September 16, 2025 • 35 mins
As Leslie Witt took to the stage Sept. 3 to deliver the keynote at Kaleidoscope, 8am’s inaugural customer conference, it was the culmination of a whirlwind summer. It had been just four months since she had joined the company formerly known as AffiniPay as chief product officer, responsible for leading product transformation and strategy for established legal tech brands LawPay, MyCase, CASEpeer and Docketwise. In the intervening 16 weeks, the company had undergone a major rebrand and finalized details of its first major conference. Now, two weeks after the rebrand and as the conference got underway, Witt stood before the keynote audience detailing the company’s newest product initiatives, including its upcoming launch of its generative AI-driven 8AM IQ.
Not long after Witt wrapped up her keynote, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with her live for this extended conversation. They spoke at the Kaleidoscope venue in Austin in a recording studio provided by 8am, where they discussed her background and career, her reasons for joining 8am, and the product announcements she had made earlier that day. Those announcements included the beta launch of an AI “Chat with Cases” feature that allows lawyers to ask questions of and search their case files, the integration of three core 8am products — LawPay, MyCase and SmartSpend — on a single technology platform, and more.
Before joining 8am in May, Witt had more than two decades of experience in leading product teams. Most recently, she had served as the chief product and design officer at the mental health and wellness technology company Headspace. She previously held senior positions at Intuit, where she led global design, research and innovation initiatives focused on small businesses.
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to 8AM and Leslie Witt
01:43 Leslie Witt's Background and Experience
09:53 Brand Transformation from Affinipay to 8AM
15:44 Product Design Philosophy and Customer Engagement
20:22 Platform Integration and New Features
24:57 Future Directions and Industry Impact
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Bob Ambrogi and we've got a special Law Next for you today, an interview with 8a.m.'s Chief Product Officer Leslie Witt recorded in person at the company's recent
Kaleidoscope Conference.
But before we get to that, please take a moment to hear from our generous sponsors.
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(00:21):
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(00:45):
That's Bill, the number four, Time.com.
Welcome to a special edition of Law Next.
I am here in Austin, Texas at the inaugural Kaleidoscope Conference of the company uh 8AM,which some of you may still remember as Affinipay, which recently, just two weeks ago,
(01:07):
rebranded as 8AM.
And I'm here with Leslie Witt, Chief Product Officer.
Leslie, how are you doing?
doing great.
Wonderful to be here with you today.
great to see you and great to meet you.
ah Leslie, among other things, delivered the keynote this morning and made someannouncements, which we're going to talk about a little bit.
(01:27):
But before we get to any of that, I actually kind of wanted to just jump into a little bitabout your background because you actually just came to this company in May.
We are sitting here now on September 2nd, it, that we are here?
September 3rd.
And so it's been barely five months that you've been here.
So
Tell us a little about who you are, where you come from, what experience you bring to thiscompany.
(01:51):
Thanks.
This was a little bit of a return to my origin story, to be honest with you.
So I spent a really formative part of my career focused on small businesses.
uh First, when I established a practice, innovation consultancy IDEO that was reallyfocused on how do you develop money services that actually land people and businesses in
(02:14):
better places.
I went from consulting into my first corporate executive role into it
focused on design and research and kind of new product development across the QuickBooksplatform.
And then COVID happened.
And like many people, I sort of woke up to this moment of staring at myself in the mirrorand at the reality of the mental health crisis.
(02:39):
And so I took a foray uh away from my commitment to small business success into mentalhealth, which I would say those things are not completely unlinked either.
And had a really
a glorious time over the last five years focused on bringing mental health services toeveryone, making them more accessible em and kind of ubiquitous through Headspace.
(03:02):
But I kept that passion for FinTech and for small business success alive by joining theboard at FreshBooks, which is an invoice and accounting platform.
And as I was thinking about my next chapter and what really drew me,
I was very attracted kind of coming back into this space, but expanding into zones Ihaven't been in before, which is specifically legal tech.
(03:24):
And so as Affinipe was, you know, like kind of saying, hey, we're ready for our nextchapter, both as a brand and as a platform.
And we really want to harness the power of technology to improve customer experiences.
It was sort of, you know, it was a perfect union.
Yeah.
It's funny because when I was thinking about speaking to you and about the fact that youhadn't previously worked in legal and I wanted to ask you about that just as you just
(03:51):
alluded to.
But then I thought, well, she worked in mental health, so maybe that does qualify you towork in legal tech.
I don't know.
But what does that experience, what do you think you bring to working with professionalservices and to the legal market in general in specific?
Yeah, I mean well I like I think there's a lot of very direct analogs from my time focusedon small businesses and just looking at the reality which is they operate a lot more like
(04:20):
consumers than like enterprises and With that comes and I would say like to be honest likeat the end of any enterprise software sits a human as well but being able to understand
how do you bring a level of confidence of efficiency of insight to an area that can
be quite complex and that isn't necessarily in the kind of dotted square of where they'refocused on being experts.
(04:46):
And so I think that for professionals, and I'll pick lawyers here, they've been trained tobe excellent lawyers.
They haven't necessarily been trained to be excellent business people.
And so figuring out how to help them thrive at what they do best.
by making operations more efficient and easier and by making financial management moreeffective and easier is where I think I can bring a lot of power.
(05:10):
And then that intersection that comes with what I learned.
more deeply by kind of being in the space of mental health is really about healthy habitformation, like taking some of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt and shame that quite
honestly canvases definitely into the financial space and into a firm management space andmaking it easier and more compelling to engage.
(05:34):
Yeah.
Do you think that not having worked in the legal sector in the past is an advantage or adisadvantage?
I'm a quick learner.
m So, you know, I would say like having spent 10 years as a consultant, I'm industrycurious.
And so while I'm not deeply steeped in legal tech, um I have an absorptive uh personalityand I have a lot of experts on my team.
(06:01):
ah you know, I have folks who, you know, the founder of Case Peer.
is on my team.
Nikki Black is one of our industry experts, is somebody that I get to consult with all thetime.
I to spend a lot of time with customers.
And so I do think that that mix in general, whether it's from the person that's coming inas the chief product officer, you name it role, that mix of having both deep expertise and
(06:23):
groundedness and new perspective is really essential to help drive relevant innovation.
So Leslie, when you were considering moving into this job or when you decided to move intothis job and you had conversations with Drew, the CEO, or with other executives here, what
were their marching orders in a sense to you?
What were they, what did they want you to do?
(06:44):
What were they bringing you in to accomplish?
Yeah, I mean, I'd say it's really that moment I was speaking to this morning, which isabout a new promise.
and paying it off in the actual customer experiences and platform.
They're also looking at the reality, which is right now, the practice of law, the practiceof accounting, quite honestly, the practice of almost anything in any industry is being
(07:09):
substantially transformed or the promise of transformation through AI.
And so bringing in someone who has experience developing generative AI tools in tandemwith experience, understanding the vicissitudes of
small business finance and operations, like to bring that combo together in order to helpcustomers lean in and trust the evolution of our services was a real essential.
(07:34):
Yeah.
What was your sense?
mean, 8 a.m., now 8 a.m., I still want to call it Affinipay because I've known it for along time.
And that the company as a whole has really been through a lot of changes over the last fewyears.
Not just the rebranding now, but the uh acquisition of my case and the companies that wentalong with it, Case Pier and...
(07:55):
uh
and others and integration of all of that.
where is this company in that evolution of bringing that all together into a cohesivewhole?
And what are the of the challenges that remain in continuing to execute on that?
They're quite far along.
(08:16):
that was also when I thought about like, is this the right time for me to join thiscompany?
uh A lot of it was poised on the work that has gone into just to throw some wonkier termslike into the replatforming of our products so that the kind of industrial logic of
(08:36):
bringing these things together could actually manifest in the customer experience.
And so I shared this morning the kind of promise to pay
off of LawPay, MyCase, and SmartSpend all being developed on the same chassis.
That is something that has been done.
I can put it in that kind of past tense, but the migration of all of our LawPay customersis a main thrust and focus of the next several months.
(09:02):
And so we are looking to be close to fully migrated.
onto this singular platform by the time that we head into 2026.
And what that really allows us to do is to ensure that the innovations that we're bringingto life are available to the vast majority of our customers, that when we're developing,
an improvement around billing and invoicing, that it actually cascades as value across allof our platform.
(09:28):
And so there's an efficiency to it, and then there's a seamlessness to the customer.
um I'd say that's a big part of why I was like, OK, the why now?
as I viscerally know from past experience, that's a multi-year journey and it has been forwhat was a Fennepay and is now 8 a.m.
and it's what made this the right time to actually make that brand transformation becausethe platform transformation underpins it as the proof.
(09:53):
Yeah, I want to get back to the platform transformation, but I want to also back up alittle bit more to the brand transformation that you've been talking about.
I mean, I wonder if you could elaborate.
I'm sure this was well underway at the point that you joined.
I know I interviewed Drew for this podcast probably two years ago when she talked aboutthe fact that they were going to be at some point having to wanting to do this.
(10:15):
I know it's been a long process, but
What's been your experience with that process?
Why do you think it's important to have gone through this transformation?
What does this mean really for ultimately for the customers and end users of theseproducts?
What's the significance for them?
Yeah, well, I will tell you that while our product brands, My Case, Lape, Dockwise,Casepear, CPA Charge, uh
(10:40):
are well known and well respected.
Our former company brand, Affinepe, was mostly not known.
And so it had that dimension of being a kind of invisible presence that quite honestlyspoke to an origin story that the company had evolved beyond.
It has pay in its title.
(11:01):
It's very hard to say like, but we're more than payments when your name says pay.
And so there was a mismatch between who we are
Current state.
and the previous name, and then certainly around that and who we are aspiring to become,which is to ensure that as a brand that is a place where, you know, we're committed to
(11:22):
helping professionals thrive, that that's legal and more, that it's practice management,financial management, it's payments, it's the, you know, kind of whole kit and caboodle,
and that it's aspirationally about the outcome that we're driving, not just the stuff.
And so I think that's what got everyone excited, me very much included about
rolling into owning this new name and promise.
(11:45):
Yeah, no, it's very true that as you say.
Legal professionals I would speak to would have no idea what a Finnape is.
They would know Lape.
They would know, as you say, they know the brands that are under that umbrella, but theydidn't understand.
They never heard the name of Finnape, really, for the most part.
ah So that makes a lot of sense.
What about the actual branding itself?
(12:09):
What have you heard in terms of what's the reception been to all of that?
And what are people saying about it?
So my origin story is in design.
actually was originally an architect of the build buildings kind.
So I care a lot about how things look.
And I would say that in any brand rollout, most of the people who talk are going to likegive a little snark.
(12:33):
But when it's snark plus positivity, that's a core win.
And what we've heard are a good number of, like the name.
hey, it's like refreshing to see some like energetic colors.
And then overall, like the way that that's come to life within our product experiences hasmet with generally positive reception.
(12:54):
you know, people are wary of change.
And I'd say that in a good way, it's raised customer expectations on us addressing some ofthe little nags that are about things that just aren't living up to their expectations.
um And we want that like.
part of rolling out a more compelling brand is to say, we're raising the bar on consumerexpectations and that's a bar that we can meet and will meet and will continue to promise
(13:21):
to raise our game.
oh
You know, forgot to, Ashley, you reminded me that I saw that you had a, you got yourmaster's degree in architecture.
You worked in architecture for a while.
How did you get from that to this?
uh How much time do we have?
Not much.
The nutshell version.
Yeah, the nutshell version is basically I realized I loved um the academic side ofarchitecture.
(13:46):
I didn't love being a practitioner.
And I had one of those lucky moments where this company IDEO in the early 2000s had reallycome onto the scene.
big time establishing the ideas around design thinking and having companies of all typeslean in to figure out what's my next iPhone.
And they needed people who knew how to 3D model.
(14:07):
And I came in as a 3D modeler, and by two years later, I'd started a practice focused onfinancial service innovation.
I won't tell you how.
It was a place where serendipity and curiosity were allowed to lead you.
And I took that for all it was worth.
And that's sort of how I'm here today.
I thought it was, was it, here you are delivering the keynote at the company's firstconference four months after joining the company.
(14:34):
Was that at all daunting to you or how did you feel about that?
say like when Drew and I were chatting about starting, she's like, okay, you're startingin May.
Here's the date I want you to hold.
You will be on stage as the keynote at this.
um it was uh really exciting to to be here.
It's been a very fun ride so far.
(14:54):
And I say like, we're just getting started.
You got you had four months of stress about this now you can move on to your day job
Hope you're enjoying this conversation with Leslie Witt.
We'll get back to it in just a moment, but first, here's an opportunity to learn about thesponsors who support Law Next.
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(15:15):
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(15:39):
That's bill the number four.
time.com
Do you as you step in I mean you made a lot of announcements this morning about productsI'd like to talk a little bit more about but just more generally more broadly Do you have
kind of a uh product design?
Philosophy or a philosophy that you approach, you know product development and design fromor what's your kind of perspective on that?
(16:01):
Yeah, I mean, it's grounded in...
deep customer observation and empathy, I would say like at the core.
Really saying like there's always a unique opportunity and we're certainly in one of thosetransformational moments to take the capabilities that technology brings to the table in
order to solve problems anew.
It's also very easy to get distracted by new technology and to get kind of enamored withsolutions in search of a problem.
(16:30):
And so I'd say like what I take from honestly my days as an architect,
and then anchored in a process methodology from my time at IDEO is you have to understandwhat they're seeking to do and foundationally connect the dots in a way that is simple and
accessible.
(16:51):
And that ends up being a golden pathway.
How do you do that in terms of understanding how lawyers and small firms are usingtechnology or aren't using technology?
mean, how do you kind of communicate with your customers or understand what it is yourcustomers want or need?
I mean, really across a canvas, like there's observation and conversation, and I doseparate those two because a lot of times you want to see past what a person says they do
(17:20):
and you're like, intriguing.
I'm observing something a little bit different and try and understand what sits betweenthose things.
You look for workarounds.
How are they making things work for what they do versus like there's a pathway where itcould be simpler and easier.
What are some of those psychological barriers?
You know, I'd say like trust is certainly one when it comes to
take of AI tooling.
(17:41):
Sometimes it's a business model, right?
Like if you're a lawyer and you're deeply married to hourly billing.
and you have this tool that sits here promising mass efficiency, well, there's like someinnate tension between those things.
So how might you help someone lean into business model evolution?
So observation and conversation that meets rapid experimentation, right?
(18:03):
Like you are always looking to oscillate between a problem identified or an opportunityidentified and the actual solution that you bring to life.
The best way to do that is to try on a variety of ones for size.
And so we use, you know, a canvas between
um you know, of un-coded and now that's becoming like a little blurrier with some of theGen.
tools, but the fastest way to put in front of someone like, what about this?
(18:27):
What about this?
And to be able to garner those impacts and then grow that into something that's coded inbeta but continues to live and evolve.
Yeah, I was thinking just just in the time I have been here Yeah, we're on the first dayof this conference at the morning of the first day of this conference But I had a
conversation this morning.
I've had several conversations with lawyers who are customers who are Pretty sophisticatedusers of technology and and and your technology specifically But I've also I had a
(18:56):
conversation with a woman this morning who's at a firm they were
Completely paper based until a year ago and they moved on to my case like a year ago andthey're just making this Transition and they're just figuring it out uh so That must have
to kind of play into how you design these products There are people who are just figuringit out and there are people who are advanced and how do you kind of be everything to
(19:21):
everybody?
Well, you can't.
think there is a dimension of like, I'm not going to be everything to everyone.
However, one of the pithier sayings I'm sure you've heard is like the futures here is justnot evenly distributed.
And that's always the case both that there's extreme examples, but in almost everyone'slife, there's some version of that where there's an extreme lean in and then there's a
(19:44):
legacy of norms.
And I'd say we feel that every day in our payments business.
um Lawyers are still really
like checks, right?
And so the check may be dead in various parts of the world, the check is not dead when itcomes to legal tech.
And that's even for firms who have deeply embraced digital payments.
And so you're always in a kind of both and moment and you wanna make sure that the thingsthat you're developing help nudge folks into more efficient and effective ways to operate,
(20:14):
that you're always making sure they actually do do that and that you're creating room fordiversity.
So to go back to the platform integration that you talked about, you said that you're nowbringing together under a single technology platform, Lape, in my case, SmartSpin.
Does this also go to docket wise?
(20:35):
Not yet, not yet, but we have actually created an extraction of some of the smart formsand workflows from DocketWise and have that available in my case as what we're calling our
immigration add-on.
So describe more what this means.
What does this mean for customers?
What are they going to see?
What will be different?
What will be the same?
Yeah, so I'd say like if you're a current Lape customer on what we are internallyreferring to as Lape Classic, as we transition you into the new Lape, it has everything
(21:07):
that you've always had.
Like, so there's feature parity plus, em and two of the areas that we felt were mostcritical to bring to life and not sequester into a practice management platform were uh
time tracking.
and invoicing.
And so those are probably the two biggest changes uh in terms of uh bringing featurecompleteness.
(21:29):
The other thing is that uh at a moment in time for those who choose to expand intopractice management, all of the data that they have collected immediately flows in and
through.
And so that transition, whether it's from how you log on to...
wanting to understand where your client information is, there's no data migrationnecessary.
(21:52):
It's just an unlock into a broader set of tools.
And what will happen, it's not yet, but I mentioned Smart Spend.
Right now, Smart Spend is available only to our My Case customers.
But because we now have the same platform logic across...
cases and clients, that's something that we are expanding over the coming months to ourLaPay base.
(22:16):
And so these additional financial services, I mentioned 8 a.m.
capital, which will come out in 2026, those will be available to our customers, whetherthey are active practice management users or not.
All right.
So if I am a My Case customer currently, does this platform integration mean anything tome?
Yeah.
We have finally delivered all of the LaPay.
(22:41):
Is it not?
oh Well, this knock on this wood, we have fully embedded all of the robustness of LaPaypayments into MyCase.
And so it used to be that if you used both, you actually occasionally had to log on toLaPay in order to actually kind of complete feature completeness.
And so we have fully embedded LaPay payments in the MyCase platform now.
(23:02):
A couple other things you announced today.
Well, actually, just mentioned 8 a.m.
Could you explain what that is or what you announced there?
Yeah, so we have been really focused on what I would say is like...
the critical problem of all small businesses, which is having the cash to operate.
And I think anyone who's ever run a business and not had somebody else paying theirpaycheck has had the experience that sometimes in your moment of biggest glory, you have
(23:30):
your biggest cashflow crisis, right?
then there's like the opportunities that you'd like to lean into.
Oh, I see an opportunity here.
I need to spend more on marketing or I actually want to hire this person in order to takethis bigger job, but I'm not going to get paid
for X amount of time.
And so the Smart Spend that I already mentioned and is live is one type of cashflow tool.
(23:52):
And it's really focused on expense reimbursement and expense management.
ADM Capital.
It's a card.
all your spending.
management layer.
the 8M capital is uh what's kind of an MCA like loan.
Like so it's a merchant capital advance based on underwriting uh of your transactionalflow.
(24:14):
And what that allows is that for businesses, a lot of times a business has proof that theyhave a robust repeatable engine and that they are credit worthy that isn't manifest in
their credit score.
especially their personal credit score.
Some of them barely have a business credit score and isn't necessarily showing up in whatlike a bank, a traditional bank would like to see like two years of robust tax filings.
(24:39):
And so what we're able to do is extend short-term loans at good prices for a larger, a farbroader cohort of folks.
And it's easy application, easy pay, and then the payback is also integrated andautomated.
I've been talking to you almost a half an hour without mentioning AI, which is almost arecord for an interview.
(25:01):
is that possible?
know.
How is that possible?
ah But uh you made some announcements along that front this morning.
So tell us a little bit about what you're doing in terms of developing and integratinggenerative AI into your products.
Yeah, I'd say our hallmark experience is A to MIQ.
And right now it is focused on a set of features that we call chat with cases.
(25:24):
And what that allows you to do is now fully uh include any documents, not yet OCRdocuments.
So I should say any text-based documents right now, but by end of year, all documents in ainteractive dialogue-based.
search, synthesis, and summarize type of experience.
And so that lets you at the level of singular documents or in aggregate understand casehistory.
(25:51):
pull out any information that's nested within and also have like that kind of super duperemployee that remembers everything, works 24 seven, is always chipper and happy and it
turns out also speaks basically any language on the planet.
And so that fluency is something that we've seen.
We've had some beta customers in it.
We're expanding that beta.
That was what I announced today and looking to pretty rapidly accelerate towards generalavailability.
(26:16):
So will 8AM IQ be able to query across all of the documents within, ultimately, what yousaid I think by the end of the year, all of the documents within the platform, including
you're saying OCR images or just something else you talked about, but financial documents,case documents, all of that or?
At the end of the year, eh that's our goal.
(26:37):
uh I would say right now what we are able to do is within any given case, all of thedocuments in the case.
so it really, what we saw as we went to that process that I was talking about ofobservation and discussion is obviously there's a lot of concerns about accuracy and
privacy.
And so the way that we can fulfill expectations is to say, you're operating within thisexisting structure.
(27:02):
That's how.
your firm tends to operate, which is a case-based archetype.
We've started to link some client-based archetypes, because often there's multiple casesper client.
But it really kind of contains its document-based search, which will include OCR by theend of the year.
So that 30 % of image-based documents included to be able to extract information.
(27:23):
We are also simultaneously working on uh ensuring that the financial side of the case.
Right?
And this would be more broadly kind of finances at a multi-case firm level are things thatwe can, if you are the right role and have the right permissions within the platform,
unleash the power of generative AI on.
(27:44):
And so some of the most common use cases are who owes me money?
All right, send a reminder and take that dimension of communication, oversight, predictiveaction into the financial documents portion of the
I mean you talked about one of the other things you talked about was that you're beenhancing the ability to create custom reports within within my case how is Custom
(28:11):
reporting different from sort of financial IQ or financial financial AI I mean I assumereport, know You could also look into a report and say who owes me money and figure that
out in the reporting So how is our the workflows or how are the use cases different?
They blend.
so part of us uh redoing our reporting engine, one was to make it just faster and moreeffective.
(28:34):
uh The second was to make it easier to customize reports to how a firm likes to see itsown operations.
But it was also to set the stage and to kind of create the right data structures so that
that insight that you might be going for that right now requires a report to be run andsome level of knowledge of how to take that report and extract what you need to know can
(28:59):
become as simple as just saying, who owes me money?
Who owes me money that's more than 30 days overdue?
Which of my employees is the most productive?
And so the older way of doing that is to create reports that kind of provide that in astructured capacity.
definitely see there's blurry lines and that the scales will tip over time to simply beingable to ask the question that right now require a report.
(29:26):
natural process really and more immediate.
What about on the sort of the case or matter level, not the financial level, but can youperhaps give me an example of how a beta user might use this now to ask a question about a
matter they're in.
I mean, I can share with you, have a very active beta user who I think on average is usingit around 60 times per day.
(29:50):
And in that case, this individual is really like just using it as a massively advancedsearch mechanic.
Just tell me, I think I actually used an example while I was up on stage, is a lot oflike, me, the individual happens to be in family law, tell me who all the family members
(30:10):
are, what are their ages?
And just being able to run those types of queries.
It's great at that.
I don't think that's necessarily where it's showcasing its utmost abilities.
Where I get very excited is around some of the case history, like help me understandwhat's happened.
uh summarizing and synthesizing some of the key points and discussions that have beenmanifest in the documents that have been collected around the case.
(30:34):
And so again, that like, if your brain could hold all of that information, this is whateach person wants to know.
But right now it takes a lot of manual effort in order to extract that.
You also mentioned this morning a new integration with net documents for documentmanagement system probably self-explanatory I don't know if we need to talk a lot about
(30:56):
that uh and just I'm watching the clock and I know we have Only only a few more minutes totalk but I was kind of curious uh Before we before we do wrap up to hear a little bit more
about where are we going from here?
I talked this morning about this is the first kaleidoscope.
There's gonna be another one next year, I guess
already talking about that, how will this product have, how will these group of products,how will 8AM have evolved from now to a year from now?
(31:22):
Yeah, I'd say like really three ways.
One is, know, I kind of outlined the three legs of the stool that make up our promise.
And what I would say we see is our differentiation in the space, which is that we comefrom a deep kind of financial management, fintech foundation and extend into practice
(31:43):
management.
And that three legs of the stool that we think are very powerful when knit together wellof payments, financial management and practice management is something that
we will continue to kind of weave together with greater and greater efficiency andeffectiveness.
AI will be some of that glue that allows those things to work that much more uh kind ofeffectively together in a way that's simple and insightful and powerful.
(32:09):
So that's kind of the second layer.
And then the third is really, you know, we are a platform that's focused on uhprofessionals.
not just legal.
And so I'd say what you should expect to see from us is a concerted expansion into otherindustries.
We have a little bit of that with the way that we have CPA charge today.
(32:31):
But we see a lot of synchrony with the accounting and bookkeeping space and also some blurthat happens across, you you think about say a state law or immigration and, really
figuring out what this sensible path is to take vertical specialization.
to take it in such a way that we can bring it to life for multiple verticals at once.
(32:52):
There's been a lot of conversation.
not here yet, although I'm sure there will be before the day's over, about what the impactof AI ultimately will be on law practice in the legal profession, with some predicting
it's going to fundamentally change the way lawyers practice law, others saying it's goingto be another step forward in technology, but not necessarily a fundamental change.
(33:15):
I know you're still new to the company and somewhat new to the legal field, but do youhave thoughts on really what that impact is going to be as we go forward?
I do, I do.
It made me the way to start.
I tend towards the utopic.
I own that.
So I don't think there's mass destruction coming.
I don't think this is the end of fill in the blank.
(33:36):
And I think we've actually already seen that in some of the industries that were even moreripe for disruption than legal, which is radiology, em accounting.
em And there are changes.
There are things that the AI, and I'll pick on radiology here for a second, em
can run the kind of most simple diagnostics even better.
(33:56):
But what we're seeing is that when you put the superpower, which is AI, in the hands ofthe experts, which are radiologists, they are making greater things happen together.
And that's actually my prediction for what we're going to see in the legal industry isyes, it's going to change, it's going to change the business model.
I'm almost certain of it.
I think we'll see a mass acceleration away from hourly to fixed fee.
(34:20):
I think it's going to allow small
or small firms to operate that much more effectively.
But it's also going to mean that everyone has to and is enabled to raise their game.
And so I'm really excited to see what equipping lawyers with these superpowers allows thesuperpowered law to bring to life.
(34:40):
um I've been asking you lots of questions.
Anything else that you wanted to say or point out?
was going to say, as someone new to the legal tech industry, any piece of advice for me?
uh Build on that mental health background you have and make sure you use that.
uh No, I have no advice whatsoever.
(35:02):
It sounds like you don't need any.
You're doing just fine.
Well, thank you for spending time.
Well, thank you very much.
really appreciate your taking time out of this busy conference to sit down and speak withme.
Love to talk to you.
This is Bob Ambrogi and we've got a special Law Next for you today, an interview with 8a.m.'s Chief Product Officer Leslie Witt recorded in person at the company's recent
Kaleidoscope Conference.
But before we get to that, please take a moment to hear from our generous sponsors.
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(00:45):
That's Bill, the number four, Time.com.
Welcome to a special edition of Law Next.
I am here in Austin, Texas at the inaugural Kaleidoscope Conference of the company uh 8AM,which some of you may still remember as Affinipay, which recently, just two weeks ago,
(01:07):
rebranded as 8AM.
And I'm here with Leslie Witt, Chief Product Officer.
Leslie, how are you doing?
doing great.
Wonderful to be here with you today.
great to see you and great to meet you.
ah Leslie, among other things, delivered the keynote this morning and made someannouncements, which we're going to talk about a little bit.
(01:27):
But before we get to any of that, I actually kind of wanted to just jump into a little bitabout your background because you actually just came to this company in May.
We are sitting here now on September 2nd, it, that we are here?
September 3rd.
And so it's been barely five months that you've been here.
So
Tell us a little about who you are, where you come from, what experience you bring to thiscompany.
(01:51):
Thanks.
This was a little bit of a return to my origin story, to be honest with you.
So I spent a really formative part of my career focused on small businesses.
uh First, when I established a practice, innovation consultancy IDEO that was reallyfocused on how do you develop money services that actually land people and businesses in
(02:14):
better places.
I went from consulting into my first corporate executive role into it
focused on design and research and kind of new product development across the QuickBooksplatform.
And then COVID happened.
And like many people, I sort of woke up to this moment of staring at myself in the mirrorand at the reality of the mental health crisis.
(02:39):
And so I took a foray uh away from my commitment to small business success into mentalhealth, which I would say those things are not completely unlinked either.
And had a really
a glorious time over the last five years focused on bringing mental health services toeveryone, making them more accessible em and kind of ubiquitous through Headspace.
(03:02):
But I kept that passion for FinTech and for small business success alive by joining theboard at FreshBooks, which is an invoice and accounting platform.
And as I was thinking about my next chapter and what really drew me,
I was very attracted kind of coming back into this space, but expanding into zones Ihaven't been in before, which is specifically legal tech.
(03:24):
And so as Affinipe was, you know, like kind of saying, hey, we're ready for our nextchapter, both as a brand and as a platform.
And we really want to harness the power of technology to improve customer experiences.
It was sort of, you know, it was a perfect union.
Yeah.
It's funny because when I was thinking about speaking to you and about the fact that youhadn't previously worked in legal and I wanted to ask you about that just as you just
(03:51):
alluded to.
But then I thought, well, she worked in mental health, so maybe that does qualify you towork in legal tech.
I don't know.
But what does that experience, what do you think you bring to working with professionalservices and to the legal market in general in specific?
Yeah, I mean well I like I think there's a lot of very direct analogs from my time focusedon small businesses and just looking at the reality which is they operate a lot more like
(04:20):
consumers than like enterprises and With that comes and I would say like to be honest likeat the end of any enterprise software sits a human as well but being able to understand
how do you bring a level of confidence of efficiency of insight to an area that can
be quite complex and that isn't necessarily in the kind of dotted square of where they'refocused on being experts.
(04:46):
And so I think that for professionals, and I'll pick lawyers here, they've been trained tobe excellent lawyers.
They haven't necessarily been trained to be excellent business people.
And so figuring out how to help them thrive at what they do best.
by making operations more efficient and easier and by making financial management moreeffective and easier is where I think I can bring a lot of power.
(05:10):
And then that intersection that comes with what I learned.
more deeply by kind of being in the space of mental health is really about healthy habitformation, like taking some of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt and shame that quite
honestly canvases definitely into the financial space and into a firm management space andmaking it easier and more compelling to engage.
(05:34):
Yeah.
Do you think that not having worked in the legal sector in the past is an advantage or adisadvantage?
I'm a quick learner.
m So, you know, I would say like having spent 10 years as a consultant, I'm industrycurious.
And so while I'm not deeply steeped in legal tech, um I have an absorptive uh personalityand I have a lot of experts on my team.
(06:01):
ah you know, I have folks who, you know, the founder of Case Peer.
is on my team.
Nikki Black is one of our industry experts, is somebody that I get to consult with all thetime.
I to spend a lot of time with customers.
And so I do think that that mix in general, whether it's from the person that's coming inas the chief product officer, you name it role, that mix of having both deep expertise and
(06:23):
groundedness and new perspective is really essential to help drive relevant innovation.
So Leslie, when you were considering moving into this job or when you decided to move intothis job and you had conversations with Drew, the CEO, or with other executives here, what
were their marching orders in a sense to you?
What were they, what did they want you to do?
(06:44):
What were they bringing you in to accomplish?
Yeah, I mean, I'd say it's really that moment I was speaking to this morning, which isabout a new promise.
and paying it off in the actual customer experiences and platform.
They're also looking at the reality, which is right now, the practice of law, the practiceof accounting, quite honestly, the practice of almost anything in any industry is being
(07:09):
substantially transformed or the promise of transformation through AI.
And so bringing in someone who has experience developing generative AI tools in tandemwith experience, understanding the vicissitudes of
small business finance and operations, like to bring that combo together in order to helpcustomers lean in and trust the evolution of our services was a real essential.
(07:34):
Yeah.
What was your sense?
mean, 8 a.m., now 8 a.m., I still want to call it Affinipay because I've known it for along time.
And that the company as a whole has really been through a lot of changes over the last fewyears.
Not just the rebranding now, but the uh acquisition of my case and the companies that wentalong with it, Case Pier and...
(07:55):
uh
and others and integration of all of that.
where is this company in that evolution of bringing that all together into a cohesivewhole?
And what are the of the challenges that remain in continuing to execute on that?
They're quite far along.
(08:16):
that was also when I thought about like, is this the right time for me to join thiscompany?
uh A lot of it was poised on the work that has gone into just to throw some wonkier termslike into the replatforming of our products so that the kind of industrial logic of
(08:36):
bringing these things together could actually manifest in the customer experience.
And so I shared this morning the kind of promise to pay
off of LawPay, MyCase, and SmartSpend all being developed on the same chassis.
That is something that has been done.
I can put it in that kind of past tense, but the migration of all of our LawPay customersis a main thrust and focus of the next several months.
(09:02):
And so we are looking to be close to fully migrated.
onto this singular platform by the time that we head into 2026.
And what that really allows us to do is to ensure that the innovations that we're bringingto life are available to the vast majority of our customers, that when we're developing,
an improvement around billing and invoicing, that it actually cascades as value across allof our platform.
(09:28):
And so there's an efficiency to it, and then there's a seamlessness to the customer.
um I'd say that's a big part of why I was like, OK, the why now?
as I viscerally know from past experience, that's a multi-year journey and it has been forwhat was a Fennepay and is now 8 a.m.
and it's what made this the right time to actually make that brand transformation becausethe platform transformation underpins it as the proof.
(09:53):
Yeah, I want to get back to the platform transformation, but I want to also back up alittle bit more to the brand transformation that you've been talking about.
I mean, I wonder if you could elaborate.
I'm sure this was well underway at the point that you joined.
I know I interviewed Drew for this podcast probably two years ago when she talked aboutthe fact that they were going to be at some point having to wanting to do this.
(10:15):
I know it's been a long process, but
What's been your experience with that process?
Why do you think it's important to have gone through this transformation?
What does this mean really for ultimately for the customers and end users of theseproducts?
What's the significance for them?
Yeah, well, I will tell you that while our product brands, My Case, Lape, Dockwise,Casepear, CPA Charge, uh
(10:40):
are well known and well respected.
Our former company brand, Affinepe, was mostly not known.
And so it had that dimension of being a kind of invisible presence that quite honestlyspoke to an origin story that the company had evolved beyond.
It has pay in its title.
(11:01):
It's very hard to say like, but we're more than payments when your name says pay.
And so there was a mismatch between who we are
Current state.
and the previous name, and then certainly around that and who we are aspiring to become,which is to ensure that as a brand that is a place where, you know, we're committed to
(11:22):
helping professionals thrive, that that's legal and more, that it's practice management,financial management, it's payments, it's the, you know, kind of whole kit and caboodle,
and that it's aspirationally about the outcome that we're driving, not just the stuff.
And so I think that's what got everyone excited, me very much included about
rolling into owning this new name and promise.
(11:45):
Yeah, no, it's very true that as you say.
Legal professionals I would speak to would have no idea what a Finnape is.
They would know Lape.
They would know, as you say, they know the brands that are under that umbrella, but theydidn't understand.
They never heard the name of Finnape, really, for the most part.
ah So that makes a lot of sense.
What about the actual branding itself?
(12:09):
What have you heard in terms of what's the reception been to all of that?
And what are people saying about it?
So my origin story is in design.
actually was originally an architect of the build buildings kind.
So I care a lot about how things look.
And I would say that in any brand rollout, most of the people who talk are going to likegive a little snark.
(12:33):
But when it's snark plus positivity, that's a core win.
And what we've heard are a good number of, like the name.
hey, it's like refreshing to see some like energetic colors.
And then overall, like the way that that's come to life within our product experiences hasmet with generally positive reception.
(12:54):
you know, people are wary of change.
And I'd say that in a good way, it's raised customer expectations on us addressing some ofthe little nags that are about things that just aren't living up to their expectations.
um And we want that like.
part of rolling out a more compelling brand is to say, we're raising the bar on consumerexpectations and that's a bar that we can meet and will meet and will continue to promise
(13:21):
to raise our game.
oh
You know, forgot to, Ashley, you reminded me that I saw that you had a, you got yourmaster's degree in architecture.
You worked in architecture for a while.
How did you get from that to this?
uh How much time do we have?
Not much.
The nutshell version.
Yeah, the nutshell version is basically I realized I loved um the academic side ofarchitecture.
(13:46):
I didn't love being a practitioner.
And I had one of those lucky moments where this company IDEO in the early 2000s had reallycome onto the scene.
big time establishing the ideas around design thinking and having companies of all typeslean in to figure out what's my next iPhone.
And they needed people who knew how to 3D model.
(14:07):
And I came in as a 3D modeler, and by two years later, I'd started a practice focused onfinancial service innovation.
I won't tell you how.
It was a place where serendipity and curiosity were allowed to lead you.
And I took that for all it was worth.
And that's sort of how I'm here today.
I thought it was, was it, here you are delivering the keynote at the company's firstconference four months after joining the company.
(14:34):
Was that at all daunting to you or how did you feel about that?
say like when Drew and I were chatting about starting, she's like, okay, you're startingin May.
Here's the date I want you to hold.
You will be on stage as the keynote at this.
um it was uh really exciting to to be here.
It's been a very fun ride so far.
(14:54):
And I say like, we're just getting started.
You got you had four months of stress about this now you can move on to your day job
Hope you're enjoying this conversation with Leslie Witt.
We'll get back to it in just a moment, but first, here's an opportunity to learn about thesponsors who support Law Next.
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(15:15):
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(15:39):
That's bill the number four.
time.com
Do you as you step in I mean you made a lot of announcements this morning about productsI'd like to talk a little bit more about but just more generally more broadly Do you have
kind of a uh product design?
Philosophy or a philosophy that you approach, you know product development and design fromor what's your kind of perspective on that?
(16:01):
Yeah, I mean, it's grounded in...
deep customer observation and empathy, I would say like at the core.
Really saying like there's always a unique opportunity and we're certainly in one of thosetransformational moments to take the capabilities that technology brings to the table in
order to solve problems anew.
It's also very easy to get distracted by new technology and to get kind of enamored withsolutions in search of a problem.
(16:30):
And so I'd say like what I take from honestly my days as an architect,
and then anchored in a process methodology from my time at IDEO is you have to understandwhat they're seeking to do and foundationally connect the dots in a way that is simple and
accessible.
(16:51):
And that ends up being a golden pathway.
How do you do that in terms of understanding how lawyers and small firms are usingtechnology or aren't using technology?
mean, how do you kind of communicate with your customers or understand what it is yourcustomers want or need?
I mean, really across a canvas, like there's observation and conversation, and I doseparate those two because a lot of times you want to see past what a person says they do
(17:20):
and you're like, intriguing.
I'm observing something a little bit different and try and understand what sits betweenthose things.
You look for workarounds.
How are they making things work for what they do versus like there's a pathway where itcould be simpler and easier.
What are some of those psychological barriers?
You know, I'd say like trust is certainly one when it comes to
take of AI tooling.
(17:41):
Sometimes it's a business model, right?
Like if you're a lawyer and you're deeply married to hourly billing.
and you have this tool that sits here promising mass efficiency, well, there's like someinnate tension between those things.
So how might you help someone lean into business model evolution?
So observation and conversation that meets rapid experimentation, right?
(18:03):
Like you are always looking to oscillate between a problem identified or an opportunityidentified and the actual solution that you bring to life.
The best way to do that is to try on a variety of ones for size.
And so we use, you know, a canvas between
um you know, of un-coded and now that's becoming like a little blurrier with some of theGen.
tools, but the fastest way to put in front of someone like, what about this?
(18:27):
What about this?
And to be able to garner those impacts and then grow that into something that's coded inbeta but continues to live and evolve.
Yeah, I was thinking just just in the time I have been here Yeah, we're on the first dayof this conference at the morning of the first day of this conference But I had a
conversation this morning.
I've had several conversations with lawyers who are customers who are Pretty sophisticatedusers of technology and and and your technology specifically But I've also I had a
(18:56):
conversation with a woman this morning who's at a firm they were
Completely paper based until a year ago and they moved on to my case like a year ago andthey're just making this Transition and they're just figuring it out uh so That must have
to kind of play into how you design these products There are people who are just figuringit out and there are people who are advanced and how do you kind of be everything to
(19:21):
everybody?
Well, you can't.
think there is a dimension of like, I'm not going to be everything to everyone.
However, one of the pithier sayings I'm sure you've heard is like the futures here is justnot evenly distributed.
And that's always the case both that there's extreme examples, but in almost everyone'slife, there's some version of that where there's an extreme lean in and then there's a
(19:44):
legacy of norms.
And I'd say we feel that every day in our payments business.
um Lawyers are still really
like checks, right?
And so the check may be dead in various parts of the world, the check is not dead when itcomes to legal tech.
And that's even for firms who have deeply embraced digital payments.
And so you're always in a kind of both and moment and you wanna make sure that the thingsthat you're developing help nudge folks into more efficient and effective ways to operate,
(20:14):
that you're always making sure they actually do do that and that you're creating room fordiversity.
So to go back to the platform integration that you talked about, you said that you're nowbringing together under a single technology platform, Lape, in my case, SmartSpin.
Does this also go to docket wise?
(20:35):
Not yet, not yet, but we have actually created an extraction of some of the smart formsand workflows from DocketWise and have that available in my case as what we're calling our
immigration add-on.
So describe more what this means.
What does this mean for customers?
What are they going to see?
What will be different?
What will be the same?
Yeah, so I'd say like if you're a current Lape customer on what we are internallyreferring to as Lape Classic, as we transition you into the new Lape, it has everything
(21:07):
that you've always had.
Like, so there's feature parity plus, em and two of the areas that we felt were mostcritical to bring to life and not sequester into a practice management platform were uh
time tracking.
and invoicing.
And so those are probably the two biggest changes uh in terms of uh bringing featurecompleteness.
(21:29):
The other thing is that uh at a moment in time for those who choose to expand intopractice management, all of the data that they have collected immediately flows in and
through.
And so that transition, whether it's from how you log on to...
wanting to understand where your client information is, there's no data migrationnecessary.
(21:52):
It's just an unlock into a broader set of tools.
And what will happen, it's not yet, but I mentioned Smart Spend.
Right now, Smart Spend is available only to our My Case customers.
But because we now have the same platform logic across...
cases and clients, that's something that we are expanding over the coming months to ourLaPay base.
(22:16):
And so these additional financial services, I mentioned 8 a.m.
capital, which will come out in 2026, those will be available to our customers, whetherthey are active practice management users or not.
All right.
So if I am a My Case customer currently, does this platform integration mean anything tome?
Yeah.
We have finally delivered all of the LaPay.
(22:41):
Is it not?
oh Well, this knock on this wood, we have fully embedded all of the robustness of LaPaypayments into MyCase.
And so it used to be that if you used both, you actually occasionally had to log on toLaPay in order to actually kind of complete feature completeness.
And so we have fully embedded LaPay payments in the MyCase platform now.
(23:02):
A couple other things you announced today.
Well, actually, just mentioned 8 a.m.
Could you explain what that is or what you announced there?
Yeah, so we have been really focused on what I would say is like...
the critical problem of all small businesses, which is having the cash to operate.
And I think anyone who's ever run a business and not had somebody else paying theirpaycheck has had the experience that sometimes in your moment of biggest glory, you have
(23:30):
your biggest cashflow crisis, right?
then there's like the opportunities that you'd like to lean into.
Oh, I see an opportunity here.
I need to spend more on marketing or I actually want to hire this person in order to takethis bigger job, but I'm not going to get paid
for X amount of time.
And so the Smart Spend that I already mentioned and is live is one type of cashflow tool.
(23:52):
And it's really focused on expense reimbursement and expense management.
ADM Capital.
It's a card.
all your spending.
management layer.
the 8M capital is uh what's kind of an MCA like loan.
Like so it's a merchant capital advance based on underwriting uh of your transactionalflow.
(24:14):
And what that allows is that for businesses, a lot of times a business has proof that theyhave a robust repeatable engine and that they are credit worthy that isn't manifest in
their credit score.
especially their personal credit score.
Some of them barely have a business credit score and isn't necessarily showing up in whatlike a bank, a traditional bank would like to see like two years of robust tax filings.
(24:39):
And so what we're able to do is extend short-term loans at good prices for a larger, a farbroader cohort of folks.
And it's easy application, easy pay, and then the payback is also integrated andautomated.
I've been talking to you almost a half an hour without mentioning AI, which is almost arecord for an interview.
(25:01):
is that possible?
know.
How is that possible?
ah But uh you made some announcements along that front this morning.
So tell us a little bit about what you're doing in terms of developing and integratinggenerative AI into your products.
Yeah, I'd say our hallmark experience is A to MIQ.
And right now it is focused on a set of features that we call chat with cases.
(25:24):
And what that allows you to do is now fully uh include any documents, not yet OCRdocuments.
So I should say any text-based documents right now, but by end of year, all documents in ainteractive dialogue-based.
search, synthesis, and summarize type of experience.
And so that lets you at the level of singular documents or in aggregate understand casehistory.
(25:51):
pull out any information that's nested within and also have like that kind of super duperemployee that remembers everything, works 24 seven, is always chipper and happy and it
turns out also speaks basically any language on the planet.
And so that fluency is something that we've seen.
We've had some beta customers in it.
We're expanding that beta.
That was what I announced today and looking to pretty rapidly accelerate towards generalavailability.
(26:16):
So will 8AM IQ be able to query across all of the documents within, ultimately, what yousaid I think by the end of the year, all of the documents within the platform, including
you're saying OCR images or just something else you talked about, but financial documents,case documents, all of that or?
At the end of the year, eh that's our goal.
(26:37):
uh I would say right now what we are able to do is within any given case, all of thedocuments in the case.
so it really, what we saw as we went to that process that I was talking about ofobservation and discussion is obviously there's a lot of concerns about accuracy and
privacy.
And so the way that we can fulfill expectations is to say, you're operating within thisexisting structure.
(27:02):
That's how.
your firm tends to operate, which is a case-based archetype.
We've started to link some client-based archetypes, because often there's multiple casesper client.
But it really kind of contains its document-based search, which will include OCR by theend of the year.
So that 30 % of image-based documents included to be able to extract information.
(27:23):
We are also simultaneously working on uh ensuring that the financial side of the case.
Right?
And this would be more broadly kind of finances at a multi-case firm level are things thatwe can, if you are the right role and have the right permissions within the platform,
unleash the power of generative AI on.
(27:44):
And so some of the most common use cases are who owes me money?
All right, send a reminder and take that dimension of communication, oversight, predictiveaction into the financial documents portion of the
I mean you talked about one of the other things you talked about was that you're beenhancing the ability to create custom reports within within my case how is Custom
(28:11):
reporting different from sort of financial IQ or financial financial AI I mean I assumereport, know You could also look into a report and say who owes me money and figure that
out in the reporting So how is our the workflows or how are the use cases different?
They blend.
so part of us uh redoing our reporting engine, one was to make it just faster and moreeffective.
(28:34):
uh The second was to make it easier to customize reports to how a firm likes to see itsown operations.
But it was also to set the stage and to kind of create the right data structures so that
that insight that you might be going for that right now requires a report to be run andsome level of knowledge of how to take that report and extract what you need to know can
(28:59):
become as simple as just saying, who owes me money?
Who owes me money that's more than 30 days overdue?
Which of my employees is the most productive?
And so the older way of doing that is to create reports that kind of provide that in astructured capacity.
definitely see there's blurry lines and that the scales will tip over time to simply beingable to ask the question that right now require a report.
(29:26):
natural process really and more immediate.
What about on the sort of the case or matter level, not the financial level, but can youperhaps give me an example of how a beta user might use this now to ask a question about a
matter they're in.
I mean, I can share with you, have a very active beta user who I think on average is usingit around 60 times per day.
(29:50):
And in that case, this individual is really like just using it as a massively advancedsearch mechanic.
Just tell me, I think I actually used an example while I was up on stage, is a lot oflike, me, the individual happens to be in family law, tell me who all the family members
(30:10):
are, what are their ages?
And just being able to run those types of queries.
It's great at that.
I don't think that's necessarily where it's showcasing its utmost abilities.
Where I get very excited is around some of the case history, like help me understandwhat's happened.
uh summarizing and synthesizing some of the key points and discussions that have beenmanifest in the documents that have been collected around the case.
(30:34):
And so again, that like, if your brain could hold all of that information, this is whateach person wants to know.
But right now it takes a lot of manual effort in order to extract that.
You also mentioned this morning a new integration with net documents for documentmanagement system probably self-explanatory I don't know if we need to talk a lot about
(30:56):
that uh and just I'm watching the clock and I know we have Only only a few more minutes totalk but I was kind of curious uh Before we before we do wrap up to hear a little bit more
about where are we going from here?
I talked this morning about this is the first kaleidoscope.
There's gonna be another one next year, I guess
already talking about that, how will this product have, how will these group of products,how will 8AM have evolved from now to a year from now?
(31:22):
Yeah, I'd say like really three ways.
One is, know, I kind of outlined the three legs of the stool that make up our promise.
And what I would say we see is our differentiation in the space, which is that we comefrom a deep kind of financial management, fintech foundation and extend into practice
(31:43):
management.
And that three legs of the stool that we think are very powerful when knit together wellof payments, financial management and practice management is something that
we will continue to kind of weave together with greater and greater efficiency andeffectiveness.
AI will be some of that glue that allows those things to work that much more uh kind ofeffectively together in a way that's simple and insightful and powerful.
(32:09):
So that's kind of the second layer.
And then the third is really, you know, we are a platform that's focused on uhprofessionals.
not just legal.
And so I'd say what you should expect to see from us is a concerted expansion into otherindustries.
We have a little bit of that with the way that we have CPA charge today.
(32:31):
But we see a lot of synchrony with the accounting and bookkeeping space and also some blurthat happens across, you you think about say a state law or immigration and, really
figuring out what this sensible path is to take vertical specialization.
to take it in such a way that we can bring it to life for multiple verticals at once.
(32:52):
There's been a lot of conversation.
not here yet, although I'm sure there will be before the day's over, about what the impactof AI ultimately will be on law practice in the legal profession, with some predicting
it's going to fundamentally change the way lawyers practice law, others saying it's goingto be another step forward in technology, but not necessarily a fundamental change.
(33:15):
I know you're still new to the company and somewhat new to the legal field, but do youhave thoughts on really what that impact is going to be as we go forward?
I do, I do.
It made me the way to start.
I tend towards the utopic.
I own that.
So I don't think there's mass destruction coming.
I don't think this is the end of fill in the blank.
(33:36):
And I think we've actually already seen that in some of the industries that were even moreripe for disruption than legal, which is radiology, em accounting.
em And there are changes.
There are things that the AI, and I'll pick on radiology here for a second, em
can run the kind of most simple diagnostics even better.
(33:56):
But what we're seeing is that when you put the superpower, which is AI, in the hands ofthe experts, which are radiologists, they are making greater things happen together.
And that's actually my prediction for what we're going to see in the legal industry isyes, it's going to change, it's going to change the business model.
I'm almost certain of it.
I think we'll see a mass acceleration away from hourly to fixed fee.
(34:20):
I think it's going to allow small
or small firms to operate that much more effectively.
But it's also going to mean that everyone has to and is enabled to raise their game.
And so I'm really excited to see what equipping lawyers with these superpowers allows thesuperpowered law to bring to life.
(34:40):
um I've been asking you lots of questions.
Anything else that you wanted to say or point out?
was going to say, as someone new to the legal tech industry, any piece of advice for me?
uh Build on that mental health background you have and make sure you use that.
uh No, I have no advice whatsoever.
(35:02):
It sounds like you don't need any.
You're doing just fine.
Well, thank you for spending time.
Well, thank you very much.
really appreciate your taking time out of this busy conference to sit down and speak withme.
Love to talk to you.
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