53:11,457 Everybody, you know, you can find a SharePoint guy easily, but more easily than you can somebody who knows a specialized technology like high Q there's a lot more of them out 556 00:53:11,457 --> 00:53:11,747 there. 557 00:53:11,747 --> 00:53:16,188 So, and your IT can also provide some support in a pinch. 558 00:53:16,188 --> 00:53:23,164 You know, if you're in KM, you may not want to rely solely on IT because they've got a big backlog and you know, but 559 00:53:23,164 --> 00:53:25,346 Um, in a pinch, you certainly could. 560 00:53:25,346 --> 00:53:27,633 we're thinking that is also going to move the dial. 561 00:53:27,854 --> 00:53:29,474 Yeah, absolutely. 562 00:53:29,474 --> 00:53:36,914 think the administration of the system is also a big factor involved. 563 00:53:37,294 --> 00:53:43,894 And I think being able to customize the administrative model within a firm makes a lot of sense. 564 00:53:43,894 --> 00:53:48,714 mean, let's face it, IT shouldn't be in the business of having to add client users. 565 00:53:48,814 --> 00:53:51,014 That's just inefficient. 566 00:53:51,014 --> 00:53:56,254 It's not a good use of their time, and it's frustrating because they just won't respond quickly. 567 00:53:56,254 --> 00:53:57,318 However, 568 00:53:57,346 --> 00:54:07,464 giving IT management oversight and understanding of the system and how it's being used so they can manage the security around the overall system is important. 569 00:54:07,464 --> 00:54:09,957 So it's really a balance. 570 00:54:09,957 --> 00:54:17,014 And that's a balance that's been difficult to achieve before within the previous platforms that were out there. 571 00:54:17,014 --> 00:54:17,796 Yeah. 572 00:54:17,796 --> 00:54:19,539 Well, Don, this has been a great conversation. 573 00:54:19,539 --> 00:54:20,554 Went a little bit over. 574 00:54:20,554 --> 00:54:24,660 I apologize for that, but it was such a good dialogue. 575 00:54:24,660 --> 00:54:25,812 I didn't want to end it. 576 00:54:25,812 --> 00:54:28,948 So I really appreciate you joining me today. 577 00:54:29,038 --> 00:54:30,278 Yeah, thank you, Ted. 578 00:54:30,278 --> 00:54:33,998 As always, it's fun to talk about this. 579 00:54:33,998 --> 00:54:37,418 So thank you for inviting me to participate. 580 00:54:37,418 --> 00:54:39,938 Really appreciate it. 581 00:54:39,978 --> 00:54:40,558 You bet. 582 00:54:40,558 --> 00:54:41,698 Thank you. 00:00:05,056 Don Fuchs, how are you this morning? 2 00:00:05,686 --> 00:00:06,619 I'm doing great, Ted. 3 00:00:06,619 --> 00:00:07,571 How are you doing? 4 00:00:07,571 --> 00:00:08,480 Thanks for having me. 5 00:00:08,480 --> 00:00:09,140 Yeah, man. 6 00:00:09,140 --> 00:00:10,561 Thanks for coming. 7 00:00:10,561 --> 00:00:18,367 You and I have talked a lot about the topics that we're going to discuss today, and I think it's going to be a great conversation. 8 00:00:18,708 --> 00:00:23,071 But before we jump into that, I want to get you properly introduced. 9 00:00:23,192 --> 00:00:32,169 You've been around the legal tech space for a really long time as a founder and then working with Opus 2 and Hi-Q and 10 00:00:32,887 --> 00:00:37,649 I'd say you're probably one of the more knowledgeable people on the planet about legal extranets. 11 00:00:38,010 --> 00:00:42,952 So it's going to be a treat to dig into some of your knowledge and experience today. 12 00:00:44,153 --> 00:00:49,494 Why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, your background and, and what you're up to these days. 13 00:00:50,114 --> 00:00:51,174 Yeah, thanks, Ted. 14 00:00:51,174 --> 00:00:52,815 Appreciate that. 15 00:00:53,335 --> 00:00:54,695 Yeah, gosh. 16 00:00:54,695 --> 00:01:07,018 I graduated from law school back in the late 90s and pretty soon after that got into extranets really early on with LegalAnywhere. 17 00:01:07,159 --> 00:01:19,476 And LegalAnywhere was sort of a multifaceted journey with different ownership where we sold early and then ended up buying it back after the dot com era. 18 00:01:19,476 --> 00:01:21,647 ended long time ago. 19 00:01:22,747 --> 00:01:33,102 But yeah, it's been it's been fun to see extra nets and legal collaboration from its infancy all the way on through to where it is today. 20 00:01:33,102 --> 00:01:39,654 It's, it's really amazing because back in the 90s law firms, lot of law firms didn't even have public websites. 21 00:01:39,654 --> 00:01:48,718 So this whole concept of sharing confidential information on the internet with clients was sort of crazy got laughed out of 22 00:01:48,718 --> 00:01:52,558 more than a few law firms at that time. 23 00:01:52,798 --> 00:01:56,558 So it's really neat to see that this has really become a standard. 24 00:01:57,138 --> 00:02:04,718 so Legal Anywhere kind of worked there through 2018 and then Haikyuu acquired Legal Anywhere at that point. 25 00:02:05,378 --> 00:02:13,478 And I was with Haikyuu through their acquisition or their acquisition from TR. 26 00:02:13,810 --> 00:02:19,736 And then I joined Opus 2 and was with Opus 2 for about four years as well. 27 00:02:19,736 --> 00:02:31,424 So yeah, it's fun to see a product like this grow from infancy to maturity where it is today and what great things are being done because the market has changed. 28 00:02:31,424 --> 00:02:32,314 Yeah. 29 00:02:32,314 --> 00:02:39,478 So by the time this airs, we will have fully launched press release and we'll be full kind of go to market with, with extra net. 30 00:02:39,478 --> 00:02:42,730 We've been working on the product for a really long time. 31 00:02:42,730 --> 00:02:56,738 So regular listeners probably know the story, but we started off a consulting organization back in 2008 called Acrowire and we fell down the legal rabbit hole very early and we 32 00:02:56,738 --> 00:03:00,480 built a lot of bespoke intranets and extranets. 33 00:03:00,608 --> 00:03:04,021 Mostly intranets, but we built some, extra net solutions as well. 34 00:03:04,021 --> 00:03:16,311 You know, primarily on SharePoint and you know, that was back in the on-prem days where you stood up a DMZ and pushed a SharePoint farm out public facing and you had to manage 35 00:03:16,311 --> 00:03:18,492 users and muddy up your active directory. 36 00:03:18,492 --> 00:03:26,338 And there was no single sign on and it was just unpleasant to say the least. 37 00:03:26,919 --> 00:03:30,562 So we have those battle scars and a lot of those learnings. 38 00:03:30,915 --> 00:03:43,161 And yeah, we're super excited about what we're bringing to market because we feel like it's different than what's available today, which we're going to talk a little bit about. 39 00:03:43,161 --> 00:03:53,746 But, you know, I really want to tap into just your, your perspective on the evolution of extra nets because you've been around it as long as anyone. 40 00:03:53,907 --> 00:04:00,290 And, you know, it seems like from where I sit and you predate me by probably 10 years. 41 00:04:01,044 --> 00:04:12,982 It seems like, you know, things started off with basic, basic document sharing and, know, morph their way into more sophisticated use cases. 42 00:04:12,982 --> 00:04:20,428 Um, but when I look really at, at the landscape, it's still a lot of document collaboration. 43 00:04:20,428 --> 00:04:27,632 Um, you know, clients sync, uh, IQ is the, is the predominant player in the space for now. 44 00:04:28,493 --> 00:04:29,570 and you know, 45 00:04:29,570 --> 00:04:39,771 Client sync documents from the DMS during the life cycle of a matter, do their thing and then archive the site. 46 00:04:39,771 --> 00:04:47,855 A lot of times those sites end up living on for a very, very long time, which can make things expensive. 47 00:04:48,556 --> 00:04:55,658 yeah, give us kind of a overview of the evolution as you've seen it over these last, God, what is it? 48 00:04:55,658 --> 00:04:57,484 It's probably 25 years. 49 00:04:57,686 --> 00:04:58,847 Yeah, it is. 50 00:04:58,847 --> 00:04:59,107 Yeah. 51 00:04:59,107 --> 00:05:01,406 Maybe going on 30 actually. 52 00:05:01,406 --> 00:05:03,109 I hate to say it. 53 00:05:04,871 --> 00:05:05,241 Yeah. 54 00:05:05,241 --> 00:05:13,597 So back in the early days, know, mid nineties, you know, this worldwide web thing was pretty new law firms, you know, were a little late to the game. 55 00:05:13,597 --> 00:05:17,059 Um, you know, no surprise back then. 56 00:05:17,066 --> 00:05:22,294 Um, but, know, there was a fundamental problem of, you know, sharing information with clients. 57 00:05:22,294 --> 00:05:26,446 So they were doing it, you know, through a lot of FedEx and couriers back then. 58 00:05:26,446 --> 00:05:27,126 in 59 00:05:27,278 --> 00:05:42,114 So really, extranets really kind of started with really large litigations and transactions where you've got your discovery process and your whole jumble of documents that you need 60 00:05:42,114 --> 00:05:43,524 to provide to a client. 61 00:05:43,524 --> 00:05:51,028 So back in those days, they started giving them on CDs rather than boxes of paper. 62 00:05:51,028 --> 00:05:55,470 And so really the first extranets were focused around those large 63 00:05:55,566 --> 00:06:07,568 cases, litigations, or transactions where there's lots of due diligence documents, lots of discovery documents, and there is a problem giving multiple remote people access to all of 64 00:06:07,568 --> 00:06:08,358 them. 65 00:06:08,719 --> 00:06:11,401 So that's really where it was born because it solved that problem. 66 00:06:11,401 --> 00:06:15,746 It made it inexpensive and easy to transmit those documents. 67 00:06:15,746 --> 00:06:20,470 And then it kind of evolved from there where, you 68 00:06:20,622 --> 00:06:22,833 Clients really liked getting online access. 69 00:06:22,833 --> 00:06:32,527 So the more innovative law firms figured out, well, gosh, I can differentiate myself if my clients can have a login and they just get basic access to the workspaces and the 70 00:06:32,527 --> 00:06:34,728 documents that I'm drafting for them. 71 00:06:35,148 --> 00:06:46,433 Law firms that were less innovative were concerned about, well, gosh, I can't give my clients access to these documents because then they might start drafting them themselves. 72 00:06:46,433 --> 00:06:49,184 I mean, which is sort of like, you know, 73 00:06:49,270 --> 00:06:50,291 I hated hearing that. 74 00:06:50,291 --> 00:06:55,574 cringe that whenever I hear that because that's not the value proposition of a lawyer. 75 00:06:55,574 --> 00:07:03,558 Lawyer, it's not the document, it's the expertise that goes into the document to make sure that everything that's in it is right. 76 00:07:03,558 --> 00:07:07,340 And I think today lawyers pretty much, most lawyers get that. 77 00:07:07,340 --> 00:07:11,402 They give the documents away and it's the expertise. 78 00:07:11,483 --> 00:07:15,244 And then it evolved further as the tool set evolved. 79 00:07:15,325 --> 00:07:17,630 Clients kind of liked having access. 80 00:07:17,630 --> 00:07:20,001 ongoing access to their information. 81 00:07:20,001 --> 00:07:32,978 sure, know, large, you know, transactions and litigations continued to be a focal point, but now law firms started figuring out, well, gosh, if my clients, you know, can, can 82 00:07:32,978 --> 00:07:39,442 continually come to my website and log in and access the documents I've drafted for them previously. 83 00:07:39,442 --> 00:07:45,075 So maybe a more sophisticated corporate client, they can access all their entity documents. 84 00:07:45,075 --> 00:07:47,532 And then when it's time for all their renewals. 85 00:07:47,532 --> 00:07:55,144 and their board meeting minute updates and all those things, we can quickly facilitate that and it kind of locks in the relationship. 86 00:07:55,244 --> 00:08:03,486 And I think the struggle that lawyers have had for a long time is how do I differentiate myself from my competitors? 87 00:08:03,486 --> 00:08:08,368 There's a lot of smart lawyers out there, a lot of lawyers that know what they're doing. 88 00:08:08,488 --> 00:08:14,639 And I think most consumers of law firms are maybe not that sophisticated. 89 00:08:14,639 --> 00:08:17,166 How do you know if a lawyer is better than another lawyer? 90 00:08:17,166 --> 00:08:27,806 So really what you have to do is you have to focus on how do I deliver my legal services to my clients along with the relationship and the service. 91 00:08:27,806 --> 00:08:33,486 And one of the biggest complaints that lawyers or law firms get is my lawyer's not available enough. 92 00:08:33,486 --> 00:08:40,566 An extranet or a client portal is a way of maintaining that availability even if you're not really available. 93 00:08:40,566 --> 00:08:46,954 Because the client can come in and interact with the information, make comments and whatnot. 94 00:08:46,954 --> 00:08:48,535 even while you're not there. 95 00:08:48,535 --> 00:08:54,419 So that's really, that really became a big, you know, selling proposition of Externet. 96 00:08:54,419 --> 00:09:00,684 And I think, you know, why they kind of took off is because they were so popular with customers, with, with clients. 97 00:09:00,684 --> 00:09:07,869 And then as it evolved further, we start going from just document, transmittal to redlining back and forth. 98 00:09:07,869 --> 00:09:16,192 So now my client and I are redlining back and forth and I can have, you know, five or six or seven different people working in the document at same time. 99 00:09:16,192 --> 00:09:19,604 a lot more efficiently than emailing documents around. 100 00:09:19,604 --> 00:09:30,652 And then, you know, if you fast forward to today, you know, we're seeing law firms, you know, doing all sorts of things because they're building in workflows that are customized 101 00:09:31,393 --> 00:09:37,896 to how a practice area works, or you can customize how you work with an individual client. 102 00:09:37,997 --> 00:09:45,762 And that's really the killer application is now the law firm is adding value to the client beyond just the legal services. 103 00:09:45,830 --> 00:09:49,713 because of how they're delivering the information and providing the information. 104 00:09:49,713 --> 00:09:58,759 So the workflow piece and the law firms that are really becoming innovative are really adapting how they work with the technology. 105 00:09:58,759 --> 00:10:11,488 The exciting thing about, know, extranet technology is that it's become very adaptable where you can configure it rather than having to put software developers in to go build a 106 00:10:11,488 --> 00:10:14,070 custom tool every time you want to 107 00:10:14,254 --> 00:10:16,734 to do something unique with a client. 108 00:10:16,754 --> 00:10:26,722 And so it allows the innovative law firms to be very creative and very quick to market with some of these unique solutions that they provide different clients. 109 00:10:26,722 --> 00:10:27,742 Yeah. 110 00:10:27,782 --> 00:10:34,962 And to your point about differentiation, the law firm market is extremely fragmented. 111 00:10:35,002 --> 00:10:41,762 If you add up the total revenue of the entire Amlaw 100, you're at about $140 billion. 112 00:10:42,042 --> 00:10:48,242 That's not even a Fortune 100 company if you were to combine the entire Amlaw 100. 113 00:10:48,342 --> 00:10:54,122 So there's not a single law firm that would qualify revenue wise for the Fortune 500. 114 00:10:54,262 --> 00:10:55,413 K &E is the closest. 115 00:10:55,413 --> 00:11:01,747 They're just outside of the floor of the Fortune 500, which is about 7.6 billion last time I looked. 116 00:11:01,747 --> 00:11:05,009 And I think K &E is in the low sevens. 117 00:11:05,089 --> 00:11:12,464 So extremely fragmented, which means, yeah, differentiating yourself is key. 118 00:11:12,464 --> 00:11:22,922 yeah, it's interesting that law firms decide to do that. 119 00:11:22,922 --> 00:11:24,160 I mean, we see 120 00:11:24,160 --> 00:11:29,733 We have one client who, they've been public about this, so I'm not speaking out of school. 121 00:11:29,934 --> 00:11:31,725 They have a law firm portal. 122 00:11:31,725 --> 00:11:35,598 It's Ogletree Deacons and they, they're an L and E firm. 123 00:11:35,598 --> 00:11:45,044 So they share, you know, 50 state surveys and employment law updates for each state, uh, through their client portal. 124 00:11:45,044 --> 00:11:50,058 Um, it's, it's not your traditional extra net where you're exchanging documents. 125 00:11:50,058 --> 00:11:53,869 It's kind of a outward facing almost e-commerce platform. 126 00:11:53,869 --> 00:11:57,921 but it's revenue generating and they're not public with the number. 127 00:11:58,041 --> 00:12:05,705 But it is a seven, it's north of seven figures that a KM group is actually revenue generating, which is unusual. 128 00:12:05,705 --> 00:12:08,327 Those are usually cost centers, not revenue centers. 129 00:12:08,467 --> 00:12:18,232 So it is a great way to not only differentiate, keep your relationship sticky, but also, you know, generate revenue. 130 00:12:18,232 --> 00:12:21,524 Did you see any of that sort of stuff in your day? 131 00:12:22,658 --> 00:12:26,409 Yeah, I saw a lot of examples of that. 132 00:12:26,409 --> 00:12:33,041 had a client in Illinois that, you Illinois passed some laws. 133 00:12:33,041 --> 00:12:47,285 This is quite a while ago, but they regulated what public schools or public education systems, sort of a priority order if they were doing layoffs for teachers. 134 00:12:47,285 --> 00:12:52,630 And it was based on seniority or tenure and then performance. 135 00:12:52,630 --> 00:13:01,577 And so there is this sort of calculation that you had to follow in order to maintain compliance with respect to who you lay off. 136 00:13:01,577 --> 00:13:11,185 So with our tool at Legal Anywhere, we helped them build essentially a management tool that would help. 137 00:13:11,906 --> 00:13:20,413 The law firm would sell to their clients in public education that would kind of calculate out the order from which they would have to make layoffs. 138 00:13:20,413 --> 00:13:22,594 So it would rank the teachers. 139 00:13:23,146 --> 00:13:25,247 for the layoffs in that fashion. 140 00:13:25,247 --> 00:13:29,649 So that's an example and they sold it and they did really well with it. 141 00:13:30,869 --> 00:13:38,643 You know, I had other examples where maybe the firms didn't monetize it quite so much, but it was like a big differentiator. 142 00:13:38,643 --> 00:13:44,355 So I had a customer that had a very large real estate portfolio. 143 00:13:44,355 --> 00:13:52,268 So it was a retail, the law firms client was a retailer with literally thousands of retail locations. 144 00:13:52,395 --> 00:13:58,080 And so the law firm historically was helping renewing all the leases every year. 145 00:13:58,080 --> 00:14:08,768 And you can imagine managing it back in the early 2000, it's all manual via spreadsheets, emails, which leases are up for renewal this year, know, who on the team is working and 146 00:14:08,768 --> 00:14:11,330 what lease is after coordinate with the client. 147 00:14:11,330 --> 00:14:17,174 So they basically built a tool, kind of a lease management tool, LMT. 148 00:14:17,515 --> 00:14:21,778 And the client could log in, they had access to all their lease 149 00:14:21,778 --> 00:14:25,021 locations, all the legal documents around it. 150 00:14:25,021 --> 00:14:34,668 And then there was dates and reminders and ticklers in advance of a lease coming up for renewal. 151 00:14:34,668 --> 00:14:45,596 So that's an example of how it's really like an early contract management tool or portfolio management tool that the law firm created before there was even that category of 152 00:14:45,596 --> 00:14:47,177 product existed. 153 00:14:48,866 --> 00:15:00,074 particular customer was not going to go to another law firm for a savings of $10 per hour because this tool added so much value to the relationship. 154 00:15:00,074 --> 00:15:12,374 And so we've seen a lot of examples, large litigation where you create kind of a litigation portfolio where the client can see kind of a heat map of where their litigation 155 00:15:12,374 --> 00:15:15,986 is occurring from and they click on the state that's 156 00:15:15,986 --> 00:15:20,170 Maybe it's California, it's the red state that has a lot of litigation. 157 00:15:20,170 --> 00:15:26,727 click on it and then they can sort of start seeing the sources of the litigation. 158 00:15:26,727 --> 00:15:39,869 So in some cases, this kind of data, the way that you provide the data to your client, the law firm is showing the client, if it's a large construction company, for example. 159 00:15:40,962 --> 00:15:49,229 the client can see, well, gosh, I'm getting a lot of litigation in these two sub-developments, and it looks like it's this sub-contractor that's causing me most of my 160 00:15:49,229 --> 00:15:50,330 problems. 161 00:15:50,330 --> 00:16:00,638 So again, there's a lot of value around that, and it has really very little to do with the legal services, but it's the law firm adding additional value within the relationship. 162 00:16:01,314 --> 00:16:03,328 So what happened to Legal Anywhere? 163 00:16:03,328 --> 00:16:05,472 I know you guys got bought by HiQ. 164 00:16:05,472 --> 00:16:11,473 Did they leverage the technology or just kind of end of life and roll everybody into HiQ? 165 00:16:13,324 --> 00:16:18,015 Yeah, Legal Anywhere, we were HiQ's biggest competitor. 166 00:16:18,015 --> 00:16:24,987 HiQ obviously started in London, wanted to work its way over to the United States. 167 00:16:24,987 --> 00:16:28,318 And I think we were sort of impeding their growth. 168 00:16:28,318 --> 00:16:36,700 So they acquired us with the intention of converting our client base onto the HiQ platform. 169 00:16:36,700 --> 00:16:41,862 And I think they were pretty successful doing that over the course of three or four years. 170 00:16:42,616 --> 00:16:50,769 There may be, there actually may be still a couple of customers out there that have self-hosted sites of Legal Anywhere. 171 00:16:50,769 --> 00:16:52,390 I know there was a few years ago. 172 00:16:52,390 --> 00:17:04,444 I haven't really looked recently, but yeah, the intent for Haikyuu was to absorb the Legal Anywhere customer base and convert them onto the Haikyuu platform. 173 00:17:04,546 --> 00:17:05,466 Gotcha. 174 00:17:05,907 --> 00:17:17,418 So, I've heard a lot about firms that leverage extranets in more advanced ways, building workflows. 175 00:17:17,418 --> 00:17:23,854 What's an example of a custom workflow that a specific practice area might leverage on their extranet? 176 00:17:23,854 --> 00:17:25,876 What does that picture look like? 177 00:17:27,148 --> 00:17:29,298 Yeah, that's a great question. 178 00:17:29,298 --> 00:17:36,241 And I always like to take a step back and let's really talk about what is a law firm? 179 00:17:36,241 --> 00:17:38,521 Is a law firm a single business? 180 00:17:38,521 --> 00:17:41,202 think a lot of people think it's a single business. 181 00:17:41,202 --> 00:17:43,262 I don't really view it that way. 182 00:17:43,343 --> 00:17:51,165 I kind of look at a law firm as sort of a portfolio of different businesses within a single entity. 183 00:17:51,165 --> 00:17:55,936 And the reason why I like to look at it that way from a technology standpoint, 184 00:17:57,004 --> 00:18:07,617 You know, you can't really take technology and just apply it the same way across a law firm because your litigators have significantly different needs than your transactional 185 00:18:07,617 --> 00:18:14,099 lawyers and your &A lawyers are a lot different than your general corporate lawyers, trust in estates, real estate. 186 00:18:14,099 --> 00:18:16,119 They all have different needs. 187 00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:25,090 And I guess at the end of the day, know, firms kind of break it down between litigation and transactional and maybe throw in regulatory, but. 188 00:18:25,090 --> 00:18:29,811 But I think you kind of have to look at it as a collection of individual business units. 189 00:18:29,811 --> 00:18:41,434 And so when you think about technology, law firms can go by a whole bunch of point solutions and they can accommodate a lot of their needs that way. 190 00:18:41,434 --> 00:18:52,878 But I think from an end user experience or from an internal user experience within a law firm, I think law firms have been really searching for, you know, sort of what I'll call 191 00:18:52,878 --> 00:18:54,658 the perfect solution. 192 00:18:54,658 --> 00:19:01,744 I think back in the early 2000s, everybody thought, you know, maybe SharePoint, enterprise SharePoint was the answer. 193 00:19:01,744 --> 00:19:05,027 But you touched on some of the issues that they had with enterprise SharePoint. 194 00:19:05,027 --> 00:19:19,509 was a heavy lift for a law firm, a lot of custom development, not fantastic security wise, you know, allowing external users in, you know, now that we hosted, we've got hosted 195 00:19:19,509 --> 00:19:23,562 SharePoint, every law firm on the planet has team SharePoint. 196 00:19:23,790 --> 00:19:36,316 It's really, think Microsoft has stepped up and provided a platform that, you know, players like you can come in and provide a platform that's pre-built and customized for 197 00:19:36,316 --> 00:19:36,856 law firms. 198 00:19:36,856 --> 00:19:44,819 So that, that I think sets the stage for an innovative law firm to create a unified client experience. 199 00:19:44,819 --> 00:19:51,072 So if they have a client that is using them across different practice areas, and let's face it. 200 00:19:51,540 --> 00:19:58,762 Every every AMLA firm in the world is trying to grow and diversify across practice areas into the client base. 201 00:19:58,762 --> 00:20:01,393 So clients aren't just using them for one piece. 202 00:20:01,393 --> 00:20:05,794 They want them to use them for litigation, corporate, real estate, the whole works. 203 00:20:06,014 --> 00:20:14,276 If your client has to log into different point solutions with different login interfaces, that's not a great user experience. 204 00:20:14,737 --> 00:20:20,238 So I think having that unified client interface for a client to log into 205 00:20:20,362 --> 00:20:22,844 with a law firm that's branded for the law firm. 206 00:20:22,844 --> 00:20:25,925 And now I'm getting to answer your question. 207 00:20:25,925 --> 00:20:32,389 They can provide solutions that are specific to different use cases or practice areas. 208 00:20:32,389 --> 00:20:34,890 So some additional examples. 209 00:20:35,571 --> 00:20:43,295 During COVID, I had a client that had a trust in the state's practice and they built an automated tool. 210 00:20:43,295 --> 00:20:49,498 Again, this kind of came up during COVID because, know, trust in the state's practices 211 00:20:49,538 --> 00:20:55,822 You know, there's a lot of client meetings, you know, to build the estate plan for a simple estate plan. 212 00:20:55,823 --> 00:20:58,064 You can pretty much automate it. 213 00:20:58,184 --> 00:21:04,489 So it allowed that firm to create, we'll call it a rudimentary estate plan with maybe a will to trust. 214 00:21:04,489 --> 00:21:05,680 It's kind of a menu. 215 00:21:05,680 --> 00:21:10,673 get certain things and the client, they built in document automation. 216 00:21:10,673 --> 00:21:16,748 They had the portal and then they had, they built in sort of an E signature component to it. 217 00:21:16,748 --> 00:21:17,548 So. 218 00:21:17,986 --> 00:21:28,033 Virtually the client they have a meeting with the client to talk about the client's needs what they need client fills out the form on the portal through a document automation 219 00:21:28,033 --> 00:21:32,516 Process, it actually builds the initial estate plan. 220 00:21:32,516 --> 00:21:43,344 It's reviewed by a paralegal and then a quick meeting between the lawyer and the client virtually Signed digitally and then delivered via the portal and they could do it for a 221 00:21:43,344 --> 00:21:46,678 finite amount of money because they're not spending a whole bunch of time on 222 00:21:46,678 --> 00:21:49,340 So they use the technology to facilitate that. 223 00:21:49,340 --> 00:21:50,751 So I think that's an example. 224 00:21:50,751 --> 00:21:57,968 We've seen a lot of examples, I think, on the young company side. 225 00:21:57,968 --> 00:22:12,429 if you've got a startup company and you need to go set up your organizational documents, your cap table, all your shareholder agreements or LLC member agreements, no entrepreneur 226 00:22:12,429 --> 00:22:14,861 in the world is interested in spending. 227 00:22:16,713 --> 00:22:20,094 $100,000 to go just set the table and make sure everything's right. 228 00:22:20,094 --> 00:22:26,234 So a lot of them kind of do it ad hoc, make a mess of it, and then later on they clean it up if they're successful. 229 00:22:26,234 --> 00:22:27,854 That's not ideal either. 230 00:22:27,854 --> 00:22:35,714 So I think a lot of law firms have, you know, sort of created their own mini ALSPs, know, so alternative legal service provider. 231 00:22:36,014 --> 00:22:37,934 Those came into play. 232 00:22:37,934 --> 00:22:43,884 That's really kind of a third party extranet that's just not sponsored by a law firm. 233 00:22:43,884 --> 00:22:53,512 that's filling a need within the marketplace because law firms with their, you know, typical hourly billing approach, they weren't meeting that need. 234 00:22:53,512 --> 00:22:56,344 So you have these technology provisions that come up. 235 00:22:56,344 --> 00:23:01,839 I think law firms have become smart and they started building their own internal ALSPs. 236 00:23:01,839 --> 00:23:11,967 So now you have large law firms that have, you know, founders workbench, or they have those, those spinoffs where an entrepreneur can come in and they get their initial 237 00:23:11,967 --> 00:23:13,618 documents for free. 238 00:23:14,478 --> 00:23:20,698 They're high quality and they sort of embed them now into the relationship with the law firm. 239 00:23:20,698 --> 00:23:22,718 So the law firm is creating a net. 240 00:23:22,718 --> 00:23:25,658 They're not spending a lot of lawyer time on it. 241 00:23:25,658 --> 00:23:36,078 And they're bringing people into the fold and those customers, you know, as their needs grow, then they'll likely use that law firm to continue doing the work when it becomes 242 00:23:36,078 --> 00:23:37,398 interesting. 243 00:23:38,278 --> 00:23:42,978 So, you know, once you start raising, you know, your series A, 244 00:23:43,426 --> 00:23:46,148 you know, now the legal work becomes more interesting. 245 00:23:46,148 --> 00:23:50,691 And I think the law firms have become smart about using that as a business development tool. 246 00:23:50,691 --> 00:23:52,372 So those are a couple of examples. 247 00:23:52,372 --> 00:23:59,197 There's really, what I love about extranets is there's really, you're limited by your imagination as a law firm. 248 00:23:59,197 --> 00:24:06,782 If you understand your client, you can build a solution that's unique to that particular client and be very nimble with it. 249 00:24:07,316 --> 00:24:08,206 Yeah. 250 00:24:08,446 --> 00:24:12,968 I know Wilson Sincini has Neuron, Cooley has Go. 251 00:24:12,968 --> 00:24:22,870 Those are both, I think, exactly what you described and fill that gap really well. 252 00:24:23,449 --> 00:24:26,481 what about leveraging financial data? 253 00:24:26,481 --> 00:24:36,790 I've always felt like law firms were hesitant to share too much financial data on 254 00:24:36,790 --> 00:24:46,014 their extra nets, you know, they don't want to make it too easy for clients to see how much they're spending over long periods of time. 255 00:24:46,014 --> 00:24:58,600 Um, so I, I think that, I think that competitively there is an advantage up for grabs there for firms that, because look, clients aren't stupid. 256 00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:04,192 Like they, they, have a finance people on their side that can go run the numbers. 257 00:25:04,214 --> 00:25:11,621 So they're going to get to the information, whether you make it easy for them or hard is, you know, potentially impacts your relationship. 258 00:25:11,621 --> 00:25:25,583 But, um, you know, I was thinking like, you know, transparency on budgets around matters and scope and like LPM, like has, is that, are those use cases that you've seen in your 259 00:25:25,583 --> 00:25:26,594 journeys? 260 00:25:27,574 --> 00:25:30,076 Yeah, absolutely. 261 00:25:30,096 --> 00:25:32,238 you're right, clients are not dumb. 262 00:25:32,238 --> 00:25:39,123 And to your point earlier about the legal market being, you know, finite and scattered, and it's also low growth. 263 00:25:39,123 --> 00:25:45,689 So I think law firms have figured out that if they're going to grow, it means they have to steal clients from other law firms. 264 00:25:45,689 --> 00:25:48,951 So that means the differentiation is super important. 265 00:25:48,951 --> 00:25:51,994 The problem is, is they don't know how to differentiate themselves. 266 00:25:51,994 --> 00:25:57,708 think technology has become a very strategic and key part of that. 267 00:25:57,708 --> 00:26:01,709 And then the other thing that you have to look at is why do clients leave law firms? 268 00:26:01,709 --> 00:26:04,440 It's for perceived lack of value. 269 00:26:06,201 --> 00:26:10,522 So if you're a law firm, you know, in your combating this, I want to grow. 270 00:26:10,522 --> 00:26:19,585 I'm having difficulty differentiating myself from my neighbors and you know, the biggest risk that we have is perceived lack of value. 271 00:26:19,785 --> 00:26:22,045 So how do we combat that? 272 00:26:22,626 --> 00:26:24,086 And you know, 273 00:26:24,322 --> 00:26:31,864 And your bigger clients, let's face it, they're going to make law firms participate on their spend management programs, you legal tracker. 274 00:26:31,864 --> 00:26:34,385 And I mean, there's, there's a bunch of them out there. 275 00:26:34,585 --> 00:26:40,307 And now the law firm has to feed all that data into the client system. 276 00:26:40,887 --> 00:26:49,169 I think really what, and that's not going to change your, your big super consumers of, lots of, of law firm services. 277 00:26:49,169 --> 00:26:52,152 They're going to be able to dictate how law firms work. 278 00:26:52,152 --> 00:27:03,296 But I think in the absence of that, think law firms that are more proactive, that provide clients with really good solutions are going to be able to control that process a little 279 00:27:03,296 --> 00:27:06,548 bit better and develop that transparency. 280 00:27:06,548 --> 00:27:20,283 And I think one of the big drivers for this sharing of financial information, I think we're seeing a lot of strain on the hourly billing model. 281 00:27:20,283 --> 00:27:22,178 So you're seeing a lot more fixed. 282 00:27:22,178 --> 00:27:23,139 fee billing. 283 00:27:23,139 --> 00:27:30,405 So I would say 15, 20 years ago, there's a handful of firms that occasionally might do it on an M &A deal. 284 00:27:30,405 --> 00:27:39,362 Today, I think you're seeing a majority of firms that are being forced to provide fixed fee work for transactions. 285 00:27:39,362 --> 00:27:44,016 But it kind of started there because I think they're a little more controllable. 286 00:27:44,016 --> 00:27:46,418 But you're seeing it in litigation now. 287 00:27:46,879 --> 00:27:51,276 So that forces law firms to move out of this, you know, cost plus 288 00:27:51,276 --> 00:27:55,789 mind frame into, okay, how do I grow my margins? 289 00:27:55,789 --> 00:28:03,074 So if I have a fixed fee, how do I grow my margin and reduce my delivery costs? 290 00:28:03,214 --> 00:28:11,140 And as part of that fixed fee, have to really understand the cost of them doing a litigation, but they also have to scope it. 291 00:28:11,140 --> 00:28:14,341 What's the scope of work that I'm doing for the customer? 292 00:28:15,382 --> 00:28:16,603 And put a box around it. 293 00:28:16,603 --> 00:28:20,856 And that's where I think a lot of firms struggle is, okay, we'll litigate this. 294 00:28:20,856 --> 00:28:23,527 for you for a million dollars or whatever. 295 00:28:24,487 --> 00:28:26,358 But then, you know, the scope grows. 296 00:28:26,358 --> 00:28:30,129 So think the firms that are really good at it, they put a budget in place. 297 00:28:30,129 --> 00:28:37,691 And then the transparency in the relationship means that every month they're updating the actual to the budget. 298 00:28:37,691 --> 00:28:43,973 And the client can see on a portal, they can see how much of the budget has been consumed. 299 00:28:43,973 --> 00:28:48,258 And I think what's even more important is when you tie that, tie... 300 00:28:48,258 --> 00:29:00,982 the progress of the work that we're doing around the financial information, it becomes really apparent to the customer, like are we on budget, under budget, over budget? 301 00:29:00,982 --> 00:29:11,245 And I think where it makes sense is on a litigation if we've agreed as part of our budget scope to review a million documents, but through discovery, it turns into two million 302 00:29:11,245 --> 00:29:12,345 documents. 303 00:29:12,345 --> 00:29:16,822 Well, now you've just put the client on notice early on in the case. 304 00:29:16,822 --> 00:29:19,023 We've just exceeded scope. 305 00:29:19,284 --> 00:29:28,129 So you're not waiting until the litigation is done and the client gets a big bill that's beyond the budget. 306 00:29:28,129 --> 00:29:32,352 And I think that's where a lot of law firms get in trouble on fixed fee billing. 307 00:29:32,712 --> 00:29:42,036 And that's where I think the value of sharing financial information along the way, as long as you embed the scope of the work in. 308 00:29:42,036 --> 00:29:47,153 and the progress involved so they can map the progress and the scope along with the bill. 309 00:29:47,515 --> 00:29:51,922 I think the firms that are doing that are the ones that are really succeeding with it. 310 00:29:51,922 --> 00:29:57,940 And it also allows them to find ways to reduce their own internal margins through the use of technology. 311 00:29:58,103 --> 00:29:58,353 Yeah. 312 00:29:58,353 --> 00:30:00,223 And this really isn't a law firm problem. 313 00:30:00,223 --> 00:30:03,895 I mean, we have the same problem in our professional services group. 314 00:30:03,895 --> 00:30:10,388 We don't do much fixed bid work, but we provide detailed estimates that we try and stay in line with. 315 00:30:10,388 --> 00:30:21,372 And when we encounter things, even if it's not a scope change, it could be an engineering challenge where we made some assumptions about an approach that might work, you know, 316 00:30:21,372 --> 00:30:25,494 approach a, and then we get in there and go, wow, we got to do approach B that's 317 00:30:25,686 --> 00:30:32,091 three X the cost, you know, we, we have, we make sure to have those conversations as early in the process as possible. 318 00:30:32,091 --> 00:30:33,512 Cause nobody likes surprises. 319 00:30:33,512 --> 00:30:45,603 Um, so one thing I wanted to make sure we spend a little bit of time on is the innovation of, of legal extra nets throughout the years. 320 00:30:45,603 --> 00:30:52,087 So from my perspective, not much has changed in the last, I mean, maybe it was since the acquisition. 321 00:30:52,087 --> 00:30:54,870 mean, high cube dominates the marketplace today. 322 00:30:55,118 --> 00:31:07,782 Um, you know, and I don't know if that's a function of just stabilized requirements, you know, some like CRMs, what big advancement in CRMs has there been in the last five years? 323 00:31:07,782 --> 00:31:08,462 Not many. 324 00:31:08,462 --> 00:31:16,465 can tell you, we've been using CRMs for 25 years in various ventures and, um, not much has changed there. 325 00:31:16,465 --> 00:31:20,666 Uh, so I don't know if it's that, or if it's 326 00:31:20,790 --> 00:31:24,536 just because there's been almost a monopoly in the marketplace? 327 00:31:24,536 --> 00:31:29,532 Or if you even agree that there hasn't been a lot of innovation, what is your take on that? 328 00:31:31,032 --> 00:31:34,248 Well, I think there's been a lot of innovation. 329 00:31:36,802 --> 00:31:49,312 But I think we're not hearing about it as much because I think law firms have sort of figured out that how they do things is becoming part of their intellectual property. 330 00:31:49,312 --> 00:31:57,879 So they're less likely to go out into the market and broadcast like, hey, we're doing this because they're using it competitively. 331 00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:05,585 whereas I think 15, 20 years ago firms were really super willing to share best practices across the board. 332 00:32:06,926 --> 00:32:17,690 So I think if law firms come up with a very unique service offering, they really don't want to broadcast it out because they're using it to compete more effectively. 333 00:32:18,651 --> 00:32:24,026 Whether you and I call it innovative versus whether a law firm thinks it's innovative. 334 00:32:24,026 --> 00:32:31,816 I they're doing a lot of things that you're like, of course, but it's innovative in the sense that it's not really being done across the market. 335 00:32:31,816 --> 00:32:37,034 And I think with the onset of workflow, I think that's 336 00:32:37,034 --> 00:32:43,700 allowing law firms to become more innovative with how they deliver. 337 00:32:44,441 --> 00:32:50,847 I think the things that have held firms back is really, you know, it's the technology or the platform. 338 00:32:50,847 --> 00:32:56,652 So, you know, early on it was, you know, enterprise SharePoint. 339 00:32:56,652 --> 00:33:04,108 Well, there were firms doing some innovative things, but it didn't really hit the whole market because most firms weren't willing to spend. 340 00:33:04,654 --> 00:33:16,177 $3 million to build a client portal system and then spend expensive development time chasing after one offs for large clients. 341 00:33:16,177 --> 00:33:17,478 That's a barrier. 342 00:33:17,478 --> 00:33:28,081 So with Legal Anywhere, we came on, we sort of democratized the ability for firms to be innovative without having them to do a lot of software development. 343 00:33:28,081 --> 00:33:29,881 But then they're limited by the platform. 344 00:33:29,881 --> 00:33:32,576 I think Haikyu came along, they added 345 00:33:32,576 --> 00:33:34,286 more functionality over time. 346 00:33:34,286 --> 00:33:48,210 So there's workflow, there's more integrations, but limitations with HiQ, I think there hasn't been a lot of innovation in that platform over the last five, six, seven years. 347 00:33:48,210 --> 00:33:50,291 It's pretty static. 348 00:33:50,291 --> 00:33:58,593 Doesn't mean firms aren't doing interesting things with it, but it's also a pretty heavy lift and it's a proprietary platform. 349 00:33:58,593 --> 00:34:01,994 So there's a skillset involved. 350 00:34:02,190 --> 00:34:07,170 You know, it's not an easy lift for somebody to learn how to be really good with IQ. 351 00:34:07,350 --> 00:34:13,290 Not hard to spin up basic sites, but you can spin up basic sites on anything pretty easily these days. 352 00:34:13,290 --> 00:34:21,490 But now I think with, you know, with Microsoft 365 and every law firm in the world has Microsoft 365. 353 00:34:21,490 --> 00:34:32,030 They've got Teams, they've got hosted SharePoint and they're, you know, it's a platform now that has become more democratized because the architecture behind it's easier. 354 00:34:32,994 --> 00:34:34,745 and they're trying to figure out how to use it. 355 00:34:34,745 --> 00:34:49,159 So I think the platforms are evolving and I think as the platform evolves and I think what you guys are doing, sort of democratizing for law firms, What you're able to do on top of 356 00:34:49,419 --> 00:34:59,892 Microsoft 365 and Teams and tapping into all this great platform technology that Microsoft has made available that, let's face it. 357 00:34:59,974 --> 00:35:05,516 a High Q is not going to be able to compete with Microsoft on underlying platform capabilities. 358 00:35:05,516 --> 00:35:14,200 So you're just making it really easy in providing highly valuable functionality on top of this platform that law firms already own. 359 00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:18,712 And that's going to further enhance the law firms ability to innovate. 360 00:35:18,712 --> 00:35:22,583 So I think what's really held law firms back, well, there's two things. 361 00:35:23,564 --> 00:35:27,459 There's a lot of law firms that aren't really innovative within their culture. 362 00:35:27,459 --> 00:35:29,240 And so they follow the pack. 363 00:35:29,240 --> 00:35:31,961 I mean, they're not gonna be the early adopters. 364 00:35:31,961 --> 00:35:39,213 They're gonna be dragged along because their clients demand it because they're getting these services from other law firms. 365 00:35:39,213 --> 00:35:41,273 So those firms get dragged along. 366 00:35:41,493 --> 00:35:50,246 But you've got the innovative law firms and there's a growing number of innovative law firms that now are going to be able to do more because the platforms make it easier for 367 00:35:50,246 --> 00:35:50,876 them to do more. 368 00:35:50,876 --> 00:35:53,376 I think they've been limited by the platform. 369 00:35:54,357 --> 00:35:59,158 Even if they had the creativity and the innovative culture. 370 00:35:59,354 --> 00:36:05,101 there's a cost to having to use platforms that are limited and do custom development. 371 00:36:05,101 --> 00:36:13,738 I think the platforms as they evolve, they're making it a lot easier for law firms to be more innovative and to be really nimble with it. 372 00:36:13,738 --> 00:36:16,959 Yeah, so I mean, that's where we're putting our chips on the table. 373 00:36:16,959 --> 00:36:30,075 So for those that don't know, Info dash is built entirely on M 365 and Azure, and we deploy in the client's tenant and the advantage to that there's advantages and 374 00:36:30,075 --> 00:36:31,465 disadvantages. 375 00:36:32,106 --> 00:36:35,237 You know, from our perspective, I'll talk about the disadvantages first. 376 00:36:35,237 --> 00:36:37,828 It's harder to push updates, right? 377 00:36:37,828 --> 00:36:39,699 We've really nailed it down to a science. 378 00:36:39,699 --> 00:36:42,572 It's pretty painless now when we first started out, 379 00:36:42,572 --> 00:36:44,423 there was a big learning curve there. 380 00:36:44,423 --> 00:36:55,311 But you know, at end of the day, we have hundreds of clients with all, we still have to push those updates into their tenant where if you host it, then you can, you have control. 381 00:36:55,311 --> 00:36:59,314 Um, That's the main downside on the, on the upside. 382 00:36:59,314 --> 00:37:03,417 However, we think far outweighs the downsides. 383 00:37:03,417 --> 00:37:11,254 We, we, because we deploy in the client's tenant, have tentacles into all of their infrastructure and systems, which means that 384 00:37:11,254 --> 00:37:24,850 they can surface data from any data source that they want and not only push that information into an extra net or intranet, but they can enable Power Automate and build 385 00:37:24,850 --> 00:37:27,271 workflows on, that data. 386 00:37:27,271 --> 00:37:35,354 So if you want a new matter intake process, you want to provision sites, a team site, anytime a new matter is open. 387 00:37:35,354 --> 00:37:39,327 Well, we stand up our integration hub in your environment. 388 00:37:39,327 --> 00:37:42,089 It talks to your practice management solution. 389 00:37:43,030 --> 00:37:48,454 Power automate places a trigger anytime a new matter is provisioned. 390 00:37:48,454 --> 00:37:52,416 It goes off in complete steps one through X. 391 00:37:52,737 --> 00:38:02,264 You can use power apps if you want to build low code applications on top of your line of business data. 392 00:38:02,264 --> 00:38:03,935 You have complete control. 393 00:38:03,935 --> 00:38:06,102 It's within your security perimeter. 394 00:38:06,102 --> 00:38:11,665 So you no longer have to worry about a third party hosting your data. 395 00:38:13,387 --> 00:38:18,110 And you control the risk as well. 396 00:38:18,110 --> 00:38:30,278 we really push our clients to leverage sound change management practices and separating environments where you're not making changes in prod. 397 00:38:30,278 --> 00:38:35,898 You're doing it in dev and pushing it into QA and then in the, you know, so 398 00:38:35,898 --> 00:38:48,211 Um, a tremendous amount of control access to a lot of the on-prem data and then some other things that, that you alluded to is, okay, now you can leverage all your line of business 399 00:38:48,211 --> 00:38:55,213 data with Azure, uh, Azure open AI or Azure AI search or co-pilot, right? 400 00:38:55,213 --> 00:38:59,024 Because we are integration hub enables that. 401 00:38:59,024 --> 00:39:05,896 So the types of experiences that you can deliver to clients becomes almost infinite. 402 00:39:06,334 --> 00:39:10,257 And it really puts firms in the driver's seat. 403 00:39:10,698 --> 00:39:17,204 You know, with building customizations in high queue, the deployment is rough, right? 404 00:39:17,204 --> 00:39:27,873 And with the way we've architected InfoDash, you know, we have modular solutions that once you deploy them through our admin center, it's drag and drop on any page that you want. 405 00:39:27,873 --> 00:39:30,896 You can build templates with them and deploy them. 406 00:39:30,896 --> 00:39:33,888 So, and then lastly, 407 00:39:34,219 --> 00:39:44,862 something called B2B sharing that Microsoft enables, which is a, I think is going to be a total game changer where if law firms enable B2B sharing with some of their clients, they 408 00:39:44,862 --> 00:39:47,662 enable essentially single sign on. 409 00:39:47,662 --> 00:39:56,185 if I, if I share a channel, a team's channel with a client, that client in their native teams, tenant goes to the channel. 410 00:39:56,185 --> 00:39:57,885 They no longer have to log in. 411 00:39:57,885 --> 00:40:02,060 no separate set of credentials, no separate URL, no separate user interface. 412 00:40:02,060 --> 00:40:04,791 Cause every high Q site looks different that I've seen. 413 00:40:05,131 --> 00:40:15,075 you've got a consistent interface and now any notifications associated with that channel are coalesced into the notifications that I see every day. 414 00:40:15,075 --> 00:40:26,080 So like, and you know, if you want to enable, your clients to ping you directly with an instant message, you have that ability and see your presence and everything else talking 415 00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,861 about making your lawyers more available. 416 00:40:28,861 --> 00:40:30,092 Some of them won't like that. 417 00:40:30,092 --> 00:40:31,062 And I get it. 418 00:40:31,062 --> 00:40:36,487 but that's one way to really grease the skids on client collaboration. 419 00:40:36,487 --> 00:40:40,040 we're super excited about it and we think it's going to absolutely change the game. 420 00:40:40,652 --> 00:40:41,833 Yeah, absolutely. 421 00:40:41,833 --> 00:40:54,148 mean, the, I think a fundamental advantage that you have is that you're actually able to tap into the actual data sources within your client organizations where, you know, with 422 00:40:54,368 --> 00:41:05,513 other, other products out there, they can integrate, but you're really grabbing information and pulling it, sinking it into like a high Q database. 423 00:41:05,513 --> 00:41:08,254 And then you're, and then you're sharing it out. 424 00:41:08,300 --> 00:41:14,692 So there's another step in there and that requires work and it's something that can break. 425 00:41:14,733 --> 00:41:27,708 So I think the Microsoft platform being able to tie into all these different data sources directly and then build in the automation around that between the different tools that law 426 00:41:27,708 --> 00:41:29,950 firms use commonly every day. 427 00:41:29,950 --> 00:41:33,320 I think that's a really big value proposition. 428 00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:37,472 And then to be candid, mean, the other thing that 429 00:41:37,486 --> 00:41:49,686 I think made extranets not difficult, but maybe a little less friendly to cut to clients is that, gosh, there's another, there's another place I have to go log into and remember 430 00:41:49,686 --> 00:41:51,706 my credentials and all this. 431 00:41:51,706 --> 00:42:01,146 And that's, that's been an Achilles heel of, you know, the, we'll call it, you know, the platform limitations that we've talked about a few minutes ago is that that's a, that's a 432 00:42:01,146 --> 00:42:02,326 change in user behavior. 433 00:42:02,326 --> 00:42:07,270 And again, I think one of the big advantages that you have is that 434 00:42:07,338 --> 00:42:09,999 everybody in the world has Microsoft, right? 435 00:42:09,999 --> 00:42:18,401 So now they can interact with the law firm through their own user interface and their own Microsoft stack. 436 00:42:18,401 --> 00:42:21,022 So their users aren't having to do anything differently. 437 00:42:21,022 --> 00:42:28,344 That's a game changer because it makes that collaboration just easier between the entities. 438 00:42:28,344 --> 00:42:37,058 And the other nice thing is that the client organization controls who has access to the information. 439 00:42:37,058 --> 00:42:48,184 That's another limitation that we've struggled with on the extranet side for years is, you know, law firm doesn't always know when people leave the client organization and now they 440 00:42:48,184 --> 00:42:52,066 have access to this confidential information. 441 00:42:52,166 --> 00:42:58,230 And there has to be a manual process between the law firm and the client organization to remove access. 442 00:42:58,230 --> 00:43:06,504 So that's a, you know, that's a bit of a security risk and, and, and an administrative issue that I think is solved. 443 00:43:07,226 --> 00:43:12,514 with the sort of the SharePoint and Teams platform model. 444 00:43:12,514 --> 00:43:14,280 So it's really pretty exciting. 445 00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:20,962 And those things are, even though we think they're small from a user standpoint, they're actually fairly big. 446 00:43:20,962 --> 00:43:21,442 Yeah. 447 00:43:21,442 --> 00:43:38,149 I mean, I can't imagine being a GC with 40 panel firms and having 40 High Q sites and 40 sets of credentials and 40 different user interface because each one of my panel firms 448 00:43:38,149 --> 00:43:40,020 customizes it a little differently. 449 00:43:40,020 --> 00:43:50,614 I feel like it will reduce the friction dramatically in the client law firm relationship, which 450 00:43:51,221 --> 00:44:01,647 Historically, there's been a lot of friction there and anything you can do to grease those skids is going to add value and ultimately improve the customer journey, which is a key 451 00:44:01,647 --> 00:44:03,068 retention metric. 452 00:44:05,182 --> 00:44:08,624 It's, you know, I think it's a very key retention metric. 453 00:44:08,624 --> 00:44:16,648 and again, we've sort of, you know, talked about how, you know, some law firms have less innovation in their culture, less imagination. 454 00:44:16,648 --> 00:44:24,883 But one thing you saw, he's drive me nuts is, you know, marketing within law firms is often, you know, well, what have we always done? 455 00:44:24,883 --> 00:44:26,744 There's two questions. 456 00:44:26,744 --> 00:44:27,845 What have we always done? 457 00:44:27,845 --> 00:44:31,937 You're in a partner's meeting and what's everybody else in town doing? 458 00:44:31,937 --> 00:44:32,662 Right? 459 00:44:32,662 --> 00:44:34,368 I mean, I'm like, 460 00:44:34,414 --> 00:44:37,994 I've been saying this for 20 years, like that's not marketing. 461 00:44:37,994 --> 00:44:42,034 You guys need to do something different and better than everybody else. 462 00:44:42,034 --> 00:44:51,794 But that's how a lot of law firms make decisions because we in the legal community are sort of raised up through law school to look at precedents. 463 00:44:51,834 --> 00:44:57,594 And so, yeah, think being innovative and different is crucial. 464 00:44:57,594 --> 00:45:04,174 And I think more and more firms are understanding that and the ones that do are going to be the ones that... 465 00:45:04,174 --> 00:45:08,494 really focus on adding that value into the client relationship. 466 00:45:08,914 --> 00:45:19,134 the client doesn't care that they charge $20 more an hour because all this other value that they're getting in service makes it worth it. 467 00:45:19,134 --> 00:45:25,954 That's where law firms get in trouble, lack of perceived value for the price that's being charged. 468 00:45:25,954 --> 00:45:29,604 And the firms that really focus on service in 469 00:45:29,986 --> 00:45:39,633 innovation in how they deliver the legal services are going to be the winners and the ones that grow their revenue at the expense of the firms around them. 470 00:45:39,633 --> 00:45:42,074 I mean, that is super key. 471 00:45:42,659 --> 00:45:43,259 Yeah. 472 00:45:43,259 --> 00:45:47,381 The, think listening to your customers is, is, is really important. 473 00:45:47,381 --> 00:45:54,514 We have a, we have a customer advisory panel that informs our product roadmap that meets with us. 474 00:45:54,514 --> 00:46:08,889 think we're every other month now and man, the insights that we get from them as part of that process are absolutely invaluable and allow us to serve them better and ultimately 475 00:46:08,889 --> 00:46:11,520 improve product market fit and 476 00:46:11,682 --> 00:46:16,286 product market fit is without it, you're dead, right? 477 00:46:16,286 --> 00:46:18,708 With it, you've got a chance. 478 00:46:18,708 --> 00:46:20,690 You got to do a lot of other things, right too. 479 00:46:20,690 --> 00:46:31,058 You have to execute market yourself well, but step one is, is product market fit and listening to your customers is a, is a key ingredient to that. 480 00:46:32,278 --> 00:46:33,858 Yeah, that is exactly right. 481 00:46:33,858 --> 00:46:45,265 And you know you're doing it right when you have customers that are actively involved in product development and providing feedback because they're engaged and because they know 482 00:46:45,265 --> 00:46:55,971 you're listening to them and you're delivering those features that are providing that unique value that they're asking for. 483 00:46:56,291 --> 00:46:57,232 That's number one. 484 00:46:57,232 --> 00:47:01,664 Then number two, when you do that right, then your customers become your best sales force. 485 00:47:01,874 --> 00:47:13,100 Um, I mean, nothing in legal marketplace is better than a customer telling another law firm that, know, wow, info dash is amazing. 486 00:47:13,100 --> 00:47:17,003 We use their product, does all sorts of things and they're fantastic to work with. 487 00:47:17,003 --> 00:47:22,485 That's, mean, that's really the recipe and it's gold and it's so simple. 488 00:47:22,485 --> 00:47:31,030 Um, and it's just, and it's, it's so fun when you can execute that way and you develop those great client relationships that last for 489 00:47:31,030 --> 00:47:32,713 years and years and years. 490 00:47:32,795 --> 00:47:34,356 That's where everybody wins. 491 00:47:34,356 --> 00:47:35,097 A hundred percent. 492 00:47:35,097 --> 00:47:37,498 We have multiple award winners. 493 00:47:37,979 --> 00:47:45,163 We have firms, two firms who won, who have won Ilta's Tramps transformative project of the year. 494 00:47:45,503 --> 00:47:56,240 We have another one who won step to intranet gold, which is a non-legal award program. 495 00:47:56,240 --> 00:47:59,472 Like it's across all verticals and they won gold. 496 00:47:59,553 --> 00:48:02,170 So, you know, making your client successful. 497 00:48:02,170 --> 00:48:04,671 is a key ingredient. 498 00:48:04,671 --> 00:48:04,982 All right. 499 00:48:04,982 --> 00:48:08,053 We're almost out of time, but I wanted to bounce one last thing off of you. 500 00:48:08,053 --> 00:48:16,738 And this is something new and it's something that we're calling unified collaboration. 501 00:48:16,738 --> 00:48:18,589 I hate the terms internet and extranet. 502 00:48:18,589 --> 00:48:21,281 They actually no longer make sense, right? 503 00:48:21,281 --> 00:48:28,675 They did when we had a firewall and we had on-prem infrastructure and intra, but everything's in the cloud now for the most part. 504 00:48:28,675 --> 00:48:31,656 So everything is an extranet essentially. 505 00:48:31,702 --> 00:48:34,583 But what do you think about? 506 00:48:34,784 --> 00:48:43,519 So with info dash, you will have one system to manage both your internal collaboration, IE intranet and external collaboration, extranet. 507 00:48:43,519 --> 00:48:51,453 It'll all be, so there will be one interface to learn one product to license and one system to manage. 508 00:48:51,453 --> 00:48:58,817 So bringing those together and not, instead of having high Q and handshake, you know, you have, you have one system. 509 00:48:58,817 --> 00:49:00,770 How, how important 510 00:49:00,770 --> 00:49:02,451 Do think that is gonna be? 511 00:49:03,578 --> 00:49:18,326 I think for adoption within a law firm, user experience, frankly outside the law firm, because I think that same concept as we talked about a few minutes ago extends outside the 512 00:49:18,326 --> 00:49:19,127 law firm as well. 513 00:49:19,127 --> 00:49:23,379 But let's focus on inside of a law firm. 514 00:49:23,379 --> 00:49:27,911 Your lawyers come in, they've got their desktop and their user interface. 515 00:49:27,911 --> 00:49:33,344 And really what an extranet is versus an internet to your point is, 516 00:49:33,344 --> 00:49:43,418 is really which of this information am I extending out beyond my organization to include clients and other parties outside of the law firm? 517 00:49:43,418 --> 00:49:50,401 I mean, it really should be the same system from a UI standpoint inside the law firm. 518 00:49:50,401 --> 00:49:52,562 I'm not having to do anything different. 519 00:49:52,562 --> 00:50:02,136 Whereas I think with the other tools and the limitations of some of the other platforms, well, now I have my internal tool. 520 00:50:02,136 --> 00:50:09,748 that I go work on and it syncs with the extranet and now I gotta go do stuff on the extranet to separate place. 521 00:50:09,748 --> 00:50:11,209 It's another activity. 522 00:50:11,209 --> 00:50:15,050 It's less efficient and it's less desirable for an end user. 523 00:50:15,050 --> 00:50:18,611 You you're more innovative users in the law firm. 524 00:50:18,611 --> 00:50:24,642 Okay, sure, they're gonna do that because they know the value they're giving their clients and they'll have their paralegal go do that. 525 00:50:24,642 --> 00:50:30,926 But to the degree that they don't have to do anything different, they're within one user interface, I think it's a 526 00:50:30,926 --> 00:50:38,926 It's a really big deal and I think it will help a law firm successfully implement the technology. 527 00:50:39,126 --> 00:50:47,506 So there's a lot of great tools that law firms have purchased over the years that their end users don't adopt because they're not user friendly, right? 528 00:50:47,506 --> 00:50:56,566 That's really, if I'm a CIO or a KM person or an innovation person in a law firm, what am I really worried about when I go buy something? 529 00:50:56,566 --> 00:50:58,686 Is it going to be successful? 530 00:50:58,686 --> 00:50:59,960 Now there's a lot of 531 00:50:59,960 --> 00:51:05,232 There's a lot of aspects that define what makes a project successful within a law firm. 532 00:51:05,472 --> 00:51:09,614 But usability is one of the key features. 533 00:51:09,614 --> 00:51:20,058 And again, if you're just using the same platform that they're using every day anyway, and you're adding some additional killer functionality on top of it. 534 00:51:20,058 --> 00:51:21,969 And then same thing with the client. 535 00:51:21,969 --> 00:51:29,666 Now the client can interact with the law firm through the same user experience that they're used to inside, but now they 536 00:51:29,666 --> 00:51:34,447 you've just extended access to information to them within their system. 537 00:51:34,447 --> 00:51:35,648 That's a game changer. 538 00:51:35,648 --> 00:51:40,139 That's not something that we've been able to effectively, I think, see before. 539 00:51:40,139 --> 00:51:44,671 It's been a limitation of the platforms that have evolved over the years. 540 00:51:44,671 --> 00:51:46,301 And now we're in a new state. 541 00:51:46,301 --> 00:51:56,364 And I think it's pretty exciting because I think it will accelerate the success law firms can have rolling out these solutions to their users. 542 00:51:56,471 --> 00:51:56,971 Yeah. 543 00:51:56,971 --> 00:51:59,022 And they've, they've always been separate. 544 00:51:59,022 --> 00:52:06,656 at least in the U S high Q has pretty much zero market share on the internet side, handshake, which was the predominant player. 545 00:52:06,656 --> 00:52:08,317 think we've taken that role. 546 00:52:08,317 --> 00:52:19,513 Um, you know, they have zero presence in, even though they had a product at one point, um, they, they, never, it never went anywhere. 547 00:52:19,513 --> 00:52:24,562 So it's been tried before, but I think the timing wasn't quite right. 548 00:52:24,562 --> 00:52:26,824 Um, the timing is right now. 549 00:52:26,824 --> 00:52:34,610 So we think bringing these things together, uh, you know, and not having specialized skill sets like, and specialized teams. 550 00:52:34,610 --> 00:52:42,297 know so many law firms that have two, three, sometimes five people managing their high Q environment. 551 00:52:42,297 --> 00:52:54,396 And if, if, and that's best case scenario, it costs more, but if you've got one person managing your high Q solution and that person leaves, you're in a world of hurt. 552 00:52:54,980 --> 00:52:55,302 Yeah. 553 00:52:55,302 --> 00:52:58,243 hard to find people who really know how to manage that. 554 00:52:58,243 --> 00:53:01,914 So yeah, we're thinking that these are commodity skills. 555 00:53:01,914 --> 00:53:11,457 Everybody, you know, you can find a SharePoint guy easily, but more easily than you can somebody who knows a specialized technology like high Q there's a lot more of them out 556 00:53:11,457 --> 00:53:11,747 there. 557 00:53:11,747 --> 00:53:16,188 So, and your IT can also provide some support in a pinch. 558 00:53:16,188 --> 00:53:23,164 You know, if you're in KM, you may not want to rely solely on IT because they've got a big backlog and you know, but 559 00:53:23,164 --> 00:53:25,346 Um, in a pinch, you certainly could. 560 00:53:25,346 --> 00:53:27,633 we're thinking that is also going to move the dial. 561 00:53:27,854 --> 00:53:29,474 Yeah, absolutely. 562 00:53:29,474 --> 00:53:36,914 think the administration of the system is also a big factor involved. 563 00:53:37,294 --> 00:53:43,894 And I think being able to customize the administrative model within a firm makes a lot of sense. 564 00:53:43,894 --> 00:53:48,714 mean, let's face it, IT shouldn't be in the business of having to add client users. 565 00:53:48,814 --> 00:53:51,014 That's just inefficient. 566 00:53:51,014 --> 00:53:56,254 It's not a good use of their time, and it's frustrating because they just won't respond quickly. 567 00:53:56,254 --> 00:53:57,318 However, 568 00:53:57,346 --> 00:54:07,464 giving IT management oversight and understanding of the system and how it's being used so they can manage the security around the overall system is important. 569 00:54:07,464 --> 00:54:09,957 So it's really a balance. 570 00:54:09,957 --> 00:54:17,014 And that's a balance that's been difficult to achieve before within the previous platforms that were out there. 571 00:54:17,014 --> 00:54:17,796 Yeah. 572 00:54:17,796 --> 00:54:19,539 Well, Don, this has been a great conversation. 573 00:54:19,539 --> 00:54:20,554 Went a little bit over. 574 00:54:20,554 --> 00:54:24,660 I apologize for that, but it was such a good dialogue. 575 00:54:24,660 --> 00:54:25,812 I didn't want to end it. 576 00:54:25,812 --> 00:54:28,948 So I really appreciate you joining me today. 577 00:54:29,038 --> 00:54:30,278 Yeah, thank you, Ted. 578 00:54:30,278 --> 00:54:33,998 As always, it's fun to talk about this. 579 00:54:33,998 --> 00:54:37,418 So thank you for inviting me to participate. 580 00:54:37,418 --> 00:54:39,938 Really appreciate it. 581 00:54:39,978 --> 00:54:40,558 You bet. 582 00:54:40,558 --> 00:54:41,698 Thank you. -->