This week, Greg Lambert sat down with Caroline Hill, Editor-in-Chief for Legal IT Insider to discuss the new partnership with NetLaw Media. Hill described the new partnership between Legal IT Insider and NetLaw Media as a mutually beneficial collaboration with significant synergy between the two organizations. She emphasized the complementarity of their focuses, with Legal IT Insider’s emphasis on impartial coverage and promotion of various conferences in the legal tech sector, and NetLaw Media’s focus on technology and IT security. Hill noted that both organizations share common sponsors and audiences, which enhances the partnership’s potential.
She also mentioned the importance of working with Frances Anderson, the chief executive of NetLaw Media. Hill pointed out that NetLaw Media has been running the British Legal Technology Forum for years, indicating a deep involvement in the legal tech community.
Greg and Caroline also discussed the dramatic change in Legal Tech in 2023, and the continued shift in the industry as demands increase on law firms and others to truly implement AI solutions in 2024.
Hill pointed out that many law firms lack the expertise to build AI solutions themselves and therefore rely heavily on their business partners (vendors) for these capabilities. She suggested that the solution might lie in leaning on these business partners, but noted the challenge of justifying the costs to law firm leadership. She further mentioned the challenge of capacity and waitlists for AI projects, indicating that this has become a source of competition among law firms. The ability to quickly understand and adapt to the requirements of working with AI and establish effective vendor relationships is crucial for law firms to stay competitive and relevant in the rapidly evolving legal tech landscape.
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Greg Lambert 0:07
Welcome to The Geek in Review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Greg Lambert and I am soloing this week because I am still in Houston. I go to New York tomorrow. Marlene is already in New York and I’m sure his neck deep in some meetings. Caroline, she said to make sure she passed on her well wishes and congratulations to you as well. So thank you. Sure. So this week, I got a little ahead of myself. I’m talking with the great Caroline Hill, editor in chief of legal and Legal IT Insider, and weekly contributor slash regular with the Bob Ambrogi. He’s Friday afternoon, Friday evening for you legal tech news webinars that he does each week. So hairline. Welcome back to The Geek in Review.
Caroline Hill 1:01
Thank you so much, Greg, and look, Bob may disagree that I’m a regular he about how irregular I am because it’s very late is 8pm on a Friday, if it was any other day than Friday. But ya know, it’s Oh, I absolutely loved speaking with those guys. I joined them as often as I can.
Greg Lambert 1:21
Yeah, I’m a regular on the on the audience side. And I get every once in a while when he runs out of other people. He’ll reluctantly asked me to come see them. And then it’d be months before he’s asking again or so.
Caroline Hill 1:36
Now that’s not true. I know you’ve been on recently, and it was a great thing when you when you could be.
Greg Lambert 1:42
Well, thanks. Well, this week that you know, while most of us are on our way to New York for legal week, but I’m guessing unfortunately, that we won’t be seeing you coming in from the UK. Am I correct that you’re not going to be there this year?
Caroline Hill 2:03
Not I’m so sad about it. This is the first time in years. It’s funny because I kind of have a love hate with the conference. I read it and I and I love it. I read the scheduling i i love them. No, I never feel like I do it. Well, I was feel like maybe you should have met more people. Maybe I should have done more sessions, you know, but I do mostly love going it’s such a great opportunity to see people and this is the first time in years that I won’t be there. So I have this. Yeah, I’m quite sad. But they’re glad that you’re going you’re going
Greg Lambert 2:36
I’ll go and I’ll fill you in on everything. I’m sure. You can let me know what you want. Want me to find out for you and up here. So why
Caroline Hill 2:47
It’s not the same, but thank you appreciate it.
Greg Lambert 2:50
You’re welcome.
Caroline Hill 2:51
Do you want this face to face? I think we realized this after looked at that there is we do a lot online. This is lovely. No criticism of this kind of thing. But it’s just that face to face. You just it’s just no, you know, there’s no substitute is there?
Greg Lambert 3:04
Yeah, yeah. The you know what the Bob, Bob mentioned something a couple of weeks ago that I’ve had the same issue. And maybe I don’t know if you’ve run into this as well, but where, you know, used to be, they would like vendors would invite you to go do something specific. You know, it’s like, well come here and let us show you this or we’ll go do this or do this, we will have this conversation. And Bob and I both have been getting this kind of generic, hey, let’s just hang out and talk kind of thing. And I think we both agree that we probably have gotten beyond that now to I think last year that was kind of okay. But this year, I think we kind of want to get back to more substance rather than just, you know, kind of hanging out. Have you seen that at all?
Caroline Hill 3:55
So when what they would take he did give me like,
Greg Lambert 3:58
well, it was just like, we want to go to coffee. Well, what’s the topic? Oh, no, we just want to chat. Right.
Caroline Hill 4:04
So they had like so that we previously they had like a specific thing that they will brief you on and now that it’s just one? Yeah, I am. Yes, I suppose because I’m thinking about it that so I am doing recording some video recordings, which is mostly driven by my fear of missing out. So I want to be video recordings of announcements. And to be fair, a lot of the announcements or more even those where we’re videoing it are quite often just they’ve pitched us catch up. So yeah, I suppose if we were a person, that would be the case. Yeah. It’s funny because them? I don’t know, I think there have been a lot of announcements. I mean, obviously we’re going to come on to what those may be about. We’ve had a bit of a giggle about what in advance I I interviewed Scott Rechtschaffen the CKO of Littler, which are just before LegalWeek. And we were laughing about what some of the announcements might be about during the conference. I think people do have announcements, you know, coming up, but yeah, I mean, I’m
Greg Lambert 5:14
sure it’d be something about they’re launching an AI tool. I could be wrong.
Caroline Hill 5:20
Well, maybe they when they have a strategy around it.
Greg Lambert 5:23
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s not as much fun to be that specific on Thursday. So Well, Well, speaking of kind of announcements, the there’s some big news for Legal IT Insider, that you have a new official media partnership with NewLaw media. So congratulations on that. Do you mind sharing some insights on the the benefits that you see with this partnership, and specifically, I know, you are talking a lot in the press release about being able to enhance your coverage of the British legal technology forum or BLTF, and the British legal technology awards for your audience. Now, I will say and we talked a little bit before we pressed record, that there’s probably some of us over on this side of the pond that aren’t familiar with this. So can you give us a little kind of high altitude vert vision of what those are? And then what what you’re hoping to get out of this partnership?
Caroline Hill 6:30
Yeah, of course. Thank you, thanks for the opportunity to talk about it. So NetLaw yeah, NetLaw Media, the chief executive is Francis Sampson, and it’s great to be working with another female leader, I’m not gonna lie. But I absolutely love the fact that, you know, we’re both women, although that’s not why we’re partnering. We Netlaw Media has run the British legal technology forum for years. It’s an exhibition style conferences. I went it for the first time last year, and was blown away by how big it is. It’s, it’s I think it’s, they have 12,000 visitors, it’s not just legal tech, so they have people from law, legal technology, IT security, it runs in May, so this year, it’s on the 14th of May. And they have lots of different themes going through. There’s lots of different stages, and lots of different topics. So last year, I chaired a panel at the British legal technology forum. We were we were, it was quite fun. Actually, it was good. It I think we got in the DeLorean. And we went back in time to work out what we would do differently had we had the benefit of of hindsight, you know, how we how we would sort of look at various technological changes, with the benefit of hindsight, which was really good fun. And the partnership will mean so we we partner with we’ve got a partnership with amlaw we you know, as a, as a media outlet, you know, we’re impartial, and we will, I just want to make it clear that we will promote anybody’s conference, just this doesn’t mean that we won’t suddenly start working, you know, with promoting what legal geek or what ILTA or what law.com is doing, it’s very important that we’re in a we, we will cover the details of all of these conferences as it’s right to do as a media outlet. But I am really excited about this partnership with net law media, because we there’s a such a big synergy between what we do, you know, they, they focus on the ingredient Nagini. And IT security, obviously, that’s most of my time is effectively around that. And we we know the same people, we have the same sponsors, but we also have some some, you know, I can help. So the idea is that they do events, and we do we did we do content, we do a little bit in the way of events, they do a little bit in the way of content, but we’ve got this amazing synergy in terms of how we can support one another. So we can give their vendors an outlet. So when when, when AI can be involved in the conference, I can, I can help you know. And that’s a real benefit to me in terms of really being part of the conversation as we need to be. And also then provide their speakers with an outlet, you know, in terms of talking about some of the really important topics that they’re going to be talking about giving them an opportunity because one day it’s it’s goes so quickly, doesn’t it? And you know, before you know it and so we’ll be talking about, you know, giving them an opportunity to talk about some of the topics in advance and afterwards and so I think it’s going to be it’s a really great opportunity for both of us to support one another. And obviously, we hope that it will also grow So we will, it will help us grow both our businesses, you know, they’re going to be referring people to us for work that we can do. We’ll be referring people to them for for things that will benefit the vendors that we perhaps work with. And I think it will grow in time. In fact, I’m no it will grow in time. So we’re really excited about it. Great.
Greg Lambert 10:20
Now, you serves the that one is. That’s the BLTF, the British Legal Technology Forum. That’s May 14.
Caroline Hill 10:29
That’s right. Yeah. That’s great. 14th. Yeah.
Greg Lambert 10:31
And it’s just a one day event.
Caroline Hill 10:34
It’s a one day is when Francis is going to kill me, I think.
Greg Lambert 10:43
Well, it’s still pretty new.
Caroline Hill 10:45
One day. I think Yeah. Okay. I’m still learning because it was the first time that we’ve been involved in any capacity I was involved on one day. Yeah, Francis will literally murder me. But it’s, it’s really well known over here, you know, and it’s something that it’s kind of a highlight of the calendar. And I know Francis is growing it every year. So it’s definitely worth worth worth it worth the look. And the other. The other thing that they do is the awards, which is in the autumn is in well, but later not in November. And again, they have you know, several 100 People from law, legal sector and legal tech come, I was there last year, and they awarded Charles Christian, my predecessor who ever known who sadly passed away. It was a year ago or more than a year ago now. But it was just over a year at the time of the awards. And they gave him a posthumous award for his contributions to Nico tech, which was very special. So I was able to go on stage and do five minute talk, which had happened, right at the end of the evening at 10:30. It was very, it was very special. And yet again, the awards is, you know, something that if people aren’t familiar on that side of the pond, it’s definitely worth a look.
Greg Lambert 12:13
Okay. All right. Well, what are I know, your May is not that far away? Is there anything in particular that you’re looking forward to for? For the BLTF conference, or meeting?
Caroline Hill 12:28
So we’ve we now even as we’ve got, we’re doing, you know, over the next is going to be a really busy month. So we’ve sort of got some Mendota planning to do, I will be told probably what I’m going to be talking about the truth be told.
Greg Lambert 12:46
That’s the best way to do it. Yeah.
Caroline Hill 12:47
And then we’ve got we’ve got kind of a shedule, you know, that we’re going to be following in terms of coverage of certain of the key some of the key speakers, they’ve got really cool. Speakers and people involved. So they’ve got Jennifer Swallow, who most people will know from law tech, UK. They’ve got Christina Blacklaws, who’s managing director of Blacklaw consulting, but she’s been involved in a regulatory capacity in the past. They’ve got Professor Richard Susskind who everybody knows he, he’s going to be involved in the conference. They’ve got the list goes on. So they’ve got an Hobbie Jackson, who’s at Herbert Smith. And the idea will be that I’m so they’ve got in Jeffrey, from the Law Society, Christian Toon, who’s the head of cyber professional services, Pinsent Masons, I won’t read the whole list at the end is that I’ll be speaking to some of these people who will be chairing various of the sessions. And we’ll be diving into some of the topics that they’re going to be talking about. So we’ve got a lot of a lot to do over the over the following months, if you if you want to have a look. So it’s just British legal, BritishLegalItForum.com. You can see some of the speakers and some of the topics as they come up.
Already. Now. Definitely make sure we put a link on for that. And I like the fact that, you know, there was a nice diverse group of speakers, that you were naming off theirs as well. And I’m sure that’s intentional. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 14:13
of course. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Greg Lambert 14:16
Well, let me kind of shift gears on you a little bit, because the last year 12-14 months has just been bonkers, right? It has just been absolutely insane, especially with the type of news that that you cover. So I wanted to ask you, you know, what’s been your take on, you know, the hype versus reality that we’re seeing with with all the AI tools, you know, from, you know, all the talk about it, versus the implementation what what’s kind of been your view of this over over the past year plus?
Caroline Hill 14:53
Yeah, gosh, it has been crazy, isn’t it? And it’s been busy. I Yeah, it’s so fun, though. So in where to start? So the hype, so I think last year, people there was such a mixed reaction depending I don’t think that you could generalize you, or even predict necessarily what people’s reaction would be in terms of how they thought about it. So obviously, if we said the words, Gen AI, we haven’t actually labeled it, have we, you know, we know what we’re talking about. So, you know, in terms of where people put it in tons of books that we all need in our, in our heads, you know, it’s it was so varied last year. So some people would think, you know, this is going to this, I think, rightly, we all think right, then that this is going to change the way that we practice law. That’s what my take on it. But, you know, in what timeframe is is another question altogether. But, and I think that some people were very much like, this is absolutely radical. It’s an it’s an inflection point. And some people were like, Oh, this is really hyped up, you know, and I had some really interesting conversations with people last year that helped me put that in perspective, talking about that, that, and this is actually came from Casey Flaherty at LexFusion, who was saying, you know, that was one of my really most helpful conversations about it last year, because Casey was saying, just because it’s massive, massively at the top of the hype cycle doesn’t mean it’s not an inflection point. And just because the products are really early doors, in terms of Gen AI, and maybe some of them will fail, maybe some of them won’t work. Some of them or just because we are about to dive into the Gartner’s pit of trough of disillusionment doesn’t mean that this isn’t an inflection point, it just means that hype and inflection can go together, right, and what and that, so that was really helpful to put into context. All the conversations that I was having in people’s various reactions, and they were very mixed. A lot of people had very different views last year in terms of, you know, where we were at the impact that it would have and the timeframe. But the one thing that, I would say, is that, from the conversations that I had, I had a lot of them with CIOs, some of them were public made public, I wrote a report. That was we agree it wasn’t Chatham House, it was kind of off the record that we would agree quite witch is available on my website, legaltechnology.com, we created a report from some of the top CIOs in the UK Top 200 firms. And there was just there was a degree, there’s a lot of caution, you know, as custodians of client’s data, the the overriding sentiment from that meeting, there was a lot of fit variance in terms of who was doing what, but there was a lot of caution. They weren’t denying that it was an inflection point or anything, but they were just saying, we are custodians of our clients data, and therefore we are cautious. Whereas a lot of clients are saying, in their RFPs, what are you doing about this? How are you saving us money? And where why are we not seeing the results? And I can see both points. Does that accord with you, Greg?
Greg Lambert 18:28
Yeah, I think I think that’s spot on. I’m, I’m thinking the, the, we may be a little overly cautious. I, to me, I think some of the issues have already been resolved. And I think we’re still arguing about issues that were problems in March of 2023, rather than what are the issues now? And I think sometimes, you know, people can put that up as barriers to moving forward. And I worry a little bit about that. But I think, again, the genies out of the bottle on this. And you’re right, the pressure coming in from the client side. Just saying things like, what are you doing, give me something that you’re actually doing with this, and not just a, you know, a press release of your, you know, you’re working with some company on something that may come out, you know, 6-12 months from now. I think everyone’s kind of looking for some proof in the pudding, to seeing some real effects of this, because I think everyone thinks this is an inflection point. And to end we’re really kind of worried that we will somehow or another, go back to business as usual. But with the hopes that you know, is really not something that that makes that big of an impact on the industry. And I think that’s just bad, bad reaction
Caroline Hill 20:07
I agree. So, a couple of points. One, I still think the cost is a huge issue. So I think people are sort of excited some, some people are excited about the likes of co pilot. Some people very much already do pilots in other firms that are doing pilots with Harvey.ai and CoPilot and a bunch of other sort of in, you know, very much in the public domain cost, I think, is a big question still, for firms. You know, when they’re being asked to demonstrate ROI, it’s very early days, to be able to demonstrate ROI. I agree with you completely, that, that doing nothing, I think that there are so many vendors that doing some quite interesting stuff, you know, I do think cost is going to be the issue. But I’ve spoken to CIOs, where they’re chosen ways to deal with their business partners, that’s how they’re going to move forward, and realize that they don’t have the expertise, a lot of firms don’t have the expertise, building stuff, you know, they and they never have. So actually, they’re, they’re saying, well, we but we do have a great number of business partners who are doing some really good stuff that we can, and we can lean on them. I think that that that’s probably the solution, subject to the caveat, that cost is going to be an issue, right? Like, and how you get that posture CEO, CFO, the good thing is, I think that this is now a board level conversation in a way that it never has been, you know, when you’re trying to choose a DMS and saying what we need this much money this is this is the whole board being very much aware of the need to do things differently. So I think that that’s gonna make things easier, from anything signed off perspective.
Greg Lambert 21:53
Yeah, and I think one of the things you’re going to see is, is, especially on the law firm side, which is, which is kind of where I’m focused, those that have done kind of these projects before that have these relationships are going to do great things. And those that have never really kind of tested the waters on on building good vendor relationships, doing third party build out, getting that going, I think they’re going to struggle with this, and it’s going to, it’s not something that they can just, you know, throw kicked down the road. And it’s not something that they’re set up to do themselves. And so it’s the, you know, I think the the quicker that they understand how, how, how the, you know, it’s going to work, and how you have to you can’t just do it all yourself, there has to be these relationships and this back and forth. I think the quicker they, they figure that out, the quicker they can get back on track.
Caroline Hill 23:04
But the challenge is also going to be these, you know, capacity and waitlists, right? Like just sort of them. It’s fascinating to me that there’s it’s become a source of competition, I actually was slightly tongue in cheek writing about a firm UK firm that has become one of the testers of one of the big publishing companies, I should just take you into that I’ve written it. But maybe they didn’t realize that it was taken them back. But so one of the managing partners was very much like our where, you know, we’re one of the early early users. And I was like, it’s become a source of competition, you know, who gets selected to be the beta? Right, which, I mean, absolutely. But it’s just an another source of competition. And it is the more progressive firms who you’ve got the biggest tech teams who have got the biggest capacity to really benefit the vendors. In terms of you’ve got an r&d team, you’ve got an AI team, if you’ve got people that understand how to use the technology and wrap fairly rapidly. And those are the firms that are being selected for these beaters. So yeah, no, I agree with you. I agree. And the other really fascinating thing, talking about the client, though, and this came up from my conversation with Scott at littler. So he was saying that the clients have started demanding that he had one that time that said, if within a year you’re not using generative AI, we’re going to go to a different law firm. And, and which is a fairly, I mean, I get I get it on level. And then on the other level, I was laughing a little bit because what are you going to get? Yeah, you need it like what are we doing with it right? Does it have to be chilling like why.
Greg Lambert 25:02
Yeah. So I’ve never been a big fan of the, you know, the kind of draconian style of, you know, if we have zero tolerance for this, you’re either using Gen AI, or you’re out kind of things. And it’s, you know, it’s like there’s so many other factors in there. But But I wanted to go back to the thing you said, which I think you’re you’re spot on. And that is, I think a lot of the firms side are the those that haven’t already established those relationships, that capacity issue, I don’t think they’re thinking about that, I think that they think, well, once I pull the trigger on this and decide that we’re, you know, going to go ahead with it, well, we’ll just, you know, call out to vendor X, and they’ll be ready to take on our business. And I don’t think they realize that, you know, they’ve got a narrow pool of professionals that can do this right now. And they’re going to be at capacity. And, you know, if, if you’re not, you know, ready now and starting to prepare, you know, that that boat gets further and further off from the dock. And then at some point, you can’t catch up to it?
Caroline Hill 26:19
Or do you think that I mean, what would your because you’ve got, you’ve obviously, been doing this a long time, and you’ve got that insider benefit? What would you say what they would have to do right now, in order to make sure that they’re ready?
Greg Lambert 26:31
I think they get to get their toe wet on something, even if it’s not something that’s going in front of the client directly. And in fact, I think the worst thing you could do is do something that either, you know, is super client facing that you’re not really 100% Confident in, or go after something that undercuts the billable hour? I think those are two. Those those would be two mistakes to start off with. I think it’s it’s much more, we’re at a point now where you need to, let’s say, you’re going to use co pilot with Microsoft Azure. Right, which I think most firms are very comfortable in, in taking that approach. Pick something, as my my friend, Ryan McClead says, take something that’s like 50% BS, where it’s, you know, not super, super important, but something that you could streamline, that that would, you know, would handle some of the issues that you’re facing, maybe administrative side, maybe it’s something with marketing or business development or in client intake, something that’s on the admin side, and start getting to know how these processes work, what works, what doesn’t work? What are the tools that are out there? What, which tools work better with with this, and which tools are better with that. But you got to be doing some thing. And if you’re sitting back and you’re still planning, again, that that ship is leaving the dock. Yeah, so that’s my, and I love interviewing reporters, because I ended up getting interviewed. So
Caroline Hill 28:31
I’ve had so many, I mean, we’re not going to do this. Now, Greg don’t. But, you know, I love being challenged as well. I’ve been challenged so much on on LinkedIn, you know, not, I didn’t get challenge. Lots actually don’t suddenly everyone’s barreling in, but by then, you know, I’m, I, yeah, I think it’s important for all of us to question ourselves. And, you know, as reporters, it’s, it’s important for us to, you know, not just perhaps, roll out the same tropes, you know, like, but actually, sometimes I come across people who absolutely have , you know, a brilliant and they challenge me about, well, why should everyone be using Microsoft, 365 and copilot? And does it even work? And, you know, all this kind of this has been a conversation that’s been coming up on teams and, and, you know, why is this? Why is this something that should just happen? You know, and because I write a lot about how law firms are very much now, a lot, a lot in most cases, you know, based around 365 and that CoPilot seems to be the logical next thing and then that will why you know, and I actually, I mean, I need to think about this because this has been very new and you know, and I seen so many advantages, I think Microsoft doing some really clever stuff and, but I do think it’s important for all of us to be very to get I think everyone needs to get their toes wet. Everyone needs to learn everyone needs to play around. Everyone needs to have a strategy, but also we need to be critical, right? We can’t just be swept along Um, you know, and oh, yeah, this is just what’s happening? You know, I think it’s falls on all of us to start getting engaged our brains and actually take it when somebody goes, well, have you thought about this? And maybe the answer is no.
Greg Lambert 30:12
That’s a good point. And I did bring up Microsoft to, mostly because that’s what we have. Yeah. It’s who we have relationships with. And I think it’s a good first start, but I think your point, I hadn’t really gone that deep into it. But you’re right is like, but that’s not the end, that’s the beginning. And you should be very critical of it, you should be demanding, you’re paying Microsoft, a ton of money.
Caroline Hill 30:40
And actually, they’re in a very strong position. And we’re not going to start Microsoft bashing on this podcast. But, but they’re, you know, actually, they are offender. Right? And I would say to people, you know, let’s, let’s, with all of the excitement, and this goes for any vendor, right? So there’s a, there’s a real shift from law firm power to vendor power at the moment, right. So this is an, that is fine. You know, the vendors often, as we already mentioned, have the capacity for research and development, and they have the developers and you know, that’s fine. But they are at the end of the day selling a product. And actually, I think it’s false to all of the buyers to be to not get swept up. And this is, you know, in the way that we do because we want to do what everybody else is doing, but actually really interrogate the product and interrogate the strap their strategy, and also interrogate you know, in the case of Microsoft, I, my one of my concerns, would be about putting the eggs in one basket, right? And that presents, you know, there’s all these things that it’s so exciting. And I and I don’t spend the time going, oh, there’s so many risks, you shouldn’t be doing this. Absolutely not the approach that’s written. Do you know what, folks this is exciting? I think it’s really exciting. I think, you know, it presents so many opportunities to get rid of tasks that nobody wants to do. You know, I really, I think that people, culturally, we need to focus on some real positives. You know, I think there’s a lot of focus on risk and, and compliance, and that’s fine. But so as saying, like, contradictory stuff, I know that I’m not sure that’s very helpful.
Greg Lambert 32:21
So what happens when when you’re thinking out loud about these things? Because it’s still, it’s still ongoing? So? Well, let me put you on the on the spot, then again, I think we’re kind of leading to this is, I’ll shoot you with the crystal ball question. And that is, you know, over the next two to five years, what do you see as either a significant change or a challenge that the legal industry is going to going to have to come in deal with?
Caroline Hill 32:50
Change or challenge? Don’t you mean, so you pick Do you want?
Greg Lambert 32:54
It’s either,
Caroline Hill 32:55
I think we’re just going to be using it? Without even thinking about it? I mean, the timeframe is the interesting question, because there’s that old, you know, the old saying about, well, things will happen much slower than and then much faster than we think, you know, so it’s not gonna happen as quickly as you think. And then that then when it does happen, it’s gonna happen real quick. And so I think that we would just be using it and in the same way as I drove when I drove my car, I don’t, I don’t worry too much about how the engine works. I think we’re going to be using Genie AI without even now obsessing, like we obsess now about what is it? Is it GPT-4? Is it 3.5, though, is it? What is it? You know, like with it? I think we’re just going to be using it. I think that we’re going to be I think there’s going to be screw ups. I think that in really interesting analogy that someone made was about email, right? So in the early days of email, we never thought lawyers would be using it. We worried about there being breaches, we worried about the Miss send emails to people and exposing confidential data. And all of that happened, and it still continues to happen. Right? We did it. But that didn’t mean that, that we that it was a bad thing, or that, you know, but I think there’s gonna be lots of teething problems. I think that in the end, we’re all going to be using Gen AI day to day just as normal, just as we are with email. I think it’s going to be a seismic shift. I think that, you know, we won’t we it will, it will substantively change the way that people practice. I do believe that and I think there’ll be providers that probably we haven’t heard of yet that come in, and that and that offer the opportunity to do I think we you know, they’ll be they’ll see what, what you can do this in different better way. I think that for vendors, that there is this a section of the market where I would be panicking if I was them, because the stuff that they do, I think there’s a risk of of Gen AI , bigger, bigger players being able to do it from the point solutions. But then, but then also let’s not forget that You know, a lot of it comes down to relationships still in, you know, you buy from people. And also, I don’t know, we’ve, there’s so many thoughts like we’ve seen, we’ve seen. We’ve seen examples of big players come in and absorb everything and turn it into a big machine, which is supposedly this great big integrated thing. And sometimes that doesn’t work so well. So it’d be really fascinating to be honest with you to see how this all plays out. I don’t know if what does that accord with what you think or No.
Greg Lambert 35:30
yeah and I think you’re like, I like the idea of the you know, there’s probably going to be some vendors who will ever know, they don’t exist now. As released as we know, and, you know, it makes me think back of during the, you know, the.com, boom, and then kind of into the 2008 downturn, when big vendors would buy up some of the smaller vendors, and there was kind of this grumbling of, well, now that products dead, because, you know, it’s just, it never really worked in a large, you know, in a in a big company environment. And so, you may, maybe they figured it out this time, because they seem to be, you know, the big vendors seem to be going full force into AI, whether it’s whether it’s build or buy. But again, I think we are five years from now, or there’s going to be some big company that everyone’s talking about, that no one’s talking about right now.
Caroline Hill 36:33
I think you’re right. And, yeah, I also think that there’ll be, it’ll be fascinating to see, for law firms or corporates, the ones that, like you said about Pepto relationships, already, the ones that have the team wants to have their data in order. So the in the corporate space, there’s some say this of CLM companies are doing some pretty cool stuff, you know, we are obviously the one that the corporates that have already have their claws, libraries in order, are going to be the ones who started to take advantage of that quicker. And that will be interesting to see what that looks like in you know, whether that the others will catch up, I guess they will. But what that will mean, you know, in terms of competition, so think that there’s still got to be a massive focus on data, right, like we talked about, that’s something that probably hasn’t changed. And it’d be interesting to see how that conversation changes over the next little while, like, at what point we stopped talking about that, if we ever stopped talking about that,
Greg Lambert 37:38
We will never we that has been, there’s been a 25 year overnight, you know, story, that every time there’s an innovation, the first thing we talk about, as well, but our data’s for crap, you know, we, that’d be great. But first, we need to hire a bunch of data stewards to clean up everything. And I do think the one the one thing that’s different about this is if companies, firms, vendors can figure out, how do we automate that clean up as much as we can? That will be the biggest game changer of all. And that’s something once the data is cleaned up, and it’s set up to automatically be cleaned up as new data is created, then that’s, you know, that’s a self solving problem.
Caroline Hill 38:28
yeah. Yes, I agree. But no, it’s exciting. I think it’s, it’s one of the I think I’ve been doing this since 2014. And there’s faster change than ever before. And it’s, yeah, I can’t wait to see this time next year. Like if we’re sitting here, what what, but I don’t know that we’ll be able to predict. Or maybe maybe it’ll be just the same as last year. think Do you think I’d be I do think there’s going to be more and more mistakes? I think that there’s going to be some, you know, I think there’s so many pockets where you can already see like the big publishing houses are doing some very cool stuff. You know, they’ve got the, again, they’ve got the data, right? So Lexis Thomson, vLex, you know, they’ve got were the ones where they’ve got a lot of data, and they can ground it in there, and they can do all the cool stuff that they’re doing right now. I think that’s really interesting, too. Gonna be really interesting to watch. Yeah. And then, yeah, there’s a ton of other, you know, vendors out there that are doing interesting stuff and more to emerge. And I think we focus one of the things, we’ve focused so heavily on open AI and GPT. I think that we’re going to hear a lot more about other Large Language Models over the next year, I think, and will realize probably, that we would they were already some of the vendors were already working with those other models, but they just hadn’t gotten quite as much airtime.
Greg Lambert 39:57
Yeah, I agree. Well, Caroline Hill I am sad that I won’t get to see you in New York this week. But I am happy that we found time to have this conversation and congrats on the new partnership that Legal IT Insider has with the with net law media. So congrats.
Caroline Hill 40:16
Thank you so much. Great. It’s always such a pleasure. I’m so sorry that I won’t see you. But let’s go to hope to get together again soon.
Greg Lambert 40:22
All right. And of course, thanks to everyone in our audience for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, please share it with a colleague and we’d love to hear from you on all the socials. So Marlene can be found on LinkedIn or she can be found on X at @gebauerm. And on threads at @mgebauer66. And I can be reached on LinkedIn or on X at @glambert. Caroline if someone wants to learn more, where can they find you?
Caroline Hill 40:58
Yeah, on LinkedIn, I mostly use LinkedIn. I thought just hit me up Caroline Hill editor Legal IT Insider, and then URL of the website is legaltechnology.com
Greg Lambert 41:09
All right, easy. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you Jerry and thanks to Caroline.
Caroline Hill 41:18
Thanks