The Legalpreneurs Sandbox

There's little more fundamental to every business than revenue. In law firms, for a while now, that's been measured by the billable hour.

In most law firms today, we still wrap up hours billed in the same parcel as expertise, performance, and value.

That's a BIG problem and it's getting bigger as AI and particularly generative AI is completing tasks faster, better, and cheaper AND starting to advance into complex problem solving too!

So, what does that mean for law firms? Can we/should we all immediately convert to fixed fees, subscriptions and/or value-based pricing or something entirely new? What happens if we do? What happens if we don't? Where do we go to figure it out?

We chatted about all of that and more on 16 April 2025 in the third podcast in CLI's Legal GenAI Conversations Series on Will GenAI kill the billable hour…ever? Terri Mottershead, Executive Director of the Centre for Legal Innovation was joined by three amazing guests with a wealth of experience to share from Australia and New Zealand:

• Melissa Lyon, Executive Director & Experience Designer, Hive Legal and CLI Advisory Board member
• Gene Turner, Managing Director, LawHawk and CLI Advisory Board member
• Tessa van Duyn, CEO and Practice Leader, Moores and CLI Advisory Board member

Topics covered in this episode included:

• Whether generative AI has put pressure on law firms to reconsider the billable hour, or if it is still mostly hype
• What are the most viable alternative fee models are and how if generative AI making these more attractive or feasible
• The key advantages and disadvantages of moving away from the billable hour toward alternative fee arrangements in a GenAI powered legal landscape
• How law firms have managed the impact of alternative models on lawyer and allied legal professional remuneration, bonuses, performance reviews and career progression
• The key focus for law firms to have in mind when deciding to move from the billable hour model

You'll find details about the other topics we'll be discussing in this series here.

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you'll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Don't forget to join CLI's free Legal Generative AI Community here – it's a lightly curated daily news feed on all things legal GenAI.

Every aspect of legal practice is transforming before our eyes with AI as the catalyst and the enabler. It's a challenging time for law firm leaders - it's definitely not a role for the faint hearted.

On 18 March 2025, in the second podcast in CLI's Legal GenAI Conversations Series Terri Mottershead, Executive Director of the Centre for Legal Innovation was joined by three law firm leaders from Australia and New Zealand to discuss this and much more in Legal leaders in the AI era – Are we there yet?

• Simon Newcomb, Partner, Clayton Utz
• Dan Proietto, Chief Executive Partner, Lander & Rogers
• Prue Tyler, Founder and Director, SHIFT Advisory Limited

Topics covered in this session included:

• Whether law firm leaders need to think differently and lead differently in the AI era
• Whether AI demanded a fundamental rethink of law firm structures, billing models, and governance and if so, how?
• How you reskill lawyers, attract new talent, create multidisciplinary teams, and redefine roles to thrive alongside AI
• How you introduce and embed AI without overwhelming everyone in the process
• With AI democratising legal knowledge and making legal services/products/solutions more accessible, how law firms can stand out, create, and sustain unique value
• Where law firms need to be on the AI Maturity Scale in the next 12 months, why, and how they will know if they have hit the mark

You'll find details about the other topics we'll be discussing in this series here.

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you'll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Don't forget to join CLI's free Legal Generative AI Community here – it's a lightly curated daily news feed on all things legal GenAI.

Generative AI has created a critical role for educators. Everyone is learning something new, and educators know how to make that meaningful and stick. Whether the tech is forcing us to challenge traditional mindsets, understand a new context for our work, experiment with new ways to work, or embrace different ways to collaborate with different people so we find the right solutions to new issues, educators have a pivotal role to play.

In this session, we chatted with three professors in the US who took their individual experiences with generative AI, and their learnings in their respective disciplines, to create a resource and community for legal educators to learn, share, and do more with this tech – they called it The Law Profs GenAI Sandbox.

Our discussion with the fabulous founders of the Sandbox: Will Monroe, Assistant Director for Instructional Technology, LSU Law Library, LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center; Tracy Norton, Assistant Professor of Law, Erick Vincent Anderson Professor, LSU Law Center; and Susan Tanner, Assistant Professor of Law, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville, was enlightening and inspiring.

We kicked off with where generative AI is taking higher education; delved into how the Sandbox started and where it might go next; and concluded with benchmarking where and how educators can embrace the tech. But, what was also evident throughout the entire discussion was the joy, excitement, and passion these profs have for finding ways to use the tech so it enhances learning for students and supports their colleagues in using it effectively and efficiently too.

If you are working in education and particularly legal education, you will not want to miss this one!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you'll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series we're chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected]

This podcast was recorded on 20 February 2025, as the inaugural session in CLI's Legal GenAI Conversations Series. In this session, Terri Mottershead, Executive Director of the Centre for Legal Innovation discussed The Lawyer Mindset with global superstar former lawyer, psychologist and legal industry consultant Dr. Larry Richard, Founder and Principal Consultant at LawyerBrain LLC.

Topics covered in this session included:

• Defining and understanding how the lawyer mindset is different
• How the lawyer mindset is impacted by, and impacts, continuous change
• How lawyers can best manage and cope with the GenAI enabled pace and breadth of change

You'll find details about the other topics we'll be discussing in this series here.

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you'll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Don't forget to join CLI's free Legal Generative AI Community here – it's a lightly curated daily news feed on all things legal GenAI.

This podcast was recorded on 5 February 2025, as the inaugural session in CLI's Lex ExploreAI Series.

In this session host Courtney Blackman, Head of Partnerships and Program Director of the LawTech Hub & AI Clinical Placements at Lander & Rogers joined Terri Mottershead, Executive Director of the Centre for Legal Innovation to discuss:

• The state of legal AI
• The work being done in AI at Lander & Rogers
• What you can expect from this series in 2025

You'll find details about the other sessions in this series here.

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you'll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Want to keep the legal AI fires burning? Please join CLI's Legal Generative AI Global Community here for a free, lightly curated daily news feed on all things legal GenAI.

We're back for our sixth year and what a year it has been for legaltech, AI and innovation!

If 2023 was the year to figure out what generative AI was all about, then 2024 was most definitely the year for pilots, experimentation, and strategies for data and AI. Well, that was how it went for some, but not everyone…

In this, our annual year in review, we discussed what happened and where the dust settled in 2024 with Caryn Sandler, Partner and Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer at Gilbert + Tobin and Co-chair of the CLI Advisory Board; Graeme Grovum, Head of Legal Technology and Client Services at Allens and Host of CLI's Legal Ops Clinic in 2024; and Tessa van Duyn, CEO and Practice Leader at Moores and member of the CLI Advisory Board.

We started this session by discussing the discernible shift in mindset during 2024 from questioning if the legal industry should engage with generative AI, to embracing it as well as understanding and learning how to manage its issues – we collectively reached a new level of AI maturity!

As we dug deeper on impacts, we identified some key changes enabled by AI, particularly generative AI, to the business and practice of law this year, including:

• Non-negotiable "must haves" for the tech – easy to use, convenient, clearly identifiable benefits.
• New levels of tech engagement – GenAI creates a space where "personal life meets professional life" and consequently its uptake has been faster and at an unprecedented scale.
• Redefining collaboration – different partnerships, different interactions, different client engagements, emerging coalitions of competitors working and learning together, all focused on building a strong legal ecosystem that delivers on the potential, promises, and opportunities of generative AI but also knows how to manage its challenges.
• Redefining legal work - from conception to delivery and everything in between.
• Redefining value – what matters most, authenticity or efficiency and, are they the only choices? Where does pricing and billing by the hour fit into all of this?
• Redefining capabilities for practice – meeting people where they are so they can work out where they need to go together and individually.
• Redefining metrics – are we measuring impact or use or something else? Are metrics the same for this tech for all its uses? We need to know if the investment in the tech is moving us forward, or not, but it may be well into 2025 before we work this one out.
• Redefining employment and workforce – employees are now in search of digitally enabled employers and employers in search of digitally and data literate employees. Is going to a law firm or legal department that is not tech-enabled now a career-limiting move? What will that do to the legal workforce?
• Embracing capabilities where you find them, not where you expect them – making the tech available to everyone can result in an expansion of roles, new roles, and uncovering tech-related capabilities that enhance careers and your workforce where they may have otherwise remained hidden.
• Understanding that the pace and scale of change is now a constant and must be proactively managed. We need to understand the human consequence of this i.e., unparalleled change fatigue and the need to focus on human wellbeing more than ever before.

And, Graeme demonstrated his interactive avatar too – we all want him to build us one!

We wrapped with what will come next in 2025. Will ops teams lead the way? Will our humanity and creativity be best explored through play? Will a growing sophistication in how we use GenAI, especially by clients, reinvent the B2B, B2C and D2C markets?

Thank you sooooo much Caryn, Graeme and Tessa – this is a session we look forward to every year and we're certain you will too – don't miss this one!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you'll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series, we're chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

In this session, we spoke with Mark Williams, a Founding Co-Director of the Vanderbilt AI Law Lab (VAILL) and a Professor of the Practice of Law at the AIGP.

Mark has come to AI via journalism, law, sometime in the political world and knowledge management. In many respects, his work now draws on that rich professional and personal life experience.

Today, Mark is deeply immersed in working with and educating future generations of lawyers through the AI Law Lab. The Lab is a hands-on, multidisciplinary, experiential learning opportunity at Vanderbilt Law School (VLS).

The VLS AI Law Lab is preparing law graduates for the next generation of legal practice and leadership. It's modelling a different way of teaching and learning in partnership with industry - one that is comfortable with experimentation and supports students in understanding the tech, its limitations and opportunities, from the ground up.

VLS's has a long history in transformative legal education, especially in the tech/AI space. We chatted with Mark about that too i.e., what drives VLS's leadership, mindset, and comfort with embracing new, different, and supporting their graduates to do that too…their secret sauce!

We wrapped this conversation by discussing the broader impact of AI education in the legal industry - the importance of digital and data literacy and, if we have arrived, or still edging towards, a different type of legal practice.

Don't miss this spotlight, if you haven't engaged with AI before now, this will be your catalyst to start your journey today!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you'll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series we're chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

This podcast was recorded on 22 July 2024 as the fifth session in CLI's Legal GenAI Around the World Series.

In this session Terri Mottershead, Executive Director at the Centre for Legal Innovation facilitated a discussion with three amazing panellists from Africa and the Middle East:

• Peter Hall, Chief Operating Officer, Cognia Law
• Leah Molatseli, Founder, Contract Alchemists
• Katie Whang, Legal Counsel, Johnson & Johnson

Topics covered included:

• An overview of legal AI in Africa and the Middle East
• How, where and why GenAI is being used in legal businesses, what's driving/limiting adoption, and the importance of metrics
• The focus on education, capability development, and access to talent to deliver legal GenAI solutions
• The changing role of tech providers and how that is impacting adoption and implementation
• The focus on country/region wide AI strategy, regulations, standards and policies and how this is/is not/should not be influenced by global initiatives
• What's unique about the legal GenAI market in Africa + the Middle East

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you'll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Please join CLI's free Legal GenAI Global Community for a lightly curated newsfeed on how legal GenAI is transforming the legal ecosystem.

In this session, we spoke with Colin Lachance, the Innovator in Residence at the Ontario Bar Association (OBA) and the Principal of law firm coaching and consulting business, PGYA Consulting.

Colin has spent most of his career in the legal industry. He's worked in publishing, consulting, and legaltech development just to name a few. In all that he has done, and it's a lot, there's been a consistent theme – he's comfortable with challenging the status quo and doing things differently.

He's been named one of the "Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers" by Canadian Lawyer Magazine, a "Legal Rebel" by the ABA Journal and is a member of the Fastcase 50 class of legal innovators and visionaries.

Colin's amazing background both qualifies and recommends him for his role as Innovator in Residence at the OBA. It's a unique role for legal member organisations. It was launched in 2018. Each innovator is appointed for 12 months and pursues a different focus area, always with a change agenda.

Colin's focus area could not be more topical…it's legal AI. His action plan is ambitious, critical, timely and compelling. It comprises a multi-pronged approach to supporting the digital literacy of OBA's members at scale. His work will impact the 16,000 lawyers OBA represents and influence many, many more. It includes tech demos, weekly information sessions, establishing an interactive learning platform and…he is just getting started!

We spoke about all of this as well as the global and local context that led to Colin's appointment i.e., how GenAI has become an enabler for significant change in the legal world; how the pace, depth and breadth of that change is reinventing legal practice; and how it is incumbent on us all to embrace that change.

Don't miss this spotlight, it's going to excite and inspire you!

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you'll find the video here.

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series we're chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

This podcast was recorded on 18 June 2024 as the fourth session in CLI's Legal GenAI Around the World Series.

In this session Terri Mottershead, Executive Director at the Centre for Legal Innovation facilitated a discussion with four amazing panellists from Europe and the UK:

• Giulio Coraggio, Partner – Location Head of Italian Intellectual Property and Technology Department, DLA Piper
• Uwais Iqbal, Founder, simplexico
• Tanja Podinic, Global Legal Gen AI Lead, PwC
• Tara Waters, Partner & Chief Digital Officer, Ashurst

Topics covered included:

• How, where and why GenAI is being used in legal businesses and what's driving/limiting adoption
• LLMs, the impact of RAGs, and the case for/against the decision to build or buy
• What capabilities are needed to deliver legal GenAI solutions today, tomorrow, and how to bridge the gaps
• What's unique about the legal GenAI market in Europe + UK
• How legal GenAI is likely to evolve in 2024

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you'll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Please join CLI's free Legal GenAI Global Community for a lightly curated newsfeed on how legal GenAI is transforming the legal ecosystem.