This week, Greg Lambert sits down with Tom Dunlop, CEO and founder of Summize, and Laura Proctor, Chief Marketing Officer, to explore the evolution and impact of Summize in the contract lifecycle management (CLM) space. From its innovative beginnings to its strategic positioning in a competitive market, this discussion unveils the strategies, challenges, and future trends shaping legal technology.
Tom Dunlop shares the frustrations that sparked the idea for Summize, recounting his days as an in-house lawyer overwhelmed by the manual review of locked PDF contracts during due diligence. “It was painstaking,” Tom recalls, “I knew there had to be a better way.” Teaming up with a software engineer, he sought to create a tool that could generate instant, usable summaries of contracts. Thus, Summize was born, tackling not only legal pain points but also bridging communication gaps between legal teams and broader business units.
Laura Proctor highlights Summize’s unique approach to embedding its tools within widely used platforms like Microsoft Word, Slack, and Teams. This strategy ensures lawyers and business users can collaborate seamlessly without leaving their existing workflows. “Why ask lawyers to leave Word when they already love working there?” Laura explains, emphasizing Summize’s commitment to user-centric design. This integration not only enhances efficiency but also shifts the perception of legal teams from bottlenecks to enablers.
Central to Summize’s implementation is their “Hero Framework,” a three-step process designed to reduce legal bottlenecks, enhance efficiency, and track progress with actionable analytics. Tom explains, “We focus on reducing low-value, high-volume tasks, enabling self-service for the business, and then optimizing legal workflows.” This framework has even led to unexpected benefits, such as elevating the “personal brand” of legal teams within organizations.
Laura delves into the differences between US and UK markets, noting that US buyers often have prior experience with CLM tools, while UK customers may be making their first purchase. This distinction shapes Summize’s marketing and implementation strategies, with a focus on ensuring rapid time-to-value and addressing previous pain points. “In the US, it’s about reassurance and quick wins,” she explains, highlighting the importance of tailoring approaches to meet varying customer needs.
Looking ahead, Tom envisions a future where AI moves beyond single tasks to orchestrate complex workflows, potentially disrupting the billable hour model and democratizing access to legal knowledge. “If we can monetize legal knowledge rather than time, we could 10x the market,” he predicts. Laura adds that Summize will continue leaning into creativity and differentiation in an increasingly crowded market, ensuring their solutions remain bold and memorable.
This episode is a deep dive into the innovative strategies that are redefining CLM and the broader legal tech landscape. From the practical application of AI to enhancing legal collaboration, Summize offers a glimpse into the transformative potential of technology in the legal world.
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Blue Sky: @glambertpod @marlgeb
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
TRANSCRIPT
Greg Lambert (00:07)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Greg Lambert, and I am flying solo this week, although maybe Marlene will join us in a little bit. On this week’s episode, we are joined by Tom Dunlop
The founder and CEO is Summize and Laura Proctor, Summize’s chief marketing officer. So Tom and Laura, welcome to the Geek in Review.
Tom Dunlop (00:33)
Thank you for having us.
Laura Proctor (00:34)
Indeed.
Greg Lambert (00:35)
So before we jump in and talk about your work there at Summize, I sat in on a live demo presentation yesterday, and it was hosted by the National Law Journal. Wickard AI was the sponsor, and even a Geek in Review guest, this, where they had, I think it was 13,
teen startups and they gave them each eight minutes to do a live presentation. there’s a mixed bag of results whenever you have live presentations, there’s always something that goes right and something that goes wrong. so I wanted to, while I had Laura and Tom here, kind of talk about what happened there and then get their feedback on some things that they do and maybe even some…
war stories along the way as well if they don’t mind. So let me just kind of say a couple of things that went right, which I think the startups did a great job of going straight to here is the key to our product. So they hit you first with the thing that would be most relevant to the audience.
A lot of them hit on good example, relevant examples for their audience. So this was mostly law firm, maybe some in-house folks that were looking at the product. So they focused on use cases that fit that audience. And even though, again, eight minutes, not a lot of time, I think a lot of them were well-scripted, but not…
not sounding robotic at the same time that you could kind of tell. One, they knew the product, they did good demonstrations, and they could follow the script even when, the product may have went off script during. Now, let me tell you some things that went poorly, and then we’ll jump into the conversation. So again, eight minutes, not a lot of time, and almost everyone, you could tell.
still had about eight minutes of content that they wanted to cover when their eight minutes ran live demonstrations where you’re using the product live is really risky. And it’s high risk, high reward, but it’s also a high chance of failure. And there was a little bit of both of that. think there were some folks that it was good to kind of see the product.
kind of churn and how quickly it came back. But sometimes it wasn’t good to see how long it took to get some of the things back. And that little circle, spinning circle is never a good thing when you’re in a presentation. I did, there was one poor presenter that, you know, they ran out of time, but for some reason their video stayed up so you could still see them while the next…
vendor had come in to present and you could just kind of see the energy leaving the poor fellow’s face and it wasn’t until the other person started sharing their screen that they were finally let off the hook and were able to leave. I’m sure you guys have been in similar situations, whether it’s in a group that’s presenting at a…
Tom Dunlop (03:29)
No.
Greg Lambert (03:49)
a conference or online or even if you’re given time in front of an in-house team or law firm team. Laura, let me start with you. When you are sending poor Tom out to do a demo, what kind of advice do you have when you have time limitations?
Laura Proctor (04:08)
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I totally feel the pain of the people that were demoing because we all know that a hundred times it would have gone right. And then the one time you didn’t a live demo, something goes wrong. And it’s usually things outside of your control, like the internet or, know, you don’t necessarily know the qualities of the venue. So I would say one thing that we’ve tried is just doing a screen recording beforehand. So the delivery is still live. So you’re still.
sort of talking somebody through the journey, but at least you’ve got the assurance that nothing’s going to go wrong on the day. So I think forward preparation in that sense, it’s still, you know, it’s not an edited version of the product. It’s still a live kind of experience, but you’re not reliant on those technology issues. So that’s probably my marketing top tip just to stop the, the anxiety beforehand.
Greg Lambert (04:42)
I like that.
Yeah, that’s
actually a great idea because I have also seen like we, Marlene and I do a thing every year usually for this, there’s a SKILLS conference that Oz [Benamram] puts on in New York. And there’s a pre-conference that they do where they have the actual presentation itself is totally pre-recorded.
And so that way it’s set, you know, it definitely fits within a certain timeframe. And I was having a conversation with some others about this and suggested that and they were like, yeah, but that kind of takes away from some of the, know, the, especially if you have audience participation. And so Laura, you’re, think that idea, I hadn’t even thought of that, of having the actual part where the product is performing.
Laura Proctor (05:36)
Yeah.
Exactly.
Greg Lambert (05:50)
that that part is pre-recorded so that you know exactly what’s going on and you’re not subject to the whims of the internet on any given Tuesday.
Laura Proctor (05:59)
Exactly. Yeah, and you can still
pause it, you know, if you need to extend the conversation. But yeah, that would be my first tip. And then the second thing is, you know, generally people only remember three main points. So in the eight minutes, I’d just say what are the three things that you want people to remember and just really hone in on those. That’d be my top advice.
Greg Lambert (06:19)
Good, good. So Tom, have you had any experience where things went well or went off the rails?
Tom Dunlop (06:20)
Yeah, I’ve been there.
A lot of experience with both, think. I think one of, I’ll start with an experience that didn’t go so well, which was actually less to do with technical challenges. I remember one, we tried to be quite creative in the delivery of our talk using props to illustrate the point and to really engage the audience. Cause it was that kind of, events where they were trying to make it entertaining as well as, you know, the content you were trying to deliver. So I had a number of props and.
I’m pretty sure that kind of three out of the four props just went wrong. Like I dropped a piece of paper which was meant to kind of illustrate a contract that was really long and it fell off the stage. I went to pick up another prop that basically I dropped and it kind of broke. And so even though it was less to do with technical, you kind of don’t foresee that those kind of issues are going to happen. But I think my overall thing is with the various gone well is actually
I mean, there’s so much advice out there and I’ve been, you know, whether you’re pitching to investors or whether you’re pitching to clients or whether you’re pitching to, you know, potential prospects about what you should cover, how you should approach it. And I think that’s almost the problem is that a lot of people focus on the content to fit, you know, almost like a mold that they believe they should follow in a particular order. And then they script it accordingly. The, the, honestly, the best times I’ve had are the best pitches that I’ve had, has been when I’ve told the best story when I’ve
related to as many people in the audience as I can. my background being a, for our products, my background being a lawyer, if I spent more time just talking about the pain that I had as a lawyer, which led to Summize naturally I’d build a much better rapport with the audience. Even if I don’t really mention the functionality of Summize, they’ll remember that I was a lawyer, that I felt a pain, that they felt a connection with me. that actually, nine times out of 10, is going to stand in a much better stead than…
demoing all the features of your products and worrying about squeezing that into the time. So I think that’s really important. I actually now follow a different methodology, less to do with scripting, according to slides. I kind of follow this thing called, what I call it, like the five peaks, where I start off with a bit of a, whether it be a statement or some kind of curiosity statement, bring them into the conversation, get them thinking, why have I just said that? Or it’s a fact or a figure. Then I’ll do the three points, as Laura said, and I’ll try and like…
Laura Proctor (08:22)
Mm.
Tom Dunlop (08:48)
hone my conversation around those three points and then I’ll reinforce the three points and kind of some kind of closing statement which reinforces that first statement that I mentioned. So I kind of eight minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, as long as I know that I’m covering off those five points, kind of what happens in between, I’m quite relaxed to kind of freestyle it a little bit because I know that that’s going to be the key is storytelling, getting the three points across, strong close, open, strong close and…
it’s pretty much always going to go well in that environment.
Greg Lambert (09:20)
Excellent, excellent. Yeah, I just remember a presentation I did and actually it was just in my office where I had put some audio in on a presentation and gave it to the IT people and the marketing people and then they loaded up the wrong one and it had no audio. And I was like, no.
Laura Proctor (09:42)
You
Greg Lambert (09:49)
So sometimes, and it wasn’t me, it wasn’t audio of me, it was audio of other people. So it wasn’t like I could just step in and say, well, know, Sarah said this. so, yeah, you know, the nice thing about this is, know, nothing ever goes as planned. And it’s usually some of that going off script that actually has the biggest impact.
I think so, as long as you know your topic, you know your audience, I think you know what your three takeaways are going to be. I think even if everything else went wrong, as long as you know those three things, I think you’ll be fine.
Laura Proctor (10:36)
And even if it goes wrong, it’s memorable and we’re talking about it, right? So any PR is good PR as they say.
Greg Lambert (10:39)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Dunlop (10:39)
Yeah, this is it.
Greg Lambert (10:45)
All right. Well, thank you both for going on that little side trip with me. So let’s now talk about Summize. So Tom, Samayis is, I’ve heard it referred to as a nice game changer in the contract lifestyle management space. So you mind kind of going back in time and telling the story of starting the company?
And the question I like to ask, especially founders, is if I’m your customer, what’s the problem I was facing that led me to seek you out?
Tom Dunlop (11:23)
Yeah, definitely. So, well, I guess for some context, my background, I guess, prior to SMI was being a lawyer for a number of years, so I was an in-house lawyer, worked in primarily tech businesses. So I guess day-to-day experienced to some extent all the pain that a CLM now addresses. But I think the specific, I guess, frustration or lightbulb moment really was
quite a narrow focus. As with most SaaS products, usually start with a relatively narrow focus that then grows into something bigger. at the time I was the GC at a software company, we were going through a due diligence, essentially a transaction, and I was having to manually review hundreds of contracts which were signed locked PDFs. And I was essentially manually going through these different documents. I couldn’t search them because they were locked.
And I was trying to find the same three, four things that mattered, understanding the key risks in those contracts. So I was literally, you know, some I was printing out the highlighter, some I was trying to do on screen with a PDF and scrolling. I was creating an Excel spreadsheet on a different screen. then painstakingly we’d go through these, you know, 100 page MSAs to pull out these provisions. So it took me about three months alongside my day job.
to try and get this job done. Almost the most frustrating thing was at the end of that process, I realized that my naming convention in terms of what I wrote as the answers in the spreadsheet actually didn’t really make any sense. For one of them I was kind of, is there indemnity? Yes. The next one would be like, yes for IP. And the next one I’d be like, kind of one way. None of it was consistent that it was actually necessarily usable data going forward.
It was at that point that I kind of spoke to my co-founder, who was a senior software engineer at the time, and was basically like, how can we create a really usable summary of a contract in seconds? And that was very much where the name comes from in terms of SMISE. And the first kind of real use case that we were looking to address was creating instant summaries of signed contracts was the initial idea. But I think that the key thing was I also worked in a fast-paced, you
Greg Lambert (13:38)
Yeah.
Tom Dunlop (13:43)
tech business. I also experienced the pain of pre-signature review negotiation. It’s just that I guess that wasn’t necessarily the catalyst for our first product.
Greg Lambert (13:53)
Yeah. On the summarization, as an attorney that’s working with the documents, what were you seeing as the value of creating that summary?
Tom Dunlop (14:08)
think there was twofold really. So one was, you know, at the time, a very quick way to get an understanding of both risk and opportunity and contracts from a legal perspective, because I, you that was kind of my job. I was kind of the safeguarder of risk, but also I’d like to think of myself as being kind of the gatekeeper to some opportunity in certain contractual relationships that we had and contracts fundamentally underpin every important relationship that drives value in a business. So it was very much kind of
for me, was an enabler to do my job at the best way I could. But I think the other thing that I found was the rest of the business didn’t understand contracts. They didn’t understand legal language. They would ask me a very natural language question and I’d almost have to act as a bit of a translator between the contracts and them. So there was one way, which was for my own personal use, but I think the biggest thing that we found by doing the product was how can we create a product that the business could use and how could we turn legal language into a natural language usable summary.
that they didn’t need that kind of intermediate translator being the lawyer there to explain what it even means. So they were probably the two biggest, I guess, areas that we focused on or realized was the big benefit.
Greg Lambert (15:21)
Yeah, so you’ve got this idea, you’re lucky enough to have a friend who’s a software engineer that you can go and pull in for your initial vision. So how did that start off, how well did it go? And then once you’ve kind of realized that sort of vision, did the vision of Summize expand?
after that, what’s kind of the current vision that you have as well?
Tom Dunlop (15:54)
Yeah, so it’s an interesting question. think most people, you know, particularly if you’ve not started a business, but you’ve got good ideas, I think a lot of people really wait till they’ve crafted the idea to perfection. I think that that’s the most important step. Whereas every business that I’ve seen or spoken to or that I guess been involved with never goes like that. You start with a pretty narrow vision. You get to the point where you work that out. You speak to customers, you attain customers, and then from there, whether you pivot or focus or…
expand. So for us, you know, we quickly realized that we were becoming a project tool essentially. So we were uploading people learning contracts, we’d summarize them, they were like, great, now what, you know, are you our contract management system, are you a project management system? And we sold to both law firms and in-house legal teams. So we really quickly realized that we needed to focus on one of those sectors, but also be a bit more holistic. So people understood where we sat, I guess, in their, you know, tech stack. So
That’s where we were focused on contract management and the in-house legal world. So I think the vision then became, you know, we’d want to be a holistic kind of tool for in-house lawyers to deal with their contracts and their wider business as well. So we very much leaned into developing precincture functionality, primarily through Microsoft Word, but also drafting capabilities. Just so basically every touch point with a contract, we were there.
And that was from inception through to signature. And I think that became kind of that next vision for Summize I think, where has that developed to today? Well, one of the unique things about Summize, I guess, is that we decided very early on that we needed to embed our intelligence or experience into tools that people use. We know that a lot of the business touch contracts, and we don’t want to make the entire business adopt a legal tool, as it were, or a contract tool. So a lot of the emphasis we’ve always
put on is how can we make sales, create contracts without ever coming to Summize.com or marketing or whatever business division may be. So I think now what’s been interesting about our vision is it’s very much, we have a great relationship with the ultimate business user as a software product. It’s not just legal. We actually have a direct relationship with business users as well as legal users and they never go to Summize.com.
The vision is, actually, could we expand our functionality and be more relevant to the whole office of the CFO? Could we actually orchestrate processes across any document that’s relevant to finance, IT, HR, procurement, and legal? And I think that we’re realizing with quite a unique approach, we could own the business user relationship, but also orchestrate processes across all those different functions. So, yeah, it’s definitely expanded over time from being a point tool for one use case, full CLM to…
essentially a lot bigger than that.
Greg Lambert (18:44)
Yeah, well, I think that segue is nice. Laura, I love bringing in the CMOs because it’s one thing to talk about the development and what spurred the idea behind it. I would say probably prior to November 2022, before AI became the big thing, CRMs were…
CLMs rather were kind of like the hot topic. Everyone was talking about contract life cycle management and just how many tools that were on there. And I think Tom has touched on it. So I would like to get your perspective on this because it’s one thing to kind of address the in-house legal team with a legal product. So how do you
develop a marketing strategy that goes beyond that and goes actually out to the CFO and maybe even the sales team as Tom was talking about.
Laura Proctor (19:53)
Yeah, it’s a good question. So I guess first and foremost, our primary buyer is still the legal team. So we have to make sure that in all of our communications, we’re reassuring them. Yeah, we’re reassuring them that of course it’s a best in class tool for the things that you need to use it for. So of course, we have a really intelligent central repository where we know you’re going to want to.
Greg Lambert (20:05)
You got to keep them happy too, right?
Laura Proctor (20:17)
store all of your contracts and summarize them and run analytics. And so of course, you know, we’ve got you covered. And I think the way that we’ve done that in a different way is by integrating the legal review processes into Word. So I think Tom has always been like very passionate about the fact that most lawyers use Word and enjoy using Word. So why, why try to convince them that they should start editing contracts in a different tool? So I think that kind of gave us the
the starting position of, so if that’s gonna be our market position and our strategy, it’s really leaning into making it easier for people to work where they already work and embedding the legal experiences within their sort of daily routine. So I think for us, it’s the case of educating the legal team that for your legal processes and the CLM rule out to be successful, you have to have partners and stakeholders.
in the rest of the business. And the best way to do that is to get them engaged with the tool within their existing collaboration suite. So, you know, within Outlook, within Teams, within Slack, and sort of change the perception, I guess, of legal as the bottleneck to legal as the enabler. And again, you know, linking to what Tom said earlier, that’s his personal experience and belief. And I think that’s really what’s our positioning in the market. And it’s something that definitely resonates because
We know that legal teams can struggle to secure budget, for example, but if they go into a business case in partnership with a sales leader, a CFO, we know that their chances of securing the budget are much greater because anything that slows down a deal gets the attention of the business. So I think it is that shift to seeing this as an enablement, sort of more strategic business tool.
Greg Lambert (22:03)
Yeah. Well, I imagine because one of the big talking points over probably the past five or six years for the in-house team is how do we stop being the department of no and seen more as a collaborator with the business units that you’re representing that it’s not just about telling them everything they need to do to reduce their risk down to zero, but rather to
Laura Proctor (22:14)
Yeah
Greg Lambert (22:31)
understand the risk and then be able to manage that risk at the same time. It’s something that I hear from in-house about complaining about their outside counsel because their outside counsel is giving them instructions on how to get the risk down to zero and they’re like, I don’t need that. What I need to do is know how to manage my risk. So, you know, I’m wondering if there was any
you know, in-house councils that were really surprised that you were kind of showing them how to expand their relationships through a CLM tool. there customers that you presented this to that was like a light bulb moment for them?
Tom Dunlop (23:19)
Yeah, I think something from speaking with lot of general, I mean, it comes about to our point before about how you present, you know, a story or a pitch to a customer. when we kind of understood their pain in a way that they live and breathe and say, look, the reality is, you you are probably drowned by volume. You consider the bottleneck, you know, all these things that you’ve just talked about.
Now, if you were to buy a tool and actually go and try and get those same business stakeholders to adopt a tech products alongside the issues already have, what do you think the chances of that being successful are? And I think they just, it is a bit of a light moment that like, yeah, actually I want to be more efficient, but it is absolutely contingent on bringing the business along on that journey as well as, you know, as low as legal. So.
I think it’s just relating to the pain and they understand the product. Most people comment, I mean, it’s almost like a terrible marketing tagline. Laura probably will virtually kick me under the table, but a lot of people do say, you you can tell it’s been built by a, built by a lawyer for lawyers sort of thing. It’s been that kind of approach kind of really resonates.
Laura Proctor (24:23)
you
Tom Dunlop (24:33)
It does change the focus. And I think it is a little bit of education because there’s a lot of noise in the market. And I appreciate that, you know, as you alluded to earlier, it’s, you know, the CLM market, the legal tech market. there’s a lot of products and there’s a lot of people, you know, trying to find their voice in a very crowded market about their functionality, particularly. so we try and bring about almost first principles or basics where it’s, well, forget products, but how do you work today?
what do you want the future to look like? Or what do you think is realistic and then apply the products on top of it? And I think that’s where we get a lot of success.
Greg Lambert (25:07)
Excellent, excellent. Well, I know, especially with legal in-house teams, which don’t bill by the hour, I think they’re viewing some advancements in technology, including, but not necessarily limited to the AI tools that have just kind of flooded the market over the past couple of years. So, you know, they’ve got…
lean teams, they’re seen as overhead, they want to collaborate, they don’t want to be seen as the department of no. So how do you see tools like AI and others impacting both what you’re doing with Summize, but also helping the legal teams kind of evaluate their efficiency and impact for their organization?
Tom Dunlop (26:01)
Yeah, I think we, we actually purchased in our implantation. we, what we’ve done in implementation is designed something we call the hero framework. I won’t run through the kind of acronym, but broadly you could argue it follows like a three step process that we go through with customers. So the kind of first step really is to reduce the volume into legal because a lot of people buy tech and actually what it does is potentially increase volume into legal because you’re making it easier to make, you for the wider business to submit requests.
Greg Lambert (26:30)
No good deed goes
unpunished.
Tom Dunlop (26:32)
Yes, exactly.
Laura Proctor (26:32)
you
Tom Dunlop (26:33)
Exactly. And we see that a lot. It’s kind of like, really easy for people now to just throw tickets over the fence to legal and we’ve now got to deal with a higher volume. So I think the key for me is that the first step that we usually take with our clients is I appreciate we have to get onto legal efficiency and getting your signed contracts into the repository, but can we get the business to self-serve on any documents? And again, our approach is very much via Slack, Teams, Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, whatever it might be.
So we reduce the volume by enabling self-service and also centralizing those requests through a legal front door. That deals with an element of volume that hopefully disappears, that’s low value but high volume work. We then focus on the next step to do with legal efficiency. So now we’ve got work coming to legal that you can argue should come into legal. We talk about how can we make legal more efficient with the word that comes through. And that’s primarily delivered through as Laura referenced, our kind of Microsoft Word add-ins. So we have…
a lot of tools, AI based, and that’s, you know, it could be a summary that you need. It could be an AI redlining. It could be that you just need to access your playbook or ask AI to redraft a clause for you rather than manually type it in. And that’s really the kind of second stage is to say, let’s make you more efficient in anything that hits legal. And then finally, we then track, I guess, all of that efficiency via analytics. So we understand how does a contract progress from
the creation through to the review, negotiation, where are the legal team spending the most amount of time still, you know, after we’ve created these efficiencies. And that can usually then focus on certain areas. For example, the playbook, you know, you’re always spending time negotiating these particular provisions. And, and that might be an area that, you know, maybe a bit more relaxed on the next one, which means, you know, you, kind of, to your point, always say no on that particular point, let’s say yes, a few more times and the speed of the, you know, the legal process, so much quicker.
So I think the net effect of all of those efficiency gains kind of just enables the legal team to elevate their efficiency and impact. And I think the other thing that we’ve seen with using Summize and this was a great user story that we had, because we do it in, I’d say quite a cool way. You know, we have chat bots in Slack and Teams and things like that. We actually find that the personal brand of legal goes up because the wider business not only are more efficient because they’re self-service, but now they’re saying…
this is great. I’ve got a chat bot, know, like Legal have introduced the chat bot into the business. At one point, one business actually got a standing ovation in all hands when they demoed the products. I’m not just saying this is genuine, the genuine happened, but almost I was more grateful about that than actually the tool providing the efficiency. was wow, Legal’s reputation or personal brand has just gone through the roof as a result of the tool that we’re using. So I think…
There’s loads of efficiency gains, but I think that one of the biggest things is, you know, just by using it, it increased the personal brand of legal.
Greg Lambert (29:28)
Is there anything specific with AI tools that you think are going, that will be kind of changing the game or do you think it’s still gonna be kind of like nibbling around the edges?
Tom Dunlop (29:44)
I think AI, there’s a lot of talk, I think everyone’s looking for silver bullets with AI. think that, you know, since ChatDBT came along, there’s, you know, there’s the gimmicky use cases to start with, and then there was actual use cases, but probably single tasks that AI could complete at any one time. The reality is with AI, it’s just a natural progression. So what we’ll see is just, you know, AI completing single, basic tasks to more complex kind of multitask elements. So it can…
It will be able to do a, you know, let’s say automated workflow to different people based on a response. might then create a task. And then from there, it might automatically do something to document. our view, it might do an AI redline for you based on the answer to the previous task. So it’s kind of knitting together more complex tasks. But I mean, there’s a lot of noise about, it going to be, you know, autonomous in contract negotiation? Can you replace lawyers? I think all of that is.
is not quite the silver bullet that I think people are wanting it to be. It’ll be a natural progression through just more complex tasks being put together.
Greg Lambert (30:55)
Well, Laura, I know that you guys have expanded your Boston office quite a bit over the past few months and years. So what kind of trends are you seeing in the US market that Summize is having to adopt to that you may not see in the UK or Europe?
Laura Proctor (31:23)
Yeah, I think the biggest difference really is just the maturity of the market category and the buyer. So what we tend to find is in the UK and European market, it’s still quite often a fair, we call it a first generation purchase. So they know they’ve got a pain, but they don’t necessarily have a tool in place. So with that market, it’s all about education, about the different types of solutions, the different approaches you can take and
Really we spent a lot of time helping them, you know, build a business case, create a compelling event, and giving them confidence in how to buy legal tech because oftentimes they haven’t done it before. So we’re sort of guiding them through the journey of how you actually buy this in the first place. Whereas I think the flip side is in the U S it’s, it’s more common that they’re already on their second or their third CLM. And so it’s generally, they already know.
you know, the problems that they’ve been trying to solve. And often they have seen pain in implementation where maybe the product hasn’t lived up to expectations or they’ve really struggled to get the full value out of the solution. So I think with the US, it’s a lot more around speaking about our implementation process earlier on to really provide that reassurance that we can get time to value quickly and focusing on this, the hero.
framework that Tom referenced is really great for that because we can set clear milestones with very clear metrics in sort of three three week sprints, which means you’re not waiting 12 weeks or longer to see value from this new tool. can you can switch and sort of see almost immediate value. So I think it’s just a slightly different time in the in the life cycle of where they’re at in their bio journey. And I guess for me, like the challenges.
conveying both of those messages at the same time when you only have one website, for example. So I think where you can tailor the message and obviously working very closely with the sales team, we just make sure that the material that we provide and the toolkits, particularly for sales and our customer success team are designed to be sort of memorable and informative and adding value to every engagement really. think that’s the key.
Greg Lambert (33:21)
He
Yeah, yeah, interesting. Just kind of bring this full circle, I think, from our initial conversation on presenting and Laura, you talking about having the three things that you want to make sure the audience walks away with. The hero concept that you guys have come up with sounds really interesting and being able to organize not just how you present it, but implement as well.
It sounds like you guys are pretty well along this hero’s journey.
Laura Proctor (34:18)
There’s all sorts, you can play with it. Like again, you
Tom Dunlop (34:18)
You
So anyway.
Laura Proctor (34:23)
know, it sort of ties into our brand value really, which is we want to make legal the champion. And as Tom said earlier, know, creating a personal brand for the legal team is really important to us. And that really links well with, know, we’re helping you become the hero, the contract hero within your organization. So I think it allows us to have some personality as a brand as well.
and kind of tying into that emotive connection. You know, this is an emotional conversation with solving genuine pain. So I think to have a bit of fun with it is important as well.
Greg Lambert (34:57)
Yeah. Well, Tom, we’re at the point in the interview where we ask you our crystal ball questions. So what do you see as we go into this new year? I can’t believe 2025. It sounded so far away and now it’s here. What do you see as any kind of trends or challenges or changes in the market for legal technology in the legal technology space?
And how do you think you and Summize are going to approach these?
Tom Dunlop (35:29)
It’s interesting question. I think the, the positive for me almost for the, for the last few months of this year has been genuine value being obtained from AI on a day to day basis. think we’ve kind of, we had a lot of noise about AI in the last, like you say, two years, particularly last 12, 18 months. think it’s only we’re seeing with our customers that people are using AI on a day to day basis now accepting it and they’re getting value from it. And they’re not scared by.
using AI. So with that context, think 2025 for me is kind of what I alluded to earlier. It’s going to be a continuation of that theme. And I think we don’t want to, as a product, as a company, almost lose momentum with a kind of legal adopting this really clever technology that fundamentally focuses on pretty low value, menial tasks that no one really wants to do anyway.
And so we’re kind of really leaning into that and we’re going to be, I guess, looking at how AI can automate more generic workflows, how we can have more complexity around, I guess, between clicks or between human interaction, what can, I guess, AI do. So there’s a number of areas we’re doing that across the products, but I think that will be a generic theme across, you know, legal tech. And I think one of the interesting areas, this is, you know,
sort of something related to Summize but I think it’d be interesting as an industry is, I do wonder if we’re finally going to get to a point where more on the legal services side, we have the confidence to monetize and I guess, lawyers knowledge rather than time. And I think that everyone’s been talking about this for years. I think there’s the green shoots already of
I guess the ability to provide knowledge in a way, particularly using a CLM like ours, for example, where knowledge can be put into the model and you can almost scale that indefinitely and have simultaneous, know, hundreds of customers simultaneously using, you know, I guess, verified knowledge without the lawyer actually being involved. So I do wonder if, you I guess a more bolder prediction is, we, are we actually going to finally get a disruption to the
to the billable hour and, you know, and in my view, 10x the size of legal market. If we can do that, I think it makes knowledge more accessible and it will only mean the market will increase kind of tenfold. But specifically with Summize’s think what we’ll see is just a more gradual complexity of what AI can handle and also the, I guess, how comfortable people are with using AI to handle that more and more tasks. And that’s really going to be a theme probably of 2025.
Greg Lambert (38:15)
Laura, anything to add to the projections?
Laura Proctor (38:18)
I think it’s just, I mean, marketing’s work is never done right. Your website’s never done. The message is constantly evolving. So I think for us, it’s leaning into how do we create those sort of bold and memorable experiences. you know, we go to a lot of events, particularly US events where we want to do things a little bit differently. So we’ve tried things like the AI red line race where we’re encouraging people to get hands on with the tech and things like that. So I think for us, it’s just
continuing to be creative and think outside the box in what is becoming quite a confused and crowded market. So it’s a good opportunity for us, I think, to continue leading into sort of our areas of difference.
Greg Lambert (39:01)
It’s going to be exciting times. can tell you that so well Tom Dunlop and Laura Proctor I want to thank both of you from Summize coming in and talking with me today. This has been great
Laura Proctor (39:04)
Exactly.
Thanks so much for having us.
Tom Dunlop (39:12)
pleasure.
Greg Lambert (39:13)
All right, and of course, thanks to all of our listeners for joining us and taking the time to listen to the Geek in Review podcast. So if you guys enjoy the show, please share it with a colleague. If you want to reach out to us, feel free to reach us on LinkedIn. Tom and Laura, I’ll make sure that we put links on the show notes, but what’s a good way for the listeners to reach out and learn more?
Laura Proctor (39:40)
The most simple way is just to go straight to systemize.com. You’ll also find us on LinkedIn if you just search for systemize and we’d be happy to connect there.
Greg Lambert (39:49)
Right. And as always, the music that you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry. All right. Thank you both for being here. Bye.
Laura Proctor (39:59)
Thanks so much.
Tom Dunlop (39:59)
Thank you.