1 00:00:02,680 --> 00:00:04,491 Keith, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,524 --> 00:00:05,268 doing good, thanks. 3 00:00:05,268 --> 00:00:06,261 How are you? 4 00:00:06,456 --> 00:00:07,137 Doing great. 5 00:00:07,137 --> 00:00:07,797 Doing great. 6 00:00:07,797 --> 00:00:13,071 Appreciate you taking a few minutes here to, we got a good agenda. 7 00:00:13,612 --> 00:00:27,423 Talk about you and I engaged on LinkedIn regarding, I think we were talking about AFAs and some other interesting topics that, and whether or not law firm clients are actually ready 8 00:00:27,423 --> 00:00:28,214 for AFAs. 9 00:00:28,214 --> 00:00:30,506 And we had a good dialogue. 10 00:00:30,506 --> 00:00:35,736 So I figured a conversation here on the podcast would be good idea. 11 00:00:35,736 --> 00:00:36,137 Sure. 12 00:00:36,137 --> 00:00:38,754 I appreciate the invite and I always like talking shop. 13 00:00:38,754 --> 00:00:40,870 yeah, excited to be here. 14 00:00:40,870 --> 00:00:41,210 Thanks. 15 00:00:41,210 --> 00:00:42,031 Thanks again. 16 00:00:42,031 --> 00:00:42,971 good stuff, man. 17 00:00:42,971 --> 00:00:46,384 So I took a look, I took a look at your LinkedIn. 18 00:00:46,384 --> 00:00:49,116 So you've been in legal for, for quite some time. 19 00:00:49,116 --> 00:00:53,639 Um, you're an MBA, not a JD, correct? 20 00:00:54,740 --> 00:01:03,267 And you are head of pricing and analytics at Caton, but you spent time at Perkins Cooey, DLA Piper, Ackerman. 21 00:01:03,267 --> 00:01:07,720 Um, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and where you do it. 22 00:01:07,736 --> 00:01:10,036 Yeah, got into actually funny story. 23 00:01:10,036 --> 00:01:11,836 I got into legal on accident. 24 00:01:12,156 --> 00:01:15,796 It was right after the tragedies in 9 11. 25 00:01:15,796 --> 00:01:18,436 I was looking for a new job because I had worked at a startup back then. 26 00:01:18,436 --> 00:01:20,996 It was like an interactive marketing agency. 27 00:01:20,996 --> 00:01:27,516 I was a project manager there and I was looking for a new job and the only one I could get at the time because nobody was hiring. 28 00:01:27,516 --> 00:01:30,116 I was he right was the American Bar Association. 29 00:01:30,116 --> 00:01:33,016 It was and it turned out being a great opportunity. 30 00:01:33,016 --> 00:01:34,856 Had some got some great experience there. 31 00:01:34,856 --> 00:01:36,392 Introduced me to law. 32 00:01:36,392 --> 00:01:37,663 and some really great people. 33 00:01:37,663 --> 00:01:42,755 So I'm grateful that the opportunity that things sort of transpired the way they did. 34 00:01:43,456 --> 00:01:46,608 But so I spent a little time at the ABA doing a number of different things. 35 00:01:46,608 --> 00:01:52,881 And then I said, hey, you I work with all these lawyers that are members of the association. 36 00:01:52,972 --> 00:01:59,465 I wonder what the in-house sort of law firm side of the coin looks like as far as other opportunities to expand. 37 00:01:59,465 --> 00:02:04,312 So that was when I made the jump over to Ackerman. 38 00:02:04,312 --> 00:02:11,047 I was able to use my connections to get some interviews at Ackerman and join there. 39 00:02:11,047 --> 00:02:15,059 Got my feet wet in what the in-house law firm side of things looks like. 40 00:02:15,059 --> 00:02:18,261 And not too long after that, I took the job at DLA. 41 00:02:18,261 --> 00:02:20,073 So I grew up at DLA. 42 00:02:20,073 --> 00:02:23,815 And that's actually when I went back to grad school to get my MBA was when I was at DLA. 43 00:02:23,815 --> 00:02:27,087 So I was working there full time and grad school at night. 44 00:02:27,127 --> 00:02:32,951 And then the other fortuitous thing that happened, that landed me where I am now. 45 00:02:33,022 --> 00:02:40,375 is the global financial crisis came, which is, I feel like I have these sort of a career that's punctuated by crises, right? 46 00:02:40,675 --> 00:02:42,506 But they were sort of inflection points for me. 47 00:02:42,506 --> 00:02:50,360 So what that really did was it enabled me to, again, I was looking for a job getting out of my MBA, finishing my MBA studies. 48 00:02:50,360 --> 00:02:52,540 I wanted to go into management consulting. 49 00:02:52,621 --> 00:02:59,944 And then, by virtue of the slowdown in the economy, there wasn't too many opportunities in management consulting at the time when I was interviewing. 50 00:02:59,964 --> 00:03:00,672 But 51 00:03:00,672 --> 00:03:04,664 what had happened was the legal industry was undergoing this transformation at that point, right? 52 00:03:04,664 --> 00:03:15,753 Where it was, there was a lot of pressure from clients to have more transparency, more predictability to do things differently, all the things that we still actually have 53 00:03:15,753 --> 00:03:20,286 misalignments on in a lot of cases these days, but a lot of progress has been made since then. 54 00:03:20,286 --> 00:03:29,176 So anyway, that was the opportunity that I kind of up being able to seize to go, okay, how do I take this industry knowledge that I have? 55 00:03:29,176 --> 00:03:44,076 And then also the frameworks and principles from my studies towards my MBA to go, how do I deploy those towards a new problem and a new set of challenges to overcome? 56 00:03:44,416 --> 00:03:52,876 So fast forward to today, I started doing the pricing, profitability, LPM budgeting, all that stuff in 2009. 57 00:03:52,876 --> 00:03:54,456 And it wasn't even my real job. 58 00:03:54,456 --> 00:03:58,336 It was my sort of side job that I was recruited to do internally. 59 00:03:58,368 --> 00:04:02,752 And then in 2011, they wanted to make it a real, they said, hey, these need to be functions. 60 00:04:02,752 --> 00:04:04,984 So you're the only one that knows how to do this. 61 00:04:04,984 --> 00:04:05,664 Do you want to do it? 62 00:04:05,664 --> 00:04:06,395 And I'm like, sure. 63 00:04:06,395 --> 00:04:07,976 So here I am today. 64 00:04:07,976 --> 00:04:13,100 So yeah, I've been in legal for that's a long way of saying it, what 20, know, 24 years now. 65 00:04:13,100 --> 00:04:15,032 So kind of scary. 66 00:04:15,032 --> 00:04:17,084 It makes me feel really old, but yeah. 67 00:04:17,084 --> 00:04:17,506 So. 68 00:04:17,506 --> 00:04:19,653 Yeah, legal has a certain amount of gravity to it. 69 00:04:19,653 --> 00:04:25,349 It's kind of like you get in and it's like the Roach Motel that you come in, but you don't come out. 70 00:04:25,668 --> 00:04:29,470 Yeah, it's a very, you know, you could also say it's like a Liam Neeson thing. 71 00:04:29,470 --> 00:04:41,545 Like you have a very specific set of skills that you could translate elsewhere, but it seems like, you know, once you develop those capabilities, you seem well-served to keep 72 00:04:41,545 --> 00:04:44,005 them focused in the subject matter. 73 00:04:44,005 --> 00:04:45,020 So anyway. 74 00:04:45,020 --> 00:04:50,635 my I'm sure all my customers are gonna love that I just equated law firms to the the Roach Motel. 75 00:04:51,296 --> 00:04:53,442 You check in but you don't check out. 76 00:04:53,442 --> 00:04:54,092 a good point. 77 00:04:54,092 --> 00:04:56,523 That's a good point. 78 00:04:56,523 --> 00:05:01,070 Makes my taking thing sound better even though that's not a great topic either. 79 00:05:01,070 --> 00:05:03,090 You know, you got, I'm not for everybody. 80 00:05:03,090 --> 00:05:06,470 Uh, I've, I've come, I've come to terms with that. 81 00:05:06,470 --> 00:05:15,330 Um, I, you know, I state, I try and be authentic and, especially online and, know, like I said, I, I, you don't win them all. 82 00:05:15,410 --> 00:05:19,470 Um, well, you know, I, I got my MBA around the same time as you did. 83 00:05:19,470 --> 00:05:25,110 And I was at bank of America at the time and I didn't even get a cup of coffee when I graduated. 84 00:05:25,110 --> 00:05:29,990 Like it was, there was, you know, I did it for myself and really didn't expect. 85 00:05:30,164 --> 00:05:33,735 any huge doors to just swing open as a result of that. 86 00:05:33,735 --> 00:05:48,419 But it did give me a basis for, as an entrepreneur, you don't really use a lot of those skills, but as you start to build a bigger business, some of those skills and analytics 87 00:05:48,419 --> 00:05:57,362 and understanding, you know, how businesses differentiate themselves, a lot of the reading that I did during the MBA program was, was really helpful. 88 00:05:57,362 --> 00:05:59,222 So it's, 89 00:05:59,586 --> 00:06:09,773 Yeah, you know, this is not on the agenda, but I'm curious of your take on this, which might be a little bit of a controversial question, but what, what do you think about 90 00:06:09,773 --> 00:06:11,874 lawyers as business people? 91 00:06:11,895 --> 00:06:18,279 In my experience, I've had, um, I've had a real mixed bag with that as a client, especially. 92 00:06:18,279 --> 00:06:21,421 So my wife and I own gyms here in St. 93 00:06:21,421 --> 00:06:24,343 Louis and, um, we own five of them. 94 00:06:24,343 --> 00:06:25,344 We moved to location. 95 00:06:25,344 --> 00:06:28,556 So I've had to negotiate six commercial retail leases. 96 00:06:28,830 --> 00:06:39,788 And, know, I've had some real interesting commentary for, from lawyers, especially on the other side of the table, um, about just interesting topics that from a academic 97 00:06:39,788 --> 00:06:45,121 perspective or a legal perspective may make sense, but they don't make any sense from a business perspective. 98 00:06:45,121 --> 00:06:56,359 I don't know what's, what's, what's your take on, uh, business skills that I don't, lawyers aren't really taught that as part of the JD, but, I, they, they acquire those 99 00:06:56,359 --> 00:06:58,124 skills over time, I suppose. 100 00:06:58,124 --> 00:07:01,776 Yeah, well, I think it's interesting because it does vary case by case. 101 00:07:01,776 --> 00:07:12,404 You know, over my 20 some years now in the industry, I've worked with a number of lawyers who who not only couldn't care less, but also resent the idea that there's a business 102 00:07:12,404 --> 00:07:16,336 component to this this industry that we work in. 103 00:07:16,336 --> 00:07:26,904 They want to be sort of the artists out there, the know, the the guru, the subject matter expert that is unbound by the principles of economics or strategy or competition or all 104 00:07:26,904 --> 00:07:27,756 those things. 105 00:07:27,756 --> 00:07:31,158 And I understand that mindset because I've come across it a lot. 106 00:07:31,980 --> 00:07:39,325 trying to do, trying to apply the business principles in those situations is a little bit different than I'd say the other category of people. 107 00:07:39,325 --> 00:07:50,795 probably, I'd say it's a spectrum, not two categories, like not two distinct buckets, on the other side of the spectrum, you've got the folks that are by nature, know, attorneys, 108 00:07:50,795 --> 00:07:54,358 very, very smart people, right? 109 00:07:54,358 --> 00:07:56,899 Obviously very curious, very intellectually. 110 00:07:58,192 --> 00:08:02,115 I'm curious and want to learn about a lot of different things. 111 00:08:03,236 --> 00:08:12,924 those folks that that have that curiosity and bring that to like to come to the realization, like I do what I do substantively to deliver legal services to corporations 112 00:08:12,924 --> 00:08:14,745 or whomever I'm representing. 113 00:08:14,786 --> 00:08:18,559 That's one piece of sort of the industry and what I bring to the table. 114 00:08:18,559 --> 00:08:19,830 And that's what I studied. 115 00:08:19,830 --> 00:08:26,896 I think I hope at least in most cases, that's their passion, what they want to do that is fulfilling for them. 116 00:08:26,896 --> 00:08:27,500 But 117 00:08:27,500 --> 00:08:31,642 the realities of, this is a business that we operate in. 118 00:08:31,722 --> 00:08:41,006 It's different when you have a shingle on Main Street compared to when you've got, you're a global firm with 78 offices in 47 countries. 119 00:08:41,006 --> 00:08:47,189 There's a different operating model there that you have to acknowledge and sort of be able to embrace. 120 00:08:47,189 --> 00:08:54,512 So it's usually pretty easy when you can, after a while, to kind of be able to assess. 121 00:08:54,688 --> 00:09:03,054 the personalities and sort of the hot button topics or where the interests lie with, you know, with whomever it is that you're working with on the lawyer side. 122 00:09:03,054 --> 00:09:07,416 I mean, I've seen this on the, you know, not only on the firm side, but also on the client side. 123 00:09:08,028 --> 00:09:11,179 Where it's like, okay, they're thinking more statute and precedent. 124 00:09:11,179 --> 00:09:16,843 And I'm thinking process, levers, weightings, components, timelines. 125 00:09:16,843 --> 00:09:20,345 How do we find the intersection of those things so that we both get what we need out of it? 126 00:09:20,345 --> 00:09:22,446 One last thing I'll share on that. 127 00:09:25,080 --> 00:09:37,140 The conversations are interesting a lot of times because you'll be talking to somebody who's very engaged with the novelty or the novelty of the legal issue at hand and what 128 00:09:37,140 --> 00:09:48,780 that means to the client or what it might mean to markets or the broader sort of business segment in general of its regulations, those type of things. 129 00:09:48,780 --> 00:09:54,104 And I'll be talking to them because they need some type of, whether it's... 130 00:09:54,104 --> 00:09:55,044 How can we price this? 131 00:09:55,044 --> 00:09:59,204 How do we give transparency to the clients that we're working with so they know what we're doing? 132 00:09:59,244 --> 00:10:04,764 If it's reporting, what are some of the risk factors and financial implications and levers and all those things? 133 00:10:04,984 --> 00:10:15,484 They'll launch into these, I would say tangents, but they'll drill down on something that is a novel legal issue that I'm sure is fascinating to anybody that's got a passion for 134 00:10:15,484 --> 00:10:15,984 that. 135 00:10:15,984 --> 00:10:18,084 And I kind of have to take a step back. 136 00:10:19,104 --> 00:10:24,004 The analogy I use a lot of times is the fugitive when, the movie The Fugitive when 137 00:10:24,348 --> 00:10:27,519 Harrison Ford's like, didn't kill my wife and Tommy Lee Jones is like, I don't care. 138 00:10:27,519 --> 00:10:28,659 Like that's not my job. 139 00:10:28,659 --> 00:10:30,130 I'm not worried about that, right? 140 00:10:30,130 --> 00:10:35,531 It's not so much that I don't care, but I don't need that level of context for what I need to do to help you. 141 00:10:35,631 --> 00:10:44,154 So you do learn some interesting things having those conversations, but then you have to kind of distill it down and go, what do I need in order to do my business piece? 142 00:10:44,154 --> 00:10:48,835 That's going to help you to deliver on those pieces as well as the substantive issues. 143 00:10:48,835 --> 00:10:52,512 So there's a lot of partnership I think that happens and it's... 144 00:10:52,512 --> 00:10:57,520 It just sort of takes different shapes depending on what the situation might be and who you're dealing 145 00:10:57,966 --> 00:10:58,726 Yeah. 146 00:10:58,726 --> 00:11:03,886 So the way I try and approach, so I've been an entrepreneur for 32 years. 147 00:11:03,886 --> 00:11:12,506 I started my first business when I was a third year undergrad, took a year off, built the business and then finished my undergrad part-time at night. 148 00:11:12,706 --> 00:11:17,006 And so, and I was an operator for 22 of those 32 years. 149 00:11:17,006 --> 00:11:28,246 So I've had lots of interactions with, with lawyers over the years and how I try and frame it up is like for my legal partner, I'm going to make the risk reward. 150 00:11:28,344 --> 00:11:32,497 decision, what I need you to tell me is what's the risk? 151 00:11:32,798 --> 00:11:38,203 You don't have any visibility as my legal counsel on the reward or limited visibility, right? 152 00:11:38,203 --> 00:11:41,145 Those are trade-offs that we make as business people. 153 00:11:41,265 --> 00:11:48,292 And there's all sorts of, you know, ancillary intangible dimensions to the problem. 154 00:11:48,292 --> 00:11:50,924 It's not a black and white conversation. 155 00:11:50,924 --> 00:11:55,948 I have to make those risk reward trade-offs as a business person, but you are. 156 00:11:55,978 --> 00:12:00,803 As my counsel, you are in the best position to tell me what risks exist. 157 00:12:00,803 --> 00:12:04,556 And then I decide which risks to take. 158 00:12:04,556 --> 00:12:05,396 Yeah. 159 00:12:05,957 --> 00:12:15,861 Well, and it's interesting when you think in an entrepreneurial context, because over the years I've done a lot of work with lawyers that represent startups and I've been directly 160 00:12:18,762 --> 00:12:23,204 involved with the clients in those situations in some instances too. 161 00:12:23,504 --> 00:12:32,108 And the lawyer's role is to spot and minimize risk, but as a startup, you have to figure out where the right calculated 162 00:12:32,180 --> 00:12:35,512 risk is to take because if you didn't take any risk, there'd be no startups, right? 163 00:12:35,512 --> 00:12:36,593 That sort of defeats the purpose. 164 00:12:36,593 --> 00:12:44,609 You have to go, I've got a vision, I have a passion, I've spotted an opportunity, I need to kind of push the balance on something that hasn't been done before. 165 00:12:44,609 --> 00:12:53,645 And that's sort of diametrically opposed to what the lawyer skill set is, is to spot those risks and sort of try and do away with them as much as possible. 166 00:12:53,645 --> 00:13:01,728 So it's an interesting sort of balance to strike as an entrepreneur. 167 00:13:01,728 --> 00:13:06,822 I can say to some extent, I'll give a slight plug here to Legal Value Networks. 168 00:13:06,822 --> 00:13:10,755 That's an industry organization that I'm one of the co-founders of. 169 00:13:10,836 --> 00:13:13,277 And it's for folks like myself. 170 00:13:13,678 --> 00:13:18,402 And we call it involved in the commercials of law or the business of law side of functions. 171 00:13:18,402 --> 00:13:25,488 And that could be at law firms or large corporate legal departments or at our business partners too. 172 00:13:25,488 --> 00:13:31,072 see consultancies, technology providers and all that. 173 00:13:31,106 --> 00:13:35,698 we kind of bring the community together to have these conversations about what needs to be done, right? 174 00:13:35,698 --> 00:13:42,122 So we started that as a, you know, as a new enterprise and I six partners on that. 175 00:13:42,482 --> 00:13:44,913 I mean, we've had to have some of those decisions to make too. 176 00:13:44,913 --> 00:13:48,755 It's like, okay, well, it's sort of, you know, corporate structure. 177 00:13:48,755 --> 00:13:52,047 Do you want to have what risks does that, you know, impose? 178 00:13:52,047 --> 00:13:54,108 What limitations does that impose if you do that? 179 00:13:54,108 --> 00:14:01,342 So it really is, I enjoy those conversations and considerations because it's, it's fun to try and 180 00:14:01,407 --> 00:14:11,339 navigate what's the right, I keep using the word balance, but sort of what's the right mixture or recipe for what we need to get done versus what's not gonna, you know, land us 181 00:14:11,339 --> 00:14:13,871 in jail or get us fined or, you know, those types of things. 182 00:14:13,871 --> 00:14:15,452 So, yeah. 183 00:14:15,735 --> 00:14:16,215 exactly. 184 00:14:16,215 --> 00:14:28,312 You said something earlier too, that is a good segue into the first part of our first topic, which is the business of law versus the practice of law or the business versus a 185 00:14:28,312 --> 00:14:29,002 profession. 186 00:14:29,002 --> 00:14:37,787 And I am a big advocate of the fact that the distinction holds the industry back. 187 00:14:37,888 --> 00:14:42,560 I believe that the practice of law and business of law are tightly coupled. 188 00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:44,271 and hopelessly intertwined. 189 00:14:44,271 --> 00:14:50,535 The practice informs the business and the business informs the practice and you can't have one without the other. 190 00:14:50,535 --> 00:15:04,103 So, what we were kicking around on LinkedIn, we were talking about the big four and the new alternative business structure legislation that is in Arizona and I believe Utah. 191 00:15:04,324 --> 00:15:08,206 And we were debating how, what the, 192 00:15:09,454 --> 00:15:13,473 What the likelihood is of success because we've all heard it before, right? 193 00:15:13,473 --> 00:15:18,194 You know, in the mid 2010s or late 2010s, there was a big push. 194 00:15:18,194 --> 00:15:19,354 Didn't really go anywhere. 195 00:15:19,354 --> 00:15:24,674 The legal services act in the UK was 20, 19, six, seven, eight years ago. 196 00:15:24,674 --> 00:15:25,914 Not much happened. 197 00:15:25,914 --> 00:15:31,234 In fact, the publicly traded firms there aren't doing great from what I've read. 198 00:15:31,254 --> 00:15:37,816 So I think that, um, you know, I'll give my position first and then let you respond to that. 199 00:15:37,816 --> 00:15:40,146 I think that this time is going to be different. 200 00:15:40,287 --> 00:15:43,668 And what's different about this time than last time. 201 00:15:43,668 --> 00:15:49,946 And back when ALSPs were really starting to, you know, that acronym was everywhere. 202 00:15:49,946 --> 00:15:54,210 I would that, that for me was about 10 years ago. 203 00:15:54,210 --> 00:15:59,112 What's different is the means of legal production now is changing. 204 00:15:59,412 --> 00:16:08,022 And there are organizations like, um, like the big four, like KPMG with 4,000 lawyers. 205 00:16:08,022 --> 00:16:24,133 and armies of technologists and lean Six Sigma black belts that are better positioned than any law firm is and has resources in excess of what any law firm has in those ancillary 206 00:16:24,754 --> 00:16:26,975 divisions. 207 00:16:26,975 --> 00:16:29,957 now I don't think they're going to come in and eat Big Law's lunch. 208 00:16:29,957 --> 00:16:31,398 I'm not saying that at all. 209 00:16:31,398 --> 00:16:34,811 They're going to come in and focus on the blocking and tackling initially. 210 00:16:34,811 --> 00:16:37,362 And then I think they're going to work their way up. 211 00:16:37,474 --> 00:16:38,635 the ladder. 212 00:16:38,857 --> 00:16:44,716 What is your perspective on this go round with the big four making another push? 213 00:16:44,760 --> 00:16:53,660 I think the it's an interesting, you know, topic to sort of philosophize on and opine on the way I analyze it. 214 00:16:53,660 --> 00:16:54,040 Who knows? 215 00:16:54,040 --> 00:16:55,020 I guess we'll see how it works. 216 00:16:55,020 --> 00:17:00,500 never claim that I'm right, but I claim to hopefully have some compelling reasons why I have the position I have. 217 00:17:00,500 --> 00:17:10,700 I just didn't necessarily see it when the news started breaking about the Arizona license and KPMG's application for it. 218 00:17:10,700 --> 00:17:13,378 It didn't seem to me that. 219 00:17:13,378 --> 00:17:29,503 the limiting factor or the bottleneck in sort of unleashing the genie last time was, there's no way to have a entity in the US legal system that can compete or deliver any 220 00:17:29,503 --> 00:17:33,414 type of related services in this area. 221 00:17:33,414 --> 00:17:41,456 I felt like the things that I saw, look, full disclosure, as 222 00:17:41,528 --> 00:17:52,448 the in the last round of the 2018, 2019, 2021, there was a lot of speculation that ALSPs were going to start eating Big Law's lunch and then that didn't materialize really right. 223 00:17:53,108 --> 00:18:02,668 I was and still remain in some, guess, in some to some degree, an advocate of, you can form a captive ALSP at a firm. 224 00:18:02,668 --> 00:18:11,328 So you've still got that same integration, because I guess what I'm saying is I buy into the concept of the model that, you know, every 225 00:18:11,348 --> 00:18:21,382 service is a process and you can try and argue that in a number of different ways, but it is a series of activities that have to take place in overlapping timelines and there's 226 00:18:21,382 --> 00:18:23,153 dependencies and that type of stuff. 227 00:18:23,153 --> 00:18:26,334 you can always deconstruct that into some organized process. 228 00:18:26,995 --> 00:18:33,917 I don't necessarily think that the big four have a monopoly on how to do that effectively. 229 00:18:34,658 --> 00:18:39,800 They do have resources, but again, sort of what I've 230 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:50,480 saw more as being the limiting factor was relationships and sort of synthesizing everything in a way that was superior to what was already in place. 231 00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:51,000 Right. 232 00:18:51,000 --> 00:19:00,340 So a lot of what it seemed was limiting ALSP's last go around was was not the capabilities or the logic. 233 00:19:00,340 --> 00:19:03,700 It was the relationships and sort of the continuity of service. 234 00:19:03,700 --> 00:19:04,240 Right. 235 00:19:04,240 --> 00:19:09,834 So as a firm, you could make some adjustments to how you did the work that would 236 00:19:09,834 --> 00:19:15,007 mimic or reproduce some of the benefits that the ALSPs were proposing. 237 00:19:15,007 --> 00:19:23,252 And then if you put yourself in the client's seat, at least this is what I saw happening, the client goes, I could either hire these two entities and try and stick them together 238 00:19:23,252 --> 00:19:28,615 and make sure that they all talk when they need to talk and exchange data and all the protocols are correct and all that. 239 00:19:28,615 --> 00:19:37,820 Or I can take the next best thing and stick with who I know knows all the high level stuff or all the sort cream part, the real subject matter expertise piece of the work that I 240 00:19:37,820 --> 00:19:38,560 need. 241 00:19:38,570 --> 00:19:44,385 and accept or adopt their approaches to replicating what the big four is trying to build, right? 242 00:19:44,385 --> 00:19:57,306 So what it seemed like to me is, you you could make the argument, and it's a valid one, that, you know, the big four has a very deep collection of resources, as you mentioned, 243 00:19:57,306 --> 00:20:01,139 from both money and people and expertise and talent, and they're very smart people there. 244 00:20:01,139 --> 00:20:04,802 So I'm in no way trying to slight that at all or disregard that. 245 00:20:05,443 --> 00:20:06,744 But you can... 246 00:20:06,764 --> 00:20:13,470 Effectively bring an aircraft carrier to a knife fight right like you you may not want to 247 00:20:17,182 --> 00:20:19,294 make those big changes right away. 248 00:20:19,294 --> 00:20:27,941 If from a service delivery standpoint, if you do perceive that there's more risk or less sort of coordination or collaboration that could result. 249 00:20:27,941 --> 00:20:29,952 know lawyers are all risk averse, right? 250 00:20:29,952 --> 00:20:31,974 So that's what they're trained. 251 00:20:31,974 --> 00:20:33,445 That's why they're good at what they do. 252 00:20:33,445 --> 00:20:35,457 So that goes for in-house lawyers too. 253 00:20:35,457 --> 00:20:39,070 So I think it was just a big, you know, it was an inhibitor. 254 00:20:39,070 --> 00:20:46,516 It's an inhibitor to adoption, to unbundle things and then try and hope that they go together well for what seems to be, you know, 255 00:20:47,256 --> 00:20:51,198 potentially cost savings, which I understand the importance of that. 256 00:20:51,459 --> 00:21:05,959 anyway, think to me, those are just some of the relevant sort of forces or considerations that I don't see how the current sort of headlines really overcome that coordination, 257 00:21:05,959 --> 00:21:11,492 collaboration, synthesis, continuity issue or the reputation issue. 258 00:21:11,853 --> 00:21:13,014 So I don't know. 259 00:21:13,014 --> 00:21:14,064 Actually, one last thing. 260 00:21:14,064 --> 00:21:16,215 I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but one last thing on that. 261 00:21:17,046 --> 00:21:20,759 I had a conversation with somebody about this a while back. 262 00:21:20,999 --> 00:21:28,906 The GCs at big companies don't think what's our audit firm doing for the legal department when they want legal services. 263 00:21:28,906 --> 00:21:33,469 They go, hey, what's the right legal tool for this legal problem that we have? 264 00:21:34,090 --> 00:21:39,354 Let's find a way to make that fit the outcomes, to deliver the outcomes we need. 265 00:21:40,155 --> 00:21:43,057 It doesn't seem necessarily as intuitive in many cases. 266 00:21:43,057 --> 00:21:43,848 That could be changing. 267 00:21:43,848 --> 00:21:45,359 I'm not a general counsel. 268 00:21:46,686 --> 00:21:57,843 in the past, I've heard that that's also a barrier to grabbing market share is the GC is not going to go for a 20 % potential savings. 269 00:21:57,843 --> 00:22:06,148 I'm going to go to my accountants or obviously the advisory arms of those firms to offset that sort of spend. 270 00:22:06,636 --> 00:22:09,027 Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. 271 00:22:09,027 --> 00:22:16,210 Here's what I would, um, so all of those are headwinds for the big four. 272 00:22:16,330 --> 00:22:18,171 I'm going to throw out some tailwinds. 273 00:22:18,171 --> 00:22:20,552 Um, see if you agree. 274 00:22:20,552 --> 00:22:30,956 So law firms, law firm leadership, the way law firm leadership comes to be is typically by lawyers working their way up the ranks and being the best at lawyering. 275 00:22:30,956 --> 00:22:35,718 Um, it's a partnership model and, um, 276 00:22:36,172 --> 00:22:40,744 There are decision-making is very challenging. 277 00:22:40,764 --> 00:22:44,205 The culture at law firms is very slow. 278 00:22:44,225 --> 00:22:53,390 There's a great podcast snippet out there where Mark Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz, he invented Netscape. 279 00:22:53,390 --> 00:22:58,632 Now he's a VC, talks about a program called the Wild Ducks at IBM. 280 00:22:59,032 --> 00:23:03,138 And it was a group of, I think, seven executives who 281 00:23:03,138 --> 00:23:12,226 This is in the nineties when everybody at IBM wore suit and tie and they wore cowboy boots, put their feet up on the table and they really had carte blanche within the 282 00:23:12,226 --> 00:23:17,971 organization to bypass processes that slowed them down in innovation efforts. 283 00:23:17,971 --> 00:23:21,774 That won't happen ever at a law firm in my opinion. 284 00:23:21,774 --> 00:23:23,065 Um, just based on culture. 285 00:23:23,065 --> 00:23:31,822 Another, another, uh, I guess tailwind for big four is the fact that, that 286 00:23:31,822 --> 00:23:36,422 only lawyers can own law firms, at least in 48 of the 50 States. 287 00:23:36,422 --> 00:23:47,742 How do you recruit somebody from Google or Amazon or Microsoft, some executive with the, you know, the tech and leadership skills that are so hard to find, especially in a single 288 00:23:47,742 --> 00:23:51,562 individual to come work in your law firm, you're give them stock options. 289 00:23:51,562 --> 00:23:56,102 I maybe you could stand, you know, leverage shadow equity, uh, what have you. 290 00:23:56,102 --> 00:23:59,846 And then, you know, just the governance model that, that 291 00:24:00,270 --> 00:24:11,759 partnership versus a traditional publicly traded company that's got a board of directors that installs and oversees management creates and that, and those installations, those 292 00:24:11,759 --> 00:24:13,520 roles are filled based on merit. 293 00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:15,662 It's not, are you the best lawyer? 294 00:24:15,662 --> 00:24:19,004 It's are you the best butt in that seat? 295 00:24:19,004 --> 00:24:21,746 And that's not always how it happens in law firms. 296 00:24:21,746 --> 00:24:24,938 So I see, I see that as a huge advantage. 297 00:24:24,938 --> 00:24:27,530 Also attitude attitudes towards tech. 298 00:24:27,956 --> 00:24:33,708 law firms and I've been selling into this space for 17 years and I used to have hair like you. 299 00:24:35,269 --> 00:24:39,151 It's, um, their, their attitude towards tech investment. 300 00:24:39,151 --> 00:24:42,012 It's it, they don't look at it as an investment. 301 00:24:42,012 --> 00:24:45,674 They look at it as an expense that needs to be minimized. 302 00:24:45,774 --> 00:24:47,435 Now, is that going to change with AI? 303 00:24:47,435 --> 00:24:55,058 It is, but it's going to, these are cultural changes and you know, um, not Porter, but, 304 00:24:56,824 --> 00:25:03,256 Who was it that said, uh, strategy eats or a culture eats strategy for breakfast. 305 00:25:03,256 --> 00:25:04,636 I don't know, but I say it all the time. 306 00:25:04,636 --> 00:25:07,576 need to find out who that is because I say that all the time. 307 00:25:08,976 --> 00:25:09,476 there you go. 308 00:25:09,476 --> 00:25:10,035 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 309 00:25:10,035 --> 00:25:10,975 Peter Drucker. 310 00:25:10,975 --> 00:25:22,408 So, you know, all of those things are going to help the big four, I think in very significant ways because, know, I've talked about it a million times on this podcast. 311 00:25:22,408 --> 00:25:28,040 I don't know if you and I talked about it, but the biggest law firm in the world is K &E by revenue, about 7.2 billion. 312 00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,961 The floor for the fortune 500 is about 7.6 billion. 313 00:25:30,961 --> 00:25:35,714 There's not one law firm that would qualify to be in the Fortune 500. 314 00:25:35,714 --> 00:25:38,816 based on revenue if they were public, which they're not. 315 00:25:38,816 --> 00:25:48,962 So why, you know, and all of these factors limit scale, the way the lateral movement within law for a big laws like hotel for hotels for lawyers, they can pick up their book 316 00:25:48,962 --> 00:25:49,594 of business. 317 00:25:49,594 --> 00:25:52,173 know, that doesn't exist in accounting firms. 318 00:25:52,173 --> 00:25:53,484 You sign a non-compete. 319 00:25:53,484 --> 00:25:57,966 I've got lots of friends at Accenture and EY from my banking days. 320 00:25:58,767 --> 00:26:02,569 and so it, that lateral mobility is much more limited. 321 00:26:02,569 --> 00:26:04,327 It keeps people 322 00:26:04,327 --> 00:26:08,474 increases retention, certainly retention on the client side. 323 00:26:08,474 --> 00:26:11,759 Can't just pick up a book of business and walk across the street. 324 00:26:11,759 --> 00:26:12,501 So I don't know. 325 00:26:12,501 --> 00:26:16,296 How do you think those factors are going to figure in? 326 00:26:16,344 --> 00:26:18,436 So there's a lot of things that impact that I would say. 327 00:26:18,436 --> 00:26:34,259 it's sort of, think one of the fundamental foundational issues that all these things are symptomatic of is that the partnership model is a friction heavy type of model to try and 328 00:26:34,259 --> 00:26:40,764 have a unified vision and a sort of execution plan to achieve in. 329 00:26:40,764 --> 00:26:40,994 Right. 330 00:26:40,994 --> 00:26:46,198 So when you talk about your decision authority and all that and investment decisions. 331 00:26:46,296 --> 00:26:48,517 which actually, mean, the big four are partnerships too, right? 332 00:26:48,517 --> 00:26:59,639 But I think the scale is different and there's other, I think centralization of authority there that is to their, know, their advantage to them. 333 00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:13,313 One of the interesting phenomenon that I've seen related to this in particular is, you know, we talk about tech investments or integration, implementation of technology into 334 00:27:13,313 --> 00:27:15,564 service delivery and all that. 335 00:27:15,916 --> 00:27:17,527 There are merits to that. 336 00:27:17,527 --> 00:27:19,960 are, you know, obviously we talked about some of the challenges. 337 00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:21,030 Some of them are cultural. 338 00:27:21,030 --> 00:27:23,182 Some of them are market based challenges. 339 00:27:23,182 --> 00:27:27,565 And here's why I say that. 340 00:27:28,186 --> 00:27:39,496 We had LVN, so we had a survey that we've done every year in collaboration with Blickstein Group where we look at what do you in-house legal operations executives say on challenges 341 00:27:39,496 --> 00:27:40,897 that they face every year? 342 00:27:40,897 --> 00:27:44,640 And what do their counterparts on the law firm side say? 343 00:27:44,736 --> 00:27:52,019 in terms of, know, here's what I see as my issues in the market with getting the services that we need or delivering the services that we need to the clients. 344 00:27:52,019 --> 00:28:03,964 So one of the data points we found was that 41 % of law firm executives cite that their clients either forbid or discourage them to use AI on their work, right? 345 00:28:04,744 --> 00:28:05,324 Yeah, got it. 346 00:28:05,324 --> 00:28:05,765 Okay, good. 347 00:28:05,765 --> 00:28:06,045 Cool. 348 00:28:06,045 --> 00:28:07,355 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 349 00:28:07,355 --> 00:28:11,307 So that here's the here's the dilemma that that creates, right? 350 00:28:11,307 --> 00:28:14,558 If you're in leadership at a law firm and you go, man, 351 00:28:14,584 --> 00:28:21,464 there's some huge potential changes that are sort of materializing in the industry and how we do things. 352 00:28:21,464 --> 00:28:29,644 We need to stay ahead of those or at least stay current with those and make sure we're adopting what we can and we're not kind of caught flat-footed. 353 00:28:29,644 --> 00:28:40,504 The trick is if it's that 41 % number is reflective of the market, it's hard to make a wholesale investment decision and then get all the partners in the firm to buy into it on 354 00:28:40,504 --> 00:28:44,464 top of that, because it's going to come out of their pockets in the short term, right? 355 00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:56,396 And you know cash based systems in a partnership Business model it's hard to make long-term investments that have payouts later I mean the mobility thing is a big component 356 00:28:56,396 --> 00:29:06,551 of that too right here if I'm a partner and I go hey I got to give up 10 % of what my or 20 % of whatever whatever the percentage might be fill in the number as you please of my 357 00:29:06,551 --> 00:29:09,642 bonus this year to go into tech investments that 358 00:29:09,642 --> 00:29:11,944 I know that there's mergers happening all the time. 359 00:29:11,944 --> 00:29:19,158 My practice might fit better somewhere else in 18 months and why would I be a fool and stay here and sort of limit myself otherwise? 360 00:29:19,158 --> 00:29:29,145 So what's my incentive to pay into these investments that are going to be for the good of, you know, the longer term folks that are around where I don't have any guaranteed, you 361 00:29:29,145 --> 00:29:30,386 know, benefit from that. 362 00:29:30,386 --> 00:29:33,768 So it's a tricky all around for a lot of those reasons. 363 00:29:33,929 --> 00:29:39,612 But one like what isn't what is sort of an equalizer, at least at this point. 364 00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:54,500 is in my experience, and I like to think I'm relatively well traveled in some of these corners of the industry, none of the really cool, high firepower type of solutions that 365 00:29:54,500 --> 00:30:01,920 are out there now that are leveraging a lot of the cutting edge, more provocative technologies and capabilities are cheap. 366 00:30:01,940 --> 00:30:06,340 And they're not cheap for the big four, they're not cheap for Big Law. 367 00:30:06,340 --> 00:30:08,440 So what I wonder is, 368 00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:18,328 You know different business strategies as far as like competition goes The big four could commit to a battle of attrition where they're just gonna outspend law firms and by doing 369 00:30:18,328 --> 00:30:25,835 that take big losses for however many number of years they project a lot of smart people there are trying to figure these things out and I'm sure they have so I'm just you know 370 00:30:25,835 --> 00:30:36,918 here speculating with absolutely no data on my on my side to to back it up, but I would I would think there's got to be some exit point where you go if we haven't achieved 371 00:30:36,918 --> 00:30:46,392 you know, this level of adoption yet by this time point, and we've, you know, invested X amount of dollars at that point, we need to either that's going to be our sort of fisher 372 00:30:46,392 --> 00:30:52,301 cut bait moment where we have to decide what is the next, you know, mile, what is the distance to the next milestone look like? 373 00:30:52,301 --> 00:30:53,835 And is it more promising? 374 00:30:53,835 --> 00:31:04,419 Or else why should we keep dumping billions into these technologies or these developers or these people that are trying to go in and implementation teams or, know, ways of trying to 375 00:31:04,439 --> 00:31:06,528 spur adoption amongst both 376 00:31:06,528 --> 00:31:10,900 law firms that we could be selling to and corporate legal departments, you if you're talking about the scale question. 377 00:31:10,900 --> 00:31:19,993 So it's really that that is a reality of trying to take market share from a competitive standpoint is that sometimes you have to buy it. 378 00:31:19,993 --> 00:31:23,835 And there I mean, these are accounting firms as well as consulting firms. 379 00:31:23,835 --> 00:31:33,869 Hopefully they're having a pretty good you know, handle on what their cost basis is on what their investment sort of strategies are and sort of when they're not working and what 380 00:31:33,869 --> 00:31:36,630 they need to do to make you know, to pivot when necessary. 381 00:31:36,728 --> 00:31:43,048 I don't know what those numbers look like or what that time horizon looks like, but the reality is those things are really expensive now. 382 00:31:43,708 --> 00:31:45,908 that's, nobody's sort of shielded from that. 383 00:31:45,908 --> 00:31:48,008 Will that change over time as maturity increases? 384 00:31:48,008 --> 00:31:50,648 One would assume that's kind of how the model works, right? 385 00:31:50,648 --> 00:31:53,788 But then that'll still be the same playing field for law firms too. 386 00:31:53,788 --> 00:31:55,508 So, I don't know. 387 00:31:55,508 --> 00:31:57,768 It's an interesting, all these things are interesting. 388 00:31:57,788 --> 00:32:06,744 I'm thinking of the different angles and levers and who knows if I'm right or who's right, but just the way some of the forces I think stack up. 389 00:32:06,744 --> 00:32:08,337 based on the dynamics. 390 00:32:08,568 --> 00:32:08,918 Yeah. 391 00:32:08,918 --> 00:32:12,100 And the relationship piece is real. 392 00:32:12,100 --> 00:32:15,561 you know, but at that, that bridge or that gap can be bridged. 393 00:32:15,561 --> 00:32:25,405 Um, the, know, the, the, the 4,000 attorneys at KPMG all probably made their way up the ranks in big law. 394 00:32:25,405 --> 00:32:26,936 They have relationships to dent. 395 00:32:26,936 --> 00:32:30,457 Now do they have relationships on the inside council aside? 396 00:32:30,457 --> 00:32:34,089 Probably not to the same extent as partners who are working with them every day. 397 00:32:34,089 --> 00:32:37,690 If these are internally facing legal resources. 398 00:32:37,958 --> 00:32:40,420 Um, but they have other relationships, right? 399 00:32:40,420 --> 00:32:56,251 So they've got huge enterprise tax and audit relationships and, um, consulting advisory relationships that could be leveraged, effectively, especially above the CLO's head. 400 00:32:56,672 --> 00:32:57,132 Right. 401 00:32:57,132 --> 00:33:05,838 Um, so that getting, getting, um, getting at bats, isn't going to be a problem. 402 00:33:05,838 --> 00:33:07,819 for the big four in my opinion. 403 00:33:07,819 --> 00:33:10,879 And then you've got smaller players that are entering the space. 404 00:33:10,879 --> 00:33:13,200 I think you and I kicked it around a little bit. 405 00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:22,623 Um, aprio and Raiden law in Arizona, just 50 attorney law firm, 3000 employee accounting firm, not big. 406 00:33:22,623 --> 00:33:27,554 They're now doing a JV and calling it aprio legal, you know? 407 00:33:27,554 --> 00:33:31,095 So it's not just the big four who are interested in this. 408 00:33:31,095 --> 00:33:35,266 They're, I think they're looking at the landscape and going, 409 00:33:35,266 --> 00:33:44,151 Man, law firms are slow to move and you're a thousand percent correct that it is often the client that holds them back. 410 00:33:44,151 --> 00:33:49,733 It's not only true with AI, it's true with AFAs, which we're going to talk about. 411 00:33:50,034 --> 00:33:52,785 It was absolutely the case with cloud. 412 00:33:52,785 --> 00:34:02,681 You had clients, especially in the financial services space that are under, under a tremendous amount of regulatory scrutiny with respect to third party counter risk. 413 00:34:02,681 --> 00:34:05,302 And they just hammer with 414 00:34:05,302 --> 00:34:06,303 O.C.G. 415 00:34:06,303 --> 00:34:07,073 ridiculous. 416 00:34:07,073 --> 00:34:16,187 They're in the cloud, but you can't be in the cloud when the reality is the cloud is usually a lot safer than a law firm managed on-prem environment. 417 00:34:17,122 --> 00:34:18,589 It doesn't make sense. 418 00:34:18,589 --> 00:34:24,932 So yeah, I acknowledge that it is often the client, but there's a lot of overlap. 419 00:34:24,932 --> 00:34:29,912 If you look at the Venn diagram with ALSPs, law firms, and even BPOs. 420 00:34:29,912 --> 00:34:30,446 Mm-hmm. 421 00:34:30,446 --> 00:34:30,906 Right. 422 00:34:30,906 --> 00:34:34,426 So I did some work in default services years ago. 423 00:34:34,426 --> 00:34:42,986 In fact, I'm going to be talking to the, uh, that they, um, that law firm is no longer in existence, but the founder is a good friend of mine. 424 00:34:42,986 --> 00:34:50,126 You know, they had a BPO in India, default service work is very, you know, process oriented. 425 00:34:50,126 --> 00:34:56,626 Um, we did some neat stuff over there, actually got written up a cover story by the ABA journal in like 2014. 426 00:34:56,626 --> 00:34:58,226 We had monitors. 427 00:34:58,248 --> 00:34:58,458 up. 428 00:34:58,458 --> 00:35:04,960 They had like seven areas, departments that were responsible for all sorts of prime. 429 00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:11,838 had monitors up there with control charts and showing when processes were going at, was pretty damn cool, especially in 2014. 430 00:35:12,182 --> 00:35:14,863 The ABA flew down, took pictures, wrote an article. 431 00:35:14,863 --> 00:35:17,443 It was, it was pretty neat, but there's a lot of overlap. 432 00:35:17,443 --> 00:35:21,164 So these lines are, these lines aren't clear exactly. 433 00:35:21,164 --> 00:35:27,719 They're a little murky and where things are going to end up shifting is, you know, 434 00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:30,104 an interesting conversation like we're having now. 435 00:35:30,104 --> 00:35:30,944 Yeah, for sure. 436 00:35:30,944 --> 00:35:40,884 mean, one of the things I use a lot because it's just something I've lived for now, you know, have money, I guess over two decades is, you know, for whatever reason, the business 437 00:35:40,884 --> 00:35:46,204 model in the legal services sector tends to be pretty resilient. 438 00:35:46,204 --> 00:35:49,564 So it changes over time, but it changes really slow. 439 00:35:49,564 --> 00:35:56,284 So I haven't yet seen one disruptive force that forces a revolution on anybody. 440 00:35:56,284 --> 00:35:58,720 I've seen evolution and it's going to happen. 441 00:35:58,720 --> 00:36:09,254 you know, in what degree does that, you know, start taking share from what the income players are versus, you know, one of the things is this this was something that came up in 442 00:36:09,254 --> 00:36:20,319 conversation, you know, in the last round of Big Four is going to, you know, take everything over was, I said, you know, the law firms for you know, debatably, depending on 443 00:36:20,319 --> 00:36:27,272 who you are, what position you want to take, you have to admit that if you look at what 444 00:36:27,404 --> 00:36:33,729 the financial performance has been, the growth of that segment of the economy, year over year. 445 00:36:34,930 --> 00:36:52,284 Despite all the headwinds and complications and friction of doing things in a much more sophisticated business oriented procedure or framework, law firms have been at least 446 00:36:52,284 --> 00:36:57,130 relatively effective at pivoting and evolving. 447 00:36:57,130 --> 00:37:09,849 as much as they need to, to be able to maintain strong relationships, financial performance across any number of metrics you look at. 448 00:37:09,849 --> 00:37:12,691 And it is astounding as you go, wow, these things are happening. 449 00:37:12,691 --> 00:37:18,265 Why are they able to have such great results at the end of the year? 450 00:37:18,265 --> 00:37:19,735 I don't understand it. 451 00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:26,260 And maybe that, again, goes back to that X factor of what's the value of a relationship. 452 00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:38,178 You think about sort of, you know, in &A when they do valuations, brand is a value that is sort of very, you know, amorphous in nature to go, what makes a brand and how do you put 453 00:37:38,178 --> 00:37:39,069 numbers on it? 454 00:37:39,069 --> 00:37:44,373 There's something to that familiarity aspect that must, you know, be carrying it forward. 455 00:37:44,373 --> 00:37:51,608 anyway, I don't, you know, I don't disagree with the idea that things will change. 456 00:37:51,608 --> 00:37:55,170 It should because from a logic and rational thought standpoint, 457 00:37:55,170 --> 00:37:59,141 Doesn't make sense to do a lot of things manually just because you've always done them that way. 458 00:37:59,401 --> 00:38:07,094 But you have to make sure that what you're replacing them with from an automation standpoint is at least as good or predictable or faster. 459 00:38:07,094 --> 00:38:12,325 There's got to be some additional benefits you're reaping from that in order to make it viable. 460 00:38:12,325 --> 00:38:19,367 I keep saying the old cheap, fast and good framework, you can pick two. 461 00:38:20,047 --> 00:38:22,218 That makes a difference, right? 462 00:38:22,218 --> 00:38:25,170 You can do something fast and cheap, but it might not be good. 463 00:38:25,170 --> 00:38:27,731 You can do something fast and good, but it won't be cheap. 464 00:38:28,051 --> 00:38:32,043 That very simple concept or framework is relevant here. 465 00:38:32,043 --> 00:38:32,894 It applies. 466 00:38:32,894 --> 00:38:35,975 There's really, I don't, don't know how to really break that. 467 00:38:36,656 --> 00:38:46,081 So, you know, all of these things, I think they're going to be influencing factors and you will continue to see this evolution, but it's, it's really interesting to see in spite of 468 00:38:46,081 --> 00:38:50,924 all, you know, other sort of market forces, there has been some resilience. 469 00:38:51,296 --> 00:39:00,400 and ability of law firms to counter threats, either by, know, sort of if you can't beat them, join them sort of thing, right? 470 00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:09,044 Like nobody, I don't think anybody on law firm side is going, forget all these legal tech companies and all this stuff that helps you automate or streamline or give better. 471 00:39:09,044 --> 00:39:10,524 Who needs all that? 472 00:39:10,865 --> 00:39:18,058 We got some really smart people and I know that, you know, they're a little slow sometimes, you know, getting things done and whatever, but that's your best bet. 473 00:39:18,058 --> 00:39:19,610 Nobody's really trying to make that case. 474 00:39:19,610 --> 00:39:26,887 There's some level of, all right, let's make sure we can stay current with the times and adjust as we need to. 475 00:39:26,887 --> 00:39:29,319 it's been a relatively effective strategy so far. 476 00:39:29,319 --> 00:39:34,704 So who knows if that happens forever, but that's what's been happening. 477 00:39:35,086 --> 00:39:36,586 Yeah, law firms are doing great. 478 00:39:36,586 --> 00:39:40,066 Profits rose by 17 % last year. 479 00:39:40,366 --> 00:39:46,366 Revenue increased by 13 % and rates increased by nine. 480 00:39:46,526 --> 00:39:47,586 So. 481 00:39:47,913 --> 00:39:57,169 I think one of the reasons, one of the drivers behind those numbers is the fact that, we talked about the difference between, you know, the profession and the business, right? 482 00:39:57,169 --> 00:40:07,166 You know, the last 10, 12 years, there's been huge investments made into professional management functions and teams and executives, right? 483 00:40:07,166 --> 00:40:16,092 I think those are really, you know, not to, it may sound like a biased opinion coming from me, but I think those are large, 484 00:40:16,460 --> 00:40:30,251 factor in being able to remain competitive or being able to remain as effective at doing what you're in business to do that they have exercised the opportunity to specialty, to 485 00:40:30,251 --> 00:40:40,580 exert specialization of labor and go, look, if I'm the best &A lawyer in the financial services industry in the world, that's great. 486 00:40:40,580 --> 00:40:43,812 Don't diminish that by making me the chairman of the firm. 487 00:40:43,812 --> 00:40:44,973 And now I don't get to do that anymore. 488 00:40:44,973 --> 00:40:46,508 And I got to make decisions on 489 00:40:46,508 --> 00:40:51,665 how to manage an enterprise that isn't really in line with where I contribute the most value. 490 00:40:51,665 --> 00:41:02,440 You bring on the people that do know how to orchestrate those resources and processes and make everything sort of fire on all eight cylinders the way it should be, everything's in 491 00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:03,550 its own lane. 492 00:41:04,078 --> 00:41:16,048 Well, how, you know, you probably have a really good perspective on this and I, I, I may be, uh, in the finance world, this may be a little different, but how, how empowered are 493 00:41:16,048 --> 00:41:17,980 these C-suite roles? 494 00:41:17,980 --> 00:41:22,654 Like for example, you know, chief innovation officer talk a lot about that role. 495 00:41:22,654 --> 00:41:27,938 There are customer and you've got some really, really bright people sitting in those seats. 496 00:41:28,050 --> 00:41:34,243 And when I look at the amount of true innovation that's happening in legal, it's not a lot. 497 00:41:34,243 --> 00:41:41,778 There is some, but you know, the difference between improvement and innovation is improvement is incremental, right? 498 00:41:41,778 --> 00:41:43,758 It's focused on efficiency. 499 00:41:44,039 --> 00:41:45,760 Innovation is a disruptor. 500 00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:49,362 It's fun doing things differently at a fundamental level. 501 00:41:49,362 --> 00:41:57,186 So, you know, I, I wonder, and again, I think this is going to vary by, uh, by function. 502 00:41:57,250 --> 00:42:02,492 but I'm wondering how empowered, you know, there's a lot of innovation theater going on in legal. 503 00:42:02,492 --> 00:42:03,413 Let's be real. 504 00:42:03,413 --> 00:42:06,514 I told you, I got a dear friend of mine. 505 00:42:06,514 --> 00:42:17,418 She's the director of innovation at like a 350 attorney law firm and she was doing, uh, I manage upgrades two weeks ago and I was like, what the hell are you doing? 506 00:42:17,698 --> 00:42:18,929 This is the IT's job. 507 00:42:18,929 --> 00:42:22,520 She's like, I am IT and KM and innovation. 508 00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:27,327 And you know, that's shame on shame on that XCOM. 509 00:42:27,327 --> 00:42:36,436 for just slapping a title on somebody's role and not empowering them to actually go and do what is their charter. 510 00:42:36,812 --> 00:42:49,109 Yeah, mean, so we saw the same thing happen sort of in, you know, in the little niche of the industry where I've kind of resided, right, was, you know, lot of firms earnestly were 511 00:42:49,109 --> 00:42:51,471 like, hey, let's make sure we remain competitive. 512 00:42:51,471 --> 00:42:57,715 Let's, you know, make sure we get the right people in place that have that finger on the pulse or have the right ideas that we should be trying. 513 00:42:57,715 --> 00:43:01,197 And this goes for, you know, for other functions as well. 514 00:43:01,197 --> 00:43:03,328 But let's, you know, 515 00:43:03,670 --> 00:43:13,277 Genuinely invest and work on adopting and propagating those practices and principles throughout the firm so that we're you remaining as nimble and as Responsive in market as 516 00:43:13,277 --> 00:43:20,983 possible then there's other ones that said, you know I keep reading all these things about these new titles that they're hiring and I saw that you know so and so across the street 517 00:43:20,983 --> 00:43:29,399 has a Director of pricing or an innovation person whenever right we should probably get one of those without any real sort of you know 518 00:43:30,968 --> 00:43:42,788 Commitment, yeah, commitment from the top, but also the ability to drive those practices or best practices or concepts throughout the firm so that you're able to, you talk about 519 00:43:42,788 --> 00:43:45,828 scale, like internal scale, so you can scale the benefits of those things. 520 00:43:45,828 --> 00:43:49,068 It ends up really being difficult. 521 00:43:49,068 --> 00:44:00,322 And when you think about some of the capabilities that sort of develop certainly as a function of technology solutions, right? 522 00:44:00,322 --> 00:44:06,764 I'm a huge fan of anything that does cool stuff fast and right and all those things. 523 00:44:06,764 --> 00:44:15,886 I'm a big proponent of all those solutions and coming up with new solutions to problems that Legal Tech Fund Summit that we went to. 524 00:44:15,886 --> 00:44:21,538 I love sitting in those pitch sessions and watching the ideas people come up with and the problems they're solving. 525 00:44:22,178 --> 00:44:25,349 So I think there's certainly a play for that. 526 00:44:25,349 --> 00:44:28,900 But what I think you see a lot of times is 527 00:44:28,940 --> 00:44:35,960 the sacred cow of sort of the service delivery piece ends up being protected till the last possible moment. 528 00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:47,093 And what ends up getting exploited by technology solutions first and very effectively, which I think also manifests in those performance numbers you see is how do you deploy 529 00:44:47,093 --> 00:44:51,076 some of these solutions from the operational side, internally at the firm, right? 530 00:44:51,076 --> 00:44:57,590 So how do we leverage those things if the lawyers won't use it or the clients don't want us to use it or the clients don't know? 531 00:44:57,590 --> 00:45:08,587 whether they want us to use it, let's proof of concepting this on other processes internally that help us get faster, quicker, more nimble, more creative and all those 532 00:45:08,587 --> 00:45:09,468 things more effective. 533 00:45:09,468 --> 00:45:12,122 Yeah, exactly. 534 00:45:12,523 --> 00:45:13,404 Exactly. 535 00:45:13,404 --> 00:45:14,585 Agreed, agreed. 536 00:45:14,585 --> 00:45:26,522 So we're almost out of time, but I did want to, You and I had a really interesting conversation around some of the, some of the things making it difficult for, um, for law 537 00:45:26,522 --> 00:45:33,576 firms to innovate and the fragmentation in the gen AI space and knowing who's going to be the long-term winner. 538 00:45:33,576 --> 00:45:38,478 I mean, you know, if you look at throughout the history of business, 539 00:45:38,764 --> 00:45:48,142 the, um, the leader, the, the initial leader in a particular category is rarely the long-term winner of that category, right? 540 00:45:48,142 --> 00:45:55,488 They kind of paved the way for some, I mean, there's a million examples of this, MySpace, BlackBerry, Netscape, Lotus123. 541 00:45:55,488 --> 00:45:58,601 Um, right. 542 00:45:58,601 --> 00:45:59,121 Exactly. 543 00:45:59,121 --> 00:45:59,692 Yeah. 544 00:45:59,692 --> 00:46:01,893 Or maybe even third or fourth mover. 545 00:46:02,574 --> 00:46:07,210 so as it does, I understand the, the, there's gridlock right now. 546 00:46:07,210 --> 00:46:10,617 in firms with like where do we invest? 547 00:46:10,617 --> 00:46:11,619 Where do we spend our time? 548 00:46:11,619 --> 00:46:12,490 Where do we spend our money? 549 00:46:12,490 --> 00:46:17,790 And you had some thoughts on how that's making things difficult. 550 00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:32,160 Yeah, that sort of inhibits adoption of tools or capabilities as well because as is sort of a natural progression of things when you've got capabilities that are sort of starting 551 00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:41,300 to gain more maturity in a market, you're going to have a lot of new entrants in the market trying to leverage those capabilities and find out, find their niche or find their 552 00:46:41,300 --> 00:46:43,680 audience, find their customer base, right? 553 00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:44,656 So. 554 00:46:44,660 --> 00:46:47,772 As a firm, I work a lot with our innovation team. 555 00:46:47,772 --> 00:46:53,585 We have a weekly call, we source projects for each other, we help develop pilots together and everything. 556 00:46:53,585 --> 00:46:54,896 It's a good symbiosis. 557 00:46:54,896 --> 00:46:58,408 I'm kind of a front row seat on this, how it goes at my current firm. 558 00:46:58,408 --> 00:47:00,368 And I've seen it at past firms too. 559 00:47:01,529 --> 00:47:09,984 If you identify a need based on, okay, look, we see a process here that looks like it would benefit from some of the different capabilities that are coming online in the market 560 00:47:09,984 --> 00:47:10,514 now. 561 00:47:10,514 --> 00:47:13,896 And then you go to market to try and find the best tool to do it. 562 00:47:13,922 --> 00:47:18,215 Well, you've got, you we talked, you know, we used the idea of Venn diagrams earlier. 563 00:47:18,215 --> 00:47:21,577 You've got a series of circles. 564 00:47:21,577 --> 00:47:22,888 It's not even just two or three. 565 00:47:22,888 --> 00:47:32,765 You've got a whole chain of circles that are overlapping to varying degrees within a certain sort of niche or, you know, target outcome or target function. 566 00:47:32,765 --> 00:47:33,325 Right. 567 00:47:33,325 --> 00:47:42,592 So when you have to make an investment decision and you know that these are all in most cases, you know, emerging growth companies, which is where innovation comes from. 568 00:47:42,592 --> 00:47:43,544 And that's great. 569 00:47:43,544 --> 00:47:52,364 But you also know, okay, we can't necessarily invest in these things with big dollars if we don't know if that particular solution out of the seven that are somewhat overlapping 570 00:47:52,364 --> 00:47:57,744 and relevant to what we need to do is going to be around in six months or 12 months or who they're going to get bought by. 571 00:47:57,744 --> 00:48:05,424 You know, I know a number of people who were very loyal clients or customers of some solutions. 572 00:48:05,424 --> 00:48:13,452 And then that solution got bought by a larger platform and it got sunsetted or it got rolled into something else and that wasn't compliant with the 573 00:48:13,452 --> 00:48:16,773 financial system they were on or the other, know, dashboarding tools they had. 574 00:48:16,773 --> 00:48:17,873 So then they had to migrate. 575 00:48:17,873 --> 00:48:23,735 So it's when you have this fragmentation of options, you know, this is highly fragmented market. 576 00:48:23,735 --> 00:48:32,637 It does add a level of complexity and also sort of, you know, risk aversion where you go, okay, look, I kind of feel like based on the analysis we've done internally, that we could 577 00:48:32,637 --> 00:48:37,018 change some things with these particular workflows or pockets within these practices. 578 00:48:37,018 --> 00:48:43,298 And there's probably maybe even some, you know, level of interest within the lawyer ranks there that we could get some adoption there. 579 00:48:43,298 --> 00:48:47,632 but then you sort of get stuck putting it on the sidelines because you're like, I don't know what to buy to bring in. 580 00:48:47,632 --> 00:48:52,275 And if we tried to build it, then that's you, run into other, you know, issues and complications. 581 00:48:52,275 --> 00:48:57,640 So it does, that does sort of inhibit or slow the maturity curve, I would say. 582 00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:00,682 And then also by, by association, the adoption curve with those things. 583 00:49:00,682 --> 00:49:02,333 So it's tricky. 584 00:49:02,333 --> 00:49:03,464 It's very tricky. 585 00:49:03,990 --> 00:49:06,041 Now you're 100 % right. 586 00:49:06,041 --> 00:49:08,131 Yeah, I've seen it a million times. 587 00:49:08,411 --> 00:49:19,245 A legal tech vendor gets bought by one of the big, you know, one of the big practice management solutions or, and they take it out back and shoot it in the head. 588 00:49:19,245 --> 00:49:20,125 Sometimes they do it. 589 00:49:20,125 --> 00:49:21,365 Sometimes they do it slow. 590 00:49:21,365 --> 00:49:23,786 Sometimes they, and it's not just legal tech, man. 591 00:49:23,786 --> 00:49:25,957 This is, this happens everywhere. 592 00:49:26,877 --> 00:49:28,798 Well, man, this has been a great conversation. 593 00:49:28,798 --> 00:49:29,658 We, 594 00:49:29,730 --> 00:49:33,788 There was a bunch of stuff we didn't get to, but I feel like we had some really good dialogue here. 595 00:49:33,788 --> 00:49:35,266 So this was a lot of fun. 596 00:49:35,266 --> 00:49:36,217 Likewise, I enjoyed it. 597 00:49:36,217 --> 00:49:38,278 Like I say, great, talk in shop. 598 00:49:38,278 --> 00:49:43,371 the most fun thing is, you know, it's talk about things you can't be wrong about, because, know, who knows what the future holds, right? 599 00:49:43,371 --> 00:49:45,293 So I enjoy that. 600 00:49:45,293 --> 00:49:50,606 It adds a level of sort of engagement and fun to the day. 601 00:49:50,606 --> 00:49:57,811 So I appreciate again, the invitation and the engagement on LinkedIn, just in the discussion that kind of brought us together, you know, to have this conversation. 602 00:49:57,811 --> 00:49:59,632 So thanks a 603 00:49:59,729 --> 00:50:00,260 Yeah, man. 604 00:50:00,260 --> 00:50:01,262 Absolutely. 605 00:50:01,262 --> 00:50:01,693 All right. 606 00:50:01,693 --> 00:50:03,406 It was a great chat. 607 00:50:03,406 --> 00:50:06,284 Hopefully we'll get to chat again soon, maybe in person. 608 00:50:06,284 --> 00:50:07,228 Yeah, love that. 609 00:50:07,228 --> 00:50:08,469 Look forward to it. 610 00:50:09,314 --> 00:50:10,111 Thanks, Tim. 611 00:50:10,111 --> 00:50:11,113 Thank you. 00:00:04,491 Keith, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,524 --> 00:00:05,268 doing good, thanks. 3 00:00:05,268 --> 00:00:06,261 How are you? 4 00:00:06,456 --> 00:00:07,137 Doing great. 5 00:00:07,137 --> 00:00:07,797 Doing great. 6 00:00:07,797 --> 00:00:13,071 Appreciate you taking a few minutes here to, we got a good agenda. 7 00:00:13,612 --> 00:00:27,423 Talk about you and I engaged on LinkedIn regarding, I think we were talking about AFAs and some other interesting topics that, and whether or not law firm clients are actually ready 8 00:00:27,423 --> 00:00:28,214 for AFAs. 9 00:00:28,214 --> 00:00:30,506 And we had a good dialogue. 10 00:00:30,506 --> 00:00:35,736 So I figured a conversation here on the podcast would be good idea. 11 00:00:35,736 --> 00:00:36,137 Sure. 12 00:00:36,137 --> 00:00:38,754 I appreciate the invite and I always like talking shop. 13 00:00:38,754 --> 00:00:40,870 yeah, excited to be here. 14 00:00:40,870 --> 00:00:41,210 Thanks. 15 00:00:41,210 --> 00:00:42,031 Thanks again. 16 00:00:42,031 --> 00:00:42,971 good stuff, man. 17 00:00:42,971 --> 00:00:46,384 So I took a look, I took a look at your LinkedIn. 18 00:00:46,384 --> 00:00:49,116 So you've been in legal for, for quite some time. 19 00:00:49,116 --> 00:00:53,639 Um, you're an MBA, not a JD, correct? 20 00:00:54,740 --> 00:01:03,267 And you are head of pricing and analytics at Caton, but you spent time at Perkins Cooey, DLA Piper, Ackerman. 21 00:01:03,267 --> 00:01:07,720 Um, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and where you do it. 22 00:01:07,736 --> 00:01:10,036 Yeah, got into actually funny story. 23 00:01:10,036 --> 00:01:11,836 I got into legal on accident. 24 00:01:12,156 --> 00:01:15,796 It was right after the tragedies in 9 11. 25 00:01:15,796 --> 00:01:18,436 I was looking for a new job because I had worked at a startup back then. 26 00:01:18,436 --> 00:01:20,996 It was like an interactive marketing agency. 27 00:01:20,996 --> 00:01:27,516 I was a project manager there and I was looking for a new job and the only one I could get at the time because nobody was hiring. 28 00:01:27,516 --> 00:01:30,116 I was he right was the American Bar Association. 29 00:01:30,116 --> 00:01:33,016 It was and it turned out being a great opportunity. 30 00:01:33,016 --> 00:01:34,856 Had some got some great experience there. 31 00:01:34,856 --> 00:01:36,392 Introduced me to law. 32 00:01:36,392 --> 00:01:37,663 and some really great people. 33 00:01:37,663 --> 00:01:42,755 So I'm grateful that the opportunity that things sort of transpired the way they did. 34 00:01:43,456 --> 00:01:46,608 But so I spent a little time at the ABA doing a number of different things. 35 00:01:46,608 --> 00:01:52,881 And then I said, hey, you I work with all these lawyers that are members of the association. 36 00:01:52,972 --> 00:01:59,465 I wonder what the in-house sort of law firm side of the coin looks like as far as other opportunities to expand. 37 00:01:59,465 --> 00:02:04,312 So that was when I made the jump over to Ackerman. 38 00:02:04,312 --> 00:02:11,047 I was able to use my connections to get some interviews at Ackerman and join there. 39 00:02:11,047 --> 00:02:15,059 Got my feet wet in what the in-house law firm side of things looks like. 40 00:02:15,059 --> 00:02:18,261 And not too long after that, I took the job at DLA. 41 00:02:18,261 --> 00:02:20,073 So I grew up at DLA. 42 00:02:20,073 --> 00:02:23,815 And that's actually when I went back to grad school to get my MBA was when I was at DLA. 43 00:02:23,815 --> 00:02:27,087 So I was working there full time and grad school at night. 44 00:02:27,127 --> 00:02:32,951 And then the other fortuitous thing that happened, that landed me where I am now. 45 00:02:33,022 --> 00:02:40,375 is the global financial crisis came, which is, I feel like I have these sort of a career that's punctuated by crises, right? 46 00:02:40,675 --> 00:02:42,506 But they were sort of inflection points for me. 47 00:02:42,506 --> 00:02:50,360 So what that really did was it enabled me to, again, I was looking for a job getting out of my MBA, finishing my MBA studies. 48 00:02:50,360 --> 00:02:52,540 I wanted to go into management consulting. 49 00:02:52,621 --> 00:02:59,944 And then, by virtue of the slowdown in the economy, there wasn't too many opportunities in management consulting at the time when I was interviewing. 50 00:02:59,964 --> 00:03:00,672 But 51 00:03:00,672 --> 00:03:04,664 what had happened was the legal industry was undergoing this transformation at that point, right? 52 00:03:04,664 --> 00:03:15,753 Where it was, there was a lot of pressure from clients to have more transparency, more predictability to do things differently, all the things that we still actually have 53 00:03:15,753 --> 00:03:20,286 misalignments on in a lot of cases these days, but a lot of progress has been made since then. 54 00:03:20,286 --> 00:03:29,176 So anyway, that was the opportunity that I kind of up being able to seize to go, okay, how do I take this industry knowledge that I have? 55 00:03:29,176 --> 00:03:44,076 And then also the frameworks and principles from my studies towards my MBA to go, how do I deploy those towards a new problem and a new set of challenges to overcome? 56 00:03:44,416 --> 00:03:52,876 So fast forward to today, I started doing the pricing, profitability, LPM budgeting, all that stuff in 2009. 57 00:03:52,876 --> 00:03:54,456 And it wasn't even my real job. 58 00:03:54,456 --> 00:03:58,336 It was my sort of side job that I was recruited to do internally. 59 00:03:58,368 --> 00:04:02,752 And then in 2011, they wanted to make it a real, they said, hey, these need to be functions. 60 00:04:02,752 --> 00:04:04,984 So you're the only one that knows how to do this. 61 00:04:04,984 --> 00:04:05,664 Do you want to do it? 62 00:04:05,664 --> 00:04:06,395 And I'm like, sure. 63 00:04:06,395 --> 00:04:07,976 So here I am today. 64 00:04:07,976 --> 00:04:13,100 So yeah, I've been in legal for that's a long way of saying it, what 20, know, 24 years now. 65 00:04:13,100 --> 00:04:15,032 So kind of scary. 66 00:04:15,032 --> 00:04:17,084 It makes me feel really old, but yeah. 67 00:04:17,084 --> 00:04:17,506 So. 68 00:04:17,506 --> 00:04:19,653 Yeah, legal has a certain amount of gravity to it. 69 00:04:19,653 --> 00:04:25,349 It's kind of like you get in and it's like the Roach Motel that you come in, but you don't come out. 70 00:04:25,668 --> 00:04:29,470 Yeah, it's a very, you know, you could also say it's like a Liam Neeson thing. 71 00:04:29,470 --> 00:04:41,545 Like you have a very specific set of skills that you could translate elsewhere, but it seems like, you know, once you develop those capabilities, you seem well-served to keep 72 00:04:41,545 --> 00:04:44,005 them focused in the subject matter. 73 00:04:44,005 --> 00:04:45,020 So anyway. 74 00:04:45,020 --> 00:04:50,635 my I'm sure all my customers are gonna love that I just equated law firms to the the Roach Motel. 75 00:04:51,296 --> 00:04:53,442 You check in but you don't check out. 76 00:04:53,442 --> 00:04:54,092 a good point. 77 00:04:54,092 --> 00:04:56,523 That's a good point. 78 00:04:56,523 --> 00:05:01,070 Makes my taking thing sound better even though that's not a great topic either. 79 00:05:01,070 --> 00:05:03,090 You know, you got, I'm not for everybody. 80 00:05:03,090 --> 00:05:06,470 Uh, I've, I've come, I've come to terms with that. 81 00:05:06,470 --> 00:05:15,330 Um, I, you know, I state, I try and be authentic and, especially online and, know, like I said, I, I, you don't win them all. 82 00:05:15,410 --> 00:05:19,470 Um, well, you know, I, I got my MBA around the same time as you did. 83 00:05:19,470 --> 00:05:25,110 And I was at bank of America at the time and I didn't even get a cup of coffee when I graduated. 84 00:05:25,110 --> 00:05:29,990 Like it was, there was, you know, I did it for myself and really didn't expect. 85 00:05:30,164 --> 00:05:33,735 any huge doors to just swing open as a result of that. 86 00:05:33,735 --> 00:05:48,419 But it did give me a basis for, as an entrepreneur, you don't really use a lot of those skills, but as you start to build a bigger business, some of those skills and analytics 87 00:05:48,419 --> 00:05:57,362 and understanding, you know, how businesses differentiate themselves, a lot of the reading that I did during the MBA program was, was really helpful. 88 00:05:57,362 --> 00:05:59,222 So it's, 89 00:05:59,586 --> 00:06:09,773 Yeah, you know, this is not on the agenda, but I'm curious of your take on this, which might be a little bit of a controversial question, but what, what do you think about 90 00:06:09,773 --> 00:06:11,874 lawyers as business people? 91 00:06:11,895 --> 00:06:18,279 In my experience, I've had, um, I've had a real mixed bag with that as a client, especially. 92 00:06:18,279 --> 00:06:21,421 So my wife and I own gyms here in St. 93 00:06:21,421 --> 00:06:24,343 Louis and, um, we own five of them. 94 00:06:24,343 --> 00:06:25,344 We moved to location. 95 00:06:25,344 --> 00:06:28,556 So I've had to negotiate six commercial retail leases. 96 00:06:28,830 --> 00:06:39,788 And, know, I've had some real interesting commentary for, from lawyers, especially on the other side of the table, um, about just interesting topics that from a academic 97 00:06:39,788 --> 00:06:45,121 perspective or a legal perspective may make sense, but they don't make any sense from a business perspective. 98 00:06:45,121 --> 00:06:56,359 I don't know what's, what's, what's your take on, uh, business skills that I don't, lawyers aren't really taught that as part of the JD, but, I, they, they acquire those 99 00:06:56,359 --> 00:06:58,124 skills over time, I suppose. 100 00:06:58,124 --> 00:07:01,776 Yeah, well, I think it's interesting because it does vary case by case. 101 00:07:01,776 --> 00:07:12,404 You know, over my 20 some years now in the industry, I've worked with a number of lawyers who who not only couldn't care less, but also resent the idea that there's a business 102 00:07:12,404 --> 00:07:16,336 component to this this industry that we work in. 103 00:07:16,336 --> 00:07:26,904 They want to be sort of the artists out there, the know, the the guru, the subject matter expert that is unbound by the principles of economics or strategy or competition or all 104 00:07:26,904 --> 00:07:27,756 those things. 105 00:07:27,756 --> 00:07:31,158 And I understand that mindset because I've come across it a lot. 106 00:07:31,980 --> 00:07:39,325 trying to do, trying to apply the business principles in those situations is a little bit different than I'd say the other category of people. 107 00:07:39,325 --> 00:07:50,795 probably, I'd say it's a spectrum, not two categories, like not two distinct buckets, on the other side of the spectrum, you've got the folks that are by nature, know, attorneys, 108 00:07:50,795 --> 00:07:54,358 very, very smart people, right? 109 00:07:54,358 --> 00:07:56,899 Obviously very curious, very intellectually. 110 00:07:58,192 --> 00:08:02,115 I'm curious and want to learn about a lot of different things. 111 00:08:03,236 --> 00:08:12,924 those folks that that have that curiosity and bring that to like to come to the realization, like I do what I do substantively to deliver legal services to corporations 112 00:08:12,924 --> 00:08:14,745 or whomever I'm representing. 113 00:08:14,786 --> 00:08:18,559 That's one piece of sort of the industry and what I bring to the table. 114 00:08:18,559 --> 00:08:19,830 And that's what I studied. 115 00:08:19,830 --> 00:08:26,896 I think I hope at least in most cases, that's their passion, what they want to do that is fulfilling for them. 116 00:08:26,896 --> 00:08:27,500 But 117 00:08:27,500 --> 00:08:31,642 the realities of, this is a business that we operate in. 118 00:08:31,722 --> 00:08:41,006 It's different when you have a shingle on Main Street compared to when you've got, you're a global firm with 78 offices in 47 countries. 119 00:08:41,006 --> 00:08:47,189 There's a different operating model there that you have to acknowledge and sort of be able to embrace. 120 00:08:47,189 --> 00:08:54,512 So it's usually pretty easy when you can, after a while, to kind of be able to assess. 121 00:08:54,688 --> 00:09:03,054 the personalities and sort of the hot button topics or where the interests lie with, you know, with whomever it is that you're working with on the lawyer side. 122 00:09:03,054 --> 00:09:07,416 I mean, I've seen this on the, you know, not only on the firm side, but also on the client side. 123 00:09:08,028 --> 00:09:11,179 Where it's like, okay, they're thinking more statute and precedent. 124 00:09:11,179 --> 00:09:16,843 And I'm thinking process, levers, weightings, components, timelines. 125 00:09:16,843 --> 00:09:20,345 How do we find the intersection of those things so that we both get what we need out of it? 126 00:09:20,345 --> 00:09:22,446 One last thing I'll share on that. 127 00:09:25,080 --> 00:09:37,140 The conversations are interesting a lot of times because you'll be talking to somebody who's very engaged with the novelty or the novelty of the legal issue at hand and what 128 00:09:37,140 --> 00:09:48,780 that means to the client or what it might mean to markets or the broader sort of business segment in general of its regulations, those type of things. 129 00:09:48,780 --> 00:09:54,104 And I'll be talking to them because they need some type of, whether it's... 130 00:09:54,104 --> 00:09:55,044 How can we price this? 131 00:09:55,044 --> 00:09:59,204 How do we give transparency to the clients that we're working with so they know what we're doing? 132 00:09:59,244 --> 00:10:04,764 If it's reporting, what are some of the risk factors and financial implications and levers and all those things? 133 00:10:04,984 --> 00:10:15,484 They'll launch into these, I would say tangents, but they'll drill down on something that is a novel legal issue that I'm sure is fascinating to anybody that's got a passion for 134 00:10:15,484 --> 00:10:15,984 that. 135 00:10:15,984 --> 00:10:18,084 And I kind of have to take a step back. 136 00:10:19,104 --> 00:10:24,004 The analogy I use a lot of times is the fugitive when, the movie The Fugitive when 137 00:10:24,348 --> 00:10:27,519 Harrison Ford's like, didn't kill my wife and Tommy Lee Jones is like, I don't care. 138 00:10:27,519 --> 00:10:28,659 Like that's not my job. 139 00:10:28,659 --> 00:10:30,130 I'm not worried about that, right? 140 00:10:30,130 --> 00:10:35,531 It's not so much that I don't care, but I don't need that level of context for what I need to do to help you. 141 00:10:35,631 --> 00:10:44,154 So you do learn some interesting things having those conversations, but then you have to kind of distill it down and go, what do I need in order to do my business piece? 142 00:10:44,154 --> 00:10:48,835 That's going to help you to deliver on those pieces as well as the substantive issues. 143 00:10:48,835 --> 00:10:52,512 So there's a lot of partnership I think that happens and it's... 144 00:10:52,512 --> 00:10:57,520 It just sort of takes different shapes depending on what the situation might be and who you're dealing 145 00:10:57,966 --> 00:10:58,726 Yeah. 146 00:10:58,726 --> 00:11:03,886 So the way I try and approach, so I've been an entrepreneur for 32 years. 147 00:11:03,886 --> 00:11:12,506 I started my first business when I was a third year undergrad, took a year off, built the business and then finished my undergrad part-time at night. 148 00:11:12,706 --> 00:11:17,006 And so, and I was an operator for 22 of those 32 years. 149 00:11:17,006 --> 00:11:28,246 So I've had lots of interactions with, with lawyers over the years and how I try and frame it up is like for my legal partner, I'm going to make the risk reward. 150 00:11:28,344 --> 00:11:32,497 decision, what I need you to tell me is what's the risk? 151 00:11:32,798 --> 00:11:38,203 You don't have any visibility as my legal counsel on the reward or limited visibility, right? 152 00:11:38,203 --> 00:11:41,145 Those are trade-offs that we make as business people. 153 00:11:41,265 --> 00:11:48,292 And there's all sorts of, you know, ancillary intangible dimensions to the problem. 154 00:11:48,292 --> 00:11:50,924 It's not a black and white conversation. 155 00:11:50,924 --> 00:11:55,948 I have to make those risk reward trade-offs as a business person, but you are. 156 00:11:55,978 --> 00:12:00,803 As my counsel, you are in the best position to tell me what risks exist. 157 00:12:00,803 --> 00:12:04,556 And then I decide which risks to take. 158 00:12:04,556 --> 00:12:05,396 Yeah. 159 00:12:05,957 --> 00:12:15,861 Well, and it's interesting when you think in an entrepreneurial context, because over the years I've done a lot of work with lawyers that represent startups and I've been directly 160 00:12:18,762 --> 00:12:23,204 involved with the clients in those situations in some instances too. 161 00:12:23,504 --> 00:12:32,108 And the lawyer's role is to spot and minimize risk, but as a startup, you have to figure out where the right calculated 162 00:12:32,180 --> 00:12:35,512 risk is to take because if you didn't take any risk, there'd be no startups, right? 163 00:12:35,512 --> 00:12:36,593 That sort of defeats the purpose. 164 00:12:36,593 --> 00:12:44,609 You have to go, I've got a vision, I have a passion, I've spotted an opportunity, I need to kind of push the balance on something that hasn't been done before. 165 00:12:44,609 --> 00:12:53,645 And that's sort of diametrically opposed to what the lawyer skill set is, is to spot those risks and sort of try and do away with them as much as possible. 166 00:12:53,645 --> 00:13:01,728 So it's an interesting sort of balance to strike as an entrepreneur. 167 00:13:01,728 --> 00:13:06,822 I can say to some extent, I'll give a slight plug here to Legal Value Networks. 168 00:13:06,822 --> 00:13:10,755 That's an industry organization that I'm one of the co-founders of. 169 00:13:10,836 --> 00:13:13,277 And it's for folks like myself. 170 00:13:13,678 --> 00:13:18,402 And we call it involved in the commercials of law or the business of law side of functions. 171 00:13:18,402 --> 00:13:25,488 And that could be at law firms or large corporate legal departments or at our business partners too. 172 00:13:25,488 --> 00:13:31,072 see consultancies, technology providers and all that. 173 00:13:31,106 --> 00:13:35,698 we kind of bring the community together to have these conversations about what needs to be done, right? 174 00:13:35,698 --> 00:13:42,122 So we started that as a, you know, as a new enterprise and I six partners on that. 175 00:13:42,482 --> 00:13:44,913 I mean, we've had to have some of those decisions to make too. 176 00:13:44,913 --> 00:13:48,755 It's like, okay, well, it's sort of, you know, corporate structure. 177 00:13:48,755 --> 00:13:52,047 Do you want to have what risks does that, you know, impose? 178 00:13:52,047 --> 00:13:54,108 What limitations does that impose if you do that? 179 00:13:54,108 --> 00:14:01,342 So it really is, I enjoy those conversations and considerations because it's, it's fun to try and 180 00:14:01,407 --> 00:14:11,339 navigate what's the right, I keep using the word balance, but sort of what's the right mixture or recipe for what we need to get done versus what's not gonna, you know, land us 181 00:14:11,339 --> 00:14:13,871 in jail or get us fined or, you know, those types of things. 182 00:14:13,871 --> 00:14:15,452 So, yeah. 183 00:14:15,735 --> 00:14:16,215 exactly. 184 00:14:16,215 --> 00:14:28,312 You said something earlier too, that is a good segue into the first part of our first topic, which is the business of law versus the practice of law or the business versus a 185 00:14:28,312 --> 00:14:29,002 profession. 186 00:14:29,002 --> 00:14:37,787 And I am a big advocate of the fact that the distinction holds the industry back. 187 00:14:37,888 --> 00:14:42,560 I believe that the practice of law and business of law are tightly coupled. 188 00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:44,271 and hopelessly intertwined. 189 00:14:44,271 --> 00:14:50,535 The practice informs the business and the business informs the practice and you can't have one without the other. 190 00:14:50,535 --> 00:15:04,103 So, what we were kicking around on LinkedIn, we were talking about the big four and the new alternative business structure legislation that is in Arizona and I believe Utah. 191 00:15:04,324 --> 00:15:08,206 And we were debating how, what the, 192 00:15:09,454 --> 00:15:13,473 What the likelihood is of success because we've all heard it before, right? 193 00:15:13,473 --> 00:15:18,194 You know, in the mid 2010s or late 2010s, there was a big push. 194 00:15:18,194 --> 00:15:19,354 Didn't really go anywhere. 195 00:15:19,354 --> 00:15:24,674 The legal services act in the UK was 20, 19, six, seven, eight years ago. 196 00:15:24,674 --> 00:15:25,914 Not much happened. 197 00:15:25,914 --> 00:15:31,234 In fact, the publicly traded firms there aren't doing great from what I've read. 198 00:15:31,254 --> 00:15:37,816 So I think that, um, you know, I'll give my position first and then let you respond to that. 199 00:15:37,816 --> 00:15:40,146 I think that this time is going to be different. 200 00:15:40,287 --> 00:15:43,668 And what's different about this time than last time. 201 00:15:43,668 --> 00:15:49,946 And back when ALSPs were really starting to, you know, that acronym was everywhere. 202 00:15:49,946 --> 00:15:54,210 I would that, that for me was about 10 years ago. 203 00:15:54,210 --> 00:15:59,112 What's different is the means of legal production now is changing. 204 00:15:59,412 --> 00:16:08,022 And there are organizations like, um, like the big four, like KPMG with 4,000 lawyers. 205 00:16:08,022 --> 00:16:24,133 and armies of technologists and lean Six Sigma black belts that are better positioned than any law firm is and has resources in excess of what any law firm has in those ancillary 206 00:16:24,754 --> 00:16:26,975 divisions. 207 00:16:26,975 --> 00:16:29,957 now I don't think they're going to come in and eat Big Law's lunch. 208 00:16:29,957 --> 00:16:31,398 I'm not saying that at all. 209 00:16:31,398 --> 00:16:34,811 They're going to come in and focus on the blocking and tackling initially. 210 00:16:34,811 --> 00:16:37,362 And then I think they're going to work their way up. 211 00:16:37,474 --> 00:16:38,635 the ladder. 212 00:16:38,857 --> 00:16:44,716 What is your perspective on this go round with the big four making another push? 213 00:16:44,760 --> 00:16:53,660 I think the it's an interesting, you know, topic to sort of philosophize on and opine on the way I analyze it. 214 00:16:53,660 --> 00:16:54,040 Who knows? 215 00:16:54,040 --> 00:16:55,020 I guess we'll see how it works. 216 00:16:55,020 --> 00:17:00,500 never claim that I'm right, but I claim to hopefully have some compelling reasons why I have the position I have. 217 00:17:00,500 --> 00:17:10,700 I just didn't necessarily see it when the news started breaking about the Arizona license and KPMG's application for it. 218 00:17:10,700 --> 00:17:13,378 It didn't seem to me that. 219 00:17:13,378 --> 00:17:29,503 the limiting factor or the bottleneck in sort of unleashing the genie last time was, there's no way to have a entity in the US legal system that can compete or deliver any 220 00:17:29,503 --> 00:17:33,414 type of related services in this area. 221 00:17:33,414 --> 00:17:41,456 I felt like the things that I saw, look, full disclosure, as 222 00:17:41,528 --> 00:17:52,448 the in the last round of the 2018, 2019, 2021, there was a lot of speculation that ALSPs were going to start eating Big Law's lunch and then that didn't materialize really right. 223 00:17:53,108 --> 00:18:02,668 I was and still remain in some, guess, in some to some degree, an advocate of, you can form a captive ALSP at a firm. 224 00:18:02,668 --> 00:18:11,328 So you've still got that same integration, because I guess what I'm saying is I buy into the concept of the model that, you know, every 225 00:18:11,348 --> 00:18:21,382 service is a process and you can try and argue that in a number of different ways, but it is a series of activities that have to take place in overlapping timelines and there's 226 00:18:21,382 --> 00:18:23,153 dependencies and that type of stuff. 227 00:18:23,153 --> 00:18:26,334 you can always deconstruct that into some organized process. 228 00:18:26,995 --> 00:18:33,917 I don't necessarily think that the big four have a monopoly on how to do that effectively. 229 00:18:34,658 --> 00:18:39,800 They do have resources, but again, sort of what I've 230 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:50,480 saw more as being the limiting factor was relationships and sort of synthesizing everything in a way that was superior to what was already in place. 231 00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:51,000 Right. 232 00:18:51,000 --> 00:19:00,340 So a lot of what it seemed was limiting ALSP's last go around was was not the capabilities or the logic. 233 00:19:00,340 --> 00:19:03,700 It was the relationships and sort of the continuity of service. 234 00:19:03,700 --> 00:19:04,240 Right. 235 00:19:04,240 --> 00:19:09,834 So as a firm, you could make some adjustments to how you did the work that would 236 00:19:09,834 --> 00:19:15,007 mimic or reproduce some of the benefits that the ALSPs were proposing. 237 00:19:15,007 --> 00:19:23,252 And then if you put yourself in the client's seat, at least this is what I saw happening, the client goes, I could either hire these two entities and try and stick them together 238 00:19:23,252 --> 00:19:28,615 and make sure that they all talk when they need to talk and exchange data and all the protocols are correct and all that. 239 00:19:28,615 --> 00:19:37,820 Or I can take the next best thing and stick with who I know knows all the high level stuff or all the sort cream part, the real subject matter expertise piece of the work that I 240 00:19:37,820 --> 00:19:38,560 need. 241 00:19:38,570 --> 00:19:44,385 and accept or adopt their approaches to replicating what the big four is trying to build, right? 242 00:19:44,385 --> 00:19:57,306 So what it seemed like to me is, you you could make the argument, and it's a valid one, that, you know, the big four has a very deep collection of resources, as you mentioned, 243 00:19:57,306 --> 00:20:01,139 from both money and people and expertise and talent, and they're very smart people there. 244 00:20:01,139 --> 00:20:04,802 So I'm in no way trying to slight that at all or disregard that. 245 00:20:05,443 --> 00:20:06,744 But you can... 246 00:20:06,764 --> 00:20:13,470 Effectively bring an aircraft carrier to a knife fight right like you you may not want to 247 00:20:17,182 --> 00:20:19,294 make those big changes right away. 248 00:20:19,294 --> 00:20:27,941 If from a service delivery standpoint, if you do perceive that there's more risk or less sort of coordination or collaboration that could result. 249 00:20:27,941 --> 00:20:29,952 know lawyers are all risk averse, right? 250 00:20:29,952 --> 00:20:31,974 So that's what they're trained. 251 00:20:31,974 --> 00:20:33,445 That's why they're good at what they do. 252 00:20:33,445 --> 00:20:35,457 So that goes for in-house lawyers too. 253 00:20:35,457 --> 00:20:39,070 So I think it was just a big, you know, it was an inhibitor. 254 00:20:39,070 --> 00:20:46,516 It's an inhibitor to adoption, to unbundle things and then try and hope that they go together well for what seems to be, you know, 255 00:20:47,256 --> 00:20:51,198 potentially cost savings, which I understand the importance of that. 256 00:20:51,459 --> 00:21:05,959 anyway, think to me, those are just some of the relevant sort of forces or considerations that I don't see how the current sort of headlines really overcome that coordination, 257 00:21:05,959 --> 00:21:11,492 collaboration, synthesis, continuity issue or the reputation issue. 258 00:21:11,853 --> 00:21:13,014 So I don't know. 259 00:21:13,014 --> 00:21:14,064 Actually, one last thing. 260 00:21:14,064 --> 00:21:16,215 I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but one last thing on that. 261 00:21:17,046 --> 00:21:20,759 I had a conversation with somebody about this a while back. 262 00:21:20,999 --> 00:21:28,906 The GCs at big companies don't think what's our audit firm doing for the legal department when they want legal services. 263 00:21:28,906 --> 00:21:33,469 They go, hey, what's the right legal tool for this legal problem that we have? 264 00:21:34,090 --> 00:21:39,354 Let's find a way to make that fit the outcomes, to deliver the outcomes we need. 265 00:21:40,155 --> 00:21:43,057 It doesn't seem necessarily as intuitive in many cases. 266 00:21:43,057 --> 00:21:43,848 That could be changing. 267 00:21:43,848 --> 00:21:45,359 I'm not a general counsel. 268 00:21:46,686 --> 00:21:57,843 in the past, I've heard that that's also a barrier to grabbing market share is the GC is not going to go for a 20 % potential savings. 269 00:21:57,843 --> 00:22:06,148 I'm going to go to my accountants or obviously the advisory arms of those firms to offset that sort of spend. 270 00:22:06,636 --> 00:22:09,027 Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. 271 00:22:09,027 --> 00:22:16,210 Here's what I would, um, so all of those are headwinds for the big four. 272 00:22:16,330 --> 00:22:18,171 I'm going to throw out some tailwinds. 273 00:22:18,171 --> 00:22:20,552 Um, see if you agree. 274 00:22:20,552 --> 00:22:30,956 So law firms, law firm leadership, the way law firm leadership comes to be is typically by lawyers working their way up the ranks and being the best at lawyering. 275 00:22:30,956 --> 00:22:35,718 Um, it's a partnership model and, um, 276 00:22:36,172 --> 00:22:40,744 There are decision-making is very challenging. 277 00:22:40,764 --> 00:22:44,205 The culture at law firms is very slow. 278 00:22:44,225 --> 00:22:53,390 There's a great podcast snippet out there where Mark Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz, he invented Netscape. 279 00:22:53,390 --> 00:22:58,632 Now he's a VC, talks about a program called the Wild Ducks at IBM. 280 00:22:59,032 --> 00:23:03,138 And it was a group of, I think, seven executives who 281 00:23:03,138 --> 00:23:12,226 This is in the nineties when everybody at IBM wore suit and tie and they wore cowboy boots, put their feet up on the table and they really had carte blanche within the 282 00:23:12,226 --> 00:23:17,971 organization to bypass processes that slowed them down in innovation efforts. 283 00:23:17,971 --> 00:23:21,774 That won't happen ever at a law firm in my opinion. 284 00:23:21,774 --> 00:23:23,065 Um, just based on culture. 285 00:23:23,065 --> 00:23:31,822 Another, another, uh, I guess tailwind for big four is the fact that, that 286 00:23:31,822 --> 00:23:36,422 only lawyers can own law firms, at least in 48 of the 50 States. 287 00:23:36,422 --> 00:23:47,742 How do you recruit somebody from Google or Amazon or Microsoft, some executive with the, you know, the tech and leadership skills that are so hard to find, especially in a single 288 00:23:47,742 --> 00:23:51,562 individual to come work in your law firm, you're give them stock options. 289 00:23:51,562 --> 00:23:56,102 I maybe you could stand, you know, leverage shadow equity, uh, what have you. 290 00:23:56,102 --> 00:23:59,846 And then, you know, just the governance model that, that 291 00:24:00,270 --> 00:24:11,759 partnership versus a traditional publicly traded company that's got a board of directors that installs and oversees management creates and that, and those installations, those 292 00:24:11,759 --> 00:24:13,520 roles are filled based on merit. 293 00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:15,662 It's not, are you the best lawyer? 294 00:24:15,662 --> 00:24:19,004 It's are you the best butt in that seat? 295 00:24:19,004 --> 00:24:21,746 And that's not always how it happens in law firms. 296 00:24:21,746 --> 00:24:24,938 So I see, I see that as a huge advantage. 297 00:24:24,938 --> 00:24:27,530 Also attitude attitudes towards tech. 298 00:24:27,956 --> 00:24:33,708 law firms and I've been selling into this space for 17 years and I used to have hair like you. 299 00:24:35,269 --> 00:24:39,151 It's, um, their, their attitude towards tech investment. 300 00:24:39,151 --> 00:24:42,012 It's it, they don't look at it as an investment. 301 00:24:42,012 --> 00:24:45,674 They look at it as an expense that needs to be minimized. 302 00:24:45,774 --> 00:24:47,435 Now, is that going to change with AI? 303 00:24:47,435 --> 00:24:55,058 It is, but it's going to, these are cultural changes and you know, um, not Porter, but, 304 00:24:56,824 --> 00:25:03,256 Who was it that said, uh, strategy eats or a culture eats strategy for breakfast. 305 00:25:03,256 --> 00:25:04,636 I don't know, but I say it all the time. 306 00:25:04,636 --> 00:25:07,576 need to find out who that is because I say that all the time. 307 00:25:08,976 --> 00:25:09,476 there you go. 308 00:25:09,476 --> 00:25:10,035 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 309 00:25:10,035 --> 00:25:10,975 Peter Drucker. 310 00:25:10,975 --> 00:25:22,408 So, you know, all of those things are going to help the big four, I think in very significant ways because, know, I've talked about it a million times on this podcast. 311 00:25:22,408 --> 00:25:28,040 I don't know if you and I talked about it, but the biggest law firm in the world is K &E by revenue, about 7.2 billion. 312 00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,961 The floor for the fortune 500 is about 7.6 billion. 313 00:25:30,961 --> 00:25:35,714 There's not one law firm that would qualify to be in the Fortune 500. 314 00:25:35,714 --> 00:25:38,816 based on revenue if they were public, which they're not. 315 00:25:38,816 --> 00:25:48,962 So why, you know, and all of these factors limit scale, the way the lateral movement within law for a big laws like hotel for hotels for lawyers, they can pick up their book 316 00:25:48,962 --> 00:25:49,594 of business. 317 00:25:49,594 --> 00:25:52,173 know, that doesn't exist in accounting firms. 318 00:25:52,173 --> 00:25:53,484 You sign a non-compete. 319 00:25:53,484 --> 00:25:57,966 I've got lots of friends at Accenture and EY from my banking days. 320 00:25:58,767 --> 00:26:02,569 and so it, that lateral mobility is much more limited. 321 00:26:02,569 --> 00:26:04,327 It keeps people 322 00:26:04,327 --> 00:26:08,474 increases retention, certainly retention on the client side. 323 00:26:08,474 --> 00:26:11,759 Can't just pick up a book of business and walk across the street. 324 00:26:11,759 --> 00:26:12,501 So I don't know. 325 00:26:12,501 --> 00:26:16,296 How do you think those factors are going to figure in? 326 00:26:16,344 --> 00:26:18,436 So there's a lot of things that impact that I would say. 327 00:26:18,436 --> 00:26:34,259 it's sort of, think one of the fundamental foundational issues that all these things are symptomatic of is that the partnership model is a friction heavy type of model to try and 328 00:26:34,259 --> 00:26:40,764 have a unified vision and a sort of execution plan to achieve in. 329 00:26:40,764 --> 00:26:40,994 Right. 330 00:26:40,994 --> 00:26:46,198 So when you talk about your decision authority and all that and investment decisions. 331 00:26:46,296 --> 00:26:48,517 which actually, mean, the big four are partnerships too, right? 332 00:26:48,517 --> 00:26:59,639 But I think the scale is different and there's other, I think centralization of authority there that is to their, know, their advantage to them. 333 00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:13,313 One of the interesting phenomenon that I've seen related to this in particular is, you know, we talk about tech investments or integration, implementation of technology into 334 00:27:13,313 --> 00:27:15,564 service delivery and all that. 335 00:27:15,916 --> 00:27:17,527 There are merits to that. 336 00:27:17,527 --> 00:27:19,960 are, you know, obviously we talked about some of the challenges. 337 00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:21,030 Some of them are cultural. 338 00:27:21,030 --> 00:27:23,182 Some of them are market based challenges. 339 00:27:23,182 --> 00:27:27,565 And here's why I say that. 340 00:27:28,186 --> 00:27:39,496 We had LVN, so we had a survey that we've done every year in collaboration with Blickstein Group where we look at what do you in-house legal operations executives say on challenges 341 00:27:39,496 --> 00:27:40,897 that they face every year? 342 00:27:40,897 --> 00:27:44,640 And what do their counterparts on the law firm side say? 343 00:27:44,736 --> 00:27:52,019 in terms of, know, here's what I see as my issues in the market with getting the services that we need or delivering the services that we need to the clients. 344 00:27:52,019 --> 00:28:03,964 So one of the data points we found was that 41 % of law firm executives cite that their clients either forbid or discourage them to use AI on their work, right? 345 00:28:04,744 --> 00:28:05,324 Yeah, got it. 346 00:28:05,324 --> 00:28:05,765 Okay, good. 347 00:28:05,765 --> 00:28:06,045 Cool. 348 00:28:06,045 --> 00:28:07,355 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 349 00:28:07,355 --> 00:28:11,307 So that here's the here's the dilemma that that creates, right? 350 00:28:11,307 --> 00:28:14,558 If you're in leadership at a law firm and you go, man, 351 00:28:14,584 --> 00:28:21,464 there's some huge potential changes that are sort of materializing in the industry and how we do things. 352 00:28:21,464 --> 00:28:29,644 We need to stay ahead of those or at least stay current with those and make sure we're adopting what we can and we're not kind of caught flat-footed. 353 00:28:29,644 --> 00:28:40,504 The trick is if it's that 41 % number is reflective of the market, it's hard to make a wholesale investment decision and then get all the partners in the firm to buy into it on 354 00:28:40,504 --> 00:28:44,464 top of that, because it's going to come out of their pockets in the short term, right? 355 00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:56,396 And you know cash based systems in a partnership Business model it's hard to make long-term investments that have payouts later I mean the mobility thing is a big component 356 00:28:56,396 --> 00:29:06,551 of that too right here if I'm a partner and I go hey I got to give up 10 % of what my or 20 % of whatever whatever the percentage might be fill in the number as you please of my 357 00:29:06,551 --> 00:29:09,642 bonus this year to go into tech investments that 358 00:29:09,642 --> 00:29:11,944 I know that there's mergers happening all the time. 359 00:29:11,944 --> 00:29:19,158 My practice might fit better somewhere else in 18 months and why would I be a fool and stay here and sort of limit myself otherwise? 360 00:29:19,158 --> 00:29:29,145 So what's my incentive to pay into these investments that are going to be for the good of, you know, the longer term folks that are around where I don't have any guaranteed, you 361 00:29:29,145 --> 00:29:30,386 know, benefit from that. 362 00:29:30,386 --> 00:29:33,768 So it's a tricky all around for a lot of those reasons. 363 00:29:33,929 --> 00:29:39,612 But one like what isn't what is sort of an equalizer, at least at this point. 364 00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:54,500 is in my experience, and I like to think I'm relatively well traveled in some of these corners of the industry, none of the really cool, high firepower type of solutions that 365 00:29:54,500 --> 00:30:01,920 are out there now that are leveraging a lot of the cutting edge, more provocative technologies and capabilities are cheap. 366 00:30:01,940 --> 00:30:06,340 And they're not cheap for the big four, they're not cheap for Big Law. 367 00:30:06,340 --> 00:30:08,440 So what I wonder is, 368 00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:18,328 You know different business strategies as far as like competition goes The big four could commit to a battle of attrition where they're just gonna outspend law firms and by doing 369 00:30:18,328 --> 00:30:25,835 that take big losses for however many number of years they project a lot of smart people there are trying to figure these things out and I'm sure they have so I'm just you know 370 00:30:25,835 --> 00:30:36,918 here speculating with absolutely no data on my on my side to to back it up, but I would I would think there's got to be some exit point where you go if we haven't achieved 371 00:30:36,918 --> 00:30:46,392 you know, this level of adoption yet by this time point, and we've, you know, invested X amount of dollars at that point, we need to either that's going to be our sort of fisher 372 00:30:46,392 --> 00:30:52,301 cut bait moment where we have to decide what is the next, you know, mile, what is the distance to the next milestone look like? 373 00:30:52,301 --> 00:30:53,835 And is it more promising? 374 00:30:53,835 --> 00:31:04,419 Or else why should we keep dumping billions into these technologies or these developers or these people that are trying to go in and implementation teams or, know, ways of trying to 375 00:31:04,439 --> 00:31:06,528 spur adoption amongst both 376 00:31:06,528 --> 00:31:10,900 law firms that we could be selling to and corporate legal departments, you if you're talking about the scale question. 377 00:31:10,900 --> 00:31:19,993 So it's really that that is a reality of trying to take market share from a competitive standpoint is that sometimes you have to buy it. 378 00:31:19,993 --> 00:31:23,835 And there I mean, these are accounting firms as well as consulting firms. 379 00:31:23,835 --> 00:31:33,869 Hopefully they're having a pretty good you know, handle on what their cost basis is on what their investment sort of strategies are and sort of when they're not working and what 380 00:31:33,869 --> 00:31:36,630 they need to do to make you know, to pivot when necessary. 381 00:31:36,728 --> 00:31:43,048 I don't know what those numbers look like or what that time horizon looks like, but the reality is those things are really expensive now. 382 00:31:43,708 --> 00:31:45,908 that's, nobody's sort of shielded from that. 383 00:31:45,908 --> 00:31:48,008 Will that change over time as maturity increases? 384 00:31:48,008 --> 00:31:50,648 One would assume that's kind of how the model works, right? 385 00:31:50,648 --> 00:31:53,788 But then that'll still be the same playing field for law firms too. 386 00:31:53,788 --> 00:31:55,508 So, I don't know. 387 00:31:55,508 --> 00:31:57,768 It's an interesting, all these things are interesting. 388 00:31:57,788 --> 00:32:06,744 I'm thinking of the different angles and levers and who knows if I'm right or who's right, but just the way some of the forces I think stack up. 389 00:32:06,744 --> 00:32:08,337 based on the dynamics. 390 00:32:08,568 --> 00:32:08,918 Yeah. 391 00:32:08,918 --> 00:32:12,100 And the relationship piece is real. 392 00:32:12,100 --> 00:32:15,561 you know, but at that, that bridge or that gap can be bridged. 393 00:32:15,561 --> 00:32:25,405 Um, the, know, the, the, the 4,000 attorneys at KPMG all probably made their way up the ranks in big law. 394 00:32:25,405 --> 00:32:26,936 They have relationships to dent. 395 00:32:26,936 --> 00:32:30,457 Now do they have relationships on the inside council aside? 396 00:32:30,457 --> 00:32:34,089 Probably not to the same extent as partners who are working with them every day. 397 00:32:34,089 --> 00:32:37,690 If these are internally facing legal resources. 398 00:32:37,958 --> 00:32:40,420 Um, but they have other relationships, right? 399 00:32:40,420 --> 00:32:56,251 So they've got huge enterprise tax and audit relationships and, um, consulting advisory relationships that could be leveraged, effectively, especially above the CLO's head. 400 00:32:56,672 --> 00:32:57,132 Right. 401 00:32:57,132 --> 00:33:05,838 Um, so that getting, getting, um, getting at bats, isn't going to be a problem. 402 00:33:05,838 --> 00:33:07,819 for the big four in my opinion. 403 00:33:07,819 --> 00:33:10,879 And then you've got smaller players that are entering the space. 404 00:33:10,879 --> 00:33:13,200 I think you and I kicked it around a little bit. 405 00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:22,623 Um, aprio and Raiden law in Arizona, just 50 attorney law firm, 3000 employee accounting firm, not big. 406 00:33:22,623 --> 00:33:27,554 They're now doing a JV and calling it aprio legal, you know? 407 00:33:27,554 --> 00:33:31,095 So it's not just the big four who are interested in this. 408 00:33:31,095 --> 00:33:35,266 They're, I think they're looking at the landscape and going, 409 00:33:35,266 --> 00:33:44,151 Man, law firms are slow to move and you're a thousand percent correct that it is often the client that holds them back. 410 00:33:44,151 --> 00:33:49,733 It's not only true with AI, it's true with AFAs, which we're going to talk about. 411 00:33:50,034 --> 00:33:52,785 It was absolutely the case with cloud. 412 00:33:52,785 --> 00:34:02,681 You had clients, especially in the financial services space that are under, under a tremendous amount of regulatory scrutiny with respect to third party counter risk. 413 00:34:02,681 --> 00:34:05,302 And they just hammer with 414 00:34:05,302 --> 00:34:06,303 O.C.G. 415 00:34:06,303 --> 00:34:07,073 ridiculous. 416 00:34:07,073 --> 00:34:16,187 They're in the cloud, but you can't be in the cloud when the reality is the cloud is usually a lot safer than a law firm managed on-prem environment. 417 00:34:17,122 --> 00:34:18,589 It doesn't make sense. 418 00:34:18,589 --> 00:34:24,932 So yeah, I acknowledge that it is often the client, but there's a lot of overlap. 419 00:34:24,932 --> 00:34:29,912 If you look at the Venn diagram with ALSPs, law firms, and even BPOs. 420 00:34:29,912 --> 00:34:30,446 Mm-hmm. 421 00:34:30,446 --> 00:34:30,906 Right. 422 00:34:30,906 --> 00:34:34,426 So I did some work in default services years ago. 423 00:34:34,426 --> 00:34:42,986 In fact, I'm going to be talking to the, uh, that they, um, that law firm is no longer in existence, but the founder is a good friend of mine. 424 00:34:42,986 --> 00:34:50,126 You know, they had a BPO in India, default service work is very, you know, process oriented. 425 00:34:50,126 --> 00:34:56,626 Um, we did some neat stuff over there, actually got written up a cover story by the ABA journal in like 2014. 426 00:34:56,626 --> 00:34:58,226 We had monitors. 427 00:34:58,248 --> 00:34:58,458 up. 428 00:34:58,458 --> 00:35:04,960 They had like seven areas, departments that were responsible for all sorts of prime. 429 00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:11,838 had monitors up there with control charts and showing when processes were going at, was pretty damn cool, especially in 2014. 430 00:35:12,182 --> 00:35:14,863 The ABA flew down, took pictures, wrote an article. 431 00:35:14,863 --> 00:35:17,443 It was, it was pretty neat, but there's a lot of overlap. 432 00:35:17,443 --> 00:35:21,164 So these lines are, these lines aren't clear exactly. 433 00:35:21,164 --> 00:35:27,719 They're a little murky and where things are going to end up shifting is, you know, 434 00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:30,104 an interesting conversation like we're having now. 435 00:35:30,104 --> 00:35:30,944 Yeah, for sure. 436 00:35:30,944 --> 00:35:40,884 mean, one of the things I use a lot because it's just something I've lived for now, you know, have money, I guess over two decades is, you know, for whatever reason, the business 437 00:35:40,884 --> 00:35:46,204 model in the legal services sector tends to be pretty resilient. 438 00:35:46,204 --> 00:35:49,564 So it changes over time, but it changes really slow. 439 00:35:49,564 --> 00:35:56,284 So I haven't yet seen one disruptive force that forces a revolution on anybody. 440 00:35:56,284 --> 00:35:58,720 I've seen evolution and it's going to happen. 441 00:35:58,720 --> 00:36:09,254 you know, in what degree does that, you know, start taking share from what the income players are versus, you know, one of the things is this this was something that came up in 442 00:36:09,254 --> 00:36:20,319 conversation, you know, in the last round of Big Four is going to, you know, take everything over was, I said, you know, the law firms for you know, debatably, depending on 443 00:36:20,319 --> 00:36:27,272 who you are, what position you want to take, you have to admit that if you look at what 444 00:36:27,404 --> 00:36:33,729 the financial performance has been, the growth of that segment of the economy, year over year. 445 00:36:34,930 --> 00:36:52,284 Despite all the headwinds and complications and friction of doing things in a much more sophisticated business oriented procedure or framework, law firms have been at least 446 00:36:52,284 --> 00:36:57,130 relatively effective at pivoting and evolving. 447 00:36:57,130 --> 00:37:09,849 as much as they need to, to be able to maintain strong relationships, financial performance across any number of metrics you look at. 448 00:37:09,849 --> 00:37:12,691 And it is astounding as you go, wow, these things are happening. 449 00:37:12,691 --> 00:37:18,265 Why are they able to have such great results at the end of the year? 450 00:37:18,265 --> 00:37:19,735 I don't understand it. 451 00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:26,260 And maybe that, again, goes back to that X factor of what's the value of a relationship. 452 00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:38,178 You think about sort of, you know, in &A when they do valuations, brand is a value that is sort of very, you know, amorphous in nature to go, what makes a brand and how do you put 453 00:37:38,178 --> 00:37:39,069 numbers on it? 454 00:37:39,069 --> 00:37:44,373 There's something to that familiarity aspect that must, you know, be carrying it forward. 455 00:37:44,373 --> 00:37:51,608 anyway, I don't, you know, I don't disagree with the idea that things will change. 456 00:37:51,608 --> 00:37:55,170 It should because from a logic and rational thought standpoint, 457 00:37:55,170 --> 00:37:59,141 Doesn't make sense to do a lot of things manually just because you've always done them that way. 458 00:37:59,401 --> 00:38:07,094 But you have to make sure that what you're replacing them with from an automation standpoint is at least as good or predictable or faster. 459 00:38:07,094 --> 00:38:12,325 There's got to be some additional benefits you're reaping from that in order to make it viable. 460 00:38:12,325 --> 00:38:19,367 I keep saying the old cheap, fast and good framework, you can pick two. 461 00:38:20,047 --> 00:38:22,218 That makes a difference, right? 462 00:38:22,218 --> 00:38:25,170 You can do something fast and cheap, but it might not be good. 463 00:38:25,170 --> 00:38:27,731 You can do something fast and good, but it won't be cheap. 464 00:38:28,051 --> 00:38:32,043 That very simple concept or framework is relevant here. 465 00:38:32,043 --> 00:38:32,894 It applies. 466 00:38:32,894 --> 00:38:35,975 There's really, I don't, don't know how to really break that. 467 00:38:36,656 --> 00:38:46,081 So, you know, all of these things, I think they're going to be influencing factors and you will continue to see this evolution, but it's, it's really interesting to see in spite of 468 00:38:46,081 --> 00:38:50,924 all, you know, other sort of market forces, there has been some resilience. 469 00:38:51,296 --> 00:39:00,400 and ability of law firms to counter threats, either by, know, sort of if you can't beat them, join them sort of thing, right? 470 00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:09,044 Like nobody, I don't think anybody on law firm side is going, forget all these legal tech companies and all this stuff that helps you automate or streamline or give better. 471 00:39:09,044 --> 00:39:10,524 Who needs all that? 472 00:39:10,865 --> 00:39:18,058 We got some really smart people and I know that, you know, they're a little slow sometimes, you know, getting things done and whatever, but that's your best bet. 473 00:39:18,058 --> 00:39:19,610 Nobody's really trying to make that case. 474 00:39:19,610 --> 00:39:26,887 There's some level of, all right, let's make sure we can stay current with the times and adjust as we need to. 475 00:39:26,887 --> 00:39:29,319 it's been a relatively effective strategy so far. 476 00:39:29,319 --> 00:39:34,704 So who knows if that happens forever, but that's what's been happening. 477 00:39:35,086 --> 00:39:36,586 Yeah, law firms are doing great. 478 00:39:36,586 --> 00:39:40,066 Profits rose by 17 % last year. 479 00:39:40,366 --> 00:39:46,366 Revenue increased by 13 % and rates increased by nine. 480 00:39:46,526 --> 00:39:47,586 So. 481 00:39:47,913 --> 00:39:57,169 I think one of the reasons, one of the drivers behind those numbers is the fact that, we talked about the difference between, you know, the profession and the business, right? 482 00:39:57,169 --> 00:40:07,166 You know, the last 10, 12 years, there's been huge investments made into professional management functions and teams and executives, right? 483 00:40:07,166 --> 00:40:16,092 I think those are really, you know, not to, it may sound like a biased opinion coming from me, but I think those are large, 484 00:40:16,460 --> 00:40:30,251 factor in being able to remain competitive or being able to remain as effective at doing what you're in business to do that they have exercised the opportunity to specialty, to 485 00:40:30,251 --> 00:40:40,580 exert specialization of labor and go, look, if I'm the best &A lawyer in the financial services industry in the world, that's great. 486 00:40:40,580 --> 00:40:43,812 Don't diminish that by making me the chairman of the firm. 487 00:40:43,812 --> 00:40:44,973 And now I don't get to do that anymore. 488 00:40:44,973 --> 00:40:46,508 And I got to make decisions on 489 00:40:46,508 --> 00:40:51,665 how to manage an enterprise that isn't really in line with where I contribute the most value. 490 00:40:51,665 --> 00:41:02,440 You bring on the people that do know how to orchestrate those resources and processes and make everything sort of fire on all eight cylinders the way it should be, everything's in 491 00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:03,550 its own lane. 492 00:41:04,078 --> 00:41:16,048 Well, how, you know, you probably have a really good perspective on this and I, I, I may be, uh, in the finance world, this may be a little different, but how, how empowered are 493 00:41:16,048 --> 00:41:17,980 these C-suite roles? 494 00:41:17,980 --> 00:41:22,654 Like for example, you know, chief innovation officer talk a lot about that role. 495 00:41:22,654 --> 00:41:27,938 There are customer and you've got some really, really bright people sitting in those seats. 496 00:41:28,050 --> 00:41:34,243 And when I look at the amount of true innovation that's happening in legal, it's not a lot. 497 00:41:34,243 --> 00:41:41,778 There is some, but you know, the difference between improvement and innovation is improvement is incremental, right? 498 00:41:41,778 --> 00:41:43,758 It's focused on efficiency. 499 00:41:44,039 --> 00:41:45,760 Innovation is a disruptor. 500 00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:49,362 It's fun doing things differently at a fundamental level. 501 00:41:49,362 --> 00:41:57,186 So, you know, I, I wonder, and again, I think this is going to vary by, uh, by function. 502 00:41:57,250 --> 00:42:02,492 but I'm wondering how empowered, you know, there's a lot of innovation theater going on in legal. 503 00:42:02,492 --> 00:42:03,413 Let's be real. 504 00:42:03,413 --> 00:42:06,514 I told you, I got a dear friend of mine. 505 00:42:06,514 --> 00:42:17,418 She's the director of innovation at like a 350 attorney law firm and she was doing, uh, I manage upgrades two weeks ago and I was like, what the hell are you doing? 506 00:42:17,698 --> 00:42:18,929 This is the IT's job. 507 00:42:18,929 --> 00:42:22,520 She's like, I am IT and KM and innovation. 508 00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:27,327 And you know, that's shame on shame on that XCOM. 509 00:42:27,327 --> 00:42:36,436 for just slapping a title on somebody's role and not empowering them to actually go and do what is their charter. 510 00:42:36,812 --> 00:42:49,109 Yeah, mean, so we saw the same thing happen sort of in, you know, in the little niche of the industry where I've kind of resided, right, was, you know, lot of firms earnestly were 511 00:42:49,109 --> 00:42:51,471 like, hey, let's make sure we remain competitive. 512 00:42:51,471 --> 00:42:57,715 Let's, you know, make sure we get the right people in place that have that finger on the pulse or have the right ideas that we should be trying. 513 00:42:57,715 --> 00:43:01,197 And this goes for, you know, for other functions as well. 514 00:43:01,197 --> 00:43:03,328 But let's, you know, 515 00:43:03,670 --> 00:43:13,277 Genuinely invest and work on adopting and propagating those practices and principles throughout the firm so that we're you remaining as nimble and as Responsive in market as 516 00:43:13,277 --> 00:43:20,983 possible then there's other ones that said, you know I keep reading all these things about these new titles that they're hiring and I saw that you know so and so across the street 517 00:43:20,983 --> 00:43:29,399 has a Director of pricing or an innovation person whenever right we should probably get one of those without any real sort of you know 518 00:43:30,968 --> 00:43:42,788 Commitment, yeah, commitment from the top, but also the ability to drive those practices or best practices or concepts throughout the firm so that you're able to, you talk about 519 00:43:42,788 --> 00:43:45,828 scale, like internal scale, so you can scale the benefits of those things. 520 00:43:45,828 --> 00:43:49,068 It ends up really being difficult. 521 00:43:49,068 --> 00:44:00,322 And when you think about some of the capabilities that sort of develop certainly as a function of technology solutions, right? 522 00:44:00,322 --> 00:44:06,764 I'm a huge fan of anything that does cool stuff fast and right and all those things. 523 00:44:06,764 --> 00:44:15,886 I'm a big proponent of all those solutions and coming up with new solutions to problems that Legal Tech Fund Summit that we went to. 524 00:44:15,886 --> 00:44:21,538 I love sitting in those pitch sessions and watching the ideas people come up with and the problems they're solving. 525 00:44:22,178 --> 00:44:25,349 So I think there's certainly a play for that. 526 00:44:25,349 --> 00:44:28,900 But what I think you see a lot of times is 527 00:44:28,940 --> 00:44:35,960 the sacred cow of sort of the service delivery piece ends up being protected till the last possible moment. 528 00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:47,093 And what ends up getting exploited by technology solutions first and very effectively, which I think also manifests in those performance numbers you see is how do you deploy 529 00:44:47,093 --> 00:44:51,076 some of these solutions from the operational side, internally at the firm, right? 530 00:44:51,076 --> 00:44:57,590 So how do we leverage those things if the lawyers won't use it or the clients don't want us to use it or the clients don't know? 531 00:44:57,590 --> 00:45:08,587 whether they want us to use it, let's proof of concepting this on other processes internally that help us get faster, quicker, more nimble, more creative and all those 532 00:45:08,587 --> 00:45:09,468 things more effective. 533 00:45:09,468 --> 00:45:12,122 Yeah, exactly. 534 00:45:12,523 --> 00:45:13,404 Exactly. 535 00:45:13,404 --> 00:45:14,585 Agreed, agreed. 536 00:45:14,585 --> 00:45:26,522 So we're almost out of time, but I did want to, You and I had a really interesting conversation around some of the, some of the things making it difficult for, um, for law 537 00:45:26,522 --> 00:45:33,576 firms to innovate and the fragmentation in the gen AI space and knowing who's going to be the long-term winner. 538 00:45:33,576 --> 00:45:38,478 I mean, you know, if you look at throughout the history of business, 539 00:45:38,764 --> 00:45:48,142 the, um, the leader, the, the initial leader in a particular category is rarely the long-term winner of that category, right? 540 00:45:48,142 --> 00:45:55,488 They kind of paved the way for some, I mean, there's a million examples of this, MySpace, BlackBerry, Netscape, Lotus123. 541 00:45:55,488 --> 00:45:58,601 Um, right. 542 00:45:58,601 --> 00:45:59,121 Exactly. 543 00:45:59,121 --> 00:45:59,692 Yeah. 544 00:45:59,692 --> 00:46:01,893 Or maybe even third or fourth mover. 545 00:46:02,574 --> 00:46:07,210 so as it does, I understand the, the, there's gridlock right now. 546 00:46:07,210 --> 00:46:10,617 in firms with like where do we invest? 547 00:46:10,617 --> 00:46:11,619 Where do we spend our time? 548 00:46:11,619 --> 00:46:12,490 Where do we spend our money? 549 00:46:12,490 --> 00:46:17,790 And you had some thoughts on how that's making things difficult. 550 00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:32,160 Yeah, that sort of inhibits adoption of tools or capabilities as well because as is sort of a natural progression of things when you've got capabilities that are sort of starting 551 00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:41,300 to gain more maturity in a market, you're going to have a lot of new entrants in the market trying to leverage those capabilities and find out, find their niche or find their 552 00:46:41,300 --> 00:46:43,680 audience, find their customer base, right? 553 00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:44,656 So. 554 00:46:44,660 --> 00:46:47,772 As a firm, I work a lot with our innovation team. 555 00:46:47,772 --> 00:46:53,585 We have a weekly call, we source projects for each other, we help develop pilots together and everything. 556 00:46:53,585 --> 00:46:54,896 It's a good symbiosis. 557 00:46:54,896 --> 00:46:58,408 I'm kind of a front row seat on this, how it goes at my current firm. 558 00:46:58,408 --> 00:47:00,368 And I've seen it at past firms too. 559 00:47:01,529 --> 00:47:09,984 If you identify a need based on, okay, look, we see a process here that looks like it would benefit from some of the different capabilities that are coming online in the market 560 00:47:09,984 --> 00:47:10,514 now. 561 00:47:10,514 --> 00:47:13,896 And then you go to market to try and find the best tool to do it. 562 00:47:13,922 --> 00:47:18,215 Well, you've got, you we talked, you know, we used the idea of Venn diagrams earlier. 563 00:47:18,215 --> 00:47:21,577 You've got a series of circles. 564 00:47:21,577 --> 00:47:22,888 It's not even just two or three. 565 00:47:22,888 --> 00:47:32,765 You've got a whole chain of circles that are overlapping to varying degrees within a certain sort of niche or, you know, target outcome or target function. 566 00:47:32,765 --> 00:47:33,325 Right. 567 00:47:33,325 --> 00:47:42,592 So when you have to make an investment decision and you know that these are all in most cases, you know, emerging growth companies, which is where innovation comes from. 568 00:47:42,592 --> 00:47:43,544 And that's great. 569 00:47:43,544 --> 00:47:52,364 But you also know, okay, we can't necessarily invest in these things with big dollars if we don't know if that particular solution out of the seven that are somewhat overlapping 570 00:47:52,364 --> 00:47:57,744 and relevant to what we need to do is going to be around in six months or 12 months or who they're going to get bought by. 571 00:47:57,744 --> 00:48:05,424 You know, I know a number of people who were very loyal clients or customers of some solutions. 572 00:48:05,424 --> 00:48:13,452 And then that solution got bought by a larger platform and it got sunsetted or it got rolled into something else and that wasn't compliant with the 573 00:48:13,452 --> 00:48:16,773 financial system they were on or the other, know, dashboarding tools they had. 574 00:48:16,773 --> 00:48:17,873 So then they had to migrate. 575 00:48:17,873 --> 00:48:23,735 So it's when you have this fragmentation of options, you know, this is highly fragmented market. 576 00:48:23,735 --> 00:48:32,637 It does add a level of complexity and also sort of, you know, risk aversion where you go, okay, look, I kind of feel like based on the analysis we've done internally, that we could 577 00:48:32,637 --> 00:48:37,018 change some things with these particular workflows or pockets within these practices. 578 00:48:37,018 --> 00:48:43,298 And there's probably maybe even some, you know, level of interest within the lawyer ranks there that we could get some adoption there. 579 00:48:43,298 --> 00:48:47,632 but then you sort of get stuck putting it on the sidelines because you're like, I don't know what to buy to bring in. 580 00:48:47,632 --> 00:48:52,275 And if we tried to build it, then that's you, run into other, you know, issues and complications. 581 00:48:52,275 --> 00:48:57,640 So it does, that does sort of inhibit or slow the maturity curve, I would say. 582 00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:00,682 And then also by, by association, the adoption curve with those things. 583 00:49:00,682 --> 00:49:02,333 So it's tricky. 584 00:49:02,333 --> 00:49:03,464 It's very tricky. 585 00:49:03,990 --> 00:49:06,041 Now you're 100 % right. 586 00:49:06,041 --> 00:49:08,131 Yeah, I've seen it a million times. 587 00:49:08,411 --> 00:49:19,245 A legal tech vendor gets bought by one of the big, you know, one of the big practice management solutions or, and they take it out back and shoot it in the head. 588 00:49:19,245 --> 00:49:20,125 Sometimes they do it. 589 00:49:20,125 --> 00:49:21,365 Sometimes they do it slow. 590 00:49:21,365 --> 00:49:23,786 Sometimes they, and it's not just legal tech, man. 591 00:49:23,786 --> 00:49:25,957 This is, this happens everywhere. 592 00:49:26,877 --> 00:49:28,798 Well, man, this has been a great conversation. 593 00:49:28,798 --> 00:49:29,658 We, 594 00:49:29,730 --> 00:49:33,788 There was a bunch of stuff we didn't get to, but I feel like we had some really good dialogue here. 595 00:49:33,788 --> 00:49:35,266 So this was a lot of fun. 596 00:49:35,266 --> 00:49:36,217 Likewise, I enjoyed it. 597 00:49:36,217 --> 00:49:38,278 Like I say, great, talk in shop. 598 00:49:38,278 --> 00:49:43,371 the most fun thing is, you know, it's talk about things you can't be wrong about, because, know, who knows what the future holds, right? 599 00:49:43,371 --> 00:49:45,293 So I enjoy that. 600 00:49:45,293 --> 00:49:50,606 It adds a level of sort of engagement and fun to the day. 601 00:49:50,606 --> 00:49:57,811 So I appreciate again, the invitation and the engagement on LinkedIn, just in the discussion that kind of brought us together, you know, to have this conversation. 602 00:49:57,811 --> 00:49:59,632 So thanks a 603 00:49:59,729 --> 00:50:00,260 Yeah, man. 604 00:50:00,260 --> 00:50:01,262 Absolutely. 605 00:50:01,262 --> 00:50:01,693 All right. 606 00:50:01,693 --> 00:50:03,406 It was a great chat. 607 00:50:03,406 --> 00:50:06,284 Hopefully we'll get to chat again soon, maybe in person. 608 00:50:06,284 --> 00:50:07,228 Yeah, love that. 609 00:50:07,228 --> 00:50:08,469 Look forward to it. 610 00:50:09,314 --> 00:50:10,111 Thanks, Tim. 611 00:50:10,111 --> 00:50:11,113 Thank you. -->