Latest / AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers / Episode 008 AI Discovery: A Safer, Defensible Way to Use AI in Discovery Work

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Episode 008 AI Discovery: A Safer, Defensible Way to Use AI in Discovery Work · AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers

0:03
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: Practical, no-nonsense guidance to help attorneys put AI power to work in their practice right now.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Uncertainty is expensive, and that's what I used to tell my clients all the time.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: And right now, there's a lot of uncertainty about one of the most obvious legal AI use cases, and that's how you use AI in discovery.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Now, AI can obviously help lawyers sort, summarize, organize, and accelerate discovery work.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: But most lawyers do not have enough certainty about how to do that in a way that's safe, defensible, and worth relying on.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: And that matters because when lawyers lack certainty, they hesitate, or worse, they improvise.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is about how to stop improvising.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: And a recent case out of a Kansas federal court gives us something that lawyers have badly needed in this space, and that is not fear, not ethics hand wringing and finger pointing and you know getting smacked with a rod, but a real standard.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: And once you have a standard, you can build a workflow.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: And what this episode is all about is having built a workflow to be able to efficiently and not that expensively use AI in discovery.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm Ron Drescher.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Heather Gardner.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: And Heather, we were just talking off camera about how few lawyers really have an understanding of what they're doing.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: You're in the field.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Could you give me a percentage of like of how many lawyers are actually thinking about using AI in a defensible and responsible way?
2:05
SPEAKER_02: I think almost all attorneys are thinking about how to use it.
2:09
SPEAKER_02: But when you talk about that sort of nuance, I doubt that many are really getting to that level.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, and and this episode's not going to be about the hallucinated case epidemic.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Tangentially, maybe we'll we'll hit upon it.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: But this is much more about when you've got when a lawyer gets a big tranch of either discovery materials or even client-rated related documents, and they want to use AI to make sense of them.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the problem, obviously, AI can help in discovery, but it needs to be done defensively.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: So, all right, let's talk about some of the great things you can do with Discovery and AI.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: First of all, there's document review.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: You got 5,000 documents in a Google Drive folder as your production.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: It's really nice to be able to reliably ask AI what are these documents?
3:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, what are some of the highlights?
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Can you summarize the trends?
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Can you give me a timeline of the facts?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Can you identify duplicates?
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Can you read through long email chains?
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Right?
3:22
SPEAKER_00: This happens in Discovery all the time.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, you've asked for communications, and so the other side dumps all of these long, complex, redundant email chains.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: AI's perfect for making sense of those.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, so also you want to organize your exhibits for summary judgment motions or for trial.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: AI is fantastic for that.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: Incredibly.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: But you know, what are some of the problems?
3:53
SPEAKER_00: You you got data coming in there.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: What's happening to the data?
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Is your AI model using that data to train other models so that that data leaks into its response to other other users?
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Do you have privilege issues, attorney client privilege, and you're uploading documents to a non-secure framework?
4:16
SPEAKER_00: These are things that courts are obviously looking at, and they're gonna get you into a lot of trouble if you can't answer the judge in a way, yeah, this is what happened to the data.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure that's a rare certainty right now.
4:31
SPEAKER_02: Most attorneys are choosing their AI tools based on what they can do and how much they cost.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: They aren't even probably getting ahead to the part of what happens to the data.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: I have to imagine that's true.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Because let's talk about this case with it, which is Jeffries versus Harzco.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: And in this episode, uh, I developed some deliverables that I'm going to talk about later on and at length in a field note that I'm going to record right after this.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: We've uploaded the deliverables onto the show website.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: So we'll put a link to that deliverables resource in the show notes, and lawyers will be able to download them and go and visit them.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to ask for your email.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to charge.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: We're not charging for this.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: This is totally free.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: So feel free when you get in front of your computer next time to download them and you know, take a look at them.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Load them up into your AI tool and ask your AI tool to summarize them.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: One of them is going to be the case of Jeffries versus Harsko.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: And what this case did is it talks about the distinction between open tools and closed tools.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we're going with AI in the law firm.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: We're going to the closed tool standard.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk about what that means.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: So the court, this judge, she knew AI.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those judges she really knows what she's talking about when it comes to this.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: She talked about what makes an AI tool open versus closed.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: She's not anti-AI.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: She explicitly said, yeah, this is this is what AI is good for in the discovery context.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: So all right, she laid out some things that the lawyers should know.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: So the protocols, they require they require that they be closed, not open.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And that one of the things that means is no model training.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: The consumer level tools, the free tools, the 20 bucks a month level tools, what they're doing is when you put up inputs and you have discussions with AI, they're going to use those discussions to train subsequent models to improve their products and their outputs.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, that allows a lot of leakage if you're going to be putting things of interest up into those prompts.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: That's no good.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: You can't have your models training other models on discovery materials and confidential client data.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: It's got to be a secure environment, which means that it's not something that can be easily hacked into.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: For example, if you subscribe to Google Workspace, Google Workspace advertises itself as a secure environment.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's why you can upload unredacted client confidential documents into Google.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: I mean, do you have any protocols about that with the paralegals on your on your Yeah, we have an AI protocol for the company, and none of our paralegals actually can use AI unless it is explicitly outlined with the attorneys that they're working with?
8:05
SPEAKER_02: We only have one paralegal that does use AI in her daily, daily work with attorneys, and it is under their supervision with their approval.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: What would happen if you have a paralegal in your team that is working for a someone who wants to be a Jetsons-level lawyer?
8:25
SPEAKER_00: And and it turns out that they're really not using the right tools.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any kind of discussions about how a paralegal should respond in those situations?
8:36
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: So we always have the policy that if any paralegal is working with an attorney and there's anything happening that they're not comfortable with, that they come and have a discussion with us about it.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: I think even in years past, I've had discussions with you a couple of times about things that I uh needed to discuss.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: But that is something that we handle on a case-by-case basis.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes that's something you you don't know until it's too late.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: Because there's we're going to talk about some things that are really not obvious to most legal users of AI tools.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Access controls.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: You know, who has the right in your law firm to access this tool for uploading client information or discovery materials?
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Deletion capability.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: This is something that's very interesting and people don't really think about.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: All right, you're going to take discovery materials that you get from the other side and you're going to upload them into your tool.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: That shouldn't be sitting around forever.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: That's got to be something that is deleted at the conclusion of the case.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And you have to be able to prove that you can do that.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, there's lawyer supervision and defensibility.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's something you've got to be able to get up in court and say, oh, yeah, judge, this is exactly the tool we used.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: These this is how it was configured.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: These are my logs.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh it this is these are the features of the tool.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: This is all because of this case, right?
10:07
SPEAKER_02: And I love this opinion because it is not anti-AI at all.
10:10
SPEAKER_02: And the the judge does really go out of her way to talk about how useful AI can be in discovery.
10:18
SPEAKER_02: She's saying you can use AI, you just have to use it in a way where you preserve control and it is defensible.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, something that happens to me for sure when I get a laundry list of requirements, I start to have anxiety.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm freaking out a little bit because it feels unmanageable.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: It feels like, okay, this is going to be really expensive.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: This is going to be very time consuming.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to be really confusing.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not really sure that I'm going to be able to get it right.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: So because I have these experiences when I when I hear of these requirements, I thought that we need for listeners of this podcast to reduce that friction and to reduce the anxiety.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: And so we've come up with a few different rules and things to think about.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: And the first one, the most important one, is consumer grade eye to red light.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Just a red light.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And here's the shortcut.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: If you're using a tool that doesn't have the word enterprise somehow connected to that tool, because that's what they're doing.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: It does the enterprise, it's not a legal standard just because uh a vendor uses that word in the title of the tier of the tool that it's using.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: But it's a shorthand that these brands are using to tell the buying public what those tools can be used for.
11:57
SPEAKER_02: So when someone says Chat GPT, that doesn't mean one thing anymore.
12:01
SPEAKER_02: When someone says Claude or Gemini or Copilot, that doesn't mean one thing anymore.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I I think this is this is what we're gonna talking about here is gonna go into NDAs.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're gonna start seeing NDAs talk about how you can use AI in information that you're obtaining subject to that NDA, obviously discovery agreements we're talking about there, and protective orders.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: And anytime client information or what what one party wants to hold as confidential is passing hands, they're gonna start implementing protocols like the one that is the Kansas case has introduced.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: I think the Kansas case should be an immediate universal standard for all attorneys everywhere to start looking at that and paying attention.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, I completely agree.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: That's why we've tried to boil it down to I've got four deliverables that we're going to talk about.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: One of them is the protocol.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: I've taken and listen, full disclosure, when I say I, I really mean Claude with under my supervision.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Because Claude just does such a great job of this.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, we created the protocols, which is um kind of a plain language boiling down of what the Kansas case said.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And it's very suitable for uploading to AI tools to make sure that you're in compliance with the protocols.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: So the second is I took that Kansas case and I created a form of Rule 26 language for a proposed protective order, which is something that if you look at it and you say, wow, this really works, and you bring it into your next case at the Rule 26 stage, which is the conference you're supposed to have about discovery.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: I think, first of all, you're going to impress the judge that you've thought about it.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: And there might be a little bit of an intimidation factor if the attorney on the other side has not thought about these issues.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, you're throwing something that shows that you have an elevated thought process about AI tools.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's gonna create at least a little bit of leverage at that stage of the proceedings.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I created a notice of intent to use discovery materials, AI for discovery materials.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: And that addresses the Kansas case's requirement that you give notice and an opportunity for the other party to object to your use of AI for their discovery materials.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: And so that takes that into consideration.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: It talks about which AI tools you're going to use.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: It talks about how you plan on using them.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Then the last of these deliverables is a log template where you're going to use one for every matter, and you're going to talk about every time you use AI on those discovery materials.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: It's an all-purpose template that you can use to say, all right, look, if I'm filling out this form properly and I'm doing the certification, I'm okay.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: As I went through all of this, I realized that this is a three-legged stool, and you need to observe each of the three legs in order to have a safe harbor for how to use AI for discovery materials.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: So the first leg is the vendor leg.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: The vendor's got to provide you a tool that is capable of being a closed system and being configured properly to satisfy those requirements.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And this is where the magic word that we talked about before is enterprise.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: If you've got a tool that's advertising itself as an enterprise tool, I mean, you have to double-check it yourself.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: You're going to have to download the vendor agreement, make sure that it's in compliance, but that's not a long process.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: And using the word enterprise is going to be a shortcut for you.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: So that's the vendor leg.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: The next leg is the IT leg.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: And this is where most lawyers are really going to have a hard time.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Because you could have a tool that is capable of complying with the protocol.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: But if it's not configured properly, it's not going to it'll be a sieve.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: It's going to, you know, it'll be one of those colanders where the water is just going to flow through.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Still going to leak data, yeah.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: It's still, it's right.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: You have to tell it.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: It's still going to allow unauthorized people to use the tool, for example.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: And in the field note, I'm going to talk about how a small firm or a solo can satisfy the IT leg of the stool without necessarily having to spend a lot of money on an outside consultant.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could use the outside consultant, but you could do it in-house too.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: And then the third leg is the lawyer leg, making sure that there's scope control, supervision, the notice of intent to use discovery materials we talked about, the logging of AI use, the accountability.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: And we really try to address that in that lawyer log.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: If you think this is expensive, if you're in the Google workspace and you're not going to use discovery materials constantly, it's not going to be a heavy part of your practice.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: If it's a heavy part of your practice, you're going to have a you're going to want a really much more robust tool.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even probably beyond just the main tools we've been talking about, you may want to really look at a specialty tool uh that has all of these capabilities.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: Right.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: You can get into the spellbooks or the Vincent or the Harvey, those very specific to legal tools that are very pricey but do a lot more for the price, you know, for the tool itself and the capability.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: Right.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: But if you're not going to be an everyday user, you can have a uh protocol capable license from Google for$36 a month.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: So and that's not going to break the bank, and you're going to get a lot of value for that.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: And then you need to configure it correctly and check your deletion verification process.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: Right.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: But that threshold doesn't have to be unduly burdensome.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Right?
19:05
SPEAKER_00: You can you can sleep at night for 36 bucks a month.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as long as you're doing the other stuff.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: Very accessible.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: I want to get back to folder mania for a minute, because just because a tool satisfies these criteria doesn't mean it's the right tool for your practice.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if it if it can't satisfy the file cabinet test, if it doesn't have an easy way to give you access to the 5,000 uh document discovery folder you've just been given by opposing counsel, it's not the right tool for you.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: So uh that that's why we did folder mania first, because it's that's the substantive side of this process.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a tool that works.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, you got there's a tool that's safe, and there's a tool that works, and you need both.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: All right.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: So Heather, there's a future in sight, and I think you're seeing it.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: You're like one of the most tech savvy people that I know.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: You're obviously willing to spend money on getting uh high quality uh AI tools, and I see a day where every law firm puts every document it receives of any nature through an AI workflow.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: It's in sight.
20:37
SPEAKER_02: Probably coming sooner than we think.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
20:40
SPEAKER_02: Maybe already happening in some firms.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, in some firms, it in the Jetsons firms, it is.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: It is.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, they've already taken care of the safety aspect of it that we're talking about in this episode.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: So, my feeling is if you're going to aspire to amp up the use of AI in your practice for all of the benefits that it gives you, you may as well bite the bullet right now and adopt these discovery protocols, which can be pretty easily adapted to non-discovery workflows.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: There's one thing that, like you we've kind of gone over, but not seriously, but you're going to go over sort of having this workflow.
21:26
SPEAKER_02: But for mine, I have, you know, the biggest things we want to talk about are buying the enterprise tool, it does not mean you're automatically compliant.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: Someone has to be responsible for turning off training, controlling access, understanding retention, verifying deletion.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: And if you don't know who did those things, it's probably not done or you can't count on it.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: It has to be the firm owner, administrator, et cetera.
21:50
SPEAKER_02: Someone attorneys are not AI experts.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: They're not tech experts, they're not IT experts.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: It's just not even ever been something they've been expected to do.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: And now all of a sudden they kind of have no choice but to step into this, right?
22:05
SPEAKER_00: The good news is, and this is we're gonna go back to why I talked about screenshots in an earlier episode.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: A lawyer, a solo lawyer, small firm lawyer, not super sophisticated, can upgrade to the enterprise level tool.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna take a minute, right?
22:29
SPEAKER_00: You're you're you're in your AI tool, you go down to the settings, you click the upgrade box, you choose the enterprise level, and there you are.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: You've satisfied the first leg of the stool.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Then what you do, because you're capable, is you upload the protocol and you tell the AI, all right, help me configure this tool to satisfy the protocol.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: And then you take a screenshot of your settings box and you upload it to the AI, and the AI will walk you through that process.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Then when you're done, take another screenshot of the final settings, and then go to a different AI tool, upload the protocol, upload the screenshot of the of the final configuration, and ask that other tool does this configuration for this enterprise level tool satisfy the protocol that I just uploaded?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And it will give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: And so there you've verified it.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: Then you take that screenshot and you put it in a in a central place.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: And that is your defensibility evidence that you've satisfied the configuration part of the tool.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: That's that's my feeling about it.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: You're giving me a look that I've got to do that.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm not sure that is because AI makes mistakes.
24:01
SPEAKER_02: And so having one tool verify that you're what you've done on another is correct doesn't to me seem like you could get a definitive or an always accurate answer there.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: But you have two tools.
24:15
unknown: Right.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: You have the tools.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: They're both AI.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: They're both AI.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
24:22
SPEAKER_00: If you want, send, you know, maybe do it yourself and send everything over to some IT consultants.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: Right.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: Most law firms, this is something I will say for even the small solo law firms I work with, almost all of them have an IT company that they do work with.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: That is a very common, you know, widespread thing.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: Even the smallest firms I worked for over the years had an IT company that came in as needed.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay, outside resource manager.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: Right.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: Having maybe sending it to them and asking them, you know, does this satisfy the requirements?
25:01
SPEAKER_00: I would never discourage a firm from doing that.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: But the bottom line is you have that screenshot.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you have an email.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Send it over to your guy.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Send everything over to your IT guy.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: You know what your IT guy's gonna do?
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Upload it to their AI tool and then ask if that's okay.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: But they weren't a few years ago.
25:22
SPEAKER_02: So that's what I I want the, I would tell them I want you to to manually go through this and check these settings and tell me with your expertise.
25:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, you know what?
25:33
SPEAKER_02: That option, I think that's a better option.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a a great perspective, but the bottom line is to satisfy that configuration tool does not have to be unduly burdensome.
25:47
unknown: No.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, you could have AI walk you through it and then belt and suspenders, send it out to your IT guy, pay him whatever you have to pay him, get the email back confirming, save that email with the screenshot and the central location, and you've got the second leg of the stool taken care of.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: All right.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: So that's there's a lot to talk about.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: But my hope is that listeners will come away from this discussion feeling, you know, I can do that.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: I can do that.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: That's that's not that hard.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: That moves us to the practice signal part of our episode, where we talk about how lawyers in the wild are dealing with problems in the practice and how AI might be able to address the problem.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: So this comes from Reddit, where so many practice signals come from, because people are anonymous and free to complain.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And someone wrote, has anyone with a solo practice ever merged with a larger firm or partnered up with one, starting with separate identities but share resources before a full merger?
27:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, Heather, but just now I'm starting to get nervous thinking about that.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: All right.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: And how do you choose the right partnership?
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really important question.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: So what do you think, Heather, about that?
27:26
SPEAKER_00: Um happens all the time.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you know, sharing resources.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: What is in the old days that meant you had a receptionist and maybe a legal assistant, and you both shared that cost.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you chip in for the copier down the hall.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And and and you and you you you share rent.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people who did those kind of arrangements.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: So but this is not a merger question.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is a merger question, but it's a systems question.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of solos really don't want to merge.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: What they want is they want to spend less money, have more capacity, maybe better admin support, you know, if there's an office manager to help deal with that kind of thing, and just better overall systems.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Um here's where the AI tie-in comes.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, today with cloud systems and AI layered on top, two separate law practices can start to function like one operational unit much earlier.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: You can have shared intake using AI summaries, you can have shared admin using AI-generated follow-ups, you can have shared document workflows, you can have shared drafting supports, right?
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Like you bought five seats from Claude.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, there you go.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: You've you, you know, I got a seat, you got a seat, the legal, you know, the legal assistant has a seat, you know, maybe the virtual paralegal has a seat, and you're using up your five seats that beforehand, you know, you had one person buying the five seats.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: So they the arrangements can work, but you can't just do it on a handshake.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: You have to talk about client ownership, right?
29:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if somebody calls in and you're sharing those resources, who gets that client?
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, second, how is money divided if it comes in?
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Is it just, you know, what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours?
29:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh where are you just paying a monthly bill to somebody who had that infrastructure to begin with?
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Or are you making it really more of a groupthink kind of thing?
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Third, who controls the workflow?
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna are you gonna work cases together with this other person?
29:57
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the big benefits of a law firm.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Different lawyers can handle different parts of the engagement.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: Then there's the tech stack and systems.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: This is a big issue.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: If one of the lawyers is really involved in the Microsoft ecosystem, but the other lawyer is heavily involved in the Google ecosystem, how's that going to marry?
30:19
SPEAKER_00: And how's that going to work out?
30:22
SPEAKER_00: And finally, you got to talk about the potential exit.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: A lot of these arrangements do not work out.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Listen, solo practitioners get stubborn in their systems, having not had anyone to be accountable to for as many years as they've been in practice.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Not that I had that experience myself.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, I was a solo for 35 years.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: I never merged with anybody else.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: But if you exit, you need to talk about who does what and who gets what and where that goes.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: So AI could absolutely help with that practice signal.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: It's a huge, it's a huge one.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: All right.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: Now we're up to our Flintstones Simpsons Jetsons segment.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: And I was going to talk about the Kansas case and discovery because it's pretty well tiered.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: And if you're a if you're on the Flintstones level and you're committed to being on the Flintstones level, and maybe somebody in your office has an open AI account with free Chat GPT, don't put those discovery materials anywhere near that.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Just don't.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: You're a Flintstones level lawyer, it's working for you.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: You've won tons of cases and made hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in your practice, and you're committed to it, just keep those separate.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Don't be tempted to just kind of think, uh, maybe I'll just dip my pinky toe into that.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Keep them separate.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: That's that's the best tip I have for a Flintstones level lawyer with Discovery.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Now, for Simpson's level, build the stool.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and build that stool.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: It's not that hard.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Once you build that stool, in my opinion, you're Simpson's level.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: You've left Flintstones behind.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: It's in the it's in the rear view mirror or whatever, whatever mirror Fled Flintstone used to use when he was kind of foot pedaling around bedrock.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, you've you've left that behind.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: And congratulations.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Build the stool, your Simpsons level.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: You may not even need to go past that.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: But for Jetson's level, you want to go that extra step, not just to build the stool, but to make sure you've got, you know, citation verification protocols and AI error protocols, where if you catch AI in a mistake, you can correct it.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: You make a note of it so that you have an audit trail.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: I've got some other deliverables for that.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: Go that last step and make your office safe for AI materials to pass for client discovery and other confidential materials to pass through your AI tools safely so you don't ever have to worry about it.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: And if anybody ever asks, well, how how could you be so sure you were safe?
33:34
SPEAKER_00: You've got you've got the receipts.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: That's so funny.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: My Flintstone's tip is exactly yours.
33:40
SPEAKER_02: In my notes, it says, uh, do not put discovery into any public AI tools, just don't do it.
33:48
SPEAKER_02: So that's great that we had the same thought because we didn't even talk about that first.
33:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh for Simpsons, I say pick one controlled tool and learn and understand how it handles your data.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: And for Jetsons, build your SOP for your firm and use it for every person and every case and everything that's uploaded into AI.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: Those are really useful tools.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: I hope that listeners got value from this session.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have a field note.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: We're going to release them both at the same time, and you'll be able to take a deeper dive into the three legs of the stool.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: And until next time, safe AI.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: That's it for today's episode of AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.