In this 45th episode of Charting Change in Legal, Caroline Hill, Editor and Publisher of Legal IT Insider, and I discussed ILTACON 2025, the Copilot gateway to generative AI, and transforming legal training.
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(00:00):
Welcome to the post-Iltacon 2025 charting change in legal.
(00:08):
I'm Ari Kapplin, an analyst who covers the legal industry.
And I have the distinct privilege every single episode to be joined by my cohost.
Caroline Hill. Hi, everyone.
Caroline Hill is got a really, so much better at opening them.
So I am the editor of Legalite Insider and I was over in Washington last week
(00:33):
with everybody at Iltacon and saw Ari super briefly.
We didn't really get to catch up in person.
It was a tragedy. It was ridiculous.
And I'm sorry, but it was nice to see you in passing.
And yeah, and just sort of say hi at least face to face.
It was so busy. It was crazy.
It sort of was the show this year of the Drive-by hello.
(00:55):
Just sort of the passing in the escalators or running from session to session
or meeting to meeting.
I mean, all worth it.
Honestly, I felt like it was such a great event.
I was really happy for Joy Heath Rush, the CEO of Iltac and her peers,
Dawn and all of the other leaders at the organization
(01:16):
because they really produced an excellent show.
And people came out for it.
So congratulations to Iltacon.
They did a great job. It was one of my favourites.
They had, I think they had 4,600 at the heights and we're around there,
which is just huge.
And we said on the episode before,
Iltacon, there's a lot of competition.
(01:36):
And I spoke to a few people about this during the show.
There's more competition than ever and more shows.
But Iltacon because of that community,
it really attracts those senior people that you don't get at other shows.
I mean, maybe some of them and on a smaller scale.
But yeah, like you've got plenty of access to the decision makers
(01:57):
and all the vendors that you need to speak to.
It's someone, I've done an interview that's not out yet with Tony McKenna
who's just finished his presidency of Iltac.
And he said you can get a whole years' work done at Iltac on the exhibition floor
because you've got everybody you need to speak to in one place.
I thought that was quite a nice sort of observation.
(02:19):
I had a wonderful run with Tony.
And Tony's always just a kind, kind supporter of pretty much anything I do.
I met Tony through the Lexpo conference in Rob and Mirin.
So we worked together in Amsterdam several years ago.
And what a wonderful leader.
And I think Iltacon, the organizational miss him,
(02:42):
they have been well served in his presidency.
I'm sure that his successor will be just as accomplished.
But it's funny that you mentioned him because I fond of him.
And we got some time running and it was really nice.
And that is just a minute I just like to say that that's probably my favorite venue
of all the venues that they do in Iltacon.
(03:03):
I really like National Harbor.
It's just a nice little kind of manufactured city for this purpose.
And it works.
Lots of nice restaurants.
I agree.
Not to restaurants, yeah.
They had a real job this year squeezing that many people.
Logistically for Iltac, it was a real challenge.
Trying to fit that many people in that venue.
And I know that from speaking to Dawn and Joey at the press briefings.
(03:27):
But I think you're absolutely right is my favorite because it's so accessible
and just much more manageable.
So if they could do that, continue to do that.
I think that's everyone's favorite venue.
They also, I got this sort of,
there was a very good discussion of Iltac and that it is a volunteer powered organization.
(03:55):
And it just, I felt like I had a lot of conversations with people
of interested in volunteering next year.
Or at some event that's happening.
People just were so appreciative of the work that their colleagues did that I got the sense
that they were motivated to.
I wonder if next year they'll have so many volunteers.
They will know what to do with them because they were new people
(04:15):
that I saw, peers of mine who were volunteering this year that I had never seen volunteer before.
But also people expressing that interest.
And I was lucky because Iltac had an Iltacon live series, a live stream.
And I interviewed some of the members of the board of directors.
And I interviewed the co-chairs.
And it was just super fun.
And I can only imagine the level of satisfaction of being the co-chair in event.
(04:39):
And then seeing your vision come to fruition with just a record number of people.
And so much buzz, really, really excited.
So tell me, what were the issues that stood out?
The conversations, the areas that people need to kind of be aware of as we kind of power into Q4?
So obviously there's a lot around tech.
And there's a lot around agentech.
(05:01):
There's a lot of talk about people doing agentech.
They're launching agentech.
I feel like there's a disconnect, slight disconnect between where vendors are.
And where the end users are.
I don't think end users are in the law firm market.
Are quite there, mostly with agentech yet.
But that, I suppose, is always going to be the case.
(05:23):
They're very much looking.
The other theme that came through really strongly was mainstream versus legal tech.
So mainstream capability, you know, of the big cloud providers.
And mainstream, in some cases, large language models.
These are obviously hugely complex topics.
But just as a broad, mainstream versus legal tech is a big debate.
(05:44):
And including a safe example, DMS or other markets.
And so the legal tech providers are having to really prove their worth, I think,
and just show that they're innovating and they're being asked to do more and more and more.
I think so they're having to run really hard.
(06:04):
I think for the end users, they're having to discern again,
we've now got the buzz around a genty K.I. haven't we?
So they're like, well, is it, isn't it?
So is it a genty?
Because it's not really.
So there's lots of conversations around that kind of thing.
And then I suppose just thirdly, the people side of things.
(06:28):
So that came through in some of my conversations.
Just what are the people implications behind all of this?
We were remembering that we were people led business.
What are the implications in terms of the way people are working?
There's a kind of, we're at this really awkward junction with all sorts of things.
So and that goes back to things like cloud as well.
(06:51):
You know, so I was talking to Tony about the fact that we, Andrew Powell,
who's going to be a vice president who is a VP of Ilta, he's got a cloud survey coming out,
or was already out now, that shows that the market always thinks we also think that we're much further ahead
with cloud adoption than we actually are.
And what that means is that you'll have some firms who have their DMS in the cloud,
(07:13):
but not their practice management system.
And then what that means for people is they can't be retrained.
They're being deployed doing, you know, there's this, there's mishmash in firms of some people.
They can't just completely retrain or redeploy their people.
So they're, you know, they're really looking to vendors to become business partners and to really
help them at what's a kind of really awkward stage where you're being asked to do a ton of stuff.
(07:37):
And actually people are all at different levels.
And, and, and still very sort of like have some sort of awkward contradictions within their own organizations.
I don't know whether that accords with you.
I agree. I think that one of the challenges we still have in our space is that we have
a really elite group of leaders who are frequently talking about their success,
(08:03):
which is a result of the fact that they're so elite and accomplished and have freedom and budget
to purchase, pilot, and also make mistakes.
And that's just not the case for most firms.
And you and I are lucky because we get to dig a little deeper into the population
(08:24):
beyond the stars who sit on stage and are worthy for the record.
Those people are worthy to be on stage.
I mean, it's really amazing and I'm proud to be part of this community with such really remarkable
leaders. But when I hosted, I was very lucky to hosted dinner with Draftwise when I was at
Ilta and we had just a waiting list group of incredible individuals.
(08:47):
But not all of them are at the level of the people you see on stage.
And one of the things that I think I've picked up, not just from Ilta Khan, but also,
and I've been doing a lot of research as you have this summer speaking to buyers in the space.
And I keep hearing this concept of sort of co-pilot as a gateway drug to some legal specific
(09:11):
generative AI. You know that co-pilot is the beginning firms are, when I ask, are you deploying
generative AI? It's often a some iteration of co-pilot and some series of licenses.
And then they get expanding into other areas. And there's a very, there's a basic level of usage
(09:36):
of deployment that just isn't consistent with the incredible promise of what you're hearing
about. However, we saw it. We've seen this before. We saw this in a discovery. I mean, the concept
of predictive coding in a discovery came out more than a decade ago. And there was a disconnect
between usage and promotion, but that normalized and it became ubiquitous in many respects.
(10:01):
And now we are onto the next thing. But there is definitely, but it, you know, just a disconnect in
terms of day to day and what what technologists speak about. Yeah, come, great. The co-pilot comes up
time and time again. I got some insights into the G200 particularly. So G100 G200, which as many
(10:22):
people will know, are illiter. They run these sessions for the G100 and 200 and they're closed.
So that they can speak completely freely. The G200 was apparently really, really good.
And they apparently that, yeah, co-pilot, that was very commonly talked about in terms of early
adoption examples. Co-pilot was fairly ubiquitous. And it's interesting you call it a gateway drug.
(10:49):
I didn't hear that, but I'm happy to coin it, but I'm sure someone said that.
You can certainly attribute it to our discussion here, but someone has had to say that.
It's not that creative, but yes, but it is, but it is, it does sort of describe it because most
people are in the Microsoft environment. So turning on co-pilot is a very easy way to start
(11:13):
pilot, especially for the kind of mid-size firms pushing into large. There's with those firms have
fewer resources, typically lower budgets as a percentage of where they invest their technologies
for generative AI experiments. And so co-pilot is the easy first step.
Yeah, 100%. And yeah, it's interesting. Boban Brogie wrote a piece, going back to your piece about the,
(11:42):
you know, the win of very lucky. And we, this is representative necessarily of all firms.
Boban Brogie wrote quite a good observation about ill to consent, making exactly that point. But I do
think, yeah, co-pilot seems to be in terms of that gateway drug or whatever, something that
only made the observation that last year, you know, we wanted to progress between ilters. And last year,
(12:05):
the G200 people were still talking about, what if and, you know, how and there's still some confusion
and now the conversation has really evolved. And a lot of that does center around co-pilot, which
people are using, you know, they've had to remind people, they've had to send emails, they've had
to encourage people to use it. And now a lot of people are just using it for helping them to draft
(12:30):
emails or presentations or whatever it might be. It's becoming, I'm, you know, fairly normalized
for lots of people part of the workflow, which is, which is a massive progress.
Yeah, one of the other things that comes up a lot is the shifting nature of our profession. And I,
(12:52):
I'm curious and even concerned for people who are not embracing just developing greater
familiarity with what's changing because for years, I've been asking law firm leaders,
are you replacing any roles with generative AI? And they would, you know, just immediately say no.
(13:16):
And this year for the first time, the more common response is not yet. And I think that that's it,
it's not meant to be ominous. I just think it's telling. And we all, you know, I, I include myself here.
I produce content and I'm always thinking, what should I be learning? How can I be using this
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better? And I think it's a very important part of this discussion. And I, I got a little bit of that
at Ilta, but again, you know, I'm hearing people talk about their success, but people I think want to
see some of the nitty gritty, right? They want to, like, it's almost like, let's follow someone over the
(13:56):
course of a day and highlight with a little arrow. This could be co-pilot. This could be another tool.
This and, and see what happens, but that concept is important. And you hear a lot about the
efficiency gains and talking about time savings. And then people say, well, but I make up the time
savings by now having to review all the work product that I have generated. And so I don't know that
(14:21):
there's certainly not an optimization yet, but it's been just fascinating. I was, I was happy
to have a lot of conversations. And I think that I'll, I'm going to, I'm going to publish my mix
tape today. So got a lot of, a lot of interesting perspectives about why people come. What questions
they get? First timers. I always love to share that. Yeah, I was starting with the chief, I'm,
(14:45):
you're giving you lots of exclusives because this is, this is a, well, they're like snippets of
exclusives. But I'm speaking, actually, this isn't exclusive because it's already out there, but I
haven't written about it. So I spoke with the chief innovation officer of Freshfields,
Gail Perez, who's a great guy, who's over at the conference. And after the conference, we also
(15:07):
caught up, because it was so crazy, you know, like 10 minutes and they were talking about, he was
talking about they have a training, and a new program for trainees, which is a tech masters at
King's College in London. And this is the first one that's starting in September. And they're
putting a cohort of their trainees, they're delaying their training contract by a year,
(15:29):
and putting them through a technology masters, which is a huge investment. And they are planning to,
this is the first one, they're planning to extend it probably. And Gail was like, he said, you know,
when you're being asked to go travel to New York and you need a plane, you can't be driving a car,
what's kind of his analogy? And he's like, I think that there's in the not too distant future,
(15:54):
there's going to be a whole chunk of legal work that you can't do if you don't know how to use
the technology. And I was like, I've slightly blown away because it's, it's one of those sort of
obvious, but also like, okay, wow, and what time scale are we talking about? And what does that mean
for trainees and there's so many implications? And it's kind of really exciting that they're doing that as well.
Yeah, I often ask, you know, is gendered AI affecting your training so far? That is interpreted
(16:22):
by a lot of people as do we offer more gendered AI training? But that's actually not what my,
I always have to clarify, that's not actually my question. Obviously you're offering new training
programs. My question is, is it, is it transforming the training? And that word came up a lot. This idea of
is the profession truly transforming at this moment? And I also get the sense that there were a lot
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of like I saw and featured on my podcast, Kyle Gribin at Mathison and who's based in Dublin. And I
got the sense that there were a lot of my peers, Barbara, Gahn-Jim D'Arosia was from Brazil, was able to
lead her in the organization, so I expected to see her. But I felt like there was a lot of
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a lot more, it seemed like a lot of my peers who I would see in London or in Amsterdam or in other
places outside of the US were also at Ilta. I don't know the numbers there, but I also got the
sense that there was a lot of, there were a lot of perspectives from the peers. And actually Kyle
said something super interesting. He said, you know, we are not only interested in the technology,
(17:34):
which we also can see at other events in, in Europe or closer to home. But we want to see how
our peers in different jurisdictions are deploying that technology. Where they're having success,
where they're struggling so that we can learn from the act of using the tool rather than the
(17:59):
tool itself. The tool itself we can see in a demo, we can see it online, we can see it at other
events that are much closer to home, but we won't necessarily get to hear the stories of how that
tool is being deployed within a certain system and be able to go back to our teams. And that
that was ultimately most important, people just wanted to give some action in the moment back to
(18:20):
their, come back with actionable ideas that they could use for practical purposes. 100%. It's about
the people, then the connections. I tell you, you do some stuff, quite a lot of stuff in the corporate
market. And one thing that Ilta, I mean, we've got, you've got to clock and obviously they represent
the Globs and neither of them being Frank have ever done. I don't think an amazing job of
(18:43):
bringing the two together, right? It's a tricky one because you've got that buyer cell, a thing that
they try and, you know, try and marry in. It's a bit complicated, but they did have, they do have
corporate attendees. Obviously they've got League of Lobs people and Brad Blixteen,
Ranna Session for Chief Innovation Officers at Law firms and League of Lobs people. And then
(19:05):
they brought the two together at lunchtime. And that's kind of fascinating because,
so they were talking about RFPs and the law, I think the law firm, I'm relaying this second hand,
so, you know, if anyone was there, please bear with if I get some, some of the details slightly wrong.
But so the law firm people were like, we are, you ask about what our technology stack looks like
(19:28):
in your RFPs, do you actually really care, you know, we think that you're just like on some kind
of fishing expedition, they were probably more polite than that because these are their clients.
But, and then the League of Lobs people were like, oh well, hey, guess what, we really do look at it.
And we're basing our decisions on it, which, which sparks some interesting, you know,
thoughts because so for years, those RFPs have caused sort of a varying degrees of emotion
(19:53):
and conflict and difficulty because they can take forever years ago. We had the, when we had sort
of the likes of care popping up, we had everyone going, well, hey, are you using, you know,
and everyone was like, oh, what does that even mean? Or how are you innovating? I've seen RFPs,
how are you innovating? And now it's like, you know, that people are sort of much further along,
but they're like, what do you, what does your tech stack look like? And like, there's so many things
(20:19):
that spring up from that. Like, A, is it their business? And B, why are they asking? Is it because,
are you an innovative firm or is it around? And what I think it comes down to some of Brad's takeaways,
again, that I haven't written, are that it comes down to billing and apparently where you've got
firms that heavily rely on the billable hour, they, the client are much more likely to be interrogating
(20:44):
you over what your tech stack is than those who have moved away to flat fees, which is a fascinating
insight, you know, like it's so if you, if you're still charging them if they're not sure what value
they're getting, then you're much more likely to be interrogated about your tech stack, which,
to me, I'm like, is it the clients business? I mean, you've got the supply chain tech security
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factor, which I get, right? But if it's purely from what are you using, it just brings up so many
interesting discussions. Well, the client is hiring you for a result and the result is it always
winning, right? The result may have some other objective. I remember speaking to a lawyer,
an old dear friend of mine who is a litigator in intellectual property and said, you know,
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our result doesn't always result in our result is keeping this going or some other reason because
of the business purpose of the organization. And so there has to be a metric to that. And that's
either getting to the result in less time, getting to a better result than you would have otherwise
gotten and asking those questions is a means of trying to distinguish between firms that have
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in some ways become kind of fungible, right? Like X firm and Y firm of a similar caliber with a
similar number of people who are all very experienced with similar organizations that are trying to
come up with some distinction. So relationship, obviously, but of course, how long is it going to take,
what are you using to get us there? It's going to be better. What's the work product and look like?
But I think it's a work product. Like if that is how you get them, you should be judged on your
(22:19):
results. I agree with you completely. And that includes cost, right? So, so I mean, maybe the bill of
the hour, but goes towards that. Maybe it means that they're not as happy with them. And I know if that's
the case, but but it should be the result, you know, you've never gone, yeah, because if you're so many,
you know, if you're if you're getting the right result and you're performing well, is it anyone's
(22:40):
business, how you do that? Like if the cost is right, obviously the cost is a huge factor. So maybe
that maybe I'm answering my own question, but it just, I don't know, it just feels like I need to do
some more digging because I know from a supply chain perspective, that could be a really valid question.
Obviously you have to vet your supplies and then you have to understand what they're using because
(23:02):
it just goes, just going down the train and with AI being, some of this technology being very new,
some of the vendors being quite small, again, it from that perspective. So it's, but it's just an
interesting thing to come up, you know, like peaked my brain. I was like, oh, you know, one of those
conversations is that I don't know if I agree with that. And also I think this is important to acknowledge
(23:23):
that there are, we're looking at like samples here. So we can't really draw conclusions from a
conversation here and a conversation there that there is a sort of sampling, which I do a lot of
in my research, but we have to acknowledge that a few people saying one thing is not necessarily
indicative of what the whole is actually trying to do, but it is, it is happening and people do want to
(23:47):
understand what they can do. And the reason why you have these leaders of law firms sharing their
viewpoints and successes and some sort of missteps on stage is because they're trying to serve their
clients better. They're trying to create a competitive advantage. They're trying to distinguish
(24:08):
what they offer from the person sitting right next to them. And the technology is helping them do that.
The existential question for law firms is what is to what extent can you innovate and will you
innovate yourself out of your elevated status? Like that's, that's a big issue. Like if you cut a
(24:31):
project that took 20 hours into one hour, I know all the discussions that I've heard them and I
understand them completely. Well, we'll be able to then do 21 hours of other work and it's going to be
amazing and disagree. But that that's a projection. Right now the reduction is a reality. And so
what happens? And so that I think that was sort of the lingering question. If I were thinking of a
(24:55):
takeaway, I think that there were two. One, so there were two. One of the takeaways was there's a
there's a level of uncertainty in the space right now that matches the level of enthusiasm and
(25:16):
excitement. People are super excited about the profession, about how it's changing. It's very exciting.
And they, I'm sure left concerned about what it will look like at El Takhan 2026. And of course,
acidic would say it's going to look exactly the same with a couple of more bus words. But my sense is
(25:40):
that this is moving so quickly that we, I don't know that we can anticipate what next year would look
like last year we were having this conversation and I have a recording I'm sure. And I'm guessing that
it was like it was generally on and some other kind of AI. But if people start figuring out how to
get an agent to do certain, you know, more meaningful, interesting tasks, I think you will start to see
(26:03):
a reconfiguration. So that was my takeaway that that people left both animated and excited and
energized and also cautious about what the future of the profession looks like. And with a sense of
urgency that they need to, if not buy something, certainly become much more familiar, much more quickly
(26:26):
about what's available. I also want to share this. The other takeaway was that Mel Ballastero,
who is a leader in our space gifted me this beautiful piece of artwork. And with a little note on
the back, which was very generous of her. And I brought it home and I safeguarded it on the point.
This is the book I should have to share. You have to share the picture with alongside.
(26:47):
Oh, that's right. I will share the picture however. Yeah, because that's. Hold it, hold it, hold it,
hold it. Oh, so it is a beautiful black picture with a crab on it. What is that?
She explained it to me that her style is to add many layers, ten layers, something like that,
(27:10):
a very thick paint to a piece of wood as an enduring base. And then with a hot knife,
cut it once the paint is tried to create this sort of effect of depth and texture.
It's just beautiful. Just beautiful. I was really touched by her generosity.
(27:34):
So those are my two takeaways. Yeah, that was that. I mean, those are like a good place to end.
I think I started with my takeaways and I knew with your takeaways. I mean, I think that there's
so much to do between this year and next year. I think they're kind of busting through some of the
nonsense. I think that there's going to be a lot of talk about integration and how we actually
deliver some of the stuff, the platforms that the partnerships and the alliances. And I talked a lot
(27:59):
about MCP, which is how AI will connect these various systems. There's lots of announcements around that.
Model context, protocol. There's all kinds of really super exciting stuff that I think everyone's
going to be taking away and just mulling over. I keep having conversations with people and going,
explain it to me again. There's so much to get your head around and it's exciting. But yeah,
(28:27):
I imagine for end users there's a lot of uncertainty. I think if you can take the uncertainty,
I start mapping out, doing your strategic planning is very hard to plan actually because it's moving
so fast. But also try and take away. I think people are more excited. There's been fear, there's been
(28:51):
all sorts of stuff. I do think that there's perhaps more excitement around the potential. I think
a lot of the questions around what this means are not answered. We can see that there's going to be
massive change, like massive change. The fear has subsided from a fear from, oh, this is going to take
over and displace me to a fear of how do I get to the point where I can trust this? And almost like
(29:16):
a new hire. And can I rely on the work that you're producing? And as we start to re-imagine
which work we do and who does it, I think that will become clearer. But right now, but it seems
like there's been a shift from, oh, my goodness, this thing is going to take over to wait. Can I trust
the work of this thing? And if I, how do I get to that point? And so we've definitely moved and
(29:44):
progressed from the irrational to the more rational. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't boring and it was fascinating.
And I'm happy to see you and everybody else. I love this week. It's exhausting, but it is so stimulating.
And yeah, it can get us again to the organizers and Tony McKenna. Yeah.
(30:05):
And to you on your run. I saw the picture. We thought of people. It was super fun.
And I did. And I did. And I did. Yeah. No. That's the joke. And I'll end with everybody says,
I'm sorry, I missed your run today. And I will say, oh, it's tomorrow. And then they laugh and say,
I'm sorry, I missed your run tomorrow. But it was fun. We had a really probably record number of
(30:28):
people. And I love the smiles and the conversations. And it's, uh, I actually got a call from the
Lone Cancer Foundation of America yesterday, you know, to whom all the proceeds go. And, uh, they were
really excited. Not only I have to say for the, for the fundraising, but for the visibility.
Because it's not a large organist, not as large an organization as others. And it just,
(30:49):
the elit does just the privilege of bringing our community together that way is, uh, is wonderful.
And I feel grateful. Yeah, I know. Well done. This is, this is, uh, this is a lucky opportunity to get
the chat with you like this. I look forward to doing it in a couple of weeks. And, uh, I hope you
enjoy the remainder of your summer. Thank you. Likewise. Love you to see you. All right. See you.
Welcome to the post-Iltacon 2025 charting change in legal.
(00:08):
I'm Ari Kapplin, an analyst who covers the legal industry.
And I have the distinct privilege every single episode to be joined by my cohost.
Caroline Hill. Hi, everyone.
Caroline Hill is got a really, so much better at opening them.
So I am the editor of Legalite Insider and I was over in Washington last week
(00:33):
with everybody at Iltacon and saw Ari super briefly.
We didn't really get to catch up in person.
It was a tragedy. It was ridiculous.
And I'm sorry, but it was nice to see you in passing.
And yeah, and just sort of say hi at least face to face.
It was so busy. It was crazy.
It sort of was the show this year of the Drive-by hello.
(00:55):
Just sort of the passing in the escalators or running from session to session
or meeting to meeting.
I mean, all worth it.
Honestly, I felt like it was such a great event.
I was really happy for Joy Heath Rush, the CEO of Iltac and her peers,
Dawn and all of the other leaders at the organization
(01:16):
because they really produced an excellent show.
And people came out for it.
So congratulations to Iltacon.
They did a great job. It was one of my favourites.
They had, I think they had 4,600 at the heights and we're around there,
which is just huge.
And we said on the episode before,
Iltacon, there's a lot of competition.
(01:36):
And I spoke to a few people about this during the show.
There's more competition than ever and more shows.
But Iltacon because of that community,
it really attracts those senior people that you don't get at other shows.
I mean, maybe some of them and on a smaller scale.
But yeah, like you've got plenty of access to the decision makers
(01:57):
and all the vendors that you need to speak to.
It's someone, I've done an interview that's not out yet with Tony McKenna
who's just finished his presidency of Iltac.
And he said you can get a whole years' work done at Iltac on the exhibition floor
because you've got everybody you need to speak to in one place.
I thought that was quite a nice sort of observation.
(02:19):
I had a wonderful run with Tony.
And Tony's always just a kind, kind supporter of pretty much anything I do.
I met Tony through the Lexpo conference in Rob and Mirin.
So we worked together in Amsterdam several years ago.
And what a wonderful leader.
And I think Iltacon, the organizational miss him,
(02:42):
they have been well served in his presidency.
I'm sure that his successor will be just as accomplished.
But it's funny that you mentioned him because I fond of him.
And we got some time running and it was really nice.
And that is just a minute I just like to say that that's probably my favorite venue
of all the venues that they do in Iltacon.
(03:03):
I really like National Harbor.
It's just a nice little kind of manufactured city for this purpose.
And it works.
Lots of nice restaurants.
I agree.
Not to restaurants, yeah.
They had a real job this year squeezing that many people.
Logistically for Iltac, it was a real challenge.
Trying to fit that many people in that venue.
And I know that from speaking to Dawn and Joey at the press briefings.
(03:27):
But I think you're absolutely right is my favorite because it's so accessible
and just much more manageable.
So if they could do that, continue to do that.
I think that's everyone's favorite venue.
They also, I got this sort of,
there was a very good discussion of Iltac and that it is a volunteer powered organization.
(03:55):
And it just, I felt like I had a lot of conversations with people
of interested in volunteering next year.
Or at some event that's happening.
People just were so appreciative of the work that their colleagues did that I got the sense
that they were motivated to.
I wonder if next year they'll have so many volunteers.
They will know what to do with them because they were new people
(04:15):
that I saw, peers of mine who were volunteering this year that I had never seen volunteer before.
But also people expressing that interest.
And I was lucky because Iltac had an Iltacon live series, a live stream.
And I interviewed some of the members of the board of directors.
And I interviewed the co-chairs.
And it was just super fun.
And I can only imagine the level of satisfaction of being the co-chair in event.
(04:39):
And then seeing your vision come to fruition with just a record number of people.
And so much buzz, really, really excited.
So tell me, what were the issues that stood out?
The conversations, the areas that people need to kind of be aware of as we kind of power into Q4?
So obviously there's a lot around tech.
And there's a lot around agentech.
(05:01):
There's a lot of talk about people doing agentech.
They're launching agentech.
I feel like there's a disconnect, slight disconnect between where vendors are.
And where the end users are.
I don't think end users are in the law firm market.
Are quite there, mostly with agentech yet.
But that, I suppose, is always going to be the case.
(05:23):
They're very much looking.
The other theme that came through really strongly was mainstream versus legal tech.
So mainstream capability, you know, of the big cloud providers.
And mainstream, in some cases, large language models.
These are obviously hugely complex topics.
But just as a broad, mainstream versus legal tech is a big debate.
(05:44):
And including a safe example, DMS or other markets.
And so the legal tech providers are having to really prove their worth, I think,
and just show that they're innovating and they're being asked to do more and more and more.
I think so they're having to run really hard.
(06:04):
I think for the end users, they're having to discern again,
we've now got the buzz around a genty K.I. haven't we?
So they're like, well, is it, isn't it?
So is it a genty?
Because it's not really.
So there's lots of conversations around that kind of thing.
And then I suppose just thirdly, the people side of things.
(06:28):
So that came through in some of my conversations.
Just what are the people implications behind all of this?
We were remembering that we were people led business.
What are the implications in terms of the way people are working?
There's a kind of, we're at this really awkward junction with all sorts of things.
So and that goes back to things like cloud as well.
(06:51):
You know, so I was talking to Tony about the fact that we, Andrew Powell,
who's going to be a vice president who is a VP of Ilta, he's got a cloud survey coming out,
or was already out now, that shows that the market always thinks we also think that we're much further ahead
with cloud adoption than we actually are.
And what that means is that you'll have some firms who have their DMS in the cloud,
(07:13):
but not their practice management system.
And then what that means for people is they can't be retrained.
They're being deployed doing, you know, there's this, there's mishmash in firms of some people.
They can't just completely retrain or redeploy their people.
So they're, you know, they're really looking to vendors to become business partners and to really
help them at what's a kind of really awkward stage where you're being asked to do a ton of stuff.
(07:37):
And actually people are all at different levels.
And, and, and still very sort of like have some sort of awkward contradictions within their own organizations.
I don't know whether that accords with you.
I agree. I think that one of the challenges we still have in our space is that we have
a really elite group of leaders who are frequently talking about their success,
(08:03):
which is a result of the fact that they're so elite and accomplished and have freedom and budget
to purchase, pilot, and also make mistakes.
And that's just not the case for most firms.
And you and I are lucky because we get to dig a little deeper into the population
(08:24):
beyond the stars who sit on stage and are worthy for the record.
Those people are worthy to be on stage.
I mean, it's really amazing and I'm proud to be part of this community with such really remarkable
leaders. But when I hosted, I was very lucky to hosted dinner with Draftwise when I was at
Ilta and we had just a waiting list group of incredible individuals.
(08:47):
But not all of them are at the level of the people you see on stage.
And one of the things that I think I've picked up, not just from Ilta Khan, but also,
and I've been doing a lot of research as you have this summer speaking to buyers in the space.
And I keep hearing this concept of sort of co-pilot as a gateway drug to some legal specific
(09:11):
generative AI. You know that co-pilot is the beginning firms are, when I ask, are you deploying
generative AI? It's often a some iteration of co-pilot and some series of licenses.
And then they get expanding into other areas. And there's a very, there's a basic level of usage
(09:36):
of deployment that just isn't consistent with the incredible promise of what you're hearing
about. However, we saw it. We've seen this before. We saw this in a discovery. I mean, the concept
of predictive coding in a discovery came out more than a decade ago. And there was a disconnect
between usage and promotion, but that normalized and it became ubiquitous in many respects.
(10:01):
And now we are onto the next thing. But there is definitely, but it, you know, just a disconnect in
terms of day to day and what what technologists speak about. Yeah, come, great. The co-pilot comes up
time and time again. I got some insights into the G200 particularly. So G100 G200, which as many
(10:22):
people will know, are illiter. They run these sessions for the G100 and 200 and they're closed.
So that they can speak completely freely. The G200 was apparently really, really good.
And they apparently that, yeah, co-pilot, that was very commonly talked about in terms of early
adoption examples. Co-pilot was fairly ubiquitous. And it's interesting you call it a gateway drug.
(10:49):
I didn't hear that, but I'm happy to coin it, but I'm sure someone said that.
You can certainly attribute it to our discussion here, but someone has had to say that.
It's not that creative, but yes, but it is, but it is, it does sort of describe it because most
people are in the Microsoft environment. So turning on co-pilot is a very easy way to start
(11:13):
pilot, especially for the kind of mid-size firms pushing into large. There's with those firms have
fewer resources, typically lower budgets as a percentage of where they invest their technologies
for generative AI experiments. And so co-pilot is the easy first step.
Yeah, 100%. And yeah, it's interesting. Boban Brogie wrote a piece, going back to your piece about the,
(11:42):
you know, the win of very lucky. And we, this is representative necessarily of all firms.
Boban Brogie wrote quite a good observation about ill to consent, making exactly that point. But I do
think, yeah, co-pilot seems to be in terms of that gateway drug or whatever, something that
only made the observation that last year, you know, we wanted to progress between ilters. And last year,
(12:05):
the G200 people were still talking about, what if and, you know, how and there's still some confusion
and now the conversation has really evolved. And a lot of that does center around co-pilot, which
people are using, you know, they've had to remind people, they've had to send emails, they've had
to encourage people to use it. And now a lot of people are just using it for helping them to draft
(12:30):
emails or presentations or whatever it might be. It's becoming, I'm, you know, fairly normalized
for lots of people part of the workflow, which is, which is a massive progress.
Yeah, one of the other things that comes up a lot is the shifting nature of our profession. And I,
(12:52):
I'm curious and even concerned for people who are not embracing just developing greater
familiarity with what's changing because for years, I've been asking law firm leaders,
are you replacing any roles with generative AI? And they would, you know, just immediately say no.
(13:16):
And this year for the first time, the more common response is not yet. And I think that that's it,
it's not meant to be ominous. I just think it's telling. And we all, you know, I, I include myself here.
I produce content and I'm always thinking, what should I be learning? How can I be using this
(13:36):
better? And I think it's a very important part of this discussion. And I, I got a little bit of that
at Ilta, but again, you know, I'm hearing people talk about their success, but people I think want to
see some of the nitty gritty, right? They want to, like, it's almost like, let's follow someone over the
(13:56):
course of a day and highlight with a little arrow. This could be co-pilot. This could be another tool.
This and, and see what happens, but that concept is important. And you hear a lot about the
efficiency gains and talking about time savings. And then people say, well, but I make up the time
savings by now having to review all the work product that I have generated. And so I don't know that
(14:21):
there's certainly not an optimization yet, but it's been just fascinating. I was, I was happy
to have a lot of conversations. And I think that I'll, I'm going to, I'm going to publish my mix
tape today. So got a lot of, a lot of interesting perspectives about why people come. What questions
they get? First timers. I always love to share that. Yeah, I was starting with the chief, I'm,
(14:45):
you're giving you lots of exclusives because this is, this is a, well, they're like snippets of
exclusives. But I'm speaking, actually, this isn't exclusive because it's already out there, but I
haven't written about it. So I spoke with the chief innovation officer of Freshfields,
Gail Perez, who's a great guy, who's over at the conference. And after the conference, we also
(15:07):
caught up, because it was so crazy, you know, like 10 minutes and they were talking about, he was
talking about they have a training, and a new program for trainees, which is a tech masters at
King's College in London. And this is the first one that's starting in September. And they're
putting a cohort of their trainees, they're delaying their training contract by a year,
(15:29):
and putting them through a technology masters, which is a huge investment. And they are planning to,
this is the first one, they're planning to extend it probably. And Gail was like, he said, you know,
when you're being asked to go travel to New York and you need a plane, you can't be driving a car,
what's kind of his analogy? And he's like, I think that there's in the not too distant future,
(15:54):
there's going to be a whole chunk of legal work that you can't do if you don't know how to use
the technology. And I was like, I've slightly blown away because it's, it's one of those sort of
obvious, but also like, okay, wow, and what time scale are we talking about? And what does that mean
for trainees and there's so many implications? And it's kind of really exciting that they're doing that as well.
Yeah, I often ask, you know, is gendered AI affecting your training so far? That is interpreted
(16:22):
by a lot of people as do we offer more gendered AI training? But that's actually not what my,
I always have to clarify, that's not actually my question. Obviously you're offering new training
programs. My question is, is it, is it transforming the training? And that word came up a lot. This idea of
is the profession truly transforming at this moment? And I also get the sense that there were a lot
(16:48):
of like I saw and featured on my podcast, Kyle Gribin at Mathison and who's based in Dublin. And I
got the sense that there were a lot of my peers, Barbara, Gahn-Jim D'Arosia was from Brazil, was able to
lead her in the organization, so I expected to see her. But I felt like there was a lot of
(17:09):
a lot more, it seemed like a lot of my peers who I would see in London or in Amsterdam or in other
places outside of the US were also at Ilta. I don't know the numbers there, but I also got the
sense that there was a lot of, there were a lot of perspectives from the peers. And actually Kyle
said something super interesting. He said, you know, we are not only interested in the technology,
(17:34):
which we also can see at other events in, in Europe or closer to home. But we want to see how
our peers in different jurisdictions are deploying that technology. Where they're having success,
where they're struggling so that we can learn from the act of using the tool rather than the
(17:59):
tool itself. The tool itself we can see in a demo, we can see it online, we can see it at other
events that are much closer to home, but we won't necessarily get to hear the stories of how that
tool is being deployed within a certain system and be able to go back to our teams. And that
that was ultimately most important, people just wanted to give some action in the moment back to
(18:20):
their, come back with actionable ideas that they could use for practical purposes. 100%. It's about
the people, then the connections. I tell you, you do some stuff, quite a lot of stuff in the corporate
market. And one thing that Ilta, I mean, we've got, you've got to clock and obviously they represent
the Globs and neither of them being Frank have ever done. I don't think an amazing job of
(18:43):
bringing the two together, right? It's a tricky one because you've got that buyer cell, a thing that
they try and, you know, try and marry in. It's a bit complicated, but they did have, they do have
corporate attendees. Obviously they've got League of Lobs people and Brad Blixteen,
Ranna Session for Chief Innovation Officers at Law firms and League of Lobs people. And then
(19:05):
they brought the two together at lunchtime. And that's kind of fascinating because,
so they were talking about RFPs and the law, I think the law firm, I'm relaying this second hand,
so, you know, if anyone was there, please bear with if I get some, some of the details slightly wrong.
But so the law firm people were like, we are, you ask about what our technology stack looks like
(19:28):
in your RFPs, do you actually really care, you know, we think that you're just like on some kind
of fishing expedition, they were probably more polite than that because these are their clients.
But, and then the League of Lobs people were like, oh well, hey, guess what, we really do look at it.
And we're basing our decisions on it, which, which sparks some interesting, you know,
thoughts because so for years, those RFPs have caused sort of a varying degrees of emotion
(19:53):
and conflict and difficulty because they can take forever years ago. We had the, when we had sort
of the likes of care popping up, we had everyone going, well, hey, are you using, you know,
and everyone was like, oh, what does that even mean? Or how are you innovating? I've seen RFPs,
how are you innovating? And now it's like, you know, that people are sort of much further along,
but they're like, what do you, what does your tech stack look like? And like, there's so many things
(20:19):
that spring up from that. Like, A, is it their business? And B, why are they asking? Is it because,
are you an innovative firm or is it around? And what I think it comes down to some of Brad's takeaways,
again, that I haven't written, are that it comes down to billing and apparently where you've got
firms that heavily rely on the billable hour, they, the client are much more likely to be interrogating
(20:44):
you over what your tech stack is than those who have moved away to flat fees, which is a fascinating
insight, you know, like it's so if you, if you're still charging them if they're not sure what value
they're getting, then you're much more likely to be interrogated about your tech stack, which,
to me, I'm like, is it the clients business? I mean, you've got the supply chain tech security
(21:05):
factor, which I get, right? But if it's purely from what are you using, it just brings up so many
interesting discussions. Well, the client is hiring you for a result and the result is it always
winning, right? The result may have some other objective. I remember speaking to a lawyer,
an old dear friend of mine who is a litigator in intellectual property and said, you know,
(21:30):
our result doesn't always result in our result is keeping this going or some other reason because
of the business purpose of the organization. And so there has to be a metric to that. And that's
either getting to the result in less time, getting to a better result than you would have otherwise
gotten and asking those questions is a means of trying to distinguish between firms that have
(21:54):
in some ways become kind of fungible, right? Like X firm and Y firm of a similar caliber with a
similar number of people who are all very experienced with similar organizations that are trying to
come up with some distinction. So relationship, obviously, but of course, how long is it going to take,
what are you using to get us there? It's going to be better. What's the work product and look like?
But I think it's a work product. Like if that is how you get them, you should be judged on your
(22:19):
results. I agree with you completely. And that includes cost, right? So, so I mean, maybe the bill of
the hour, but goes towards that. Maybe it means that they're not as happy with them. And I know if that's
the case, but but it should be the result, you know, you've never gone, yeah, because if you're so many,
you know, if you're if you're getting the right result and you're performing well, is it anyone's
(22:40):
business, how you do that? Like if the cost is right, obviously the cost is a huge factor. So maybe
that maybe I'm answering my own question, but it just, I don't know, it just feels like I need to do
some more digging because I know from a supply chain perspective, that could be a really valid question.
Obviously you have to vet your supplies and then you have to understand what they're using because
(23:02):
it just goes, just going down the train and with AI being, some of this technology being very new,
some of the vendors being quite small, again, it from that perspective. So it's, but it's just an
interesting thing to come up, you know, like peaked my brain. I was like, oh, you know, one of those
conversations is that I don't know if I agree with that. And also I think this is important to acknowledge
(23:23):
that there are, we're looking at like samples here. So we can't really draw conclusions from a
conversation here and a conversation there that there is a sort of sampling, which I do a lot of
in my research, but we have to acknowledge that a few people saying one thing is not necessarily
indicative of what the whole is actually trying to do, but it is, it is happening and people do want to
(23:47):
understand what they can do. And the reason why you have these leaders of law firms sharing their
viewpoints and successes and some sort of missteps on stage is because they're trying to serve their
clients better. They're trying to create a competitive advantage. They're trying to distinguish
(24:08):
what they offer from the person sitting right next to them. And the technology is helping them do that.
The existential question for law firms is what is to what extent can you innovate and will you
innovate yourself out of your elevated status? Like that's, that's a big issue. Like if you cut a
(24:31):
project that took 20 hours into one hour, I know all the discussions that I've heard them and I
understand them completely. Well, we'll be able to then do 21 hours of other work and it's going to be
amazing and disagree. But that that's a projection. Right now the reduction is a reality. And so
what happens? And so that I think that was sort of the lingering question. If I were thinking of a
(24:55):
takeaway, I think that there were two. One, so there were two. One of the takeaways was there's a
there's a level of uncertainty in the space right now that matches the level of enthusiasm and
(25:16):
excitement. People are super excited about the profession, about how it's changing. It's very exciting.
And they, I'm sure left concerned about what it will look like at El Takhan 2026. And of course,
acidic would say it's going to look exactly the same with a couple of more bus words. But my sense is
(25:40):
that this is moving so quickly that we, I don't know that we can anticipate what next year would look
like last year we were having this conversation and I have a recording I'm sure. And I'm guessing that
it was like it was generally on and some other kind of AI. But if people start figuring out how to
get an agent to do certain, you know, more meaningful, interesting tasks, I think you will start to see
(26:03):
a reconfiguration. So that was my takeaway that that people left both animated and excited and
energized and also cautious about what the future of the profession looks like. And with a sense of
urgency that they need to, if not buy something, certainly become much more familiar, much more quickly
(26:26):
about what's available. I also want to share this. The other takeaway was that Mel Ballastero,
who is a leader in our space gifted me this beautiful piece of artwork. And with a little note on
the back, which was very generous of her. And I brought it home and I safeguarded it on the point.
This is the book I should have to share. You have to share the picture with alongside.
(26:47):
Oh, that's right. I will share the picture however. Yeah, because that's. Hold it, hold it, hold it,
hold it. Oh, so it is a beautiful black picture with a crab on it. What is that?
She explained it to me that her style is to add many layers, ten layers, something like that,
(27:10):
a very thick paint to a piece of wood as an enduring base. And then with a hot knife,
cut it once the paint is tried to create this sort of effect of depth and texture.
It's just beautiful. Just beautiful. I was really touched by her generosity.
(27:34):
So those are my two takeaways. Yeah, that was that. I mean, those are like a good place to end.
I think I started with my takeaways and I knew with your takeaways. I mean, I think that there's
so much to do between this year and next year. I think they're kind of busting through some of the
nonsense. I think that there's going to be a lot of talk about integration and how we actually
deliver some of the stuff, the platforms that the partnerships and the alliances. And I talked a lot
(27:59):
about MCP, which is how AI will connect these various systems. There's lots of announcements around that.
Model context, protocol. There's all kinds of really super exciting stuff that I think everyone's
going to be taking away and just mulling over. I keep having conversations with people and going,
explain it to me again. There's so much to get your head around and it's exciting. But yeah,
(28:27):
I imagine for end users there's a lot of uncertainty. I think if you can take the uncertainty,
I start mapping out, doing your strategic planning is very hard to plan actually because it's moving
so fast. But also try and take away. I think people are more excited. There's been fear, there's been
(28:51):
all sorts of stuff. I do think that there's perhaps more excitement around the potential. I think
a lot of the questions around what this means are not answered. We can see that there's going to be
massive change, like massive change. The fear has subsided from a fear from, oh, this is going to take
over and displace me to a fear of how do I get to the point where I can trust this? And almost like
(29:16):
a new hire. And can I rely on the work that you're producing? And as we start to re-imagine
which work we do and who does it, I think that will become clearer. But right now, but it seems
like there's been a shift from, oh, my goodness, this thing is going to take over to wait. Can I trust
the work of this thing? And if I, how do I get to that point? And so we've definitely moved and
(29:44):
progressed from the irrational to the more rational. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't boring and it was fascinating.
And I'm happy to see you and everybody else. I love this week. It's exhausting, but it is so stimulating.
And yeah, it can get us again to the organizers and Tony McKenna. Yeah.
(30:05):
And to you on your run. I saw the picture. We thought of people. It was super fun.
And I did. And I did. And I did. Yeah. No. That's the joke. And I'll end with everybody says,
I'm sorry, I missed your run today. And I will say, oh, it's tomorrow. And then they laugh and say,
I'm sorry, I missed your run tomorrow. But it was fun. We had a really probably record number of
(30:28):
people. And I love the smiles and the conversations. And it's, uh, I actually got a call from the
Lone Cancer Foundation of America yesterday, you know, to whom all the proceeds go. And, uh, they were
really excited. Not only I have to say for the, for the fundraising, but for the visibility.
Because it's not a large organist, not as large an organization as others. And it just,
(30:49):
the elit does just the privilege of bringing our community together that way is, uh, is wonderful.
And I feel grateful. Yeah, I know. Well done. This is, this is, uh, this is a lucky opportunity to get
the chat with you like this. I look forward to doing it in a couple of weeks. And, uh, I hope you
enjoy the remainder of your summer. Thank you. Likewise. Love you to see you. All right. See you.
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Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.