June 4, 2025 • 13 mins
I spoke with Richard Tromans, founder of Tromans Consulting and Artificial Lawyer, which is the co-producer of the Legal Innovators Conference Series, including Legal Innovators California in San Francisco on June 11th and 12th. We discussed the genesis of Artificial Lawyer, the inspiration for the Legal Innovators Conference, the importance of facilitating complementary conversations for law firm and legal department leaders, and best practices for balancing discussions of the practical and the promising aspects of emerging technology.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is Ari Kaplett, and I'm speaking today with Richard Troman's founder of Troman's
(00:08):
consulting and artificial lawyer, which is the co-producer of the Legal Innovators Conference
series.
Legal Innovators California will take place in San Francisco on June 11th and 12th.
Richard, it's a privilege to speak with you today.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Oh, likewise, Ari.
Likewise.
Thank you for having me.
(00:29):
Tell us about your background and the genesis of artificial lawyer.
I started working in the legal sector in 1999.
I came in as a journalist, a work from magazine called Legal Week, which eventually was
bought by American Law Magazine with the international editor, did various things.
Then I moved into the city of London, working as a consultant, worked inside Thompson Reuters,
(00:53):
inside their Hildermont Group, very briefly.
But before I've enjoyed an M&A boutique, which was run by the X Managing Partner of Clifford
Chancen, the other less, that was an absolute education.
And it learned an enormous amount in both five years, really fantastic.
It was basically managing partners on a regular basis all over the place, very business-focused.
(01:14):
And one of the jobs I had was to write reports.
One of the reports I had to write was about the future.
So I did a big chapter on AI, and I really got into it.
I think this stuff is fantastic.
And then I said, "Oh, my own business.
Trump is consulting."
The interest in AI continued, and I went to see a legal tech company, the first ever legal
(01:38):
tech company I'd ever met, which is mad because if you think I started in the legal sector
in 1999, and I met my very first legal tech company in 2016, 17 years.
I was in the legal sector, 17 years, and I never met a legal tech company.
I think that tells you something about how legal tech was, and how legal tech is today.
(02:00):
Anyway, I walked into this legal tech company in London.
We've shown an AI tool, and it was reviewing documents very quickly, pulling out key clauses,
and I just went, "Wow, this is it."
And because I spent several years previously working on the business side of law, I could
just put two and two together and I just thought, "If this is real and it looks real, then
(02:24):
this is going to completely revolutionize the legal market.
This is going to be utterly transformative in the same way that the combustion engine got
rid of horses."
And it was obvious that it was going to disrupt in a positive way.
It was just crystal clear to me.
Now I launched artificial law because of that, because I wanted to share insights and
so forth.
And it just took off.
It completely took off my consulting work.
(02:46):
I was a lawyer itself, either way, bigger than my consulting ever was.
And I was amazed to find that there was actually an entire group of people spread around the
world.
Who for years had been working on legal AI?
It was incredibly exciting because not only was there philosophical excitement, but this
is it, and it was becoming real.
There was this community of people who really didn't get a lot of publicity at that point.
(03:10):
2015, 2016.
And there was the occasional story, but there wasn't really anyone just focusing on the AI
bit and the law, and I just went for it.
You may not believe this really, but at the time, there were some parts of the legal tech
media that basically ignored these new companies.
And I don't know if that was one of those kind of innovators' dilemma things where you've
(03:30):
built a market for yourself, everyone's happy and content.
And you see the new kid coming.
You see the new kid coming.
You see the new kid coming.
Oh, it's too late, bonk.
It was very strange.
I remember for the first year, two years, there was no one else really covering it, by which
point, Artificial Law had built itself out into a pretty well known brand, right around
the world.
(03:51):
My biggest audience became America quite quickly, and still is America.
The US is my biggest audience by a long way, followed by the UK and then the rest of the
world.
And the rest is history.
And of course, the Vegemrity of AI arrival November 22 has just been just like a shot in
the arm, has just given everything 10 times more energy.
(04:12):
How has the mission of Artificial Law evolved since you founded the enterprise?
The funny thing is, not a single thing has changed.
I was in the London office of this legal tech company and I saw it and his thing just dropped
and I went home and all these different ideas were just filtering through and it was crystallized
and coalesced.
And most fundamental thoughts have not changed at all.
(04:33):
I mean, obviously there are variations.
We've got AI agents, we've got multiple MLM.
We've got companies that have only ever been using generative AI.
Who have stolen a huge chunk of the market in the period of about two and a half years?
Incredible.
AI or generative AI or any other form of AI is basically a form of automation.
If we just boil it down and we forget about legal tech, we just think about basic science
(04:57):
and engineering and society.
It's a form of technology that automates things.
Humans slot in and out, there's laws in the loop, there's refinement, there's quality
jacking, but ultimately it's just automation.
So if we bring automation into legal, what does that mean?
Now, I forget instincts of a lot of people, it's got, oh my god, it's the end of a profession
and of course, as we found out, we're more lawyers today than the word 10 years ago, but
(05:21):
there's way more legal tech.
At least for the short to medium term, I don't see law firms losing anyone because the
demand for the quality of legal services just keeps going up.
It's incredible.
You have perhaps some of the more routine contract management roles could go.
All of this just keeps coming back to the same fundamental idea, which is what happens
(05:41):
when you automate something that used to be an artisanal skill and was wholly owned by
the people who were licensed to perform by artisanal skill.
What inspired you to launch the legal innovator's conference series?
This guy called Timo, who runs Cosmonauts, which is a UK based conference company.
(06:04):
How is it taking part in the conference?
And he said, why don't you do a conference at that point?
It was very early in artificial law history.
And I didn't run anything myself.
And I said, why don't you run your own event?
I was like, my idea, but who's going to help you organize it?
And he went to me.
And so legal innovators was born.
And the idea of it was that legal innovators would be a reflection of the ideas and the
(06:26):
ethos of artificial law.
So legal innovators can only really exist in markets where there's a genuine prospect of systemic
change in that market.
So we started in London because obviously we were based in London.
But I think during that first way that they are, there was real genuine interest and people
were really focusing on what that was all going to mean.
(06:48):
And I think that's partly because legal market in the UK is much smaller than the US market.
But you've got some enormous law firms packed with a lot of very smart people.
And it's very competitive.
You've also got the big four who particularly at that point in time were really pushing into
the legal world and they actually there's a catalyst.
So there was a lot of excitement and you got legal services at.
(07:09):
What does it mean?
It is a very interesting innovative market, particularly the some of the larger firms and some of
the smaller firms which are very creative.
So it's great.
It's perfect fit.
Artificial lawyer focused on AI in the frontier of legal tech.
And then the innovators inside a market bringing innovators together.
And also there was actually a correlation between the title.
(07:31):
I chose legal innovators as the title because I'd seen a way that people taking on the title
head of innovation.
Which certainly when I started in the legal world in 1999 maybe there were a couple.
I don't think there were any actually.
There wasn't anyone's had a law firm whose job was head of innovation, head of KM maybe
at a discovery, head of innovation, no chance.
(07:53):
So that was a reflection of that.
And then we did California because a, I absolutely love California.
California's always felt like the future to me, Bay Area, natural home and technology
giants.
I'd got to know some of the firms out there and I just thought yeah, this is it.
It makes total sense.
And now New York, I've always wanted to do an event in New York.
(08:15):
It wasn't the right time, the years and years but the last 18 months I think things have
changed in New York.
And I think that's probably starting to see some very interesting thinking and investments.
Yes, we are.
And I think that now opens up the door to do legal innovators in New York which will be in
November.
How do the legal innovators series differ from other conferences and events in the industry?
(08:40):
It's super focused on senior people.
So heads of legal ops or GCs who are really into legal tech and transformation.
It's heads of innovation, naturally.
It tends to be big law.
It tends to be fortune 500 companies.
It's very much focused on the cutting edge.
(09:01):
There are two things which fit together.
One is it like real brass tax talk about where we are now.
No wishy washy stuff.
Where are you now?
Who is using what?
What impact is it having?
How transformative is it?
And then also thinking about where we are going next.
So where are we now?
(09:21):
What's market?
And then where are we heading next?
All options are on the table.
Let's sift through them.
I'm not really interested in the status quo.
I'm only interested in the status quo in as much as it's important to understand the terrain
that you're in.
But the goal of legal innovators and artificial law is not to set up a tent village within
(09:41):
the current terrain.
I'm off to the tree line and I'm saying who else wants to come with me?
Because I've got a funny feeling that there's something really fantastic because we can
just get through this jungle.
And I'm like straight heading there.
We do about two, three hundred people a day.
We do a law firm day and then we do an in-house day, both in London, New York and California.
(10:03):
We can get three hundred people from law firms, three hundred people from in-house, from
all the top law firms, from all the top companies, from all the top legal tech companies,
on panels, giving keynotes, networking, meeting each other, sharing ideas.
It's like a small fusion reactor.
What can attendees at legal innovators, California expect?
(10:25):
To me some of the leading thinkers and doers in the West Coast from companies like Google,
Meta, Uber, we've got people coming from White Combinator.
We have heads of innovation from some of the top firms on the West Coast.
It's just such an incredible bunch of people.
And of course, then you've got legal tech companies.
(10:45):
We're having a special start-up section each day for very new companies that companies
no one had heard of three years ago.
Actually our keynote top sponsors, that's how fast the market has moved.
Why do you split the program into a day of law firm discussions and another for in-house
leaders?
They come at this from a consulting business background.
(11:05):
And I see the legal world as a market of buyers and sellers.
And to me it always seemed completely bizarre that you wouldn't have a conference where
you had both sides of the market, law firms in-house.
The two are just completely symbiotic and a lot of the audience will be on both days and
(11:26):
equally a lot of legal tech companies, particularly now are selling to both audiences.
And that's interesting because actually that wasn't always the case.
The spectrum of the market is broadening and it means that the actual legal tech companies
themselves can make much more revenue.
How do you balance discussions of the practical and the promising aspects of emerging technology?
(11:48):
We'll have some hard conversations about what is working, what isn't working, what is adoption
like.
Even though we might say there are small steps forward and we're actually coming a long
way.
And then the question is, okay, so we've come a long way in two and a half years.
Where are we heading?
What do we need to invest in?
What is our strategy?
What is our plan for legal innovators, California?
How have you seen the preferences and expectations of conference attendees changing since you
(12:14):
first launched?
It hasn't changed too much.
They're looking for the real deal.
They're looking for market insights.
They want to learn what is market and they want to do some deep thinking because there
is way more law firms now and in the national department, they're genuinely serious about
self-destruction.
This is Ari Katlin speaking with Richard Troman's founder of Troman's Consulting and Artificial
(12:42):
Lawyer, which is the co-producer of the legal innovators conference series.
Legal innovators California will take place in San Francisco on June 11th and 12th.
Richard, really, you're not in a chat with you and I'm wishing you the very best of luck
at Legal innovators California.
Thanks, Ari. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you.
(13:03):
Thank you.
This is Ari Kaplett, and I'm speaking today with Richard Troman's founder of Troman's
(00:08):
consulting and artificial lawyer, which is the co-producer of the Legal Innovators Conference
series.
Legal Innovators California will take place in San Francisco on June 11th and 12th.
Richard, it's a privilege to speak with you today.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Oh, likewise, Ari.
Likewise.
Thank you for having me.
(00:29):
Tell us about your background and the genesis of artificial lawyer.
I started working in the legal sector in 1999.
I came in as a journalist, a work from magazine called Legal Week, which eventually was
bought by American Law Magazine with the international editor, did various things.
Then I moved into the city of London, working as a consultant, worked inside Thompson Reuters,
(00:53):
inside their Hildermont Group, very briefly.
But before I've enjoyed an M&A boutique, which was run by the X Managing Partner of Clifford
Chancen, the other less, that was an absolute education.
And it learned an enormous amount in both five years, really fantastic.
It was basically managing partners on a regular basis all over the place, very business-focused.
(01:14):
And one of the jobs I had was to write reports.
One of the reports I had to write was about the future.
So I did a big chapter on AI, and I really got into it.
I think this stuff is fantastic.
And then I said, "Oh, my own business.
Trump is consulting."
The interest in AI continued, and I went to see a legal tech company, the first ever legal
(01:38):
tech company I'd ever met, which is mad because if you think I started in the legal sector
in 1999, and I met my very first legal tech company in 2016, 17 years.
I was in the legal sector, 17 years, and I never met a legal tech company.
I think that tells you something about how legal tech was, and how legal tech is today.
(02:00):
Anyway, I walked into this legal tech company in London.
We've shown an AI tool, and it was reviewing documents very quickly, pulling out key clauses,
and I just went, "Wow, this is it."
And because I spent several years previously working on the business side of law, I could
just put two and two together and I just thought, "If this is real and it looks real, then
(02:24):
this is going to completely revolutionize the legal market.
This is going to be utterly transformative in the same way that the combustion engine got
rid of horses."
And it was obvious that it was going to disrupt in a positive way.
It was just crystal clear to me.
Now I launched artificial law because of that, because I wanted to share insights and
so forth.
And it just took off.
It completely took off my consulting work.
(02:46):
I was a lawyer itself, either way, bigger than my consulting ever was.
And I was amazed to find that there was actually an entire group of people spread around the
world.
Who for years had been working on legal AI?
It was incredibly exciting because not only was there philosophical excitement, but this
is it, and it was becoming real.
There was this community of people who really didn't get a lot of publicity at that point.
(03:10):
2015, 2016.
And there was the occasional story, but there wasn't really anyone just focusing on the AI
bit and the law, and I just went for it.
You may not believe this really, but at the time, there were some parts of the legal tech
media that basically ignored these new companies.
And I don't know if that was one of those kind of innovators' dilemma things where you've
(03:30):
built a market for yourself, everyone's happy and content.
And you see the new kid coming.
You see the new kid coming.
You see the new kid coming.
Oh, it's too late, bonk.
It was very strange.
I remember for the first year, two years, there was no one else really covering it, by which
point, Artificial Law had built itself out into a pretty well known brand, right around
the world.
(03:51):
My biggest audience became America quite quickly, and still is America.
The US is my biggest audience by a long way, followed by the UK and then the rest of the
world.
And the rest is history.
And of course, the Vegemrity of AI arrival November 22 has just been just like a shot in
the arm, has just given everything 10 times more energy.
(04:12):
How has the mission of Artificial Law evolved since you founded the enterprise?
The funny thing is, not a single thing has changed.
I was in the London office of this legal tech company and I saw it and his thing just dropped
and I went home and all these different ideas were just filtering through and it was crystallized
and coalesced.
And most fundamental thoughts have not changed at all.
(04:33):
I mean, obviously there are variations.
We've got AI agents, we've got multiple MLM.
We've got companies that have only ever been using generative AI.
Who have stolen a huge chunk of the market in the period of about two and a half years?
Incredible.
AI or generative AI or any other form of AI is basically a form of automation.
If we just boil it down and we forget about legal tech, we just think about basic science
(04:57):
and engineering and society.
It's a form of technology that automates things.
Humans slot in and out, there's laws in the loop, there's refinement, there's quality
jacking, but ultimately it's just automation.
So if we bring automation into legal, what does that mean?
Now, I forget instincts of a lot of people, it's got, oh my god, it's the end of a profession
and of course, as we found out, we're more lawyers today than the word 10 years ago, but
(05:21):
there's way more legal tech.
At least for the short to medium term, I don't see law firms losing anyone because the
demand for the quality of legal services just keeps going up.
It's incredible.
You have perhaps some of the more routine contract management roles could go.
All of this just keeps coming back to the same fundamental idea, which is what happens
(05:41):
when you automate something that used to be an artisanal skill and was wholly owned by
the people who were licensed to perform by artisanal skill.
What inspired you to launch the legal innovator's conference series?
This guy called Timo, who runs Cosmonauts, which is a UK based conference company.
(06:04):
How is it taking part in the conference?
And he said, why don't you do a conference at that point?
It was very early in artificial law history.
And I didn't run anything myself.
And I said, why don't you run your own event?
I was like, my idea, but who's going to help you organize it?
And he went to me.
And so legal innovators was born.
And the idea of it was that legal innovators would be a reflection of the ideas and the
(06:26):
ethos of artificial law.
So legal innovators can only really exist in markets where there's a genuine prospect of systemic
change in that market.
So we started in London because obviously we were based in London.
But I think during that first way that they are, there was real genuine interest and people
were really focusing on what that was all going to mean.
(06:48):
And I think that's partly because legal market in the UK is much smaller than the US market.
But you've got some enormous law firms packed with a lot of very smart people.
And it's very competitive.
You've also got the big four who particularly at that point in time were really pushing into
the legal world and they actually there's a catalyst.
So there was a lot of excitement and you got legal services at.
(07:09):
What does it mean?
It is a very interesting innovative market, particularly the some of the larger firms and some of
the smaller firms which are very creative.
So it's great.
It's perfect fit.
Artificial lawyer focused on AI in the frontier of legal tech.
And then the innovators inside a market bringing innovators together.
And also there was actually a correlation between the title.
(07:31):
I chose legal innovators as the title because I'd seen a way that people taking on the title
head of innovation.
Which certainly when I started in the legal world in 1999 maybe there were a couple.
I don't think there were any actually.
There wasn't anyone's had a law firm whose job was head of innovation, head of KM maybe
at a discovery, head of innovation, no chance.
(07:53):
So that was a reflection of that.
And then we did California because a, I absolutely love California.
California's always felt like the future to me, Bay Area, natural home and technology
giants.
I'd got to know some of the firms out there and I just thought yeah, this is it.
It makes total sense.
And now New York, I've always wanted to do an event in New York.
(08:15):
It wasn't the right time, the years and years but the last 18 months I think things have
changed in New York.
And I think that's probably starting to see some very interesting thinking and investments.
Yes, we are.
And I think that now opens up the door to do legal innovators in New York which will be in
November.
How do the legal innovators series differ from other conferences and events in the industry?
(08:40):
It's super focused on senior people.
So heads of legal ops or GCs who are really into legal tech and transformation.
It's heads of innovation, naturally.
It tends to be big law.
It tends to be fortune 500 companies.
It's very much focused on the cutting edge.
(09:01):
There are two things which fit together.
One is it like real brass tax talk about where we are now.
No wishy washy stuff.
Where are you now?
Who is using what?
What impact is it having?
How transformative is it?
And then also thinking about where we are going next.
So where are we now?
(09:21):
What's market?
And then where are we heading next?
All options are on the table.
Let's sift through them.
I'm not really interested in the status quo.
I'm only interested in the status quo in as much as it's important to understand the terrain
that you're in.
But the goal of legal innovators and artificial law is not to set up a tent village within
(09:41):
the current terrain.
I'm off to the tree line and I'm saying who else wants to come with me?
Because I've got a funny feeling that there's something really fantastic because we can
just get through this jungle.
And I'm like straight heading there.
We do about two, three hundred people a day.
We do a law firm day and then we do an in-house day, both in London, New York and California.
(10:03):
We can get three hundred people from law firms, three hundred people from in-house, from
all the top law firms, from all the top companies, from all the top legal tech companies,
on panels, giving keynotes, networking, meeting each other, sharing ideas.
It's like a small fusion reactor.
What can attendees at legal innovators, California expect?
(10:25):
To me some of the leading thinkers and doers in the West Coast from companies like Google,
Meta, Uber, we've got people coming from White Combinator.
We have heads of innovation from some of the top firms on the West Coast.
It's just such an incredible bunch of people.
And of course, then you've got legal tech companies.
(10:45):
We're having a special start-up section each day for very new companies that companies
no one had heard of three years ago.
Actually our keynote top sponsors, that's how fast the market has moved.
Why do you split the program into a day of law firm discussions and another for in-house
leaders?
They come at this from a consulting business background.
(11:05):
And I see the legal world as a market of buyers and sellers.
And to me it always seemed completely bizarre that you wouldn't have a conference where
you had both sides of the market, law firms in-house.
The two are just completely symbiotic and a lot of the audience will be on both days and
(11:26):
equally a lot of legal tech companies, particularly now are selling to both audiences.
And that's interesting because actually that wasn't always the case.
The spectrum of the market is broadening and it means that the actual legal tech companies
themselves can make much more revenue.
How do you balance discussions of the practical and the promising aspects of emerging technology?
(11:48):
We'll have some hard conversations about what is working, what isn't working, what is adoption
like.
Even though we might say there are small steps forward and we're actually coming a long
way.
And then the question is, okay, so we've come a long way in two and a half years.
Where are we heading?
What do we need to invest in?
What is our strategy?
What is our plan for legal innovators, California?
How have you seen the preferences and expectations of conference attendees changing since you
(12:14):
first launched?
It hasn't changed too much.
They're looking for the real deal.
They're looking for market insights.
They want to learn what is market and they want to do some deep thinking because there
is way more law firms now and in the national department, they're genuinely serious about
self-destruction.
This is Ari Katlin speaking with Richard Troman's founder of Troman's Consulting and Artificial
(12:42):
Lawyer, which is the co-producer of the legal innovators conference series.
Legal innovators California will take place in San Francisco on June 11th and 12th.
Richard, really, you're not in a chat with you and I'm wishing you the very best of luck
at Legal innovators California.
Thanks, Ari. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you.
(13:03):
Thank you.
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