August 26, 2025 • 21 mins
I spoke with Nick Abrahams, a partner and the Global Co-Leader of Digital Transformation at Norton Rose Fulbright, who is also the Co-Founder of LawPath, a direct-to-consumer legal services provider. We discussed balancing digital transformation and practicing law, the effect of generative AI on the legal profession, and the qualities that matter most to prospective clients.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speakingtoday with Nick Abrahams, the global
(00:24):
co-leader of Digital transformation atNorton Rose Fulbright, where he is a
partner with an active law practice.
He's also the co-founder ofLaw Path, a direct to consumer
legal services provider.
Nick, it's a privilege to see you.
Ari, thanks very much for the time.
I'm looking forward to it.
I am also looking forwardto this conversation.
(00:46):
Tell us about your background andyour role at Norton Rose Fulbright.
I am the global co-leader at DigitalTransformation Practice, so that's talking
to our clients about what's happeningin the digital transformation world, and
then a few years ago I was for about fouror five years, the global leader of our
(01:07):
technology and innovation group, helpingout our clients with the views on what's
happening in technology and innovation.
What are the most common questionsthat they have asked you about
the firm's posture or the legalindustry's position on innovation?
Most of the legal world doesn't seem tobe aware of how to innovate correctly
(01:30):
and in my business law path we didthat using what's called minimum viable
product as an innovation philosophy.
And it's a very good one.
Most startups use it andvery few law firms use it.
So I find what law firms and legalteams are doing right at the moment
with innovation and they're strugglingwith it, is product-led innovation.
(01:51):
Particularly, obviously gen ai, superpopular right at the moment, but what
we're seeing is a lot of firms andlegal teams just licensing in some AI
tech and trying to find the use case.
And that's actually a veryinefficient way of innovating.
What we are trying to do and whatwe are trying to work with clients
we doing is really focusing onbeing problem led with innovation.
If we've got a client that we areworking with, what's the problem that
(02:14):
they've got that we could work togetheron, and really focus on the problem and
then get the tech to solve the problem.
How do you balance an active lawpractice with leading digital
transformation at a global law firm?
I'm very lucky because we justhave a lot of great people around.
My role is more on the legalpractice side and on the the
(02:36):
co-leader of digital transformation.
That's more of a sort of a,guiding role if you like.
There's a lot of people in ourorganization who are involved in that
particular aspect of the business.
What is the genesis of law Path?
Law Path started 12 years ago.
(02:56):
I was involved in technology.
So during.com, I was chief operatingofficer of an internet company, I was
based in Los Angeles at the time, andwe listed it at the height of.com and
we got it to 400 million of market cap.
And at that stage it lookedlike it was never work again
time, which is pretty good.
And then, in the space of twoweeks, the share price cratered
(03:20):
and I found myself wondering whatI was going to do with my life.
And I found as my equity was goingsouth, my interest in the law rekindled.
And also my interest infeeding the children.
So I came back to law and returnedback to Australia, but that had
always left a burning passion.
I'm a technology lawyer, so Iwas doing that for my clients and
loving that, but I'd always hadunfinished business with the internet.
(03:44):
And 12 years ago I thought itwas about time for a direct to
small business play in Australia.
And so I started a business calledLaw Path and then brought in two
co-founders with me and the co-foundersrun the business and are unbelievable.
(04:06):
I've been blessed to have Domand Tom join me as co-founders.
We are focused on providing legalservices to small business who
would not otherwise go to a lawyer.
We've served over half amillion small businesses.
I think most of those would've nevergone to a lawyer for the problem
that they came to us, but becausewe found the price point and we use
(04:26):
technology to make legal accessible,it's now a successful business.
It's not a linear process by any stretch.
It's had its ups and downs, but it isnow a mature business, and we've just
had a nice $10 million investment.
It's been a fascinatinginsight into how technology can
democratize the legal process.
What lessons did you learn indeveloping Lawpath and navigating
(04:50):
its growth trajectory that legal techentrepreneurs now could learn and apply?
The most important story to come out ofLawpath occurred about five years ago,
and at that stage, Lawpath was a disaster.
We were burning way too much money andwere going to close the business . We
(05:10):
had a pretty simple business model.
It was a complete DIY legal solution,so you would get for a subscription
fee access to 500 legal documents andthe thesis behind that was that if
you're a small business owner and it's11 o'clock at night and you need an
employment agreement, you don't wantto speak to a lawyer, you just want
(05:32):
to download the employment agreementfrom Lawpath, fill it out and send
it to the prospective employee.
We couldn't sell a subscription to the 500documents at $30 a month or at $5 a month.
There was zero interest in afully DIY solution, so as a
last-ditch attempt to save thatbusiness, we tweaked the offering.
(05:56):
We said you get unlimited accessto the 500 documents, plus you
get unlimited calls with lawyers.
Overnight, the business justradically changed, and that has been
the secret sauce to that business.
The lesson to be learned from that forall lawyers, whether they're legal tech
entrepreneurs or lawyers who are currentlyin legal teams in-house or in private
(06:21):
practice, is that law is very complicatedfor people who aren't lawyers, and very
few people are prepared to back themselvesor just go with a complete DIY solution.
People in areas where there isgreat complexity and great potential
downsides, will look for the humanexpert to help them, and that is
(06:45):
the secret to my business, and weshould really bear that in mind.
I know there's this big focus onthe robo lawyer, but the reality
is that what we do is complicated.
It's a maze for people, and theywant the reassurance of being
able to speak to a human expert.
Contrary to what a lot of peopletalk about, AI makes the world
(07:06):
a more complicated place andlawyers thrive on complexity.
So I see terrific upsidefor the profession.
How do you drive change in such a largeorganization when there is both an
advantage to having a digital environmentand yet you recognize the need for this
(07:29):
human input, guidance, and interaction?
The law has been blessed over thelast, years, decades, because we
have not been impacted by technology.
A bit of eDiscovery obviously,Zoom and and teams, but the
reality is if you compare us to theaccounting firms, their world got
turned upside down first by Excel.
(07:51):
People said, with the rise ofExcel that, we'd see a lot of
accountants lose their jobs.
'cause Excel did a lot of what accountantsused to do, simple bookkeeping stuff.
Of course that didn't happen.
The accountants grabbed thetechnology, they leveled up, and
now, you use Excel to provide,incredible insight into your business.
So we have been very luckythat we have not been impacted.
(08:12):
The large language models are now playingin our game, which is words, and so
there will be change, but I think whatI've seen over years of being in this
space and just trying to figure out howto help people by using technology to
help them to access legal services isthat the law is very slow to change.
(08:37):
There's a whole lot ofstructural reasons why that is.
And, we talked about, this basichuman need for human connection where
things are potentially quite parallel.
So it's really important withinlarge organizations to think about
change as being incremental andchange has to also really make sense.
(08:59):
I think most lawyers would say, certainlyevery in-house lawyer you speak to would
say, I could work 24 7 for the next sixmonths and still not get through my inbox.
There is a massive latentdemand for what we do.
It's unserved demand.
So how can we actually serveup legal services to that?
We can take people along on thejourney, but lawyers are super busy,
(09:22):
so any change that we give them,if it's a new piece of technology,
it has to work right outta the box.
That's why I'm not super keen onproduct-led innovation because
lawyers don't have any spare time.
My belief has always been give lawyerstools that will work immediately and
they'll find great value in them, andin which case they will adopt them.
(09:42):
When I had the global head of technologyand innovation role, I created with a
colleague of mine, this is five yearsago, the world's first AI enabled
privacy chatbot, and it answeredquestions about privacy related issues.
It was called Parker, and we builtParker in about 30 hours and were just
using a chatbot as a service platform.
(10:03):
We just filled out a lotof templates and so forth.
So we didn't need it involved.
It was unbelievable.
No technology people from the firmhad to be involved other than to
put the widget into the websitewhen we finally launched it.
And so on day one of Parker beinglive, it answered over a thousand
people's questions, delivered over40 hours of legal information.
(10:25):
Was smarter at the end of the day thanit was at the beginning of the day.
All up in license fees to the chat bot.
As a service provider, we paid $8 50and it was just an incredible thing.
We used it as a lead generationtool because when there's a
change in law, there's lots ofpeople need to know about it.
And so Parker answered those questionsand then we could then see who was
(10:48):
interested in it, and then we wouldget an email address, then we'd
follow it up so we lose it as leadgeneration generated over a million
dollars worth of legal work outta that.
I then did a webinar for our peoplearound the world explaining how
all lawyers could build a chatbot.
And there were six Parkers builtaround the world on the same platform.
(11:08):
So the key message there is.
How do we get the innovation capabilityinto the hands of our lawyers rather
than it having to go to the IT team whothen deliver something and then for a
whole range of reasons, which are allvery reasonable, what's delivered is
not necessarily 100% what was expected.
(11:29):
And also there's, the process ofdevelopment has not been sufficiently
involved with customer feedback.
How to drive things is I thinkfinding tools that the lawyers can use
immediately that add immediate valueand also i'm very big on focusing on
solving a problem that is worth solving.
There's plenty of problems tosolve, but how big is the problem?
(11:51):
What's the value proposition?
How do you validate that it's aworthwhile thing to spend time on?
You earned a master's in film,television, new media from the
University of Southern California andworked in Hollywood for many years.
What inspired that moveand why did you return?
(12:13):
After law school, I did four years withone of the major law firms in Sydney, and
then three years with a law firm in Tokyo,but I'd always wanted to be a Hollywood
studio executive, and where I grew upin Australia was a pretty regional area
and it's definitely not a direct linefrom regional Australia to Hollywood.
So I'd managed to get into Universityof Southern California Film School.
(12:37):
George Lucas went there.
They only take 20 people a year.
I had a great time at film school,and then I worked at Warner
Brothers as a creative executive.
So I was out of the law, I wasdoing the job I'd always wanted.
I was working with writers anddirectors, working on ER and the
development of The West Wing.
This was the very early days of it.
(12:57):
The first draft of that Sorkinscript of episode one was incredible.
When you're a studio executive, you reada lot of scripts I think I read 1500
scripts in a year or something, and yetto read that, it was just incredible.
That was a wonderful moment and agreat opportunity, but i'd always had
this desire to have side businesses.
So I had a script that I thoughtwas interesting and I owned it.
(13:20):
I needed a star to agree to be init so I could get it funded, and
back in those days, I sent lettersto a hundred agents and managers.
No one responded for days and weeksuntil one day the phone rang and
it was Woody Allen's agent and shesays, Mr. Allen will do your film.
And so the film's called Searchingfor Alison Porchnik We released it and
(13:43):
six months later, Ari, I got an Oscar.
Oscar Alexander Abrahams the firstof our three sons, and so Oscar
was born while we were in la andliterally from the moment he was born.
I changed.
I'd always wanna be a Hollywoodstudio executive, and then I was
like, I wanna raise a family, andHollywood is filled with sociopaths.
(14:06):
So I decided to return to Australiaand return to the law and focus on
helping people through being a lawyer.
My original idea was I could help peoplethrough telling stories through film and
tv, which is a great idea but I just cameback to Australia to raise the family
and help people through being a lawyer.
Because I know my purpose through thework that I'm doing in my research
(14:27):
at Bond University, I've spokento a lot of successful people.
That purpose idea is so importantand my purpose was very clear.
I was gonna raise a family inAustralia, so I often say I take
my worst day as a lawyer overmy best day at Warner Brothers.
You referenced yourresearch at Bond University.
Tell us about that.
I've always enjoyed being a lawyerand it's given me great satisfaction.
(14:52):
What always troubled me is how manypeople hate being a lawyer and it's just
a unfortunate position to find people.
So it made me try to understandwhy is it that some lawyers love
what they do and others don't.
I became an adjunct professor at BondUniversity to focus on this issue.
I interviewed over 200 globallegal leaders and business leaders.
(15:16):
So the general counsels of Apple andOracle and what I've found is 20% of
the profession are what I call thrivers.
They love being a lawyer.
I also spoke to more than a hundred peoplewho are just normal lawyers and found 20%
of our profession are thrivers loving it.
80% of the profession are grindersand really not enjoying it and
(15:39):
trying to figure out how theycan get through the next day.
What I then did was to come up with10 core skills that elevates people
from being grinders to thrivers.
That's one Bond University course whichis called career coaching intensive.
Then generative AI came along andI'm like, this is something that
lawyers can really benefit from.
So I created a generative AI productivitytraining for lawyers course, and
(16:02):
that's been incredibly successful.
So the coaching course is good.
We've had many hundreds of people,but the gen AI productivity training
for lawyers courses had over 900people do it in the last eight months.
We've just had United Nationshuman rights Commission legal
team, 35 of them have done it.
It's very short, six hours very cheap.
(16:23):
So that's what I do at Bond.
You are the author of several books,including Big Data, big Responsibilities,
and Data Disruption in Australia.
What do you want yourreaders to learn from them?
I got to go to film school 'causeI like to try to communicate ideas.
(16:43):
That's something thatI'm very interested in.
That's why the bond courses are soimportant to me because really what
I'm trying to do is communicateideas, which I think might be helpful.
And in writing the books, that wasreally just a way of trying to make
sense for people who maybe aren'tas close to the action as I am.
(17:05):
The first one was around a digitaldisruption, and that was really trying
to explain what is happening with.
Particularly all of the m and a andthe venture capital investment that was
going on and, what are some of the keythemes that we could take out of that?
I did that 'cause I had a ringside seatat that sort of information and it was
really just a way of translating thatinformation to people so that, if they
(17:29):
weren't as lucky as me to be that closeto it, they would get an understanding.
And the same with bigdata, big responsibilities.
'cause part of what I do is aroundthe privacy and cyber world.
And so when you're seeing data breachesand ransomware attacks on a daily basis
from your clients, I felt like there waslots of information that not necessarily
a lot of people knew, and so how couldwe get that information out to people?
(17:51):
That's a constant theme I thinkthrough also the bond courses as well.
I was lucky enough to have a legalcareer that I like, so how I try to
distill and communicate some thoughtsthat might help people with that.
How do you see innovation inthe legal profession evolving?
I see it evolving slowly.
(18:12):
There's lots of talk out therethat we're going to go to no
work for lawyers and so forth.
And technology is so greatand technology is good.
Technology is much better now thanit was when I first started Law
Path, and it was not very good then.
And frankly, we struggled for manyyears to try to make the technology
work to provide more efficient access.
(18:32):
I don't think that people are looking fortheir lawyers to be radical innovators.
I don't think they're looking for the nextGoogle or the next iPhone out of lawyers.
I think what people want.
At its core, and this is what I foundwith the research that I did on high
performing lawyers and I interviewedlots of general counsels and also
business people who use a lot of lawyers.
(18:54):
And very interesting, when I would askthem a question, what makes a great lawyer
knowledge of the law was just assumed.
What really elevated people inthe minds of those users of legal
services were communication , theability to form meaningful and
lasting relationships, adaptability,that's a key one right at the moment.
(19:16):
I think that technology will help withsome of the lower level work that is
done by lawyers, that is less enjoyable.
And I think it becomes a bit likethe Excel example where accountants
just grab the tool and it madethem better at what they do.
I think that's wherelawyers are headed to.
(19:38):
Just a story on this idea of lawyers arenot gonna have jobs jeffrey Hinton, the
godfather of ai and he just got the NobelPrize but in 2016, Jeffrey Hinton said
machines are so much better at readingscans than humans that radiologists are
like the coyote from the old cartoonthat have just run off the cliff.
(19:58):
They're just about to plummetto their death and we shouldn't
train any more radiologists.
We don't need them.
And in five years they'll be gone.
That was 2016.
Hinton was completely wrong.
From 2016 to now, the number of radiologypositions in the US has grown at 1.4% per
year and forecast to grow out to 2032.
(20:20):
There's a global shortage ofradiologists, what Hinton didn't
take account of is human naturenot to surrender to the technology.
They adapted.
Radiologists use technologyto provide greater insights
into their patient conditions.
And that's the opportunity for lawyers.
We are not going anywhere.
We will use this technology to levelup to hopefully take away some of
(20:44):
the dreary work that we have todo and concentrate on the really
interesting stuff, which is whatclients would love to hear more from us.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking with NickAbrahams, a partner and the global
co-leader of digital transformationat Norton Rose Fulbright, who is
also among so many other things, theco-founder of Law Path, a direct to
(21:08):
consumer legal services provider.
Nick, thanks so very much.
It's really been a privilege.
Thanks very much, Ari.
I really enjoyed it and thankyou for what you are doing.
It's great to have this podcast out there.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speakingtoday with Nick Abrahams, the global
(00:24):
co-leader of Digital transformation atNorton Rose Fulbright, where he is a
partner with an active law practice.
He's also the co-founder ofLaw Path, a direct to consumer
legal services provider.
Nick, it's a privilege to see you.
Ari, thanks very much for the time.
I'm looking forward to it.
I am also looking forwardto this conversation.
(00:46):
Tell us about your background andyour role at Norton Rose Fulbright.
I am the global co-leader at DigitalTransformation Practice, so that's talking
to our clients about what's happeningin the digital transformation world, and
then a few years ago I was for about fouror five years, the global leader of our
(01:07):
technology and innovation group, helpingout our clients with the views on what's
happening in technology and innovation.
What are the most common questionsthat they have asked you about
the firm's posture or the legalindustry's position on innovation?
Most of the legal world doesn't seem tobe aware of how to innovate correctly
(01:30):
and in my business law path we didthat using what's called minimum viable
product as an innovation philosophy.
And it's a very good one.
Most startups use it andvery few law firms use it.
So I find what law firms and legalteams are doing right at the moment
with innovation and they're strugglingwith it, is product-led innovation.
(01:51):
Particularly, obviously gen ai, superpopular right at the moment, but what
we're seeing is a lot of firms andlegal teams just licensing in some AI
tech and trying to find the use case.
And that's actually a veryinefficient way of innovating.
What we are trying to do and whatwe are trying to work with clients
we doing is really focusing onbeing problem led with innovation.
If we've got a client that we areworking with, what's the problem that
(02:14):
they've got that we could work togetheron, and really focus on the problem and
then get the tech to solve the problem.
How do you balance an active lawpractice with leading digital
transformation at a global law firm?
I'm very lucky because we justhave a lot of great people around.
My role is more on the legalpractice side and on the the
(02:36):
co-leader of digital transformation.
That's more of a sort of a,guiding role if you like.
There's a lot of people in ourorganization who are involved in that
particular aspect of the business.
What is the genesis of law Path?
Law Path started 12 years ago.
(02:56):
I was involved in technology.
So during.com, I was chief operatingofficer of an internet company, I was
based in Los Angeles at the time, andwe listed it at the height of.com and
we got it to 400 million of market cap.
And at that stage it lookedlike it was never work again
time, which is pretty good.
And then, in the space of twoweeks, the share price cratered
(03:20):
and I found myself wondering whatI was going to do with my life.
And I found as my equity was goingsouth, my interest in the law rekindled.
And also my interest infeeding the children.
So I came back to law and returnedback to Australia, but that had
always left a burning passion.
I'm a technology lawyer, so Iwas doing that for my clients and
loving that, but I'd always hadunfinished business with the internet.
(03:44):
And 12 years ago I thought itwas about time for a direct to
small business play in Australia.
And so I started a business calledLaw Path and then brought in two
co-founders with me and the co-foundersrun the business and are unbelievable.
(04:06):
I've been blessed to have Domand Tom join me as co-founders.
We are focused on providing legalservices to small business who
would not otherwise go to a lawyer.
We've served over half amillion small businesses.
I think most of those would've nevergone to a lawyer for the problem
that they came to us, but becausewe found the price point and we use
(04:26):
technology to make legal accessible,it's now a successful business.
It's not a linear process by any stretch.
It's had its ups and downs, but it isnow a mature business, and we've just
had a nice $10 million investment.
It's been a fascinatinginsight into how technology can
democratize the legal process.
What lessons did you learn indeveloping Lawpath and navigating
(04:50):
its growth trajectory that legal techentrepreneurs now could learn and apply?
The most important story to come out ofLawpath occurred about five years ago,
and at that stage, Lawpath was a disaster.
We were burning way too much money andwere going to close the business . We
(05:10):
had a pretty simple business model.
It was a complete DIY legal solution,so you would get for a subscription
fee access to 500 legal documents andthe thesis behind that was that if
you're a small business owner and it's11 o'clock at night and you need an
employment agreement, you don't wantto speak to a lawyer, you just want
(05:32):
to download the employment agreementfrom Lawpath, fill it out and send
it to the prospective employee.
We couldn't sell a subscription to the 500documents at $30 a month or at $5 a month.
There was zero interest in afully DIY solution, so as a
last-ditch attempt to save thatbusiness, we tweaked the offering.
(05:56):
We said you get unlimited accessto the 500 documents, plus you
get unlimited calls with lawyers.
Overnight, the business justradically changed, and that has been
the secret sauce to that business.
The lesson to be learned from that forall lawyers, whether they're legal tech
entrepreneurs or lawyers who are currentlyin legal teams in-house or in private
(06:21):
practice, is that law is very complicatedfor people who aren't lawyers, and very
few people are prepared to back themselvesor just go with a complete DIY solution.
People in areas where there isgreat complexity and great potential
downsides, will look for the humanexpert to help them, and that is
(06:45):
the secret to my business, and weshould really bear that in mind.
I know there's this big focus onthe robo lawyer, but the reality
is that what we do is complicated.
It's a maze for people, and theywant the reassurance of being
able to speak to a human expert.
Contrary to what a lot of peopletalk about, AI makes the world
(07:06):
a more complicated place andlawyers thrive on complexity.
So I see terrific upsidefor the profession.
How do you drive change in such a largeorganization when there is both an
advantage to having a digital environmentand yet you recognize the need for this
(07:29):
human input, guidance, and interaction?
The law has been blessed over thelast, years, decades, because we
have not been impacted by technology.
A bit of eDiscovery obviously,Zoom and and teams, but the
reality is if you compare us to theaccounting firms, their world got
turned upside down first by Excel.
(07:51):
People said, with the rise ofExcel that, we'd see a lot of
accountants lose their jobs.
'cause Excel did a lot of what accountantsused to do, simple bookkeeping stuff.
Of course that didn't happen.
The accountants grabbed thetechnology, they leveled up, and
now, you use Excel to provide,incredible insight into your business.
So we have been very luckythat we have not been impacted.
(08:12):
The large language models are now playingin our game, which is words, and so
there will be change, but I think whatI've seen over years of being in this
space and just trying to figure out howto help people by using technology to
help them to access legal services isthat the law is very slow to change.
(08:37):
There's a whole lot ofstructural reasons why that is.
And, we talked about, this basichuman need for human connection where
things are potentially quite parallel.
So it's really important withinlarge organizations to think about
change as being incremental andchange has to also really make sense.
(08:59):
I think most lawyers would say, certainlyevery in-house lawyer you speak to would
say, I could work 24 7 for the next sixmonths and still not get through my inbox.
There is a massive latentdemand for what we do.
It's unserved demand.
So how can we actually serveup legal services to that?
We can take people along on thejourney, but lawyers are super busy,
(09:22):
so any change that we give them,if it's a new piece of technology,
it has to work right outta the box.
That's why I'm not super keen onproduct-led innovation because
lawyers don't have any spare time.
My belief has always been give lawyerstools that will work immediately and
they'll find great value in them, andin which case they will adopt them.
(09:42):
When I had the global head of technologyand innovation role, I created with a
colleague of mine, this is five yearsago, the world's first AI enabled
privacy chatbot, and it answeredquestions about privacy related issues.
It was called Parker, and we builtParker in about 30 hours and were just
using a chatbot as a service platform.
(10:03):
We just filled out a lotof templates and so forth.
So we didn't need it involved.
It was unbelievable.
No technology people from the firmhad to be involved other than to
put the widget into the websitewhen we finally launched it.
And so on day one of Parker beinglive, it answered over a thousand
people's questions, delivered over40 hours of legal information.
(10:25):
Was smarter at the end of the day thanit was at the beginning of the day.
All up in license fees to the chat bot.
As a service provider, we paid $8 50and it was just an incredible thing.
We used it as a lead generationtool because when there's a
change in law, there's lots ofpeople need to know about it.
And so Parker answered those questionsand then we could then see who was
(10:48):
interested in it, and then we wouldget an email address, then we'd
follow it up so we lose it as leadgeneration generated over a million
dollars worth of legal work outta that.
I then did a webinar for our peoplearound the world explaining how
all lawyers could build a chatbot.
And there were six Parkers builtaround the world on the same platform.
(11:08):
So the key message there is.
How do we get the innovation capabilityinto the hands of our lawyers rather
than it having to go to the IT team whothen deliver something and then for a
whole range of reasons, which are allvery reasonable, what's delivered is
not necessarily 100% what was expected.
(11:29):
And also there's, the process ofdevelopment has not been sufficiently
involved with customer feedback.
How to drive things is I thinkfinding tools that the lawyers can use
immediately that add immediate valueand also i'm very big on focusing on
solving a problem that is worth solving.
There's plenty of problems tosolve, but how big is the problem?
(11:51):
What's the value proposition?
How do you validate that it's aworthwhile thing to spend time on?
You earned a master's in film,television, new media from the
University of Southern California andworked in Hollywood for many years.
What inspired that moveand why did you return?
(12:13):
After law school, I did four years withone of the major law firms in Sydney, and
then three years with a law firm in Tokyo,but I'd always wanted to be a Hollywood
studio executive, and where I grew upin Australia was a pretty regional area
and it's definitely not a direct linefrom regional Australia to Hollywood.
So I'd managed to get into Universityof Southern California Film School.
(12:37):
George Lucas went there.
They only take 20 people a year.
I had a great time at film school,and then I worked at Warner
Brothers as a creative executive.
So I was out of the law, I wasdoing the job I'd always wanted.
I was working with writers anddirectors, working on ER and the
development of The West Wing.
This was the very early days of it.
(12:57):
The first draft of that Sorkinscript of episode one was incredible.
When you're a studio executive, you reada lot of scripts I think I read 1500
scripts in a year or something, and yetto read that, it was just incredible.
That was a wonderful moment and agreat opportunity, but i'd always had
this desire to have side businesses.
So I had a script that I thoughtwas interesting and I owned it.
(13:20):
I needed a star to agree to be init so I could get it funded, and
back in those days, I sent lettersto a hundred agents and managers.
No one responded for days and weeksuntil one day the phone rang and
it was Woody Allen's agent and shesays, Mr. Allen will do your film.
And so the film's called Searchingfor Alison Porchnik We released it and
(13:43):
six months later, Ari, I got an Oscar.
Oscar Alexander Abrahams the firstof our three sons, and so Oscar
was born while we were in la andliterally from the moment he was born.
I changed.
I'd always wanna be a Hollywoodstudio executive, and then I was
like, I wanna raise a family, andHollywood is filled with sociopaths.
(14:06):
So I decided to return to Australiaand return to the law and focus on
helping people through being a lawyer.
My original idea was I could help peoplethrough telling stories through film and
tv, which is a great idea but I just cameback to Australia to raise the family
and help people through being a lawyer.
Because I know my purpose through thework that I'm doing in my research
(14:27):
at Bond University, I've spokento a lot of successful people.
That purpose idea is so importantand my purpose was very clear.
I was gonna raise a family inAustralia, so I often say I take
my worst day as a lawyer overmy best day at Warner Brothers.
You referenced yourresearch at Bond University.
Tell us about that.
I've always enjoyed being a lawyerand it's given me great satisfaction.
(14:52):
What always troubled me is how manypeople hate being a lawyer and it's just
a unfortunate position to find people.
So it made me try to understandwhy is it that some lawyers love
what they do and others don't.
I became an adjunct professor at BondUniversity to focus on this issue.
I interviewed over 200 globallegal leaders and business leaders.
(15:16):
So the general counsels of Apple andOracle and what I've found is 20% of
the profession are what I call thrivers.
They love being a lawyer.
I also spoke to more than a hundred peoplewho are just normal lawyers and found 20%
of our profession are thrivers loving it.
80% of the profession are grindersand really not enjoying it and
(15:39):
trying to figure out how theycan get through the next day.
What I then did was to come up with10 core skills that elevates people
from being grinders to thrivers.
That's one Bond University course whichis called career coaching intensive.
Then generative AI came along andI'm like, this is something that
lawyers can really benefit from.
So I created a generative AI productivitytraining for lawyers course, and
(16:02):
that's been incredibly successful.
So the coaching course is good.
We've had many hundreds of people,but the gen AI productivity training
for lawyers courses had over 900people do it in the last eight months.
We've just had United Nationshuman rights Commission legal
team, 35 of them have done it.
It's very short, six hours very cheap.
(16:23):
So that's what I do at Bond.
You are the author of several books,including Big Data, big Responsibilities,
and Data Disruption in Australia.
What do you want yourreaders to learn from them?
I got to go to film school 'causeI like to try to communicate ideas.
(16:43):
That's something thatI'm very interested in.
That's why the bond courses are soimportant to me because really what
I'm trying to do is communicateideas, which I think might be helpful.
And in writing the books, that wasreally just a way of trying to make
sense for people who maybe aren'tas close to the action as I am.
(17:05):
The first one was around a digitaldisruption, and that was really trying
to explain what is happening with.
Particularly all of the m and a andthe venture capital investment that was
going on and, what are some of the keythemes that we could take out of that?
I did that 'cause I had a ringside seatat that sort of information and it was
really just a way of translating thatinformation to people so that, if they
(17:29):
weren't as lucky as me to be that closeto it, they would get an understanding.
And the same with bigdata, big responsibilities.
'cause part of what I do is aroundthe privacy and cyber world.
And so when you're seeing data breachesand ransomware attacks on a daily basis
from your clients, I felt like there waslots of information that not necessarily
a lot of people knew, and so how couldwe get that information out to people?
(17:51):
That's a constant theme I thinkthrough also the bond courses as well.
I was lucky enough to have a legalcareer that I like, so how I try to
distill and communicate some thoughtsthat might help people with that.
How do you see innovation inthe legal profession evolving?
I see it evolving slowly.
(18:12):
There's lots of talk out therethat we're going to go to no
work for lawyers and so forth.
And technology is so greatand technology is good.
Technology is much better now thanit was when I first started Law
Path, and it was not very good then.
And frankly, we struggled for manyyears to try to make the technology
work to provide more efficient access.
(18:32):
I don't think that people are looking fortheir lawyers to be radical innovators.
I don't think they're looking for the nextGoogle or the next iPhone out of lawyers.
I think what people want.
At its core, and this is what I foundwith the research that I did on high
performing lawyers and I interviewedlots of general counsels and also
business people who use a lot of lawyers.
(18:54):
And very interesting, when I would askthem a question, what makes a great lawyer
knowledge of the law was just assumed.
What really elevated people inthe minds of those users of legal
services were communication , theability to form meaningful and
lasting relationships, adaptability,that's a key one right at the moment.
(19:16):
I think that technology will help withsome of the lower level work that is
done by lawyers, that is less enjoyable.
And I think it becomes a bit likethe Excel example where accountants
just grab the tool and it madethem better at what they do.
I think that's wherelawyers are headed to.
(19:38):
Just a story on this idea of lawyers arenot gonna have jobs jeffrey Hinton, the
godfather of ai and he just got the NobelPrize but in 2016, Jeffrey Hinton said
machines are so much better at readingscans than humans that radiologists are
like the coyote from the old cartoonthat have just run off the cliff.
(19:58):
They're just about to plummetto their death and we shouldn't
train any more radiologists.
We don't need them.
And in five years they'll be gone.
That was 2016.
Hinton was completely wrong.
From 2016 to now, the number of radiologypositions in the US has grown at 1.4% per
year and forecast to grow out to 2032.
(20:20):
There's a global shortage ofradiologists, what Hinton didn't
take account of is human naturenot to surrender to the technology.
They adapted.
Radiologists use technologyto provide greater insights
into their patient conditions.
And that's the opportunity for lawyers.
We are not going anywhere.
We will use this technology to levelup to hopefully take away some of
(20:44):
the dreary work that we have todo and concentrate on the really
interesting stuff, which is whatclients would love to hear more from us.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking with NickAbrahams, a partner and the global
co-leader of digital transformationat Norton Rose Fulbright, who is
also among so many other things, theco-founder of Law Path, a direct to
(21:08):
consumer legal services provider.
Nick, thanks so very much.
It's really been a privilege.
Thanks very much, Ari.
I really enjoyed it and thankyou for what you are doing.
It's great to have this podcast out there.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
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