1 00:00:02,626 --> 00:00:04,767 Peter Duffy, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,775 --> 00:00:06,054 Amazing, Lucifer Will. 3 00:00:06,054 --> 00:00:07,308 Great to chat to you Ted. 4 00:00:07,308 --> 00:00:08,871 Yeah, it's good to chat with you too. 5 00:00:08,871 --> 00:00:10,622 It's been a long time coming. 6 00:00:10,678 --> 00:00:13,378 had our initial planning conversation. 7 00:00:13,378 --> 00:00:17,494 It seems like it's been at least a month, maybe more. 8 00:00:17,811 --> 00:00:18,681 It has indeed. 9 00:00:18,681 --> 00:00:21,561 It's busy season, which is a good sign in one sense. 10 00:00:21,561 --> 00:00:24,108 But glad that we're getting around to having the chat. 11 00:00:24,108 --> 00:00:25,368 Yeah, absolutely. 12 00:00:25,368 --> 00:00:32,140 So, before we jump into the conversation, we, I want to get you properly introduced. 13 00:00:32,140 --> 00:00:40,821 Um, you've got a pretty popular legal AI newsletter and that's kind of how our conversation started. 14 00:00:41,363 --> 00:00:53,166 And, you're very active on LinkedIn, but you, started your career in software development, I believe, and you ended up working for Deloitte and now you're doing 15 00:00:53,230 --> 00:00:55,073 consulting around innovation. 16 00:00:55,073 --> 00:00:58,998 Tell us about your background and what you're doing today. 17 00:00:59,318 --> 00:01:00,359 Sure, absolutely. 18 00:01:00,359 --> 00:01:02,521 Yeah, so my background is quite varied. 19 00:01:02,521 --> 00:01:06,103 As you mentioned, I'm not a lawyer and find myself in the legal industry. 20 00:01:06,103 --> 00:01:08,525 My career effectively has three different chapters. 21 00:01:08,525 --> 00:01:11,348 So trained, graduated as an energy engineer. 22 00:01:11,348 --> 00:01:15,570 So focused on wind turbines, solar panels, that kind of stuff, but never went down that route. 23 00:01:15,731 --> 00:01:17,673 Fell in love with software at an early stage. 24 00:01:17,673 --> 00:01:22,917 And in the first chapter, set up some companies and worked with my friends on a bunch of different tech startups. 25 00:01:22,917 --> 00:01:28,731 So areas like online advertising, political canvassing, and energy conservation. 26 00:01:28,819 --> 00:01:35,573 realized the most successful of those was the political canvassing, but I realized relatively early that I actually don't have too much interest in politics. 27 00:01:36,374 --> 00:01:46,141 After that, made the jump to the second chapter, which was working with Deloitte Digital and Deloitte Digital is Deloitte's digital consulting arm. 28 00:01:46,261 --> 00:01:55,788 So worked with them for five years in Ireland and the UK and there effectively we were helping large corporates in a bunch of different sectors like sports betting, financial 29 00:01:55,788 --> 00:01:57,994 services, telecoms and pharmaceuticals. 30 00:01:57,994 --> 00:02:00,435 to build and launch mobile apps and web apps at scale. 31 00:02:00,435 --> 00:02:01,695 So massive projects. 32 00:02:01,695 --> 00:02:05,696 We're talking like over 300 people building a commercial banking mobile app. 33 00:02:05,696 --> 00:02:08,096 So really technology delivery at scale. 34 00:02:08,357 --> 00:02:16,159 After doing that for five years, decided the route of working within a large consultancy wasn't exactly the path I wanted my life to follow. 35 00:02:16,159 --> 00:02:22,960 So I left Deloitte and moved into the third chapter, which is I set up my own consultancy, Titans. 36 00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:26,151 So after I left Deloitte, Deloitte asked me to come back. 37 00:02:26,183 --> 00:02:36,510 So I started consulting with them initially in financial services and then they asked move across to Deloitte Legal, which was a big push in the UK at the time and still is, they're 38 00:02:36,510 --> 00:02:38,522 growing quite a lot. 39 00:02:38,522 --> 00:02:48,838 so effectively for the last five years have been exclusively focused on the legal market and helping large legal service providers and in-house teams when it comes to all things 40 00:02:48,838 --> 00:02:50,329 relating to legal technology. 41 00:02:50,329 --> 00:02:55,433 And these days in particular, that is a heavy, heavy focus on AI. 42 00:02:55,594 --> 00:02:59,699 which is there has never been a more exciting time to be working in this space. 43 00:03:00,216 --> 00:03:01,990 Yeah, it's an interesting time for sure. 44 00:03:01,990 --> 00:03:07,421 So at Deloitte, were you, do they have a, like an in-house ALSP? 45 00:03:08,661 --> 00:03:16,281 Yeah, so interestingly in the UK, which was the, where I worked with Android Legal there, they effectively have three different strands. 46 00:03:16,281 --> 00:03:21,321 So they have the legal advisory, which is kind of like your traditional law firm. 47 00:03:21,321 --> 00:03:23,701 Then they have the second strand, which is legal consulting. 48 00:03:23,701 --> 00:03:28,941 So advising in-house teams on improving their overall kind of internal operations. 49 00:03:28,941 --> 00:03:32,341 And the third one is focused on managed services. 50 00:03:32,341 --> 00:03:37,913 So kind of like what people may view as traditional kind of managed services, ALSP activities. 51 00:03:38,230 --> 00:03:39,191 Interesting. 52 00:03:39,191 --> 00:03:48,747 And we're going to talk about ALSP's a little later, but what really initiated the dialogue between you and I, was, was reading your newsletter. 53 00:03:48,747 --> 00:03:52,159 I don't, it's number 34 from November. 54 00:03:52,159 --> 00:03:53,610 Is that your latest one? 55 00:03:54,359 --> 00:03:57,104 I have had one since then I believe. 56 00:03:58,168 --> 00:03:59,933 But yeah, that was a good one. 57 00:03:59,933 --> 00:04:01,836 So yeah, it's worth talking about that one. 58 00:04:01,854 --> 00:04:03,174 that was a really good one. 59 00:04:03,174 --> 00:04:14,654 And I, uh, early on in the newsletter, you published, um, or talked about some numbers that were published by a Wharton study that caught my eye. 60 00:04:14,654 --> 00:04:23,994 And some of the highlights that you pointed out were that, um, I believe this is, yeah, it says legal departments. 61 00:04:23,994 --> 00:04:27,424 So I'm assuming this is inside council. 62 00:04:27,424 --> 00:04:29,662 When you say legal departments, um, 63 00:04:29,662 --> 00:04:34,577 Do you remember if that Wharton study was law firms and legal departments or? 64 00:04:34,907 --> 00:04:36,574 I believe it's just legal departments. 65 00:04:36,574 --> 00:04:37,614 Okay. 66 00:04:37,914 --> 00:04:38,354 Okay. 67 00:04:38,354 --> 00:04:42,436 So the, I, and I don't have a ton of visibility on that side. 68 00:04:42,436 --> 00:04:47,977 So info dash is an intranet extranet platform and we sell exclusively to law firms. 69 00:04:48,197 --> 00:04:54,739 Our extranet offering touches legal departments, but that's, we have, we don't have a ton of exposure there. 70 00:04:54,799 --> 00:05:05,342 So, but I think there is some commonalities that, really raise some questions in my mind as to the numbers. 71 00:05:05,402 --> 00:05:06,282 So, 72 00:05:07,218 --> 00:05:12,530 And I think you and I, before we got started here, we talked about some of these numbers and do they make sense? 73 00:05:12,530 --> 00:05:14,200 Are they aspirational? 74 00:05:14,380 --> 00:05:19,561 And I'm in the camp that a lot of the numbers that come out now seem to be aspirational. 75 00:05:19,862 --> 00:05:30,245 Before we jump into the Wharton study, the Iltatech survey that came out recently, I don't know when the last three months, the question was not worded the best, but it was 76 00:05:30,245 --> 00:05:34,906 basically, you use AI in business scenarios? 77 00:05:36,088 --> 00:05:42,580 For law firms, the answer varied pretty widely between small and large law. 78 00:05:42,580 --> 00:05:48,882 And the way ILTA categorizes law firm size, at the smallest end, it's 50 and under attorneys. 79 00:05:48,882 --> 00:05:51,842 And at the largest end, it's 700 and above. 80 00:05:51,922 --> 00:06:05,486 And at 700 and above attorneys, response, law firms with 700 or more attorneys, the response was north of 70 % said yes, that they do use AI in 81 00:06:05,624 --> 00:06:13,619 business use cases at the small end under 50, it was like 20%, which surprised me. 82 00:06:14,200 --> 00:06:26,938 I've had multiple conversations with people and there's lots of ways you could kind of interpret that, but 70 % of law firms are not using AI and at least in production practice 83 00:06:26,938 --> 00:06:30,370 of law use use cases today. 84 00:06:30,671 --> 00:06:34,973 I'm really confident in saying that just it's anecdotal, but 85 00:06:35,276 --> 00:06:41,318 we do business with a ton of AMLaw firms and I talk to CKOs every day and chief innovation officers. 86 00:06:41,318 --> 00:06:52,861 And I just, know that 70 % aren't doing it, at least in big, in big rollouts, they may have little pockets of experimentation and those sorts of things going on. 87 00:06:52,861 --> 00:06:54,931 But I think those numbers are deceiving. 88 00:06:56,232 --> 00:07:03,246 I saw another number and I forget who put, who pushed this one out that, um, like something like 50, 89 00:07:03,246 --> 00:07:04,916 teen or maybe even less than that. 90 00:07:04,916 --> 00:07:09,806 Maybe it was low teens, percent of law firms have an AI use policy. 91 00:07:09,806 --> 00:07:12,206 And I was like, okay, well, that's pretty scary. 92 00:07:12,206 --> 00:07:21,046 If 70 % of big law is telling you that you're using AI and less than 15 % have a policy around it, that's a real problem. 93 00:07:21,046 --> 00:07:32,670 I think the reality is that the number is actually closer to 15 % that are actually using it in a material way in practice of law scenarios. 94 00:07:32,670 --> 00:07:40,295 Is marketing a cam using Copilot or ChachiBT or Claude? 95 00:07:40,295 --> 00:07:44,177 Yeah, that seems reasonable that 70%. 96 00:07:44,177 --> 00:07:51,221 But I still think we're in an experimentation phase in legal. 97 00:07:51,221 --> 00:07:53,032 What is your take on that? 98 00:07:53,430 --> 00:07:57,330 Yeah, well, firstly, I totally agree with you in the experimentation phase. 99 00:07:57,330 --> 00:08:00,090 Like we're still in the early days. 100 00:08:00,310 --> 00:08:06,310 The technology has kind of only been available to law firms for a short period of time. 101 00:08:06,310 --> 00:08:13,730 And if you factor in the time it takes for the procurement cycle to law firms to actually buy technology, that it's only been a very short period of time where people could start 102 00:08:13,730 --> 00:08:15,370 using it internally. 103 00:08:15,370 --> 00:08:20,693 To your point around, is 70 % usage sound high? 104 00:08:21,053 --> 00:08:22,034 It sounds high, right? 105 00:08:22,034 --> 00:08:24,396 That's the good feel of that sounds very, very high. 106 00:08:24,396 --> 00:08:29,560 And as you say, there's a lot to the wording of questionnaires of within surveys. 107 00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:35,704 And I'm always have a healthy dose of skepticism for any survey I don't administer myself. 108 00:08:35,944 --> 00:08:47,968 And more broadly, when it comes to surveys, any individual survey, it's you can get interesting, broad kind of broad data points in isolation, there's minimal value. 109 00:08:47,968 --> 00:08:53,362 But when you look across a bunch of surveys, you can start to see interesting trends. 110 00:08:53,542 --> 00:08:59,727 Again, with the caveats that like how the questions are worded, what qualifies as use. 111 00:09:00,428 --> 00:09:04,851 There's a whole heap of nuances with every question and with every survey. 112 00:09:05,992 --> 00:09:13,233 So as a gut and sense check, yeah, I'd be more inclined to say, if you were to ask me, is it closer to 15 or 70? 113 00:09:13,233 --> 00:09:17,289 I'd say it's probably closer to 15 for material impact. 114 00:09:17,289 --> 00:09:18,989 that is being regularly used. 115 00:09:19,350 --> 00:09:20,690 But there's always caveats in that. 116 00:09:20,690 --> 00:09:27,033 As you said, there will be pockets within a given legal service provider or within corporates who have substantial uses. 117 00:09:27,033 --> 00:09:28,693 So it does vary quite a bit. 118 00:09:28,693 --> 00:09:37,687 But I think whenever people see or hear very large numbers and very high adoption, they should have a natural skepticism at this point because we're still in the very early 119 00:09:37,687 --> 00:09:38,557 stages. 120 00:09:38,606 --> 00:09:40,468 Yeah, agreed. 121 00:09:40,468 --> 00:09:54,449 And the Wharton study that I was referencing here, that you provided a little bit of clarity around, it said that 69%, and it sounds like this is inside council, are using 122 00:09:54,449 --> 00:09:56,920 GEN-AI at least once a week. 123 00:09:57,181 --> 00:10:03,406 And that 66 % think it has a high or medium impact. 124 00:10:03,766 --> 00:10:08,730 And I looked at kind of the inverse of that 125 00:10:09,614 --> 00:10:20,861 uh, argument and, really looked at those who S who said it would have a low impact, which was 25%, which is a real head scratcher for me. 126 00:10:20,861 --> 00:10:21,151 Right. 127 00:10:21,151 --> 00:10:30,066 I mean, yes, the majority think that it will have, at least higher medium only 28 % said that they think it's going to have a high impact. 128 00:10:30,066 --> 00:10:37,358 So when I look at those two in the middle, it's not as interesting, but on both extremes, they're 129 00:10:37,358 --> 00:10:45,418 I find it interesting that only 20 28 % think it's going to have a high impact and that 25 % think it's going to have a low impact. 130 00:10:45,418 --> 00:10:49,008 Like I can't wrap my head around what's going on there. 131 00:10:49,008 --> 00:10:51,174 Do you have any thoughts on that? 132 00:10:51,606 --> 00:10:55,609 Well, it's interesting because in this study, there's a few different ways you can look at it. 133 00:10:55,609 --> 00:10:58,851 One is around the percentage that use it regularly. 134 00:10:58,851 --> 00:11:08,837 And one of the main takeaways is that within the various departments in a corporate, legal is amongst the lowest slash potentially the lowest when it comes to adoption of gen AI. 135 00:11:08,837 --> 00:11:18,143 So that in itself, it sounds broadly correct if we think about, well, lawyers, the nature of the work that they do, the importance of being totally accurate in the work that is 136 00:11:18,143 --> 00:11:20,757 produced, it's natural that they have lower usage than. 137 00:11:20,757 --> 00:11:32,357 sales and marketing or other departments in the enterprise, then when it comes to the potential impact, that's an interesting one too, because the question is phrased as an 138 00:11:32,357 --> 00:11:35,257 expected impact, which is a future prediction. 139 00:11:35,257 --> 00:11:43,157 And the thing is people are often very bad at predicting the future, especially if it's new technology, which they may not fully understand or comprehend the potential impact. 140 00:11:44,337 --> 00:11:46,582 My takeaway from this 141 00:11:46,582 --> 00:11:56,982 Personally, it's great that there's already 28 % of these respondents are expecting that it will have a high impact and another 39 % are expecting a median impact. 142 00:11:56,982 --> 00:12:07,162 Because that shows those who have appetite to start using or who will be easier to start adopting and really driving value in what they do. 143 00:12:07,162 --> 00:12:12,009 So I would look at that quite positively and see, OK, attain. 144 00:12:12,009 --> 00:12:23,407 takes time for any technology to become embedded or adopted or people to understand what's coming through, to show that people are already expecting quite a large impact is a 145 00:12:23,407 --> 00:12:24,267 positive sign. 146 00:12:24,267 --> 00:12:35,835 And that there is appetite and recognition broadly from the majority that this will have an impact in how legal is delivered within the corporate. 147 00:12:36,514 --> 00:12:39,075 Yeah, you're a glass half full kind of guy. 148 00:12:39,075 --> 00:12:45,476 I look at this and go, what are the 25 % who think it's going to have a low impact thinking? 149 00:12:45,476 --> 00:12:48,177 Like, do they have their head buried in the sand? 150 00:12:48,177 --> 00:12:50,198 Are they, do they not read? 151 00:12:50,198 --> 00:12:52,258 Are they not going to conferences? 152 00:12:52,258 --> 00:13:00,261 Have they not experimented because there's no way that it's going to have a low impact on the legal industry. 153 00:13:00,261 --> 00:13:06,262 If you were to stack rank industries that gen AI is going to have the biggest impact on. 154 00:13:06,514 --> 00:13:10,697 legal is going to be near the top of that, in my opinion. 155 00:13:10,697 --> 00:13:13,479 So yeah, I guess that's kind of the head scratcher. 156 00:13:13,479 --> 00:13:21,464 Like, man, and I guess it's easy, you know, for me to say this, I own a legal technology company. 157 00:13:21,604 --> 00:13:23,384 I'm in it neck deep. 158 00:13:24,326 --> 00:13:33,642 And you know, the reality is if you look at the demographics, especially in law firm leadership, you know, it skews older, right? 159 00:13:33,642 --> 00:13:35,714 And maybe people towards, 160 00:13:36,046 --> 00:13:48,967 towards the end of their careers aren't investing time in learning about it because I guess they figure maybe that by the time it gets here and has a real transformational 161 00:13:48,967 --> 00:13:54,201 effect, they'll be in Florida on a boat somewhere. 162 00:13:55,843 --> 00:13:57,464 Yeah, I don't know. 163 00:13:57,485 --> 00:13:59,436 That may have something to do with it too. 164 00:13:59,926 --> 00:14:00,446 Absolutely. 165 00:14:00,446 --> 00:14:02,176 like you raised a very good point. 166 00:14:02,176 --> 00:14:05,236 Look, we are at the forefront of what is happening here. 167 00:14:05,236 --> 00:14:07,646 You are running a technology company. 168 00:14:07,646 --> 00:14:13,346 You are selling to those who are already of the mindset that technology is having a big impact. 169 00:14:13,346 --> 00:14:19,486 And likewise, the people I deal with are clients who get it, who are already moving fast and want to move even faster. 170 00:14:19,526 --> 00:14:24,326 So I firmly believe that AI is going to have a massive impact on legal. 171 00:14:24,326 --> 00:14:28,615 And when I see that 25 % perceive it will have a lower impact. 172 00:14:28,853 --> 00:14:30,353 I believe that they are incorrect. 173 00:14:30,353 --> 00:14:40,293 I believe that just highlights those are the, that is the area that we'll have to be more mindful of when it comes to adoption and when it comes to implementation. 174 00:14:40,813 --> 00:14:43,233 But I think their view is probably incorrect. 175 00:14:43,233 --> 00:14:51,593 We just have to manage that as this change comes through and it kind of ties on the part that like, within the industry, everyone's at different stages of the maturity here. 176 00:14:51,873 --> 00:14:55,213 It's a very broad market and 177 00:14:55,328 --> 00:14:59,461 There's a huge change management piece when it comes to the introduction of AI. 178 00:14:59,461 --> 00:15:06,725 And I think it, for me, it highlights that we need to be mindful that there is a cohort of people who do not think that this will have an impact. 179 00:15:06,725 --> 00:15:12,849 And that's something that needs to be, people need to be careful of when introducing technology, that people element. 180 00:15:13,016 --> 00:15:15,907 Yeah, I don't think they should be in law firm leadership. 181 00:15:15,907 --> 00:15:17,827 I mean, I really feel that strongly. 182 00:15:17,827 --> 00:15:32,131 you, if you have someone who has not, does not fully grasp the potential and likelihood of the transformational effect of AI in the industry, I don't think they should be leading 183 00:15:32,131 --> 00:15:33,211 your law firm. 184 00:15:34,852 --> 00:15:38,593 but the reality is I don't choose who leads these law firms. 185 00:15:38,593 --> 00:15:42,814 And, what, what's interesting is I don't know how this works in the UK, but 186 00:15:42,840 --> 00:15:50,063 here in the U S you know, lot of law firm leadership comes to be because they're the best at lawyering, right? 187 00:15:50,063 --> 00:15:57,296 It's not because they're the best leaders necessarily, or you know, they've got the best resume to lead the firm. 188 00:15:57,296 --> 00:16:03,729 It's, know, because they've been most successful, um, you know, building a book of business and there's value to that. 189 00:16:03,729 --> 00:16:10,956 But you know, in, in other industries, like you mentioned financial services, I spent 10 years at bank of America, um, 190 00:16:10,956 --> 00:16:24,160 You know, the, it's a different model in big corporate organizations that, especially if they're publicly traded or they have a, they have a board, a fiduciary board that, you 191 00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:26,821 know, that management is held accountable to. 192 00:16:26,821 --> 00:16:30,992 There's no such thing in law firms, at least in the U S right there. 193 00:16:30,992 --> 00:16:31,732 There is no board. 194 00:16:31,732 --> 00:16:34,973 The owners are partners and they work in the business. 195 00:16:34,973 --> 00:16:39,394 So there's no kind of third party objective arms length. 196 00:16:39,468 --> 00:16:47,061 relationship between a board that puts management in place with very specific criteria. 197 00:16:47,061 --> 00:16:55,265 And I think that impacts the ability for law firms to really grow to their full potential. 198 00:16:55,265 --> 00:16:57,636 So the biggest law firm in the world is K &E. 199 00:16:57,636 --> 00:17:01,618 They're just under the floor of the Fortune 500. 200 00:17:01,808 --> 00:17:03,909 They're all private in the US. 201 00:17:03,909 --> 00:17:05,610 So there's no publicly traded law firms. 202 00:17:05,610 --> 00:17:06,850 There can't be. 203 00:17:07,032 --> 00:17:09,906 But if there were, there still wouldn't be any in the fortune 500. 204 00:17:09,906 --> 00:17:18,136 And if you were to ask, well, why there's other professional services organizations in the fortune 500, why not legal? 205 00:17:18,136 --> 00:17:22,321 I would point to that model as, one of the reasons why. 206 00:17:22,321 --> 00:17:23,752 you have any thoughts on that? 207 00:17:24,221 --> 00:17:25,191 Yeah, absolutely. 208 00:17:25,191 --> 00:17:35,205 I think that you make a very valid point that fundamentally the incentives and the structure of law firms make a lot of things hard. 209 00:17:35,326 --> 00:17:44,799 And where we see alternative structures, I've seen quite a bit in the UK and I will say as well with a caveat that Titans, in a very fortunate position that the clients that we work 210 00:17:44,799 --> 00:17:49,531 with, they think big and they want to move fast and they get it. 211 00:17:49,531 --> 00:17:53,734 So we're not in the business of trying to know. 212 00:17:53,734 --> 00:17:55,335 tell executives that this matter. 213 00:17:55,335 --> 00:17:58,697 Executives come to us and like, we know this really matters. 214 00:17:58,697 --> 00:17:59,777 Let's go. 215 00:18:00,538 --> 00:18:03,199 So that's a lovely position for us. 216 00:18:03,199 --> 00:18:08,482 I think that for the overall structures where I haven't seen it, it is different. 217 00:18:08,482 --> 00:18:18,227 In some cases in the UK, for example, one of the law firms I worked with for numerous years, DWF, they were the largest publicly listed law firm in the world at one point. 218 00:18:18,687 --> 00:18:20,368 They're now private equity owned. 219 00:18:20,368 --> 00:18:22,581 And in general, we're seeing kind of private equity. 220 00:18:22,581 --> 00:18:27,521 are making larger moves in the legal service market, not just in the UK, but elsewhere. 221 00:18:28,801 --> 00:18:41,321 And the whole process there and the incentives are very, different to what we see with law firms when it's not ultimately just about, the profit per equity partner, whatever it 222 00:18:41,321 --> 00:18:41,551 might be. 223 00:18:41,551 --> 00:18:43,741 It's the overall, what is the value of the business? 224 00:18:43,761 --> 00:18:47,781 And it's interesting that that does drive different incentives. 225 00:18:47,781 --> 00:18:51,701 And it will be curious as we see that become more common within legal. 226 00:18:52,031 --> 00:18:53,282 how that may change things. 227 00:18:53,282 --> 00:18:53,592 Yeah. 228 00:18:53,592 --> 00:18:56,945 And things seem to be trending in that direction here too. 229 00:18:56,945 --> 00:19:00,267 There are certain States like Arizona, for example, there are others. 230 00:19:00,267 --> 00:19:08,973 I think Utah might be one where they are allowing non-lawyers to have an ownership stake in law firms. 231 00:19:08,973 --> 00:19:11,856 And I think that will change significantly. 232 00:19:11,856 --> 00:19:20,908 I think that will improve the organizational design and structure within law firms where again, 233 00:19:20,908 --> 00:19:25,760 Just because you're the best at lawyering doesn't mean you should be the CEO of a law firm. 234 00:19:26,721 --> 00:19:38,087 and I, know, I think when you bring outsiders in and you put professional management in place that understand how to grow and scale a large organization, good things will happen 235 00:19:38,087 --> 00:19:39,488 from a growth perspective. 236 00:19:39,488 --> 00:19:46,312 So we're just now starting that journey in, in the U S but I know it's, you guys are further ahead. 237 00:19:46,312 --> 00:19:50,694 That's, that's already happening or has happened in the UK. 238 00:19:50,776 --> 00:19:51,636 Correct. 239 00:19:51,734 --> 00:19:54,114 Yeah, it's actually happened for quite some years. 240 00:19:54,114 --> 00:19:55,914 I think it was the Legal Services Act. 241 00:19:55,914 --> 00:20:03,804 can't remember exactly what year it came in, but that effectively made it lot easier for non-lawyer ownership of legal service providers. 242 00:20:03,804 --> 00:20:13,674 So the likes of the big four who have a large presence in the UK for legal services, that has an impact on the market. 243 00:20:13,674 --> 00:20:18,614 And even if we think about ALSPs more broadly, that in the UK, 244 00:20:18,941 --> 00:20:29,722 Most of the top 50 law firms will have an ALSP arm that will help with consulting or potentially use some other services or other pieces like that. 245 00:20:29,722 --> 00:20:33,617 So it does introduce new potential delivery models. 246 00:20:33,617 --> 00:20:41,024 And I think it's something that I know that in the US there's hesitation for the non-lawyer ownership, but it seems like a no brainer. 247 00:20:42,486 --> 00:20:42,986 Indeed. 248 00:20:42,986 --> 00:20:44,787 Yeah, it just makes sense. 249 00:20:44,787 --> 00:20:56,512 Um, you know, and this is maybe controversial perspective, but honestly, I think, a lot of this is ego in, the U S right. 250 00:20:56,512 --> 00:20:59,313 Lawyers think they're special sometimes like this. 251 00:20:59,313 --> 00:21:02,855 They say we're a business or a profession, not a business. 252 00:21:02,855 --> 00:21:04,095 That's nonsense. 253 00:21:04,095 --> 00:21:06,096 You're, both right. 254 00:21:06,096 --> 00:21:08,487 And I've, I've talked about that before. 255 00:21:08,487 --> 00:21:11,598 Every, every profession is a business. 256 00:21:11,606 --> 00:21:20,854 Not every business is a profession, but when you look at the criteria for to be in the legal profession, it's not that unique. 257 00:21:20,854 --> 00:21:23,546 It's like doctors do the same thing. 258 00:21:23,546 --> 00:21:29,842 They have, you know, exams and they, have to go through residency. 259 00:21:29,842 --> 00:21:40,310 There's all sorts of things and there's plenty of, um, outside investment from non medical professionals into the, into the medical field. 260 00:21:40,310 --> 00:21:42,371 and you've seen things grow substantially. 261 00:21:42,371 --> 00:21:51,136 So I think a lot of this is if we're being candid about it, a lot of it is ego, inflated perspective of what they do. 262 00:21:51,136 --> 00:21:52,617 Yes, it's, important. 263 00:21:52,617 --> 00:21:54,779 And yes, the stakes are high. 264 00:21:54,779 --> 00:21:58,200 Is it higher than in the medical profession? 265 00:21:58,301 --> 00:22:00,582 That's a hard no for me, right? 266 00:22:00,582 --> 00:22:07,438 If I, if I got to decide between a life or death or having a bad legal outcome, 267 00:22:07,438 --> 00:22:08,728 I'm going to, I'm going to choose that. 268 00:22:08,728 --> 00:22:15,698 I'm going to choose life and figure out how to, how to deal with the, whatever the legal situation is that I'm in. 269 00:22:15,698 --> 00:22:16,878 So I'm hopeful. 270 00:22:16,878 --> 00:22:23,757 It does seem like that's that, that is changing to like, you know, you see, you see the ABA has now there's a push. 271 00:22:23,757 --> 00:22:32,418 can't remember if they actually adopted this or not, but the American bar association to deprecate the terminology around lawyer, non-lawyers, right? 272 00:22:32,418 --> 00:22:34,362 Because it, seems 273 00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:36,251 It can be perceived as condescending. 274 00:22:36,251 --> 00:22:40,374 don't really have a strong opinion on that one, honestly, but I know a lot of people do. 275 00:22:40,374 --> 00:22:44,016 So I think there is a push in that direction to make this less. 276 00:22:44,016 --> 00:22:47,048 You're not that special because you have a JD and you practice law. 277 00:22:47,048 --> 00:22:52,542 It's like, yes, what you do is important and what other people do in other industries is important too. 278 00:22:52,542 --> 00:22:55,344 So we're, we're, getting there. 279 00:22:55,344 --> 00:22:58,966 I think we're just a little bit, a little bit behind for those reasons. 280 00:22:59,478 --> 00:23:01,048 Yeah, I totally agree with you. 281 00:23:01,048 --> 00:23:08,358 Look, every job is important and lawyers are no more important than any other professions or any other industries that are there. 282 00:23:08,358 --> 00:23:19,618 think that, again, without the nuanced understanding of some of the US landscape around what is prohibiting it, but at a very basic level, look, it's a form of protectionism in 283 00:23:19,618 --> 00:23:24,041 that it is preventing external players from coming in. 284 00:23:24,041 --> 00:23:29,364 to a market that is massively lucrative for you have owners of business making millions and tens and tens of millions every year. 285 00:23:29,364 --> 00:23:31,599 That's obviously a business. 286 00:23:32,110 --> 00:23:32,911 protectionism. 287 00:23:32,911 --> 00:23:36,774 It's yeah, that's, and I, listen, I'll be honest. 288 00:23:36,774 --> 00:23:41,997 If I was in that position, I would probably have that same perspective, right? 289 00:23:41,997 --> 00:23:44,429 I mean, it's, let's be honest. 290 00:23:44,429 --> 00:23:47,571 It's not an irrational thought process. 291 00:23:47,571 --> 00:23:48,742 And I want to be clear on that. 292 00:23:48,742 --> 00:23:56,287 I said, look, I sell to law firms and lawyers and, I don't mean any disrespect by it, but I, you know, that's the way I see it. 293 00:23:56,568 --> 00:23:59,510 So, um, you know, you and I talked about, 294 00:23:59,718 --> 00:24:01,049 this is a great conversation. 295 00:24:01,049 --> 00:24:10,984 You and I talked about the challenges around ROI measurement with, with AI and you know, we had our planning call a while ago. 296 00:24:10,984 --> 00:24:17,088 So when I wrote this agenda, I have a note in here that says PWC data showing limited productivity gains. 297 00:24:17,088 --> 00:24:21,220 Normally I include a link because so I can go back and look, I didn't in this scenario. 298 00:24:21,220 --> 00:24:26,083 So I forget, I read so many studies, they come out so rapidly these days. 299 00:24:26,083 --> 00:24:28,684 Like I don't have this one memorized, but 300 00:24:28,684 --> 00:24:38,689 I do remember seeing the data that showed that ROI is challenged right now. 301 00:24:39,251 --> 00:24:44,658 What is your perspective on measuring it and managing that? 302 00:24:44,982 --> 00:24:53,702 Yeah, so firstly on the survey point as a refresher, so was a PWEC survey of the top 100 law firms in the UK. 303 00:24:53,702 --> 00:25:01,702 And it was exploring whether productivity gains have been monetized by the use of GEN.AI. 304 00:25:01,702 --> 00:25:07,832 And outside of the top 10, 0 % of respondents had monetized productivity gains. 305 00:25:07,832 --> 00:25:10,822 And within the top 10, a set of 17%. 306 00:25:10,822 --> 00:25:14,271 So overall, the broad message is close to nobody. 307 00:25:14,271 --> 00:25:19,702 has monetized the productivity gains that they may be seeing through Gen.AI. 308 00:25:19,763 --> 00:25:22,983 And there's one part of me that's not surprised in that. 309 00:25:23,324 --> 00:25:27,165 as you mentioned earlier, we're still in the very early stages of this. 310 00:25:27,165 --> 00:25:39,068 And we can expect to be monetizing everything extremely quickly, especially if you factor in, look, the tools themselves are expensive to start using to start rolling out. 311 00:25:39,148 --> 00:25:41,799 It's a big effort to get them into any particular firm. 312 00:25:41,978 --> 00:25:53,077 And at this point where people kind of started off in their experimentation or in the phase was things like general AI assistance or chatbots that could help with very discrete 313 00:25:53,077 --> 00:25:59,813 specific tasks in a much broader workflow that it may be addressing. 314 00:25:59,813 --> 00:26:09,331 So if you're just helping with very small pieces of a large workflow, it's hard to get tangible or a why on that. 315 00:26:09,505 --> 00:26:16,851 You can certainly get loads of benefits in that it's reducing drudge work, improving the lives of those who are actually using the tool, et cetera. 316 00:26:16,851 --> 00:26:28,279 But until you start expanding along a workflow and start to have a greater percentage impact on the set of tasks that are part of that workflow, it's a lot harder to see that 317 00:26:28,279 --> 00:26:33,922 tangible ROI for the work that is being completed. 318 00:26:33,923 --> 00:26:37,645 As well, we need to be aware as well. 319 00:26:37,716 --> 00:26:46,138 as is always the case with Inlego with the billable hour, that if we're looking around kind of the monetization of the benefits, well, if you're just cutting down your billable 320 00:26:46,138 --> 00:26:49,079 hours, how are you monetizing those productivity gains? 321 00:26:49,079 --> 00:26:53,190 So there is that question around, okay, well, what is the pricing model here? 322 00:26:53,190 --> 00:26:58,491 How are we actually benefiting commercially from the activities that we're doing? 323 00:26:58,511 --> 00:27:00,792 And we're definitely still in the early stages of that. 324 00:27:00,792 --> 00:27:06,973 So I'm not surprised to see that very few people can honestly say that they're seeing 325 00:27:07,138 --> 00:27:09,916 monetary productivity gains at this point. 326 00:27:10,030 --> 00:27:12,990 Yeah, that makes perfect sense. 327 00:27:13,550 --> 00:27:23,190 we also talked about balancing the hype and reality and I feel like there's a lot of hype right now and man, I'm to, I'm going to, I feel like I sound like Debbie Downer on this 328 00:27:23,190 --> 00:27:25,230 episode, but Mr. 329 00:27:25,230 --> 00:27:37,810 Skeptic and I am naturally skeptical, but I'm actually extremely bullish about AI and I think it is going to be amazingly transformative everywhere, not just within legal. 330 00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:40,692 but it already has been for me personally. 331 00:27:40,692 --> 00:27:46,637 So, um, I'm, I'm, a, very bullish overall, but I see so much hype. 332 00:27:47,758 --> 00:28:02,210 you know, there was a, uh, there was a legal IT insider, I think, uh, kind of a case study with Clifford chance on co-pilot and co-pilot is another situation where I know in the 333 00:28:02,210 --> 00:28:03,931 longterm Microsoft's going to get it right. 334 00:28:03,931 --> 00:28:07,784 They're too invested to not, but right now it's, it's not. 335 00:28:08,794 --> 00:28:11,035 it needs work. 336 00:28:11,035 --> 00:28:20,839 But this case study really paints this picture that is not in line with reality from my perspective. 337 00:28:20,839 --> 00:28:32,884 When they talk through use cases, the first use case they mention is the big use case is cases or summarization where, for example, people are in a big email chain and want to 338 00:28:32,884 --> 00:28:35,865 summarize it to give a report to the client. 339 00:28:35,865 --> 00:28:37,826 Then it says dash 340 00:28:37,996 --> 00:28:40,787 All of the output will obviously need to be checked. 341 00:28:41,288 --> 00:28:43,019 Well, then where the hell's the ROI? 342 00:28:43,019 --> 00:28:51,553 If I got to go read the damn thing to make sure that the summarization that it wrote is accurate, I don't need the summarization. 343 00:28:51,553 --> 00:28:54,765 So scratch that one off the list for me. 344 00:28:54,765 --> 00:28:57,427 Now, this is how I see it. 345 00:28:57,427 --> 00:29:07,554 I do think there is value in summarizing teams, chats and meetings and email threads, but you can't use it. 346 00:29:07,554 --> 00:29:11,757 to summarize with a high on a high risk communication, right? 347 00:29:11,757 --> 00:29:19,242 Like let's say back and forth with, with clients and you're just jumping in the loop and you're an attorney assigned to a matter. 348 00:29:19,242 --> 00:29:22,305 Don't use co-pilot to go somewhere. 349 00:29:22,305 --> 00:29:23,986 There might be details in there. 350 00:29:23,986 --> 00:29:28,669 There probably are details in there that it, that it, that it might miss. 351 00:29:28,689 --> 00:29:33,102 So, you know, I think that there's just a lot of hype right now. 352 00:29:33,102 --> 00:29:36,204 And you know, the marketing engines are 353 00:29:36,352 --> 00:29:46,201 at full speed and I think there's a big gap between what the marketing is pushing out in the marketplace and what these tools are actually delivering. 354 00:29:46,201 --> 00:29:49,236 you have the same perspective or do you see it differently? 355 00:29:49,716 --> 00:29:51,637 Yeah, I definitely agree. 356 00:29:51,637 --> 00:29:54,548 Well, firstly, your point around the default skepticism. 357 00:29:54,548 --> 00:29:57,689 when it comes to AI, I try to balance it as well. 358 00:29:57,689 --> 00:30:06,452 So there's one part of me that has a default skepticism of any claims or hype or any kind of articles I see coming through for sure. 359 00:30:06,873 --> 00:30:14,976 There's the second part that is incredibly excited by this, that the tangible benefits I'm getting in a day-to-day basis and what I'm seeing with some of our clients are phenomenal. 360 00:30:14,976 --> 00:30:19,097 So I do balance those two different hats. 361 00:30:19,209 --> 00:30:22,670 When it comes to copilot specifically, yeah. 362 00:30:22,670 --> 00:30:32,012 So as you mentioned, some of the main use cases that people are getting benefit from, like using it with teams, transcripts, summaries, that type of stuff are kind of catching up on 363 00:30:32,012 --> 00:30:32,523 some emails. 364 00:30:32,523 --> 00:30:38,894 They're the main ones for copilot impact on actual legal advisory work. 365 00:30:38,894 --> 00:30:40,915 Like say working with contracts and that kind of stuff. 366 00:30:40,915 --> 00:30:43,696 It's not there from broadly speaking. 367 00:30:43,696 --> 00:30:45,996 It's not at that level. 368 00:30:45,996 --> 00:30:49,142 People are definitely getting benefits from certain 369 00:30:49,142 --> 00:30:58,182 task that they complete because one level it's a safe way of accessing AI and it's a safe way of accessing the models. 370 00:30:58,262 --> 00:31:06,082 And within that particular case study, you know, one of the things that they had referenced around the selection of copilot is that it's form of risk mitigation that 371 00:31:06,082 --> 00:31:13,262 people would be using GenAI in some form, whether that be their personal account with ChatGBT or something else. 372 00:31:13,262 --> 00:31:19,341 So at least if you can provide them with a secure, safe, relatively cheap access to 373 00:31:19,401 --> 00:31:25,101 And GNI, okay, you may say $30 per user per month is expensive when it's going to cost a whole firm. 374 00:31:25,101 --> 00:31:31,881 But at the same time in the GNI world of the pricing of vendors, $30 per month per user is very, cheap. 375 00:31:31,961 --> 00:31:35,421 So in that sense, I see the value there. 376 00:31:36,101 --> 00:31:47,421 But if the question, if you think about what is the tangible impact on actual substantive legal work, it's probably limited. 377 00:31:48,180 --> 00:32:00,060 which is the case at the moment, think across the board in many cases, because again, we're still kind of just tackling small little tasks or within broader workflows that is 378 00:32:00,060 --> 00:32:01,601 starting to change. 379 00:32:02,202 --> 00:32:06,035 And I think it is good to have a healthy balance of skepticism versus what we see kind of out there. 380 00:32:06,035 --> 00:32:15,252 I'm definitely seeing scenarios and cases where Gen.ai is having a massive impact on work. 381 00:32:16,349 --> 00:32:24,046 In particular, what I see around the of the contracting space with whether it be pre-execution or post-execution work, that there is massive tangible benefits that are 382 00:32:24,046 --> 00:32:24,917 happening. 383 00:32:24,917 --> 00:32:28,290 Oftentimes those benefits aren't the ones that are in the headlines or are being talked about. 384 00:32:28,290 --> 00:32:36,388 So yeah, it's a mixture of, I think a lot of talk out there is talk. 385 00:32:36,388 --> 00:32:42,124 However, at the same time, there is meaningful benefits that people are gaining as well. 386 00:32:42,124 --> 00:32:42,614 Yeah. 387 00:32:42,614 --> 00:32:43,194 Yeah. 388 00:32:43,194 --> 00:32:45,455 I don't, we're probably not that far apart. 389 00:32:45,455 --> 00:32:57,629 Um, I just, I've gotten a little frustrated if I'm being honest, like, especially in the Microsoft world, they have this most valuable professional program MVP, which is based on 390 00:32:57,629 --> 00:33:03,401 when when you get an MVP designation, basically it's how much of a Microsoft fan boy are you right? 391 00:33:03,401 --> 00:33:05,942 How, how big of an advocate have you been? 392 00:33:05,942 --> 00:33:07,362 How have you changed? 393 00:33:07,362 --> 00:33:09,283 Like, and people buy into this. 394 00:33:09,283 --> 00:33:14,077 there's, I'm not going to say any names, but there are several on LinkedIn that talk about co-pilot. 395 00:33:14,077 --> 00:33:16,348 Like it is the best thing ever. 396 00:33:16,348 --> 00:33:24,234 And all these, there was even a 10 day take replace Google with co-pilot for 10 days. 397 00:33:24,234 --> 00:33:28,357 That's like replacing a spoon with a hammer, right? 398 00:33:28,357 --> 00:33:29,737 Completely. 399 00:33:30,078 --> 00:33:31,799 They don't do the same things. 400 00:33:31,799 --> 00:33:33,190 They're not the same tool. 401 00:33:33,190 --> 00:33:36,014 The same use cases don't apply, but 402 00:33:36,014 --> 00:33:44,594 All of this, you know, so it's not even just Microsoft, it's people out there wanting to get traction on their new YouTube channel. 403 00:33:44,594 --> 00:33:48,174 Are there several YouTube channels that are zeroed in with Copilot? 404 00:33:48,174 --> 00:33:51,694 And again, it's not that I think Copilot is awful. 405 00:33:51,694 --> 00:33:54,594 It's just, it feels like an early beta. 406 00:33:54,594 --> 00:34:02,004 And I think it's, if it were $5 a month right now, I think it would be fairly priced at six times that. 407 00:34:02,004 --> 00:34:04,066 don't, I don't think the value's there. 408 00:34:04,066 --> 00:34:11,048 But you bring up a good point about the safe path and it is, they do have the controls in place. 409 00:34:11,048 --> 00:34:16,829 They actually have too many controls in place because it doesn't, co-pilot doesn't even access. 410 00:34:16,829 --> 00:34:27,352 Um, when you're drafting an email, for example, it does not look at your, the large corpus of data that has sitting in exchange to look at how you can meet normally communicate. 411 00:34:27,352 --> 00:34:32,304 Um, and the, the, they're waving the flag of, cause we don't want to store any of your data. 412 00:34:32,304 --> 00:34:33,376 like, wait a second. 413 00:34:33,376 --> 00:34:35,687 You do that data is in your data center. 414 00:34:35,687 --> 00:34:37,367 Like you already store it. 415 00:34:37,367 --> 00:34:41,268 So I think they're, the ring fence is a little too tight right now. 416 00:34:41,268 --> 00:34:49,950 And I know they're going to fix these things, but yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm frustrated with people out there pushing this when, and not telling the whole story. 417 00:34:50,011 --> 00:34:58,153 So I guess that's why I got a little bit of a edge when I, when I talk about it, cause I know it's, it's going to be great. 418 00:34:58,153 --> 00:34:59,133 It's going to be amazing. 419 00:34:59,133 --> 00:35:02,146 Like it is perfectly positioned over the 420 00:35:02,146 --> 00:35:11,131 Microsoft graph and all of the massive amount of data law firms actually keep very little data in SharePoint and our platform is built on SharePoint. 421 00:35:11,131 --> 00:35:16,514 So I know that well, but, they don't keep much interesting. 422 00:35:16,514 --> 00:35:20,096 There's like things like policy documents in their policies. 423 00:35:20,096 --> 00:35:28,341 Um, but their project documentation, but they, they big, big law firms don't keep work product in SharePoint. 424 00:35:28,341 --> 00:35:29,722 Um, 425 00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:34,213 I wish they would, it would be great for us, but that's a whole nother topic. 426 00:35:34,213 --> 00:35:39,328 don't, I don't see, I don't see SharePoint as a large law DMS anytime soon. 427 00:35:39,754 --> 00:35:43,007 Yeah, I think again, kind of finishing off on copilot. 428 00:35:43,007 --> 00:35:46,359 So as you say, like it's going to get a lot better at the end of the day. 429 00:35:46,359 --> 00:35:46,750 It's hard. 430 00:35:46,750 --> 00:35:49,041 It's hard to bet against Microsoft. 431 00:35:49,302 --> 00:35:56,666 They have like every large law firm is a customer of Microsoft lawyers live in Microsoft word. 432 00:35:56,788 --> 00:36:07,026 So when it comes to distribution safety, just reliability, if you were CIO, it's a relatively easy and safe choice to go with Microsoft copilot at this point, especially if 433 00:36:07,026 --> 00:36:08,169 you want to get. 434 00:36:08,169 --> 00:36:10,030 Gen.ai into the hands of your people. 435 00:36:10,030 --> 00:36:20,422 And firms are facing pressure to do so because there are clients out there who are demanding that AI is used to reduce the value, sorry, reduce the cost of legal services 436 00:36:20,422 --> 00:36:21,623 either now or in the future. 437 00:36:21,623 --> 00:36:29,695 for example, I've seen RFPs, which are very clear, like, what is your Gen.ai strategy and how do you intend to pass on these savings to clients? 438 00:36:29,695 --> 00:36:37,777 there is an AI mandate, both within law firms and within the enterprise world. 439 00:36:37,974 --> 00:36:41,458 of teams need to be doing something with AI. 440 00:36:41,458 --> 00:36:48,895 And so if you're a technology executive making a decision to get AI into the hands of your people, it's not a bad choice in that way. 441 00:36:48,895 --> 00:36:58,514 know, it's, if we think about the actual impact it's having on the day to day in certain use cases, questionable in others, it probably is having impact, but there's a lot of 442 00:36:58,514 --> 00:37:01,817 sound logic in people making this choice as well. 443 00:37:02,082 --> 00:37:02,842 Yeah. 444 00:37:02,842 --> 00:37:12,765 Well, that's a good segue into what we were going to talk about next, which was, which is kind of best practices for AI implementation and adoption, right? 445 00:37:12,765 --> 00:37:21,387 Like I've been an advocate of starting with business of all use cases because the risk reward balances out better there. 446 00:37:21,387 --> 00:37:26,109 Um, a very high impact on the practice of law side. 447 00:37:26,109 --> 00:37:27,369 Also very high risk. 448 00:37:27,369 --> 00:37:30,870 Um, you got client data. 449 00:37:31,266 --> 00:37:36,909 to worry about, you've got attorneys who have very low tolerance for missteps. 450 00:37:36,909 --> 00:37:44,874 So if things don't work right when you put it in front of them, it's really hard to get them back to the table sometimes for round two. 451 00:37:44,874 --> 00:37:59,362 So I advocate for have your KM department, innovation teams, your finance teams, your marketing teams, your HR teams, start to use it there where the risk reward balances out 452 00:37:59,362 --> 00:38:00,562 much better. 453 00:38:00,886 --> 00:38:10,531 as an incremental step towards eventually, obviously, the biggest bottom line impact is going to be in the practice of law. 454 00:38:10,531 --> 00:38:18,284 But what are your thoughts on starting small and controlled rather than doing full enterprise rollouts? 455 00:38:18,675 --> 00:38:19,886 Yeah, I totally agree. 456 00:38:19,886 --> 00:38:23,649 And when it comes to implementation of AI, think of three different things. 457 00:38:23,649 --> 00:38:28,953 Firstly, starting small and hand holding a particular group that you focus on. 458 00:38:28,953 --> 00:38:36,378 Secondly is getting very specific on the use cases that you're looking to solve, not just to push the AI out there for the sake of it. 459 00:38:36,418 --> 00:38:39,900 And thirdly is setting expectations. 460 00:38:40,181 --> 00:38:44,023 As you said, if you lose that trust with people, it's hard to regain it. 461 00:38:44,024 --> 00:38:45,812 And when... 462 00:38:45,812 --> 00:38:47,813 We deploy AI with clients. 463 00:38:47,813 --> 00:38:51,546 That's one of things we've really focused on is appropriate expectation setting. 464 00:38:51,546 --> 00:38:56,829 And with the introduction of any tool, it's not just here are all the things the tool can do. 465 00:38:56,829 --> 00:38:59,951 It's being super clear on this is what it cannot do. 466 00:38:59,951 --> 00:39:02,823 If you try and use it for these use cases, it will fail. 467 00:39:02,823 --> 00:39:03,974 You will get bad results. 468 00:39:03,974 --> 00:39:07,702 You will get frustrated and just being super transparent with people. 469 00:39:07,702 --> 00:39:15,361 you know, touching on the hype piece that there's some talk in the market about AI being magical and what it can't do, cetera. 470 00:39:15,803 --> 00:39:19,016 However, if you go in at that attitude, you will fail for sure. 471 00:39:19,016 --> 00:39:21,899 It's not at that level for the vast majority of use cases. 472 00:39:21,899 --> 00:39:32,320 Whereas if you frame it up, look, this is like having a junior associate or in certain cases, even a mid-level associate that could support with the work that you complete that 473 00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:33,621 they will make mistakes. 474 00:39:33,621 --> 00:39:34,312 It's not perfect. 475 00:39:34,312 --> 00:39:35,534 It needs your input. 476 00:39:35,534 --> 00:39:38,556 And that's actually a far better. 477 00:39:39,296 --> 00:39:44,069 change management piece as well, because from the lawyer's point of view, it's very clear, look, this is not replacing them. 478 00:39:44,069 --> 00:39:46,830 This is augmenting how they perform the work. 479 00:39:47,971 --> 00:39:50,752 So yeah, expectation setting is a massive one. 480 00:39:51,152 --> 00:40:01,958 And then as I mentioned about getting very, very specific, it needs to be tied to a very clear use case that the benefits are very tangible, that it's clear what the objectives 481 00:40:01,958 --> 00:40:03,309 are and what you're trying to achieve. 482 00:40:03,309 --> 00:40:06,213 And just having that in a kind of contained environment. 483 00:40:06,213 --> 00:40:07,801 And by contained, I mean, 484 00:40:07,857 --> 00:40:08,617 Structured. 485 00:40:08,617 --> 00:40:10,788 This is how we are going to approach it. 486 00:40:10,788 --> 00:40:14,420 Here's how we check how, you know, the feedback as we progress. 487 00:40:14,420 --> 00:40:16,281 Here's how we iterate as we go. 488 00:40:16,281 --> 00:40:26,216 Just overall delivery, best practices and change management best practices, you know, start small, expand, learn, get some proof points and then, then go broader. 489 00:40:26,216 --> 00:40:30,587 Um, when that approach is taken, I've seen marvelous results. 490 00:40:30,888 --> 00:40:33,653 However, people need to be mindful that like. 491 00:40:33,653 --> 00:40:40,101 all the standard best practices we would have with any technology implementation, they still are true. 492 00:40:40,101 --> 00:40:43,713 You still need to do all the good stuff you would do before. 493 00:40:43,713 --> 00:40:50,513 AI just doesn't remove the need for traditional change management and delivery experience that you would have with any technology. 494 00:40:50,604 --> 00:40:52,335 Yeah, that's a great point. 495 00:40:53,476 --> 00:41:03,102 To the extent that you're able, what are some specific examples of AI use cases where you've seen good success? 496 00:41:03,977 --> 00:41:04,558 Yeah, sure. 497 00:41:04,558 --> 00:41:11,724 So what I can speak to, a lot of the work that we focus on involves transactions and contracts. 498 00:41:11,864 --> 00:41:23,166 And within that, if we think about the kind of contracting workflow, two of the kind of broad areas, one when comes to pre-execution and the review of contracts against specified 499 00:41:23,166 --> 00:41:27,860 playbooks, that use case can be really, really good. 500 00:41:28,757 --> 00:41:36,557 And conceptually, that can apply in many other cases, because effectively, you're just taking a set of rules or a set of principles and applying it against a body of text. 501 00:41:36,617 --> 00:41:41,257 That can be used in many different areas of the business, but that we have seen really, really good results. 502 00:41:41,377 --> 00:41:47,937 The second one is for the post-execution bulk review of documents. 503 00:41:48,077 --> 00:41:57,337 So tasks that would traditionally have been used with some of the classic machine learning vendors, also seen really good results with Gen.ai providers. 504 00:41:58,066 --> 00:41:59,927 in that type of activity. 505 00:41:59,927 --> 00:42:10,226 And part of the reason for that is because, whereas with machine learning, we'd just be identifying relevant passages of text for people to then review and interpret, with GEN.AI 506 00:42:10,226 --> 00:42:18,563 being able to not only just identify the text, but actually interpret it and like say answer a question or get a specific result, not just a control F, but going a couple of 507 00:42:18,563 --> 00:42:20,304 steps further in that process. 508 00:42:20,365 --> 00:42:25,849 And the efficiency gains for both of those can be remarkable when done well. 509 00:42:27,128 --> 00:42:28,218 Interesting. 510 00:42:28,459 --> 00:42:44,029 So, you and I also talked a little bit about what I call innovation theater, which is, um, I didn't coin the term, I can't remember his name now. 511 00:42:44,410 --> 00:42:56,672 guy from NRF, uh, put it, it's, it's in Colin Levy's book and he talked about innovation theater and it was like, um, steps to being innovated. 512 00:42:56,672 --> 00:43:01,504 Step one, don't be a law firm, which is hilarious. 513 00:43:01,504 --> 00:43:14,909 But there is a concept of innovation theater where there's a lot of, and I think this is changing too, for the better in a big way since November of two years ago. 514 00:43:16,190 --> 00:43:26,444 I think that the market has seen the industry, the buyers of legal services as behind the curve on technology and rightly so. 515 00:43:26,572 --> 00:43:28,743 law firms are behind the curve. 516 00:43:28,743 --> 00:43:36,104 Like if you compare law firms, I've spent a ton of time, 16 years in legal and 10 years in financial services. 517 00:43:36,345 --> 00:43:38,625 And it, there's no comparison. 518 00:43:38,625 --> 00:43:48,708 Um, but the response to that initially was, Hey, let's create a chief C suite with innovation in the title. 519 00:43:48,828 --> 00:43:56,130 And, um, that was the, that was the initial response for some, there are, there are innovation teams out there that are doing really 520 00:43:56,130 --> 00:43:58,931 good, amazing work here in the US. 521 00:43:58,931 --> 00:44:01,292 I'm sure it's the same way in the UK. 522 00:44:01,332 --> 00:44:03,613 And I don't know what the ratio is. 523 00:44:03,773 --> 00:44:15,558 I would totally be making a number up, but there is this concept of, I call it innovation inflation, where the number of titles with innovation are exploding. 524 00:44:16,739 --> 00:44:19,720 what is it different in the UK? 525 00:44:20,140 --> 00:44:25,182 What is how, well, I guess two questions is, 526 00:44:25,294 --> 00:44:37,474 Do you see kind of that same exponential growth in innovation roles and is the amount of innovation work proportionate to that growth or is there a gap there like there is in the 527 00:44:37,474 --> 00:44:38,288 US? 528 00:44:39,136 --> 00:44:47,168 So on that, I think the UK has actually been ahead of the US for quite some time when it comes to innovation and legal tech within law firms. 529 00:44:48,808 --> 00:44:55,180 And so I entered the legal market five years ago and was working with innovation teams immediately and have been since then. 530 00:44:55,180 --> 00:44:56,890 And some teams in the UK are massive. 531 00:44:56,890 --> 00:45:03,092 So you have the likes of Adolf Schallgadar to have like 70 plus people in the UK within their innovation and tech teams. 532 00:45:03,552 --> 00:45:08,973 So it's quite formalized in the UK and most of the larger firms will have those teams. 533 00:45:09,724 --> 00:45:14,405 And they, for the ones I've interacted with, doing a lot of great stuff. 534 00:45:14,785 --> 00:45:19,325 Don't get me wrong, it is hard to drive innovation and change within law firms. 535 00:45:20,205 --> 00:45:25,825 Just to be factoring, know, with lawyers trying to get their time to build a law or all the incentives, it does make stuff hard. 536 00:45:25,825 --> 00:45:31,705 It is much easier now with AI when there's people have, when the lawyers have an appetite and interest to get more involved. 537 00:45:32,265 --> 00:45:36,105 In terms of the growth of innovation. 538 00:45:36,165 --> 00:45:38,696 So I haven't seen. 539 00:45:38,696 --> 00:45:48,720 much change in that like it was already a, I'm sure it has grown, but the default in the five years I've been involved has been like all those large firms have innovation teams. 540 00:45:48,720 --> 00:45:51,491 So it's not as if it's a new concept for them. 541 00:45:51,491 --> 00:45:55,092 It's something that was being certainly quite active in the last five years. 542 00:45:55,272 --> 00:46:04,256 In fact, firms would often have, you might have a specific innovation team, also having a specific legal tech team, also having a knowledge management team. 543 00:46:04,256 --> 00:46:08,223 So the UK, I think looking across the globe, 544 00:46:08,223 --> 00:46:14,641 has traditionally been one of the most advanced when it comes to legal innovation teams within law firms. 545 00:46:14,776 --> 00:46:15,387 Yeah. 546 00:46:15,387 --> 00:46:27,967 So if you look at a pie chart, the slice of pie of firms that are engaging in innovation theater, that slice is getting smaller and smaller, especially in the last two years, 547 00:46:27,967 --> 00:46:33,602 because it's no longer an option to fake it till you can make it. 548 00:46:33,742 --> 00:46:35,604 You need to be investing in this now. 549 00:46:35,604 --> 00:46:38,946 That's really been the challenge, I think, has been around investment. 550 00:46:39,527 --> 00:46:42,882 Law firms, and I'm using broad brushstrokes here, they're 551 00:46:42,882 --> 00:46:57,392 many, many exceptions to this, but law firms have really tried to not always looked at technology as strategic, more of a necessary evil and a cost that needs to be managed. 552 00:46:57,392 --> 00:47:01,104 And that has really shifted in the last two years. 553 00:47:01,104 --> 00:47:07,759 And I can't tell you how happy I am about it as a legal tech company and just somebody who works in the industry, man. 554 00:47:07,759 --> 00:47:12,965 It's just really good to see the mindset growth. 555 00:47:12,965 --> 00:47:16,032 have you seen the same shift over there? 556 00:47:16,661 --> 00:47:17,301 Totally. 557 00:47:17,301 --> 00:47:21,944 think that the mindset to technology has really changed. 558 00:47:21,944 --> 00:47:33,930 That like, even if we think about the data points of the appetite of lawyers within law firms and their views on technology, having worked within innovations and tech teams 559 00:47:33,930 --> 00:47:40,474 within directly embedded within law firms and trying to get engagement from different practice areas, it is often a challenge. 560 00:47:40,554 --> 00:47:46,442 However, with the introduction of AI, that's really flipped that on its head where AI 561 00:47:46,442 --> 00:47:49,084 brings lawyers to the table. 562 00:47:49,384 --> 00:47:53,747 AI may not always be the correct answer, but at least you have them at the table. 563 00:47:53,748 --> 00:48:01,214 And now you can point to something else on the menu, whether it be document automation or even just using the DMS property or whatever it might be, but you have their attention or 564 00:48:01,214 --> 00:48:04,676 their time and interest, which is a massive change. 565 00:48:04,676 --> 00:48:15,909 And so it is now an incredible moment to be working in legal because we have both the technology and the AI and the interest. 566 00:48:15,909 --> 00:48:17,629 of the end users. 567 00:48:17,650 --> 00:48:27,392 Whereas a couple of years ago, we did not have the interest of the end users and we did not have this technology that is coming through as well. 568 00:48:27,392 --> 00:48:32,424 Yes, we had a bunch of different technology that's incredible for different use cases and just general automation. 569 00:48:32,424 --> 00:48:37,995 But now we are really at a point where we have that desire for change. 570 00:48:37,995 --> 00:48:43,657 So it's incredibly important, as you mentioned, managing expectations. 571 00:48:43,781 --> 00:48:48,613 and not blowing that trust that we have and that interest that we have. 572 00:48:48,613 --> 00:48:54,104 Because if you do so, you lose another, you you lose people for another couple of years. 573 00:48:54,306 --> 00:48:58,828 Yeah, they say that trust is built in drops and lost in buckets. 574 00:48:58,828 --> 00:49:09,494 Um, you know, and that, that, that really matters because like you said, getting them back to the table, would be an uphill battle. 575 00:49:09,694 --> 00:49:12,066 Well, we're, we're just about out of time here, man. 576 00:49:12,066 --> 00:49:13,286 This has been a great conversation. 577 00:49:13,286 --> 00:49:19,970 We didn't get through half the things we were going to talk about here, but I'll, I'll, I'll have to, I'd love to have you back on. 578 00:49:19,970 --> 00:49:24,002 I think your newsletter is outstanding and I highly recommend, I'm going to give you a, 579 00:49:24,002 --> 00:49:25,064 shameless plug here. 580 00:49:25,064 --> 00:49:26,166 think it's great. 581 00:49:26,166 --> 00:49:33,299 think folks should, um, who are interested in the topic of AI and legal should absolutely check it out. 582 00:49:33,299 --> 00:49:37,576 How do, how do people find you and your newsletter? 583 00:49:37,814 --> 00:49:38,404 Sure, absolutely. 584 00:49:38,404 --> 00:49:46,791 So for the newsletter, if people go to legaltectrends.com, there is the option to sign up there and links to the previous edition. 585 00:49:46,791 --> 00:49:49,974 So we're now nearly at 3,000 people. 586 00:49:49,974 --> 00:49:51,665 So really appreciate the feedback. 587 00:49:51,665 --> 00:49:52,596 It's going down really well. 588 00:49:52,596 --> 00:50:01,333 And in particular, what's nice is that the readership is a lot of technology decision makers within firms and within in-house teams, which is quite nice. 589 00:50:01,333 --> 00:50:06,367 And then for people who want to find me and what Titans do, you can go to... 590 00:50:06,367 --> 00:50:10,945 titans.legal is our website or find me on LinkedIn as well, just Peter Duffy. 591 00:50:10,945 --> 00:50:12,437 There's plenty of Peter Duffy's. 592 00:50:12,437 --> 00:50:14,732 It's actually incredibly popular name worldwide. 593 00:50:14,732 --> 00:50:18,446 But if you put Peter Duffy and Titans, I'll probably pop up. 594 00:50:18,446 --> 00:50:20,126 I don't have that problem. 595 00:50:20,126 --> 00:50:21,206 Ted Theodoropoulos. 596 00:50:21,206 --> 00:50:24,266 There's not, there's a few, but, but, but not many. 597 00:50:24,266 --> 00:50:27,426 Um, well, this has been, this has been a great conversation. 598 00:50:27,426 --> 00:50:29,586 I really appreciate you spending the time. 599 00:50:29,586 --> 00:50:31,306 I look forward to reading more of your stuff. 600 00:50:31,306 --> 00:50:36,866 And again, I'd love to have you back, uh, sometime in 2025 to, to, talk more of this stuff. 601 00:50:36,866 --> 00:50:40,038 I, it's been a uh, a really fun conversation. 602 00:50:40,263 --> 00:50:44,001 Absolutely anytime, massive fan of the podcast, always listening to it. 603 00:50:44,001 --> 00:50:46,798 So I'm for sure happy to come back. 604 00:50:46,798 --> 00:50:48,078 Awesome, good stuff. 605 00:50:48,078 --> 00:50:51,417 All right, well have a good rest of your afternoon and a good holiday. 606 00:50:52,358 --> 00:50:54,498 All right, take care. 00:00:04,767 Peter Duffy, how are you this afternoon? 2 00:00:04,775 --> 00:00:06,054 Amazing, Lucifer Will. 3 00:00:06,054 --> 00:00:07,308 Great to chat to you Ted. 4 00:00:07,308 --> 00:00:08,871 Yeah, it's good to chat with you too. 5 00:00:08,871 --> 00:00:10,622 It's been a long time coming. 6 00:00:10,678 --> 00:00:13,378 had our initial planning conversation. 7 00:00:13,378 --> 00:00:17,494 It seems like it's been at least a month, maybe more. 8 00:00:17,811 --> 00:00:18,681 It has indeed. 9 00:00:18,681 --> 00:00:21,561 It's busy season, which is a good sign in one sense. 10 00:00:21,561 --> 00:00:24,108 But glad that we're getting around to having the chat. 11 00:00:24,108 --> 00:00:25,368 Yeah, absolutely. 12 00:00:25,368 --> 00:00:32,140 So, before we jump into the conversation, we, I want to get you properly introduced. 13 00:00:32,140 --> 00:00:40,821 Um, you've got a pretty popular legal AI newsletter and that's kind of how our conversation started. 14 00:00:41,363 --> 00:00:53,166 And, you're very active on LinkedIn, but you, started your career in software development, I believe, and you ended up working for Deloitte and now you're doing 15 00:00:53,230 --> 00:00:55,073 consulting around innovation. 16 00:00:55,073 --> 00:00:58,998 Tell us about your background and what you're doing today. 17 00:00:59,318 --> 00:01:00,359 Sure, absolutely. 18 00:01:00,359 --> 00:01:02,521 Yeah, so my background is quite varied. 19 00:01:02,521 --> 00:01:06,103 As you mentioned, I'm not a lawyer and find myself in the legal industry. 20 00:01:06,103 --> 00:01:08,525 My career effectively has three different chapters. 21 00:01:08,525 --> 00:01:11,348 So trained, graduated as an energy engineer. 22 00:01:11,348 --> 00:01:15,570 So focused on wind turbines, solar panels, that kind of stuff, but never went down that route. 23 00:01:15,731 --> 00:01:17,673 Fell in love with software at an early stage. 24 00:01:17,673 --> 00:01:22,917 And in the first chapter, set up some companies and worked with my friends on a bunch of different tech startups. 25 00:01:22,917 --> 00:01:28,731 So areas like online advertising, political canvassing, and energy conservation. 26 00:01:28,819 --> 00:01:35,573 realized the most successful of those was the political canvassing, but I realized relatively early that I actually don't have too much interest in politics. 27 00:01:36,374 --> 00:01:46,141 After that, made the jump to the second chapter, which was working with Deloitte Digital and Deloitte Digital is Deloitte's digital consulting arm. 28 00:01:46,261 --> 00:01:55,788 So worked with them for five years in Ireland and the UK and there effectively we were helping large corporates in a bunch of different sectors like sports betting, financial 29 00:01:55,788 --> 00:01:57,994 services, telecoms and pharmaceuticals. 30 00:01:57,994 --> 00:02:00,435 to build and launch mobile apps and web apps at scale. 31 00:02:00,435 --> 00:02:01,695 So massive projects. 32 00:02:01,695 --> 00:02:05,696 We're talking like over 300 people building a commercial banking mobile app. 33 00:02:05,696 --> 00:02:08,096 So really technology delivery at scale. 34 00:02:08,357 --> 00:02:16,159 After doing that for five years, decided the route of working within a large consultancy wasn't exactly the path I wanted my life to follow. 35 00:02:16,159 --> 00:02:22,960 So I left Deloitte and moved into the third chapter, which is I set up my own consultancy, Titans. 36 00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:26,151 So after I left Deloitte, Deloitte asked me to come back. 37 00:02:26,183 --> 00:02:36,510 So I started consulting with them initially in financial services and then they asked move across to Deloitte Legal, which was a big push in the UK at the time and still is, they're 38 00:02:36,510 --> 00:02:38,522 growing quite a lot. 39 00:02:38,522 --> 00:02:48,838 so effectively for the last five years have been exclusively focused on the legal market and helping large legal service providers and in-house teams when it comes to all things 40 00:02:48,838 --> 00:02:50,329 relating to legal technology. 41 00:02:50,329 --> 00:02:55,433 And these days in particular, that is a heavy, heavy focus on AI. 42 00:02:55,594 --> 00:02:59,699 which is there has never been a more exciting time to be working in this space. 43 00:03:00,216 --> 00:03:01,990 Yeah, it's an interesting time for sure. 44 00:03:01,990 --> 00:03:07,421 So at Deloitte, were you, do they have a, like an in-house ALSP? 45 00:03:08,661 --> 00:03:16,281 Yeah, so interestingly in the UK, which was the, where I worked with Android Legal there, they effectively have three different strands. 46 00:03:16,281 --> 00:03:21,321 So they have the legal advisory, which is kind of like your traditional law firm. 47 00:03:21,321 --> 00:03:23,701 Then they have the second strand, which is legal consulting. 48 00:03:23,701 --> 00:03:28,941 So advising in-house teams on improving their overall kind of internal operations. 49 00:03:28,941 --> 00:03:32,341 And the third one is focused on managed services. 50 00:03:32,341 --> 00:03:37,913 So kind of like what people may view as traditional kind of managed services, ALSP activities. 51 00:03:38,230 --> 00:03:39,191 Interesting. 52 00:03:39,191 --> 00:03:48,747 And we're going to talk about ALSP's a little later, but what really initiated the dialogue between you and I, was, was reading your newsletter. 53 00:03:48,747 --> 00:03:52,159 I don't, it's number 34 from November. 54 00:03:52,159 --> 00:03:53,610 Is that your latest one? 55 00:03:54,359 --> 00:03:57,104 I have had one since then I believe. 56 00:03:58,168 --> 00:03:59,933 But yeah, that was a good one. 57 00:03:59,933 --> 00:04:01,836 So yeah, it's worth talking about that one. 58 00:04:01,854 --> 00:04:03,174 that was a really good one. 59 00:04:03,174 --> 00:04:14,654 And I, uh, early on in the newsletter, you published, um, or talked about some numbers that were published by a Wharton study that caught my eye. 60 00:04:14,654 --> 00:04:23,994 And some of the highlights that you pointed out were that, um, I believe this is, yeah, it says legal departments. 61 00:04:23,994 --> 00:04:27,424 So I'm assuming this is inside council. 62 00:04:27,424 --> 00:04:29,662 When you say legal departments, um, 63 00:04:29,662 --> 00:04:34,577 Do you remember if that Wharton study was law firms and legal departments or? 64 00:04:34,907 --> 00:04:36,574 I believe it's just legal departments. 65 00:04:36,574 --> 00:04:37,614 Okay. 66 00:04:37,914 --> 00:04:38,354 Okay. 67 00:04:38,354 --> 00:04:42,436 So the, I, and I don't have a ton of visibility on that side. 68 00:04:42,436 --> 00:04:47,977 So info dash is an intranet extranet platform and we sell exclusively to law firms. 69 00:04:48,197 --> 00:04:54,739 Our extranet offering touches legal departments, but that's, we have, we don't have a ton of exposure there. 70 00:04:54,799 --> 00:05:05,342 So, but I think there is some commonalities that, really raise some questions in my mind as to the numbers. 71 00:05:05,402 --> 00:05:06,282 So, 72 00:05:07,218 --> 00:05:12,530 And I think you and I, before we got started here, we talked about some of these numbers and do they make sense? 73 00:05:12,530 --> 00:05:14,200 Are they aspirational? 74 00:05:14,380 --> 00:05:19,561 And I'm in the camp that a lot of the numbers that come out now seem to be aspirational. 75 00:05:19,862 --> 00:05:30,245 Before we jump into the Wharton study, the Iltatech survey that came out recently, I don't know when the last three months, the question was not worded the best, but it was 76 00:05:30,245 --> 00:05:34,906 basically, you use AI in business scenarios? 77 00:05:36,088 --> 00:05:42,580 For law firms, the answer varied pretty widely between small and large law. 78 00:05:42,580 --> 00:05:48,882 And the way ILTA categorizes law firm size, at the smallest end, it's 50 and under attorneys. 79 00:05:48,882 --> 00:05:51,842 And at the largest end, it's 700 and above. 80 00:05:51,922 --> 00:06:05,486 And at 700 and above attorneys, response, law firms with 700 or more attorneys, the response was north of 70 % said yes, that they do use AI in 81 00:06:05,624 --> 00:06:13,619 business use cases at the small end under 50, it was like 20%, which surprised me. 82 00:06:14,200 --> 00:06:26,938 I've had multiple conversations with people and there's lots of ways you could kind of interpret that, but 70 % of law firms are not using AI and at least in production practice 83 00:06:26,938 --> 00:06:30,370 of law use use cases today. 84 00:06:30,671 --> 00:06:34,973 I'm really confident in saying that just it's anecdotal, but 85 00:06:35,276 --> 00:06:41,318 we do business with a ton of AMLaw firms and I talk to CKOs every day and chief innovation officers. 86 00:06:41,318 --> 00:06:52,861 And I just, know that 70 % aren't doing it, at least in big, in big rollouts, they may have little pockets of experimentation and those sorts of things going on. 87 00:06:52,861 --> 00:06:54,931 But I think those numbers are deceiving. 88 00:06:56,232 --> 00:07:03,246 I saw another number and I forget who put, who pushed this one out that, um, like something like 50, 89 00:07:03,246 --> 00:07:04,916 teen or maybe even less than that. 90 00:07:04,916 --> 00:07:09,806 Maybe it was low teens, percent of law firms have an AI use policy. 91 00:07:09,806 --> 00:07:12,206 And I was like, okay, well, that's pretty scary. 92 00:07:12,206 --> 00:07:21,046 If 70 % of big law is telling you that you're using AI and less than 15 % have a policy around it, that's a real problem. 93 00:07:21,046 --> 00:07:32,670 I think the reality is that the number is actually closer to 15 % that are actually using it in a material way in practice of law scenarios. 94 00:07:32,670 --> 00:07:40,295 Is marketing a cam using Copilot or ChachiBT or Claude? 95 00:07:40,295 --> 00:07:44,177 Yeah, that seems reasonable that 70%. 96 00:07:44,177 --> 00:07:51,221 But I still think we're in an experimentation phase in legal. 97 00:07:51,221 --> 00:07:53,032 What is your take on that? 98 00:07:53,430 --> 00:07:57,330 Yeah, well, firstly, I totally agree with you in the experimentation phase. 99 00:07:57,330 --> 00:08:00,090 Like we're still in the early days. 100 00:08:00,310 --> 00:08:06,310 The technology has kind of only been available to law firms for a short period of time. 101 00:08:06,310 --> 00:08:13,730 And if you factor in the time it takes for the procurement cycle to law firms to actually buy technology, that it's only been a very short period of time where people could start 102 00:08:13,730 --> 00:08:15,370 using it internally. 103 00:08:15,370 --> 00:08:20,693 To your point around, is 70 % usage sound high? 104 00:08:21,053 --> 00:08:22,034 It sounds high, right? 105 00:08:22,034 --> 00:08:24,396 That's the good feel of that sounds very, very high. 106 00:08:24,396 --> 00:08:29,560 And as you say, there's a lot to the wording of questionnaires of within surveys. 107 00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:35,704 And I'm always have a healthy dose of skepticism for any survey I don't administer myself. 108 00:08:35,944 --> 00:08:47,968 And more broadly, when it comes to surveys, any individual survey, it's you can get interesting, broad kind of broad data points in isolation, there's minimal value. 109 00:08:47,968 --> 00:08:53,362 But when you look across a bunch of surveys, you can start to see interesting trends. 110 00:08:53,542 --> 00:08:59,727 Again, with the caveats that like how the questions are worded, what qualifies as use. 111 00:09:00,428 --> 00:09:04,851 There's a whole heap of nuances with every question and with every survey. 112 00:09:05,992 --> 00:09:13,233 So as a gut and sense check, yeah, I'd be more inclined to say, if you were to ask me, is it closer to 15 or 70? 113 00:09:13,233 --> 00:09:17,289 I'd say it's probably closer to 15 for material impact. 114 00:09:17,289 --> 00:09:18,989 that is being regularly used. 115 00:09:19,350 --> 00:09:20,690 But there's always caveats in that. 116 00:09:20,690 --> 00:09:27,033 As you said, there will be pockets within a given legal service provider or within corporates who have substantial uses. 117 00:09:27,033 --> 00:09:28,693 So it does vary quite a bit. 118 00:09:28,693 --> 00:09:37,687 But I think whenever people see or hear very large numbers and very high adoption, they should have a natural skepticism at this point because we're still in the very early 119 00:09:37,687 --> 00:09:38,557 stages. 120 00:09:38,606 --> 00:09:40,468 Yeah, agreed. 121 00:09:40,468 --> 00:09:54,449 And the Wharton study that I was referencing here, that you provided a little bit of clarity around, it said that 69%, and it sounds like this is inside council, are using 122 00:09:54,449 --> 00:09:56,920 GEN-AI at least once a week. 123 00:09:57,181 --> 00:10:03,406 And that 66 % think it has a high or medium impact. 124 00:10:03,766 --> 00:10:08,730 And I looked at kind of the inverse of that 125 00:10:09,614 --> 00:10:20,861 uh, argument and, really looked at those who S who said it would have a low impact, which was 25%, which is a real head scratcher for me. 126 00:10:20,861 --> 00:10:21,151 Right. 127 00:10:21,151 --> 00:10:30,066 I mean, yes, the majority think that it will have, at least higher medium only 28 % said that they think it's going to have a high impact. 128 00:10:30,066 --> 00:10:37,358 So when I look at those two in the middle, it's not as interesting, but on both extremes, they're 129 00:10:37,358 --> 00:10:45,418 I find it interesting that only 20 28 % think it's going to have a high impact and that 25 % think it's going to have a low impact. 130 00:10:45,418 --> 00:10:49,008 Like I can't wrap my head around what's going on there. 131 00:10:49,008 --> 00:10:51,174 Do you have any thoughts on that? 132 00:10:51,606 --> 00:10:55,609 Well, it's interesting because in this study, there's a few different ways you can look at it. 133 00:10:55,609 --> 00:10:58,851 One is around the percentage that use it regularly. 134 00:10:58,851 --> 00:11:08,837 And one of the main takeaways is that within the various departments in a corporate, legal is amongst the lowest slash potentially the lowest when it comes to adoption of gen AI. 135 00:11:08,837 --> 00:11:18,143 So that in itself, it sounds broadly correct if we think about, well, lawyers, the nature of the work that they do, the importance of being totally accurate in the work that is 136 00:11:18,143 --> 00:11:20,757 produced, it's natural that they have lower usage than. 137 00:11:20,757 --> 00:11:32,357 sales and marketing or other departments in the enterprise, then when it comes to the potential impact, that's an interesting one too, because the question is phrased as an 138 00:11:32,357 --> 00:11:35,257 expected impact, which is a future prediction. 139 00:11:35,257 --> 00:11:43,157 And the thing is people are often very bad at predicting the future, especially if it's new technology, which they may not fully understand or comprehend the potential impact. 140 00:11:44,337 --> 00:11:46,582 My takeaway from this 141 00:11:46,582 --> 00:11:56,982 Personally, it's great that there's already 28 % of these respondents are expecting that it will have a high impact and another 39 % are expecting a median impact. 142 00:11:56,982 --> 00:12:07,162 Because that shows those who have appetite to start using or who will be easier to start adopting and really driving value in what they do. 143 00:12:07,162 --> 00:12:12,009 So I would look at that quite positively and see, OK, attain. 144 00:12:12,009 --> 00:12:23,407 takes time for any technology to become embedded or adopted or people to understand what's coming through, to show that people are already expecting quite a large impact is a 145 00:12:23,407 --> 00:12:24,267 positive sign. 146 00:12:24,267 --> 00:12:35,835 And that there is appetite and recognition broadly from the majority that this will have an impact in how legal is delivered within the corporate. 147 00:12:36,514 --> 00:12:39,075 Yeah, you're a glass half full kind of guy. 148 00:12:39,075 --> 00:12:45,476 I look at this and go, what are the 25 % who think it's going to have a low impact thinking? 149 00:12:45,476 --> 00:12:48,177 Like, do they have their head buried in the sand? 150 00:12:48,177 --> 00:12:50,198 Are they, do they not read? 151 00:12:50,198 --> 00:12:52,258 Are they not going to conferences? 152 00:12:52,258 --> 00:13:00,261 Have they not experimented because there's no way that it's going to have a low impact on the legal industry. 153 00:13:00,261 --> 00:13:06,262 If you were to stack rank industries that gen AI is going to have the biggest impact on. 154 00:13:06,514 --> 00:13:10,697 legal is going to be near the top of that, in my opinion. 155 00:13:10,697 --> 00:13:13,479 So yeah, I guess that's kind of the head scratcher. 156 00:13:13,479 --> 00:13:21,464 Like, man, and I guess it's easy, you know, for me to say this, I own a legal technology company. 157 00:13:21,604 --> 00:13:23,384 I'm in it neck deep. 158 00:13:24,326 --> 00:13:33,642 And you know, the reality is if you look at the demographics, especially in law firm leadership, you know, it skews older, right? 159 00:13:33,642 --> 00:13:35,714 And maybe people towards, 160 00:13:36,046 --> 00:13:48,967 towards the end of their careers aren't investing time in learning about it because I guess they figure maybe that by the time it gets here and has a real transformational 161 00:13:48,967 --> 00:13:54,201 effect, they'll be in Florida on a boat somewhere. 162 00:13:55,843 --> 00:13:57,464 Yeah, I don't know. 163 00:13:57,485 --> 00:13:59,436 That may have something to do with it too. 164 00:13:59,926 --> 00:14:00,446 Absolutely. 165 00:14:00,446 --> 00:14:02,176 like you raised a very good point. 166 00:14:02,176 --> 00:14:05,236 Look, we are at the forefront of what is happening here. 167 00:14:05,236 --> 00:14:07,646 You are running a technology company. 168 00:14:07,646 --> 00:14:13,346 You are selling to those who are already of the mindset that technology is having a big impact. 169 00:14:13,346 --> 00:14:19,486 And likewise, the people I deal with are clients who get it, who are already moving fast and want to move even faster. 170 00:14:19,526 --> 00:14:24,326 So I firmly believe that AI is going to have a massive impact on legal. 171 00:14:24,326 --> 00:14:28,615 And when I see that 25 % perceive it will have a lower impact. 172 00:14:28,853 --> 00:14:30,353 I believe that they are incorrect. 173 00:14:30,353 --> 00:14:40,293 I believe that just highlights those are the, that is the area that we'll have to be more mindful of when it comes to adoption and when it comes to implementation. 174 00:14:40,813 --> 00:14:43,233 But I think their view is probably incorrect. 175 00:14:43,233 --> 00:14:51,593 We just have to manage that as this change comes through and it kind of ties on the part that like, within the industry, everyone's at different stages of the maturity here. 176 00:14:51,873 --> 00:14:55,213 It's a very broad market and 177 00:14:55,328 --> 00:14:59,461 There's a huge change management piece when it comes to the introduction of AI. 178 00:14:59,461 --> 00:15:06,725 And I think it, for me, it highlights that we need to be mindful that there is a cohort of people who do not think that this will have an impact. 179 00:15:06,725 --> 00:15:12,849 And that's something that needs to be, people need to be careful of when introducing technology, that people element. 180 00:15:13,016 --> 00:15:15,907 Yeah, I don't think they should be in law firm leadership. 181 00:15:15,907 --> 00:15:17,827 I mean, I really feel that strongly. 182 00:15:17,827 --> 00:15:32,131 you, if you have someone who has not, does not fully grasp the potential and likelihood of the transformational effect of AI in the industry, I don't think they should be leading 183 00:15:32,131 --> 00:15:33,211 your law firm. 184 00:15:34,852 --> 00:15:38,593 but the reality is I don't choose who leads these law firms. 185 00:15:38,593 --> 00:15:42,814 And, what, what's interesting is I don't know how this works in the UK, but 186 00:15:42,840 --> 00:15:50,063 here in the U S you know, lot of law firm leadership comes to be because they're the best at lawyering, right? 187 00:15:50,063 --> 00:15:57,296 It's not because they're the best leaders necessarily, or you know, they've got the best resume to lead the firm. 188 00:15:57,296 --> 00:16:03,729 It's, know, because they've been most successful, um, you know, building a book of business and there's value to that. 189 00:16:03,729 --> 00:16:10,956 But you know, in, in other industries, like you mentioned financial services, I spent 10 years at bank of America, um, 190 00:16:10,956 --> 00:16:24,160 You know, the, it's a different model in big corporate organizations that, especially if they're publicly traded or they have a, they have a board, a fiduciary board that, you 191 00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:26,821 know, that management is held accountable to. 192 00:16:26,821 --> 00:16:30,992 There's no such thing in law firms, at least in the U S right there. 193 00:16:30,992 --> 00:16:31,732 There is no board. 194 00:16:31,732 --> 00:16:34,973 The owners are partners and they work in the business. 195 00:16:34,973 --> 00:16:39,394 So there's no kind of third party objective arms length. 196 00:16:39,468 --> 00:16:47,061 relationship between a board that puts management in place with very specific criteria. 197 00:16:47,061 --> 00:16:55,265 And I think that impacts the ability for law firms to really grow to their full potential. 198 00:16:55,265 --> 00:16:57,636 So the biggest law firm in the world is K &E. 199 00:16:57,636 --> 00:17:01,618 They're just under the floor of the Fortune 500. 200 00:17:01,808 --> 00:17:03,909 They're all private in the US. 201 00:17:03,909 --> 00:17:05,610 So there's no publicly traded law firms. 202 00:17:05,610 --> 00:17:06,850 There can't be. 203 00:17:07,032 --> 00:17:09,906 But if there were, there still wouldn't be any in the fortune 500. 204 00:17:09,906 --> 00:17:18,136 And if you were to ask, well, why there's other professional services organizations in the fortune 500, why not legal? 205 00:17:18,136 --> 00:17:22,321 I would point to that model as, one of the reasons why. 206 00:17:22,321 --> 00:17:23,752 you have any thoughts on that? 207 00:17:24,221 --> 00:17:25,191 Yeah, absolutely. 208 00:17:25,191 --> 00:17:35,205 I think that you make a very valid point that fundamentally the incentives and the structure of law firms make a lot of things hard. 209 00:17:35,326 --> 00:17:44,799 And where we see alternative structures, I've seen quite a bit in the UK and I will say as well with a caveat that Titans, in a very fortunate position that the clients that we work 210 00:17:44,799 --> 00:17:49,531 with, they think big and they want to move fast and they get it. 211 00:17:49,531 --> 00:17:53,734 So we're not in the business of trying to know. 212 00:17:53,734 --> 00:17:55,335 tell executives that this matter. 213 00:17:55,335 --> 00:17:58,697 Executives come to us and like, we know this really matters. 214 00:17:58,697 --> 00:17:59,777 Let's go. 215 00:18:00,538 --> 00:18:03,199 So that's a lovely position for us. 216 00:18:03,199 --> 00:18:08,482 I think that for the overall structures where I haven't seen it, it is different. 217 00:18:08,482 --> 00:18:18,227 In some cases in the UK, for example, one of the law firms I worked with for numerous years, DWF, they were the largest publicly listed law firm in the world at one point. 218 00:18:18,687 --> 00:18:20,368 They're now private equity owned. 219 00:18:20,368 --> 00:18:22,581 And in general, we're seeing kind of private equity. 220 00:18:22,581 --> 00:18:27,521 are making larger moves in the legal service market, not just in the UK, but elsewhere. 221 00:18:28,801 --> 00:18:41,321 And the whole process there and the incentives are very, different to what we see with law firms when it's not ultimately just about, the profit per equity partner, whatever it 222 00:18:41,321 --> 00:18:41,551 might be. 223 00:18:41,551 --> 00:18:43,741 It's the overall, what is the value of the business? 224 00:18:43,761 --> 00:18:47,781 And it's interesting that that does drive different incentives. 225 00:18:47,781 --> 00:18:51,701 And it will be curious as we see that become more common within legal. 226 00:18:52,031 --> 00:18:53,282 how that may change things. 227 00:18:53,282 --> 00:18:53,592 Yeah. 228 00:18:53,592 --> 00:18:56,945 And things seem to be trending in that direction here too. 229 00:18:56,945 --> 00:19:00,267 There are certain States like Arizona, for example, there are others. 230 00:19:00,267 --> 00:19:08,973 I think Utah might be one where they are allowing non-lawyers to have an ownership stake in law firms. 231 00:19:08,973 --> 00:19:11,856 And I think that will change significantly. 232 00:19:11,856 --> 00:19:20,908 I think that will improve the organizational design and structure within law firms where again, 233 00:19:20,908 --> 00:19:25,760 Just because you're the best at lawyering doesn't mean you should be the CEO of a law firm. 234 00:19:26,721 --> 00:19:38,087 and I, know, I think when you bring outsiders in and you put professional management in place that understand how to grow and scale a large organization, good things will happen 235 00:19:38,087 --> 00:19:39,488 from a growth perspective. 236 00:19:39,488 --> 00:19:46,312 So we're just now starting that journey in, in the U S but I know it's, you guys are further ahead. 237 00:19:46,312 --> 00:19:50,694 That's, that's already happening or has happened in the UK. 238 00:19:50,776 --> 00:19:51,636 Correct. 239 00:19:51,734 --> 00:19:54,114 Yeah, it's actually happened for quite some years. 240 00:19:54,114 --> 00:19:55,914 I think it was the Legal Services Act. 241 00:19:55,914 --> 00:20:03,804 can't remember exactly what year it came in, but that effectively made it lot easier for non-lawyer ownership of legal service providers. 242 00:20:03,804 --> 00:20:13,674 So the likes of the big four who have a large presence in the UK for legal services, that has an impact on the market. 243 00:20:13,674 --> 00:20:18,614 And even if we think about ALSPs more broadly, that in the UK, 244 00:20:18,941 --> 00:20:29,722 Most of the top 50 law firms will have an ALSP arm that will help with consulting or potentially use some other services or other pieces like that. 245 00:20:29,722 --> 00:20:33,617 So it does introduce new potential delivery models. 246 00:20:33,617 --> 00:20:41,024 And I think it's something that I know that in the US there's hesitation for the non-lawyer ownership, but it seems like a no brainer. 247 00:20:42,486 --> 00:20:42,986 Indeed. 248 00:20:42,986 --> 00:20:44,787 Yeah, it just makes sense. 249 00:20:44,787 --> 00:20:56,512 Um, you know, and this is maybe controversial perspective, but honestly, I think, a lot of this is ego in, the U S right. 250 00:20:56,512 --> 00:20:59,313 Lawyers think they're special sometimes like this. 251 00:20:59,313 --> 00:21:02,855 They say we're a business or a profession, not a business. 252 00:21:02,855 --> 00:21:04,095 That's nonsense. 253 00:21:04,095 --> 00:21:06,096 You're, both right. 254 00:21:06,096 --> 00:21:08,487 And I've, I've talked about that before. 255 00:21:08,487 --> 00:21:11,598 Every, every profession is a business. 256 00:21:11,606 --> 00:21:20,854 Not every business is a profession, but when you look at the criteria for to be in the legal profession, it's not that unique. 257 00:21:20,854 --> 00:21:23,546 It's like doctors do the same thing. 258 00:21:23,546 --> 00:21:29,842 They have, you know, exams and they, have to go through residency. 259 00:21:29,842 --> 00:21:40,310 There's all sorts of things and there's plenty of, um, outside investment from non medical professionals into the, into the medical field. 260 00:21:40,310 --> 00:21:42,371 and you've seen things grow substantially. 261 00:21:42,371 --> 00:21:51,136 So I think a lot of this is if we're being candid about it, a lot of it is ego, inflated perspective of what they do. 262 00:21:51,136 --> 00:21:52,617 Yes, it's, important. 263 00:21:52,617 --> 00:21:54,779 And yes, the stakes are high. 264 00:21:54,779 --> 00:21:58,200 Is it higher than in the medical profession? 265 00:21:58,301 --> 00:22:00,582 That's a hard no for me, right? 266 00:22:00,582 --> 00:22:07,438 If I, if I got to decide between a life or death or having a bad legal outcome, 267 00:22:07,438 --> 00:22:08,728 I'm going to, I'm going to choose that. 268 00:22:08,728 --> 00:22:15,698 I'm going to choose life and figure out how to, how to deal with the, whatever the legal situation is that I'm in. 269 00:22:15,698 --> 00:22:16,878 So I'm hopeful. 270 00:22:16,878 --> 00:22:23,757 It does seem like that's that, that is changing to like, you know, you see, you see the ABA has now there's a push. 271 00:22:23,757 --> 00:22:32,418 can't remember if they actually adopted this or not, but the American bar association to deprecate the terminology around lawyer, non-lawyers, right? 272 00:22:32,418 --> 00:22:34,362 Because it, seems 273 00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:36,251 It can be perceived as condescending. 274 00:22:36,251 --> 00:22:40,374 don't really have a strong opinion on that one, honestly, but I know a lot of people do. 275 00:22:40,374 --> 00:22:44,016 So I think there is a push in that direction to make this less. 276 00:22:44,016 --> 00:22:47,048 You're not that special because you have a JD and you practice law. 277 00:22:47,048 --> 00:22:52,542 It's like, yes, what you do is important and what other people do in other industries is important too. 278 00:22:52,542 --> 00:22:55,344 So we're, we're, getting there. 279 00:22:55,344 --> 00:22:58,966 I think we're just a little bit, a little bit behind for those reasons. 280 00:22:59,478 --> 00:23:01,048 Yeah, I totally agree with you. 281 00:23:01,048 --> 00:23:08,358 Look, every job is important and lawyers are no more important than any other professions or any other industries that are there. 282 00:23:08,358 --> 00:23:19,618 think that, again, without the nuanced understanding of some of the US landscape around what is prohibiting it, but at a very basic level, look, it's a form of protectionism in 283 00:23:19,618 --> 00:23:24,041 that it is preventing external players from coming in. 284 00:23:24,041 --> 00:23:29,364 to a market that is massively lucrative for you have owners of business making millions and tens and tens of millions every year. 285 00:23:29,364 --> 00:23:31,599 That's obviously a business. 286 00:23:32,110 --> 00:23:32,911 protectionism. 287 00:23:32,911 --> 00:23:36,774 It's yeah, that's, and I, listen, I'll be honest. 288 00:23:36,774 --> 00:23:41,997 If I was in that position, I would probably have that same perspective, right? 289 00:23:41,997 --> 00:23:44,429 I mean, it's, let's be honest. 290 00:23:44,429 --> 00:23:47,571 It's not an irrational thought process. 291 00:23:47,571 --> 00:23:48,742 And I want to be clear on that. 292 00:23:48,742 --> 00:23:56,287 I said, look, I sell to law firms and lawyers and, I don't mean any disrespect by it, but I, you know, that's the way I see it. 293 00:23:56,568 --> 00:23:59,510 So, um, you know, you and I talked about, 294 00:23:59,718 --> 00:24:01,049 this is a great conversation. 295 00:24:01,049 --> 00:24:10,984 You and I talked about the challenges around ROI measurement with, with AI and you know, we had our planning call a while ago. 296 00:24:10,984 --> 00:24:17,088 So when I wrote this agenda, I have a note in here that says PWC data showing limited productivity gains. 297 00:24:17,088 --> 00:24:21,220 Normally I include a link because so I can go back and look, I didn't in this scenario. 298 00:24:21,220 --> 00:24:26,083 So I forget, I read so many studies, they come out so rapidly these days. 299 00:24:26,083 --> 00:24:28,684 Like I don't have this one memorized, but 300 00:24:28,684 --> 00:24:38,689 I do remember seeing the data that showed that ROI is challenged right now. 301 00:24:39,251 --> 00:24:44,658 What is your perspective on measuring it and managing that? 302 00:24:44,982 --> 00:24:53,702 Yeah, so firstly on the survey point as a refresher, so was a PWEC survey of the top 100 law firms in the UK. 303 00:24:53,702 --> 00:25:01,702 And it was exploring whether productivity gains have been monetized by the use of GEN.AI. 304 00:25:01,702 --> 00:25:07,832 And outside of the top 10, 0 % of respondents had monetized productivity gains. 305 00:25:07,832 --> 00:25:10,822 And within the top 10, a set of 17%. 306 00:25:10,822 --> 00:25:14,271 So overall, the broad message is close to nobody. 307 00:25:14,271 --> 00:25:19,702 has monetized the productivity gains that they may be seeing through Gen.AI. 308 00:25:19,763 --> 00:25:22,983 And there's one part of me that's not surprised in that. 309 00:25:23,324 --> 00:25:27,165 as you mentioned earlier, we're still in the very early stages of this. 310 00:25:27,165 --> 00:25:39,068 And we can expect to be monetizing everything extremely quickly, especially if you factor in, look, the tools themselves are expensive to start using to start rolling out. 311 00:25:39,148 --> 00:25:41,799 It's a big effort to get them into any particular firm. 312 00:25:41,978 --> 00:25:53,077 And at this point where people kind of started off in their experimentation or in the phase was things like general AI assistance or chatbots that could help with very discrete 313 00:25:53,077 --> 00:25:59,813 specific tasks in a much broader workflow that it may be addressing. 314 00:25:59,813 --> 00:26:09,331 So if you're just helping with very small pieces of a large workflow, it's hard to get tangible or a why on that. 315 00:26:09,505 --> 00:26:16,851 You can certainly get loads of benefits in that it's reducing drudge work, improving the lives of those who are actually using the tool, et cetera. 316 00:26:16,851 --> 00:26:28,279 But until you start expanding along a workflow and start to have a greater percentage impact on the set of tasks that are part of that workflow, it's a lot harder to see that 317 00:26:28,279 --> 00:26:33,922 tangible ROI for the work that is being completed. 318 00:26:33,923 --> 00:26:37,645 As well, we need to be aware as well. 319 00:26:37,716 --> 00:26:46,138 as is always the case with Inlego with the billable hour, that if we're looking around kind of the monetization of the benefits, well, if you're just cutting down your billable 320 00:26:46,138 --> 00:26:49,079 hours, how are you monetizing those productivity gains? 321 00:26:49,079 --> 00:26:53,190 So there is that question around, okay, well, what is the pricing model here? 322 00:26:53,190 --> 00:26:58,491 How are we actually benefiting commercially from the activities that we're doing? 323 00:26:58,511 --> 00:27:00,792 And we're definitely still in the early stages of that. 324 00:27:00,792 --> 00:27:06,973 So I'm not surprised to see that very few people can honestly say that they're seeing 325 00:27:07,138 --> 00:27:09,916 monetary productivity gains at this point. 326 00:27:10,030 --> 00:27:12,990 Yeah, that makes perfect sense. 327 00:27:13,550 --> 00:27:23,190 we also talked about balancing the hype and reality and I feel like there's a lot of hype right now and man, I'm to, I'm going to, I feel like I sound like Debbie Downer on this 328 00:27:23,190 --> 00:27:25,230 episode, but Mr. 329 00:27:25,230 --> 00:27:37,810 Skeptic and I am naturally skeptical, but I'm actually extremely bullish about AI and I think it is going to be amazingly transformative everywhere, not just within legal. 330 00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:40,692 but it already has been for me personally. 331 00:27:40,692 --> 00:27:46,637 So, um, I'm, I'm, a, very bullish overall, but I see so much hype. 332 00:27:47,758 --> 00:28:02,210 you know, there was a, uh, there was a legal IT insider, I think, uh, kind of a case study with Clifford chance on co-pilot and co-pilot is another situation where I know in the 333 00:28:02,210 --> 00:28:03,931 longterm Microsoft's going to get it right. 334 00:28:03,931 --> 00:28:07,784 They're too invested to not, but right now it's, it's not. 335 00:28:08,794 --> 00:28:11,035 it needs work. 336 00:28:11,035 --> 00:28:20,839 But this case study really paints this picture that is not in line with reality from my perspective. 337 00:28:20,839 --> 00:28:32,884 When they talk through use cases, the first use case they mention is the big use case is cases or summarization where, for example, people are in a big email chain and want to 338 00:28:32,884 --> 00:28:35,865 summarize it to give a report to the client. 339 00:28:35,865 --> 00:28:37,826 Then it says dash 340 00:28:37,996 --> 00:28:40,787 All of the output will obviously need to be checked. 341 00:28:41,288 --> 00:28:43,019 Well, then where the hell's the ROI? 342 00:28:43,019 --> 00:28:51,553 If I got to go read the damn thing to make sure that the summarization that it wrote is accurate, I don't need the summarization. 343 00:28:51,553 --> 00:28:54,765 So scratch that one off the list for me. 344 00:28:54,765 --> 00:28:57,427 Now, this is how I see it. 345 00:28:57,427 --> 00:29:07,554 I do think there is value in summarizing teams, chats and meetings and email threads, but you can't use it. 346 00:29:07,554 --> 00:29:11,757 to summarize with a high on a high risk communication, right? 347 00:29:11,757 --> 00:29:19,242 Like let's say back and forth with, with clients and you're just jumping in the loop and you're an attorney assigned to a matter. 348 00:29:19,242 --> 00:29:22,305 Don't use co-pilot to go somewhere. 349 00:29:22,305 --> 00:29:23,986 There might be details in there. 350 00:29:23,986 --> 00:29:28,669 There probably are details in there that it, that it, that it might miss. 351 00:29:28,689 --> 00:29:33,102 So, you know, I think that there's just a lot of hype right now. 352 00:29:33,102 --> 00:29:36,204 And you know, the marketing engines are 353 00:29:36,352 --> 00:29:46,201 at full speed and I think there's a big gap between what the marketing is pushing out in the marketplace and what these tools are actually delivering. 354 00:29:46,201 --> 00:29:49,236 you have the same perspective or do you see it differently? 355 00:29:49,716 --> 00:29:51,637 Yeah, I definitely agree. 356 00:29:51,637 --> 00:29:54,548 Well, firstly, your point around the default skepticism. 357 00:29:54,548 --> 00:29:57,689 when it comes to AI, I try to balance it as well. 358 00:29:57,689 --> 00:30:06,452 So there's one part of me that has a default skepticism of any claims or hype or any kind of articles I see coming through for sure. 359 00:30:06,873 --> 00:30:14,976 There's the second part that is incredibly excited by this, that the tangible benefits I'm getting in a day-to-day basis and what I'm seeing with some of our clients are phenomenal. 360 00:30:14,976 --> 00:30:19,097 So I do balance those two different hats. 361 00:30:19,209 --> 00:30:22,670 When it comes to copilot specifically, yeah. 362 00:30:22,670 --> 00:30:32,012 So as you mentioned, some of the main use cases that people are getting benefit from, like using it with teams, transcripts, summaries, that type of stuff are kind of catching up on 363 00:30:32,012 --> 00:30:32,523 some emails. 364 00:30:32,523 --> 00:30:38,894 They're the main ones for copilot impact on actual legal advisory work. 365 00:30:38,894 --> 00:30:40,915 Like say working with contracts and that kind of stuff. 366 00:30:40,915 --> 00:30:43,696 It's not there from broadly speaking. 367 00:30:43,696 --> 00:30:45,996 It's not at that level. 368 00:30:45,996 --> 00:30:49,142 People are definitely getting benefits from certain 369 00:30:49,142 --> 00:30:58,182 task that they complete because one level it's a safe way of accessing AI and it's a safe way of accessing the models. 370 00:30:58,262 --> 00:31:06,082 And within that particular case study, you know, one of the things that they had referenced around the selection of copilot is that it's form of risk mitigation that 371 00:31:06,082 --> 00:31:13,262 people would be using GenAI in some form, whether that be their personal account with ChatGBT or something else. 372 00:31:13,262 --> 00:31:19,341 So at least if you can provide them with a secure, safe, relatively cheap access to 373 00:31:19,401 --> 00:31:25,101 And GNI, okay, you may say $30 per user per month is expensive when it's going to cost a whole firm. 374 00:31:25,101 --> 00:31:31,881 But at the same time in the GNI world of the pricing of vendors, $30 per month per user is very, cheap. 375 00:31:31,961 --> 00:31:35,421 So in that sense, I see the value there. 376 00:31:36,101 --> 00:31:47,421 But if the question, if you think about what is the tangible impact on actual substantive legal work, it's probably limited. 377 00:31:48,180 --> 00:32:00,060 which is the case at the moment, think across the board in many cases, because again, we're still kind of just tackling small little tasks or within broader workflows that is 378 00:32:00,060 --> 00:32:01,601 starting to change. 379 00:32:02,202 --> 00:32:06,035 And I think it is good to have a healthy balance of skepticism versus what we see kind of out there. 380 00:32:06,035 --> 00:32:15,252 I'm definitely seeing scenarios and cases where Gen.ai is having a massive impact on work. 381 00:32:16,349 --> 00:32:24,046 In particular, what I see around the of the contracting space with whether it be pre-execution or post-execution work, that there is massive tangible benefits that are 382 00:32:24,046 --> 00:32:24,917 happening. 383 00:32:24,917 --> 00:32:28,290 Oftentimes those benefits aren't the ones that are in the headlines or are being talked about. 384 00:32:28,290 --> 00:32:36,388 So yeah, it's a mixture of, I think a lot of talk out there is talk. 385 00:32:36,388 --> 00:32:42,124 However, at the same time, there is meaningful benefits that people are gaining as well. 386 00:32:42,124 --> 00:32:42,614 Yeah. 387 00:32:42,614 --> 00:32:43,194 Yeah. 388 00:32:43,194 --> 00:32:45,455 I don't, we're probably not that far apart. 389 00:32:45,455 --> 00:32:57,629 Um, I just, I've gotten a little frustrated if I'm being honest, like, especially in the Microsoft world, they have this most valuable professional program MVP, which is based on 390 00:32:57,629 --> 00:33:03,401 when when you get an MVP designation, basically it's how much of a Microsoft fan boy are you right? 391 00:33:03,401 --> 00:33:05,942 How, how big of an advocate have you been? 392 00:33:05,942 --> 00:33:07,362 How have you changed? 393 00:33:07,362 --> 00:33:09,283 Like, and people buy into this. 394 00:33:09,283 --> 00:33:14,077 there's, I'm not going to say any names, but there are several on LinkedIn that talk about co-pilot. 395 00:33:14,077 --> 00:33:16,348 Like it is the best thing ever. 396 00:33:16,348 --> 00:33:24,234 And all these, there was even a 10 day take replace Google with co-pilot for 10 days. 397 00:33:24,234 --> 00:33:28,357 That's like replacing a spoon with a hammer, right? 398 00:33:28,357 --> 00:33:29,737 Completely. 399 00:33:30,078 --> 00:33:31,799 They don't do the same things. 400 00:33:31,799 --> 00:33:33,190 They're not the same tool. 401 00:33:33,190 --> 00:33:36,014 The same use cases don't apply, but 402 00:33:36,014 --> 00:33:44,594 All of this, you know, so it's not even just Microsoft, it's people out there wanting to get traction on their new YouTube channel. 403 00:33:44,594 --> 00:33:48,174 Are there several YouTube channels that are zeroed in with Copilot? 404 00:33:48,174 --> 00:33:51,694 And again, it's not that I think Copilot is awful. 405 00:33:51,694 --> 00:33:54,594 It's just, it feels like an early beta. 406 00:33:54,594 --> 00:34:02,004 And I think it's, if it were $5 a month right now, I think it would be fairly priced at six times that. 407 00:34:02,004 --> 00:34:04,066 don't, I don't think the value's there. 408 00:34:04,066 --> 00:34:11,048 But you bring up a good point about the safe path and it is, they do have the controls in place. 409 00:34:11,048 --> 00:34:16,829 They actually have too many controls in place because it doesn't, co-pilot doesn't even access. 410 00:34:16,829 --> 00:34:27,352 Um, when you're drafting an email, for example, it does not look at your, the large corpus of data that has sitting in exchange to look at how you can meet normally communicate. 411 00:34:27,352 --> 00:34:32,304 Um, and the, the, they're waving the flag of, cause we don't want to store any of your data. 412 00:34:32,304 --> 00:34:33,376 like, wait a second. 413 00:34:33,376 --> 00:34:35,687 You do that data is in your data center. 414 00:34:35,687 --> 00:34:37,367 Like you already store it. 415 00:34:37,367 --> 00:34:41,268 So I think they're, the ring fence is a little too tight right now. 416 00:34:41,268 --> 00:34:49,950 And I know they're going to fix these things, but yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm frustrated with people out there pushing this when, and not telling the whole story. 417 00:34:50,011 --> 00:34:58,153 So I guess that's why I got a little bit of a edge when I, when I talk about it, cause I know it's, it's going to be great. 418 00:34:58,153 --> 00:34:59,133 It's going to be amazing. 419 00:34:59,133 --> 00:35:02,146 Like it is perfectly positioned over the 420 00:35:02,146 --> 00:35:11,131 Microsoft graph and all of the massive amount of data law firms actually keep very little data in SharePoint and our platform is built on SharePoint. 421 00:35:11,131 --> 00:35:16,514 So I know that well, but, they don't keep much interesting. 422 00:35:16,514 --> 00:35:20,096 There's like things like policy documents in their policies. 423 00:35:20,096 --> 00:35:28,341 Um, but their project documentation, but they, they big, big law firms don't keep work product in SharePoint. 424 00:35:28,341 --> 00:35:29,722 Um, 425 00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:34,213 I wish they would, it would be great for us, but that's a whole nother topic. 426 00:35:34,213 --> 00:35:39,328 don't, I don't see, I don't see SharePoint as a large law DMS anytime soon. 427 00:35:39,754 --> 00:35:43,007 Yeah, I think again, kind of finishing off on copilot. 428 00:35:43,007 --> 00:35:46,359 So as you say, like it's going to get a lot better at the end of the day. 429 00:35:46,359 --> 00:35:46,750 It's hard. 430 00:35:46,750 --> 00:35:49,041 It's hard to bet against Microsoft. 431 00:35:49,302 --> 00:35:56,666 They have like every large law firm is a customer of Microsoft lawyers live in Microsoft word. 432 00:35:56,788 --> 00:36:07,026 So when it comes to distribution safety, just reliability, if you were CIO, it's a relatively easy and safe choice to go with Microsoft copilot at this point, especially if 433 00:36:07,026 --> 00:36:08,169 you want to get. 434 00:36:08,169 --> 00:36:10,030 Gen.ai into the hands of your people. 435 00:36:10,030 --> 00:36:20,422 And firms are facing pressure to do so because there are clients out there who are demanding that AI is used to reduce the value, sorry, reduce the cost of legal services 436 00:36:20,422 --> 00:36:21,623 either now or in the future. 437 00:36:21,623 --> 00:36:29,695 for example, I've seen RFPs, which are very clear, like, what is your Gen.ai strategy and how do you intend to pass on these savings to clients? 438 00:36:29,695 --> 00:36:37,777 there is an AI mandate, both within law firms and within the enterprise world. 439 00:36:37,974 --> 00:36:41,458 of teams need to be doing something with AI. 440 00:36:41,458 --> 00:36:48,895 And so if you're a technology executive making a decision to get AI into the hands of your people, it's not a bad choice in that way. 441 00:36:48,895 --> 00:36:58,514 know, it's, if we think about the actual impact it's having on the day to day in certain use cases, questionable in others, it probably is having impact, but there's a lot of 442 00:36:58,514 --> 00:37:01,817 sound logic in people making this choice as well. 443 00:37:02,082 --> 00:37:02,842 Yeah. 444 00:37:02,842 --> 00:37:12,765 Well, that's a good segue into what we were going to talk about next, which was, which is kind of best practices for AI implementation and adoption, right? 445 00:37:12,765 --> 00:37:21,387 Like I've been an advocate of starting with business of all use cases because the risk reward balances out better there. 446 00:37:21,387 --> 00:37:26,109 Um, a very high impact on the practice of law side. 447 00:37:26,109 --> 00:37:27,369 Also very high risk. 448 00:37:27,369 --> 00:37:30,870 Um, you got client data. 449 00:37:31,266 --> 00:37:36,909 to worry about, you've got attorneys who have very low tolerance for missteps. 450 00:37:36,909 --> 00:37:44,874 So if things don't work right when you put it in front of them, it's really hard to get them back to the table sometimes for round two. 451 00:37:44,874 --> 00:37:59,362 So I advocate for have your KM department, innovation teams, your finance teams, your marketing teams, your HR teams, start to use it there where the risk reward balances out 452 00:37:59,362 --> 00:38:00,562 much better. 453 00:38:00,886 --> 00:38:10,531 as an incremental step towards eventually, obviously, the biggest bottom line impact is going to be in the practice of law. 454 00:38:10,531 --> 00:38:18,284 But what are your thoughts on starting small and controlled rather than doing full enterprise rollouts? 455 00:38:18,675 --> 00:38:19,886 Yeah, I totally agree. 456 00:38:19,886 --> 00:38:23,649 And when it comes to implementation of AI, think of three different things. 457 00:38:23,649 --> 00:38:28,953 Firstly, starting small and hand holding a particular group that you focus on. 458 00:38:28,953 --> 00:38:36,378 Secondly is getting very specific on the use cases that you're looking to solve, not just to push the AI out there for the sake of it. 459 00:38:36,418 --> 00:38:39,900 And thirdly is setting expectations. 460 00:38:40,181 --> 00:38:44,023 As you said, if you lose that trust with people, it's hard to regain it. 461 00:38:44,024 --> 00:38:45,812 And when... 462 00:38:45,812 --> 00:38:47,813 We deploy AI with clients. 463 00:38:47,813 --> 00:38:51,546 That's one of things we've really focused on is appropriate expectation setting. 464 00:38:51,546 --> 00:38:56,829 And with the introduction of any tool, it's not just here are all the things the tool can do. 465 00:38:56,829 --> 00:38:59,951 It's being super clear on this is what it cannot do. 466 00:38:59,951 --> 00:39:02,823 If you try and use it for these use cases, it will fail. 467 00:39:02,823 --> 00:39:03,974 You will get bad results. 468 00:39:03,974 --> 00:39:07,702 You will get frustrated and just being super transparent with people. 469 00:39:07,702 --> 00:39:15,361 you know, touching on the hype piece that there's some talk in the market about AI being magical and what it can't do, cetera. 470 00:39:15,803 --> 00:39:19,016 However, if you go in at that attitude, you will fail for sure. 471 00:39:19,016 --> 00:39:21,899 It's not at that level for the vast majority of use cases. 472 00:39:21,899 --> 00:39:32,320 Whereas if you frame it up, look, this is like having a junior associate or in certain cases, even a mid-level associate that could support with the work that you complete that 473 00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:33,621 they will make mistakes. 474 00:39:33,621 --> 00:39:34,312 It's not perfect. 475 00:39:34,312 --> 00:39:35,534 It needs your input. 476 00:39:35,534 --> 00:39:38,556 And that's actually a far better. 477 00:39:39,296 --> 00:39:44,069 change management piece as well, because from the lawyer's point of view, it's very clear, look, this is not replacing them. 478 00:39:44,069 --> 00:39:46,830 This is augmenting how they perform the work. 479 00:39:47,971 --> 00:39:50,752 So yeah, expectation setting is a massive one. 480 00:39:51,152 --> 00:40:01,958 And then as I mentioned about getting very, very specific, it needs to be tied to a very clear use case that the benefits are very tangible, that it's clear what the objectives 481 00:40:01,958 --> 00:40:03,309 are and what you're trying to achieve. 482 00:40:03,309 --> 00:40:06,213 And just having that in a kind of contained environment. 483 00:40:06,213 --> 00:40:07,801 And by contained, I mean, 484 00:40:07,857 --> 00:40:08,617 Structured. 485 00:40:08,617 --> 00:40:10,788 This is how we are going to approach it. 486 00:40:10,788 --> 00:40:14,420 Here's how we check how, you know, the feedback as we progress. 487 00:40:14,420 --> 00:40:16,281 Here's how we iterate as we go. 488 00:40:16,281 --> 00:40:26,216 Just overall delivery, best practices and change management best practices, you know, start small, expand, learn, get some proof points and then, then go broader. 489 00:40:26,216 --> 00:40:30,587 Um, when that approach is taken, I've seen marvelous results. 490 00:40:30,888 --> 00:40:33,653 However, people need to be mindful that like. 491 00:40:33,653 --> 00:40:40,101 all the standard best practices we would have with any technology implementation, they still are true. 492 00:40:40,101 --> 00:40:43,713 You still need to do all the good stuff you would do before. 493 00:40:43,713 --> 00:40:50,513 AI just doesn't remove the need for traditional change management and delivery experience that you would have with any technology. 494 00:40:50,604 --> 00:40:52,335 Yeah, that's a great point. 495 00:40:53,476 --> 00:41:03,102 To the extent that you're able, what are some specific examples of AI use cases where you've seen good success? 496 00:41:03,977 --> 00:41:04,558 Yeah, sure. 497 00:41:04,558 --> 00:41:11,724 So what I can speak to, a lot of the work that we focus on involves transactions and contracts. 498 00:41:11,864 --> 00:41:23,166 And within that, if we think about the kind of contracting workflow, two of the kind of broad areas, one when comes to pre-execution and the review of contracts against specified 499 00:41:23,166 --> 00:41:27,860 playbooks, that use case can be really, really good. 500 00:41:28,757 --> 00:41:36,557 And conceptually, that can apply in many other cases, because effectively, you're just taking a set of rules or a set of principles and applying it against a body of text. 501 00:41:36,617 --> 00:41:41,257 That can be used in many different areas of the business, but that we have seen really, really good results. 502 00:41:41,377 --> 00:41:47,937 The second one is for the post-execution bulk review of documents. 503 00:41:48,077 --> 00:41:57,337 So tasks that would traditionally have been used with some of the classic machine learning vendors, also seen really good results with Gen.ai providers. 504 00:41:58,066 --> 00:41:59,927 in that type of activity. 505 00:41:59,927 --> 00:42:10,226 And part of the reason for that is because, whereas with machine learning, we'd just be identifying relevant passages of text for people to then review and interpret, with GEN.AI 506 00:42:10,226 --> 00:42:18,563 being able to not only just identify the text, but actually interpret it and like say answer a question or get a specific result, not just a control F, but going a couple of 507 00:42:18,563 --> 00:42:20,304 steps further in that process. 508 00:42:20,365 --> 00:42:25,849 And the efficiency gains for both of those can be remarkable when done well. 509 00:42:27,128 --> 00:42:28,218 Interesting. 510 00:42:28,459 --> 00:42:44,029 So, you and I also talked a little bit about what I call innovation theater, which is, um, I didn't coin the term, I can't remember his name now. 511 00:42:44,410 --> 00:42:56,672 guy from NRF, uh, put it, it's, it's in Colin Levy's book and he talked about innovation theater and it was like, um, steps to being innovated. 512 00:42:56,672 --> 00:43:01,504 Step one, don't be a law firm, which is hilarious. 513 00:43:01,504 --> 00:43:14,909 But there is a concept of innovation theater where there's a lot of, and I think this is changing too, for the better in a big way since November of two years ago. 514 00:43:16,190 --> 00:43:26,444 I think that the market has seen the industry, the buyers of legal services as behind the curve on technology and rightly so. 515 00:43:26,572 --> 00:43:28,743 law firms are behind the curve. 516 00:43:28,743 --> 00:43:36,104 Like if you compare law firms, I've spent a ton of time, 16 years in legal and 10 years in financial services. 517 00:43:36,345 --> 00:43:38,625 And it, there's no comparison. 518 00:43:38,625 --> 00:43:48,708 Um, but the response to that initially was, Hey, let's create a chief C suite with innovation in the title. 519 00:43:48,828 --> 00:43:56,130 And, um, that was the, that was the initial response for some, there are, there are innovation teams out there that are doing really 520 00:43:56,130 --> 00:43:58,931 good, amazing work here in the US. 521 00:43:58,931 --> 00:44:01,292 I'm sure it's the same way in the UK. 522 00:44:01,332 --> 00:44:03,613 And I don't know what the ratio is. 523 00:44:03,773 --> 00:44:15,558 I would totally be making a number up, but there is this concept of, I call it innovation inflation, where the number of titles with innovation are exploding. 524 00:44:16,739 --> 00:44:19,720 what is it different in the UK? 525 00:44:20,140 --> 00:44:25,182 What is how, well, I guess two questions is, 526 00:44:25,294 --> 00:44:37,474 Do you see kind of that same exponential growth in innovation roles and is the amount of innovation work proportionate to that growth or is there a gap there like there is in the 527 00:44:37,474 --> 00:44:38,288 US? 528 00:44:39,136 --> 00:44:47,168 So on that, I think the UK has actually been ahead of the US for quite some time when it comes to innovation and legal tech within law firms. 529 00:44:48,808 --> 00:44:55,180 And so I entered the legal market five years ago and was working with innovation teams immediately and have been since then. 530 00:44:55,180 --> 00:44:56,890 And some teams in the UK are massive. 531 00:44:56,890 --> 00:45:03,092 So you have the likes of Adolf Schallgadar to have like 70 plus people in the UK within their innovation and tech teams. 532 00:45:03,552 --> 00:45:08,973 So it's quite formalized in the UK and most of the larger firms will have those teams. 533 00:45:09,724 --> 00:45:14,405 And they, for the ones I've interacted with, doing a lot of great stuff. 534 00:45:14,785 --> 00:45:19,325 Don't get me wrong, it is hard to drive innovation and change within law firms. 535 00:45:20,205 --> 00:45:25,825 Just to be factoring, know, with lawyers trying to get their time to build a law or all the incentives, it does make stuff hard. 536 00:45:25,825 --> 00:45:31,705 It is much easier now with AI when there's people have, when the lawyers have an appetite and interest to get more involved. 537 00:45:32,265 --> 00:45:36,105 In terms of the growth of innovation. 538 00:45:36,165 --> 00:45:38,696 So I haven't seen. 539 00:45:38,696 --> 00:45:48,720 much change in that like it was already a, I'm sure it has grown, but the default in the five years I've been involved has been like all those large firms have innovation teams. 540 00:45:48,720 --> 00:45:51,491 So it's not as if it's a new concept for them. 541 00:45:51,491 --> 00:45:55,092 It's something that was being certainly quite active in the last five years. 542 00:45:55,272 --> 00:46:04,256 In fact, firms would often have, you might have a specific innovation team, also having a specific legal tech team, also having a knowledge management team. 543 00:46:04,256 --> 00:46:08,223 So the UK, I think looking across the globe, 544 00:46:08,223 --> 00:46:14,641 has traditionally been one of the most advanced when it comes to legal innovation teams within law firms. 545 00:46:14,776 --> 00:46:15,387 Yeah. 546 00:46:15,387 --> 00:46:27,967 So if you look at a pie chart, the slice of pie of firms that are engaging in innovation theater, that slice is getting smaller and smaller, especially in the last two years, 547 00:46:27,967 --> 00:46:33,602 because it's no longer an option to fake it till you can make it. 548 00:46:33,742 --> 00:46:35,604 You need to be investing in this now. 549 00:46:35,604 --> 00:46:38,946 That's really been the challenge, I think, has been around investment. 550 00:46:39,527 --> 00:46:42,882 Law firms, and I'm using broad brushstrokes here, they're 551 00:46:42,882 --> 00:46:57,392 many, many exceptions to this, but law firms have really tried to not always looked at technology as strategic, more of a necessary evil and a cost that needs to be managed. 552 00:46:57,392 --> 00:47:01,104 And that has really shifted in the last two years. 553 00:47:01,104 --> 00:47:07,759 And I can't tell you how happy I am about it as a legal tech company and just somebody who works in the industry, man. 554 00:47:07,759 --> 00:47:12,965 It's just really good to see the mindset growth. 555 00:47:12,965 --> 00:47:16,032 have you seen the same shift over there? 556 00:47:16,661 --> 00:47:17,301 Totally. 557 00:47:17,301 --> 00:47:21,944 think that the mindset to technology has really changed. 558 00:47:21,944 --> 00:47:33,930 That like, even if we think about the data points of the appetite of lawyers within law firms and their views on technology, having worked within innovations and tech teams 559 00:47:33,930 --> 00:47:40,474 within directly embedded within law firms and trying to get engagement from different practice areas, it is often a challenge. 560 00:47:40,554 --> 00:47:46,442 However, with the introduction of AI, that's really flipped that on its head where AI 561 00:47:46,442 --> 00:47:49,084 brings lawyers to the table. 562 00:47:49,384 --> 00:47:53,747 AI may not always be the correct answer, but at least you have them at the table. 563 00:47:53,748 --> 00:48:01,214 And now you can point to something else on the menu, whether it be document automation or even just using the DMS property or whatever it might be, but you have their attention or 564 00:48:01,214 --> 00:48:04,676 their time and interest, which is a massive change. 565 00:48:04,676 --> 00:48:15,909 And so it is now an incredible moment to be working in legal because we have both the technology and the AI and the interest. 566 00:48:15,909 --> 00:48:17,629 of the end users. 567 00:48:17,650 --> 00:48:27,392 Whereas a couple of years ago, we did not have the interest of the end users and we did not have this technology that is coming through as well. 568 00:48:27,392 --> 00:48:32,424 Yes, we had a bunch of different technology that's incredible for different use cases and just general automation. 569 00:48:32,424 --> 00:48:37,995 But now we are really at a point where we have that desire for change. 570 00:48:37,995 --> 00:48:43,657 So it's incredibly important, as you mentioned, managing expectations. 571 00:48:43,781 --> 00:48:48,613 and not blowing that trust that we have and that interest that we have. 572 00:48:48,613 --> 00:48:54,104 Because if you do so, you lose another, you you lose people for another couple of years. 573 00:48:54,306 --> 00:48:58,828 Yeah, they say that trust is built in drops and lost in buckets. 574 00:48:58,828 --> 00:49:09,494 Um, you know, and that, that, that really matters because like you said, getting them back to the table, would be an uphill battle. 575 00:49:09,694 --> 00:49:12,066 Well, we're, we're just about out of time here, man. 576 00:49:12,066 --> 00:49:13,286 This has been a great conversation. 577 00:49:13,286 --> 00:49:19,970 We didn't get through half the things we were going to talk about here, but I'll, I'll, I'll have to, I'd love to have you back on. 578 00:49:19,970 --> 00:49:24,002 I think your newsletter is outstanding and I highly recommend, I'm going to give you a, 579 00:49:24,002 --> 00:49:25,064 shameless plug here. 580 00:49:25,064 --> 00:49:26,166 think it's great. 581 00:49:26,166 --> 00:49:33,299 think folks should, um, who are interested in the topic of AI and legal should absolutely check it out. 582 00:49:33,299 --> 00:49:37,576 How do, how do people find you and your newsletter? 583 00:49:37,814 --> 00:49:38,404 Sure, absolutely. 584 00:49:38,404 --> 00:49:46,791 So for the newsletter, if people go to legaltectrends.com, there is the option to sign up there and links to the previous edition. 585 00:49:46,791 --> 00:49:49,974 So we're now nearly at 3,000 people. 586 00:49:49,974 --> 00:49:51,665 So really appreciate the feedback. 587 00:49:51,665 --> 00:49:52,596 It's going down really well. 588 00:49:52,596 --> 00:50:01,333 And in particular, what's nice is that the readership is a lot of technology decision makers within firms and within in-house teams, which is quite nice. 589 00:50:01,333 --> 00:50:06,367 And then for people who want to find me and what Titans do, you can go to... 590 00:50:06,367 --> 00:50:10,945 titans.legal is our website or find me on LinkedIn as well, just Peter Duffy. 591 00:50:10,945 --> 00:50:12,437 There's plenty of Peter Duffy's. 592 00:50:12,437 --> 00:50:14,732 It's actually incredibly popular name worldwide. 593 00:50:14,732 --> 00:50:18,446 But if you put Peter Duffy and Titans, I'll probably pop up. 594 00:50:18,446 --> 00:50:20,126 I don't have that problem. 595 00:50:20,126 --> 00:50:21,206 Ted Theodoropoulos. 596 00:50:21,206 --> 00:50:24,266 There's not, there's a few, but, but, but not many. 597 00:50:24,266 --> 00:50:27,426 Um, well, this has been, this has been a great conversation. 598 00:50:27,426 --> 00:50:29,586 I really appreciate you spending the time. 599 00:50:29,586 --> 00:50:31,306 I look forward to reading more of your stuff. 600 00:50:31,306 --> 00:50:36,866 And again, I'd love to have you back, uh, sometime in 2025 to, to, talk more of this stuff. 601 00:50:36,866 --> 00:50:40,038 I, it's been a uh, a really fun conversation. 602 00:50:40,263 --> 00:50:44,001 Absolutely anytime, massive fan of the podcast, always listening to it. 603 00:50:44,001 --> 00:50:46,798 So I'm for sure happy to come back. 604 00:50:46,798 --> 00:50:48,078 Awesome, good stuff. 605 00:50:48,078 --> 00:50:51,417 All right, well have a good rest of your afternoon and a good holiday. 606 00:50:52,358 --> 00:50:54,498 All right, take care. -->