[Music] welcome to the geek and review the podcast focused on Innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry I'm Marlene gabow and I'm Greg Lambert so happy di deos Greg yeah it's a big deal here in Houston it is I can't well I'm still stunned it's November but I I said that about this time last year so you know I guess it's an annual event I'm stunned it's still 80° that I'm not surprised at it's either 80 Dees or snowing one one or the other one or the other one or the other so what what you got going on uh well I got some I got some family coming down to to visit it's their first time visiting Texas so uh they're in the Austin area right now and uh we're going to we're going to get together and spend some time together so uh I'm eager to hear uh about their their uh their Adventure yeah well well tell them not all of Texas is as weird as Austin so that's right that's right only Austin has that yeah and the food's better in Houston by the way so of course it just so they know so everything's better in Houston yeah I've got I got some family coming down we're going to go up to Lake Livingston and and spend the weekend so it's good it's the first time that they've been down in a while so it's good going to be good to catch up with them great sounds good Well we'd like to welcome Tom Martin founder of law Droid uh Tom in addition to being the founder of law Droid Tom does many many things yeah he's he's quite the renaissance man he is he's he's a professor a philosopher a coder lawyer and a highly success successful author so Tom uh welcome to the geek and review hey Marlene hey Greg I'm so excited to be here and uh you know talk about a number of things going on in the AI leag world yeah I think there's a few things going on from from what I could tell so so Tom you've been around the the the industry for uh quite a while now but do you mind uh just kind of sharing your story about the founding of laid and your journey in in the legal tech industry yeah I'll try to keep it short so I got started with LA Droid about eight years ago but I've been a practicing lawyer for just over 25 years I've been dabbling in Tech the whole time and L roid was just one way to kind of crystallize what I was working on and I was making these tools for myself so I thought I'll help other lawyers that are in the same boat as I am solo small firm work is what I did and still do a lot of lawyers are benefi benefiting from it you know so that's what I do I'm curious law law Droid what's the what's the story behind the name you know just I mean it's kind of obvious right just trying to put together like Star Wars nerd is that Automation and legal but but yeah there was definitely that influence I love the idea of like a little R2 unit that can help the law so um Tom what do you think are some of the key advantages of using generative AI assistance for for lawyers and for legal professionals look the great thing about generative AI is that you know it's based on large language models it is optimized for language so are we as lawyers like that's what we deal with day and day out it's about tweaking the words to make them get what we want for our clients and so this thing is expert at that and uh takes takes a lot of the burden off our shoulders um any you know everything from something as simple as summarizing documents to finding references within a document to even help us helping us to draft stuff so I don't think we could have asked for for more although there there is a lot a lot more to do in this area say there there is some improvement um that that we were aware of yeah I mean there's there's definitely room for improvement uh but I think what I found interesting is just human nature like how quickly the gold poost move this stuff would be miraculous like three years ago and now um you know we've kind of pushed it out and now it's just common place actually John McCarthy who was one of the Godfathers of AI said that you know as soon as it starts working it's not AI anymore um but um yeah there's a lot of room for improvement but that's also a challenge right I mean it it it you know I think we we we hit this and I mean it was so amazing and that that I think people were a little dazzled and then we had to take some time to sort of take a deeper dive and look at it and you know okay we're finding some things there's you know hallucinations and you know sometimes it's slow and and you know but compared to where we were before um kind of amazing and we recognize that there needs to be improvements and you're seeing um you're seeing those improvements being made in the in the industry yeah for sure there's a lot of ways to cut against it you know if you're using the consumer facing version of chat GPT you're definitely going to have some hallucinations but now they have that web search which by the way is ranking your podcast right up there as one of the top podcasts nice it should as it should yeah but that cuts against hallucinations right because it's pulling from factual information and then with legal AI applications are built on top of the technology but have their own source of like trusted information so it gets even better so there's definitely definitely ways of making the syst system much more truthful accurate and reliable so uh know one of the things that that you've been working on is is the no code agentic workflow transformation so can you talk to us a little bit about what you're doing with that and where you think are the ways that legal professionals can that can help them manage their task and and their processes and I would say is this the the word of the of the Year seems to be uh workflow automation or phrase I guess is is that are we talking workflow uh automation or or is this something else something else a little bit different workflow automation is so like 2020 right um I think uh not according to a lot of vendors out there what I think the catchphrase for this year for all vendors is is agents and you know agentic maybe agentic workflows and actually you know I don't want to be one of those guys that's like we've been working on this for years but but we have for the past eight years and the the Bots or agents that we've had the whole purpose of the ones that we built are that they can take actions independently 247 365 so you don't have to be constantly one toone involved with it synchronously right chat GPT cop Pilots you have to be there one to one ask for something get a response ask for something get a response agents free you from that and that's what's so promising about them for all business but lawyers too for example on our platform you can in five minutes spin up an AI receptionist that is doing the job 24/7 365 answering phone calls taking messages routing calls with a pleasant voice and saying exactly the script that you want not too shabby that takes a lot of overhead and burden off and also makes all that information like at your fingertips whereas if it's somebody speaking to somebody you may not have notes about it or know exactly what happened and let's face it attorneys uh are notorious for not answering the phones and being responsive so any anything you can do to help with that has got to be a plus yeah absolutely I mean the number one bar complaint is lack of communication for lawers um I'm switching topics a little bit here well a lot of bit here um but I you know I I am very curious to get your opinion on this um you know as kind of a thought leader in this space so do you see generative Ai and no code platforms playing a role in increasing access to justice for undeserved communities or is it is it going to be you know is it going to be the opposite is it going to have the opposite type of effect because you're you're hearing a lot of discussion both sort of pro and con that okay if they they this is something that's going to be made and it's not going to give them as as high level an experience um and then others are saying this is a situation where nobody's getting this type of of of help and this is a way to be able to do it within a cost parameters bias right I'm definitely Pro using generative AI to help I'm Pro any way of trying to help right and I think this is particularly suited to it and I know for a fact that it's helping because we've worked with legal aid organizations to incorporate this technology to reach out and provide people the help that they need immediately uh we've done it with legal aid of North Carolina their Leah assistant has helped tens of thousands of people get information including just after Hurricane Helen um you know they don't have the time to be reading through hundreds of pages of great you know greatly sourced web pages of information they just want the answer and this thing gives them the answer they could take action on it we're doing a similar project with the state court of Alaska and also the State Bar of Arizona and others so there's a ton of Interest it does the job and I think that's one of the uh killer applications of gener AI I'm I'm curious on on the hurricane relief what's some of kind of the examples that that people are getting results that they wouldn't necessarily get without these tools well I I think what's what's happening is that they're getting direct access to that information about where to you know where to get the forms that they need where to get the advice that they need so like if they want to get uh those phone phone numbers or forms or all of that it's aggregated into one synthesized response so they get that as needed because everyone has like different questions different concerns and so the beauty of gen is that it could tailor the response to that particular person whereas if you use a web page you have to find it you got to track it down or you're CH choosing one option and then maybe another option and maybe they're in different places so they're not easy to find and and I'm being dangerous here because I'm coming with questions off the top of my head but it would seem like also like the some of the future if not current uh examples of what how this could help is that with it being the large language models there's multiple languages actually that you know could come in so I'm you know uh May not be specific to this but I think that's something that that these types of tools could really help with it it's not just you know does someone speak English and can get get uh the information back in English but seems like with with these you you have some flexibility absolutely like with uh Leah in North Carolina somebody asked it a question in Spanish it understands the context this person needs a response in Spanish it response to them in Spanish everything in the database like all The Trusted information that they've provided us to train the the AI is in English obviously but immediately on the Fly gets translated into the language that the user is communicating in so pretty amazing pretty impressive so let's get back to uh to law Droid and I know there's a lot of custom custom ability and flexibility that you've built in uh to the system generic you talk about can you talk about you know this flexibility to meet specific needs even across different legal practices yeah definitely there's a lot to talk about we have two products we have co-pilot which is an AI Legal Assistant just like a bunch of others out there but we also have laid Builder now that's the the heavy hitter that's the one where you can build custom agents to your needs and actually it's the platform that we used to build LOD co-pilot and so that's kind of an example for law firms of how sophisticated a you know an application they could build based on the platform but it fits pretty much any practice area because when the lawyer gets involved they can customize it to their needs some template agents that we have where you could just spin it up quickly is the AI receptionist that I mentioned before uh a lead capture bot that you put on your website engages like in a sales conversation with people people to convert them to leads uh we also have a generative AI Q&A bot which is like the one at the legal aid organizations you just feed in the information it can answer questions on the Fly and then last lastly the last template we have is one that can interview clients or potential clients gather that information and actually complete documents on the fly so a document automation agent you could just think of all the different applications for that and a state planning lawyer could have it you know creating first drafts of EST estate planning documents in word emailing them to the attorney the attorney has it 80 to 90% buttoned up before they even talk to the client I'm kind oh go go ahead I was I was just saying I'm curious how hard is it to do the build I mean I know this is sort of low code no code but for your average attorney who you know May not be familiar with with any of that um how easy is it for them to do it well there is some work involved we do have like self self-help videos support uh we're there for them and that's if you know they go down the do it-yourself route we try to make it as easy as possible with the templates but you know definitely uh I understand as Lear myself they may not have the time inclination to even learn how to do that that's why we have a second option which is a done for you option where we can build it out for them they just answer some questions in the questionnaire and then based on that build it out they get implemented very quickly and get it out there helping them it's kind of your sweet spot for you for your client base is it a little small firm larger what what it's kind of the spectrum of your your customer base yeah I mean to be open with you I have two customer bases like there's the projects where I work with legal aid I have a legal insurance company that's a client and those are kind of like longer term larger ticket item projects that we work on on the other hand there's a software service where I'm working with individual law firms and lawyers to help them automate their their law practice and one handwashes the other like the projects kind of underwrite everything allow us to build over build up over the years the software service platform and that's been growing you know over the past couple of years so it's really you know I I'm very thankful for everyone that's worked with me because to remain bootstrapped but profitable without having to take VC investment without having to give up control uh or be under someone else's timeline has been a great Advantage because I think right now as you're seeing there's so much change when it comes to generative AI that to be able to like wait it out and incorporate the changes slowly as they make sense as opposed to being under the gun is uh a big Advantage you do you have any aspirations to either you know for example move in on the corporate side or larger law firms or is there there someone that you think could take advantage of of what law Droid does that don't necessarily have La Droid on on the radar unfortunately I think La Droid is probably not on a lot of people's radar and that's that's problem need to get it on their radar I hope so because I think I think in the the scope of all of the options that are available right now for legal AI I know for a fact that La Droid is one of the most affordable and one of the most uh D Dynamic and that you could apply to a lot of different use cases you know if you're if if you want for your Law Firm like an AI tool chest where you can get into this and build it out for yourself intuitively easily and affordably that's La Droid so yeah I welcome that interest and I think we can really help a lot of people so one of the things that I deal with pretty much on a daily Bas daily basis is um data security and privacy requirements for for different vendors gen vendors and never heard of that yeah no never never and you know I I understand like we as an industry are struggling with that right now we're wrestling with it and that's a good thing and we'll figure it out but in the meantime so what are the measures that law Droid takes to ensure that data security and privacy for you know users for you know law firms or or legal departments and and Law Firm clients it's a great question we get asked a lot it comes up in all the conversations that we have and it should it should you know like as a lawyer myself I understand the importance of these ethics rules and that we comply with them and that we keep the best interest of our clients at heart because that's that's what we do as professionals so that that filters down into how we handle the information so for examp example all of the data that comes into our system we don't train against it and every vendor that we use we have contractual you know obligations from them not to train against it we do retain the information for the convenience of the users we have um you know archives of conversations they could refer back to sometimes they need to for compliance to just make sure that you know if somebody said hey they accepted the terms of service that this is not legal advice that in fact we have a log of that and they can refer back to it but we also allow data management so that if they want to delete you know conversations after a month they could go into the system they could bulk delete they could individually delete conversations so we're very respectful of getting rid of the data if they want to get rid of it and then of course for security we have encryption both in terms of the transmission of the data to us and then how it's kept so we take reasonable precautions to ensure that all of this information is secure private and that we provide the best situation for their clients that is kept in a you know secure manner um I'm gonna I'm GNA hop back to the theme I had about like how easy is it for for lawyers to to use this technology um you know as an attorney yourself you know what advice would you give to lawyers who are hesitant to adopt you know AI or no code Solutions in their practice because that's that's always a challenge with you know Innovation teams and and others who try and roll out these products is to you know get you know the the clientele at at their organization to to use it and to consistently use it all right so my my answer is kind of like a a Clarion call like a call to action because I think I think sometimes lawyers they have and I've been guilty of this in the past too but have this sense of you know I could I could wait I could wait it out right like ah it's not quite perfect for me I'm just going to push away from the table and because we've had like a a pretty iron uh clad Monopoly in the past that's been more doable then with the sandboxes with you know in California there's multiple licenses of non lawyers that are actually essentially practicing law with a Document Preparation some paralegals and others throughout the different states that level of like Ironclad mon Monopoly is kind of it's being eaten into and then you have ai companies that are making all of this information easily accessible you know as Greg pointed out with the web search on open thei right now on chat GPT you could find a lot of this Legal Information very quickly directly through it so it's not like we have control the way we used to they can enun us and so you know the best way I think to battle that is to jump into it experiment with it remain curious you're only going to be able to master AI if you experiment and use Ai and the attorney that is already using it is going to be ahead of the game so one last thing I'll mention is that if you look at the actual statistics not just me talking about it as a vendor which you might think well you're biased Tom but if you look at you know recent numbers out of Walter's cluer it's 86% of In-House Council are using gen in some way and I believe it's 7 79 or 78% of law firms are using generative Ai and of course the Cleo numbers are that last year went from 19% adoption to this year 79% adoption so this is a Title Wave of interest in adoption and you don't want to be left behind how do you how do you balance that with I know there are times where I show attorneys you know hey look look at this feature that we can do here's here's something that we can do to streamline your work and uh the initial response is oh God it's good thing I'm only five years away from retirement because I I don't think that I'm going to have a job in five years which I try to like bring them off the The Cliff so how how do you discuss the the benefit Ai and how and then how that benefit actually enhances the role of the attorney rather than than necessarily takes away from it that's a great question you know and it's it's a it's a matter of good news bad news I always like to deal with the bad news first so the bad news is yes it is going to there are going to be jobs lost as they're currently defined so the types of job skills and work that we do day-to-day prei that's not going to remain the same there's a lot of stuff that's going to get removed from that and then put into the lap of AI because it's just much better at doing route summarization you know data extraction all that stuff which I know when I had colleagues of mine come out in the late 90s into the working world you know they were not happy to be pouring through thousands and thousands of pages of deposition trans transcripts doing that uh kind of like Discovery in the old days so that's bad news that jobs are going to change by definition but the good news is that AI is going to be able to help us with a lot of the work that we're doing and make it more interesting because we'll be able to focus on more interesting stuff so that's that's kind of the good news bad news about it and I think on the net it's going to be a net positive it'll also by the way by making all of this more efficient bring down the cost of representation so we could actually represent more and it could widen the the market and the number of customers that can access it and afford US let talk about uh the big event that you hold every year the the annual legal technology Awards and and and I think last one was was here in Texas in Austin talk talk about the event kind of why you created it and and you know why it's important to recognize some of the leadership and and accomplishments in for the legal Tech creators yeah it's been a it's been a work of of love and heart I think because the people that come to it the people that we recognize they're really about giving back to the community and it's also about doing well but doing good and so it was in Austin it was at the bar Mansion it was an amazing like event that I think really brought people together and our mission I co-founded this organization with Pat uh excuse me Patrick Palace and Cat moon were friends and it really came from a place of we're in the community we love everyone in our community we wanted to have great excuse to get together and just hang out and party honestly but also like having the mission of recognizing those people holding them up as examples so that it can create you know a cycle of improvement for for us and like the whole industry and thereby benefit everyone in the world really so it's it's a bit idealistic it's it's very Grassroots and um I'm very excited that it's going to continue next year and hopefully the year after that and the year after that hopefully you have in Texas again I was gonna say we're have you got it got it lined up for the event place yet haven't completely decided but um I just as I think you mentioned at the top I accepted a position as an adun professor at suffk uh law school which is in Boston typically in the past we've kind of been in the same place as the CLE Cloud conference we've had the awards and then they uh you know had their conference it may work out that way um but we haven't decided ultimately yet carve you out some space at suffk for the event yeah absolutely yeah we'll see so uh Tom uh we we we've reached the end of the interview and what we do with all of our guests is we ask everybody crystal ball question and basically this is what future developments or features can we expect from La Droid in the coming years or what thoughts do you have on on the future of AI development that's a know pressure's on just a little just a little easy yeah well I I could the great the great thing is you can be wrong because like it's all just happening so quickly it really doesn't matter whether anybody's right or wrong it's like I don't think we can figure it out at this point well the easier one I'll take first which is like how's it going to affect l Droid that part is easier to answer because the way that l Droid has been built out as a platform is to take advantage of like all the new improvements so like we started out with classic AI if then statements like you know if you choose a then it's go down one route if you choose B then it goes down a different rout so like very like decision very like fine-tuned decision tree yeah exactly but we've add added layers with natural language then with generative Ai and taking advantage of everything so like when things get even better we'll be able to utilize that as for how things are going to play out more broadly um I don't know but one thing I can say is that I think it would be a terrible thing if all we did with that Improvement that's going to happen and is happening right now it'd be a terrible thing if all we did was build a faster horse because I think that what's happening is that we're being faced we're being given an opportunity to reshape how we actually interact with the law and I think if we do it the right way we'll be able to reshape it so that we include everyone under the under the tent and and not only increase access to justice but guarantee access to justice for everyone yeah I I was afraid you were going to say it' be a shame if all we built were richer lawyers so well never know you can have both it's not it's not a you know it's not a a zero some game I think I think it could be a win-win yeah absolutely Ely well Tom Martin from La La Droid want to thank you very much for coming in and talking with us today it's it's been great thank you Craig thank you Marlene I really enjoyed having well I really enjoyed being here thank you and of course thanks to all of you our listeners for taking the time to listen to The Geek and review podcast if you enjoyed the show share it with a colleague we'd love to hear from you so reach out to us on um social media on LinkedIn Tom we'll put some links on the show notes but what's the best way for people to reach out and find out more about law Droid or to reach out to you with more questions thanks Greg you could find me pretty much on all social social media at laid laid is my handle but I also have a substack where I put out articles and my own podcast at laid manifesto. comom and of course La Droid is a laid.com so feel free to follow up love to hear from you so if they remember anything it's just it's law Droid Droid yeah la Droid okay and as always the music you hear is from Jerry David TOA thanks so much Jerry Jerry all right Marlene I'll talk to you later byebye don't have to go to Sal of the Earth on the way to a h the devil's backb hey hey don't take me away I can walk by the North Star but I fail to notice how still out devil is backb the Devil's Back B and the Devil's Back B
2024-11-18