The Geek in Review podcast hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert interviewed ⁠Nicole Clark⁠, CEO of ⁠Trellis⁠, about their new Law Firm Intelligence tool (LFI). This tool allows law firms to analyze aggregated and normalized state trial court data to gain competitive intelligence across cases, practice areas, and performance. Collecting this unstructured data from county courts is very challenging, but provides valuable business insights.

The Law Firm Intelligence tool enables firms to identify growth opportunities, benchmark themselves, and drill down into the data to find strategic insights. Firms can slice and dice the data by region, practice area, time period, and other parameters to get to the most relevant information. LFI also gives litigators specific insights into judges, opposing counsel tactics, and case outcomes.

Trellis uses both technology and human QA processes to ensure the accuracy of the raw trial court data. The data comes directly from the courts, without any alterations by Trellis. This allows Trellis to spot trends like hotspots for certain case types, which can inform law firm strategy and policy implications.

As a newer legal tech company, Trellis initially had to overcome skepticism and get large firms to try their product. But steady growth has now built their credibility. Nicole Clark discussed the challenges of selling into the legal industry as a startup.

Trellis has exciting new AI capabilities in development that will leverage the trove of state court data they have aggregated. While widespread adoption of AI in legal is coming, though the timeline is uncertain. Clark predicts more law firm consolidation and AI startups, but cautions against overestimating what legal tasks AI can solve.

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Transcript

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Marlene Gebauer 0:07
Welcome to The Geek in Review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlene Gebauer,

And I’m Greg Lambert. Marlene I am teaming up with with the combination of some former guest and some fellow three geeks members for a legal value network webinar on Tuesday, August 15, at noon, Eastern, and we’re going to have a conversation about the now I guess it’s either famous or infamous Goldman Sachs report that talks about how 44% of legal work will be replaced by AI. We we had some issues with that report. So we will view it we thought we would dive into some of the details. And luckily, because we had some former guests, which includes Kris Satkunas, from CouncilLink and Nita Sanger from Cherry Bekaert, so they’re going to join Toby Brown and Ryan McClead. And I and I’m going to be moderating, because this is way above my abilities to talk about this. But we’re gonna we’re gonna have fun conversation on this. Ryan McClead also published a three part series that’s on three geeks in a law blog detailing some of the findings that we had. And I do have to put a warning out for everyone. There is math involved in this. So luckily, I’m just the moderator, I don’t have to worry about the math. I’m going to leave that to everybody else. So. So I’m going to put a link on the show notes for that. And as you know, which is near and dear to my heart with the webinars also free so

well, you know, maybe maybe you’ll get lucky and you’ll get a response from from Goldman Sachs.

Maybe God, I hope not.

That that’d be interesting. That would be interesting. Well, I’m fresh off a trip, finishing a trip to West Texas.

Was it 110 or 112?

It was actually cooler than it was in Houston. Believe it or not, it was actually much more pleasant. But you know, definitely different moving from coastal plains to, you know, high desert. So, anyway, good trip, but and I’ll be making it in another couple of weeks. Yeah.

Go Red Raiders.

Go Red Raiders. And speaking of geek and review alumni, we have one this week, who’s returning to talk to us about some really great features for state docket information. We’d like to welcome back Nicole Clark, CEO and co founder of trellis. Nicole, welcome back to The Geek in Review.

Nicole Clark 2:46
Thanks so much. Great to be here, guys.

Marlene Gebauer 2:48
So can you provide an overview of Trellis has recently released law firm intelligence feature and how that aims to benefit law firms.

Nicole Clark 2:57
So for those who know Trellis, you know that we deal in state trial court data, State Trial Court dockets and documents, we’ve worked really hard to be able to look across the trial court data from a law firm level. So that was really never possible before. And what we allow now in our law firm intelligence product, is the ability to look across cases across practice areas across performance, it’s really for law firms to understand themselves and their peer firms from a competitive intelligence standpoint, in a in a new way, with a lot of transparency,

Marlene Gebauer 3:34
I know that, and we talked about this before, that being able to obtain and aggregate trial court data at the state level is is not easy. In fact, you you may be one of one of the few that have been able to kind of figure this out. So do you mind kind of just telling us a little bit more about how you’re gathering the information and creating it for this new law firm intelligence tool?

Nicole Clark 4:06
Absolutely. For anyone who’s gone on to a been a, you know, had to look up information in a in a state trial court, you’ve likely gone to a county court website. Those are very difficult to to navigate at best. What we do is. Yes, we have to go into aggregate this data, it is county by county, just like it would be for a lawyer going on to look about particular docket of a case. We go in county by county, we aggregate all of the cases, both historically, as well as new cases being filed and current cases that are moving forward. And then we structure that data. So that data is going to be different county by county, the way they number cases, the way they describe case types, almost everything and we structure it and we classify it so all the way down to what every motion is who brought The motion what was the outcome, so really everything classified. And then all we do is we allow you to look across the state trial courts. So from a single interface, not have to go on to 1000s of different county court websites, but be able to pull up information, not only docket information, but document information as well be able to search really the body and text of those documents. And so I really like to think of us as a far more innovative version of Pacer, but with a state trial court system with some really, really fantastic analytics service on top of that data, and law firm intelligence being our newest analytics service on top of this data.

Marlene Gebauer 5:39
I remember when I was at the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and I may have mentioned this last time we talked, the most trouble ever got into was during a training session, explaining how one counties court information may be completely different than another counties court information, even though it’s on the same system. And I had one one county clerk that that called me into her office and yelled at me because she thought I was being insulting into it. I’m like, No, I’m just telling you that things are, you know, if you go from Payne County, to Oklahoma County to Tulsa County, it’s going to be input different. So it must be a challenge to kind of normalize that that information.

Nicole Clark 6:24
It absolutely is. In fact, we see it down almost to some judges with clerks and putting information differently, and you can see the same judge same county, and information will be input differently. So Challenge is a euphemism for collecting and aggregating all of this state trial court data. But we’ve made leaps and bounds probably even since last time we chatted, we will be 44 states by the end of this year, and 1000s of counties. So we’re really and I’m just so proud of the team and everything we’ve accomplished in terms of coverage and how we’re continuing to move forward.

Marlene Gebauer 6:56
So once you sort of bring a state on board attempt, do you find you know, you mentioned the judges and sort of unique, you know, three unique things that they’re doing? Do you find that it changes? Like, once you’ve, you know, once you’ve kind of mastered, mastered a particular state, do you find that then sometimes they change and then you have to adjust again?

Nicole Clark 7:17
They change daily? The monstrous act of structuring and normalizing this data. Yeah, they change their systems all the time. And so if you think about from our side,

Marlene Gebauer 7:30
How are they allowed to do that? It’s so unfair.

It is hard to tell elected officials to change the way they do things.

Nicole Clark 7:39
Their systems also break. That’s the if they’re not changing, then they’re breaking because they’re, they’re, you know, government proposals that weren’t probably the highest and best. And so the the websites are difficult,

Marlene Gebauer 7:54
at best, to put it mildly, right? Getting back to the the law firm intelligence feature, in what ways do you sort of see how law firms can leverage that that feature to gain a competitive advantage in the legal industry?

Nicole Clark 8:12
There’s two ways to the law firms side that we see this being utilized. One is the business and development. So business development marketing side, which is the ability for a couple of things. One is to review your own internal data, how are your cases tracking over time? And what practice areas are you growing most? And then sort of have an understanding of that be able to discuss it at a business level? Is that something you want to continue to spend into is that something where there’s another practice area, that could be an opportunity that you’re not currently thinking about marketing, and just as a tracking cases over time is also sort of a leading indicator to revenue? So we find that that is just from a business health standpoint, a good check in? But also from the, you know, competitive intelligence standpoint? Well, where do you stack up against some of your peers in terms of number of cases, types of cases, regions that you are growing in dramatically? And is there opportunity where some of your peer firms are growing the most for you also to make some of those business decisions that could help you grow there. And that’s just on the high level business sort of number of cases by by region by practice area over time. But you can drill down to each of these if you want to see the underlying cases in torts for Massachusetts that your firm is actually on right now. And then look at performance. So there’s so many different ways, but from a high level, and I can get into some of the more of the use cases, but from a really high level, it’s business intelligence, and then for the actual litigators. Its strategic insights on those actual cases throughout those actual documents in motion. ones that make up a lot of BS analytics.

Marlene Gebauer 10:02
I gotta wonder that even at that high level and an evidentiary approach, those conversations must be difficult to have just from the, you know, okay, how are we doing in sort of this sector of, you know, litigation versus other ones? Because, you know, obviously, that’s going to impact people’s livelihood. And I don’t know if it kind of goes down to the granule, granular level, in terms of individuals and sort of how they’re doing. You know, have you gotten any feedback like that from customers?

Nicole Clark 10:34
Well, the interesting thing about about this product, and one of the things that I’m so proud of is that we do go down to the granular level on everything that we’re showing. So a lot of AI new technology out there, and you just have to accept it. How are they coming up with that information? Are they coming up with those answers? We don’t really know. But with us, because we have the underlying data, we actually source everything on the bottom of the page that you’re looking at. So if you wanted to look in torts in Oklahoma, you could actually see because you’ll see the individual attorneys assigned to those cases. So even for origination and information like that, you can dive down into the underlying cases to see that information. But yes, there there is a lot of that, to consider in terms of how are we actually doing what does that mean, but I think if you look at it with an eye towards the opportunities, that that’s the right way to think about it for the law firm. In general, I think that having that information is going to allow them to make better decisions. We also see for marketing departments, there are some things that certain firms excel at, and each firm is a little different, some handle cases much faster. Some have higher summary, judgment, win rates, right, there’s a variety of different areas, some firms will excel at. And in with this data, the marketing department can actually see that, and now they can market those statistics, because they see where they’re excelling where that information might be hidden. Otherwise,

Marlene Gebauer 12:05
well, Nicole, I’m going to put on my data geek hat here, because in the article, it talked about slicing the trial court data. And I love the slicing and dicing of data and beating it to until it tells you what you want it to tell you. So but do you mind elaborating a little bit on you know, what you mean by slicing the data, and how that ends up helping law firms get access to the relevant data that they want.

Nicole Clark 12:37
So for everything that we’re we’re looking at whether it be cases, business growth over time, clients, judges, outcomes, all of these have filters where you can drill down, just over and over to a specific state to a specific time period to a specific practice area, to particular matter types. So every metric that you’re looking at can be drilled down in whatever way you’re looking at. So let’s say opposing counsel, for instance, you want to look at the opposing counsel that the law firm goes up against most often. Okay, that’s a great starting point. Well, what about in this particular practice area? What about in this region? Now dig into those cases? What are the outcomes of those cases? Is there information that the litigation team can use and looking at those cases, to maybe change saw their tactics or to understand their opposing counsel a little bit better. So the ability to look high level, but then to drill down to what’s actually important for whatever you’re trying to understand at that moment? That’s the slicing and dicing, that’s so valuable, even clients, right? So you can also look at your client list by the matter type, how you know, who’s the highest volume makes up the biggest sort of book of business? But then you can drill into those cases? Well, what are the what are the regions that we represent them in the most often? Are there opportunities for other regions? Can I look at my peer firm? Did they represent this client to interesting? What are the types of business that they have? Are there opportunities for us to cross market and maybe take some of that business? So everything that you look at, you can drill down to see where there’s opportunity, whether it be by a particular region, by a practice area, by a particular matter type? So that’s what we mean by the ability to slice and dice is any metric that you’re looking at. You have the ability to slice and dice for the persona that’s looking at it, what’s important to them, and what are they trying to achieve? And you can go all the way down to the individual cases, the individual documents and that’s what we mean by slicing and dicing the data.

Marlene Gebauer 14:45
Clearly there’s there’s a use case for business development and using using trellis and using the law firm intelligence tool. So if we’re going to ship to to say actual practice, like you know what types of insights Can firms and practitioners extract from, from the tool to enhance their litigation strategies and related decision making processes?

Nicole Clark 15:10
So this, I think the best way to do it would be in opposing counsel and motions tab. So you’re going up against a specific opposing counsel, you know who they are, take a look at that firm. And you can drill all the way down to their actual performance. What are their motion grant rates across a wide variety of motions, by practice area, by region by court. But not only that, if you’re in and you’re saying, Okay, we want to understand how they do on summary judgment motions in Connecticut, we can drill down and you can look at the motions by showing only the granted ones, I want to see what those look like. So that’s the ability to drill down all the way to high level, we ought to understand performance in general. And then we want to understand those individual motions, and how they position those issues. And now, you’re really in a position to be able to be proactive in the way that you respond or the way that you think about litigation strategy against particular opponents. And so for the actual litigation strategy, I think the motion and understanding opposing counsel is key. I also think that looking at your own firm, let’s say you have a case, and it is before a judge that you’ve never appeared. Now, of course, we have judicial analytics. But what if you want to talk to someone else in your firm? Well look at the cases that your firm has had before that judge, which is another area that you can drill down on, and then see who was the partner on those cases. Now you can reach out to that colleague and say, Hey, I saw you had a piece of went to trial. Before this judge, tell me a little bit about your insights. So you even know internally who to reach out to now that might have information that’s useful, in addition to the high level analytics information.

Marlene Gebauer 17:01
Just to kind of dovetail on to that I know that you mentioned in the article that there was a way that firms can analyze their own performance using a kind of a self analysis feature. Can you talk a little bit more about what that feature does?

Nicole Clark 17:17
Yeah, so that would be looking up their own firm as a as a starting place. And for every firm, whether you’re looking at it from an internal sort of benchmark standpoint, or you’re looking at an opposing counsel for, you can look high level at a glance, across case types across practice areas, you can dig into the underlying cases, you can look at the opposing counsel that you appear before most, you can dig into your own client list and understand who’s making up the bulk of that business. By volume. Certainly, you can go in by judges, judges that your firm has appeared before. And then finally, you can look at your own outcomes. So by practice area, by region, by particular court, how are maybe the case type that I tend to handle the most? How are these cases that the outcomes actually coming out? Where my firm has been handling this? And is there something we can learn from those outcomes that maybe we can lean into if it’s great, or we can do a little bit differently if there’s ability to improve there. So it’s being able to really assess yourself, whether it be high level firm, or individual attorney, I want to see sort of, you know, information that’s going to help me on my phone caseload right now, that helps me understand how to improve, and how my opposing counsel tends to handle their cases, their sort of litigation strategy, in their cases in this practice area. Do they settle? Do they take it all the way to trial, these are pieces of information you can take back and use certainly in setting expectations with a client, but also the way that you think about planning on the case and you’re on litigation strategy.

Marlene Gebauer 18:56
It’s almost like a wellness check for firms and in terms of their their litigation health. I learned you know, where you know, where where, where are we good, where do we need some help, and some work so

flatlining where our cholesterol really

hopefully no Blaze. Nichol we talked a little bit earlier about the challenges of how state court their their you know, things break down or things change on a regular basis. And that’s got to be challenging in terms of gathering the data normalizing the data, so you know, how do you ensure the accuracy and reliability of the trial court data that’s presented in in trellis and in the the law firm intelligence feature?

Nicole Clark 19:45
So you’re absolutely right, it is not easy. We have taken on a very, very large

Marlene Gebauer 19:52
I know we talked about this last time, too, because we were you know, we were we were and are seriously impressed that you kind of like took this this on? Because this is this has always been no small feat. No, it’s always been the challenge for years and years and years just because of the things that you’ve highlighted.

Nicole Clark 20:10
Yep. So we have both technology and human sort of QA processes. So think about just tons of tests that are running constantly that let us know immediately if something is broken, if we need to rewrite to make sure that we can adjust to the way that the law that the county is doing something a little bit differently, if data isn’t coming in as quickly if any anomalies are happening. So that’s all on the technical side, where we have all of these checks and balances that let us know from a technology standpoint, changes that we need to make. And those are every day. That’s just the cost of doing business. We’re trying to bring in this data, then we have the human side of that, well, where there are these anomalies, let’s look at it. It might, in fact, be accurate. But let’s have a human confirm. Yes, that is based on the data actually, what’s going on. It is an outlier compared to other judges are compared to other things. But we can look at the data and see that that is the data itself is the trial court data. So we there’s there’s no we don’t put our own data in there. We don’t put firm data in there that is directly from the trial courts. So we have what the courts have. But our goal is to stay as up to date as the courts are. And to always provide that data. Now, in general, the courts might be slow, and they might be behind. But they’re not wrong, usually. And if they are, we’re going back and refreshing that data. And it’ll be something like a spelling of a name or you know, minor things. So with the data being refreshed with the court, that becomes it’s going to be accurate, as the Court updates that information. But none of the data, we don’t make changes to the data, the data is what the court provides is the same thing that if that attorney you were to, you know, find the relevant court website and dig in, assuming they could find the case, then that’s what they would find on from the court directly, as well. And then for us, the accuracy also comes from well, we’re doing these analytics, but let’s look at the underlying data constantly, and assess. And that’s what we’re so proud of with law firm analytics is that, you know, we have all that data, and we can provide the analytics on it, but pretty able to provide the underlying data for every piece of analytics in real time. Law, firm intelligence also updates with every new case, it’s being filed with anything that’s changing. So it’s real time updates. And we’re really proud to be able to provide the underlying data for the law firms, attorneys, corporate counsel to be able to dig in, if they have any questions, or if there’s information that might be valuable for them in some of those more granular pieces, the cases or the documents as well,

Marlene Gebauer 22:52
no small feat, just like what Greg said,

Well, you know, one of the one of the nice things about having so much data at your fingertips, and having it normalized going through and making it useful and standardizing it is that you can identify some of the trends that are going on and look for patterns. Do you mind just kind of giving us some examples of some of the trends that you’re able to find and how law firms can can look at those and capitalize on them?

Nicole Clark 23:25
Sure. So trends, certainly within their own law firm, right? What are the the practice areas that they handle the most? But then also, what is the the Kennedy match that to something like length of a case? And then think about that in terms of business units? So business economics, so there’s so much there in sort of understanding their own data that are trends, but yet service, but you can also think about it from understanding even a specific Corporation, highlighting the areas that they’re getting sued in what regions are hotspots for them? Are there particular case types that end up being the the worst and most expensive or the highest risk for them based on outcomes based on verdict information? So there’s so many different things you can think of, and that’s from sort of individual law firms, individual corporations, but then there’s also the court system itself, where are we getting backed up? What are the new cases that are being filed? Is there a new statute or a new novel case type that is coming out that we’re seeing now in complaints and uptick in complaints, but that we know might be a bigger hotbed of litigation, and we have this leading indicator of new complaints being filed related to that. So there’s so many different ways to think about trend analysis, whether it be important to a particular corporation important to a particular law firm, or almost in the way we think of policy itself across our state trial court system, areas where we’re too backed up things we can make, do a make more efficiently and all of that can be sourced out of our data.

Marlene Gebauer 25:01
So I mean, trellis is a relatively new technology company relatively, as sort of a newer player in this this field, you know, what were some of the key challenges that charlas has had to overcome in developing the product, the law firm intelligence tool? And, you know, how were you able to address these challenges?

Nicole Clark 25:26
Yeah, and it’s such a good question, especially in legal tech, because it goes sort of forward the industry in general, it is a difficult industry to bring new products and new technology into. And I think for us early on, you know, we’re maturing more as a company now, and we’ve come a really long way. But early on, it’s getting that credibility with particularly large law firms, I think that they’re hesitant to make tend to be the first to try something, right, they don’t want to be the one to take that risk, they want to be in the group of people that are all doing, you know, the, using the same technology. And so early on overcoming that and proving that No, our data was valid, that we were providing something that wasn’t available otherwise, and getting over the hump of getting folks to to think of you as credible, and to try the product in the first place. And we’ve grown a ton our and almost 50% of A and 100, we have 1000s of law firms. So we’ve come a really, really long way. But as an early legal technology company, it’s it’s not an easy industry to sell into. And to get people to take a risk and try a new product for the first time. And that just takes time. It takes time if people seeing your company, understanding your product, and slowly coming to the the opinion that like, you know, 1000s of other firms. It’s a real product, and they’re going to believe that you’re not just going to disappear, you know, the next day and not be able to provide the service that you promised.

Marlene Gebauer 27:09
Yeah. When I was at WWL, a couple of weeks ago, there was a saying that I wish I couldn’t remember who said it. And so I could give them give them credit for it. But she said law firms are rushing to be second. And I thought that’s, that sounds right. No one wants to be first, but no one wants to be last. So that’s exactly that Nailed it. Nailed it.

That’s awesome. Well, speaking of firsts, as a legal technology company, you know, what other innovations or features does trellis have in its pipeline to further support and empower law firms in the future?

Yeah, share all your secrets with us. Yeah, please,

with all of our listeners see

Nicole Clark 27:51
my lighting up. Because I am really excited, we’ve got some huge things in development right now, I will say, law firm intelligence, we call it LSI. Because it’s a mouthful, when you say it, a lot of times. But that was a fun big project that took a lot of time, particularly because the way the courts present that data, and it just wasn’t possible to do previously. So we spent so much effort getting to where we could actually do that. And with so many customer requests, so we’re really happy to be able to provide that to folks now. But that’s not the only thing that we have coming. So we have a lot of exciting AI capabilities that are going that are in development right now, that are going to be incredibly useful. And one of the things that I’m most excited about from us on the AI standpoint is, again, it’s that data piece. So we’re not relying on a model that is the internet, which is a ton of great information, but it’s not necessarily relevant. And there’s a huge ability to hallucinate without underlying data there. Because we have this massive trove of data. And it’s data where the majority of lawyers are actually practicing. It’s where the majority of cases are actually moving forward. And we have all that underlying data. So we can do so much in being able to surface questions faster to help with motion drafting, to help with research, because of our actual data set. And I feel like that’s really, I’m excited because I genuinely believe that’s going to differentiate us from other folks that are out there. There’ll be a lot of a lot of legal tech companies that are going to have some sort of generative AI sort of plug in on their website. I think the technology is all Step No, almost becoming commoditized at this point, and I and I think everyone’s going to try and have something but I’m so excited that we have the underlying data to be able to one provide information that is not a hallucination, or that limits those as much as possible. And then to source it for our lawyers. You don’t have to trust us and a model in General, but here’s the underlying data cases documents that we use and coming up with that answer and feel free to dig in yourself. And that’s what I’m really excited about.

Marlene Gebauer 30:09
Well, Nicole, it’s been about 16 months or so since you were last on. And I took the time before the interview to go back and read your crystal ball answer from April of 2022. Okay, so here’s what you mentioned. Okay. You talked about the use of API’s. You talked about single sourcing for data collections. And you talked a lot about consolidation in the legal tech and Information Industry. So looking back, I think you did very well, on your projections. Well done. Well done. Yeah. So we do the crystal ball question, part two. And so what, as of August of 2023. Now, what do you see for things like AI, state court analytics changes that you see in the industry over the next two to five years?

Nicole Clark 31:08
You know, I think we probably all agree that AI is having a massive impact in a variety of ways, whether it’s actually being utilized in the day to day right now, everyone’s talking about it in legal. And I think there’s more of a a willingness to try new technology that I’ve ever seen before, which is really, really interesting. And I think it bodes well, for legal tech in general, that we’re coming off of COVID, where people were forced to embrace technology. And now there is this technology, where they’re being told 40% of their jobs could go away, well, we got to understand this hub, let’s, let’s look at what that actually means is that accurate, so they have to dig in and understand it a little bit. And then I think you’ve got the sort of hype circle, which is law, you know, legal tech companies are going to want some form of AI to be able to talk about and be exciting. And so there will be AI, in most legal tech companies, I believe that it’ll be utilized in some way or another, whether it’s relying directly just on you know, or GPT, or there are models that are actually being, you know, honed and molded by data. I think that’s one of the questions. But I do think that law firms in general are looking to, at the very least say that they are open to AI and are exploring those things. And I think for some firms, though, it will be adopted. And once that happens, it will likely create a wave where other firms will hop on. Now, when that massively transformed, legal or not, and how fast that happened. I think those are the two things that are up in the air. I think AI will certainly and has already started to impact legal, how fast it really does things like take away some people’s jobs, or make new jobs where you have to become better at, you know, your prompts, etc. That’s a timing thing. I think it will happen. But I think we don’t know how fast. So that’s something to be seen over the next few years. And I’m excited to watch it. I think it’s interesting. And I think there’s some things that we’re way over selling. And I think there are some things where it can be a huge benefit, and can help people do things faster and perform their jobs better. So it’s a mixture of both in AI, it’s not going to be a holy grail, wherever you lawyer’s job is done, and it’s not going to be nothing. It will help folks. It just depends on the particular skill set that you need and the particular task that you’re trying to do. And I think in legal in general in the industry, you know, I talked about so consolidation of companies. And I think that that didn’t happen as much as we thought. I mean, there’s been some big ones, right, that that we know about, but I think I’m in a will continue to move a little faster right now. So I think over the next few years, we’ll see m&a of the larger players actually buying some of the smaller companies to add to their portfolio to make sure they’re staying innovative, more than I would have thought before. And that’s one of the changes of AI. We’re also seen an influx of companies start in legal where because and it’s somewhat caused by investors who are recognizing that this is an industry that maybe they can make large returns on. And so companies are being started that wouldn’t have been funded previously. And so there will be a lot of companies that continue to come over the next year or two. Not everyone’s going to be able to make it and so that’s where I think we’ll continue to see a little bit more consolidation. But there’s an influx in companies starting that we never had before.

Marlene Gebauer 34:42
Yep, I had one follow up for you. And when it talked about law firms adopting AI, and I want to I wanted to ask you if you’re seeing something that I’m seeing, and that is because there is this interest in AI it’s causing people to actually come forward and ask questions and kind of look at different ways of performing the tasks that they’re doing. And it could result in that it’s has nothing to do with AI to improve the process at all. It could be looking at the data and putting it into an old fashioned spreadsheet. So I’m wondering, Nicole, are you seeing people coming to you asking questions off the basis of, you know, how do I get the AI to improve my process? And then you give them the adviser says, Look, that’s not an AI problem. That’s, that’s an X problem. Right? Are you seeing that as well?

Nicole Clark 35:41
It’s so funny that you mentioned that because yes, and we’re having internal conversations about it about customers saying we want x and then we we and you know, we want AI to do X. And then we huddle up. And we’re like, well, it’s not AI. Like it might be but it still might solve what they’re looking for. But it is it you know, that goes to the the excitement that maybe AI can solve everything. And then we’re starting to recognize that there’s so many things that AI is not the right solution for but then we can still come up with technology solutions that are going to make everyone’s lives better and easier. And so I like that. It’s that it’s causing the catalyst for people to question how things should be done. But not everything is solved by AI. Amen. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer 36:27
I mean, they may not know that the appropriate tool, but like it’s got them excited enough to start thinking about how do we explore new ways of doing things?

Nicole Clark 36:36
That’s exactly right, which is just a boon for the industry and trying to figure out new better ways instead of it’s the way we’ve always done it.

Marlene Gebauer 36:44
Exactly. Well, I look forward to see if these predictions come true. Cole Clark, CEO and co founder of Trellis thank you for joining us today, and letting us know more about what you’re doing with trellis and the law firm intelligence feature.

Nicole Clark 36:58
Such a pleasure, guys,

Marlene Gebauer 36:59
Thanks for being here. And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter, and also on LinkedIn.

And I can be reached @glambert on I guess, do we call it X? No, I don’t I don’t know what we call it.

Oh, yeah, we gotta call it I don’t know. Did it change? Yeah. Change yet? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, dear. But

I’m actually at Yeah, sorry, actually spending a lot more time on Threads at @glambertpod.

Nicole Clark 37:36
I was going to say are you finding that the legal tech cohort is going over to Threads?

Marlene Gebauer 37:39
Finding some, some, I think until threads adds a few more features such as direct messaging and good bear groups is going to take a while so even saw one of my favorite podcasters Kai Ryssdal announced that he’s probably going to go back to Twitter until Thread gets better.

Gets its act together. So

well, but speaking of all the social medias Nicole if someone wants to reach out and learn more, or continue the conversation where where can you be found online?

Nicole Clark 38:13
Absolutely. So I can be found on LinkedIn at Nicole A. Clark. And then you can also reach out for any questions about Trellis to info@trellis.law, or just jump onto our site and start searching and experimenting yourself with searches across the state court system at trellis.law/search.

Marlene Gebauer 38:33
Listeners, you can also leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review Hotline at 713-487-7821 and as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Thanks, Jerry. Alright, Marlene, I will talk to you later.

Okay, bye

Nicole Clark 38:48
Bye, guys.