Latest / AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers / Episode 012 – AI CLEs, Flintstones Lawyers & the Problem With Legal AI Training

Transcript

Episode 012 – AI CLEs, Flintstones Lawyers & the Problem With Legal AI Training · AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Practical, no-nonsense guidance to help attorneys put AI power to work in their practice right now.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hello.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Last week, we participated in a live AI panel for the Maryland Bankruptcy Bar Association's spring break weekend, which is their big annual CLE networking event.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was moderated by retired federal judge Paul Grimm and the participants were Patty Jefferson, Nancy Rappaport, who is a guest on episode 006, and myself.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Heather and Kathy were in the room as spectators, so we're going to get their take on it.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: But today isn't just a replay of the panel.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: What I really wanted to talk about is what we talked about a little bit, what worked, what landed with the audience, and what it revealed about the current state of AI education for lawyers.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Ron Dresher.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Heather Gardner.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm Catherine Bowling.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Catherine Bowling is a physician.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: She is an AI user.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: She uses AI frequently, both professionally and for her various hobbies and other outside interests.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so she's going to offer an outside perspective.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the only reason she was in the room for that panel is because she was my, she was and remains, or at least I don't know how much longer she'll remain, my wife.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So bear in mind whatever she says can and will be used against her.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: But more importantly, will likely be used against me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was about to say, I thought you were gonna say used against me.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: It will most likely be used against me.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, honestly, one of my biggest takeaways is that the legal profession is still trying to figure out how to teach AI.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I get why the BBA, the Bankruptcy Bar Association, had to have this panel.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Spring break weekend, they've been doing it since the 1990s.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's their big CLE event of the year.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, AI is exploding everywhere.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's the hottest topic around.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, they had to do something about AI.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I don't know that a panel is really the right way to learn and to teach AI to lawyers.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if the goal was to create awareness of some of the practical uses that AI will have for lawyers, I think that I think the panel accomplished its goal.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, the format has limitations.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, as we've talked about over and over again on this podcast, lawyers are on different levels.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's Flintstone's lawyers, there's Simpson's lawyers, and there's Jets' lawyers.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And while they are in the same ballroom, they may not even be attending the same CLE.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: They've got different comfort levels, different workflows, different fears, and different technical abilities.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Heather, what do you think?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that uh that panel really was able to address the different levels of AI fluency amongst lawyers?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you broke that down, you know, in a very easily digestible way, just like you do on the podcast all the time.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great framework, this the Flintstones, Simpsons, Jetsons, because it's something everyone can, you know, associate to those cartoons and or shows that they're um, you know, caveman versus modern day right now versus the the future that we all thought we would be living in right now, and we kind of are.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look like the Jetsons, though.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the panel, like you're saying, there are limitations, but I feel like it's a good way to have the discussion around AI.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think, Kathy?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that we were able to reach lawyers in the room no matter what their level?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me why.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: So so I was sitting in the back, so I could see pretty much what uh everyone was doing as you guys were talking.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I got the feeling that certain people, when you would talk, maybe Flintstone's level, maybe the people that were on Simpson level or Jetson's level were doing something else because they already knew that, and it really didn't apply to them.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then you would move on.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: But some of those people in doing whatever they were doing got really involved in it, and I think you lost them.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I think the panel is great for introducing hey, there's AI, and we do it, and we do it in a lot of different ways.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was good in that way, but as far as teaching anybody, I don't think it really taught anybody anything.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think it more gave them an idea of what might be possible if they learn.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: All right, I'm going to respectfully disagree with one thing that you just said, and that's why I snuck in a slide at the last minute, which was the slide that showed the Google homepage and the, you know, that that little oval that Google sticks into the uh Google homepage to uh allow users to get to AI mode.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: For sub-Flynnstones level lawyers who have never touched AI, at the very least, I wanted them to be able to start by knowing where to go without signing in, without creating an open.ai account or a clawed.ai account where they go to a page they go to every day and at least get started.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: That if I accomplished that, that was a worthy accomplishment.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think you probably did accomplish that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: I just don't know how many people in that room needed that.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the whole point.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: See, first of all, it's CLE.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of lawyers are from jurisdictions that have CLE requirements.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So they gotta put their butt in the seat in that room in order to get that hour credit.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So they may not even want to be there.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: That might be a legitimate reason why we may have lost lawyers right from the start.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because they didn't they didn't really want to be there.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they and they don't have a separate independent driving urge to learn about AI tools.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're just there because they need the CLE credit.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: But there was something that happened during that panel that I saw people who were busy doing other things start to take note.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that was when the woman that was to your right did something live with AI, and you guys had a little discussion beforehand about it with some humor, and you also were like, Oh, I hope this works, right?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: You said you don't believe that you you don't believe in tech.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a tech uh I'm a tech skeptic.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get to that.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great point because that really was the highlight of the presentation.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, all right, so I was talking about first of all, I introduced the the Flintstone Simpsons Jetson framework.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I made it really clear that if you're a Flintstones lawyer, there's no judgment.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can stay a Flintstones lawyer.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, I don't believe the hype that that AI vendors and AI trainers are putting out into the world that, oh, in two years, if you're not, you haven't adopted AI fully in your practice, you're behind and you're gonna get slammed by the lawyers who have.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe that.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't agree with it, I don't think it's true.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I I just don't have any judgment.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Flintstone's lawyers could probably continue to be Flintstone's lawyers and do just fine.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there was no judgment.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: To your point, there, we spoke to one of the really huge firms.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: You and I had a conversation with someone, and they are really not using AI.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're not using AI.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the really big law firms.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was really stunned that they didn't have any kind of AI program.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I tried to I tried to give a little bit of a demo as to how you could use AI on the Flintstones level to upload a whole bunch of publicly filed documents, schedules, notices of the first meeting of creditors.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was bankruptcy, and how you could upload those to a consumer-level AI product like ChatGPT Plus or even the free version and generate client emails that would probably be a lot more compelling than any emails that lawyers are writing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of I focused on that.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to focus on the three-legged stool for the Simpsons level.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we talked about that in episode 008, which was the discovery protocols.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I did a hot take, which was my belief that every lawyer should record every conversation and every meeting that they have so that they can dump it into a tool like Ivory Mind that will do a very nice job transcribing the audio and then turning it into a summary that you can then put out on a client lay level and send that to a client if necessary or to other lawyers in the firm, or just to file it away so that you have it in your folder later on, something searchable.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really the extent of my presentation.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Patty's presentation, and by the way, so Heather, did I lose the did I lose the room?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think the room was lost.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that you could see confusion in the room, but that's to be expected because we know attorneys are a lot of attorneys are slow to adopt or try technology.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Kathy, who never pulls a punch, did I lose the room or or did did I land anything?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think you landed the point of how important it could be to record everything and have it dictated out for you and to use it in all kinds of ways.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't think you had a firm grip on the room.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: The room was sliding around.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's talk about Patty's presentation.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Patty started off talking really about prompting and how important prompting is.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I strongly agree that prompting is the heart and soul of AI use.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: But, and this is a huge but, I'm starting to believe that prompting is kind of 2025 and that the real future of AI is agent uh activity in the AI.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you're seeing a lot of these specialty tools, they have these boxes as part of their dashboard and part of their user interface, and the boxes are agents where you click on it and the AI will do something for you without you actually having to enter a prompt.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: You upload documents, of course, and the uh and the uploading of those documents or the connection to your folder, as per our folder mania episode, that's really the prompt, but you've already built in uh a repetitive workflow.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like if you're a chapter seven trustee, you're gonna be doing the same thing over and over again.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's no reason to put in a prompt.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Patty did make really good points about building out prompt libraries in the very high-level Harvey tool that her firm uses.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then she got to the big event that gave me white knuckles.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Kathy, you you talked about that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: What was that big event that she talked about that captured the room?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: She went live to show the room what putting the right prompt in could do and show the result from the AI.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So what Patty did was she uploaded a 134-page order from the Red Lobster bankruptcy case.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was the confirmation order.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And she entered a prompt that said, You're representing an unsecured creditor who's got a$50,000 claim.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Explain on a layperson's level what the impact of this confirmation order is on that client, which is very effective.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a powerful demonstration.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always nervous about that kind of presentation live in front of an audience because if something goes wrong, if the internet glitches, then it's not gonna land like it did.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: But Heather, do you feel like that presentation really landed?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that presentation was impressive, and I think everyone in the room was probably somewhat surprised by how thorough and you know detailed that email came out so quickly.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It had hyperlinks in it to, you know, portions of the order to explain to the client better.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I loved her parallel of doing the here is a vague prompt that's giving you this, you know, generic result that's not great, and here's a much more well, you know, a much better crafted prompt, and here's this really solid result.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think that her demonstrations were outstanding.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: I do too.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, when I when I sent her the email with the uh transcript of the presentation, I said, Patty, I was wrong, you were right, my wife's six favorite words.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: To hear.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Those are my six favorite words to hear.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's correct.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Six favorite words to hear.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: Not to say.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Patty also talked about what she does sometimes in the car on the way to work.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: She dictates dictates her day into ChatGPT, asks ChatGPT to organize her day for her.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, I watched a demo this morning of somebody doing something very similar with Claude Co-work, where they came out with like, give give me, you know, a day schedule.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the funny line that Patty came up with was Chat GP telling her your schedule will require a 15-hour day.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: So something, something's gotta go.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I I thought that was very effective and a really good use of AI in a professional setting that's actually not in the office.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Then we got to Nancy Rappaport's presentation, and Nancy really was focusing on client value for legal services because lawyers are nervous that they're going to adopt AI into their practices.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna save time, and that's going to yield smaller fees, which, in my opinion, lawyers should stop talking about now.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Stop it.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Don't talk, do not complain that clients will pay you less money because you bring technology into your firm.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Just stop.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bad look.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, the bottom line is if it takes you less time, clients should pay less if they're paying by the hour.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you want to you want to assume the risk that your engagement will go beyond your expected time frame?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Quote a flat fee.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Quote a hybrid fee.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Say, well, for these tasks, the fee is X dollars.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: For other tasks, we'll bill you by the hour at$3,000 an hour, which is like the current top partner rate in New York, big law firms.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: But just stop saying those things because it looks it's stupid to be complaining that you're not going to be making enough money.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are photographers who are going to be out of work completely because AI is going to replace their expertise.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's very sad, but it's reality.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Technology moves and economics move with it, and you have to adapt to that.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there is also the thought process that it will allow them to assess more clients if they can short their time by utilizing the technology.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: There is an access to justice issue.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that can be helpful.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a snarky comment.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're spending less time on high-paid billing work, do more pro bono work.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're freed up the time to do pro bono work.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: So your AI work in a sliding scale.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: But in my opinion, I don't think it's going to save that much time.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to save that much time because lawyers insist upon using it for drafting, which means you've got to deal with the hallucination verification process.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, that's a phrase that nobody was talking about two years ago.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's just going to take longer.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're not going to save the time.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's just faster to drive.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like nobody would ever take a flight from Washington, D.C.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: to Baltimore because between, you know, checking your bags and going through security and waiting at the gate, it's quicker to drive.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think, I think that that metaphor applies.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: So Nancy was also talking about how hallucinations are a real thing, how humans need to remain in the loop.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: She used her, what has become, I think, her signature line, which is if you give a chainsaw to a toddler, it may work out, but it's not likely to unless you're really supervising that.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: She believes that lawyers need to proactively warn clients regarding issues like privilege and uploading confidential information into public AI.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what was interesting to me, and one of the reasons I asked Kathy to be on this call on this episode, is the Pit talked about AI in the medical context.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that it was fair because it started out using AI to save time on charting.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Kathy, do you want to describe how the pit showed off AI in the medical context?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: So one of the characters came in with an AI program that she had helped develop that was going to make charting easier for the people in the ER.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: And they had kind of used the show to let everyone see how difficult it was to catch up with all your charting and do the work that you had to do.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so she was saying, this is really going to make a difference and it's going to be good.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so what happened was they could just talk right into it and it would write everything down that they said, and then that would be the chart, and they wouldn't have to spend so much time, you know, typing and looking at things.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: It could also look at lab work and things like that.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: But what ended up happening was at the end they went through and they were looking at one of the dictated charts, and it had taken different medications and put them in that could make a huge difference in a patient.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you thought they were really on that medicine and you prescribed it for them while they were admitted or something, it could change the course of their recovery and maybe even kill them.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was kind of everyone was like, oh wow, that didn't work that well.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the byproduct is hallucinations in the legal field are embarrassing and could get you sanctioned.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hallucinations in the medical field could be life and death.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's true.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, one of the things about the electronic health record that we have in medicine and that what's going on right now with lawyers and AI, I think it's very similar.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that is there was not an electronic health record that everyone adopted.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't like, okay, use this record, everyone, everywhere, and we'll all be connected and it'll all work out really well.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: There was like this program and that program, and and I I see the same thing happening with AI right now.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: You have Claude and you have Chat GPT and you have Gemini.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: So you have all these different AIs that are coming in, and then each of them have different levels of programs.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so you're gonna it it makes it really difficult to integrate this thing and teach it and everybody to use it when you have all this different stuff.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: I we talked about that, and that's that's an ongoing problem.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Lawyers think, oh, it's ChatGPT, but it's not, it's Chat GPT Plus or ChatGPT Enterprise.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And those are almost completely different pieces of software.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Although it doesn't, they don't look different on first blush, but their capabilities are really very different.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And their security is very different.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh yeah, of course.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's the that's uh the center part of it.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Some some Chat GPT.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Qualifies for the three-legged stool.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Other parts do not.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: The stool will collapse if you use a consumer version.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so this is the segue to the practice signal segment of our show, which is where every episode we talk about how lawyers in the wild are having problems.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: It comes from social media where people are seem to be very free to talk about all their problems.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we talk about how maybe there might be some AI approach to solving this problem.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: So this week's practice signal comes from Facebook, where the post was titled, Does Dropbox Work for High Volume Filers?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a post written by a lawyer who explained for most of the past 33 years, that sounds like a long time to me.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized, well, I practiced for 40 years, so I'm probably older than this dude.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: So for most of the 33 years he practiced as a solo at a very small firm, and about 15 years ago, he adopted Dropbox to the point where he now says he can't live without it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: But in late 2024, he joined a high-volume bankruptcy practice operating at what can only be described as a sub-Flynnstone's level of technology.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Paper files! They have paper files, outdated computers, handwritten notes, office-bound workflows, and constant scavenger hunts to locate information.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a workplace where lawyers often can't determine case status because they can't find the file.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, talk about, you know, an advertisement for foundation AI that I talked about in a workflow options episode.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: So what can we do for this lawyer?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Can AI help this lawyer?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think, Heather?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: How can how can AI help this lawyer?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if he's really concerned if he can even bring his Dropbox knowledge to help this firm, I'd say no.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I don't think they're ready if they're not even Flintstone's level.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unless he wants to compel them, you know, or get them all to learn and start utilizing.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: But this sounds like uh chaos in a firm.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I'm curious why a high-volume firm would be operating this way, but also why would the attorney choose to go to a firm like this?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't have an answer for that question.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, look, he's an older guy, he's probably slowing down, he's got one eye on retirement.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's sometimes it just makes sense to go to another firm and ease your way out.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, but but Heather, as a as major domo paralegal, you see how firms are organized.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: How could we help this lawyer help this firm move from the sub-Flynnstones level at least to the Flintstones level?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: What would the first advice be for this lawyer?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he would need to put together a proposal to integrate AI or some technology into the firm's processes.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: What would be the first sentence of that proposal?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: What would be the first, like, like this is where you start?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's, yeah, let's all come out of the uh dark ages and into uh the future, because the future is here.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't even know what I would suggest to someone like this, other than first of all, yes, see if they'll let him bring his Dropbox.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: That would be a great first step.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then go from there, you know, get see if they're open to a CRM.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, to to utilizing, uh, to upgrading their computer systems.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: It would be there's just so much to unpack here.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of firms like this.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I work with a lot of firms that operate like this and they choose to, and that's how they want to work, and there's really not a lot you can do about it.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: To see the difference in how a firm operates between a firm like this and a firm that is really tech forward, it's night and day organizationally, how the clients clients are notified of things and how so how happy the clients are.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just it really is a sort of trickle-down thing when you can put a good tech stack and now a good AI stack into your firm and then let it do the work that's going to make everyone's job easier.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I have an idea.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely want to hear it.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but this is what I would do if I wanted to introduce tech to a place that I worked at and they didn't have it.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: I would first of all find out the thing that everyone hated the most about their job.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: And then I would give a presentation to everyone showing how that thing that I'm bringing in could make that thing they hate so much better.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that is like a little foot in the door that then opens their mind to the possibility that there could be more to.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's well, that's a perfect way to look at the problem because what we're talking about so much on this show is identifying pain points in your practice.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of thinking, well, I want this great AI tool because I sat through a webinar on Claude for the law firm.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I want Claude.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, think, well, wait a second, what are the bottlenecks in the firm?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: What's the part of the firm that everybody hates?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And how can we make that hate that a little less?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you bet it's the scavenger hunt for this one?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I bet it's the scavenger hunt to locate information.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: That would be the least fun thing.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, see I've worked on those firms, I've done the scavenger hunts.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: See, here's how I would look at it.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, but differently, I look at it like, well, you're a bankruptcy law firm, which means you are filing in federal court, which means you are creating PDFs.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what do you do?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: You you print out the PDFs, you put them in a paper file, then do you throw out the PDFs?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: That seems I mean, maybe they do.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what we're gonna do.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna change that.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: You wanna print out your PDFs?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: God bless you.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can print out the PDFs.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Don't throw them away.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Either get Dropbox or get uh Google, you know, a Google workspace.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: But you gotta put those PDFs somewhere so you can grab them again.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody wants you to email the schedules to him.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta be able to email schedules in a PDF form.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: So start with where you are.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're already scanning things and creating PDFs.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Figure out where you're putting the PDFs and upgrade from there.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's my thought on this week's practice signal.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that brings us to the Flintstones Simpsons Jetsons segment, where every episode we try to figure out some way to help lawyers get onto the Flintstones level and then go from Flintstones to Simpsons to Jetsons level.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, Kathy, do you have anything?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: That might take somebody from Flintstones to Simpsons or Simpsons to Jetsons?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: A really good panel that splits up into different groups at the next time the lawyers meet up, where you have like a Flintstones panel and everybody comes and talks, or a Simpsons panel, and you get to pick where you believe you belong and then learn from that spot.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like organizational Flintstones, Simpsons, Jetsons, as opposed to firm or individual lawyer.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right, that makes a lot of sense.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, tomorrow I'm going to record a field note on uh training options for uh AI in the legal field.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for teasing that for me.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it is it even Jetson's level anymore to think about things like cloud storage and searchable files and like all of the basic you know tech things that almost every firm has, the the practicing all segment.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those things seem very Flintstone's level to me.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Are they not?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, okay.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're not.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're not, but but they're very much Simpson's level.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and the connectors that you can use to interact with Google tools or Microsoft Tools could get you up to Jetsons level.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on how you're doing it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess just having your own individual Dropbox that doesn't that's that doesn't sync with others and that's not available to others, yeah, that's probably Flintstone's level.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: But do you see how for that firm that has no tech, how just basic Simpsons level things that we see in day-to-day could be Jetsons for them?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: It could feel like that's where you're getting right.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: So what I decided I wanted to talk about for this week's Flintstone Simpsons Jetsons is with the help of ChatGPT, I like to say, yeah, I created the spreadsheet, but I didn't create the spreadsheet.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: I prompted ChatGPT to create a spreadsheet that is a tech stack audit that lists what your software category is, the subscription, who the vendor is, what the monthly cost is, what the annual cost is, because sometimes they don't have them or they don't have them the same, and what the primary use is.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: What are you getting?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it includes suggested categories like productivity apps, email, communications, AI assistance, CRM intake, legal research, billing, document management, it's a whole list.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this spreadsheet's going to be available for download in the show notes.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to just look at it and think about it, that's fine.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to download it and fill it out and just use it for your own purposes, that's fine.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to download it, fill it out, share it with others in your firm as a as a basis for talking about where you want to go, that's fine.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to download it, fill it out and send it to us at infoaddressurelaw.com and we'll put that email in the show notes.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: We'll take a look at it, we'll talk about it.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to do it anonymously, great, you can do it anonymously.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to list your name and show the world where where your firm is with its tech stack, that would be awesome, and we'll talk about that too.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that the first way to understand how to move from Flintstones to Simpsons to Jetsons is to really identify where you are in each of the tools in your stack.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because you may think, ah, listen, I got Chat GPT, I'm paying for it.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I must be on the enterprise level.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: You may not be on the enterprise level.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: You just paid, you just paid$200 to Claude for the year.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're not on the enterprise level.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't built that three-legged stool.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: You need to know that.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the point of this episode's Flintstones, Simpsons, Jetsons, workflow optimization.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Kathy, anything more to add to listeners this week?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: No, except I'm just high Flintstones.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are high Flintstones.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: What about you, Heather?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Any any thoughts or comments?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would be really curious to see what different firms are spending on average per month or per year on their tech and AI stack.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think that number has to be climbing steadily, especially with you know more and more AI tools coming out and people adopting more.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know I personally looked recently and I spend$2,500 to$3,500 a month between all of my software and systems and AI.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: How did you feel when you saw that number?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not surprised.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I have you know a lot of legal software, you know, that I have to use to run the business.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have Clio for you know multiple license uh for that.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of enterprise AI tools, and they save me so much time that if I weren't spending that in that, I would be spending far more in man hours.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I I you know what?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't even thought of that as a benefit of completing this spreadsheet and filling it out.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we ought to know what we're spending on our tech.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: You should always know what you're spending on every part of your practice, but tech does build up, especially, you know, they've nickel and dimed us to death on this, you know, SAAS software as a service subscription models.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when I first started dating Kathy, she had all of this music that she'd bought from iTunes, and these were her songs, and she had her playlist, and now we have Apple Music, and I don't know, maybe something's been lost.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, on that note, we're going to say goodbye for this week, but we will see you next time on AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's it for today's episode of AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next time.