[00:00:00] John, how are you this afternoon? Good, Ted. How are you? I'm doing great, man. I'm doing great. I am so looking forward to this conversation because you and I have similar backgrounds, financial services, process engineering, and I think that the, that lens that you and I had through our backgrounds really makes a lot of, for, for a lot of interesting conversations in legal today. So I'm anxious to get you introduced. Um- Yeah ... why don't you tell everybody kinda who you are, what you do, where you do it, and then just a little bit about your background, uh, before we jump in. Absolutely. So John Barbera, Head of Business Architecture and Enablement here at Burford Capital. Um, I started here about two and a half years ago. My career started over at the Royal Bank of Scotland. I worked in tax operations and, um, believe it or not, one day I hit someone's car in the parking lot, [00:01:00] and that changed my entire career trajectory. I wound up, this gentleman whose car I hit ran the PMO. Um, we had an interaction, and he said, "Hey, I have an opening on my team. Why don't you come apply for it?" Next thing I know, I'm working in the PMO. Next thing, I'm the head PMO on Dodd-Frank, huge, big initiative back then. Um, that led to a lot of other opportunities at RBS. I was in the business management department for technology. I then played an enablement role for our chief controls officer, and then I had an opportunity to move over to Barclays, um, play a similar PMO role within the data office there, help them stand up that data office, moved into data quality, data governance. And then I had an opportunity to move into what they were calling the process office, which soon became business architecture, and that's where I, um, sort of found my niche. Um, I helped build that office, and then two and a half years ago, Burford came knocking, and I had a wonderful opportunity to come [00:02:00] here and build out a business architecture and enablement team. Awesome. And for those that don't know, PMO is project management office. So you and I being process guys, so I'm a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. I spent 10 years at Bank of America doing process engineering work and, uh, primarily in, like risk management- Corporate audit, uh, spent a little time in global treasury, but in multiple places around the bank and evaluating processes and their effectiveness and the controls in which the business has deployed, you know, risk management measures. So I, I very much have that lens, um, when I'm looking at processes and how to make them better. And the last time you and I spoke, we talked about how a lot of law firms right now are in what I call kind of [00:03:00] wave one of this transformation, and this is nobody has-- th-this is nobody's framework but my own, but I, I kind of think about the, the transformation as coming in waves. And the, the first wave is like, all right, we've got these copilots, and I don't mean Microsoft Copilot, I mean just these practice of law tools that get bolted on to the way everything has always been done, and you gain some efficiencies and, um, it's a, a net improvement of where you are. But, you know, I see wave two of this as firms really evaluating and re-architecting their workflows using firns-first principles, right? Like- Absolutely ... stripping things down to bare metal and rebuilding them with the tech in mind. And when you and I were talking about that, you mentioned, uh, a dynamic that I thought was interesting, which is how in many industries, I don't know so much in [00:04:00] legal, but in many industries, when we, when the offshoring wave started to gain traction, we just started dumping processes offshore to lower cost labor instead of reevaluating it. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that Absolutely. I think, you know, when you think about there is alwa-- everyone wants to save money, and when there is a new way to do something more efficient or to save the bottom line, you wanna go and do it, and you wanna be the first one to do it. So I think banks did that when it came to offshoring. You know, then you have 10 years ago, there was a rush for robotic processing automation or RPA, and today we're doing that same thing when we rush into AI and, and technology. But what's happening is the pattern is technology or low cost becomes the solution before the problem is actually fully understood. And that's sort of the biggest mistake that organizations can make, is asking, "How can we use technology?" Or, "How can we make things a [00:05:00] lower cost?" Before they ask themself, "How should this work be done?" Technology should never define the process. It should always be defined. The process should define the technology, and that's exactly what business architecture does, right? If you think about the example that you gave around moving to low-cost locations, it's no similar than when you move houses, right? And you have a junk drawer in the kitchen, and you take that junk drawer and you just pack it all in a box and you move it, and then you're unpacking it and you realize you don't need half of those objects, right? So you really have to go down to the foundation of what is this process that I'm performing, and before that, what's the business objective of it, you know? That's so-- That's where I think, um, that's where I sort of think we are today with technology and AI. I think that's where, what we're starting to see and uncover. Yep. And I can tell you that having done some process engineering work in legal And in my previous company, so today we are known as InfoDash. We've been a product company for about four [00:06:00] and a half years. We had a consulting organization for 14 years before that, and one offering that we had was kind of business process improvement. Um, we did a r- a, it was a big project for us. We kind of rebuilt a default services law firm in the ear- very early 2010s. I think we started the work in '09, and just using Lean Six Sigma principles, like really breaking down their... It, it's a very process-heavy, um, practice area, so like the, uh, attorney-to-staff ratio in default services for this firm was like they probably had, I don't know, 20 attorneys and 400 staff. Wow. And that doesn't include, so talking about offshoring, they used a, a BPO in India- Okay ... where they offloaded a lot of the-- It's just very [00:07:00] process-intensive, a lot of administrative work associated, and, and we kind of redesigned everything, and my listeners have probably heard me talk about this before. Like it, it got, the project got all kinds of recognition, like it got written up in the ABA Journal, and I thought, and they named us in the article, and I thought, "Man, my phone's gonna ring off the hook," and crickets. Um, so they're, they're, like law firms h-historically have not cared about being efficient. It's actually, um, creates a conflict with their revenue model, which is to bill hourly. So we, I-- And now we're in a place where the tech is going to erode the bi- billable hour, and AFAs are going to start to get a bigger piece of the pie, and now we gotta like rethink that lack of process focus. And, [00:08:00] um, I don't know. How have you seen it in your past? H-have you encountered areas of the business, I know I did at, when I was at Bank of America, that were resistant to this concept of process engineering? And what sort of experience did you have with those areas of the business? I think in a way everyone can be resistant to change. You know? I think that it works Why, why change it, right? Mm-hmm. But I think that's where it comes down to a few different principles. One, I think you have to get everyone involved. Like I'm sure when you did your process review, you weren't able to do that alone in a silo. You had to work with every individual person who performed that process to understand what they do and then to understand how they thought about a [00:09:00] future state, right? Whether you were gathering their pain points or listening to ways that they thought that, you know, technology or governance or an op model might improve what they were doing. So I think you have to bring everyone along for the journey. I also think that it's really important that that transition comes from the top down. It can't be, you know, process optimization, process improvement, unfortunately can't really be a grassroots effort. It's very challenging to do that. It might work in certain teams, but, you know, when you went into that company to do that, you had a mandate, right? And that mandate came from the top down, and that's part of the reason why that was so successful. So it's really that human interaction. I also think that you have to show people, you have to sell it, right? You have to sell how their job is going to be easier, um, and you have to show them little bit by little bit, and then they're gonna get on board and, and then, you know, then it's, then it's gonna [00:10:00] work. I also think that, you know, when you think about law in general and, and some of the metrics that we use, like billable hours, that might not, you know, we don't know if that's ever gonna change, but that's okay. There's other metrics that we can sort of start to introduce and think about, like how long does it take to secure a deal? How long does it take to, um, you know, bring money in the door? Like those are all things that you can actually possibly use technology to help advance, and I think that's where it becomes really interesting. It's not necessarily moving away from the metrics that we have today, but it's understanding, well, with the possibility of process improvement in technology, what are other metrics that we're not even thinking about? Makes sense. And, you know, we also, last time we spoke, touched on how law firms today, not just law firms, I would imagine all industries, there's so much like FOMO driven [00:11:00] experimentation and purchasing going on in the technical world. There's a lot of redundant spend with like overlapping tools. A good example would be, you know, Harvey, Legora, um, and let's say Copilot, right? I, I-- It's very common, I see it all the time, where, you know, they've-- a firm has paid whatever, $30 per month per user for their Copilot license, and they're paying 12 to $1500 per attorney per month for Harvey and Ligori. And no, those aren't the same tools, but if you look at the Venn diagram, there is absolutely some overlap in capabilities. So how can process help us minimize that, that spend for duplicate capability? That's a, that's a great question, and I think that's actually going to be something that everyone's gonna need to solve for, and I don't know that a lot of people are necessarily thinking about that. 'Cause like you said, we're all buying those [00:12:00] tools for very specific reasons because of that Venn diagram. Now, I think that's where business architecture and process improvement and enablement come into play, because instead of understanding what the tool does, you wanna understand how does that work actually get done? Where are the decisions made? Where is information created? Where do people spend their most time? Where are the bottlenecks? Because once you understand where that process is, the opportunity for the tool, that's when it becomes, um, obvious. And I also think when we think about all of these tools, like we just actually went through something very, very similar, um, here at Burford. I had a department come to me that said, "Hey, we want this new tool, and we think it's gonna be great. We think it's gonna help us. It's gonna give us all of these capabilities that we don't currently have today." So we said, "Okay, we're gonna do a process review." We sat down with them. We mapped out the current state of this process. We identified that they had a pretty sophisticated [00:13:00] tech stack to begin with, um, and we said, "Okay, forget, forget the tool that you want us to buy. What do you want to do? Like, what are you trying to achieve here in this process, in this future state?" We mapped it out. We came up with a series of opportunities, and we took that to two of the vendors that we already had, tools that we're already paying for. And, uh, it turned out that those vendors, between the two of them, could do 95% of the things that we wanted. Um, and that new tool that they were so excited about just slowly stopped being, you know, a word on everyone's lips. And I think what's so cool there is a lot of organizations probably have potentially what they already need, but it's being bought for one specific reason and they're applying it and Someone forgets about it, or no one's having that conversation to understand how that tool is evolving, right? Because you're bo- and, and that's again where the process review is so important because you, you can't just apply [00:14:00] technology for-- it, it becomes a band-aid, right? And you have to think about it holistically across that entire process. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, from your years in, in the banking industry, like what, what are we doing in legal that you can take those learnings from your past and apply them to what you're, what you're seeing in the legal industry? Like, are there any... 'Cause I know there were for me. I saw-- So, you know, legal is, I don't know, maybe second or third to last on technology adoption, right? They are laggards in the truest sense historically. I think that's, that's slowly starting to change, um, or maybe m- more quickly starting to change, but historically that's been the case, and I don't think anybody would argue that. Like law firms spend around 2.5% on technology, and financial services spend, spends about 12, right, uh, as a [00:15:00] percentage of revenue. So by all measures, um, legal is near the bottom in the knowledge world. W- so have you-- W- what can we take from y- your experience in banking and apply those lessons in legal? Anything jump out at you? I think that one of the things you find in any organization is Part of that resistance comes from, "Well, we do things differently," right? "Our process is very bespoke and it's very different, and no one else does it." And you deal with this when you talk to traders or when you talk to lawyers. But actually, if you take it a step up, in any or in every organization, you have the same building blocks across a lot of these processes. You have an [00:16:00] intake, you have an assessment, you have research, review, approval, execution, and who doesn't love reporting, right? You have all of those components. Now, the work may be bespoke, but the process is not. And that's where if you think about it, the widget that's going through might be something very different, but it's going through very similar steps. And that's where business architecture comes in to help identify what should be standardized, where do we create a competitive advantage, where does that customization actually matter? Um, and I think it is happening in the legal world. Look, Burford's an innovator of law, and you have me here in Burford doing this. And I think that the law industry is taking those steps because they're starting to see that in order to get technology, they actually, like you said, have to rip it down to the scaffolding and potentially decide to rebuild. Yeah. And yeah, there is definitely [00:17:00] a bespoke mindset in the legal world. You know, it's l- lawyers within the same practice, within the same firm do things differently from, from one another, and there's not a lot of standardization. Um, what about, like, kind of from where we are to where we're going? Like, I always think about transformations in kinda three phases. It's like current state, transitional state, and future state. And you and I talked about, like, Big Law 1.0 and Big Law 2.0. Like, if I think about those opposite ends of the spectrum, Big Law 1.0 feels like traditional big law, like kinda how law firms do business today. Very bespoke, very slightly tech-enabled. Um, you know, the typical staff to attorney ratio in big law is one to one, so a 500 attorney law firm generally has 1,000 employees total, [00:18:00] right? And I think that over time we're going to, uh, well, that's one end of the spectrum. And then s- the other end of the spectrum is like the AI native firms that are, like, starting up from nothing and they don't have any of that legacy baggage that 1.0 firms have, right? Like the pricing models, the, the internal firm compensation models, the client engagement models, all of those things that have been done differently for so long and are deeply cultural. 2.0 doesn't have that. But I think there's like a middle ground, like a transitional state between where we are and where we're going. Uh, I don't know. How do you think about, um, transformations? Do you kind of think about them in that sort of a framework, or do you think about them differently? No, I think that's a great framework to think about them, and I think that's all transformation, right? You have your current state, you have your future [00:19:00] state of where you wanna get to, and you have this in between. And that in between hopefully is the steps you're taking to get to that 2.0. Um, I think in order to get to that 2.0, you have to be willing to redesign your workflows. You have to be able to agree holistically that you want to capture knowledge as opposed to recreate it, and that's using data, right, to flow across systems seamlessly and not manually. Understanding where those repetitive administrative tasks are and where judgment is absolutely critically needed, and that's a completely fundamental different way of operating. Like you said, it's an operating shift. It's not necessarily a technology shift. And I think many of the reasons why firms aren't ready today is because they don't have defined processes. Teams are working in, in different ways. There's limited governance, manual workarounds, right? And technology is [00:20:00] never going to solve those problems. It will only amplify it because as you know, you can't automate chaos, right? That's not something that you're gonna be able to do ever. Um, and I think that's where it comes down to that myth of, well, my process is so different. But when you take that step back and you realize that it's not, that's where you can really start to make some of that meaningful change. Um, I also think what's really interesting is when you think about transformation, right? And you think about, um- process improvement, a lot of that is automatically thought to be technology, but that's not always the case, right? I love doing a process review because you find that there's typically more than a tech solution that's available. You find it's governance, you find it's an operating model, or there are these other business solutions that are uncovered. Um, and I think what can be really interesting in a [00:21:00] 2.0 is, you know, Burford, an innovator of law, we offer litigation funding solutions. So in a, in, in very simple terms, we provide companies, um, the ability to preserve their capital, and that capital can then be spent on transformation, right? So you realize you have this problem. You're actually looking for other business solutions that are on the market, whether it's litigation funding, whether it's something else, right? But you're, you're, you're expanding your operating model to include these business solutions, and that's where 2.0 becomes really interesting because you have this sort of innovation can help fund innovation. It doesn't just have to stop at technology. Yeah, I, um, I had a, a, a-- I was on a panel at the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Summit Two, three weeks ago in, uh, in June and in London. And, um, I was asked a question about [00:22:00] is there too much focus on use cases like with AI right now? And I thought that was a really interesting question, and I, I'll tell you the way I answered it. It-- So, uh, I used Netflix as an example. So Netflix was born in 1997, and they, from day one, from everything that I've read, and I've, I have researched this. From everything that I've read, they from day one had this vision of being a streaming business, but the tech wasn't ready, right? The in- underlying infrastructure, the internet couldn't support streaming, right? Broadband was still very new. So what they did was, so that... All right, so 1.0 was the Blockbuster model in the video rental world, right? You walk in, you pick a movie off the shelf, you buy some $12 Milk Duds, and, you know, you're on your way to go have a great ni- date night or whatever. And then Netflix came in and said, "All right, we wanna, we-- Our 2.0 is [00:23:00] streaming, um, but the, the infrastructure, the technology's not ready." So their, their, their 1.5 was, "We're gonna mail three discs at a time." And what it allowed them to do was build all, a, a lot of other supporting infrastructure that would allow them to be ready when the infrastructure finally caught up. Like, they built their, their, their web presence, their subscriber base- Mm-hmm ... their payment infrastructure, their learning algorithms for making recommendations. All that was being built while the infrastructure was catching up. And then when the infrastructure was ready, they, you know, turned on a dime, and Blockbuster was hopelessly behind at that point because they didn't do all that, all that work ahead of time. So I don't know. Do you think there are any parallels? Like, is there anything we can learn from kind of that Netflix example? Because ho- honestly, the tech is not there today. I don't care [00:24:00] what people tell you. My take on, like, agentic, um, agentic technology taking over legal processes i-i-in the next couple of months is just, it, it's just not true. Um, I think there are ways you can augment, um, the human-led processes with, with agents, and I had somebody on the podcast from Google, like, at this point it'll be maybe a month or two ago, who talked about how they do it, but in no way are they just automating. But eventually we'll get there. So I don't know. What is your take on all that? I, I think the lesson that we can learn here is the strategy. Netflix came in in the very beginning, like you said, and said, "This is where we want to end up," right? "This is our ultimate goal." And they never strayed from that, even when it wasn't available. And I think that they used what they could at the time to get where [00:25:00] they wanted to go, but they never lost sight of that vision, right? So what I mean by that is, like, they used the mailing, right? They said, "Okay. Well, look, we don't have infrastructure for people to stream, but we have a mail system, and we can mail three, three DVDs out at a time. Like, let's, let's do that, and that's gonna, that's gonna be our, like, 1.5," right? Um, so I think it's that vision, and I think that's what people are missing. I think people have an opportunity to take a step back and say, "Okay, what is my vision? Where do I wanna go?" And it's not necessarily, you know, a short-term vision or a medium-term vision. It's that long-term vision. It's that, where do you wanna end up, right? And I think people sometimes are operating within the world of what's possible right now. But what is possible t- what is, what is, what do you want, right? And if you put what you want out there, and you help build that technology as part of that, you're gonna get it, right? And that's exactly what happened to Netflix. There's a very similar sort of, um, story that happened with railroads. When railro- railroads [00:26:00] were being built, right? Um, towns would build their own railroad, build a piece of a railroad that nothing would happen on, right? And it wasn't until the rest of the rails caught up that they would then connect to it. But that town was ready. That town knew that eventually this was gonna come, and they just built their however big railroad through their town. And when everyone else could come and connect, they were a stop there, right? You know? So it's, it's very similar, it's similar to the Netflix principle of like, "Look, this is where we wanna go. We wanna be a, we wanna be on this rail stop. We're gonna build the technology until you catch up, what we can of that technology," right? And that's where you have really interesting opportunities for law firms to partner with technology that's out there today, right? Um, I think- I'm going on now, but I think another really interesting thing with this too- Yeah is there are certain things that you're never gonna get away from, right? [00:27:00] So when I think about law, I think about iManage, right? If I was to ever design a process here that didn't include iManage when we're talking about document storage, it wouldn't be used because it's just how we operate. It's how the industry operates. I could, I could suggest SharePoint, but it's not gonna work, right? We use iManage. It's intrinsically in the blood of legal, and that's okay. But on the flip side, these firms that are out there that are building technology have to understand some of what's not gonna change, right? And have to partner with us to understand that, so then their products can then be infiltrated into our processes. I think that makes a lot of sense. Th- essentially, there are some pillars that have to be accounted for when you're mapping out what, what 2.0 looks like. And, you know, I think there are valuable lessons for, for [00:28:00] law firms to think about what did Blockbuster do? Like that, you know, that is what you don't wanna emulate, right? Blockbuster waited. They took a wait and see attitude. Um, they even talked to Netflix about buying them, and then they stood up a very poor attempt. You know, another example is, is Kodak. So Kodak, you know, missed the boat on the whole digital camera front and digital photography, and they actually created a, um, they created a-- It wa- wasn't quite a social media platform, but it was a, a photo sharing platform. And you know what they, the, the ultimate goal of that was? So you could select pictures and then print them. You know, it's just like, uh, what are you doing here, right? It's like that's where I think your, um, point about mapping, staying focused on what 2.0 you're striving- Yeah ... towards and making sure 1.5 [00:29:00] gets you closer to that. Like- Yeah ... don't take the Kodak model, don't take the Blockbuster model of waiting. Um- Also, to both of those points, those two models In a way, we're an innovative, right? When you're designing a 2.0, you have a chance to design a future state that is actually innovative and changing the way that things are working, right? And lawyers are very smart. We know where this is probably going. We have the opportunity to sit back and say, "Where could we be?" Right? "What could our firm look like?" Um, I mean, it's, it's sort of like a-- it, it's sort of Burford in a way, right? Like we're a litigation funder. We're, uh, the best in the world. Like that is something that is very niche and it's, it's all over, right? Like that is, that is actually really cool. Like that's why we're an [00:30:00] innovator of law. It's things like that. It's like where is the law industry going? You see a problem and you're, and you try to fix it, right? Like Netflix knew, like it was only a matter of time before things were gonna be streaming, right? And yeah, we weren't caught up from a technology perspective, but at the same time, they knew we were gonna get there. Yeah. So that's where that innovation, innovation of a future state is like, look-- And that's what I do with, with every process that we redesigned. It's like thinking, okay, like pens down, blue sky future state, right? I like to say, "Look, we can't have pigs fly, but like what else could we have?" Right? Like we don't wanna be too crazy, right? But like what, what, what really do we want out of here? Right. What within the realm of possibility could we- Yeah ... paint a picture of that would transform the industry and improve, improve the world in which we serve, um- And, and it's [00:31:00] also really important, right? So when I design a future state I don't like to list technology. I like to list characteristics of technology. I like to say, you know, "We need a workflow that captures approval or sends automatic alerts," but I don't wanna name what that workflow is. I don't wanna say what system I'm using because then I've grounded myself to a tool, right? Give me the characteristics of what you want. I wanna be able to turn on my TV and select s- out of s- out of 50 movies which one I wanna watch, and I wanna have instant access to that. That's how you then get technology to catch up with where you want that process to go. Yeah. You know, um, I, I ta- I, I talk about this a lot on LinkedIn, the cultural barriers that law firms have towards change. Like, it's the metrics, it's their hierarchy, it's their practice-centric mindset, and, um, I encountered some of this. So I was, I [00:32:00] was at B of A in the late, or, uh, ear- mid-2000s, and, um, this was shortly after 9/11. So I was actually at Bank of America during 9/11. Wow. Was as a result of 9/11, um, there was a massive effort by the US government around money laundering controls. So money laundering pre-9/11 was really focused on, um, organized crime. You know, you had things like the Bank Secrecy Act that was, was really focused on that, that sort of money laundering. But they, the, the whole, um, terrorist financing component of anti-money laundering took a whole new level of focus, and you had legislation like the USA Patriot Act- Yep where you had to Now, um, at, at a, at an- another level. So Bank of America ranked money laundering risk post 9/11 as a top three risk to the, to, to the bank. [00:33:00] Like, if there was ever another 9/11 and it came to light that, that, that terrorist financing flowed through Bank of America, they viewed that as an existential threat to their business, and rightly so. Yeah. But, you know, so there was this whole new... And I was in a, a lot of, uh, AML, um, first in, in audit and then in, on the compliance side, and we had to go out and, um, with a stick, especially when I was in audit, you know, some, some, um, compo- areas of risk management use a carrot. In audit, it's very much a stick. And we would go into these lines of business and go, "Hey, you know what? Your data, your data is trash. Like, you've got nine, nine, nine, nine, nine in all your Social Security number," or, or not all, but a large percentage of it because there weren't controls around that, and y- you gotta fix that. And they-- And so the cultural resistance that we ran into was like, "We've always done this this way. Like, why is this a problem?" And we had to re-educate them on, "Hey, [00:34:00] look, this is what happens t- to this organization if something flows through our institution that causes, you know, another scenario like that." So I don't know. I, I would imagine you probably ran into cultural resistance in your time in other industries. Like, how do you, how do you think about how to combat that? That's a great question. I think what's interesting in that scenario is, like I mentioned, you want that change to come from the top down. And even in a situation like that where the change is coming from the top down, you're still gonna get with-- met with resistance on the ground, right? Because people don't wanna change necessarily what they do. Um, and, and, and I think sometimes we might interpret resistance... We might interpret thoughtful skepticism as resistance. Hmm. And I don't-- I, I think we have to really be careful there because instead of trying to [00:35:00] convince people of why we need to do it, we need to show them, right? And that's how you build trust from this experience. And I think that's exactly what you said you did, right? You took a step back and you said, "Look, I understand that you've always put 999 in the Social Security, but look, if you continue to do this based on these events, this is what's gonna happen to us," right? That's not gonna look good for anybody, right? Like, the-- and, and you don't want that to come down on you. You don't want that to come down on the company you work for. You have pride in that. So I think it's building that trust and building that experience. Um, and yeah, I think we meet resistance in a lot of different things we do. Like I mentioned, that marketing review. You know, um, the last thing they wanted to do was sit with me to map a current state. They had already identified what they wanted, right? They were like, "Look, like this is what we want. We know it. We've seen it. We've demoed it. We're about to have a trial, like we're good." And it's like, "Okay, look, just sit with me. Just, just let me make sure that we've mapped everything out [00:36:00] because we might be missing something," right? There might be something that this tool can do that is out of scope that you haven't looked at that maybe we could apply. Um, and what'll also just help you build a business case is to say that you don't have a tool that currently does that. And, um, at the end of the four weeks, they came to me and said, "Why didn't we work with you a year ago? Like, we wish we did this a year ago with you," right? Um, and they were really happy. They weren't upset that they couldn't get this tool. They were so happy to know that they had the capabilities that they could turn on like that. You know? That's what it is. It's about building trust and it's about empathy, right? People also have this hesitation of change is gonna take away my job, and that's, and that's not true. Yeah. That's a great-- That's a really good point. And what we're talking about here is something that doesn't get talked about enough in, in the legal world, which is The human element of this and, um, [00:37:00] you know, the tech is the easy part. Like I, I wrote a post on how AI will kill law firms, and I don't mean they're gonna kill all law firms, but they, in my opinion, AI is going to kill the laggards for a variety of reasons. If you're interested, go to my profile, I have it pinned up there. But, um, you know, uh, the, the human element of this is, to your point, it's not that people are al- necessarily resistance to cha- resistant to change, but they may have a healthy dose of skepticism, which lawyers inherently do, right? Just by the nature of their work. They're paid to be skeptics, right? You send me a document, I'm looking for your angle, and I'm looking how to protect my client from you pushing forward some agenda through contract language or negotiations. So I think that is a really important point, and I, I'm glad that we're having this conversation. I think we need to have more conversations [00:38:00] around the human element of this, because there is fear. Like there, there is so much fear in the legal industry right now. If you were to stack rank industries from most vulnerable to least, I would put legal at number two behind like en- maybe, you know, engineering, like coders, right? Like software development I think is ahead of legal in terms of how they're transforming. But I, I wouldn't put anybody else ahead of law firms and like that's scary. And like, so how do we empathize with that and even tap into it and use it as As fuel, as a positive. Like, "Hey, look. Okay, I know you're, I know you're, uh, I know you're scared about this." You know, use, use different words, but, "I know this is, um, this feels threatening, but, like, let's work together and build something that will be-- that will get us to the next level and, and, [00:39:00] and out, uh, on the other side of this transformation successful." Yeah, I don't think people wake up wanting to resist change. Uh, people resist uncertainty, you know? That's really what it comes down to, and technology adoption is not the primary problem. It's, um, it's a, it- it's a, it's the people. It's the people, right? Um, people have to adopt a new technology, and they're not gonna do that until they understand it, they trust it, and they show that it makes their job easier. Um, and that's why communication, training are just as important as selecting the right technology. And it's also, again, bringing them on that journey, right? You can't just do this in a silo. If you were to go in and redesign a process and tell people, "Well, this is what you need to do. It's gonna be better," without showing them, it doesn't work. It's like a math test, right? The, the teacher wants to see that you've shown the work to make sure you've gotten the [00:40:00] problem. And, like, you have to show the work. You have to show it. You can't just give someone a number because they're not gonna trust it, right? A teacher's gonna think that you cheated or you memorized it or you, uh, used ChatGPT, right? Like, you gotta show your work, and that's the same thing you have to do with process optimization. You have to show the work, and you have to do it with them. It's a great point. You know, okay, so that takes me to, uh, three words that I bounced off you in our last conversation that I thought you had a really good pivot on. And I've heard the three, these three words used as something that everybody needs to learn how to do Which is learn, unlearn, and relearn. Ugh. Yeah, I know. It doesn't- It sounds terrible, doesn't it? Like, I don't want... Wha- unlearn? Do you know how hard it is to learn, and now you're asking me to unlearn? Like, that, that doesn't sound fun. It doesn't sound productive. But you had a different spin. Why don't you kind of [00:41:00] share w- how, how we might talk about that process differently? Yeah, absolutely. I think, look, it comes back to what we were just talking about. It's communication, right? You have to communicate things, and linguistics is such a big part of that. And to your point, when you use words like unlearn, relearn, you're talking to professionals who have decades of experience and are at the top of their career. So if you said that to me, I would say, "You want me to throw away my decades of experience that got me here?" Like, okay, I don't trust you. But I think a different mindset that really gets the same thing across is learn, advance, apply. And if you think about it, it's really the same thing with just different words, because we're not asking people to throw away what they know. We're not asking them to unlearn. We're asking them to continue to learn and advance in what they know. Um, we're asking them to evolve, and then we're asking them to [00:42:00] apply what they're learning. And I just think that that's such a more powerful and empowering message than asking someone to unlearn something, right? Like, advance with us. And that's what you think about. That's what people are, that's what people are doing. You're continuously learning. I'm continuously learning. Lawyers are continuously learning. Bankers are con- everyone is continuously learning, right? Maybe not college students, but everybody is continuously learning. Um, so that's-- And then, and then you have to apply it. Um, so I think, I think that's just a much more healthier way to get people to join the conversation. Yeah, it's a much better framing than learn, unlearn, relearn. I think really at, at the very core It's the same, but your words are more empathetic and I think easier to digest because, you know, from a change management perspective, y- you really [00:43:00] wanna take the path of least resistance, right? Yeah. If you come in with a heavy message that doesn't land well, you're just creating more work for yourself, and change management is so much work. Um, the human element of this is gonna be the hardest part. Um, well, listen, this has been such a good conversation and, you know, it, it's inspired me to think about how to have more of the-- So we talked so much about, you know, as part of innovation, like the tech piece, and that is a really important, you know, piece, architecture and, like, who owns what and, you know, the, the, the data pipes and where the harness lives and, you know, the human piece of this is what's gonna slow us down. Like, honestly, the tech is going to be in a place that can deliver way before the organizations are able to adopt that tech [00:44:00] and implement that tech, right? Because it's the human element that's so hard to change. Would you agree with that? I would agree with that, and I would also say it's the strategy, right? If the tech is there and we have the strategy and we have that buy-in, we will be able to change. We are changing, right? We are doing it slowly but surely. Um, and I think once we have that vision of what our Netflix 2.0 looks like, and then when we're able to bring people along on that journey and turn that skepticism into participation and get them to advance with us and then apply it, I think we're at that 2.0, right? And yeah, hopefully the technology will be there when we're ready, or we're helping build it along the way. I couldn't agree more. Um, okay, before we wrap, how do people find out more about Burford or connect with you? Um, you can follow me on LinkedIn. You can Google Burford and, uh, you can go to our [00:45:00] website. Um, yeah. Awesome. Well, good stuff. Uh, John, it's been a pleasure to have you on. I really, uh, appreciate you taking a little time with us this afternoon. Awesome, Ted. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. What a great conversation. Appreciate it. All right, take care. Bye. Thanks for listening to Legal Innovation Spotlight. If you found value in this chat, hit the subscribe button to be notified when we release new episodes. We'd also really appreciate it if you could take a moment to rate us and leave us a review wherever you're listening right now. Your feedback helps us provide you with top-notch content.