Fringe Legal Presents Bots @ Work

Fringe Legal Presents Bots @ Work

By Abhijat SaraswatBusinessTechnology
Download on the App Store

Fringe Legal Presents Bots @ Work episodes

  • Alma Asay - KM and Innovation at the Am Law 200 firms

    Alma is an Evangelist at Litera. Alma is a legal technology expert and trusted advisor to Litera clients, helping them to bring innovative ways of thinking and practice to life. Previously, Alma was the Chief Innovation Officer, Legal Solutions, at Integreon Discovery Solutions. Alma joined Integreon as part of its acquisition of her litigation management software business, Allegory, where she was Founder and CEO.

    Alma has been researching the prevalence of knowledge management and innovation roles across the Am Law 200 firms. 

    In this episode:

    • we go through her findings which were frankly shocking to the both of us
    • we look at firms that are doing well in functionally and practically serving the KM and Innovation function
    • what's missing, the myth of km and innovation being widespread across the profession
    • the cost of not having these roles filled at your firm
    • how Alma plans to use the information


    This episode is presented a little differently. Alma and I were having such a great conversation that I just hit record. So we'll start mid-flow and the conversation should feel raw but full of useful insights.

    Just one more thing, if you haven't head over to FringeLegal.com and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. I share 3-5 interesting finds each week as well as bonus content, such as episode transcripts and more. Over 500 people receive it each week, come join us.

    You can find Alma on LinkedIn and Twitter.

    27 min
  • S3E10 Mike Whelan on legal supply chain

    Mike Whelan, Jr.

     

    We think we understand the complexity of the supply chain, but that complexity in a weird way, feeds efficiency, cost control, and quality in a way that we just wouldn't expect. We think we're all artisans. And of course, in a big firm, [and] in law school, we're taught to be sort of artisanal.

     

    Mike has worked in logistics, solo law practice, and legal media. He teaches about the overlaps between those activities and what they mean for attorneys and the companies that aim to serve them.

    Through his speaking, consulting, and writing, Mike aims to improve the lives of solo attorneys. The legal industry has many well-documented struggles. If we can harness the minds and compassion of solos—roughly half of the profession—we can have real impact on an array of social issues, including access to justice. That is Mike’s mission.

     

    Mike lives with his wife, four children, dog, two geckos, four cats, two birds, and hedgehog in the Kansas City area. (He needs a nap). Mike is also the host of the Lawyer Forward Podcast.


    Since people think of the supply chain as a chain, I would just say that a law firm can operate that way. And that's how I talk about it.

    You know, there are handoffs, you collaborate with people outside of the firm. Somebody's overseeing it, which I think is fundamental to this thing working, but in my dream world, there's not just Bobby gives/does a project, gives it to Sally who does a piece who gives it to Bobby. In my dream world, there are feedback loops of information inside these communities.

    So in big firms, they refer to this knowledge management, which different firms are better and worse at it. But, but that is a feedback loop. That is the big firms saying we can get smarter as a firm by capturing these things that we keep using. And our knowledge can grow exponentially as we work together with each other.

    We're not just relying on the individual being really smart and individual silos, which is how a lot of big firms work because they're so specialized, but we can say what's the power of the network. And they're really smart. Big firms are figuring out how to do that.

     

     

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    • Mike’s journey from logistics to law to being an author 
    • The importance of systems-level thinking in the legal profession
    • Why law schools need to re-evaluate how to teach and prepare students for the practice and business of law
    • What is the legal supply chain and why it’s important to understand
    • Background to the Churn model created in law

    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 


    It is just impossible to be available all the time and still do the work of expertise. And in our really complex, modern legal system. Clients expect both of those. They expect you to be a super nerd about the exact thing that they're dealing with because they saw that on TV.

    And then they expect you to be incredibly responsive and there for them all the time because that's what Amazon taught them.

     


    You can get a copy of Mike’s book - Lawyer Forward on Amazon. Find out more about Mike on his website, and connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

     

     

     

     

    42 min
  • S3E9 Dr Allan McCay on Neuroscience, Ethics and Criminal Law

    Dr. Allan McCay has a PhD in Law (University of Sydney), is an admitted solicitor in Scotland, Hong Kong, New South Wales, and Tasmania (Australia). He is an author of several books, and teaches at the University of Sydney Foundation Program and will again be lecturing in Criminal Law at the University of Sydney Law School in semester 2, 2020. 

     

     

    And so, on that view, it seems like the human consciousness doesn't seem to add much because ultimately human decision making is algorithmic and as these algorithmic machines are getting better and better they will surpass us. And, there are dire implications for the future work.  
     
    As I was reading that, I kept from thinking, well if David Hodgson's view is right then that's not, that's not true. So if David Hodgson's view is right then there is some kind of advantage in the workplace from being a conscious human and the certain kinds of humans can, engage in a certain kind of judgment, when they make decisions that are not open to a non-conscious algorithmic machine. 
     
    So in a nutshell: consciousness provides a facility for judgment in the past, have probably had an evolutionary advantage, that is lacking in algorithmic non-conscious machines. According to my paper, which uses David Hodgkin's views this may be economically advantageous to us because using this judgment that we have as a result being conscious may provide an advantage in the workplace.

     

     

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    • Allan’s interest in neuroscience, ethics and the law
    • What advantage humans may or may not have over artificial intelligent agents in the workplace of the future
    • Impact of neuroscientific evidence in sentencing. Could the presence of certain protein markers (e.g, MAOA) lead to a plea for mitigation in sentencing? 
    • What is the Australian Neurolaw Database 
    • What are brain-computer interfaces (BCI) 
    • The possibility of people committing offenses by way of BCI
      • We talk through some hypotheticals - how BCI offenses challenge the core of criminal law
    • How might human consciousness impact the future of work, against the future of algorithmic machines that will soon surpass us in decision making

    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 


    The question of what, advantages humans may or may not have over Artificially intelligent agents in the workplace of the future.


    You can find out more about Allan on his website. Connect with him on LinkedIn, and Twitter.

     

    You can explore Allan’s books below:

    • Free Will and the Law
    • Neurointerventions and the Law

     

     

    54 min
  • S3E8 Chrissie Wolfe of Law and Broader

    Chrissie Wolfe is a solicitor in Irwin Mitchell's international personal injury team, specializing in claims arising outside of England and Wales. She also runs the YouTube channel, Law and Broader.

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    • Chrissie’s interesting path to law, including homeschooling
    • Going from bad A-levels, pivoting from studying biology to law
    • How Chrissie saw a need for content to be delivered in a specific way (YouTube/video) and just dove right in. The thought process behind it, and how she was able to grow her channel to over 3k subscribers
    • Skills important now and those that may need to be honed by future lawyers
    • The link between lawtech and client retention
    • Finding a balance between work and other interest

    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher

    You can find Chrissie on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and on her YouTube channel, Law and Broader.

    40 min
  • S3E7 Katrina Gowans on managing change
    It's really important to spend that initial time on the vision. The 'why are we doing it?' And, the next sort of stage for me was them saying -  the technology that we were adopting was really just a tool to get us on that vision. It's not the solution, because we're the solution. Like how we use it is the solution, but here's the tool that we're going to start with for us on our vision.

    Then there was a lot of planning. The next thing is really being quite studious, really detail-oriented about planning, and planning some more; having a communication strategy, thinking about how you talk to different lawyers. If people email them, if you have weekly standups and, I learned quite early on, for example, that sending emails every day, just didn't cut through. 

    Because the lawyer never read them. So using different channels to communicate the change that's coming is very important and being quite sensitive to the audience. And that's my next point: thinking about the audience because you're going to have change champions in your audience, you're going to have people that are very reluctant and then you can have everybody in between. 

     

    We recorded this conversation in Feb 2020, and Katrina then also spoke at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit. During that session, she expanded much further into the knowledge-based way of working. It’s well worth a watch, and Katrina answers the following thesis: what do you do to capture and share the lawyers’ knowledge, both for the current team and for the future? Do you have a strategic plan to capture that knowledge and a culture aimed at making this a priority?

     

    My caution to everybody's always, you know, think about what you're spending on the technology, but then also think about what you're spending both in terms of money and time in terms of the implementation and the adoption of that technology because the measure of success isn't the software, It's how your team adopts it and uses it. So that's where your focus should be

     

     

    Build up a knowledge-based way of working, and what that really means is: the legal team's biggest asset is everything in the brains of the lawyers in the team. All the experience that they bring to their job every day. But what I think many legal teams, including ours, had not done terrifically well at in the past that I actually think, by contrast, a lot of law firms do well is capturing that knowledge.
    So building a central repository so that you can share it with each other now and for the future. So we have been on a journey for this financial year to sort of build up firstly, a team culture to sort of really embed in our lawyers, the importance of anything that you learn, you share, and how you do that.

     

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    1. Katrina’s journey from private practice to inhouse to leading a transformation initiative
    2. One simply thing private practice lawyers can do to add value to their clients 
    3. Build up a knowledge-based way of working - what it means and how to do it
    4. How Katrina and her team measure the success and effectiveness of internal initiatives
    5. Utilizing technology as a catalyst for innovation and managing the change project that comes with it
    6. Practical suggestions for in-house legal teams as they tackle internal projects, including if you have a large, medium, or a small team.

    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

     


    So I also spent a lot of time, once we launched our system and trained our lawyers, and we started in it, going around and sitting down and saying: "what are your issues"? Give me issues. And also, what are your ideas for improving it? And I logged them all. Then as I slowly went through them all, I kept closing the loop either directly with the lawyer or with the team.

    And I'd say, I fixed this problem now, or I've let everybody know we're making this change to our system because so-and-so saw that this was a great idea or gapping the technology that we had. Where that gets you to is I think somewhere where the team actually owns the technology and they really are thinking about it's theirs.

    How do they continue to maximize it? It's got a very open dialogue about continuous improvement. Everybody knows that it's never going to be a hundred percent perfect, technology never is, but everybody's got a very, forward-looking approach to how we're gonna use it. And, keeping on, that continuous improvement cycle.

    Connect with Katrina on LinkedIn.

    44 min
  • S3E6 Karina Vazirova on chess, regtech and disruption
    In legal, to me, it will be about the challenger law firms... just have to flip a few things upside down. And, introduce a disruptive new model of doing business in this space. And that will happen in law, and you see this already, you see this with, for example, Deloitte legal, coming out. And there are a few new-law law firms, as well that are in this space and are trying different models.

     

    We recorded this conversation in Feb 2020, and of course, the world changed dramatically since then. As an accompaniment, I would recommend watching Karina’s talk at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit, where she shares how to run successful SaaS implementation projects.

     

    In technology, when you're building products and in any industry that you look at that has been disrupted and innovated over time, all of them share in common, failing fast and trying different things. And you know, they say only 1 in 10 disruptors or startups will work out. The other nine will fail, but you kind of need that churn, that turnover in the markets of different players trying and failing and learning from each other in order to get that 1 out of 10 that is successful. 

    And that is true in a market, and it's also true within an individual organization where if you don't have that culture of trying failing, then it's much harder to learn from mistakes and it is much harder to finally get to a solution that works.

     

     

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    • Karina’s journey to becoming a chess master
    • Going from chess to legal tech to reg tech to founding her own agency
    • What is reg tech, and the importance of compliance 
    • The three pillars of KV Labs and why they matter: design, build and launch
    • Importance of UI/UX in product design
    • The concept of challenger law firms, and how they might disrupt the legal profession

    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

     

     


    It's just that inevitably compliance is becoming more and more a strategic function. It's no longer just about knowing what you can and cannot do and responding to internal requests. it is just inevitable becoming more strategic because the industry is becoming more complex as well. And that's what RegTech is really about - at the end of the day, enabling that function.

    You can learn more about KV Labs here, and find Karina on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

    50 min
  • S3.E5 Sam Moore of Burness Paull on skills for future lawyers

    Sam leads business transformation projects across every division of Burness Paull. In particular, Sam helps teams within the firm to identify opportunities for automation and/or augmented workflows, making sure that Burness Paull takes full advantage of innovations in legal technology in delivering our services and delighting our clients.

    There's an old saying that there are three kinds of work in the world: there's good work, there's fast work, and there's cheap work - you can pick any two you like. And I, I think, increasingly what we are trying to do with professionals is we're trying to achieve all three because clients expect us to achieve all three. And you can't necessarily do that by just doing things the same way you've always done them

     

    We recorded this conversation in Nov 2019, and of course, the world changed dramatically since then. As an accompaniment, I would recommend watching Sam’s talk at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit, which was recorded in May 2020. It provides great juxtaposition for how his role has evolved in just a few months. And, interestingly, how many of the future skills are needed today. 

     

    Law firms are having to become more comfortable with these new roles and it's very hard to peg some of these new roles, where they sit in the typical hierarchical structure of a law firm. They don't really sit anywhere. And that's a challenge for the profession to get its head around that. You may have to be a bit more flexible about, essentially your, corporate structure to find the right place to put these important skillsets. 

     

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    • Sam’s path to becoming an Innovation Manager 
    • What does the Scottish Legal Technologist Accreditation mean
    • The transition from a legal technologist to an innovation manager
    • How having an in-house perspective adds tremendous value to the clients
    • Skills for future lawyers 
      • Basic IT skills
      • Understanding of data analytics (example: how it might apply to pricing)
      • Better familiarity with remote working - this goes without saying now but we recorded this in November 2019, and it was great foresight. You can learn more about how Sam’s role has been impacted in the post-COVID19 world from his talk at the Fringe Legal Virtual Summit. 
      • Being aware of data and cybersecurity issues

    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

     

    My first experience of working with the team of Burness Paull was wearing my client hat. I'm seeing how information is being sent across, seeing how project updates are being provided, and also seeing where the sticky points are in terms of routine transactions. So when I came back over to the lawyer side of the table, I could look out for the work I was doing and think, okay, I know this particular area of the project here is going to cause some difficulties.

     

    You can find Sam on LinkedIn and Twitter

    37 min
  • Bonus: Shannon Desmarais - practicalities of returning to work
    when we come back to work, it's going to be really interesting how we'll be able to help support the remote worker as well as those that, want to maintain some level of tradition.


    Shannon is a successful outsourced solution professional with 25 years of law firm experience.  Shannon has been with Canon 21 years originally serving as the Midwest Operations Manager for 10 years where she and her service team implemented and managed some of our largest and most innovative law firm accounts.  Having been a Facility & Services Manager for a national law firm prior to joining Canon, Shannon has the unique ability to understand law firm requirements from a client and provider perspective.

     

    Documents services and the ability to move away from, print is going to be probably the largest area of opportunity. And the best use of the support structure and also,  just driving efficiency and in those areas. 

     

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    • How long firms are planning for the return to work
    • Where are some areas of change that Shannon and her colleagues are seeing
    • Some practical, and low-tech approaches that firms will need to implement to make people feel comfortable as they return to work
    • What are some differences between leadership in corporate vs law firms

    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 

     

    leadership in some of our corporate clients is really taking this opportunity to say when you come back to work, it's going to look like this rather than let's get you back to work and, let's figure it out along the way.


    You can find Shannon on LinkedIn

    17 min
  • S3.E4 Maziar Jamnejad on the spectrum of innovation in legal practices
    I'm not sure that AI has changed what we do more than electricity did, and somehow they [lawyers] were able to absorb that. So actually, you know, where's the gap, we always assume they can't absorb technology, but maybe they can. 


    Maz will also be speaking at the 2020 Fringe Legal Virtual Summit, where he will expand on many of these items. Register at www.fringelegal.com/summit

    if you look at the time spent on talking about the subject versus the number of real-world effects, it's not what you'd expect.quite a lot of lawyers see that job as being artisanal. You know, they are they all skilled craftsman doing something that's too complicated for anyone else to comprehend

    In this episode you'll learn about:

    • The wide spectrum of innovation found within law firms and legal practices
    • The ask to make complicated disciples more simple so it can be spread to different types of lawyers
    • How to practically approach innovation conversation with lawyers
    • How to practically approach innovation conversation with clients and in-house teams
    • How to identify the intervention points that can have a significant impact on the delivery of quality work


    SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW:  iTunes // Spotify // Pocket Casts // Stitcher 



    I find the in house legal teams are normally really conscientious. They're just desperate to do the best job that they possibly can for the business and feel a bit kind of sad because a lot of the time they can't turn things around as quickly as they want to.

    Or they have to say no to people. And, then you try and work out, well, what are the intervention points that are most likely going to help them achieve that.


    You can find Maziar on LinkedIn and Twitter

    48 min

About Fringe Legal Presents Bots @ Work

From the publisher's feed

Bots at Work is the new season from Fringe Legal, which explores how AI is changing the way work gets done, with a focus on real-world impact over hype. It looks at how operators, builders, and…