September 23, 2024 • 27 mins
Ivy Grey is the Chief Strategy & Growth Officer for WordRake.
Ivy leads the company’s internal and external strategic growth initiatives. She is responsible for business strategy, process improvement, competitive analysis, legal products, and marketing, and serves as the SME for legal writing and the legal profession.
WordRake is the instant, secure editing tool that provides brevity and clarity for writing in legal, government and corporate. It helps you edit quickly, communicate clearly, write concisely, and eliminate useless words.
Connect with Ivey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivybgrey/
Visit WordRake: https://www.wordrake.com/
WordRake 5.0 Free Trial: https://www.wordrake.com/trial
On This Episode, We Discuss…
Ivy leads the company’s internal and external strategic growth initiatives. She is responsible for business strategy, process improvement, competitive analysis, legal products, and marketing, and serves as the SME for legal writing and the legal profession.
WordRake is the instant, secure editing tool that provides brevity and clarity for writing in legal, government and corporate. It helps you edit quickly, communicate clearly, write concisely, and eliminate useless words.
Connect with Ivey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivybgrey/
Visit WordRake: https://www.wordrake.com/
WordRake 5.0 Free Trial: https://www.wordrake.com/trial
On This Episode, We Discuss…
- How Lawyers Can Communicate More Effectively by Writing Concisely and Clearly
- The Balance Between AI and Human Expertise in Legal Writing
- Actionable Advice on How Lawyers Can Improve Their Writing
- The Importance of Brevity
- WordRake 5.0
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Think of your document creation process as a value stream
where you're delivering value to your client, and anything that
you do to improve the document should be about the
end product that the client receives. It shouldn't be just
about making your life easier. And it's really easy to
(00:24):
optimize your little silo as much as possible, and that
ends up with downstream effects where you actually become less
efficient because you're working out of sync with your team.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Bersano, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts and the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today my guest is Ivy Gray. She is the chief
strategy and growth officer for Word Rank. Ivy, Welcome to
the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Thank you so much for having me. Eric, I'm pleased
to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, I'm excited to have you here. You know, your
background I think is ideal for the people who listen
to this podcast. So if you wouldn't mind, could you
give us kind of a brief overview of how you
became the chief strategy and growth officer for word Rak.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Well, surprisingly, getting here didn't involve any strategy at all.
It was an accident. So I practiced corporate bankruptcy law
for ten years. And during my practice I was pretty
tech forward and the person who fixed things when you
had problems with Microsoft or with Adobe products. And I
was also the last set of eyes before any document
(01:52):
got filed, so kind of the combination of two random
skill sets. And I did that so frequently that people
knew about my skills, and eventually, in another adding maker suggested,
you know, you should try word rake, and I did,
and I fell in love. I used it my last
(02:14):
three years of practice and it was life changing. I
started with email because I thought my writing was too
precious and I wouldn't let it touch my regular writing
my documents. But I got hooked. So I consider the
email version of word rake the gateway drug. But then
(02:34):
once I started using it on my documents, I started
writing into word rake and saying, you know, it would
be better if you did this. You know, it would
be really great if word rate did this. I expected
word rake to do this other thing. Why doesn't it
do that? And finally to shut me up, they hired
me and that was six years.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Nice And just could you give kind of a brief
overview for people who aren't familiar with word Rake what
the tool does.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes, So, word rig is clear and concise editing software
that works in Microsoft Word and Outlook. It offers over
thirty five thousand suggestions to improve your writing and respects
legally operative phrases. It's also absolutely one hundred percent secure,
which matters for law firms when they're looking for new technology.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Okay, that was perfectly concise. That's that's the elevator pitch
of word RG. Yes, and I think it's good to
have that base, you know, for the attorneys who listen
to this and again who might not be familiar with it.
And if we if we can jump in now to
kind of your expertise, and you know, because you are
so close to this tool, and I know that you're
(03:40):
delving into AI like a lot of other people. But
one of the things I think we should discuss is
how to choose the right tools for the task and
how generative AI might not always be the right choice
for everything.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You know. I love that question because when people hear
about a new tool, they want to rush and apply
it to everything. They just want to sprinkle a little
AI on everything that they do, and that's not always
your best choice. Sometimes your old school tools that you
had ignored need to be dusted off and brought back
(04:16):
out or you weren't getting enough out of them, which
is why you think that generative AI seems so great.
So I've come up with a bit of a framework
for figuring it out when to choose a tool. So
the top three questions are, well, what are you working on.
Is it outcome determinative? If it is, then you need
to be really careful about what tool you're going to
(04:38):
use because you can't experiment when it's outcome determinative fork
and then how much are you willing to change? And
what's your tolerance for change in variance and misfires. The
beauty of tools like generative AI is that they're really
creative and really flexible, but you don't get the same
(05:00):
result every time. They're not reliable, they're not consistent, they're
not secure, and that might be really frustrating if you're
at the wrong place in your process. So if you
are hoping just to polish or confirm, then you might
want a tool that's more algorithmic and rules based, like
(05:21):
word rate, rather than a tool that is going to
create something entirely new, like genitive AI. And then finally,
how likely are you to actually spot an error and
be able to correct it? Because generitive AI will hallucinate
in ways that you didn't expect. And while you might
(05:42):
be used to overseeing a secretary or a paralegal or
a junior associate who makes mistakes, the types of mistakes
that genitive AI makes are a lot different from what
humans would make. So, for example, genitive AI might give
you details like and such as the thirty seventh or
(06:03):
thirty eighth president, And if you were reviewing a human's word,
you would question is it really thirty seven or thirty
eight and you would know where to look. But with
generative AI, this country might not even have presidents, this
country may not even exist. You have to question every
premise and if you are working outside of your knowledge base,
(06:27):
then you're going to have to work a lot harder
to make sure that what you're doing is correct. And
you need to do that to comply with your duty
of competence and your duty of supervision and your duty
of using your legal judgment.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, I mean, I think a real simple analogy would
just be, you know, when you're using voice to text
on your phone, you know, it seems like such a
great way to save some time if you're you know,
one hand's full, or you're just trying to write something out.
But I can't tell you how many times I've done
a voice text and then it takes me three minutes
to go in and correct everything, and I delete the
entire line, and now I've spent four minutes on a
(07:05):
text that would have just taken me forty five seconds
to type out myself. But in your case, you're talking
about something that has, you know, implications to the work
product that you're doing. You know, you if you send
out something with one hallucination in it, that can affect
you know, the quality of the entire document or the
piece of work.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Right. But to go back to your example about the
voice text, I think that people imagine these new tools
are going to be so efficient, but they're not always
because you do end up spending more time trying to
salvage what you got that wasn't quite on point, rather
than just doing your own thing from the beginning. So
(07:49):
people should make those choices and plan their work before
they use any tool, but definitely before they start to
use generative AI tools so that they get the right thing.
It's on point and it follows their need.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, And one of the things that you emphasize is
that writing and editing are key parts of the thinking process.
I have some things I'd like to mention here, but
I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, So writing is well. Thinking and writing go hand
in hand, and research is part of that. You figure
out what the parameters are, you figure out what the
law is, and then you start to apply law to fact,
and that's how you're creating attorney work product. But there
(08:37):
are also process constraints as your document develops and as
your advice develops. So along those process constraints, you've made
some choices about what goes in and what stays out,
what you're going to do, what is your focus, And
you're taking the information from your brain and turning it
(08:59):
in to words. It's a translation process. But eventually your
translation process stops being about your thoughts and taking notes
for you and starts being about your audience and your
reader and what they're going to learn, so you have
to shift your focus to their needs. And it's a
(09:21):
continuum and a recursive process as you are developing your work,
so you kind of cycle through all of that again
and again, refining what you're going to say. And if
you don't do that, if you just go from the
issue spotting straight to the output, then there's not enough
thinking in between. You've shirked your legal duties and you
haven't really given the client something that you've digested. Instead,
(09:44):
you're just giving a stack of information, and they want
you to have digested the information first.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
And is kind of what you're alluding to here that
you know, someone who's writing some information is so close
to the information they take for granted what the audience
doesn't know, you know. So if a mechanic was talking
to me about a V eight engine, you know, and
they started getting into all the details of this engine,
it would just go over my head because I don't
(10:11):
know ninety percent of the things that are involved in that.
Is that kind of what you're alluding to is that
you really have to take somebody on this journey of
what you know and then explaining it in a way
that the audience or the readers can digest.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, it's not just about going over their head. It's
about turning these stray pieces of information into one whole
story that's useful. Because the mechanic might just have a checklist,
and that checklist might have meaning to them because they
know how it all connects. But when you're writing for
(10:46):
other people, you have to think through it and make
those connections. For them, the connections must be present on
the paper and they must get some value from those connections.
So it's just a little bit more than reducing jargon.
It's about thinking about what they actually need for this
thing to be useful.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Right, And then when someone's using a tool like word rake,
what does it help with Like what are some of
the you know, is it help with efficiency, does it
help with the overall messaging? What are some of the
key components to it that an attorney could really get
use out of.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So the beauty of a tool like word rake is
that it helps you to quickly get under those page
limits that a lot of courts have. So there's typically
a lot of crying at eleven fifty nine PM and
you have three extra lines on the eleventh page, and
the court has a ten page limit and how are
you going to get rid of those words? Well, word
(11:48):
rake is a really quick answer to that specific use case.
But if you have more time and you're trying to
improve the quality of your work, it will give you
that objective eye so that you can rethink what you've
written and understand it from the audience perspective and improve
it from the audience perspective. And then finally, a lot
of associates will leave law firms because they get really
(12:11):
harsh writing feedback and it takes years for them to
get up to speed. But if you're really harsh to
those associates and they leave, then that's the money that
you've invested in recruiting them and training them just walking
out the door before those associates are even profitable. So
you want to give the associates tools to give you
(12:32):
the work product that you want while making them feel
confident that they can learn and getting those associates to
be profitable early on. And word rate will definitely help
to do that if it's incorporated in their process. So
that's kind of a side goal. So I talked about clarity,
I've talked about efficiency, I've talked about the attrition issue,
(12:55):
and then finally, word Ridge just makes your writing better.
Every firm can say we're the best writers, but you
want to actually produce the clearest writing that's going to
be useful for your client, and your documents once you've
(13:15):
ended that engagement are the only tangible evidence of the
advice and value that you gave, So they need to
be good so that your clients feel good about that
representation and come back to you for advice in the
future on something new.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
So it sounds like, you know, the tool actually helps
make people better writers, which you had just said, and
I'm kind of thinking of that opposite analogy, which would
be like a calculator. You know, so if someone's used
to doing math in their head or on paper, you know,
you just get really good at it because it's repetitive,
but if you're depend on a calculator, you kind of
remove that. It sounds like word Rake actually helps people
(13:53):
to either write better or write more efficiently, so they're
not replacing their writing skills with AI, they're actually improving
what they're doing and producing on outbit output by using the.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Tool, I'd agree. So it brings that writing advice to
your attention consistently so that you start to remember, and
you also start to compete against yourself from the people
who were not allowed to use calculators in school growing up,
A lot of us still will compete against the calculator.
(14:28):
So I still balance my checkbook on paper. I know
that's weird for somebody of my age, but I still
balance my checkbook on paper, and I do all of
the math in my head, and then I whip out
my calculator to check my neck and it's gratifying to
know that I've still got it. And word Rate can
do that with my own writing too. My writing has
(14:50):
gotten better because I use word Rate, and now I
test myself against the tool, and I say, can I
write so concisely that we're doesn't have any suggestions. I've
gamified the editing process, and it feels good to have
done that.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
And that's I do the same thing. You know, if
I play golf, so a lot of times I'll go
through and try to add up the score really quick.
You know. Yeah, if I can match it with with
my friends or you know, someone else's checking my work,
I feel good about it. I think it's good to
do those mental challenges to yourself so you just don't
lose that skill, right. You gave a really good example
(15:30):
of you know, the eleven fifty nine, you know, and
the pressure on delivering or making the writing more concise.
But you have other like ideal use cases, like where
you see this use the most or feed like for one,
it sounded like you were the number one feedback given
to word rate before you before you work. There are
(15:52):
there other people that provide this feedback, like new things
that are coming out use cases that you're like, this
is really ideal for a tool like this.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
So the top users of word rake are people who
write for work, and we were designed specifically with lawyers
in mind because our founder was a legal writing instructure
instructor for the top firms in the country and even
Fortune five hundred companies. So that was brought to word
rag first, and then we expanded to government writers, people
(16:24):
who have to comply with plain language guidelines, so we
can help you do that with the push of a button.
I would say those are the top two use cases.
And then everyone else who must write for work is
trying to be efficient and trying to persuade somebody to
take the next step, and word rik will absolutely help
you do that. I love that about word rate. It
(16:44):
gets you to that quality when you don't have five
minutes to spend per sentence, and it's just not reasonable
to fix to spend five minutes per sentence to make
an email better. So those are conceptually the best use cases.
In terms of what documents people actually use wordwig on,
it would be briefs, memos, ten k's, eight k's s ones,
(17:11):
any of the securities, exchange filings that have to be
in plane language. And then if you are bidding, submitting
a request for a proposal, all of those things also
have to be clear. So if your words matter and
you need to get someone on the same page as you,
then wordrek is going to be the ideal tool to
help you do that.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Now, when you say you know with the push of
a button, you know you can accomplish I think it
was the government example. What is this button doing. It's
going through and it's looking for actual legal terms and
making sure that they're in alignment with the governing laws.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Not quite. So when you click the rake button, it
calls to our library and what happens is that word
rake ripples through your document, marking it up in the
familiar track changes form suggesting ways that you can tighten
your sentence, improve structure, and change a jargon word to
(18:09):
a simpler word, shrink a phrase so that it's one
word instead of five. And in that track changes style,
you actually see all of the changes that you're supposed
to make. It's not just a flag saying hey, shouldn't
this be shorter? It says this should be shorter, and
(18:29):
here's how, and then it's on you to say yes.
So you get all of those suggestions with the push
of a button, but then you've got to click other
buttons to accept or reject those suggestions.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense now, and I
can picture that happening, you know. I even in my email,
it will suggest the ending to some of my sentences,
and about half the time I'll use, I go wow,
that is a better way to phrase it, or it's
more concise. But I would not want it to just
write a five hundred word email for me, and then
I'd have to go in and then with my own changes.
(19:01):
So it sounds very efficient. Somebody is reviewing their document,
go ooh, I'll accept that. That's really good. That shortens
this paragraph by quite a bit. As opposed to it
just generating a document out of the thin air and
having to go fact check it yourself, or you know,
go in and do all the edits yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And even if you have a checklist of things that
you want to edit for, you often can't imagine what
those edits would be. And the more tired you are
and the more time pressure you are, the less you're
going to have a clear picture of what else could
have been there. And word rate gives you that clear
picture for you to accept or reject.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Right, So what's next for word Rake? You know, there
is a bunch of AI tools coming out. I do
have some things that are in the near future or
maybe six months to a year out that you're excited about.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Actually, I'm super excited because word Break five point zero
is coming out in September, and with word Rake five
point zero, you will have more control over the editing
suggestions that you get and the editing suggestions that you
don't get, so you'll be able to say, you know what,
this doesn't fit my style for this document, reject all
(20:13):
of these suggestions in this document, or you can say
I like pursuant too, I believe that there really is
a difference between pursuant to an under and I am
never going to want this suggestion, never show it to
me again. So in word rate five point zero, you
will be able to say, never show me this suggestion again.
(20:36):
And that's a huge change to give people more control
over their word rate experience. And then obviously we are
adding more algorithms to edit wordy writing and change some
of the things that people are now producing Enginet of
AI that we weren't seeing in writing before. Lawyers are
(20:56):
good writers and we bring a lot of intelligence to
the table already, but now that we're outsourcing this writing,
we're seeing mistakes that never would have made it into
a first draft before. So word rate is now offering
more suggestions to edit those types of mistakes. For example,
(21:18):
not only but also generative AI loves that emphatic phrasing,
but you might see that once in a ten page document,
you're not going to say it three times in a paragraph.
And with word greg five point zero, that very complex
suggestion will actually be changed to the simpler phrase without
(21:41):
it becoming a run on sentence.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, it's funny. The one that I always see is,
you know, you know, we have people who will submit blogs,
and I can always tell when the blog is completely
written by AI because the last paragraph always is headed
in conclusion. Like I remember writing like that when I
was in like fourth grade, okay, and then here's your
you know, your head, your main body, and then your conclusion.
(22:05):
But no one writes like that, but AI writes like that.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Right, So AI is looking for the structures that you
were taught in grammar school, and it's trying to replicate
those structures, so needless sentence variation, trying to create complexity
where there is no complexity, unnecessary emphasis, cohesive devices where firstly,
(22:34):
secondly it's like I can look at the page and
I can tell that this is one, two, three, I
don't need you to actually write that out. And then
the obvious conclusion statements like you were saying in conclusion
in summary, in summation, you don't need that. We know
that it's a summary because it's the end. So word
rate will cut all of those things. It did that before,
but again there were phrases that people would never say
(22:57):
that they now do say, and Wordrik has expanded to
edit those types of things.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, so it sounds like there's actually some machine learning
within it, and if there's a couple of different people
using the tool and one person says, never show me
this again, and another person likes that they could be
getting two different like if something that's customized to their
writing stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Oh, there's actually no machine learning at all, which is
great for lawyers because it's completely everything runs locally. We
don't track any of your usage. Your document doesn't get
transmitted or stored. What you click is never transmitted or stored,
so we never learn from what you are doing. We
(23:40):
actually have subject matter experts and computational linguists working together
and arguing over what should suggest and what would be
a better suggestion. Where the customization comes in is basically
it's in tweaking your settings on your own local computer.
Even if you have an enterprise license. The word breke
(24:04):
that you get on your computer will be will wind
up being different than the word rake on somebody else's
computer because they've changed their settings. But it's not because
of machine learning. It's because you actually flipped a switch.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, no, that makes sense, And there's more of the
security on that side where you're not sending back all
your data to know some cloud you know, right.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Right, So it's a little bit slower, but we're safety first.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Right, So if there's somebody out there that's never heard
of it or used it before, you know, is there,
do you have licenses that they can try, or should
they get in contact with you? What's what's the best
way for someone to see if this tool is right
for them.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
You know, wordrek is a straightforward tool, so we have
a straightforward process. If you go to wordwreate dot com
slash trial, you will have the option to use a
simulator and get that first run word brek experience, and
then you can download a seven day free trial. No
credit card is required, none of that, and we give
(25:06):
you that simulator experience because we know that lawyers often
don't have admin rights to their own computers, so they
can't just download a free trial, and we need to
arm you with something to say to it about why
you want this tool, so the simulator does that. Then
you can download the actual free trial. If you're looking
(25:27):
at an enterprise purchase, then we will do a two
week free pilot for you where you can bring as
many users as you want. And I know this sounds
like this huge operation and you're probably imagining that it's
really expensive, but it's not where brek is only one
hundred and forty nine dollars to two hundred and twenty
nine dollars per user per year. It is, I'd say, no, Brander.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Yeah, Well, I think you did a great job of
explaining the use cases for it and the fact that
you I love the fact that you were a user
of it and you could see ways to improve it,
and then you became an employee of the company to
help bring this out to more attorneys who can use it. Well,
before we go, ivy, anything that you'd like to finish with,
(26:14):
I think you really covered the functionality, but did we
miss anything.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Well, the last thing I'd like to say is that
think of your document creation process as a value stream
where you're delivering value to your client, and anything that
you do to improve the document should be about the
end product that the client receives. It shouldn't be just
(26:42):
about making your life easier. And it's really easy to
optimize your little silo as much as possible, and that
ends up with downstream effects where you actually become less
efficient because you're working out of sync with your team.
So think of it as the whole thing, and think
of it from the client's perspective and do what you
(27:03):
can so that you're a symphony, as generatord I would say, uh,
working together to produce that thing that your client wants.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Great. Well, thank you again for your time. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Thanks so much for having me Eric.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast, presented by
Market My Market. You can check out additional episodes and
recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
Think of your document creation process as a value stream
where you're delivering value to your client, and anything that
you do to improve the document should be about the
end product that the client receives. It shouldn't be just
about making your life easier. And it's really easy to
(00:24):
optimize your little silo as much as possible, and that
ends up with downstream effects where you actually become less
efficient because you're working out of sync with your team.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market with your hosts Eric Bersano, Ryan Klein, and
Chase Williams, the go to podcast for learning from the
experts and the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today my guest is Ivy Gray. She is the chief
strategy and growth officer for Word Rank. Ivy, Welcome to
the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Thank you so much for having me. Eric, I'm pleased
to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, I'm excited to have you here. You know, your
background I think is ideal for the people who listen
to this podcast. So if you wouldn't mind, could you
give us kind of a brief overview of how you
became the chief strategy and growth officer for word Rak.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Well, surprisingly, getting here didn't involve any strategy at all.
It was an accident. So I practiced corporate bankruptcy law
for ten years. And during my practice I was pretty
tech forward and the person who fixed things when you
had problems with Microsoft or with Adobe products. And I
was also the last set of eyes before any document
(01:52):
got filed, so kind of the combination of two random
skill sets. And I did that so frequently that people
knew about my skills, and eventually, in another adding maker suggested,
you know, you should try word rake, and I did,
and I fell in love. I used it my last
(02:14):
three years of practice and it was life changing. I
started with email because I thought my writing was too
precious and I wouldn't let it touch my regular writing
my documents. But I got hooked. So I consider the
email version of word rake the gateway drug. But then
(02:34):
once I started using it on my documents, I started
writing into word rake and saying, you know, it would
be better if you did this. You know, it would
be really great if word rate did this. I expected
word rake to do this other thing. Why doesn't it
do that? And finally to shut me up, they hired
me and that was six years.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Nice And just could you give kind of a brief
overview for people who aren't familiar with word Rake what
the tool does.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes, So, word rig is clear and concise editing software
that works in Microsoft Word and Outlook. It offers over
thirty five thousand suggestions to improve your writing and respects
legally operative phrases. It's also absolutely one hundred percent secure,
which matters for law firms when they're looking for new technology.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Okay, that was perfectly concise. That's that's the elevator pitch
of word RG. Yes, and I think it's good to
have that base, you know, for the attorneys who listen
to this and again who might not be familiar with it.
And if we if we can jump in now to
kind of your expertise, and you know, because you are
so close to this tool, and I know that you're
(03:40):
delving into AI like a lot of other people. But
one of the things I think we should discuss is
how to choose the right tools for the task and
how generative AI might not always be the right choice
for everything.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You know. I love that question because when people hear
about a new tool, they want to rush and apply
it to everything. They just want to sprinkle a little
AI on everything that they do, and that's not always
your best choice. Sometimes your old school tools that you
had ignored need to be dusted off and brought back
(04:16):
out or you weren't getting enough out of them, which
is why you think that generative AI seems so great.
So I've come up with a bit of a framework
for figuring it out when to choose a tool. So
the top three questions are, well, what are you working on.
Is it outcome determinative? If it is, then you need
to be really careful about what tool you're going to
(04:38):
use because you can't experiment when it's outcome determinative fork
and then how much are you willing to change? And
what's your tolerance for change in variance and misfires. The
beauty of tools like generative AI is that they're really
creative and really flexible, but you don't get the same
(05:00):
result every time. They're not reliable, they're not consistent, they're
not secure, and that might be really frustrating if you're
at the wrong place in your process. So if you
are hoping just to polish or confirm, then you might
want a tool that's more algorithmic and rules based, like
(05:21):
word rate, rather than a tool that is going to
create something entirely new, like genitive AI. And then finally,
how likely are you to actually spot an error and
be able to correct it? Because generitive AI will hallucinate
in ways that you didn't expect. And while you might
(05:42):
be used to overseeing a secretary or a paralegal or
a junior associate who makes mistakes, the types of mistakes
that genitive AI makes are a lot different from what
humans would make. So, for example, genitive AI might give
you details like and such as the thirty seventh or
(06:03):
thirty eighth president, And if you were reviewing a human's word,
you would question is it really thirty seven or thirty
eight and you would know where to look. But with
generative AI, this country might not even have presidents, this
country may not even exist. You have to question every
premise and if you are working outside of your knowledge base,
(06:27):
then you're going to have to work a lot harder
to make sure that what you're doing is correct. And
you need to do that to comply with your duty
of competence and your duty of supervision and your duty
of using your legal judgment.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, I mean, I think a real simple analogy would
just be, you know, when you're using voice to text
on your phone, you know, it seems like such a
great way to save some time if you're you know,
one hand's full, or you're just trying to write something out.
But I can't tell you how many times I've done
a voice text and then it takes me three minutes
to go in and correct everything, and I delete the
entire line, and now I've spent four minutes on a
(07:05):
text that would have just taken me forty five seconds
to type out myself. But in your case, you're talking
about something that has, you know, implications to the work
product that you're doing. You know, you if you send
out something with one hallucination in it, that can affect
you know, the quality of the entire document or the
piece of work.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Right. But to go back to your example about the
voice text, I think that people imagine these new tools
are going to be so efficient, but they're not always
because you do end up spending more time trying to
salvage what you got that wasn't quite on point, rather
than just doing your own thing from the beginning. So
(07:49):
people should make those choices and plan their work before
they use any tool, but definitely before they start to
use generative AI tools so that they get the right thing.
It's on point and it follows their need.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, And one of the things that you emphasize is
that writing and editing are key parts of the thinking process.
I have some things I'd like to mention here, but
I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, So writing is well. Thinking and writing go hand
in hand, and research is part of that. You figure
out what the parameters are, you figure out what the
law is, and then you start to apply law to fact,
and that's how you're creating attorney work product. But there
(08:37):
are also process constraints as your document develops and as
your advice develops. So along those process constraints, you've made
some choices about what goes in and what stays out,
what you're going to do, what is your focus, And
you're taking the information from your brain and turning it
(08:59):
in to words. It's a translation process. But eventually your
translation process stops being about your thoughts and taking notes
for you and starts being about your audience and your
reader and what they're going to learn, so you have
to shift your focus to their needs. And it's a
(09:21):
continuum and a recursive process as you are developing your work,
so you kind of cycle through all of that again
and again, refining what you're going to say. And if
you don't do that, if you just go from the
issue spotting straight to the output, then there's not enough
thinking in between. You've shirked your legal duties and you
haven't really given the client something that you've digested. Instead,
(09:44):
you're just giving a stack of information, and they want
you to have digested the information first.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
And is kind of what you're alluding to here that
you know, someone who's writing some information is so close
to the information they take for granted what the audience
doesn't know, you know. So if a mechanic was talking
to me about a V eight engine, you know, and
they started getting into all the details of this engine,
it would just go over my head because I don't
(10:11):
know ninety percent of the things that are involved in that.
Is that kind of what you're alluding to is that
you really have to take somebody on this journey of
what you know and then explaining it in a way
that the audience or the readers can digest.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, it's not just about going over their head. It's
about turning these stray pieces of information into one whole
story that's useful. Because the mechanic might just have a checklist,
and that checklist might have meaning to them because they
know how it all connects. But when you're writing for
(10:46):
other people, you have to think through it and make
those connections. For them, the connections must be present on
the paper and they must get some value from those connections.
So it's just a little bit more than reducing jargon.
It's about thinking about what they actually need for this
thing to be useful.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Right, And then when someone's using a tool like word rake,
what does it help with Like what are some of
the you know, is it help with efficiency, does it
help with the overall messaging? What are some of the
key components to it that an attorney could really get
use out of.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So the beauty of a tool like word rake is
that it helps you to quickly get under those page
limits that a lot of courts have. So there's typically
a lot of crying at eleven fifty nine PM and
you have three extra lines on the eleventh page, and
the court has a ten page limit and how are
you going to get rid of those words? Well, word
(11:48):
rake is a really quick answer to that specific use case.
But if you have more time and you're trying to
improve the quality of your work, it will give you
that objective eye so that you can rethink what you've
written and understand it from the audience perspective and improve
it from the audience perspective. And then finally, a lot
of associates will leave law firms because they get really
(12:11):
harsh writing feedback and it takes years for them to
get up to speed. But if you're really harsh to
those associates and they leave, then that's the money that
you've invested in recruiting them and training them just walking
out the door before those associates are even profitable. So
you want to give the associates tools to give you
(12:32):
the work product that you want while making them feel
confident that they can learn and getting those associates to
be profitable early on. And word rate will definitely help
to do that if it's incorporated in their process. So
that's kind of a side goal. So I talked about clarity,
I've talked about efficiency, I've talked about the attrition issue,
(12:55):
and then finally, word Ridge just makes your writing better.
Every firm can say we're the best writers, but you
want to actually produce the clearest writing that's going to
be useful for your client, and your documents once you've
(13:15):
ended that engagement are the only tangible evidence of the
advice and value that you gave, So they need to
be good so that your clients feel good about that
representation and come back to you for advice in the
future on something new.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
So it sounds like, you know, the tool actually helps
make people better writers, which you had just said, and
I'm kind of thinking of that opposite analogy, which would
be like a calculator. You know, so if someone's used
to doing math in their head or on paper, you know,
you just get really good at it because it's repetitive,
but if you're depend on a calculator, you kind of
remove that. It sounds like word Rake actually helps people
(13:53):
to either write better or write more efficiently, so they're
not replacing their writing skills with AI, they're actually improving
what they're doing and producing on outbit output by using the.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Tool, I'd agree. So it brings that writing advice to
your attention consistently so that you start to remember, and
you also start to compete against yourself from the people
who were not allowed to use calculators in school growing up,
A lot of us still will compete against the calculator.
(14:28):
So I still balance my checkbook on paper. I know
that's weird for somebody of my age, but I still
balance my checkbook on paper, and I do all of
the math in my head, and then I whip out
my calculator to check my neck and it's gratifying to
know that I've still got it. And word Rate can
do that with my own writing too. My writing has
(14:50):
gotten better because I use word Rate, and now I
test myself against the tool, and I say, can I
write so concisely that we're doesn't have any suggestions. I've
gamified the editing process, and it feels good to have
done that.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
And that's I do the same thing. You know, if
I play golf, so a lot of times I'll go
through and try to add up the score really quick.
You know. Yeah, if I can match it with with
my friends or you know, someone else's checking my work,
I feel good about it. I think it's good to
do those mental challenges to yourself so you just don't
lose that skill, right. You gave a really good example
(15:30):
of you know, the eleven fifty nine, you know, and
the pressure on delivering or making the writing more concise.
But you have other like ideal use cases, like where
you see this use the most or feed like for one,
it sounded like you were the number one feedback given
to word rate before you before you work. There are
(15:52):
there other people that provide this feedback, like new things
that are coming out use cases that you're like, this
is really ideal for a tool like this.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
So the top users of word rake are people who
write for work, and we were designed specifically with lawyers
in mind because our founder was a legal writing instructure
instructor for the top firms in the country and even
Fortune five hundred companies. So that was brought to word
rag first, and then we expanded to government writers, people
(16:24):
who have to comply with plain language guidelines, so we
can help you do that with the push of a button.
I would say those are the top two use cases.
And then everyone else who must write for work is
trying to be efficient and trying to persuade somebody to
take the next step, and word rik will absolutely help
you do that. I love that about word rate. It
(16:44):
gets you to that quality when you don't have five
minutes to spend per sentence, and it's just not reasonable
to fix to spend five minutes per sentence to make
an email better. So those are conceptually the best use cases.
In terms of what documents people actually use wordwig on,
it would be briefs, memos, ten k's, eight k's s ones,
(17:11):
any of the securities, exchange filings that have to be
in plane language. And then if you are bidding, submitting
a request for a proposal, all of those things also
have to be clear. So if your words matter and
you need to get someone on the same page as you,
then wordrek is going to be the ideal tool to
help you do that.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Now, when you say you know with the push of
a button, you know you can accomplish I think it
was the government example. What is this button doing. It's
going through and it's looking for actual legal terms and
making sure that they're in alignment with the governing laws.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Not quite. So when you click the rake button, it
calls to our library and what happens is that word
rake ripples through your document, marking it up in the
familiar track changes form suggesting ways that you can tighten
your sentence, improve structure, and change a jargon word to
(18:09):
a simpler word, shrink a phrase so that it's one
word instead of five. And in that track changes style,
you actually see all of the changes that you're supposed
to make. It's not just a flag saying hey, shouldn't
this be shorter? It says this should be shorter, and
(18:29):
here's how, and then it's on you to say yes.
So you get all of those suggestions with the push
of a button, but then you've got to click other
buttons to accept or reject those suggestions.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense now, and I
can picture that happening, you know. I even in my email,
it will suggest the ending to some of my sentences,
and about half the time I'll use, I go wow,
that is a better way to phrase it, or it's
more concise. But I would not want it to just
write a five hundred word email for me, and then
I'd have to go in and then with my own changes.
(19:01):
So it sounds very efficient. Somebody is reviewing their document,
go ooh, I'll accept that. That's really good. That shortens
this paragraph by quite a bit. As opposed to it
just generating a document out of the thin air and
having to go fact check it yourself, or you know,
go in and do all the edits yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And even if you have a checklist of things that
you want to edit for, you often can't imagine what
those edits would be. And the more tired you are
and the more time pressure you are, the less you're
going to have a clear picture of what else could
have been there. And word rate gives you that clear
picture for you to accept or reject.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Right, So what's next for word Rake? You know, there
is a bunch of AI tools coming out. I do
have some things that are in the near future or
maybe six months to a year out that you're excited about.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Actually, I'm super excited because word Break five point zero
is coming out in September, and with word Rake five
point zero, you will have more control over the editing
suggestions that you get and the editing suggestions that you
don't get, so you'll be able to say, you know what,
this doesn't fit my style for this document, reject all
(20:13):
of these suggestions in this document, or you can say
I like pursuant too, I believe that there really is
a difference between pursuant to an under and I am
never going to want this suggestion, never show it to
me again. So in word rate five point zero, you
will be able to say, never show me this suggestion again.
(20:36):
And that's a huge change to give people more control
over their word rate experience. And then obviously we are
adding more algorithms to edit wordy writing and change some
of the things that people are now producing Enginet of
AI that we weren't seeing in writing before. Lawyers are
(20:56):
good writers and we bring a lot of intelligence to
the table already, but now that we're outsourcing this writing,
we're seeing mistakes that never would have made it into
a first draft before. So word rate is now offering
more suggestions to edit those types of mistakes. For example,
(21:18):
not only but also generative AI loves that emphatic phrasing,
but you might see that once in a ten page document,
you're not going to say it three times in a paragraph.
And with word greg five point zero, that very complex
suggestion will actually be changed to the simpler phrase without
(21:41):
it becoming a run on sentence.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, it's funny. The one that I always see is,
you know, you know, we have people who will submit blogs,
and I can always tell when the blog is completely
written by AI because the last paragraph always is headed
in conclusion. Like I remember writing like that when I
was in like fourth grade, okay, and then here's your
you know, your head, your main body, and then your conclusion.
(22:05):
But no one writes like that, but AI writes like that.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Right, So AI is looking for the structures that you
were taught in grammar school, and it's trying to replicate
those structures, so needless sentence variation, trying to create complexity
where there is no complexity, unnecessary emphasis, cohesive devices where firstly,
(22:34):
secondly it's like I can look at the page and
I can tell that this is one, two, three, I
don't need you to actually write that out. And then
the obvious conclusion statements like you were saying in conclusion
in summary, in summation, you don't need that. We know
that it's a summary because it's the end. So word
rate will cut all of those things. It did that before,
but again there were phrases that people would never say
(22:57):
that they now do say, and Wordrik has expanded to
edit those types of things.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, so it sounds like there's actually some machine learning
within it, and if there's a couple of different people
using the tool and one person says, never show me
this again, and another person likes that they could be
getting two different like if something that's customized to their
writing stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Oh, there's actually no machine learning at all, which is
great for lawyers because it's completely everything runs locally. We
don't track any of your usage. Your document doesn't get
transmitted or stored. What you click is never transmitted or stored,
so we never learn from what you are doing. We
(23:40):
actually have subject matter experts and computational linguists working together
and arguing over what should suggest and what would be
a better suggestion. Where the customization comes in is basically
it's in tweaking your settings on your own local computer.
Even if you have an enterprise license. The word breke
(24:04):
that you get on your computer will be will wind
up being different than the word rake on somebody else's
computer because they've changed their settings. But it's not because
of machine learning. It's because you actually flipped a switch.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, no, that makes sense, And there's more of the
security on that side where you're not sending back all
your data to know some cloud you know, right.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Right, So it's a little bit slower, but we're safety first.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Right, So if there's somebody out there that's never heard
of it or used it before, you know, is there,
do you have licenses that they can try, or should
they get in contact with you? What's what's the best
way for someone to see if this tool is right
for them.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
You know, wordrek is a straightforward tool, so we have
a straightforward process. If you go to wordwreate dot com
slash trial, you will have the option to use a
simulator and get that first run word brek experience, and
then you can download a seven day free trial. No
credit card is required, none of that, and we give
(25:06):
you that simulator experience because we know that lawyers often
don't have admin rights to their own computers, so they
can't just download a free trial, and we need to
arm you with something to say to it about why
you want this tool, so the simulator does that. Then
you can download the actual free trial. If you're looking
(25:27):
at an enterprise purchase, then we will do a two
week free pilot for you where you can bring as
many users as you want. And I know this sounds
like this huge operation and you're probably imagining that it's
really expensive, but it's not where brek is only one
hundred and forty nine dollars to two hundred and twenty
nine dollars per user per year. It is, I'd say, no, Brander.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Yeah, Well, I think you did a great job of
explaining the use cases for it and the fact that
you I love the fact that you were a user
of it and you could see ways to improve it,
and then you became an employee of the company to
help bring this out to more attorneys who can use it. Well,
before we go, ivy, anything that you'd like to finish with,
(26:14):
I think you really covered the functionality, but did we
miss anything.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Well, the last thing I'd like to say is that
think of your document creation process as a value stream
where you're delivering value to your client, and anything that
you do to improve the document should be about the
end product that the client receives. It shouldn't be just
(26:42):
about making your life easier. And it's really easy to
optimize your little silo as much as possible, and that
ends up with downstream effects where you actually become less
efficient because you're working out of sync with your team.
So think of it as the whole thing, and think
of it from the client's perspective and do what you
(27:03):
can so that you're a symphony, as generatord I would say, uh,
working together to produce that thing that your client wants.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Great. Well, thank you again for your time. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Thanks so much for having me Eric.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast, presented by
Market My Market. You can check out additional episodes and
recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
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