This episode of “The Geek in Review” explores MinterEllison’s strategic adoption of Microsoft Copilot, delving into the practical implications and challenges of implementing generative AI within the legal industry. Guests Amber O’Meara, Head of Innovation, and Tim Andrews, Director of IT Operations, discuss the firm’s multifaceted approach to generative AI, emphasizing its potential to enhance client experiences, boost productivity, and empower their legal professionals by automating mundane tasks and allowing them to focus on more complex legal work. This strategic vision, endorsed by the firm’s leadership, drove their decision to participate in the Copilot Early Access Program, providing valuable insights and shaping their implementation strategy.

One of the key takeaways is MinterEllison’s measured and strategic rollout of Copilot. Rather than a firm-wide deployment, they opted for a phased approach, prioritizing specific personas and departments that would benefit most from the technology. Initial challenges included data jurisdiction limitations, the inherent “fear factor” of adopting new technology, and user inertia stemming from unmet expectations. The firm addressed these obstacles through a comprehensive training program, incorporating a dedicated “Gen AI Time” initiative, collaborative sessions with Microsoft, and a “reverse mentoring” program for partners. This multifaceted approach, coupled with internal communication and a knowledge-sharing platform, fostered enthusiasm and addressed concerns, leading to impressive user satisfaction and reported time savings.

MinterEllison’s training program played a crucial role in the successful adoption of Copilot. Combining internally developed resources with vendor-provided training, the program addressed both the technical aspects of using Copilot and the art of prompt engineering. The firm’s innovative approach of dedicating fee-credited time for generative AI training proved highly effective, incentivizing participation and demonstrating leadership commitment. This investment in their people, combined with gamification elements like their internal “Mint Coin” cryptocurrency, fostered a competitive spirit and encouraged active engagement in the learning process.

The podcast highlights the importance of prompt engineering in maximizing the effectiveness of Copilot. While initial user expectations often fell short due to simplistic prompts, the training program emphasized the need for detailed and nuanced prompts to achieve optimal results. This understanding, coupled with the recognition that Copilot excels at content generation rather than computational tasks, significantly improved user satisfaction. The firm also acknowledges the importance of maintaining a “human in the loop” to validate outputs and mitigate potential inaccuracies or “hallucinations” generated by the AI. They anticipate the future ability to share custom prompts within the firm, further streamlining workflows and enhancing collaborative efforts.

Finally, the conversation touches on the broader impact of generative AI on the legal industry. MinterEllison envisions a future where AI tools are widely adopted, reshaping traditional law firm models and creating new roles focused on innovation and technology. They emphasize the importance of ongoing collaboration, both internally and within the legal community, to address client privacy concerns, share best practices, and navigate the evolving landscape of AI in law. The firm’s commitment to responsible AI usage, guided by their “Lighthouse Principles” and an AI steering committee, underscores their dedication to ethical implementation and client data security. They also see the potential for generative AI to contribute to access to justice initiatives and support social impact work, highlighting the transformative potential of these technologies beyond the traditional boundaries of legal practice.

 

Links:

Amber (Burgess) O’Meara | LinkedIn
Tim Andrews | LinkedIn
MinterEllison: Overview | LinkedIn
MinterEllison – MinterEllison

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Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

 

Transcript

[00:07] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

[00:14] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. And today we are going to be talking about the practical aspects of Microsoft’s co pilot when it comes to the legal industry with Amber O’Meara, who is Head of Innovation at Mentor Ellison in Melbourne, Australia, and Tim Andrews, Director IT Operations at Mentor Ellison in Wellington, New Zealand.

So Amber and Tim, I want to thank you both for coming on and talking to us on The Geek in Review.

[00:43] Marlene Gebauer: Thanks for having us.

[00:44] Tim Andrews: Yeah, looking forward to it.

[00:46] Marlene Gebauer: We have a very international group today. Yes, yes, we’re all over. It’s like, that’s very exciting.

[00:52] Greg Lambert: So, Amber, before we jump into the co pilot discussion itself, would you mind just telling us a little bit about Mentor Ellison and your role there?

[01:03] Amber O’Meara: Well, it’s my favorite question. Thanks, Greg.

It’s good to talk about yourself.

Yes! Actually talking about the innovation at Minto Elephant. Thanks, Marlene.

[01:12] Marlene Gebauer: That’s right, that’s right,

[01:13] Amber O’Meara: that’s right. We

have I’m very, very fortunate here to work with a group of 80 to 90 innovation champions across our, all of our legal business units and consulting business units, as well as our Business operations team.

And essentially I like to call myself a connector of dots. So those groups often come up with wonderful and strange ideas sometimes and great ways to do things differently. And seek to do things in a different way. And my role is really to connect them within the firm to the people that can do the amazing things from a technical perspective.

So that’s Tim and his team, and we have a fantastic team. Automation and Client Services team and wonderful tech consulting team internally that we can connect them into. And also just sharing all the great things that happen across the firm. I’m also really lucky to deal with some of the external innovations that happen.

So working with our universities here in Australia on Legal Tech Clinic or being part of hackathons. So it’s a really, really big well rounded role, but I like to think of myself as a connector of the dots to allow people’s life to move forward. I

[02:18] Marlene Gebauer: like that description. I like that a lot.

[02:20] Greg Lambert: yeah.

So, Tim, how about you? Uh, how do you define your role there at MinterEllison?

[02:27] Tim Andrews: Yeah, I’m, like you’ve mentioned, I’m the Director of IT Operations here at MinterEllison, and I’m lucky enough to I have a fantastic team of 75 people, and the span across a whole range of portfolios from front of house support to IT project management and, and also sort of overseeing the back of house infrastructure and cloud technology.

I guess my primary role really revolves around helping the firm’s operation, the IT operations and the growth and transformation, and I’m very lucky to be working with a very lovely Amber as well.

[03:04] Marlene Gebauer: So I, I think this question is probably most geared toward Tim, but please, both of you answer if, if you can.

So what motivated your decision to implement Microsoft Copilot into the firm?

[03:18] Tim Andrews: Yeah, really good question. And I think Like, why did you take that on? Yeah, I know. I guess for context, it’s probably worth sharing that Mint Allison sees Gen8i as a critical technology for the future of our industry. And ultimately, the Gen8i strategy has also been endorsed by the execs and the board as one of our strategic imperatives with sort of taking that leading edge posture.

So for us, taking on something like Microsoft Copilot was a bit of a no brainer. I guess it’s worth touching on the fact that our approach to Gen AI or a Gen AI strategy is a bit sort of multi faceted. And we look at it through an enablement lens. And that is how Gen AI will enable the firm’s overarching strategy.

Probably it costs across three key areas. And I would say the first is the client lens. So that’s sort of innovating the way we produce work for clients to enhance their experience. The second is productivity. So automating those menial tasks to create a more productive workforce. And, and then third, which is probably the most important is our people.

So removing the mundane and the pain and sort of generally moving our people up the value chain. To allow them to sort of focus on the more complex and elements of legal matter, work and projects. So for me, when I look at Copilot and those three key overarching areas, it ticked all three boxes. So I went into this with a high level of excitement, and that was one of the reasons we sort of delved in with Microsoft Copilot.

[05:13] Greg Lambert: Amber, anything to add?

[05:16] Amber O’Meara: Yeah, I guess it’s also, Tim, probably worth noting how lucky we were to be part of the early access program as well. So, there was only 600 companies on that globally, and 90 within Australia and New Zealand. Very interesting. Our Chief Digital Officer, Gary Adler, spent a lot of time with Microsoft as Microsoft Co Pilot was being rolled out.

So, I think being part of that program was a real sort of no brainer to that strategic piece as well. And also, Tim, I think the fact that we’re trying to concentrate on a few products rather than machine gunning our people with, with hundreds of products, so that they can get used to how they can use technology.

large language models to the best of their ability. So really focusing in on them and co pilots. So, we’ve gone from 300 licenses, Tim, to now Yeah,

[06:04] Tim Andrews: 300 to 550 and growing very, very quickly. I would say, and it’s probably becoming one of the hottest commodities at Minters, at Minters LSM, we’re getting a lot of requests come through day in, day out for a co pilot license.

I actually had I had a work colleague the other day send me a message saying when can everyone else get a co pilot license because I don’t want to be the secretary for my team anymore. So I thought that was, that was quite funny.

[06:29] Greg Lambert: How many, how many people total at Minter Ellison?

[06:32] Tim Andrews: We’ve got around about 3, 000 people at Minter Ellison.

[06:39] Greg Lambert: You still got a ways to go for it.

[06:42] Tim Andrews: Yeah, that’s right. And I think we, we’re taking the approach rather than just deploy Microsoft Copilot firm wide. It’s really looking for those personas, those areas in the business that are really going to take advantage of Microsoft Copilot.

[06:58] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah. I think it’s really interesting.

I mean, you’re basically looking at your strategy and your Making choices based on that. I think , we’ve kind of heard in the news a lot of firms are, you know, they sort of were doing experimentation last year just to kind of see, like, how these things work, how they’d be used. But it seems like that you have A very clear strategic vision as to sort of how you want this rolled out and, you know, who you want it rolled out to and what you want them to do with it.

[07:26] Amber O’Meara: Yeah, exactly.

[07:28] Greg Lambert: And, and Amber on, uh, on the, the process, I mean, what kind of challenges did you have? , were you already set up like on Microsoft 365 and OneDrive? Or did, did you have to do this all at one time? What, what were some of the things that you kind of had to work through?

[07:45] Amber O’Meara: Tim can definitely answer the more technical side of that.

I’m sure so many pain points from his perspective, but I think one of the big one was Because we talked a lot about it and people started to hear about Microsoft Copilot, it was sort of moving as quick as we could to get that technology into the hands of our people. And I think at that point too and Tim obviously jump in here, but You know, Microsoft was building the plane as it was flying with us.

So, you know, we would have those weekly sort of team meetings where we’d go through use cases, share examples. It was very much a collaborative experience that early stages of the co pilot, early adoption early access program. Tim, you’d be able to talk to the actual rollout, but I think getting into people’s hands quickly and then sort of Dealing with that inertia that can set in early around, Oh, but it’s not doing everything I want, you know, right now.

Deal, dealing with how you need to keep persevering and working with it and finding the use cases, as Tim said earlier, all the things that are going to other personas that are going to work well for you. Not everything will, but I think dealing with that inertia of people, you know, Oh, it’s not doing everything.

It’s not working, I give up. Push, pulling them through that, I think was, was an early challenge.

[08:55] Tim Andrews: Yeah. And I think just to expand on that as well, Amber, when I cast my mind back from when we first started deploying Microsoft Copilot, I think one of the biggest hurdles for us was when we signed up for the early access program, is that the large language model technology was actually sitting outside our jurisdiction.

So we had somewhat of a, I guess, limited, we were, we were limited in what we could use it for. So we weren’t in breach of our client’s obligation. So, but good news that that has all now been moved inside our jurisdiction. So, we we’ve started seeing a higher level of adoption across Copilot at the moment, which is great.

I think also some of the other challenges with anything new, right? I think there’s a fear factor fear of the unknown and what can and what can’t I do? So we quickly sort of realized that and sort of come up with some And Lighthouse Principles in regards to sort of Gen AI which, which definitely helped and some, some educational programs as well.

[09:56] Marlene Gebauer: Speaking of educational programs, I’m, I’m curious. It’s like, it sounded like, you know, there was some handholding, there was some motivational stuff. That was necessary. So, you know, what did you, what did you find in terms of training and support that was really effective and essential for the the adoption of co pilot and what are, what are some things that worked?

[10:21] Amber O’Meara: Oh, gosh, lots of things that we’ve done to him and so proud of. I think he often, and Tim can certainly jump in, but we have a A digital academy here at Minter Ellison. So one of the strategic priorities of the firm is to increase our digital fluency. And the digital academy was born out of that.

And we’ve had some of Tim’s fantastic team build some fantastic modules that help that have helped people learn how to use generative AI tools. More generally but recently we have we have put together a Microsoft Copilot badge, which is a credential that gets given to your micro credential through a wonderful group called Credly and that can go with you transcends Minta Ellison, but essentially it was a Bit of online learning that you had to go through and then an assessment period of how you’ve used the tool.

I’m very, very proud to say that I have recently got one of those badges and it was really good. So that was one way that we have we have done that. The other thing that we implemented from January to March this year was dedicated Gen AI time. So as Tim mentioned earlier, The board and ELT have have signed off on us taking a leading edge position in the market, and to do that we needed to make a huge investment in our people.

So that DGA IT time was 12 weeks of fee credited time for our client facing professionals to upskill on on generally of AI technology, which included Copilot. And that was a hugely successful program in giving people the time and space to do that, which as you both would know all too well is the, is the biggest, I think, challenge and hurdle to getting people on board and learning.

And then Tim, you know, there was some, there’s been some fantastic sessions that you’ve run with Microsoft themselves and I’ll let you talk about.

[12:11] Tim Andrews: Yeah, I think. You know, I’ve always got this view that, , technology or the technology strategy alone has absolutely no value. And if our number one asset, which is our people, and are not poised to take advantage of the change and the technology that’s there.

So for us, it was imperative that everyone in the organization was trained on Gen A. I. and more specifically co pilot. So, thank you. As Amber mentioned, all those initiatives that we did, we also partnered with Microsoft themselves who helped us run a number of sessions, which they sort of called the art of the possible which was really great.

So what we, what we did was before we issued a Microsoft Copilot license out to anyone, we invite them to an hour long session to really sort of spark the imagination of what’s possible with Microsoft Copilot. So that, that worked really, really well. And, and then to keep that conversation going, we also created a center of excellence within Microsoft Teams.

So people could sort of share the success stories and what prompts worked, what prompts didn’t. And they started creating a little bit more excitement around that space. And then the final thing we have done more recently is we’ve, we’ve, we’ve done some, we started a program called Reverse Mentoring for our partnership, which basically was a 30 minute session with one of our digital coaches.

And they can talk anything or ask any question that they would like around Gen AI or Microsoft Codepod which really helped with sort of shifting the needle.

[13:45] Marlene Gebauer: So it was a combination of training that you developed internally and vendor training. Is that right?

Spot

[13:53] Marlene Gebauer: on. Okay. And, and what was the reaction like to the training?

Cause I, I know sometimes you know, Uh, very busy attorneys , don’t always have the time to do the training or the inclination to do the training, or if they’re not seeing the immediate value of the training or kind of like, uh, you know, I got other things to do. So I’m curious how you kind of kept everybody’s interest in that.

[14:18] Tim Andrews: Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a good question. I think agenda or AI has been in the media quite a lot. So there was always already an interest in that space, but I think one of our most successful investments today had to be the launch of what Amber just talked about, which is dedicated Gen AI time, which was ultimately 12 hours of fee credited time across 12 weeks for our people to be able to come along and learn about Gen AI.

And I think I’ve sort of been in, in, at Mintrellison for a couple of decades. I think it’s probably one of our most successful educational campaigns. So, yep, very good.

[15:00] Marlene Gebauer: It’s interesting that you had it. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

[15:02] Amber O’Meara: Oh, no, no, Marlene, you go.

[15:04] Marlene Gebauer: I just thought it was interesting that like it’s over 12 weeks.

It’s not whenever you want. It’s just a very discreet amount of time, which again makes people focus on it.

[15:15] Amber O’Meara: Yeah. I think we tried to get, we tried to gamify or make things as fun as we can as well. So we have built our own internal cryptocurrency called Mintcoin which is really used to, yeah, really used to reward people instantaneously for getting involved in that, those training programs.

So we have during that time, DJI T time. We had those boosted. So like, there’s a grocery store here called Woolworth. So if you go to the shops you could buy, you know, your shampoo and get a boosted by a thousand times and win all sorts of awards. We had that kind of program going during DJI T and the.

Mintcoin goes into a Solana wallet. It’s, it’s not a real coin, but it sits in a Solana wallet and can then be traded back in for Prezi vouchers. So people really got into, A, the competitive spirit of our wonderfully smart people at Minter Ellison really kicks in. So there’s the, the kudos for being the top of the leaderboard of Mintcoin, but then there’s also the instantaneous reward with the, with the Prezi vouchers.

As well that tended to help. And I think also you know, the role of those fantastic innovation leaders and champions across our business units and consulting and biz ops groups is to really be the champions of getting people involved in, in just trying things out or going to their team meetings and maybe just doing a demonstration of how Co Pilot can work in Outlook or in.

You know, PowerPoint or whatever it might be is to use those champions to really be advocates as well and be kind of a train the trainer type mentality, Tim, in a lot of ways as well.

[16:48] Tim Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the most attempted courses we did wasn’t necessary around the functionality of Copilot or a tool.

It was around prompt engineering. So we had one of our own people present on prompting. And the effectiveness on prompts and that, that, that was really powerful because it sort of sparked the imagination. I think also you mentioned sort of, you know, how, how do you, how do you benchmark sort of training?

We’ve, we’ve, we’ve done a number of surveys as well, out to people that have Microsoft Copilot. And I might maybe just share a couple of those stats that’s come back because they’re, they’re quite overwhelming. 89 percent of those people that are using Microsoft Copilot are saying it’s saving them on average anywhere between two and five hours per week, which I thought was, was quite amazing.

And a remarkable 71 percent of the people using Copilot said it increased team productivity. And then 90 percent of people said they were very satisfied. With, with the tool. And and I think it was like only 1 percent said that they would actually give back a Microsoft Copilot license. So I thought those were pretty incredible and statistics coming out of our sort of monthly surveys we’ve been doing with people using Microsoft Copilot.

[18:08] Marlene Gebauer: They’re very good. I mean, did they give any detail about the time save, like what they were doing?

[18:16] Tim Andrews: Yes, they did. And I think anyone that has used Copilot, one of the significant benefits is the ability to be able to start Copilot at the beginning of any meeting, team meeting, or one on one. And, and have the ability to be able to summarize that meeting.

action items and then quickly send it off. So that seems to be the number one thing everyone’s absolutely loving with Moxel Copilot at the moment. I don’t know whether, Amber, you’ve had any others that you want to share, but that seems to be the biggest one.

[18:46] Amber O’Meara: Yeah, definitely. As you both can imagine, I think I was saying this at the Legal Innovators in California, Marlene, was the you know, lots of times people want those meeting notes verbatim and the action notes verbatim.

It’s, it’s just, I mean, from my perspective, it saves, you know, that two to five hours sometimes in a couple of days. I think also just the sheer volume of presentations our guys have to do, whether that’s internally CPD or externally with our clients. Lots of people being blown away by the ability to upload word docs and have a presentation.

Yeah. presented to them that they can then just tweak. Huge time saver. And I think the other one is, is in Outlook, especially when people come back for leave or they’ve, even if they’ve been in a workshop for a couple of hours or in a client meeting for a couple of hours, you can come back to a, I’m sure you are both only too aware of this, to a stream of, you know, Emails to get through.

So being able to sort where you’ve been added and can and been asked to do something to prioritize your inbox and also to figure out how another age old problem is the diary dance, how you can make sure, you know, When is so and so available to attend a meeting for half an hour between these dates?

It can come up with come up with some solutions for that. So I think it’s just those, as Tim says, the pain and mundane of your role sometimes that sounds ridiculous but can take up so much time. to do, being able to being able to do that first up and then being able to focus their, their brains on what to actually talk about in those meetings or the action items that come out of those is is really significant.

[20:24] Greg Lambert: Have you, now you’ve got some good use cases that you’ve observed as, as far as people being able to leverage, uh, copilot into their daily workflow. Uh, and we, we’ve talked to people on the show before, and where there were some expectations that they had that some of the things that, that they thought CoPilot should do that it’s not quite able to do as of yet have you, have you run into issues where someone is saying, uh, Boy, it really should make sense that it would do this, this, and this, but it just doesn’t do it.

How many times have you found that’s a prompting issue versus a co pilot issue? I’m just curious on that, that point. Yeah. It’s Amber, did you want to take the lead first?

[21:14] Amber O’Meara: I was just going to use only a personal example because I discovered by doing the co pilot badge that I was a very lazy prompter.

In terms

[21:23] Amber O’Meara: of in terms of it, you know, the more sort of context and source you give it, the, the obviously the better that’s going to be, but I had honestly no idea, you know, I could write almost a playbook, you know, I am, you know, give myself persona and I’m trying to do this and these people need to be interested and I want to get them excited.

Like the prompt could be quite, you know. And the results you get back from that type of prompting, mind blowing. I think exactly that the prompt from the prompting perspective, people just expect to say, do this and it’ll just sort of magically happen. And not understand that the more sort of context and nuance you give it, the better your results are going to be.

I also think the difference between. What a large language model can do, i. e. it won’t be a calculator or it won’t do, you know, X, Y, Z, it’s really there to help you create content and do other things do other wonderful things like that. But I think it’s expectation setting with people, Tim, would you say?

[22:23] Tim Andrews: Absolutely. And I think, you know, following on to that, we’ve got this notion of anything you’re doing, whether it’s Gen AI or Copilot, It’s the human in the loop. You need the human in the loop. It will get you sort of 60, 70 percent of the way there but you need to validate everything. And I think we all know from time to time that Copilot can hallucinate.

I think recently I had a response to Comeback that was in French which was a bit of a surprise, but more often than not I’m finding Copilot to be very accurate. And I think like you said, the more you can refine your prompt, give it a persona. And fine tune that, the better the results are.

So that, that, that’s, that, that’s I’ve refined the prompt.

[23:05] Greg Lambert: Is there a way within, and I’m just not as familiar with the ins and outs of Copilot, so this may, may come off as a a naive question, but, uh, say things like, you know, you can set up custom GPTs to share, uh, using, using a tool like, uh, OpenAI’s chat GPT, where you can share that.

Are you able. To set up kind of the custom prompts or a custom way on the back end so that you’re kind of giving them that best practice without them having to understand every time they need to do something, they need to learn how to be a prompt engineer.

[23:48] Tim Andrews: Yeah, spot on. And it’s something we’ve been asking for for a while, and we’ve been working very closely with Microsoft.

It’s actually on their roadmap. So they will enable the ability soon. They haven’t given us a date when it will be available, but you can actually create prompts and have the ability to be able to share them with your colleagues. And that, that’s not necessarily only centrally controlled from the backend.

That’s the ability of say Amber or myself, if we’ve got a great prompt, we can add that to the prompting library and share that with our colleagues. So I think that’s going to be pretty exciting when that feature has been launched as well.

[24:26] Marlene Gebauer: So have you guys had, has your firm had kind of the opportunity to showcase what you’re doing, you know, say to other firms or you know, clients?

[24:38] Amber O’Meara: Yes. I think we live in a, and Marlene, you, you know this. I mean, I only met you in July and I feel like I’ve known you forever. So I think we’re a pretty uh, competition is a nice way to put it. I think we’re a cooperative. Bunch. So yeah, I think Tim, you’ve been involved in, in conversation. So we belong to a group called the World Law Group.

So, that’s a, we’re a national firm and we can tap into our wonderful international network through those. We’ve done lots of sort of, uh, discussions with those, those firms around how we’re. Using co-pilot we and, and clients too. We’ve had a lot of different workshops on just how it works and and how we’re using it.

So, as an example, some of our clients were on the early access program as well, and again, everyone was kind of trying to figure out how, how to use it and what it was good for. So the sharing of those use cases there were really interesting. And now the sort of more complex challenges around now that we can all use it, how it, how can it affect our sort of legal.

Workflows and the work that we do together. But yeah, I think it’s been a real yeah, it’s been sort of competition with the firms that we, that we have talked to about it. And I think you only, I mean that’s the spirit we should be talking in, I think, to be able to make sure that we are using it in the right, in the right ways.

And to the best of our ability, we’re going to all use it in different ways, but nice to share those lessons, Tim, you’ve. You’ve done some great presentations as well.

[26:00] Marlene Gebauer: So, speaking about, you know, clients and, you know, making sure that we’re, we’re sort of addressing their work and their concerns I know it’s a particularly, it’s a particularly sensitive issue here in the States, I think, in Europe, and probably in, in the world dealing with client privacy concerns and, you know, using generative AI solutions using client, you know, client content.

So, and I, I mean, I know that you guys addressed this, but, you know, can you share a little bit with us about how, you know, how you did that? What were the concerns and how did you address them?

[26:43] Tim Andrews: Yeah, I’m happy to, to touch on that. I think. Obviously, getting security, data privacy, and the government right, it just has to be rock solid.

And we need to be confident before we can start embracing AI and technologies like Microsoft Copilot. Of course, one of our primary concerns is handling of sensitive data and confidential data. And we need to also remain very cautious. To ensure along this journey we get that right.

I think, you know, initially when I, when I talk about Microsoft Copilot, I’m, I touched on this earlier when I said we were very much limited in how we could use Copilot because of the large language model was outside our jurisdiction. And, but rather than shutting down Gen AI tools and I’m talking about when ChatGPT was also launched last year, We immediately put in a set of, or a series of guardrails in place to ensure responsible usage.

Now this sort of included sort of firm wide communication. Application popups that come up reminding staff not to use some of these tools for firm confidential data. We also set out or developed a set of lighthouse lighthouse principled principles aligned to sort of our responsible AI usage.

And this sort of covers areas. around accountability, privacy, security, explainability, and data bios, et cetera. So, we sort of created that and published that and run a series of presentations. And I think from a data security point of view, ensuring the security of our data is crucial. And one of the reasons we were able to leverage Copilot so quickly in the early days, I think is because Being a law firm we have a document management system, so, all our confidential IP and documents is stored within the DMS.

And Copilot doesn’t integrate with iManage, that enabled us to be able to move forward with adopting Copilot much, much quicker as well. I think also it’s worth touching on, this is a rapidly evolving technology. landscape.

And it will continue to be a living and breathing document, I think rather than a document that is just set and forget.

These principles and frameworks will continue to evolve, I think.

[29:08] Amber O’Meara: And I think it’s also probably worth noting, Tim, we have a sort of an AI steering committee and our general counsel is on that as well. So they, he is working hand in hand with, with our guys to make sure that all those Privacy concerns client privacy concerns are being addressed as well.

So it’s a, it’s a fusion team that makes sure that we’re doing things in the most responsible and secure way.

[29:31] Greg Lambert: Well, you talked to Amber earlier about, you know, kind of the collaboration even with the competition. But let’s look internally and I’m wondering because you know, you We talk a lot about, you know, breaking down silos collaboration across teams, across departments and it’s, you know, it’s easy to stand up in front of people and say you need to do this.

It’s, it’s very difficult to actually get them to do that. But it would seem like with a tool, it would seem like with a tool. like Co Pilot that this may be a really good opportunity to be collaborative across the team. So, are you finding that it is breaking down some of those silos? And if so, what, you know, are there some examples or how are you seeing it?

[30:19] Amber O’Meara: Yeah, I think definitely in terms of the The collaboration piece and one of the great examples I think recently, it goes back again to the knowledge sharing and people not know, you know, people don’t know what they don’t know, so I think the more that we’re sort of going and talking to our counterparts within the business about how.

We’re using it and how they might use it. But I think a really great example recently Tim, this sort of came across my desk, maybe beginning of this week was our clients and markets group went through a training session with our digital coaches to understand how they could use this better. Was that the?

Example, Tim, they had a sort of a session with our digital coach to understand what their use cases might be with respect to Gen AI and Microsoft more broadly. I think that’s a really fantastic example of, you know, being able to sort of harness a group that could use AI tools so, amazingly particularly with content generation.

I think what it has also done from a just a literal collaboration perspective being able to upload documents in Teams and be able to sort of, put notes in in that way. Really, really great example, but to take that a step further, we often have documents that We collaborate in and it’s sort of a, I guess a little bit like the job that Tim and I have been working on to have this discussion with you.

It’s a lot of information about, you know, lots of different things and from the brains of many, many different people. I think a really great example recently that I’ve worked on is, you know, putting a, document together for a for a large conference that had lots of people contribute to it.

Getting that back and thinking, Oh, this is going to be no use to anyone. And using Copilot then to to synthesize that and to put it into a more constructive document that made it make sense. I think that’s a really good way to do it. I think it’s that putting pen to paper, getting people to put their ideas on.

And then using Copilot to do the content generation piece and make it make sense is a, is a really great example. I know that our proposals team have started to use it for CV generation and that kind of thing as well across across the firm. So I definitely think again as Tim says, we’ve got the DMS system and that’s definitely everyone’s cozy, safe space.

But I think certainly our business operations team are using it in a really, really collaborative way. What are you seeing, Tim?

[32:46] Tim Andrews: Yeah, totally. And I think I’m quite excited about a recent launch. I think it was only last week where they’ve launched Microsoft Copilot Wave 2 which I haven’t actually had a chance to play around with just yet, but there’s this notion or this feature of Copilot Pages which is obviously a dynamic canvas.

Designed for multiple people to be able to work on a document at the same time. So, that’s going to be pretty exciting to see how we can bring. That feature into, to, to the teams to work more collaboratively as well. So I’m looking forward to playing around with that.

[33:20] Marlene Gebauer: So Amber, Tim, you know, your firm and your teams have, have come such a long way in terms of, of, uh, rolling out this, this co pilot initiative, but, uh, you know, I know you’re not going to be sitting on your laurels, so what are your future plans for expanding the use of co pilot across the firm?

I mean, no pressure or anything.

[33:43] Tim Andrews: Yeah. I think. And, and we’ve set ourselves a very bold target really, and we want to reach a sort of an 80 percent adoption of generally Gen AI tools across the firm. Obviously this means 80 percent of our people using Gen AI tools. And, but one of the, the, the challenges we have in, in this, in where we are today, there’s so many tools and there’s so many applications.

So we’ve, we’ve really focused on a couple. And one of them is Microsoft Co-Pilot. So by the end of this year, we really want a third of the organization using Microsoft Co-pilot, and we wanna see the adoption rate above 80%. So that’s definitely a target and rather than just sort of, roll out co-pilot across the f the firm, we’re actually looking at those personas, those groups of people that we think are gonna get the most amount of value out of using copilot.

[34:38] Marlene Gebauer: I’m actually curious, can I just follow up for Amber for one second? So you, you picked, you’ve picked a couple, like, I’m listening to you and you’re saying it’s like, yeah, there’s a million of them out there. I’m like, yes, I know. But so how, how do you, how did you make the determination? Co pilot I probably understand, but like, how did you make the determination?

Like, these are the ones we’re going to use.

[35:01] Amber O’Meara: Well, we built, we built one of them ourselves with a partner, with a partner. I think, you know, Marlene, we heard a lot about, or we keep hearing a lot about the buy versus build. So I think that we have built a fantastic product, which is going through a name rebrand at the moment. But but has historically been advice generator.

So that was built with a really, really fantastic fusion team of our our, uh, legal group and our automation client services team. And then we’re the RINCO as a partner. And that is, that was rolled out just after gen, the digital gen AI time this year to the to the group. That is now sort of becoming a suite of generator activities.

So, CV generator is being added to that. That is a tool that is the brainchild of one of our partners here who has the saved over his very, very wonderful career, nearly every single document he’s done. And has always had this in the back of the mind. How can I leverage this, these some sort of tool to be able to, to be able to create first advices for me?

And it’s only since the Advent of Gen AI that that’s been possible. So it’s been really wonderful to have one of our partners lead that project and also be become the sort of lead AI person within our firm for that. So I think that’s an obvious reason we we have chosen that particular product, but then also waving in and out of that is we’re always wanting to keep our eye on all the fantastic things that are coming up, particularly in the legal tech world.

Yeah. Your Co Counsels that they will continue to wave in the background. About how we can trial them or use them. And then we’ve got some other sort of gen, gen AI tools that are specific to Doc Automation or other things that will also that are also in the mix, but really wanting to have our focus on those two has meant that people can kind of get involved in in a more, I guess, meaningful way, having a focus.

[36:52] Tim Andrews: Yeah, we’re definitely not limiting ourselves to those two platforms. I guess another example of that is we’re just sort of moving forward with a tool called Moveworks, which is a virtual agent that will sit. But the idea here is that it will actually integrate with Copilot and ServiceNow as well. So, really bringing those sort of three platforms together to sort of, yeah, build a, a really awesome automated workflow to, for people to be able to get access to applications or be, be put into a specific distribution list and, and much more, of course.

[37:27] Greg Lambert: And, and Amber, just to follow up on, on your example it, it sounds similar. We, we had, uh, Dr. Megan Ma on from Stanford,

[37:37] Amber O’Meara: uh, Codex,

[37:38] Greg Lambert: and they, they created that M& A, uh, negotiator, emulator, uh, trainer uh, are, are you looking at kind of, you know, Doing that, kind of the, taking the brain of this partner that saved all of his or her documents and then looking at some type of emulation tool, or?

[38:05] Amber O’Meara: We could only ever wish in my wildest dreams to be Dr. Megan Ma. The, yes, exactly that. Using all of his wonderful He’s the sort of brainchild of it all, so, his group was the natural place to trial that technology. And his team works really well with our, our Fusion, our Fusion team on, on that as well.

We also have a group internally out of our tech consulting team that are looking that are looking at the ways in which we can use technology for our client work. And it looks that they’re, they’re building some amazing products as well in consultation with, with our team. I think the theme you’ll be picking up here is we love a fusion team.

We, we don’t do anything in isolation. We always make sure that we bring the, I call it the might of Minters to any project so that we can get it we can get it running successfully. At least, at least off the bat if we get the right people, people involved, but we are, we have been having lots of lovely conversations with Dr.

Megan Marr. So. We only, we only want to talk to the best.

I’ll just add to Tim’s too, just because it’s a, something we’ve been thinking about from our we have a, a fantastic purpose purpose team. So we’re a purpose led organization and thinking about the ways in which AI can help with access to justice work or our social impact work. We obviously do a lot of legal pro bono work, but I think the that Gen AI can really help all of us to be creators of access to justice, to people, or help to create social impact.

So a really good example is that we’ve got a. Fantastic social impact team here that has a lot of social enterprise clients. And they are busy doing amazing things in the world and can’t do things like put together their credentials, documents or capability statements or, you know, website content. Been doing lots of work with those types of organizations.

You know, they, like I was explaining before, have reams of word docs that have all their fantastic things that they do, being able to. upload those to Copilot and be able to put some really nice social impact reports together for them or documents that will allow them to go out to funders, I think is a really fun and exciting way that we’re looking at the product as well.

[40:18] Marlene Gebauer: Well, Amber and Tim the Gen AI future seems very bright at, uh, at Minter. But, uh, now is the time where we ask our crystal ball question, and this will be a more general sort of industry type of question. And, you know, what do each of you see happening like in the next couple years that you think you’ll need to prepare for as we advance using AI tools within law firms?

[40:49] Tim Andrews: Yeah. Crystal ball. That’s a, that’s a tricky one, I guess.

[40:52] Marlene Gebauer: And remember you, you, you answered the question that you want to have. We talked about this. All

[40:59] Amber O’Meara: of our people using AI tools.

[41:04] Tim Andrews: Yeah. I mean, crystal ball, I guess I’ve been immersed in the tech industry now for, I don’t know, three decades. And I generally haven’t felt such excitement about innovation in a, in a really long time.

So, and, and I, I personally believe we’re, we’re in a, sort of the fourth tech revolution, right? Because first we had the introduction of personal computers, then we had the, the worldwide web and smartphones, like, and the iPhone, and, and right now, large language models and technologies, Microsoft Copilot.

So I, I actually think we’re at a crossroads right now where, Gen AI will co pilot and is about to bring a transformation, not only in our work lives but our personal lives as well. So it is really an exciting time. And I today, the crystal ball, I’d love to have one of those. What do you reckon, Amber?

[41:59] Amber O’Meara: I, I would hope that we can that it will become adopted across the industry so that we can start to sort of shake up the models of firms in terms of being able to have a group of people that are both creative and innovative but also excellent at the services they provide to people.

I think it will I think, well I hope that the wellbeing part of all of this starts to come through as well. I think that Gen AI can be really fantastic to take away some of that pain and mundane and that, that, that. That work that, you know, historically has meant that lawyers spend a lot of hours behind their desk.

And I hope that that starts to filter through, that we see some of those wellbeing metrics get better. But I think it’s really hard to crystal ball because I feel like every week I’m drinking from a fire hydrant, just, you know, there’s just This has come out this week. We have, Tim and I are in a a digital leadership chat and I think, you know, every other day there’s, you know, posting something cool that someone’s seen on Instagram or, you know, this has happened.

I think every week we’re just sort of rolling with the punches and seeing new things come in. But I, I would hope that, you know, Christopher into the future, we’ve got a really comfortable group of people within Minta Ellison’s that are using Gen AI to the best of their ability. And. and helping it make a difference to their, their lives.

[43:21] Tim Andrews: Yeah, I think, I think you’re right. I think it’s, it’s about trying to free up our people and to be market makers of new services and offerings, you know, improving our own digital fluency and to remain competitive as well. And to do things. Faster, maybe cheaper and who knows what, what, what this means for future roles.

I think that’s something

we’re looking at

[43:46] Tim Andrews: as well, right? And what are the roles of the future? So that, that’s an interesting conversation right now too.

[43:52] Amber O’Meara: It’s such a good one. Totally, the roles, because who would have thought, you know, even 15 years ago that, you know, you would have big legal operations teams within firms or, you Automation and Client Services teams, it would be really exciting to see the types of roles that are existing.

I mean, I was so proud the other day to post an AI Engineering lead role, Tim, out of, out of one of our teams. So, you know, I think that’s such a massive step from what I’ve, what I’ve seen. Certainly. So I think that’s really exciting.

[44:21] Tim Andrews: Yeah. And I also think of, you know, adopting a leading edge posture in Gen AI and tools.

Thanks. It also retains and attracts some of the very best talent. And we’ve seen that even more recently with our clerkship and graduate program. And actually we’re, we’re actually going to give all those people access to Copilot, so the latest tools as well. Very nice. Well,

[44:48] Greg Lambert: Amber O’Meara and Tim Andrews of Mentor Ellison.

I want to thank both of you for taking the time to come on and talk with Marlene and me here on The Geek in Review. Thank you.

[44:57] Amber O’Meara: Thanks for having us. Thanks for the great questions.

[45:00] Greg Lambert: And of

[45:03] Marlene Gebauer: 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 LinkedIn.

[45:15] Greg Lambert: And Amber and Tim, uh, we’ll, we’ll put some links on the show notes, but, uh, what’s the best way for people to find out more about what you’re doing there at Mentor Ellison or to, to reach out if they have other questions?

[45:28] Amber O’Meara: LinkedIn. Tim, either you or I, and also Minter Ellison’s LinkedIn page is very, very full of great info.

[45:35] Tim Andrews: Yep. Spot on. Amber, I think, just visit, uh, yep, minterellison. com or just, yeah, reach out to myself, Tim Andrews, or, or Amber, and via LinkedIn.

[45:44] Amber O’Meara: I can send you some links if that helps, Marlene and Greg. Yeah. That would be great. We’ll make sure we put them on there.

[45:49] Marlene Gebauer: We’ll put them up for people. Thanks

[45:50] Amber O’Meara: for having us.

Been so lovely.

[45:53] Marlene Gebauer: You’re so welcome. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry, David Dika, so thank you very much, Jerry.

[45:59] Greg Lambert: Alright, thanks Jerry. Marlene, I’ll talk to you later.

[46:02] Marlene Gebauer: All right, bye-Bye.

Hey, hey, don’t take me away. I could walk home by the North Star. But I fail to notice that it’s still daylight. And the devil’s back from the bar. And the devil’s back from the bar. And the devil’s back from the bar.