This week, we sit down with Ted Theodoropoulos, CEO of InfoDash and host of the Legal Innovation Spotlight podcast. Ted brings over 25 years of experience in legal technology and has been instrumental in developing platforms that enhance collaboration and knowledge management in law firms. During the conversation, Ted shares the origins of InfoDash, the challenges of transitioning law firms to cloud-based systems, and the role of generative AI in both legal practice and business operations. The episode offers valuable insights for those interested in how technology is reshaping the legal industry.
Ted begins by explaining the journey of InfoDash, which evolved from a consulting firm called Acrowire, focused on building bespoke intranets and extranets for law firms. Recognizing the need for more innovative, cloud-based solutions, Ted and his team relaunched as InfoDash in 2022, just as law firms were moving en masse to Microsoft 365 and grappling with the shift to hybrid and remote work. This transition, Ted explains, has been challenging for firms accustomed to on-premises servers, a concept he refers to as “server huggers.” However, he points out that the cloud offers undeniable advantages, especially for firms looking to adopt AI-driven tools in the future.
The conversation then turns to the role of generative AI in the legal industry. Ted and the hosts discuss how AI tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot have generated excitement, but also disappointment, as their capabilities have yet to fully meet the specific needs of law firms. While generative AI shows promise in tasks like summarization and drafting, Ted cautions that the technology is not a “silver bullet.” He emphasizes the importance of oversight, particularly given the risks associated with hallucinations in AI-generated content. However, he believes that AI’s potential is vast, especially in the business side of law, where firms can automate administrative tasks without the regulatory hurdles that affect client work.
Knowledge management (KM) and innovation within law firms is another key topic of discussion. Ted notes that while KM has been a longstanding function in many firms, it often varies in scope and effectiveness. He highlights the recent rise of “innovation” roles in firms but warns that some of these are more about appearances than actual advancements—a phenomenon he dubs “innovation theater.” Ted argues that for firms to truly innovate, they must be willing to take risks and accept failure as part of the process. He calls for a more standardized approach to KM and innovation roles but acknowledges that cultural differences between firms make this difficult to achieve.
The episode concludes with a look toward the future of legal technology. Ted advises firms to adopt a cautious, incremental approach when implementing new technologies, such as AI. He warns against making large, reactionary investments based on the fear of missing out and encourages firms to start with small pilot programs that can be scaled as they yield results. By focusing on business of law use cases first, firms can gain early wins and build confidence in their technology strategies, avoiding the pitfalls of overpromising and underdelivering.
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Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript
Marlene (00:01)
Welcome to the Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gabauer.
Greg Lambert (00:08)
and I’m Greg Lambert.
Marlene (00:10)
On today’s episode, we’re joined by Ted Theodoropoulos. Did I get that right? CEO at InfoDash. Ted is a seasoned technology executive and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in building and leading high growth companies.
Ted Theodoropoulos (00:14)
You nailed it.
Marlene (00:25)
He specializes in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation.
Greg Lambert (00:31)
So Ted also has a great podcast and YouTube channel called Legal Innovation Spotlight. And recently, under his leadership InfoDash won the ILTA 2024 Innovative Leader of the Year award, recognizing the platform’s impact in legal technology. Congrats on that, Ted, and welcome to the Geek in Review.
Marlene (00:36)
That’s right.
Hey, congratulations.
Ted Theodoropoulos (00:46)
Thank you.
Thank you. And it’s great to be on this side of the podcast table for a change. I’m used to asking the questions, now I get to answer some.
Greg Lambert (00:59)
We’ll see how you feel in about 35 minutes.
Marlene (01:01)
You’re on the hot seat now, So could you start by telling us more about InfoDash and how it’s helping law firms enhance collaboration and knowledge management, especially in today’s hybrid and remote work environment?
Ted Theodoropoulos (01:01)
Alright, let’s… Let me have it.
Sure. So InfoDash is actually an evolution. We used to be a company, a services company called Acrowire. And we started back in 2008 doing basically just time and materials consulting work for law firms. I’m former Microsoft. So I have came to the table with a lot of capabilities on the Microsoft platforms.
And when we started working with law firms, we recognized there was a pretty big need with SharePoint and intranets and extranets. So we started doing consulting engagements, building bespoke intranets and extranets for law firms. Then in the mid 2010s, we partnered with a vendor in the space. They’ve since been acquired Handshake and we were Handshake’s implementation partner for a couple of years and went adorant bottom.
we kind of parted ways and we decided to build a better mousetrap and we started working on it in 2018. We took some wrong turns. In the beginning, Microsoft had a totally different development model. It the SharePoint app model and it was AngularJS and we put a bunch of time and effort into it and then Microsoft.
kind of completely redid things with what’s called the SharePoint framework and they really embraced React .js. So we had to start all over, but we learned a lot along the way and we relaunched the company and rebranded in January of 2022 as InfoDash. And it’s been a rocket ship. was telling Greg earlier, our timing was really good with just…
frankly, there’s been a lack of innovation in our space and we’re really one of the very few platforms that’s law firm focused, like exclusively. So with all these AMLaw firms that are finally moving to M365 in earnest, they’re having to start to think about what they’re going to do with all their SharePoint on -prem stuff and
our platform is a great choice for taking them to the cloud.
Greg Lambert (03:34)
Yeah, I would say that, you know, the cloud environment, I don’t think should be catching anyone off guard. We’ve been talking, you know, transitioning to the cloud for what? To, you know, 10 years to 12 years, maybe more. And, you know, now that it’s becoming more prevalent, know, part of that is we were forced to during the pandemic. Part of that is just the
Marlene (03:43)
How many years?
Greg Lambert (04:01)
coming over as you said to Microsoft 365 environment, cloud environment, and plus I think with any of the AI tools, you’re going to have to be in the cloud to do that. know, what were you, well first of all, let me ask you this, why do you think there’s, why would the lack of innovation in this space do you think initially, understanding that this is where
going and what advantages do you think you were able to take advantage of during this period as we’re moving into the cloud?
Ted Theodoropoulos (04:40)
Yeah, it’s a great question. there are, there have historically been a lot of server huggers in legal and I…
Greg Lambert (04:47)
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that, but I’m going to write it down.
Marlene (04:50)
It’s a good one.
Ted Theodoropoulos (04:50)
Yeah. And there’s still a few holdouts in the AmLaw space. And it’s largely been with firms that have a big footprint in the financial services space. And the outside council guidelines have been holding a lot of firms back. We have now, I used to be able to count on one hand the number of AmLaw firms who have
weren’t actively making plans for the cloud. And I don’t think I can count any now. There were a few holdouts that I won’t name, but they finally softened their stance. In fact, Marlene, I saw you at TLTF last year. One of the real holdouts, they were hugging their servers hard. I had the conversation at TLTF and said, hey, how are you going to leverage AI? And I heard a softer tone.
on their position on it. it’s been, can’t, I don’t blame firms altogether. I think we’re gonna talk about it later. There is a huge lack of innovation in the legal industry across the board. And I think that the whole Gen. AI movement has lit fires. That Goldman report that came out that 46 % or whatever it was, percent of legal tasks could be automated by Gen. AI.
That got some attention at some pretty senior levels at law firms and I think changing the lens slightly, which is a good thing.
Greg Lambert (06:17)
Yeah, I need to go back. Ryan McLeed and Toby Brown and I wrote a three -part series on that when it came out. I’m afraid to go back and look at it to see how much what we said actually came true. So I’ll have to go look.
Ted Theodoropoulos (06:30)
You know, it’s interesting. hear, so I had a real, I’ve got a podcast coming out on Wednesday with a couple of folks and we dove into the Stanford paper and I know you’ve written on this, Greg, and when you look at how the Stanford paper that came a year and a half after the Goldman report, they’re painting two very different pictures on Gen. AI’s capability in.
its role in delivering legal work. And again, Stanford paper was a year and a half later. and it’s also, again, we’re getting a lot of mixed messages. The fact that the chat GPT -4 placed in the 90th percentile in the bar exam is also an interesting data point. Like, wow, this seems like it’s a really capable platform. And then,
You know, we see the challenges with hallucinations and how vendors are going about mitigating that. They’re not eliminating it as the Stanford paper, very, I read all 36 pages of it as it pointed out. But yeah, we’re getting a lot of mixed messages. I think there was so much optimism in the beginning. You know, again, the Gartner hype curve, and now we’re starting to get closer to that trough of disillusionment when reality setting in.
So it’s going to be interesting to see where things go.
Marlene (07:53)
I just think there’s like, different messages. So, and there’s not a lot of focus so much on like from the business side of things, you know, how it can really help on the business side of things. You know, there’s a lot of talk about the legal and how it’s not, you know, doing well or not doing as well on, on legal tasks. but you know, not so much talk about, know, how it’s really going to improve the business side of the house, which, you know, seems to be the very logical, easier, you know, argument.
Ted Theodoropoulos (08:22)
Yeah, the listeners can’t see my head nodding, it is. Yeah, so I actually think that the business of law use cases make so much more sense right now as an incremental step towards rolling out an AI strategy. It’s lower risk, first of all. You don’t have the outside counsel guidelines and companies preventing or prohibiting
Marlene (08:25)
They will on YouTube.
Greg Lambert (08:25)
Yeah
Ted Theodoropoulos (08:48)
the inclusion of their data into AI. There’s just the risk reward, I feel like is a better balance right now with business of law. I do think practice of law side use cases are long -term going to deliver the biggest bottom line impact. Obviously, just because of the labor rates on that side of the firm are so high that saving a half an hour of a thousand dollar attorney
worth of time versus an admin function that’s 50, $75 now, whatever, you’re going to get more impact. I think we’re going to have to be, the stakes are higher on that side of the business.
Greg Lambert (09:27)
Yeah, I just wonder to get a little off track here. I just wonder if it’s because the AI companies are taking such big swings at the market that they’re trying to figure out what can we do to get into the law firm on the attorney side, which is typically what they want to do. But you know, the problem is, and I’ve said it, you know, 100 times is
Marlene (09:46)
That’s definitely happening. That’s definitely happening.
Greg Lambert (09:56)
You know, it’s really hard to get into a law firm. but once you’re in, it’s even harder to get kicked out. and so, you know, my, my advice to all these companies out there that are looking to get, you know, enterprise wide subscriptions for their legal research product is, you know, take, take a smaller swing and go for some of the, you know, the, practice of law, business side, and get in because once you’re in.
I mean, then you can start expanding from within instead of trying to eat everything all at once. So mixing my metaphors here.
Marlene (10:32)
I have a follow up question for Ted on sort of on that. I mean, have you seen sort of in your experience, some of these Gen AI solutions, you know, are they truly addressing on a detailed level, you know, some of the legal questions that are that you see in law firms? You know, my experience has been that’s kind of a mixed bag and that there’s a lot of general, but it really doesn’t sort of get down into the weeds like like the attorneys expect.
Ted Theodoropoulos (11:02)
Yeah, so I have limited exposure to on the practice of law side. I do have a lot of friends in that space, both on the vendor side and the law firm side. And I’ve had several guests on the podcast who have talked about their experience. it’s a bit third party. But the way it’s been framed up is that there are certain things that
Gen. AI is really good at, right? Summerization, drafting, it is not a silver bullet. currently, there’s a disconnect between the marketing around what these, capabilities of these platforms and reality. And I think we can have a debate on the objectiveness of the Stanford paper. But one thing it did do is really
start the conversation of, how much oversight is going to be required? How much good are we really doing? If we got to check every I and T to make sure it’s dotted and crossed, what are we really saving? So, you know, I think that on the practice of law side, they’re still figuring things out. And to your point, Greg, about taking the big swings,
Investors are just throwing money at, you know, mean, the valuations are absolutely insane with these AI startups. mean, Harvey’s, you know, I think it was, they don’t disclose revenue, but I mean, I think it was like 15, 20 million in ARR and they had a billion plus dollar valuation. To put that in perspective, I had to debate on another podcast. It was a LinkedIn live I did with
Boris Wu and have you guys ever heard of the rule of 40? It’s a vendor thing so you may not have but for a startup to be a good &A target their net profit and their growth have to total up to 40. So you can be 10 % profit 30 % growth and you’ve met the rule of 40 criteria. Well to put it in perspective like Clio’s latest round they were 12x
annual recurring revenue. If they met the rule of 40, and I’m going to have to simplify this to keep the math simple, but let’s say they were 40 % net profit and no growth, because this is easier math. If they’re at a 12x multiple, it’s going to take 30 years to break even on that investment. Right? So, you know, when you think about that in those terms,
And clearly they’re much higher growth and probably if I had to guess they would be less profitable because they’re reinvesting all of their bottom line into new growth. When you look at it through that lens, these valuations really, when you look at, when is the break even? long -term, how is this going to play out? And I think that people are really betting on, I mean, first of all, legal market’s not that big. There are only 500 law firms
on planet earth that have more than 100 attorneys. Right. And that’s really the target market for a lot of these big enterprise tools like, like Harvey, right. It’s not the three person personal injury firm down the street. okay. So you’ve got, how big is that total addressable market and how big a market share can you get of it? And how much can you charge those customers? The math really becomes a bit of a head scratcher. So it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
Greg Lambert (14:40)
Yeah, it’s interesting because last year we had like Thomson Reuters dropping $650 million to buy Case Text, which I think one, they kind of had extra cash laying around, so they had to get rid of it because they sold a seat on the London Stock Exchange. So there was other reasons for them to plunk down that much money. But do you think…
And I can’t say it for the venture capitalists, but I’m thinking for the established big players in this market that they’re okay losing a little bit money upfront as long as they can kind of lock people in to their products at the end of the day.
Ted Theodoropoulos (15:25)
You know, it seems like an arms race. It really does. You know, the, you look at some of the acquisitions out there, some of which are undisclosed, the, numbers are undisclosed like henchmen. Yeah, they were still, they were pretty early on in their, in their journey, but it’s like, again, it feels like an arms race where, you know, the legal information provider world is a duopoly and there’s always tension in
Hey, are we going to renew or are going to switch? You know, these firms have to make decisions. And I think that even, you know, if you can sway, tip the scales in one direction or there’s a lot more revenue at stake than just the actual AI capabilities that you’re selling. It’s the underlying legal research and docketing information, all those other, all those other, capabilities. So it does feel like an arms race right now. And I can’t remember if did, did TR sell elite?
after case text or was that before?
Greg Lambert (16:24)
I think that was gone before.
Ted Theodoropoulos (16:26)
Okay. So, I thought that was an interesting move and I, it made me wonder, wow, did they try and free up capital to make the case text thing happen? I don’t know, but you know, I, I do ask myself a lot of questions about all of this, activity.
Greg Lambert (16:42)
Yeah, that’s why I’m the librarian at a law firm and not running a big corporation.
Marlene (16:42)
They’re head scratchers for sure.
Ted Theodoropoulos (16:50)
You know, these guys that are writing checks like that, half a billion plus, they have to really have some sleepless nights over how this is gonna work or not work. that’s why there was so much, I mean, think about how high the stakes were for the implications of the Stanford paper. I mean, $650 million bet.
You know, that’s your horse in the race. And you’ve got a very well -respected academic institution that comes and calls in question some of the marketing claims. And it’s not just TR, right? Across the board, vendors are really, I think, overselling. Even outside of legal, you the FTC is really cracking down on, they call it AI washing, where
firms that, and again, this is outside of legal, that make claims about gen AI capabilities that are bogus. The FTC is investigating and we’ll see if it’s saber rattling or there’s any real teeth behind it. for a regulator to come out this early in the game and say they’re cracking down, you know it’s a real problem.
Marlene (18:09)
All right, so Ted, I want to shift gears for a second. You know, you’ve emphasized the importance of effective knowledge management strategies for law firms. How can firms improve in this area and what role does the technology play? know, because it’s like, KM has been in firms for a long time. So, know, so where do we stand now and where are we moving in the future?
Ted Theodoropoulos (18:32)
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I’ve seen a real interesting evolution. KM and now Innovation. Innovation didn’t really exist 12 years ago as a formal department. In fact, I did a quick little study of the Ilta roster from 2014 and yeah, the titles. There were only 16 people on the Ilta roster in 2014, 10 years ago that had the word innovation in their title.
Marlene (18:50)
titles.
Ted Theodoropoulos (18:59)
And today there’s over 300. And when I look at that, so I forget what the number is, that’s an 1800 % increase in 10 years in people with the word, is there 1800 % more innovation work happening? I don’t think so. So I…
Greg Lambert (19:21)
Well, in some firms it was zero, so any growth is exponential.
Marlene (19:25)
There you go, there you go.
Ted Theodoropoulos (19:25)
That is very true. you know, the with KM specifically, you know, KM has a lot of times been a catch all for firms, right? They don’t know what to, you know, like I’ve even KM managing.
Marlene (19:36)
I think it’s different in different firms too. I mean, it’s just not like there’s no clear, like this is what this is.
Greg Lambert (19:38)
Yeah, it’s different in every firm.
Ted Theodoropoulos (19:43)
Totally. It’s totally different. And even in the Amlaw 50, I see at the far end of the maturity spectrum, I see vastly different. There are several Amlaw 50 firms that don’t have KM. They don’t call it KM. And that’s a bit of a head scratcher. And when I dig into that, there’s not many, but there are a few. And I happen to know people at two of those firms.
Marlene (19:59)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ted Theodoropoulos (20:11)
And I asked the question, I was like, why don’t you guys have KM? And it’s political. So the leadership has a perception of KM as something not totally value add, which is crazy, but somewhere along the line, you know, this perception was established at the leadership level and they’re still doing, they’re still KM.
activities happening, but they’re not calling it that. There’s all sorts of names for it. yeah, I would love to see, I would love to see us standardize a little bit in terms of like organizational design. I don’t think it’s going to happen because there’s so much cultural influence and dynamics at play. But for us as vendors coming in and figuring out who’s the right person to talk to, it’s like a little bit of a crap shoot.
Greg Lambert (21:06)
Yeah, I get those emails. Well, if you’re not the person, then who do I need to be seeking out? So let’s jump back into some AI platforms for a little bit, because we talked about the legal specific ones. How are you perceiving the current state of AI platforms on the public side, as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot?
Marlene (21:10)
Can you tell us who is?
Greg Lambert (21:31)
in terms of how it could be implemented and even kind of revolutionize the legal industry. And I heard you talk about this on one of your podcast episodes and using the metaphor of how it’s kind of like an operating system now. So if you want to kind of build on, is this DOS, is this Windows 95? What are we looking at as far as how AI, these platforms work within legal?
Ted Theodoropoulos (22:01)
Yeah. so that was, I actually didn’t, I borrowed that metaphor and then extended it. So there was an article out that I read that talked about how using Claude feels like using a Mac, how chat GPT feels like windows. And then I extended it with co -pilot, which to me feels like MS DOS. I know I have a long history with Microsoft and including
working there. I know they’ll get it right eventually, but as it stands now, it feels like an early beta. You know, there are things that
Greg Lambert (22:35)
Which is a little scary because of the fact that there are so many firms that I think are making heavy bets on copilot.
Marlene (22:41)
Like that’s an approved one.
Ted Theodoropoulos (22:45)
Yeah, long term, think those bets will pay off, the real risk is that people, you get one shot with attorneys, right? They’re going to come in, they’re going to use it, they’re going to go, this thing sucks and I’m not. So I, exactly. You’re to have a hard time once it does get better. And there are some things that I did a podcast with Carolyn Humphreys from Traveling Coaches and she’s, she’s deep, much deeper than I am.
Greg Lambert (22:59)
never use it again.
Ted Theodoropoulos (23:12)
I’ll tell you where I’m at with it. Every time I went into this, isn’t, I’m exaggerating. It’s not every time. I would say probably half the time that I try and use it, I get frustrated and go back to Claude or chat GPT. the latest one was just this weekend as I was working on a marketing plan for next year and, use chat GPT. I’m, I tend to lean more in the Claude camp, but there’s some things that chat GPT is a little bit better at.
And I copied and pasted the output into a Word doc and the formatting was off. know, bullets, because ChatGPT is notorious for bulleted lists, like it loves bulleted lists, as opposed to more of a narrative format. And I went into the Word copilot app and asked it to reformat based on, and there’s plenty of information there for it to figure that out.
And it just completely gave me instructions on how to do it manually. I’m like, all right, this isn’t helpful. So it’s like, you know, other, there’s been several other, I’ve talked about them before. Like I categorize my calendar into the Covey quadrants, which are like important and urgent, important, not urgent. I assign them these custom categories and they’re different colors. So I can look at my week and see how proactive I am.
Marlene (24:09)
That’s it.
Ted Theodoropoulos (24:31)
And I just go into the Outlook co -pilot and say, summarize by custom category my week and add up the time. Can’t do it. Cannot do it. And I posted out into the forums and got feedback. And the feedback I got was there needs to be an update. What it tries to do, it can go through your calendar and it will read the meeting title.
and try and create categories of its own, but it wasn’t able to use my categories. Maybe they fixed it by now, but when I tried it, I don’t know, eight weeks ago, couldn’t do it. So I’m a little concerned with the bets that, cause I, I’ve heard too, some really big firms that are doing co -pilot enterprise wide. And I’m like, I think you’re going to be disappointed.
Greg Lambert (25:13)
Yeah, at least at the beginning. You know, the formatting story reminded me like back in the nineties. Remember I was working at the main library at the University of Oklahoma and we were debating about switching over from Netscape to Internet Explorer. And the one thing that convinced me to switch over was I could copy and paste from Explorer into Word.
and it would maintain the formatting. And that was the winner for me because otherwise I spent twice as much time cleaning it up. yeah. it’s not, I mean, obviously they won the browser wars for other reasons, I think, but you know, that was how they won me over is, you know, the practicality of being able to move between the different products and be able to keep that formatting was significant.
Marlene (25:50)
That’s the winner.
Ted Theodoropoulos (26:10)
We used to call it Internet Exploder, the best browser to download another browser. Got lots of like, yeah, well, you know what? I’m actually an edge user now, which yeah, since they went to Chromium, yeah, it is good. And there’s some interesting integrations. Like if you use Teams and you click a link in a Teams chat and you’re
Greg Lambert (26:14)
Yeah
Yes. This is well before Chrome. I am too. I’m back.
Marlene (26:22)
haha
I am at work.
Ted Theodoropoulos (26:39)
Edge is your default browser. It’ll open the page and in the side panel it will frame in the chat. So you can see the chat and the page that you’re clicking on and that is pretty cool. So yeah, I never thought I’d be, I’d use a Microsoft browser, but here I am.
Marlene (26:49)
point of reference. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Lambert (26:56)
Yeah, it took some convincing in doing before I did. And now actually, I think because Chrome became such a resource hog that we can’t even install it on our work computers anymore. Everything’s edge.
Ted Theodoropoulos (27:13)
Wow.
Marlene (27:16)
So given all of that, from your experience integrating AI into the legal workflows, if you were the consultant, that law firm said, how should we do this? What are the best practices for us looking to implement AI technologies effectively? What would you tell them?
Greg Lambert (27:19)
Ha ha ha ha!
Ted Theodoropoulos (27:40)
Yeah, well, so that is an excellent question. And I guess the first question that really has to be answered before you can start to formulate a strategy is do you need, do legal specific models warrant the effort, right? Like if you look at,
Marlene (28:01)
which means they have to have use cases already in mind.
Ted Theodoropoulos (28:05)
a hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. there’s been a lot of debate on that on do, you know, specially trained LLMs perform better than the general models. And the answer is debatable, right? It’s not, there’s not a clear winner there from all the benchmarking that I’ve seen.
Greg Lambert (28:25)
Well, that sounds like the perfect legal answer. It depends.
Marlene (28:27)
depends on what you do.
Ted Theodoropoulos (28:28)
Right. Yeah. Well, you know what’s happening, I think a lot. So the reason Copilot is getting so much traction, in my opinion, this is me just reading tea leaves, is really it’s around the privacy issue. So if you use Claude or GPT, even the paid subscriptions, you cannot put client work in there. Even the new chat GPT for Teams, read the, I think we might’ve exchanged an email on this. If you read the privacy policy for that product,
It does not guarantee that human eyes won’t look at your data. So they’re out. You’re out. It’s a non -starter for putting client data in there. Copilot, however, does have those privacy policies in place. So you’re kind of not left with a lot of options. Some firms are building their own. Like Gunderson with their ChatGD, there’s been several others.
Marlene (29:16)
I was gonna ask you build or buy, that another area?
Ted Theodoropoulos (29:20)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s so I talk about Bill versus by a lot and I’m very much in the by camp when there’s an off the shelf solution that can meet the majority of your requirements. And that’s not the case with a lot of A .I. out there just just yet. So, yes, some firms are rolling their own and they’re just putting thin wrappers on. That’s another.
Greg Lambert (29:21)
Here we go again.
Ted Theodoropoulos (29:46)
a hot topic these days, thin wrappers. But, you know, and they’re just putting thin wrappers to get that enterprise level security and privacy so they can move things forward. But, yeah, I mean, that’s another reason why the business of law use cases, I think, makes sense. You know what? Marketing, finance, they can, HR, you know, they can use those public, you’re not putting client data.
Greg Lambert (29:48)
Yes it is.
Ted Theodoropoulos (30:12)
in there. So it really opens up the scope on the use cases that you can accommodate. And eventually I would imagine, you know, Microsoft had to, it’s not just legal, right? I mean, think about banking, you know, like investment banks that are doing transactional work and you got a client, big client &A deal and some analyst at, you know, OpenAI
gets a heads up, goes and buys the stock ahead of time. You know, just, those sorts of things can’t happen and Microsoft has put those controls in place and I think they’re reaping the rewards of that.
Greg Lambert (30:52)
Which would be great if their AI tools worked really well, right?
Ted Theodoropoulos (30:57)
Exactly. Yeah. And they’ll get there. It’s really the in app co -pilots that I think are struggling right now. Like, you know, Carolyn pointed out a few use cases that where, you know, like you can take a word document and turn it into a PowerPoint presentation. I’ve done that. It’s not that compelling. Like, yeah, you’re saving me some cut and paste time, but like,
It’s not like that’s that thing is production ready. It’s like it needs a whole bunch of work. And honestly, I could probably automate that by writing some macros. so I think it’s the in app co -pilots that, that need work. The one in Excel. Well, first of all, you have to be in one drive, for most of this stuff to work. How many firms, IG policies allow one drive? that used to be a huge no -no. I hear that that’s
softening a little bit because of Copilot, but for the longest time, OneDrive was a, I mean, it was a hell no. It wasn’t just a no. So are firms comfortable putting client work in OneDrive? I don’t know.
Greg Lambert (31:57)
I can tell you that from talking to a few firms, yes, they are. I think they’ve just decided it’s inevitable and that they can justify, again, I think Microsoft brings a lot of sway with it. so I think that’s why. Now, if you’re gonna look at something like Dropbox or one of these other things, no.
Ted Theodoropoulos (32:06)
Givin’ up.
Greg Lambert (32:24)
But as long as Microsoft has its name on it, I think it gets a little bit more leeway than the other vendors do at this point. But yeah, I’m seeing more firms opening up OneDrive.
Ted Theodoropoulos (32:37)
Yeah, I mean, you know, you’ve got the agent that syncs data. Microsoft’s coming has some tools to help manage some of your IG really a purview. Like if you don’t know what purview is, go learn about it. It’s important. But there are still a lot of I used to be I spent a little bit of time as an auditor, a technology auditor, internal audit. And like I would look at that and
document all sorts of potential failure modes. The controls just aren’t as tight as they are in the legal DMS space.
Greg Lambert (33:11)
Yeah, I will say the one thing is though, your DMS, your document management system is definitely still the preferred and actually tends to be required place of storage. But I think a lot of firms are understanding there’s a number of things that you may be working on in the meantime that they would rather you be
Marlene (33:26)
Yes.
Greg Lambert (33:38)
putting it in OneDrive, then either storing it on your local machine or putting it in Dropbox or one these other things behind the scenes. So otherwise, I will get in trouble, I think, with probably my security people.
Ted Theodoropoulos (33:47)
Yeah. Yeah, this whole shit.
Marlene (33:52)
Yeah.
Ted Theodoropoulos (33:52)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a good thing that there’s some softening of, because, you know, there’s so many capabilities. Again, co -pilot is one of them. If you want to use co -pilot and you’re not on one drive, like good luck with that. There are some things you can do, but you will really be hamstrung. So, yeah, I think it’s, it’s inevitable. Resistance is futile.
Marlene (34:16)
All right, so Ted, can you elaborate on the concept of innovation theater within the legal industry? how can firms move beyond kind of the superficial innovation or even just sort of innovation speak? Like we’re doing it, but are we really doing it? And really achieve meaningful technological advancements.
Ted Theodoropoulos (34:44)
Yeah, that’s a great question. The Innovation Theater, I stole that term from Daniel Ferris at NRF.
Marlene (34:50)
And I love innovation theater. It’s, know, it makes life interesting.
Ted Theodoropoulos (34:54)
Yeah, and it accurately describes the situation at many firms. Yeah, my first inkling of this was of the concept was all the KM, many KM folks that I knew all of a sudden just magically had the word innovation in their title. And, you know, I started to drill in like, hey, how has your role changed? And I think that firms have felt a lot of pressure from their clients to innovate.
Greg Lambert (34:54)
You
Ted Theodoropoulos (35:19)
because historically the industry has been super laggards. And this is one way, hey, look, we have a chief innovation officer. We’re innovative. And sometimes that’s true, but sometimes it’s not. And I think that this whole Gen .ai thing has really, again, changing the lens at the XCOM level.
which that has to happen first because it’s an investment and innovation requires failure. If you’re not failing a very non -trivial percentage of the time, you’re not innovating. You’re just not. It requires.
Marlene (35:57)
And yet that goes completely against the grain of historically of law firms. You it’s got to be perfect. It’s got to be right or no good.
Ted Theodoropoulos (36:04)
Exactly.
Exactly. Lawyers are trained in the exact opposite direction. So the concept
Marlene (36:11)
Because they have to be. They have to have it right.
Ted Theodoropoulos (36:13)
Of course. Yeah. mean, the cost of mistakes is huge and malpractice suits are real. yeah, I think that firms have to get serious about it at the leadership level. And I do think that this transition that we’re in, I’ll call it that, this wave of Gen .i has really opened eyes in a way that
Marlene (36:20)
Mm -hmm.
Ted Theodoropoulos (36:41)
I see firms now writing checks that in the past, I would historically have seen a lot of resistance to look at the cloud. Look how long it took for firms to get to the cloud. Like I did, in 2014, I did 22 road shows talking about SharePoint online and I was 10 years too early, man. Like I, I used to have hair, before
2014, like I drove myself into the ground beating that drum and I was way too early. I had still not learned just how much resistance there is to change in the industry. And I’m starting to see signs of that changing, even like the, you know, the ABA guidelines around law firm ownership. you know, you’re seeing States now like Arizona that are softening on that.
And let’s be honest, if we are as an industry ever going to have law firms in that Fortune 500 caliber of revenue, K &E is close. They’re just outside of the revenue requirement, which is about $7 .5 billion to make. They can’t be in the Fortune 500 because they’re not public. But if we’re going to have firms scale to that size, you have to have CEOs that aren’t lawyers.
You being the CEO because you’re the best at lawyering is not a good thing. So I’m starting to see just fundamental structural changes that I think will help address this innovation theater concept and hopefully we’ll have some meaningful change.
Greg Lambert (38:19)
Well, Ted, I’ve got a business proposition for you for a podcast. Well, this would have to be a YouTube channel. Why don’t we create the Mystery Legal Innovation Theater 3000? And what we can do is we’ll watch some old presentations and just absolutely make snarky comments the whole time. So we’ll pull up some of your 2012 presentations.
Marlene (38:32)
Yeah. Awesome.
do snarky comments the whole time. People would pay for that.
Hahaha!
Greg Lambert (38:48)
you
Ted Theodoropoulos (38:48)
That’s all. I’m writing it down. That is good.
Greg Lambert (38:51)
Ha!
Marlene (38:52)
That’s great.
Greg Lambert (38:54)
Well, now’s the time where we get to our crystal ball question. so Ted, I want to throw this to you. What kind of changes or challenges do you see law firms facing in adopting new technologies? And we kind of talked about this, like AI, cloud -based platforms, other things. And how do you think we’ll be able to overcome that in the next two to five years?
Ted Theodoropoulos (39:17)
Yeah, so going back to the co -pilot conversation, understanding where platforms are and their level of effectiveness solving the business problems that exist and that are justifying the budget for the deployments really has to be at
at the top of everyone’s mind before. feel like there’s a lot of reactionary behavior that’s going on. People, it’s a Kony, like the cost of not investing. You have ROI and then Kony. The cost of not investing, feel like, is driving decision making. Again, when I hear about firms talking about going enterprise wide with CoPilot, like why not do the least risky?
path possible, which would be a small pilot deployment in a business of law function and incrementally build on those wins that you get on the board. But what I’m afraid of kind of going to our point earlier is we go whole hog and we write some big checks and we experience frustration with people that don’t give you a second at bat. And then we’re really going to have
folks dug in and I would hate to see that happen. So I’m really advocating for firms to have an incremental approach, get early wins on the board, make small bets and build on your strategy incrementally. And don’t let Coney supersede ROI because to do so, we’ve seen so many, I mean, this has been a cycle.
I mean, remember pets .com? know, I mean, this is a cycle that when there’s hype and people don’t want to get left behind and yeah, so that would be the path I think that firms should take.
Greg Lambert (41:02)
Yeah.
Well, Ted Theodopoulos, CEO of InfoDash and host of the podcast Legal Innovation Spotlight. I want to thank you very much for coming on and having a conversation with us. It’s been great.
Ted Theodoropoulos (41:31)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Well, I’ll have to have you guys on next.
Greg Lambert (41:35)
Please do.
Marlene (41:36)
Love, love it. 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 really love to hear from you, so reach out to us on LinkedIn.
Greg Lambert (41:49)
And Ted, we’ll put some links on the show notes, but what’s the best way for people to find out more about InfoDash or reach out to you for more questions?
Ted Theodoropoulos (41:58)
Yeah, well, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. It’s slash Ted Theo and our website is getinfo -dotcom. I’m pretty active on the conference circuit. We do about nine or 10 a year. So I see you guys frequently. So that’s another opportunity to grab me and I’d love to have a chat.
Marlene (42:25)
And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeSica. Thank you very much, Jerry.
Greg Lambert (42:30)
Thanks Jerry. Alright Marlene, I’ll talk to you later.
Marlene (42:31)
Okay, bye bye.
Ted Theodoropoulos (42:33)
Bye guys.