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WelcometoReinvitingProfessionals,apodcasthostedbyindustryanalystAriKaplan,
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whichsharesideas,guidanceandperspectivesfrommarketleadersshapingthenextgeneration
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oflegalandprofessionalservices.
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ThisisAriKaplanandI'mspeakingtodaywithJamesSheerer,apartneratBakerHostetler,
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whoservesastheco-leaderoftheemergingtechnologyteamofBakerHostetler'sdigital
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assetsanddatamanagementgroupandRossGubrimon,thefounderandCEOofLawCatch,
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thedeveloperofReefCatch,asoftwareplatformdesignedtoelevatelegalwriting,whichhas
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recentlyintroducednewgenerativeAIfeaturesforlawyersandlegalprofessionals.
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JamesRoss,greattoseeyou.
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Likewise,thankyou.
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James,tellusaboutyourbackgroundandyourpracticeatBakerHostetler.
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I'mapartneratBaker,butIstartedatAlaskain2002.
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Iwassupposedtostartasatransactionalattorneylookingattelecommunicationissues,but
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thefirmIwasgoingtostartatcollapsed.
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Ibecameaproductliabilityattorney,alitigator,andthatwasactuallymyfirstintroduction
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toeDiscoveryatalargescale.
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Andthatwasformative,certainlyformycareer,whenIdidX-TinShapiro,doingwhite
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colordefenseandinsurancecoveragepolicyholdersidelitigation.
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Andtheretoo,ItookonalotofdiscoveryandthefirsttrueautonomousprojectsIhad
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wererelatedtobiggerprojectdevelopment,likethesequantitativelycomplexprojects,
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pullingalotofinformation,lookingatwhat'shappening,wentin-houseatDelcomicalUnion
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Carbide,MortonSaltandRomanHaas,mycoreclients,andthereIwasintroducedevenmore
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heavilytomultinationalinformationatscale.
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IwasaskedbysomeofmyoutsidecounseltojoinasmallboutiquefirmcalledRedgrave,
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andthenwasreallytrulyimmersedineDiscoveryandinformationgovernance.
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Andafterbeingco-counciledwithBakerHostetlerinoneclientmattercameovertothem,and
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I'vebeenwiththemfor10years.
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AndstartingwitheDiscoveryinparticular,andthenbranchingofftoinformationgovernance,
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andthenamoredevelopedartificialintelligence,bigdataanalytics,andgovernancepractice
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forourclients.
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Andhopefullytheskills,butcertainlytheexperienceandworkamongbenchmarkingorbenchmarked
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clientsexpandedfromthat.
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RosswithJamestalkingaboutbigdata,eDiscovery,informationgovernance,analytics,AI,youpractice
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lawforseveralyearsbeforepursuingacareerfocusedonlegalwritinganddeveloping
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briefcatch.
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Howistechnologychangingthewaylawyersadvocateonbehalfoftheirclients?
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I left the actual practice of law about 20 years ago, and I'd say this is the most exciting
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thing I've ever seen.
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What's going on right now is legal tech on really on steroids.
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As we speak, almost week to week, I do think we're out a bit of a crossroads.
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You'll see an interesting and ever changing mix of fear, sometimes legitimate fear, sometimes
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exaggerated fear of the unknown, fear of being displaced, fear of security on the one hand.
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And then on the other hand, a lot of curiosity, optimism and excitement about the possibilities
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here, including making legal services more accessible to a lot more people.
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I don't think we figured out where we're going to end up on that spectrum of fear and
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evidence, but I'm guessing it's going to be closer to the positive side when all is
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done.
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James, you mentioned that in addition to your experience in law firms, you served as in-house
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counsel, have client expectations of how their lawyers communicate with them changed?
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When you're in-house counsel, I think you are task-oriented, and it's probably along three
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lines.
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One is, to the extent you've got outside counsel that are creating specific documents for
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you, whether they're litigators or they're drafting up some kind of disclosure requirements
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or 10K or something.
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That's relatively self-contained.
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You'd expect that, you can edit it, but you've got a form that's oriented toward that.
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The second part is where you're helping your in-house counsel solve their issues internally,
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and that might be, there's an angle of politics to it.
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There's a perception of cost-center sometimes.
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Clients do not want a 70-page memo on a topic.
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They don't want, "Oh, here's what the law says, you figure it out."
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They want actionable issues.
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Sometimes I'm concerned they're going to take what I write in for it right along, so I have
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to think about the context in which I'm giving advice.
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Clients are working with us.
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They are sharing the room, and I think the work product is moving much more quickly in
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that way.
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Do you think that desire for efficient delivery of legal advice is going to just increase
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and increase as more and more in-house clients realize that with legal technology, law firm
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should be faster and faster?
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Or are they also concerned about legal tech?
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How's legal tech going to affect those expectations?
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It is changing.
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Most of the clients that can afford the bigger law firms are working with multiple sets.
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And if some of those firms start to accelerate the way in which they respond, the directness
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giving actionable answers rather than you figure it out, here's the link to the law.
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You're going to look to who can adapt and get answers quickly, and in part that's because.
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It's more challenging now than it was when I was in-house well over a decade ago.
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You expect answers right away.
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Your internal clients, if you're in-house, now expect answers much more rapidly.
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To the extent that we can further use technologies to increase that pace, that'll happen.
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Ross, moving from clients to judges, given your work with judges around the world, how do
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the kind of communication skills, good writing, crafted positions that James is referring
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to affect the outcomes of bet the company matters?
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During COVID, almost all judges shifted to reading everything they have to read, mainly
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briefs and motions on iPads. And that actually really matters because people are much more
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impatient when they read things on iPads, plus a lot of judges are in that group.
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James mentioned before, more traditional will say, we don't like technology devices in
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the first place.
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Just as James was saying, clients always wanted accurate information quickly.
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Judges now, they have little patients when they are perusing, most is in briefs, especially
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when they're looking at them on screens.
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And there's a real premium, more than ever, I'd say, in having really hard-hitting, compelling,
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introductions and preliminary statements, because frankly, they're reading those pretty carefully
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and then doing a lot of skimming.
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So lots of opportunities to seize on these pranks, and the sort of impatience a lot of
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readers have if you know what you're doing.
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James is part of your practice.
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You help clients draft policies on privacy, information governance, records management, security,
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AI now.
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What's the key to drafting guidelines that people will follow and which can be seamlessly
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enforced?
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We start from the premise that we're covering the rhodor front for what matters to the organization.
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And it is, what are the laws required to the extent they are?
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And we're in that, that choppiness right now with AI.
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We've got a couple standards among Colorado and New York, and then we've got the AICP
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guidance as well as the NIST AI risk management framework.
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So it's great that we have some building blocks that we can start to orient programs and policy
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language toward.
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But there is still a middle ground, and I think it depends on if you need a policy or your
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procedure, are you coming up with a document that's going to be a reference document where
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you need to find things in it, but you wouldn't expect someone to read it all the way through,
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or is it meant to hit a certain point?
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Maybe right now if you've got the influx of generative AI capabilities and people can see a real
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business use for that, and you want to say, that's fine.
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We understand we can't get in the middle of technological adoption, but to better not
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put confidential information in there, or information that we're licensing and we do not
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have certain rights to.
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So we can hone in, be very specific on those higher level points, and then provide for
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the correct or even requisite level of detail to handle some of the other inquiries that
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come in.
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We've started adopting other methods of communication more readily.
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So you might have a much smaller policy statement.
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You can still reference it and then you can still meet certain regulatory or audit requirements.
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Then you have a frequently asked question.
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You have something that you can put out on the website, rather than on an internal document,
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we're seeing a much more fluid environment for where an organization begins and ends.
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How much do you outsource to a third party?
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Do you have a blank labeled website that looks like it's your clients, but it's being run
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by someone else?
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How do you incorporate all of that into an effective policy procedure so that the people
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who are making decisions on behalf of the organization are still aware of it, and all that information
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has been conveyed?
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So there's a practical component to all of this, and it's also trying to make sure the
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right stakeholders, not trying to give them a lot to do.
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I'm trying to give them opportunities to collaborate.
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So they feel as though their orientation and their strategies are at least being considered
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if not directly incorporated.
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What do you think about texting clients?
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Is it true?
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Partners are not texting their clients?
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You will meet the client wherever their need is.
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I had one project that ended up being a multi-year e-discovery opportunity, and it seriously
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was the third person I reached out to when I was sitting at the Hertz office in LAX.
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I tried to direct the conversation back to those channels, but people reach out on LinkedIn.
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People reach out on SMS or through WhatsApp.
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We've seen some industries, especially financial services now, really face some institutional
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challenges, regulatory enforcement about managing, let's say, broker-dealer communication.
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But we have to be and be positioned to be flexible because you're right.
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A client need, it comes from wherever they're looking for an answer, they're not looking
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for a change in method of communication.
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We meet the clients where they are, and I think there's a client expectation that we're
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going to have the right technology platform to allow us to serve them wherever they want
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to reach us.
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There's no way that's compliant, and that's going to protect all the confidentiality and
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privilege of assertions we have.
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Russ, given James's point about law firms trying to meet the clients where they are, as a
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developer of legal technology to help in the drafting process, how do you ensure that
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your tools are evolving with the needs of your users?
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One thing that's really exciting about owning one of these legal tech companies is it's
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so easy to constantly update your product almost instantly in response to not just user
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requests, but user behavior.
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One really exciting thing about an ending product is we have all different constituents, so
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we have lawyers who have requests, but we also have in-house clients who have requests.
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We have judges who say, "Hey, you should be telling people not to use this phrase for that
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phrase."
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And briefs.
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On the one hand, we can always improve.
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We can always innovate with our core products, but on the other, with everything going
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on in AI right now, there's almost no end to the possibilities when it comes to really
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helping lawyers of all types just generate superior legal documents much more quickly.
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A lot of potential still, I think, we really only just begun.
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James, has the craftsmanship involved with creating documents drafting, or even managing
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data in high stakes litigation changed due to technology?
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I hope it's only improved.
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I believe the expectations have gone up.
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The polish is expected.
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Ross is focused on the heart and the meat of it for people who are really looking at compelling
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arguments in terms of phrase.
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If they can see problems, then they're not going to trust those areas where they're not
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deep enough in the weeds to also see issues.
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We've started to see a gradual integration of different technologies which are going to
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allow us to continually improve the work product that we deliver.
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Ideally, we want to focus on those areas.
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They're not replacing practice by any means, but we hope that there's a continual improvement
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in the way in which to deliver those services so that our time and our focus really is in
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those areas that clients expect to hear from us.
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They're not worried about the other things that experience has been smooth out.
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Where there have been challenges is where some practitioners have taken that process
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and delegated it all to the technology.
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Thus, with all that in mind, what new opportunities can law firms realize with artificial intelligence?
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There's a lot you can do to consolidate a lot of partners' styles in the same practice
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area at the same firm.
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You're able to put all those collective habits together.
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I don't mean just assembling a bunch of documents and linking it to what phrases are similar,
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but really things that are partner-specific or firm-specific.
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Then another one, which, again, I think is just beginning is going beyond all those things
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James mentioned are really important, like ensuring consistent fonts and making a systemic
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client's name is not just about correctly the right form, LLC and the like, but actually
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the next stage, at least for companies like ours, is really getting into things like logic
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and have you actually skipped a step in your explanation?
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Are you going into too much detail on a point?
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Things that are really just weren't possible until this recent influx of incredible chat
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GPT-like products.
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James, how do you see law firms taking advantage of AI-empowered tools for litigators and
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practitioners going forward?
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I don't think it's a replacement.
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It's a slow adoption.
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It's exciting for us, I think in part because we're digging into the technologies.
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We're asking what I think are difficult questions.
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It's slow adoption.
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It's measured.
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It's intentional.
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And clients are starting to expect it.
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They're saying, "Hell us more about how you're using these technologies to improve the
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delivery of legal services to us because we're doing it and you can help us as we start
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to roll this into practice."
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If you're going to use it as part of your practice, you have to understand how it works
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or you have to get someone who really understands how it works because it's still your certification,
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it's still your license that you're working under.
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You're getting to the point where you can't practice without the integration of these things.
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As we see the integration to co-pilot or some of these other technologies into it, you
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can out avoid that progress.
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There was a really interesting post recently I linked in, but that lawyers were going to
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become the ideal prompt engineers, which of course is counterintuitive.
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And I own the legal tech company and employee developers and I don't know how to code.
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If you want to just, for example, create a custom GPT.
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Right now you can create your own products using normal, regular, English, and in fact you're
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rewarded for using normal, regular, plain, clear English, which is why for one's lawyers
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are being praised instead of criticized.
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That maybe lawyers are actually better than a lot of technical people that are handling
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some of these challenges.
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The practice of law is steeped in ambiguity and I don't get easy questions that frequently.
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We're too expensive of that.
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There aren't necessarily easy answers.
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You're analogizing, you're drawing comparisons.
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Understanding that the way in which these technologies work for the most part is very similar.
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You're coming back with an approach.
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You're not coming back with the right answer.
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Frankly, even within machine learning systems and 2+2, likely is 4.
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In some ways, more senior attorney adoption is some of these technologies.
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So, here's what's already been happening, which is you assign a task out to a more junior
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attorney or another practitioner and they bring you back work product and you trust but verify
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and the longer you work with it, the more you trust but you always verify.
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It's just a matter of course, being responsible with those tools and those technologies.
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And if it saves time, there are increasing pressures from clients, especially in the face
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of rising billing rates, for us to demonstrate how we're changing the value.
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TVs get less expensive.
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It has not been the case for us of how we're we going to turn and continue to demonstrate
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the partnership in the way in which we're supporting our clients and then by extension,
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they're defensive our budgets and our spend.
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This is Ari Kappeland speaking with James Sheerr, a partner at Baker Hosteltler who serves
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as the co-leader of the emerging technology team of Baker Hosteltler's Digital Assets
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and Data Management Group and Ross Gouvermann, the founder and CEO of Law Catch, the developer
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of Brief Catch, a software platform designed to elevate legal writing which has recently
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introduced new generated AI features for lawyers and legal professionals.
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James Ross, that was a fantastic conversation.
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Thank you both so much.
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Thank you, as well, Ari.
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Yeah, thanks both.
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Thank you for listening to the reinventing professionals podcast.
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Visit reinventingprofessionals.com or Ari Kappeland advisors.com to learn more.
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[MUSIC]
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WelcometoReinvitingProfessionals,apodcasthostedbyindustryanalystAriKaplan,
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whichsharesideas,guidanceandperspectivesfrommarketleadersshapingthenextgeneration
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oflegalandprofessionalservices.
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ThisisAriKaplanandI'mspeakingtodaywithJamesSheerer,apartneratBakerHostetler,
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whoservesastheco-leaderoftheemergingtechnologyteamofBakerHostetler'sdigital
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assetsanddatamanagementgroupandRossGubrimon,thefounderandCEOofLawCatch,
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thedeveloperofReefCatch,asoftwareplatformdesignedtoelevatelegalwriting,whichhas
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recentlyintroducednewgenerativeAIfeaturesforlawyersandlegalprofessionals.
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JamesRoss,greattoseeyou.
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Likewise,thankyou.
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James,tellusaboutyourbackgroundandyourpracticeatBakerHostetler.
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I'mapartneratBaker,butIstartedatAlaskain2002.
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Iwassupposedtostartasatransactionalattorneylookingattelecommunicationissues,but
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thefirmIwasgoingtostartatcollapsed.
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Ibecameaproductliabilityattorney,alitigator,andthatwasactuallymyfirstintroduction
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toeDiscoveryatalargescale.
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Andthatwasformative,certainlyformycareer,whenIdidX-TinShapiro,doingwhite
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colordefenseandinsurancecoveragepolicyholdersidelitigation.
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Andtheretoo,ItookonalotofdiscoveryandthefirsttrueautonomousprojectsIhad
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wererelatedtobiggerprojectdevelopment,likethesequantitativelycomplexprojects,
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pullingalotofinformation,lookingatwhat'shappening,wentin-houseatDelcomicalUnion
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Carbide,MortonSaltandRomanHaas,mycoreclients,andthereIwasintroducedevenmore
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heavilytomultinationalinformationatscale.
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IwasaskedbysomeofmyoutsidecounseltojoinasmallboutiquefirmcalledRedgrave,
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andthenwasreallytrulyimmersedineDiscoveryandinformationgovernance.
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Andafterbeingco-counciledwithBakerHostetlerinoneclientmattercameovertothem,and
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I'vebeenwiththemfor10years.
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AndstartingwitheDiscoveryinparticular,andthenbranchingofftoinformationgovernance,
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andthenamoredevelopedartificialintelligence,bigdataanalytics,andgovernancepractice
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forourclients.
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Andhopefullytheskills,butcertainlytheexperienceandworkamongbenchmarkingorbenchmarked
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clientsexpandedfromthat.
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RosswithJamestalkingaboutbigdata,eDiscovery,informationgovernance,analytics,AI,youpractice
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lawforseveralyearsbeforepursuingacareerfocusedonlegalwritinganddeveloping
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briefcatch.
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Howistechnologychangingthewaylawyersadvocateonbehalfoftheirclients?
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I left the actual practice of law about 20 years ago, and I'd say this is the most exciting
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thing I've ever seen.
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What's going on right now is legal tech on really on steroids.
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As we speak, almost week to week, I do think we're out a bit of a crossroads.
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You'll see an interesting and ever changing mix of fear, sometimes legitimate fear, sometimes
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exaggerated fear of the unknown, fear of being displaced, fear of security on the one hand.
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And then on the other hand, a lot of curiosity, optimism and excitement about the possibilities
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here, including making legal services more accessible to a lot more people.
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I don't think we figured out where we're going to end up on that spectrum of fear and
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evidence, but I'm guessing it's going to be closer to the positive side when all is
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done.
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James, you mentioned that in addition to your experience in law firms, you served as in-house
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counsel, have client expectations of how their lawyers communicate with them changed?
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When you're in-house counsel, I think you are task-oriented, and it's probably along three
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lines.
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One is, to the extent you've got outside counsel that are creating specific documents for
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you, whether they're litigators or they're drafting up some kind of disclosure requirements
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or 10K or something.
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That's relatively self-contained.
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You'd expect that, you can edit it, but you've got a form that's oriented toward that.
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The second part is where you're helping your in-house counsel solve their issues internally,
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and that might be, there's an angle of politics to it.
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There's a perception of cost-center sometimes.
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Clients do not want a 70-page memo on a topic.
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They don't want, "Oh, here's what the law says, you figure it out."
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They want actionable issues.
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Sometimes I'm concerned they're going to take what I write in for it right along, so I have
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to think about the context in which I'm giving advice.
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Clients are working with us.
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They are sharing the room, and I think the work product is moving much more quickly in
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that way.
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Do you think that desire for efficient delivery of legal advice is going to just increase
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and increase as more and more in-house clients realize that with legal technology, law firm
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should be faster and faster?
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Or are they also concerned about legal tech?
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How's legal tech going to affect those expectations?
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It is changing.
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Most of the clients that can afford the bigger law firms are working with multiple sets.
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And if some of those firms start to accelerate the way in which they respond, the directness
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giving actionable answers rather than you figure it out, here's the link to the law.
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You're going to look to who can adapt and get answers quickly, and in part that's because.
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It's more challenging now than it was when I was in-house well over a decade ago.
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You expect answers right away.
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Your internal clients, if you're in-house, now expect answers much more rapidly.
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To the extent that we can further use technologies to increase that pace, that'll happen.
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Ross, moving from clients to judges, given your work with judges around the world, how do
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the kind of communication skills, good writing, crafted positions that James is referring
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to affect the outcomes of bet the company matters?
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During COVID, almost all judges shifted to reading everything they have to read, mainly
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briefs and motions on iPads. And that actually really matters because people are much more
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impatient when they read things on iPads, plus a lot of judges are in that group.
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James mentioned before, more traditional will say, we don't like technology devices in
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the first place.
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Just as James was saying, clients always wanted accurate information quickly.
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Judges now, they have little patients when they are perusing, most is in briefs, especially
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when they're looking at them on screens.
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And there's a real premium, more than ever, I'd say, in having really hard-hitting, compelling,
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introductions and preliminary statements, because frankly, they're reading those pretty carefully
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and then doing a lot of skimming.
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So lots of opportunities to seize on these pranks, and the sort of impatience a lot of
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readers have if you know what you're doing.
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James is part of your practice.
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You help clients draft policies on privacy, information governance, records management, security,
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AI now.
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What's the key to drafting guidelines that people will follow and which can be seamlessly
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enforced?
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We start from the premise that we're covering the rhodor front for what matters to the organization.
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And it is, what are the laws required to the extent they are?
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And we're in that, that choppiness right now with AI.
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We've got a couple standards among Colorado and New York, and then we've got the AICP
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guidance as well as the NIST AI risk management framework.
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So it's great that we have some building blocks that we can start to orient programs and policy
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language toward.
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But there is still a middle ground, and I think it depends on if you need a policy or your
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procedure, are you coming up with a document that's going to be a reference document where
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you need to find things in it, but you wouldn't expect someone to read it all the way through,
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or is it meant to hit a certain point?
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Maybe right now if you've got the influx of generative AI capabilities and people can see a real
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business use for that, and you want to say, that's fine.
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We understand we can't get in the middle of technological adoption, but to better not
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put confidential information in there, or information that we're licensing and we do not
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have certain rights to.
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So we can hone in, be very specific on those higher level points, and then provide for
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the correct or even requisite level of detail to handle some of the other inquiries that
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come in.
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We've started adopting other methods of communication more readily.
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So you might have a much smaller policy statement.
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You can still reference it and then you can still meet certain regulatory or audit requirements.
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Then you have a frequently asked question.
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You have something that you can put out on the website, rather than on an internal document,
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we're seeing a much more fluid environment for where an organization begins and ends.
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How much do you outsource to a third party?
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Do you have a blank labeled website that looks like it's your clients, but it's being run
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by someone else?
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How do you incorporate all of that into an effective policy procedure so that the people
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who are making decisions on behalf of the organization are still aware of it, and all that information
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has been conveyed?
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So there's a practical component to all of this, and it's also trying to make sure the
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right stakeholders, not trying to give them a lot to do.
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I'm trying to give them opportunities to collaborate.
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So they feel as though their orientation and their strategies are at least being considered
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if not directly incorporated.
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What do you think about texting clients?
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Is it true?
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Partners are not texting their clients?
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You will meet the client wherever their need is.
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I had one project that ended up being a multi-year e-discovery opportunity, and it seriously
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was the third person I reached out to when I was sitting at the Hertz office in LAX.
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I tried to direct the conversation back to those channels, but people reach out on LinkedIn.
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People reach out on SMS or through WhatsApp.
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We've seen some industries, especially financial services now, really face some institutional
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challenges, regulatory enforcement about managing, let's say, broker-dealer communication.
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But we have to be and be positioned to be flexible because you're right.
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A client need, it comes from wherever they're looking for an answer, they're not looking
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for a change in method of communication.
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We meet the clients where they are, and I think there's a client expectation that we're
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going to have the right technology platform to allow us to serve them wherever they want
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to reach us.
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There's no way that's compliant, and that's going to protect all the confidentiality and
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privilege of assertions we have.
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Russ, given James's point about law firms trying to meet the clients where they are, as a
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developer of legal technology to help in the drafting process, how do you ensure that
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your tools are evolving with the needs of your users?
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One thing that's really exciting about owning one of these legal tech companies is it's
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so easy to constantly update your product almost instantly in response to not just user
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requests, but user behavior.
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One really exciting thing about an ending product is we have all different constituents, so
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we have lawyers who have requests, but we also have in-house clients who have requests.
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We have judges who say, "Hey, you should be telling people not to use this phrase for that
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phrase."
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And briefs.
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On the one hand, we can always improve.
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We can always innovate with our core products, but on the other, with everything going
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on in AI right now, there's almost no end to the possibilities when it comes to really
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helping lawyers of all types just generate superior legal documents much more quickly.
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A lot of potential still, I think, we really only just begun.
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James, has the craftsmanship involved with creating documents drafting, or even managing
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data in high stakes litigation changed due to technology?
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I hope it's only improved.
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I believe the expectations have gone up.
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The polish is expected.
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Ross is focused on the heart and the meat of it for people who are really looking at compelling
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arguments in terms of phrase.
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If they can see problems, then they're not going to trust those areas where they're not
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deep enough in the weeds to also see issues.
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We've started to see a gradual integration of different technologies which are going to
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allow us to continually improve the work product that we deliver.
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Ideally, we want to focus on those areas.
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They're not replacing practice by any means, but we hope that there's a continual improvement
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in the way in which to deliver those services so that our time and our focus really is in
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those areas that clients expect to hear from us.
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They're not worried about the other things that experience has been smooth out.
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Where there have been challenges is where some practitioners have taken that process
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and delegated it all to the technology.
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Thus, with all that in mind, what new opportunities can law firms realize with artificial intelligence?
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There's a lot you can do to consolidate a lot of partners' styles in the same practice
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area at the same firm.
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You're able to put all those collective habits together.
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I don't mean just assembling a bunch of documents and linking it to what phrases are similar,
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but really things that are partner-specific or firm-specific.
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Then another one, which, again, I think is just beginning is going beyond all those things
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James mentioned are really important, like ensuring consistent fonts and making a systemic
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client's name is not just about correctly the right form, LLC and the like, but actually
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the next stage, at least for companies like ours, is really getting into things like logic
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and have you actually skipped a step in your explanation?
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Are you going into too much detail on a point?
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Things that are really just weren't possible until this recent influx of incredible chat
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GPT-like products.
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James, how do you see law firms taking advantage of AI-empowered tools for litigators and
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practitioners going forward?
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I don't think it's a replacement.
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It's a slow adoption.
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It's exciting for us, I think in part because we're digging into the technologies.
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We're asking what I think are difficult questions.
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It's slow adoption.
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It's measured.
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It's intentional.
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And clients are starting to expect it.
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They're saying, "Hell us more about how you're using these technologies to improve the
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delivery of legal services to us because we're doing it and you can help us as we start
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to roll this into practice."
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If you're going to use it as part of your practice, you have to understand how it works
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or you have to get someone who really understands how it works because it's still your certification,
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it's still your license that you're working under.
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You're getting to the point where you can't practice without the integration of these things.
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As we see the integration to co-pilot or some of these other technologies into it, you
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can out avoid that progress.
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There was a really interesting post recently I linked in, but that lawyers were going to
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become the ideal prompt engineers, which of course is counterintuitive.
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And I own the legal tech company and employee developers and I don't know how to code.
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If you want to just, for example, create a custom GPT.
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Right now you can create your own products using normal, regular, English, and in fact you're
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rewarded for using normal, regular, plain, clear English, which is why for one's lawyers
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are being praised instead of criticized.
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That maybe lawyers are actually better than a lot of technical people that are handling
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some of these challenges.
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The practice of law is steeped in ambiguity and I don't get easy questions that frequently.
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We're too expensive of that.
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There aren't necessarily easy answers.
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You're analogizing, you're drawing comparisons.
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Understanding that the way in which these technologies work for the most part is very similar.
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You're coming back with an approach.
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You're not coming back with the right answer.
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Frankly, even within machine learning systems and 2+2, likely is 4.
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In some ways, more senior attorney adoption is some of these technologies.
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So, here's what's already been happening, which is you assign a task out to a more junior
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attorney or another practitioner and they bring you back work product and you trust but verify
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and the longer you work with it, the more you trust but you always verify.
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It's just a matter of course, being responsible with those tools and those technologies.
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And if it saves time, there are increasing pressures from clients, especially in the face
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of rising billing rates, for us to demonstrate how we're changing the value.
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TVs get less expensive.
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It has not been the case for us of how we're we going to turn and continue to demonstrate
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the partnership in the way in which we're supporting our clients and then by extension,
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they're defensive our budgets and our spend.
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This is Ari Kappeland speaking with James Sheerr, a partner at Baker Hosteltler who serves
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as the co-leader of the emerging technology team of Baker Hosteltler's Digital Assets
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and Data Management Group and Ross Gouvermann, the founder and CEO of Law Catch, the developer
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of Brief Catch, a software platform designed to elevate legal writing which has recently
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introduced new generated AI features for lawyers and legal professionals.
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James Ross, that was a fantastic conversation.
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Thank you both so much.
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Thank you, as well, Ari.
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Yeah, thanks both.
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Thank you for listening to the reinventing professionals podcast.
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Visit reinventingprofessionals.com or Ari Kappeland advisors.com to learn more.
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