July 31, 2025 • 19 mins
It was a privilege to feature the following leaders in legal technology and legal services for the Q2 2025 Ari Kaplan Advisors CEO roundtable discussion about trends, challenges, and opportunities: Milan Bobde, Oddr Keao Caindec, Clarra William Johnson, TCDI Marcel Lang, Epona Nishat Mehta, Lexitas Subroto Mukerji, Integreon Gene Phillips, PF2 Securities Luke Suydam, Page Vault
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals, a podcast hosted by industry analyst Ari Kaplan,
(00:12):
which shares ideas, guidance and perspectives from market leaders shaping the next generation
of legal and professional services.
Welcome to the Q2 2025 CEO Roundtable.
I'm Ari Kaplan.
(00:32):
I'm an analyst that covers the legal industry and have been convening this discussion series
for five years.
I'm Bill Johnson and I head up BOTCDI, which is a typical eDiscovery service provider.
We started in the 1988.
My name is Luke Sudam.
We provide a software solution that helps law firms to collect online evidence.
(00:55):
The website, social media, mostly used for litigation and we do it in a way that is
friendsically found and legally admissible.
My name is Marcel Lang.
I am the CEO of Ipona.
Ipona is a provider of legal documentagement solution on top of Microsoft 365.
I'm business 25 years plus in legal.
My name is Jean Phillips.
(01:16):
I'm based in Los Angeles.
I essentially run two companies.
The first company is something of a pure play expert witness consulting company.
We talk to litigators running large-scale financial market litigation and pitch them that
they should use our experts.
We've done some big cases and we've been going for about 17 years.
(01:41):
The aspirational play is called the X-angle to help law firms launch, grow the litigation
boutiques and help them find the experts.
My name is Shobrata.
I'm the CEO of Integron and I've been this business for three years.
I spent 35 years in the IT services industry, 20 of them with HP and it's many successors
(02:03):
and predecessors and then a few years with RAC space.
Integron is one of the original LSP founded about 26 years ago.
A few years ago we sold our e-discovery business to TCDI.
We now do things like manage discovery, contract, cyber incident response, other legal services
from our nine locations across the world.
(02:26):
My name is Mullen Bobday.
I'm the co-founder and CEO at Order.
I've been in legal tech for close to two decades now.
We started Order about three and a half years ago.
Order is essentially a category defining in voice to cash platform, changing the paradigm
of how revenue management happens within law firms.
(02:49):
From billing to collections to payments to reconciliation, all of that in a single platform.
Shobh met the CEO of Lexitas, a tech enabled legal services company.
We provide court reporting medical record retrieval process service and legal talent solutions
where private equity backed very much the result of about 50 acquisitions over the last
(03:12):
decade to build a national provider of these services.
I joined the company about 15 months ago and this is my first foray into the legal space.
I come from 20 years in data and information services.
K.O. Kane Deck, I'm the CEO of Clara, a legal case and practice management platform.
(03:36):
A company started just three years ago.
We've designed it to be simple, easy to integrate, easy to customize and really optimized for
litigation.
In a field as crowded as case management, we view our role as really helping law firms
to modernize the core part of managing a law firm so that they can integrate all of the
(04:01):
other great applications.
Does anybody anticipating an opportunity seen an opportunity this year in the first half
that is particularly meaningful or surprising?
Global case management.
When you think about large law or very large enterprise customers, they have a big problem
(04:22):
with managing global contingent liability.
We're designed for being able to have a global platform that's customized by country and
multi tenant permissions in access.
We work with firms that have securities litigation globally, but they find it very difficult
(04:44):
to manage it all because as much as they want to use AI, many are not super sophisticated.
They find it very difficult to take all of that information and coordinate it globally.
Ever since the January way I came to the market, I found that many customers and art customers
are mostly enterprises, some law firms, but a little bit dear in the headlights as to
(05:06):
what to do in legal transformation, say implementation of a CELM solution or whatever, that came, that
slowed down, came almost to a halt because people started questioning, does the landscape
change dramatically because of this technology?
I'm finding in this year is that people are realizing that the technology will continue
to evolve, that what is needed is domain specific solution.
(05:30):
One cannot wait for the perfect, not let it be the enemy of the good.
So choose from the options that are available now, make the choice and move forward.
And if the area is one where there is a lot of uncertainty, look for a model whereby
the commitment can be reversed easily without too much of cost by using a service provider
(05:51):
rather than making a big commitment to us off to a platform yourself.
A sudden leap from the end of Q4 of last year, our pipeline has ballooned for these kind
of solutions.
We've got a project that we're just starting that's something we've been aiming to get
in place for two years now since the wave of AI started.
We've found that especially in major corporations, there's so much pressure internally
(06:15):
from the board and the C-suite to start using AI and find efficiencies.
We've got a couple of contracts that we think of as managed services for AI to beat the
AI advisors and implementers without any specific project in place at the beginning.
But we need AI roadmap built and then we need to execute on AI roadmap.
(06:40):
We do a process analysis review of the workflows to determine where AI can solve bottleneck
problems or bring in cost efficiencies and then survey the market and see if there's anything
already available for third party vendors.
If not then design a custom solution and put those in place and start seeing the benefits
(07:00):
and then move on to the next project without having to create a new SOW for a new AI project.
This kind of support service, managed services for you to discover it.
We see a lot of AI readiness assessments popping up.
We are provider of a document management solution and we got clients everywhere globally putting
all the precious data into SharePoint but could be also imangering their documents.
(07:24):
People are now aware of co-pilot or chat GPT that they need to do something with their
data.
Most data is not ready for it.
People say everything.
A lot of sensitive data inside of the DMS.
What we see today is more.
Can you check my environment to see if my firm, in this case my data is ready for AI at
(07:46):
all.
We do a very easy check.
We're not spending hours and days to do this.
In my ex-alver environment we can peel out very easily the sensitive information and give
a quick report on that.
It's not our core business but it is helping not only our customers or prospects.
But also make them aware that your DMS is not some expensive file share.
(08:08):
We just dump everything in.
But that you really need to make sure that your data is ready to move forward.
Do not use your data out of the box with any AI engine or tool out there before you really
know what you're doing.
That's something we see was an opportunity for us.
I'm an optimist for AI but I'm also a cynic.
I think there is a collision course right now with a lot of law firms and enterprises where
(08:35):
they have these ambitions to take advantage of AI.
But the very systems and tools they're using to manage their business are still quite old.
They aren't cloud ready.
There's still a lot of systems out there that are using very old bus architectures, monolithic,
custom built.
And it doesn't allow them to take advantage of these new technologies.
(08:57):
You can think of AI for simple use cases, summarization, extraction, but that may move the needle
in a part of the business.
But in looking at things like reducing the hours on non billable time or helping you to
really improve your strategy for litigation, those can really move the needle or looking
at profitability of different areas of your business.
(09:21):
A lot of the problem is really having them take a few steps back and take stock of what
they have and make sure they just have a more of a transformation planning in place that
incorporates AI instead of focusing on AI.
As we're thinking about these different opportunities and strategies, any concerns as
(09:43):
we head into the second half of the year.
Something we've started to see this year and maybe have concern about for the next half
of the year is mind share.
There's so many solutions and so much money in the space chasing all of the opportunity
that's here.
How do we stay top of mind?
They think about ourselves funnel.
How do we get the attention of attorneys or you discovery folks in the first place?
(10:08):
And then once we have that attention, we have a champion.
How do we get the tech teams attention to make sure they're going to do a security review
on time? They've got hundreds of applications they're trying to bet once it's shifted the
way we think about our go-to-market towards relationship based lead generation, staying
top of mind, multithreading through a bunch of different stakeholders.
(10:28):
The attention share is something that's been hard, especially if it's more a solution.
When we were going through some of those top of mind share issues, one thing that was really
helpful was really deepening partnerships with key partners and making sure our integration
is not just checking the box, but there were very tight integrations and going to market
(10:50):
with something where there was a clear joint value to the client.
That way you're not so much trying to rise above it, but more being able to move forward,
I call it brand draft.
One of the difficulties historically has been to get in front of the offense.
There's an opportunity now for the equal tech to really get in front of the offense because
they are fearful and they are opportunistic.
(11:10):
It's becoming more and more difficult to get in front of clients whether because of lack
of return to office or just they're getting inundated.
We've found a success in using philanthropic activities, things like access to justice,
pro bono work.
We just recently sponsored the New York City Urban Debate League, which is an organization
(11:31):
that teaches fourth through 12th graders to debate.
There's all sorts of work around scholarships related to certain bar associations.
What we have found is the level of the folks that I meet at these events.
Their willingness to engage post the event is five times as good as any other marketing
activity that we do.
This is an industry that I so built on in relationship and relationships are so well-struck
(11:55):
when we have common interests.
At the end of the day you've got to believe in the cause as well, but I've just been very
pleasantly surprised and we're thinking about increasing our budget next year as a lead
generation source in addition to actually doing some good work in the industry.
One thing, geopolitical crisis and the economic uncertainty that it brings along with it.
(12:18):
We are all witnessing so much activity across the globe, but as a business I'm seeing forms
relating their growth plans or pushing their decisions for 30-60 days.
There's not a lot we could do about it, but it's something as a CEO and a leader that
you'll think about.
Another thing I pay attention to when we close the leaders standing out in a crowd.
(12:38):
When we started about three and a half years ago, there was nothing called invoice to cash
within law firms.
Today, there are so many shares that claim to be invoice to cash.
It's really important as a young growing company to have our differentiator for us.
It is mainly the speed and velocity at which we innovate that no matter who's trying to
(13:00):
get to the similar space and see the same opportunity if you are able to innovate faster than
the others and be able to effectively communicate that.
It helps you mitigate that.
Are the skills that you're looking for, that your team is expected to have?
Has that changed at all?
Is there something specific about what leaders are looking for today?
(13:23):
If we take as an example, not just GNII, but AI overall, we had to take a stance in
the company that you need to learn this technology to be valuable to your client and to yourself.
The threat is not the technology.
The threat is somebody else using the technology to be more efficient than you are.
(13:43):
We did a launch of a whole set of training courses which people had to take on their own
time.
It had an introductory course, intermediate course, advanced course, and expert course, and
we offered it to people and build a curriculum.
In the first week, a thousand of our 3,000-odd people signed up.
We were able to get them excited that it's the right thing to do.
(14:06):
Today, 18 months late, about 600 people have completed the introductory course.
You can get a little bit of external talent, but that is like a spice to food.
You can only afford and get a little bit of it.
If you put too much of it, you'll burn your mouth.
The rest of the change in flavor has to come by retraining, re-weeping, re-energizing
(14:31):
the existing workforce.
That's our strategy.
We're really looking at investing in folks who are investing in their own AI talent,
our biggest group of people that we hire in any given year is engineers.
We've always said a really good engineer can be five to ten times more productive than
a median engineer when you put AI into the mix.
(14:51):
A really good engineer who is good and efficient at using artificial intelligence can be 20,
30 times just in terms of the amount of sheer code that they can write.
As we've hired more engineers, we're looking for AI fluency and see it as an engineer who
can be a good user of artificial intelligence, but like a leader of a team of different agents
who can each write a bunch of code and then oversee it.
(15:12):
They just really change the game in terms of the type of people we look for.
To move to remote as our base of operations has really changed our view of the
experience and the seniority of the people that we are willing to add to the staff.
There's a lot less room for bringing in a junior person and mentoring them because you
just don't have that opportunity to do it.
(15:33):
In the remote environment, there's a lot more value placed on people that are independent
and independent thinkers because the time and the opportunity for IDX changed is a lot
more limited and has to be intentional as opposed to the only at the water cooler to
exchange some ideas that opportunity just isn't there and you have to be really intentional.
(15:55):
So we've become a lot more senior oriented, especially on our development, technical staff,
which boads badly for people coming into the business new, but it's a reality.
I know a lot of companies are going back to an office, but for us, it's a lot nicer to
be able to recruit country wide and hire the best people in the world where they are.
(16:19):
Domain knowledge is still the highest thing within the legal tech.
It doesn't mean that finding the right technical skills is easy, but that's an easier part
of the problem.
Finding people that really understand legal tech and nuances, that's the hard part and
the most sought after skill within our company.
You can learn AI and can find a really good mid-level and you can go to a higher level,
(16:44):
but for someone to really understand the legal domain takes years.
It's amazing when you just get smart people together with some good knowledge, magic starts
to happen.
A lot of our functionality comes from our engineers.
And I think that domain knowledge really differentiates who has the ability to think from
that perspective.
You can find the technical skills, but if you think about domain knowledge, that's a small
(17:08):
pool.
Where are we headed?
I'll just curious to see where people think the next half of the year is going.
For us in the company, we always have to deal with some wars going on.
From Ukraine, Russia, in Europe, something in the Middle East, it is something we are concerned
about, but also our customers or our prospects as well.
(17:29):
Everybody is focusing on the train AI.
So for us, the whole focus is based on Microsoft and AI and make sure that they are getting
where they want to go.
I don't think they're ready, but there will be a day that they're ready.
Our focus for this six months is on this one.
We're breaking down the big problem into baby steps.
So in the next six months, what's the first step you can take to get on the AI train or the
(17:52):
next step?
You can take, make a small one because people are overwhelmed.
AI is a bubble in the gold right now.
The valuations companies are getting, it's never, ever going to be that scale because of
the technology so advanced and the cash inflow.
There are so many vendors that are going to come to this space claiming to do things.
I expect to see a lot more legal and non legal vertical company is trying to use AI and
(18:15):
it's going to be chaos for law firms to really figure out which solution is right for that.
Most players will not survive this.
There might be some consolidation coming up within the vendor space.
So much change going on right now with new technology, AI, a lot of older technologies
that will have to be end of life or consolidated and there are so many competitors.
(18:36):
What's excited about the future is all of these things happening at once right now and
there's certainly opportunity there.
It's a little watching a marathon on TV at the start of the marathon, you got a thousand
people all running together and it's just a fast jumble and you come back at the five mile
mark and you start to see that filter out and every mile you get less and less people
in the lead and your picture gets clear eventually by the 26 mile mark.
(18:59):
There may be just one or two people that are still in the race.
It's just trying to figure out which mile mark are we at.
I know we're not meant to begin, but it's fairly early in the race right now.
Thank you all so much.
This is such a privilege to facilitate this conversation.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Thank you for listening to the reinventing professionals podcast.
(19:23):
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com or are you cap lind advisers.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals, a podcast hosted by industry analyst Ari Kaplan,
(00:12):
which shares ideas, guidance and perspectives from market leaders shaping the next generation
of legal and professional services.
Welcome to the Q2 2025 CEO Roundtable.
I'm Ari Kaplan.
(00:32):
I'm an analyst that covers the legal industry and have been convening this discussion series
for five years.
I'm Bill Johnson and I head up BOTCDI, which is a typical eDiscovery service provider.
We started in the 1988.
My name is Luke Sudam.
We provide a software solution that helps law firms to collect online evidence.
(00:55):
The website, social media, mostly used for litigation and we do it in a way that is
friendsically found and legally admissible.
My name is Marcel Lang.
I am the CEO of Ipona.
Ipona is a provider of legal documentagement solution on top of Microsoft 365.
I'm business 25 years plus in legal.
My name is Jean Phillips.
(01:16):
I'm based in Los Angeles.
I essentially run two companies.
The first company is something of a pure play expert witness consulting company.
We talk to litigators running large-scale financial market litigation and pitch them that
they should use our experts.
We've done some big cases and we've been going for about 17 years.
(01:41):
The aspirational play is called the X-angle to help law firms launch, grow the litigation
boutiques and help them find the experts.
My name is Shobrata.
I'm the CEO of Integron and I've been this business for three years.
I spent 35 years in the IT services industry, 20 of them with HP and it's many successors
(02:03):
and predecessors and then a few years with RAC space.
Integron is one of the original LSP founded about 26 years ago.
A few years ago we sold our e-discovery business to TCDI.
We now do things like manage discovery, contract, cyber incident response, other legal services
from our nine locations across the world.
(02:26):
My name is Mullen Bobday.
I'm the co-founder and CEO at Order.
I've been in legal tech for close to two decades now.
We started Order about three and a half years ago.
Order is essentially a category defining in voice to cash platform, changing the paradigm
of how revenue management happens within law firms.
(02:49):
From billing to collections to payments to reconciliation, all of that in a single platform.
Shobh met the CEO of Lexitas, a tech enabled legal services company.
We provide court reporting medical record retrieval process service and legal talent solutions
where private equity backed very much the result of about 50 acquisitions over the last
(03:12):
decade to build a national provider of these services.
I joined the company about 15 months ago and this is my first foray into the legal space.
I come from 20 years in data and information services.
K.O. Kane Deck, I'm the CEO of Clara, a legal case and practice management platform.
(03:36):
A company started just three years ago.
We've designed it to be simple, easy to integrate, easy to customize and really optimized for
litigation.
In a field as crowded as case management, we view our role as really helping law firms
to modernize the core part of managing a law firm so that they can integrate all of the
(04:01):
other great applications.
Does anybody anticipating an opportunity seen an opportunity this year in the first half
that is particularly meaningful or surprising?
Global case management.
When you think about large law or very large enterprise customers, they have a big problem
(04:22):
with managing global contingent liability.
We're designed for being able to have a global platform that's customized by country and
multi tenant permissions in access.
We work with firms that have securities litigation globally, but they find it very difficult
(04:44):
to manage it all because as much as they want to use AI, many are not super sophisticated.
They find it very difficult to take all of that information and coordinate it globally.
Ever since the January way I came to the market, I found that many customers and art customers
are mostly enterprises, some law firms, but a little bit dear in the headlights as to
(05:06):
what to do in legal transformation, say implementation of a CELM solution or whatever, that came, that
slowed down, came almost to a halt because people started questioning, does the landscape
change dramatically because of this technology?
I'm finding in this year is that people are realizing that the technology will continue
to evolve, that what is needed is domain specific solution.
(05:30):
One cannot wait for the perfect, not let it be the enemy of the good.
So choose from the options that are available now, make the choice and move forward.
And if the area is one where there is a lot of uncertainty, look for a model whereby
the commitment can be reversed easily without too much of cost by using a service provider
(05:51):
rather than making a big commitment to us off to a platform yourself.
A sudden leap from the end of Q4 of last year, our pipeline has ballooned for these kind
of solutions.
We've got a project that we're just starting that's something we've been aiming to get
in place for two years now since the wave of AI started.
We've found that especially in major corporations, there's so much pressure internally
(06:15):
from the board and the C-suite to start using AI and find efficiencies.
We've got a couple of contracts that we think of as managed services for AI to beat the
AI advisors and implementers without any specific project in place at the beginning.
But we need AI roadmap built and then we need to execute on AI roadmap.
(06:40):
We do a process analysis review of the workflows to determine where AI can solve bottleneck
problems or bring in cost efficiencies and then survey the market and see if there's anything
already available for third party vendors.
If not then design a custom solution and put those in place and start seeing the benefits
(07:00):
and then move on to the next project without having to create a new SOW for a new AI project.
This kind of support service, managed services for you to discover it.
We see a lot of AI readiness assessments popping up.
We are provider of a document management solution and we got clients everywhere globally putting
all the precious data into SharePoint but could be also imangering their documents.
(07:24):
People are now aware of co-pilot or chat GPT that they need to do something with their
data.
Most data is not ready for it.
People say everything.
A lot of sensitive data inside of the DMS.
What we see today is more.
Can you check my environment to see if my firm, in this case my data is ready for AI at
(07:46):
all.
We do a very easy check.
We're not spending hours and days to do this.
In my ex-alver environment we can peel out very easily the sensitive information and give
a quick report on that.
It's not our core business but it is helping not only our customers or prospects.
But also make them aware that your DMS is not some expensive file share.
(08:08):
We just dump everything in.
But that you really need to make sure that your data is ready to move forward.
Do not use your data out of the box with any AI engine or tool out there before you really
know what you're doing.
That's something we see was an opportunity for us.
I'm an optimist for AI but I'm also a cynic.
I think there is a collision course right now with a lot of law firms and enterprises where
(08:35):
they have these ambitions to take advantage of AI.
But the very systems and tools they're using to manage their business are still quite old.
They aren't cloud ready.
There's still a lot of systems out there that are using very old bus architectures, monolithic,
custom built.
And it doesn't allow them to take advantage of these new technologies.
(08:57):
You can think of AI for simple use cases, summarization, extraction, but that may move the needle
in a part of the business.
But in looking at things like reducing the hours on non billable time or helping you to
really improve your strategy for litigation, those can really move the needle or looking
at profitability of different areas of your business.
(09:21):
A lot of the problem is really having them take a few steps back and take stock of what
they have and make sure they just have a more of a transformation planning in place that
incorporates AI instead of focusing on AI.
As we're thinking about these different opportunities and strategies, any concerns as
(09:43):
we head into the second half of the year.
Something we've started to see this year and maybe have concern about for the next half
of the year is mind share.
There's so many solutions and so much money in the space chasing all of the opportunity
that's here.
How do we stay top of mind?
They think about ourselves funnel.
How do we get the attention of attorneys or you discovery folks in the first place?
(10:08):
And then once we have that attention, we have a champion.
How do we get the tech teams attention to make sure they're going to do a security review
on time? They've got hundreds of applications they're trying to bet once it's shifted the
way we think about our go-to-market towards relationship based lead generation, staying
top of mind, multithreading through a bunch of different stakeholders.
(10:28):
The attention share is something that's been hard, especially if it's more a solution.
When we were going through some of those top of mind share issues, one thing that was really
helpful was really deepening partnerships with key partners and making sure our integration
is not just checking the box, but there were very tight integrations and going to market
(10:50):
with something where there was a clear joint value to the client.
That way you're not so much trying to rise above it, but more being able to move forward,
I call it brand draft.
One of the difficulties historically has been to get in front of the offense.
There's an opportunity now for the equal tech to really get in front of the offense because
they are fearful and they are opportunistic.
(11:10):
It's becoming more and more difficult to get in front of clients whether because of lack
of return to office or just they're getting inundated.
We've found a success in using philanthropic activities, things like access to justice,
pro bono work.
We just recently sponsored the New York City Urban Debate League, which is an organization
(11:31):
that teaches fourth through 12th graders to debate.
There's all sorts of work around scholarships related to certain bar associations.
What we have found is the level of the folks that I meet at these events.
Their willingness to engage post the event is five times as good as any other marketing
activity that we do.
This is an industry that I so built on in relationship and relationships are so well-struck
(11:55):
when we have common interests.
At the end of the day you've got to believe in the cause as well, but I've just been very
pleasantly surprised and we're thinking about increasing our budget next year as a lead
generation source in addition to actually doing some good work in the industry.
One thing, geopolitical crisis and the economic uncertainty that it brings along with it.
(12:18):
We are all witnessing so much activity across the globe, but as a business I'm seeing forms
relating their growth plans or pushing their decisions for 30-60 days.
There's not a lot we could do about it, but it's something as a CEO and a leader that
you'll think about.
Another thing I pay attention to when we close the leaders standing out in a crowd.
(12:38):
When we started about three and a half years ago, there was nothing called invoice to cash
within law firms.
Today, there are so many shares that claim to be invoice to cash.
It's really important as a young growing company to have our differentiator for us.
It is mainly the speed and velocity at which we innovate that no matter who's trying to
(13:00):
get to the similar space and see the same opportunity if you are able to innovate faster than
the others and be able to effectively communicate that.
It helps you mitigate that.
Are the skills that you're looking for, that your team is expected to have?
Has that changed at all?
Is there something specific about what leaders are looking for today?
(13:23):
If we take as an example, not just GNII, but AI overall, we had to take a stance in
the company that you need to learn this technology to be valuable to your client and to yourself.
The threat is not the technology.
The threat is somebody else using the technology to be more efficient than you are.
(13:43):
We did a launch of a whole set of training courses which people had to take on their own
time.
It had an introductory course, intermediate course, advanced course, and expert course, and
we offered it to people and build a curriculum.
In the first week, a thousand of our 3,000-odd people signed up.
We were able to get them excited that it's the right thing to do.
(14:06):
Today, 18 months late, about 600 people have completed the introductory course.
You can get a little bit of external talent, but that is like a spice to food.
You can only afford and get a little bit of it.
If you put too much of it, you'll burn your mouth.
The rest of the change in flavor has to come by retraining, re-weeping, re-energizing
(14:31):
the existing workforce.
That's our strategy.
We're really looking at investing in folks who are investing in their own AI talent,
our biggest group of people that we hire in any given year is engineers.
We've always said a really good engineer can be five to ten times more productive than
a median engineer when you put AI into the mix.
(14:51):
A really good engineer who is good and efficient at using artificial intelligence can be 20,
30 times just in terms of the amount of sheer code that they can write.
As we've hired more engineers, we're looking for AI fluency and see it as an engineer who
can be a good user of artificial intelligence, but like a leader of a team of different agents
who can each write a bunch of code and then oversee it.
(15:12):
They just really change the game in terms of the type of people we look for.
To move to remote as our base of operations has really changed our view of the
experience and the seniority of the people that we are willing to add to the staff.
There's a lot less room for bringing in a junior person and mentoring them because you
just don't have that opportunity to do it.
(15:33):
In the remote environment, there's a lot more value placed on people that are independent
and independent thinkers because the time and the opportunity for IDX changed is a lot
more limited and has to be intentional as opposed to the only at the water cooler to
exchange some ideas that opportunity just isn't there and you have to be really intentional.
(15:55):
So we've become a lot more senior oriented, especially on our development, technical staff,
which boads badly for people coming into the business new, but it's a reality.
I know a lot of companies are going back to an office, but for us, it's a lot nicer to
be able to recruit country wide and hire the best people in the world where they are.
(16:19):
Domain knowledge is still the highest thing within the legal tech.
It doesn't mean that finding the right technical skills is easy, but that's an easier part
of the problem.
Finding people that really understand legal tech and nuances, that's the hard part and
the most sought after skill within our company.
You can learn AI and can find a really good mid-level and you can go to a higher level,
(16:44):
but for someone to really understand the legal domain takes years.
It's amazing when you just get smart people together with some good knowledge, magic starts
to happen.
A lot of our functionality comes from our engineers.
And I think that domain knowledge really differentiates who has the ability to think from
that perspective.
You can find the technical skills, but if you think about domain knowledge, that's a small
(17:08):
pool.
Where are we headed?
I'll just curious to see where people think the next half of the year is going.
For us in the company, we always have to deal with some wars going on.
From Ukraine, Russia, in Europe, something in the Middle East, it is something we are concerned
about, but also our customers or our prospects as well.
(17:29):
Everybody is focusing on the train AI.
So for us, the whole focus is based on Microsoft and AI and make sure that they are getting
where they want to go.
I don't think they're ready, but there will be a day that they're ready.
Our focus for this six months is on this one.
We're breaking down the big problem into baby steps.
So in the next six months, what's the first step you can take to get on the AI train or the
(17:52):
next step?
You can take, make a small one because people are overwhelmed.
AI is a bubble in the gold right now.
The valuations companies are getting, it's never, ever going to be that scale because of
the technology so advanced and the cash inflow.
There are so many vendors that are going to come to this space claiming to do things.
I expect to see a lot more legal and non legal vertical company is trying to use AI and
(18:15):
it's going to be chaos for law firms to really figure out which solution is right for that.
Most players will not survive this.
There might be some consolidation coming up within the vendor space.
So much change going on right now with new technology, AI, a lot of older technologies
that will have to be end of life or consolidated and there are so many competitors.
(18:36):
What's excited about the future is all of these things happening at once right now and
there's certainly opportunity there.
It's a little watching a marathon on TV at the start of the marathon, you got a thousand
people all running together and it's just a fast jumble and you come back at the five mile
mark and you start to see that filter out and every mile you get less and less people
in the lead and your picture gets clear eventually by the 26 mile mark.
(18:59):
There may be just one or two people that are still in the race.
It's just trying to figure out which mile mark are we at.
I know we're not meant to begin, but it's fairly early in the race right now.
Thank you all so much.
This is such a privilege to facilitate this conversation.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Thank you for listening to the reinventing professionals podcast.
(19:23):
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com or are you cap lind advisers.com to learn more.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!