This week we welcome Jane Oxley, Chief Revenue Officer at Smokeball, to discuss the pivotal role of communication in legal organizations and how AI is transforming legal practice management. While normally in Australia, we were lucky enough to find Jane while she was working in Chicago, Jane shares her global perspective on communication challenges, bridging time zones, and the creative ways Smokeball leverages technology to streamline law firm operations. Co-host, Greg Lambert kicked off the show by introducing the concept of “Lambert’s Law,” highlighting that “all problems are communication problems,” setting the tone for an insightful discussion on organizational efficiency.
Jane explains how effective communication structures can reveal the health of an organization, whether through Slack’s rapid exchanges or more traditional law firm channels like email and face-to-face meetings. She notes the unique challenges faced by smaller firms, particularly their focus on casework over internal collaboration. Smokeball addresses these needs by integrating AI tools that help firms manage cases, streamline communication, and reduce administrative burdens, allowing lawyers to feel more in control of their workflows.
Jane Oxley and Marlene Gebauer also discuss the role of AI in enhancing productivity and profitability. Jane describes Smokeball’s AI tool, Archie, which helps automate document creation, email drafting, and summarization tasks. With AI handling routine work, lawyers can dedicate more time to client interaction and higher-value tasks. This shift not only increases efficiency but also helps smaller firms bill more accurately for their time—a long-standing challenge in the legal industry.
Addressing the potential impact of AI on the billable hour, Jane shares her perspective on the slow but inevitable shift toward value-based billing. She emphasizes that while AI enhances efficiency, widespread change in billing models requires education and a mindset shift. Some firms have begun experimenting with alternative billing structures, but the transition is gradual and nuanced, varying by practice area. Ultimately, AI tools empower firms to deliver better client service and justify their fees confidently.
Finally, the discussion highlights ethical considerations in adopting AI, particularly regarding client data privacy and regulatory compliance. Jane advises firms to be vigilant in choosing trusted AI providers and implementing safeguards. She predicts that AI will amplify client expectations for efficiency and responsiveness, but the human side of law—empathy, communication, and trust—will remain irreplaceable. By embracing AI to manage routine tasks, firms can focus on delivering exceptional client experiences, making the human element the true winner in this evolving landscape.
Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
Twitter: @gebauerm, or @glambert
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
TRANSCRIPT
Marlene Gebauer (00:07)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gabauer.
Greg Lambert (00:14)
And I’m Greg Lambert, and this week we are happy to have with us Jane Oxley, who’s the Chief Revenue Officer at Smokeball. Jane, you’re normally in Australia, but today you are parked in Chicago, apparently right outside the L, so we may hear a train go by every once in a while. Happy to have you here.
Jane Oxley (00:33)
You may. Thanks, it’s good to be here.
Greg Lambert (00:38)
We’re shifting things up a little bit recently and that we want to do a little bit of banter, but we wanted to bring in our guest on it because it’d be a shame to talk about some things here in the legal technology realm without taking advantage of the wonderful guests that we get in. So I picked today’s subject because one, it was something I listened to on the way into work today, and two, it hits on a point that I say a lot, and that is I have a
the theme of all problems are communication problems, which means that any problem that you have, especially within your organization, you can almost directly link back to the way that you communicate with the folks that are having that issue. But I learned today there’s this thing called Conway’s Law. And I was listening to the podcast, Decoder.
and they had the CEO from GoDaddy, name’s Aman Bhutani, and he talked about when he goes into an organization, he asks for two things. And that is one, last year’s HR data, which is essentially a review of all the employees, and then two, he asked to look at the code structure for that organization, which he deals a lot with more computer code.
But I think even on a broader aspect, I want to look at this as, I would how does a company or an organization communicate, especially across the different verticals of that company? And I think that tells you, as he says, should tell you about 80 % of what that company is made up of. And if it doesn’t tell you that, then they’re just, I’ll clean this up, just making stuff up.
Jane Oxley (02:28)
Hahaha
Marlene Gebauer (02:30)
I feel like a lot of people are listening to this and chuckling, thinking about their own organizations and how communication flows through.
Greg Lambert (02:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, so Jane, let me ask you, if I were to ask you how does Smokeball communicate, that give me about 80 % of how your organization is set up?
Jane Oxley (02:52)
I would say probably yes. And I am also wondering what people would say if they really looked under the hood. We use slack like crazy people at Smokeball. And so they, I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It may seem a little bit chaotic.
because I mean, think we, because we have like our head office is in Australia, but our biggest market is the US and we’ve just started in the UK. So trying to navigate those time zones as well as, you know, all of our product comes out of one place generally, it’s difficult. So I think Slack would be an interesting thing to look at and then.
I mean I think a lot of companies their internal systems grow with them, which ours definitely have, so there’s probably all sorts of weird stuff in there that which would show over communication or under communication in some areas, I’m sure.
Greg Lambert (03:47)
Yeah. Marlene, what do you think about communicating? I’m actually, I’m very pro-select.
Marlene Gebauer (03:54)
going to take a hard pass on talking about my organization, but, but, I do think, you know, just from, from a law firm perspective that I think that the comment is interesting because, you know, in big law, just have people that are spread out Jane, like as, you’ve mentioned, but, perhaps a little more conservative in terms of, how they communicate, using.
you know, things more like email or even in person, you know, whether that’s on video or whether that’s, you know, face to face. I think people, I mean, my experience is that that in firms that is craved, I think just because it’s such a large organization that you do want that kind of human touch.
Greg Lambert (04:42)
Yeah, and I think also one of the things that I point to, and I point back to my old army days, is you use communication to reduce uncertainty in the environment. And I think one of the things that maybe law firms can do very well is setting up the communication through the expectation of workflow.
that everyone understands what their assignments are, that there’s the ability to communicate as you see fit, whether that’s coming from the top down to explain, you know, here’s the strategy that we’re taking on whatever this particular topic may be, but also giving the bottom-up ability to communicate so that as things are happening,
that people feel the ability to be able to communicate and feel comfort in pointing out when something may not be going right or when something may be going super right and being able to communicate that. So Jane, how do you look at communication there at Smokeball?
Jane Oxley (05:47)
Yeah.
I mean, if I look at it through our clients lens, we deal with smaller law firms. And I think what we see is they often focus more on their cases and their matters than their team. And you sort of see it when even like when they’re looking for software, they think about doing the actual work rather than the kind of the umbrella of the organization. So I think.
That is something interesting we’ve leaned into with our product even is to go, know what? Yeah, we’re going to help you manage your cases because that’s what they ask us about. But we’re actually going to kind of tie that all together into a picture of that’s more broad, which actually helps them communicate cross-functionally. And look, not all firms are like it, but I would say a lot of firms we see, you know, they kind of…
They see themselves as practicing law rather than running a business and especially in that smaller space. we try and… I really haven’t changed. Yeah, right. Yeah. So we try and help them. I think that is the thing. Because yeah, it is hugely important. I mean, communication is… for us as a company, it’s always on the agenda, right? You’re always trying to do better. And whenever something goes wrong, it’s…
Greg Lambert (06:53)
Yeah, I don’t think that gets any better with size. Yeah. Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (06:54)
In the bigger space too.
Jane Oxley (07:15)
nearly always about communication.
Greg Lambert (07:18)
Yeah, yeah. So really what I was trying to do here is shift this away from Conway’s law and see if I can get Lambert’s law established here. So all problems are communication problems. We’ll just call that Lambert’s law. It’s got better alliteration in it anyway.
Jane Oxley (07:28)
Yeah
Marlene Gebauer (07:37)
This whole conversation reminds me of a former guest, remember Love is a Business Language, And just again, what they needed to do to change, and Jane, just so you know, it’s like they started out, there was just horrendous communication problems, and everybody was really not in a good space. CEO,
Greg Lambert (07:45)
Mm, yeah.
Marlene Gebauer (08:03)
sort of went to a conference and was transformed and they basically, basically what they learned and what they applied, they put this into this book really good, good lessons about, you know, honesty, but respect and, sort of talking through difficult situations. So.
All right.
Greg Lambert (08:21)
All right, you ready to talk about Smokeball,
Jane Oxley (08:24)
Sure, let’s do it.
Marlene Gebauer (08:27)
right, so before we dive deep into the topic of AI’s effect on profitability of legal services and value-based billing, which we will, tell us a little bit about Smokeball and your role as the chief revenue officer.
Greg Lambert (08:35)
Which we will.
Jane Oxley (08:43)
So Smokeball is a practice management software company. We’re Australian, but our biggest market is the followed by Australia. And we’ve just recently started up in the UK. We’ve been around since about 2013. And I
probably have a reputation for being very good at productivity, very good at client service. And we like to see our clients lead a less stressful life, I think is probably what I would say and make more money doing it, which is definitely in the small end of town when we’re talking about billing and AI is a problem. And my role, so I’m one of the founders and my role isn’t always strictly definable, but
generally the business units report up to me. So like the US business unit reports up to me in the UK business unit. And I’m also very involved in product strategy in how we go to market and kind of exploring different ways to do that. Branding, all sorts of stuff. So I’m never bored. Yeah, and probably master of number.
Marlene Gebauer (09:49)
So you’re like the jack of all trades, really.
Greg Lambert (09:53)
Well, it really boils down to you got to bring in more money, right? I see Chief Revenue Officer, all I see is this is a person that brings in more money.
Jane Oxley (10:03)
Yeah, it’s kind of a joke internally for in a meeting and we start talking about revenue that my ears go. My antennae go up. It’s like, let’s talk about this.
Greg Lambert (10:07)
Ha
So Jane, I wanted to expand that just a little bit. So if I’m one of your clients, Why would I reach out to Smokeball and bring you in? What am I struggling with?
Jane Oxley (10:26)
you’re probably struggling with feeling organised and in control of your day. That is probably the biggest thing, that you’re wanting to kind of get that visibility of what’s going on. We get a lot of people coming to us saying they want an all-in-one platform. And particularly in the small end of town, we happily serve, you know, they really want that core platform where they can get everything done. you know, wanting to feel like you’re in control.
get your work done more efficiently, bill more hopefully, and get a team that all feels they’re on the same page, which is that communication again, it’s gonna come at the same of the day. you have, everyone’s on the same page, you have that communication and you’re actually able to serve your clients better as well. So, I would say people come to us because they’ve spoken to other firms often who are like, you know what, I bought Smokeball for reason.
A, like I wanted to automate, you know, get my documents produced faster. I wanted to manage my emails or I want to do my billing better. But what actually happened six months down the track was that I felt less stressed and more in control and my team were happier. And that is probably the word of mouth that we actually get in the front door is kind of the six month epiphany of life practicing law and running a small law firm could be easier than it is right now.
Greg Lambert (11:46)
So as the CRO there at Smokeball, I’m curious, because we talk a lot of AI here on the podcast, and I’m curious to where you’ve seen AI kind of have its effect, whether it’s in legal practice management or elsewhere in the smaller firms. How are you seeing the smaller firms?
look at what AI brings.
Jane Oxley (12:12)
So I mean obviously for me the easiest lens is through our client base and I would say that I have been surprised at the level
in AI straight out of the box. There’s definitely, we definitely have the extremes. have, you know, I’ve spoken to one firm who’s like, we have decided we are not touching anything AI, so please don’t talk to us about it. To the other extreme who are like, please can we talk to you because we’re doing this on ChatGPT team, we’ve set up these things and we’ve loaded all our cases into this and you’re like, okay. So we have to kind of look at all the markets, but I mean,
Greg Lambert (12:37)
Yeah.
Jane Oxley (12:52)
they’re definitely hyper aware of it even in the small space and they’re interested in seeing what it’s going to do from them and I think it’s great because I mean some of the questions you’ve got today it’s making them think about efficiency in a way that I think a lot of small businesses haven’t done before which is a good
Marlene Gebauer (13:10)
Do you find, do you find that they, you there there’s interest, but do you find that they, kind of truly understand, you know, some of the nuances of, know, say gen AI versus AI. mean, I’m hearing, you know, firms are saying, we’re not going to touch this. It’s like, you’re, you’re already touching it. You know, if you, if you have word, you’re already touching it, but, know, do they understand kind of those, those nuances, are they, you know, eager to learn that.
Jane Oxley (13:28)
Yeah.
They definitely generally don’t understand the nuances, but I think they are interested in learning. And we’ve seen, you know, a huge up, like we’ve had the biggest webinars we’ve ever had in the last few months with just such, you know, strong level of interest and people being like, please explain it to me. And also please show me what it does. And I think when they’re scared, it’s all about their client data, right? That’s at the end of the day, that’s what they’re really worried about.
they’re curious and they’re a little bit worried, but they kind of, they understand that it’s here and it’s here to stay, which is good, really.
Greg Lambert (14:15)
Yeah. Are you able to leverage that curiosity? Because sometimes again, they may come in with a curiosity that is spurned on by just what they think AI can do. And then you can come in and go, you know, really what you’re needing is A, B, and C. And that’s what we’re providing. That’s that level of comfort and workflow that you need.
And that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with AI, but it’s giving them an opportunity to kind of ask those questions. Are you finding that at these webinars?
Jane Oxley (14:56)
Yeah, yes, 100%. It’s really interesting because…
Our client base has gone from like, you we often talk about that, you know, like if you asked a client what they wanted that they’d want a faster horse, not a car. I’ve just totally wrecked that saying, but our clients have gone from being like that largely, anyone who’s listening, not you, other people, but to being like, can Smokeball make my lunch and clean the house and like do everything. So it’s incredible that we’ve got this
Marlene Gebauer (15:20)
You
Jane Oxley (15:31)
on Slack, this AI question channel coming through from clients that a lot of us are on. And it’s incredible just to see how our clients’ minds have opened up to the possibilities of how their work life could be. So I think that is a hugely beneficial thing. And it’s inspiring us to go, huh, could we do that? We probably could do that. So yeah, it’s actually kind of becoming this very positive.
positive cycle of change for us and our clients. Already.
Marlene Gebauer (16:01)
So I just thought of this question, and I’m really curious to hear what you have to say about this, because you work with sort of smaller firms. And I’m curious in terms of the efficiencies that, know, GenAI tools are, you know, kind of bringing know, to these law firms. You know,
A small firm, it’s, you know, once you get a lot of these efficiencies, then I think it might have a significant impact, say, on staffing or on the bottom line. And I’m wondering kind of what you see, you know, in terms of your experience, you know, with your clients, because it sounds it seems like, I mean, what I’ve read is that, projecting
staffing might be impacted, but in the long run, it’s going to allow them to do more work or even expand into different areas and then possibly bring on more people.
Jane Oxley (16:59)
Yeah, I think all those things are true. But what I would say in our client base we generally see is that our clients are too busy a lot of the time. they get to, once they kind of get past that solo size, in that solo space, there’s a whole lot of stuff going on. That’s a very interesting market in the US.
and there’s definitely people who are looking for work, but in our client base generally, people have too much work. And we see that their staff are too busy, again, they’re too busy to do the communication side of things and actually the human side of law, which I think is gonna be the winner in this.
I think this is just gonna help them do their work better, serve their clients better. And with the bottom line, I’m not actually not so worried about that for our clients. do when you, if you look at any of the studies of, know, one to…
they say 40 use a law firm, the average billing is around two hours per day per fee earner. And you know, that’s horrible, right? It’s horrible. And they’re doing far more work than that. So my hope is that with AI, they’re actually going to go, you know what, I am using these tools to get my work done so efficiently, I’m actually gonna feel good about billing for all of my time.
And so hopefully it will get to the point where, you know, leveraging technology, they can just kind of do the work and let the software almost look after everything else behind the scenes when it comes to billing. So.
My feeling is it’s actually going to help client service win and hopefully the law firms will actually make a bit more money because they’ll actually feel good about billing for their time because billing in a small law firm is just so different to big law. You talk to a lot of our clients and you go, how many hours are your staff billing per day? And they’ll go, I have no idea, but they’re working very hard.
They’re working very hard and you’re like, that’s great. But how much money are making out of these people? So I think I just see benefits around it. Honestly, do think that the I having worked in a couple of different markets, the UK market and the Australian market.
Marlene Gebauer (18:55)
this.
Jane Oxley (19:12)
for various reasons, think also partly through the technology that was available a really long time ago, those markets actually adopted a lot of productivity software a long time ago. So you see those firms really focused and those markets really focused on getting work done efficiently. So AI is just kind of the cherry on top. Whereas in the US, I feel like there’s a lot of small law firms who really they focused on the time and billing side of things and not on productivity. So I think this is actually just bringing productivity to the fore.
in the US market, which is going to be great, great for small law firms. think hopefully they’ll actually end up making more money and feeling good about it. I love saying feeling good about it because they’re servicing people, right? They’re not servicing big corporations and that’s part of the weird psychology of billing in a small law firm. Feel good about it, their clients feel good about it. Winner, winner, hopefully.
Marlene Gebauer (20:07)
Okay, and that actually segues nicely into my next question. you know, with AI is enhancing, you know, legal work how do you envision, will it impact like a transition from billable hours to value-based billing?
Jane Oxley (20:25)
Yeah, so we’ve been thinking about this a lot. think I was really hot on this six months ago. was like everything’s gonna change.
Marlene Gebauer (20:36)
So was I. was like, it’s the end, it’s the end. And they’re like, no, it’s not.
Greg Lambert (20:37)
Yeah.
Jane Oxley (20:41)
No, changes. So yeah, I mean, I kind of made some notes for this and I was like, business model shifts are not fast. But I do think, you know, because when I started talking to a couple of clients about this, it’s like, you can move away from the billable hour and they’re like, yeah, we’re going to start charging by the page or by the email. And I’m like, that’s not value. That’s not value. And so it’s just, there’s a very…
Greg Lambert (21:08)
Sounds very 1990s.
Jane Oxley (21:10)
I know, it’s just a limited understanding of what value is. I do think that consumers are pushing this barrow, right? And they have been for a long time. Consumers don’t want an hourly rate, they want certainty and you do see it creeping in.
do think that increases in productivity are going to make firms more confident in doing this, but my biggest piece for this is education. think they need, and it’s quite different per practice area, right? I think family law, for example, it’s a tricky area. It’s a tricky area. You never know how a matter is going to go. value is, it’s hard to, it’s a little bit intangible sometimes in some of these practice areas. So I think there’s areas where it will be.
easier to implement than others and obviously you see that in estate planning and someone has already moved a lot to fix fee. But I do think it’s going to creep out wider and I think the tools, the AI and the tools around them are going to help them feel more confident once they kind of see how to do it, we’ve got, like I know I firm in
a firm who does a really good job in family law of kind of scoping it out, a work almost like she’s doing a building project for her clients. And then if something goes sideways at some point, just as an ability project, she’ll re-scope.
So, you know, there’s different ways to do it, which is that value? I’m not sure. And then you’ve got, you know, people like Sean Jardine in the UK who is doing some great education on how to do value-based billing and how he’s kind of published this whole workbook, which is really impressive on how to do it. So I think it is going to push the industry that way. It has gradually been shifting that way for a long time, but I don’t think it’s like…
magical overnight.
Greg Lambert (23:07)
Well, we can’t talk AI or even value-based models, I think, without talking about the ethical considerations that come along with this type of especially when we’re dealing with things like client confidentiality, the data that’s involved, regulatory issues. I’m sure there’s a ton of things.
What kind of ethical concerns are you hearing from your clients around this type of change?
Jane Oxley (23:41)
I think, well you know we’ve got that spectrum as I said of people who won’t even touch it because they’re so concerned even though as Marlene said they’re using it every day. Again I think this is an education piece. think…
It’s understanding what you can do and what you can’t do. Looking to all the bar associations are saying to publish really good guides and checklists around what to look for and what to do. So I think that’s a good area to lean into. I mean, there’s common sense, right? Don’t put your client data into an open AI model. I know clients of ours who’ve done that and type showing us all the wonderful things that it’s done for them. And we’re like, you know what, put it in our one because it’s, you know, it’s in a nice little ring fenced.
environment. It’s not going to go anywhere else. So I think
little bit of education, choosing your providers carefully. you know I think a lot of law firms hopefully will have someone like us or similar where they’ve got
a trusted provider who has a lot of their data, because that’s the thing, you’ve got to the data for it to be useful. And then definitely look at your staff, because what I also see is that AI tools can sneak into a law firm, especially in a smaller law firm, and your staff can start using different tools without you even knowing about it. So really getting a handle on that and making sure that you as a business owner are controlling what your staff are doing.
and knowing what tools they’re using and directing them a certain way. One of our favorite terms at Smokeball as well is trust but verify. So once you’re actually using the tools, not trust the outcome. You need to verify. need to, you’re a lawyer. You have a duty of care. You need to verify the work.
So they’re kind of, and I think what we are saying again, this isn’t quite, not just an ethical thing, but start using it for…
less dangerous things, I would say. you’re dipping your toe into using AI, don’t go straight into extreme legal research or trying to get it to draft a complex affidavit for you. It’s not the right place for it right now. And look, legal research is coming along, I’m seeing, you know, hallucinations, I’m seeing all sorts of stories. Yeah, there’s a lot work to be done.
Marlene Gebauer (26:05)
work to be done.
Greg Lambert (26:07)
Well, yeah, and legal research was probably the hardest thing to address with AI, and it was like the first thing they tried to address, which, you know, welcome to legal. Let’s eat the elephant all at once.
Jane Oxley (26:21)
Yeah, so we’ve gone the opposite direction, right? We’ve gone like, you know what? What’s the stuff you do all day, every day? Let’s use AI to help with that.
Marlene Gebauer (26:31)
You have clientele in Australia, you clientele in the UK, you have clientele in the US. So all of those regions have different regulatory schemas. So I’m wondering how does that impact your business and what you can and can’t do or how you approach clients?
Jane Oxley (26:52)
I’m seeing is that…
it’s all pretty similar. And you’ll see like you, UK Lawyers reading US Bar Association stuff and like it’s all spreading everywhere. So I think I don’t see a huge difference in how it’s being applied and how the recommendations are forming. Australia has just released, I know I’ve not read it in detail, but
may get this wrong, but I think it was the Chief Justice of the Family Law Court in Australia who said you cannot use AI for drafting certain documents, certain key documents. So that’s the first time I’ve seen really specific do not do cases come out.
So that is going to be interesting to see how that proceeds around the world. It doesn’t affect us too much because we’re really not leaning into that side as much. We’re much more leaning into more of the repetitive work or the drafting your emails that you’re doing all day, every day, kind of stuff, summarizing documents and then actually just kind of tying it into your workflow.
Marlene Gebauer (28:00)
Can you share some specific examples of how AI powered tools in Smokeball software help lawyers focus on the high value work while streamlining the administrative tasks?
Jane Oxley (28:15)
what we’ve really leaned into is our tool Archie. And Archie, I think one of our staff the other day said, I think the whole theme of everything is never start from scratch again. you shouldn’t have to start from scratch with your routine documents and emails that you’re doing all day, every day. So one thing that Smokeball’s always
been really good at is not just giving you case management but also integrating it through to Word and Outlook because we know that usually the output of what you’re doing is to create an email, to create a document, send some sort of communication out into the world.
And that’s why people love our software because it kind of really streamlines that process. So what we’ve kind of done is put our AI tool Archie kind of into the heart of that to go actually go there first and you can go, you know what, I’ve got this report, summarize the content of that report and then automatically turn that into an email and send that out the door. So I think it’s using AI to speed up
those kind of communications and then actually embed it into your workflow so that you’re getting your work done faster than ever before. So our clients are using
to draft, know, you’re sending out 100 emails a day or maybe say 50 emails a day in response to things, you can use Archie to get those done in a fraction of the time you’re doing before as well as using it to, you know, summarise the status of something, summarise a document.
and format it an appropriate way. and that’s probably the biggest use case we’re seeing, getting those documents out the door or querying where a case is up to based on every document, every email, every communication on the matter. So our clients are loving that as well.
I just had a look before we came on today and there’s like 100, we’ve only had it out for four months and there’s about 150,000 questions already been asked in Archie. So the uptake is really, really high. So it’s definitely hit a nerve. also looking at how to use it in all different, I mean, I think, as you said, Marlene, AI is everywhere. It’s embedded into everything we do.
I think the reality is that every part of a software is going to be impacted by AI over time. and that’s really what our development teams are doing, are going, how can we use AI to help with this function or this function? So one we did recently was intake forms. you look
Marlene Gebauer (30:58)
you
Jane Oxley (31:02)
Our clients will often have like literally a PDF which is like here’s all the pieces of information. I’m plotting up a piece of paper which is very helpful in a podcast. Here are all the pieces of information that we need to get going on a case and you can actually just take a picture of that or scan that into Smokeball and we will turn it into an intake form and create all the fields for you mapped to the fields in Smokeball. So that’s pretty awesome. Another thing we’re doing, I mean I won’t talk all day about all the different.
Marlene Gebauer (31:28)
Mm-hmm.
Jane Oxley (31:32)
that our clients are using it or will be using it but one of the our clients favorite features in Smokeball is Auto Time which is basically using our
It’s not AI, but a lot of our clients think it’s AI. We actually track everything that everyone does in our software all day, every day. And because, as I was saying before, our clients use us as their kind of core platform to not just manage case data, but manage their documents, their emails, all their communications out and in, their internal messaging, their events. We…
We can see what they’ve done all day. about five years ago, we developed this thing called Auto Time where we go, know, here’s your time, here’s your time sheet, here’s all your time entries. We know what you did. And our clients love it. And because of that, they’re billing more, which is great. But what we saw just after launching it was that our clients then spend an hour every day changing every description of every time entry to be very, very hyper-specific because
Greg Lambert (32:33)
you
Jane Oxley (32:37)
that is the proof, the tangible proof of the work they’ve done. So we’re now working on AI to actually do that last piece and we’ll even learn from the way that they’ve worded their time entries in the past, whether they peruse documents or read documents or whatever they do, so that they can hopefully just do the work and we will bill it for them.
if they will trust us to do that, which they weren’t completely, most mostly. Yes. So, yes.
Marlene Gebauer (33:07)
I think they will. think anything they can get out of having to build time is a good thing in their eyes.
Jane Oxley (33:12)
I know, no one likes it.
So yeah, I mean that was a long answer, but I think what we’re seeing right now is using it to summarize documents, create emails, and then create documents. And I guess the last piece, we’re kind of developing templates because…
Greg Lambert (33:16)
Yep.
Jane Oxley (33:33)
One of the questions before you’re kind of alluding to like people not really knowing what to do with AI and we see that as well. People come in and they kind of like, what prompt should I write? we, a lot of our clients will be like, summarize this case. And you’re like, well, maybe you could.
be a little bit more helpful than just summarize this case. So we’re actually building templates in the background that go when someone says summarize this case and it’s a family law divorce, actually run these 10 prompts and format them this way so that they get an output that they’re like, holy moly, this is incredible. So we’re actually just kind of trying to go most people are not prompt.
Marlene Gebauer (34:15)
That’s awesome.
Jane Oxley (34:21)
kings and queens and we know what output they’re trying to get because we have legal IP on our team at Smokeball so we can go this is actually what the right answer that they wanted so then it becomes more repeatable process for them that they’re happy with.
Greg Lambert (34:39)
Yeah, a couple of observations as you were talking. One, never underestimate the lawyer still wanting to wordsmith their time entries. And then two, anything that’s viewed as magic right now is going to be viewed as AI. So whether it’s AI or not, I think if they see it as magic. So if you somehow miraculously come up with their time entries and they don’t know how you’ve done that.
that obviously is magic or AI, so.
Jane Oxley (35:11)
It’s definitely, I completely agree.
Marlene Gebauer (35:12)
Thanks
Greg Lambert (35:15)
Well, Jane, you said something earlier, and that was with all of this change, whether it’s in workflow or AI, you said the human side of law is going to be the winner. And I really, really liked the way that you phrased that. So when we talk about the human side and the lawyers on the human side of things,
Again, we talked about there’s this nervousness that increased AI adoption may actually cut into the profitability of a firm over time. sounds like you give a lot of your firms kind of advice as well on their business structure. So what kind of strategies do you kind of recommend that they do to maintain profitability in this type of paradigm shift?
Jane Oxley (36:07)
I think they need to lean into the human side and remember that that’s actually why people come to them. So, you know, when you are going to a lawyer, you’re actually thinking about generally the kind of crappy situation you might be in at the time, right, often. And what you want is someone who’s going to make you feel better about it and make you feel like they’ve got this
they’re going to get you through whatever is going on. And look, it’s not always terrible. But even if it’s, you know, contract stuff, it’s still stressful stuff. And it’s still very important stuff. Generally, when you’re going to a lawyer, it’s because there’s something significant that is going on in your life or in your business. And we know that the majority of complaints against lawyers are around communication, right?
client base in small law is so busy all day every day, that is kind of often the piece that suffers. I make this joke when I’m inducting new team members that they come back from court and they have 15 phone calls to return or emails or whatever and they only have time to reply to the ones that have smoke coming off them. I think hopefully lawyers need to remember that,
That is actually really the value that they bring. It’s not the document. It’s not all those things that are going to be quicker and faster to output, which is fantastic. And it’s the stuff they generally don’t feel good about billing for in the first place. That is what I see. We’ll see clients who don’t bill for half the emails they do on a date, which not realizing that it took them two hours of their time.
my feeling is lean into helping your clients. That is why most people went to law school. They went into law school to help people and make the world a bit of a better place. So lean into that. And don’t forget that that is the value you bring and see how you change your business model to give your clients more time. Because generally they want more time from you, not less.
Marlene Gebauer (38:15)
So Jane, looking into your crystal ball, how do you anticipate AI reshaping client expectations regarding legal services over the next couple years? And how can law firms proactively adapt to meet these evolving demands?
Jane Oxley (38:32)
You know, because you gave me the sneak peek of the crystal ball, my answer is actually exactly what I just said. That was going to be my answer because I think that’s what it is. The client expectations, they’re going to know that they can go to ChatGPT and get a paragraph to deal with XYZ and people are already doing that, right? But.
What they can’t go to chat GPT for right now is getting someone to hold their hand. So I think…
Making sure that they are focused on client service, making their clients feel like they found the best lawyer in the whole world that is going to deal with their issues, I think is genuinely what they should lean into and use AI to get all the other stuff done as quickly as possible so they can still feel good about billing for their work, their clients feel better about the lawyer they’ve chosen, and I think it’s going to be a win-win if we can make
that happen.
Greg Lambert (39:35)
All right, well, glad you got to answer that one twice.
Jane Oxley (39:41)
Repetition is important in communication. Yeah, exactly.
Greg Lambert (39:43)
It is, it is. Well, Jane Oxley, the Chief Revenue Officer at Smokeball, I want to thank you very much for coming in and talking to us on the Geek in Review.
Marlene Gebauer (39:44)
site. Everybody will remember now.
Jane Oxley (39:55)
It’s absolute pleasure to meet with you both.
Marlene Gebauer (39:58)
And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners, for taking the time to listen to the Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you, so reach out to us on LinkedIn.
Greg Lambert (40:09)
And Jane, we’ll put the links on the show notes, but what’s the best way for people to reach out and learn more about you or Smokeball if they have any questions?
Jane Oxley (40:19)
I’m on LinkedIn, there’s not that many Jane Oxley’s out there so you can definitely find me on LinkedIn and connect with me, I would love that. Alternatively you can always visit www.smokeball.com to learn more about what we do.
Marlene Gebauer (40:32)
Thank you very much, Jane. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you, Jerry.
Greg Lambert (40:39)
All right, thanks, Jerry. Talk to you later, Marlene.
Marlene Gebauer (40:41)
Okay, bye.