0:08

Hello and welcome to Legal Management

0:08

Talk,

0:10

The official podcast of the Association

0:10

of Legal Administrators.

0:14

I'm your host, Justin Askenazy.

0:16

Now, we're joined today by Hamid Cohen.

0:20

He is the president and CEO of Legal Soft,

0:20

which works

0:25

to optimize firm operations

0:25

and drive efficiency in law firms.

0:30

And he is also

0:30

the founder of Magic Law Group,

0:33

and an author of several books on law firm

0:33

operations.

0:38

So, first of all, thanks for being here.

0:40

Hamid,

0:40

I think with a resume like that, you're

0:42

definitely the guy

0:42

we want to hear from today.

0:47

It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. So,

0:53

and I, I want to first kind of talk about

0:59

that efficiency aspect of what you, what you deal with,

1:00

and making sure that

1:05

firms are operating at the optimal

1:10

level, especially with, you know,

1:13

such a a, fast-paced industry

1:13

and everything is changing all the time.

1:18

And so, it's incredibly important

1:22

for firms

1:22

to be able to streamline their processes.

1:27

So, I just want to first kind of

1:27

pick your brain about kind of

1:32

what are you seeing in your line of work

1:32

about where firms

1:37

should be getting more efficient?

1:41

Absolutely. Typically in the legal industry,

1:43

something that I came from, you know, twenty

1:47

plus years of a Silicon Valley, is to have a

1:50

scaling globalization of the operations.

1:54

It follows a recipe and system.

1:57

And you get experts to set up

1:57

your processes, your organizational

2:01

structure,

2:01

your workflow processes, and all of that.

2:05

When you bring that into the legal

2:05

industry, it's almost nonexistence,

2:08

because the all follow one another.

2:11

And it's basically, they know somebody who

2:15

became an attorney, opened up an office,

2:15

and then hired the admin,

2:19

and then hired a paralegal,

2:19

hired case manager, and they just,

2:23

they think that's the system. And when they scale to deliver it

2:25

bigger,

2:27

the whole system comes apart

2:27

because there's no work for processes,

2:31

there's no organizational chart,

2:31

there's nothing like that.

2:34

So then people overlapping,

2:34

overstepping, and basically

2:39

nobody knows exactly the job descriptions,

2:39

and the hands off to where it goes next.

2:45

So those some of the things that I realized right from the beginning,

2:47

is that when they, when they,

2:51

when the potential client

2:51

comes in as a lead

2:54

or as a contact or whatever,

2:54

what happens? Who talks to them? To

2:58

what shape or form? To what system?

2:58

Where is the data into it?

3:02

Where is that data goes next?

3:04

And then when they get retained,

3:04

who handles the retainer?

3:07

Who opens the matter? Who?

3:09

Who onboards the client?

3:12

And that whole processes is just been sort

3:15

of nonexistent

3:15

into the system, in the industry.

3:18

And then you take that into

3:18

to more complex matters, which is, now

3:22

there is injuries that needs to be

3:22

taken care of for the clients.

3:26

So, how do they go

3:26

to their medical provider?

3:29

What's the procedure?

3:29

What's their obligation?

3:32

Who checks to make sure they gone

3:32

through the treatments

3:35

and gotten all the treatments

3:35

and they're okay now?

3:37

So there is no workflow processes. And so when they go

3:39

to these organizations,

3:42

we help them set up an infrastructure

3:42

that is a scalable.

3:47

So if you go from signing ten clients

3:47

a month, to hundred clients a month,

3:51

it is not going to sort of kill

3:51

the system, it just scales it up.

3:56

So instead of three of these, now you have six of these, and then four

3:58

of those and two of these, and whatever.

4:02

So it just flows like that. So that's a workflow infrastructure.

4:06

And then, on top of that,

4:06

they need to have trained,

4:11

focused people with KPIs

4:11

and so forth, set up in the organization.

4:16

And then you need to maximize

4:16

the number of technologies

4:21

that they're going to be used

4:21

to optimize your process,

4:25

do quality control in your process,

4:25

and making sure that you are able

4:30

to manage the law firm on the dashboard

4:30

numeric basis.

4:35

There is so much technologies

4:38

that it is extremely helpful

4:38

for a law practice from the minute

4:42

they actually get a prospect client,

4:42

all the way to the settlements

4:46

and completion of the cases.

4:49

Gotcha. So,

4:53

you know, I know that short staffing has been an issue in, in recent years.

4:58

And, you know, as you're talking about scaling a firm and growing it

5:04

and making

5:04

sure the right people are there,

5:08

what can firms do,

5:08

especially smaller firms that, maybe,

5:12

you know, don't have all the capabilities

5:12

of midsize or larger firms,

5:17

what can they do

5:19

specifically to make their, their lives

5:19

easier?

5:22

Exactly. This has been the number one

5:28

challenge for any law practice.

5:30

Doesn't matter actually, they're a solo practitioner

5:30

or they are nationwide law practice.

5:35

They all have the same issue, it's shortage of

5:40

qualified, trained,

5:42

dedicated, affordable present

5:46

staff to do the job

5:46

and get the job done.

5:51

It's almost like in every level,

5:51

every practice tied.

5:54

So virtual law practice

5:54

is a big thing now.

5:57

Everywhere you go, every conference, every,

5:57

even university is now talking about it.

6:02

And so, for

6:02

setting up a virtual law practice,

6:05

it starts with infrastructure

6:05

because it's virtual,

6:10

it needs to be extremely organized

6:10

in having infrastructure.

6:13

Then second recipe,

6:13

piece of the recipe, is technology.

6:17

You need to deploy technology that helps you set up

6:20

and operate a virual law practice.

6:24

An attorney is a virtual train staff

6:24

to be deployed.

6:28

If these three things are set up properly,

6:28

you can have a truly,

6:32

rail-running machine

6:32

that is a virtual law practice,

6:36

and the attorney only needs

6:36

to be sort of monitoring it

6:41

as an operation, as a business

6:41

with the technology and the virtual staff.

6:46

And I think that's such a cool aspect to,

6:53

you know, kind of their growth in,

6:55

in, you know, virtual conferencing

6:55

and, and everything that now

7:00

everybody can do, everything

7:00

from anywhere in the world.

7:04

So that's, you know, that's really neat capability

7:06

that's come

7:09

come up in the last couple of years.

7:11

Yeah, it's been extremely on the,

7:11

on the uptake and,

7:17

and lot of education,

7:17

lot of conferences, lot of sit ups.

7:22

But it is to be systematically implemented

7:22

and they need to know

7:28

that they need technology

7:28

to manage and scale it.

7:31

So, I do want to switch gears a little bit,

7:31

but still talking about technology

7:37

that helps, makes firm, helps make firms

7:37

more efficient,

7:41

and that's AI of course.

7:44

And I know you have a lot of expertise in,

7:48

in AI and kind of how

7:51

that's being adopted at firms or not

7:51

as the case may be.

7:56

So, you know,

7:56

what are you seeing in terms of

8:00

how AI is evolving in the legal industry?

8:04

So, absolutely.

8:04

This is one of the most exciting thing

8:07

has happened to me for the past few years,

8:07

because having like twenty

8:12

plus years of experience

8:12

in data management system, I'm

8:15

an originally engineer development, data

8:15

warehousing, data management, data mining,

8:21

all of that stuff,

8:21

which is a foundation of the AI,

8:24

and then combine it with all the issues

8:24

I found with the legal industry,

8:28

it was like, okay, finally,

8:28

there is a light end of this tunnel.

8:31

We can actually fix this thing. So take the virtual to the whole new level.

8:35

Now getting it to the virtual,

8:35

they can learn, expand, implement

8:41

above and beyond even the virtual now.

8:43

So, the AI, I actually put out the book last

8:43

few months about how to scale your AI

8:49

law practice, and I explained in there,

8:52

every aspect of the law practice

8:52

was going to get impacted with the AI.

8:57

So, we have two type of law practice.

9:01

We have transactional law

9:01

and have litigation law.

9:04

Transactional law is describes

9:04

from being like immigration, bankruptcy,

9:09

estate planning,

9:12

some level tax,

9:12

real estate, corporate formation.

9:14

These are all transactional. What that means is that yes,

9:16

you can use an attorney to do it for you,

9:20

but you can also do it yourself. You can file for your own

9:22

immigration status,

9:24

you can file for your own bankruptcy,

9:26

you can file your own divorce,

9:26

you can file all of that yourself.

9:30

But attorneys can help.

9:32

Well, that attorney can help

9:32

is not going to be AI can help.

9:37

Because, what is that

9:38

attorney does, it shares his experience

9:42

and expertise with you on how to fill out

9:45

an immigration form or a divorce form,

9:49

right? AI is going to know more,

9:52

have access to more data, more examples.

9:56

And it continuously learning,

9:56

which lot of attorneys

10:00

just stop learning because they think

10:00

they just know enough to do the job,

10:04

so they stop learning. AI never stops.

10:07

So it just going to be the best version

10:10

of a legal assistant, a legal attorney,

10:13

assistant to a client at

10:17

zero or very little cost.

10:19

So that's the biggest impact

10:19

on transaction.

10:23

And, if whoever is not ready for it

10:25

and is not getting in

10:25

front of it is going to get left behind,

10:28

in my opinion,

10:28

in a matter of less than three years,

10:31

60-70% of transactional law

10:34

is basically going to be left out there

10:34

because the AI is going to take over

10:39

and do it for it. That's amazing.

10:42

Now you come to litigation. Again,

10:42

when you're litigating the case,

10:46

yeah, I'm not, the litigation is, is sort of misrepresented

10:47

in the industry.

10:52

Filing a complaint is, to me, is not really

10:52

litigation,

10:54

it's the beginning of a process of something.

10:57

Before that, What happens? Again,

10:58

we check all the case laws.

11:03

You know, the good attorneys

11:03

check the case laws, do lot of research,

11:08

do lot of discovery, collect

11:08

lot of information.

11:11

They map it together,

11:11

they create summaries,

11:14

they, they draw conclusions,

11:17

they look at all the court rulings

11:17

in the past twenty years about similar cases.

11:22

And they call that all lawyering,

11:22

which it is.

11:25

It is lawyering. But it's all about data,

11:25

information, the precedence, and so forth.

11:31

AI going to do all of that

11:31

in ten minutes,

11:34

and it's going to go back hundred years

11:34

instead of two years,

11:38

you know? And their conclusion

11:41

is backed up with all the information

11:44

that is accurately exist

11:44

in a variety of different data warehouses.

11:50

So, all of that preparation to go to litigation,

11:51

to go to the discovery,

11:55

to do their positions, to do

11:55

mediations, to get prepped for,

11:59

AI is going to be 90%

12:02

more effective picking a jury,

12:05

because there's lot more access

12:08

to data than the attorney does.

12:12

But even picking of court

12:12

to do a little, picking of a judge

12:16

will give you analysis of this judge, how

12:16

this judge has been ruling for past thirty years.

12:21

But what basically turns them

12:21

on? What turns them off? what you should say?

12:25

What you should not say? AI is going to give you a whole recipes,

12:26

almost like prepping you to go to a date

12:30

where it's, it's, it's evaluated the entire history,

12:34

family, profession, education

12:34

of who you're about to go on the date with.

12:39

And it gives you a full book about

12:39

this person that you're going to on a date

12:43

with. You're going to do it with a judge,

12:43

with a jury, with a prosecutor.

12:47

And that's the impact of the AI

12:47

and it's going to learn very fast.

12:51

Having said that is not foolproof,

12:51

it still needs supervision.

12:56

It still needs regulation.

12:58

You know, AI could be extremely dangerous

12:58

if it's not regulated, managed,

13:03

controlled, you can't just unleash it

13:06

on the society and hope for the best.

13:09

So I'm very pro doing,

13:09

I've never been a pro,

13:12

any kind of restrictions, regulations

13:12

or anything like that.

13:17

But in this case, I'm on the other side. It's like this

13:19

thing needs to be controlled because it's a huge

13:20

beast it's, it could be dangerous.

13:25

And you can also learn there are bad things

13:25

and learn the wrong things.

13:30

You know, people cannot assume

13:30

that AI is a learning machine,

13:34

but it's just going to learn good stuff.

13:36

You know, it's like having a kid

13:36

that has great learning capabilities

13:40

and expecting that this kid is only learn

13:40

good things.

13:44

Well, know you unleash it out there,

13:44

and they get some bad friends,

13:47

and they're going to get, learn some really bad

13:47

things.

13:51

It's the same thing with AI so you need to be

13:51

careful, it need to be supervised,

13:55

it needs to be monitored, it needs to be corrected sometimes.

14:00

But, the rest of the stuff, before

14:00

you get to that point, it can do it.

14:05

It can do a better

14:05

job faster, cheaper, and all of that.

14:09

So, now before we wrap up, just, you know,

14:14

one more thing I want to touch on is,

14:16

so, what is the best way for

14:20

firms to start employing that AI,

14:23

you know, do they, you

14:27

know, technology wise, people wise?

14:29

How do they, how do they best start

14:29

doing that and forming policies around it?

14:35

So the law firms attorneys

14:37

need to be engaged

14:37

with some sort of research of the AI.

14:41

So they stick,

14:41

they keep themselves informed,

14:44

almost like people

14:44

will do want to get into cryptocurrency.

14:47

They can just blindly jump in there

14:47

and buy something.

14:50

They need to know if this is for them,

14:50

if they need to know what's going

14:54

on? What regulation is going

14:54

on? What technologies are around it?

14:57

Where do I keep it? Where do I save it?

15:00

So they need to not ignore it

15:03

because if they ignore it,

15:03

they're going to get left behind.

15:05

They don't necessarily

15:05

need to adopt anything so fast either,

15:10

because it's evolving

15:10

and changing very rapidly.

15:14

So don't buy into anything permanently,

15:16

don't subscribe to something permanently, but just do

15:17

enough research to, you know, what's going

15:22

on? who's doing it? What's new?

15:22

What works? What is kind of BS?

15:27

There's stuff around it too,

15:27

there is, you need to filter it.

15:31

And I think that it's, like you said,

15:35

something is going to happen

15:35

soon, but it's,

15:38

but with how much it evolves, it's so hard

15:41

to kind of see down the road

15:45

and, you know, know exactly

15:48

when that'll be or what

15:48

it's going to look like.

15:51

True. I, I do a comparison

15:53

Because I was there

15:53

when the internet came about

15:56

and I was there when there were

15:56

.coms came about and all of that stuff.

16:00

I was in the forefront of all this stuff

16:00

in Silicon Valley

16:03

when, instead of cabling everything

16:03

together, we actually use internet,

16:07

and Wi-Fi and all of these.

16:11

At the end, you have to compare it

16:14

to, before internet and after internet.

16:18

What did internet do to businesses,

16:18

societies, you know, social, all of that?

16:24

What the Internet did is the exact equivalent impact

16:26

level with AI.

16:30

Life is not going to

16:30

be the same on the other side.

16:35

Once the AI is fully developed and implemented,

16:37

which I'm giving it like three to five years,

16:42

nothing's going to be the same.

16:44

You'll be talking

16:44

to four people on the screen

16:47

and you have no idea which one is real

16:47

and which one is AI.

16:51

Scary. And they're going to talk

16:51

hundred different languages

16:55

from one person

16:55

and it's not like there's a,

17:01

you can't tell. I done some tests,

17:04

I looked at some eyes on the video site,

17:04

and even myself knowing

17:10

I had to zoom in so much to, to determine

17:14

if this is a real person

17:14

or is AI person talking to me.

17:22

You know, as cool as it is, also

17:22

it's concerning, I think. Very concerning.

17:27

It could be amazing, it could be terrible.

17:29

But on the same time, in the same day,

17:29

you could be benefit

17:33

from it greatly today

17:33

and basically get ruined tomorrow,

17:36

from it, so you got

17:36

to be very careful.

17:41

Right. So on that note,

17:41

I want to thank you, Hamid, for being here

17:46

and kind of giving us a look at,

17:46

you know, what,

17:51

the, what's

17:51

trending in terms of firm efficiencies

17:54

and also kind of giving us the overview

17:54

of where AI is at the moment. So,

18:00

thanks so much for being here

18:01

and I hope we'll be talking again soon.

18:05

Great. Thank you, Justin. Looking forward

18:06

to have the conversation again,

18:08

maybe in a few months

18:08

and see what has changed. Exactly.

18:11

And I'm sure a lot will. Yes, it will be.

18:15

Thanks to our viewers and subscribers

18:15

for tuning in.

18:20

If you want to see more Legal Management

18:20

Talk, you can check us out on YouTube.

18:25

Make sure to subscribe and,

18:28

and you can also download the podcast

18:28

wherever you get your podcast.

18:33

And of course,

18:33

you can learn more about ALA at alanet.org.

18:37

Until next time.