This week on The Geek in Review, we talk with Abdi Shayesteh, CEO of AltaClaro, and Jeanine Conley Daves, Littler’s New York office managing shareholder, about a different question in the legal AI conversation. Instead of asking whether AI will write the brief, summarize the contract, or replace the junior associate, they focus on whether AI might help lawyers learn how to practice law. Their recent work around AltaClaro’s DepoSim points toward a model of legal training built less on passive observation and more on structured repetition, feedback, and skill development.
Shayesteh traces the origin of AltaClaro back to his own early years at King & Spalding, where he benefited from proximity to a mentor willing to explain the work. That experience also showed him the unevenness of the old apprenticeship model. Access to assignments, feedback, and sponsorship often depended on luck, relationships, and office geography. For Shayesteh, the idea of a “flight simulator for lawyers” grew out of the realization that pilots, athletes, and musicians all practice in structured environments before performance, while lawyers too often learn in front of clients, courts, and opposing counsel.
DepoSim applies this flight simulator concept to one of litigation’s highest-pressure skills: taking and defending depositions. The platform gives attorneys a simulated witness, opposing counsel, court reporter, and feedback system, with options to vary the difficulty and personalities involved. Conley Daves explains why this kind of realism matters. In a real deposition, a lawyer might face an evasive witness, a hostile witness, an aggressive opposing counsel, or a combination of all three. The simulator lets lawyers practice those moments repeatedly, receive targeted feedback, and return to specific skills such as exhibit handling, follow-up questions, or managing objections.
The conversation also connects AI training to equity in professional development. Conley Daves notes that access to high-quality assignments and sponsorship has not always been distributed evenly across firms. A standardized, rubric-based feedback system gives more lawyers a chance to build core skills without waiting to be selected by the right partner or assigned to the right matter. Shayesteh adds that firms seeing the strongest results are not treating training as an after-hours side quest. They are creating protected time for deliberate practice, pairing AI feedback with human mentorship, and using simulation as a bridge rather than a substitute for coaching.
Looking ahead, Shayesteh and Conley Daves see simulation moving well beyond depositions. Oral argument, cross-examination, meet-and-confer sessions, negotiations, client interviews, and even Supreme Court preparation all fit within this training model. The larger shift is not automation for its own sake. It is the use of AI to help lawyers build judgment before the stakes are real. For law firms, that means better preparation, more consistent training, stronger associate development, and a clearer path toward delivering value to clients. For the profession, it suggests a future where competence is practiced deliberately, measured thoughtfully, and taught more fairly.
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Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript:
Greg Lambert (00:00)
Hi, I’m Greg Lambert from The Geek in Review and I have Nikki Shaver with us from Legal Technology Hub. Nikki, I know you guys do a lot of surveys and one of the most recent ones is a survey of the European legal market on AI usage. So, do you mind filling us in on that one?
Nikki Shaver (00:17)
Thanks, Greg. Yeah. We really find we’re getting a lot of outreach from firms asking for benchmarking. They want to know how they’re doing in the market, how mature their AI program is compared to other firms. So we do a lot of surveying. We find it’s one of the things that people are most interested in. What is the data on the market? We’ve done that for a number of different verticals within the US legal market. So we’ve surveyed mid-law, we’ve surveyed large law.
We haven’t really seen this kind of data coming out of continental Europe yet. We partnered with Lexpo, an organization that runs an annual conference out of Amsterdam. This year, it’s on June 8th and 9th. And we have now surveyed the European law firm market for AI maturity and also to understand how significant their AI adoption rollout has been and what they’re using, who is using what for what types of use cases.
We have seen early data on this and it’s very interesting to see in which ways the European law firm market is different from the US law firm market and where AI maturity differs, where different tool use differs. So fascinating outcomes. We will be presenting on this. Chris Ford from Legal Tech Hub will be presenting on stage at Lexpo. So if you’re going, look out for that.
Any participating firms get the full report ahead of time, but we’ll also be doing content on this on Legal Tech Hub, both on the European law firm survey itself, but also comparatively with the US market. So it’s one you will not want to miss. Look out in June for some content coming on that. We are at legaltechnologyhub.com. Thanks, Greg.
Greg Lambert (02:01)
You’re welcome. We do love to see what our competitors are doing. Thanks for setting that benchmark.
Nikki Shaver (02:06)
It’s a good driver of adoption.
Greg Lambert (02:08)
Yes, it is.
Marlene (02:16)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
Greg Lambert (02:23)
And I’m Greg Lambert.
Marlene (02:25)
So Greg, we have spent the better part of two years debating whether AI is going to draft our briefs or summarize our contracts. But I think we’ve been missing the most important question. You know, can AI actually teach us how to be lawyers?
Greg Lambert (02:43)
Yeah, that’s an interesting and critical point that I think we’re running into now. And the old sink-or-swim apprenticeship model, where you’re kind of trying to look over the partner’s shoulders to learn the practice, is effectively dead, although, you know, between us, I think it’s been dead for a while now. But between the billable hour work and remote work, the osmosis training has kind of vanished. So it’s leaving associates in these high-stakes gaps between law school theory and actually being able to perform in the courtroom.
Marlene (03:22)
So we’re tackling that today. You know, our guests are building the, the, the flight simulator, if you will, to bridge that gap. They recently co-authored a piece in New York Law Journal, arguing that the real promise of AI isn’t automation, it’s deliberate practice.
Joining us is Abdi Shayesteh, the CEO of AltaClaro. Abdi is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company at 17 and spent 15 years as a lawyer at firms like King & Spalding and as a deputy GC at MUFG before launching a platform used by nearly 80 of the Am Law 200.
Greg Lambert (03:59)
And I will say, Abdi and I worked at King & Spalding together back in the day. And joining Abdi is Jeanine Conley Daves, who is a top tier trial lawyer and the office managing shareholder of Littler’s New York office. So, a little small office in New York there, right Jeanine? Jeanine is a leader who spent her career not just winning defense verdicts, but actively interrupting bias.
Marlene (04:03)
Yeah, that’s right.
Jeanine Conley Daves (04:18)
Yeah.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (04:19)
Thank you.
Greg Lambert (04:27)
and opening doors for the next generation of diverse talent through our work with the New York Urban League and Association of Black Women Lawyers. So, Abdi and Jeanine, thank you very much for being on the show and welcome.
Jeanine Conley Daves (04:40)
You’re welcome. Thank you for having us.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (04:43)
Thank you, great to be here. Good to see you both again.
Greg Lambert (04:46)
Yeah.
Marlene (04:47)
Yes.
So Abdi, you said your success as a young lawyer felt like it really depended more on luck than on a structured system. Specifically, being lucky enough to have an office right next to a mentor who would actually explain things to you. And I think a lot of people who came up around the same time feel the same way. I know I do. So how did those early years at firms like King & Spalding
shape your conviction that the guild tradition of legal training was really withering away and why did you pick depositions as the first high-stakes skill to tackle with a simulator?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (05:29)
Yeah, no, thank you Marlene. A great place to start is back in the day at King & Spalding, I got lucky. I had a mentor or sort of, I don’t think he knew he was my mentor, but I made him my mentor. And he was always available, going over things. And I realized very quickly that the pathway to becoming a better practitioner is all about assignment feedback, assignment feedback. The more assignments you get, the more feedback you get, the better you become, the better your judgment skills develop.
and the diverse set of assignments you get as well. And I realized that not everybody had the same access as I did. And in particular, I mean, you know, law school doesn’t teach you any of this stuff, right? So you come in after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on your education thinking this is it, I’m gonna learn everything here. But unfortunately, even back then, the apprenticeship model started withering away and that you saw many people after four years doing the grunt work and being asked to leave or they just kind of gave up, right?
And usually those were, unfortunately, diverse lawyers and female lawyers because the same people were getting the same deals over and over again. And I thought right there and then, 1185 Avenue of the Americas, New York office of King & Spalding, wouldn’t it be great if there was a flight simulator for lawyers? And I was just thinking about pilots get to put in hours and get feedback before taking off. Of course, was a fantasy of mine.
And it wasn’t until I was in-house counsel, almost a decade and a half later, that I really realized the pain point, that I didn’t want associates spinning their wheels, spending 10 hours on drafting my NDA, where it only should take an hour. And that’s where I got the entrepreneurial bug again to launch AltaClaro, a place where attorneys can practice safely in simulated environments on assignments that are taken from the real world and get feedback.
And since then, this was 2016, when the cracks started happening, when this apprenticeship model was on its way out, we have continued to grow. We only had like five courses back then. Today we have over 60 across a variety of practice areas, from corporate to litigation, real estate, lending, all this good stuff. And we have now, actually you said 80, it’s over 100, Am Law 200 firms. I’m very grateful for this growth.
A few years ago, three years ago, we started experimenting with AI and giving immediate feedback on these simulated assignments so that associates could become aware, like an athlete becomes aware, or a musician who is practicing and getting feedback on where their strengths are and where their gaps are. And AI can be used as your friend in this way, not random AI, not ChatGPT, but a very structured rubric framework where those things are consistent and they’re evaluating you in an objective way on how to improve. And this was a hit. We deployed it for all of our clients and associates loved it. And the firms also had analysis on where gaps were so that when it came time to internal training or mentoring, they were building on top of it, but very targeted, right? So it became very efficient for partners to not start from ground zero. We won an award for this last year at Legal Week by ALM. Very grateful for that.
Right around that time when we started thinking, this is how we got to depositions. How can we use this technology, because up to now our courses and programs have focused on the written work product of a lawyer, drafting motions, drafting deposition outlines, contracts and things like that. How can we use it for the human-to-human parts of a lawyer’s job? The things like oral negotiation, taking a deposition, defending a deposition.
How can we leverage it for those things that hopefully AI will never replace and build the human muscle for judgment? Something like deposition. And this story started with Jeanine and me, believe it or not. This is the first time I’m talking about it. So Jeanine was representing us in a case. The case name is not mentioned here.
And there I was, and we were right around that time thinking about what to do next in our product roadmap. And I was watching Jeanine depose somebody. We went in with our set of questions, and right away we saw how hostile this witness was, very frivolous case, and how rude, and this and that. And then how this opposing counsel even made it past law school. It was just this obscure situation. And I thought, how do you train for this? How do you train for thinking on your feet, reworking your questions?
and how do you get an associate? Because I would not want a junior associate on something like that. And that’s when I realized this could be a great opportunity to leverage AI for this. So that’s when we went to work and leveraged AI to build a deposition simulator. So we built an AI witness, AI opposing counsel, AI court reporter, and guardrail framework leveraging the technology we had used with our benchmark tool. And you can go in and toggle and say, give me a hostile witness, or you can say, give me an opposing counsel who is super aggressive as many times as you want, like a flight simulator and practice your deposition. You get feedback. You go as little as 10 minutes or as long as six hours if you want.
And get that feedback so that you can become better and help you think on your feet in these situations when the real one comes. So we launched that recently, but before we launched it, we went to some of our clients that are big on investing in technology and big on investing in training, like Littler Mendelsohn, and together, six firms put in over 160 hours of testing it and giving us feedback. And they loved it. They loved it to even use as a warm-up tool. And so now anyway, this deposition simulator is being used in the market.
Greg Lambert (11:26)
I did want to go back to one thing that we kind of made a comment on you being lucky as an associate to have a mentor. Having known you, I know sometimes you make your own luck. It’s one thing to have that proximity. It’s another thing to make that step to make sure you build that relationship and kind of inject yourself in there and then having the EQ.
to read the room and know how to do that, yeah.
Marlene (11:51)
Luck favors the prepared.
Greg Lambert (11:53)
Speaking of EQ, in your co-authored article, I saw where you…
leaned really heavily into the research of K. Anders Ericsson, which looks at how elite athletes and musicians achieved their greatness through what’s called deliberate practice. And so from your perspective as a very prominent trial lawyer,
You know, what’s the legal equivalent of this deliberate practice where, you know, violinists may practice scales 50 times and, and why do you think this, you know, traditional law firm training that we’ve instilled like this passive CLE, you know, it’s like, okay, you got to have X hours of CLE and get them all in this month before your birthday this year. You know, what, why do you, why do you think that that’s
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (12:42)
I’m sorry.
Jeanine Conley Daves (12:44)
Right.
Greg Lambert (12:47)
failed to provide the same kind of intensity and results in the law firm environment.
Jeanine Conley Daves (12:54)
I think, Greg, it’s really the act of doing that really helps you to grow and develop.
when you’re looking over someone’s shoulders, you’re looking at what they are doing, but not always are you really thinking about how would I respond to that? What would I say? And so, it’s while you’re having a chance, and what DepoSim is so helpful and useful to do, is that you have a real-life opportunity to practice. And not only to just do repetitions of one thing, but to
hone in on those skills to really focus on what am I doing well, what am I not doing well given the feedback that you are provided. And that is an opportunity that unfortunately, associates just, you know, haven’t had up until now to get that continuous practice in and to think about, okay, how do I want to improve on this? How could I have done better on this?
It’s having that ability to really focus on those areas. I think also, you know, from the
article in Anders Ericsson, who we talk about, he talks about, Mozart was a prodigy, but it really came from this rigorous training that made him as great as he was. And that’s exactly what we want from our associates. We want them to be able to build the skills when, as we see, AI is taking some of those other tasks in terms of memos, you know, research, even though you always have to check the research.
But this is a way for them to become strong litigators.
Greg Lambert (14:39)
Amen.
Yeah,
and I would assume that one of the most valuable things, and we bill by it, is time. And so I imagine that the past 15, 20 years it’s been this crunch on time being able to, for the people that need to be leading this type of training and teaching by doing just really haven’t looked like they’ve had the time. Is that a correct assumption on why we think that that has fallen a little short over the past decade and a half?
Jeanine Conley Daves (15:18)
Yeah, time is difficult and I will say that this giving…
associates the opportunity to go in and do it, you know, when they have time themselves to focus on this area without requiring another $1,000 biller or whatever the rate is to have to or $3,000 biller to have to take the time to not only train but to, you know, learn a sample or example of
Greg Lambert (15:36)
or $3,000 billers.
Jeanine Conley Daves (15:49)
sort of a case outline and all of that is actually going through the technology. I think you’re absolutely right, Greg. The time that it saves is critical.
Marlene (16:01)
Jeanine, Littler was one of the six early adopter firms that logged over 160 hours of testing during the DepoSim pilot this past February. I’m curious, you know, what did your associates like, you know, what aspects did they feel helped them most?
Jeanine Conley Daves (16:21)
I think that…
One of the biggest things for them is how real it is. Abdi talked about a deposition that he saw me take. And when you go into a deposition, you really don’t know what you’re going to get. There are some opposing counsel who don’t object a lot, some that do object a lot. And so the fact that you can get all of these different personalities so that you really have an
understanding and can get more comfort with whatever, not only opposing counsel that you get, but whatever witness that you get. And if that person is being evasive, being able to practice, how exactly do I handle that type of situation, I think is really helpful with DepoSim and is what I think a lot of the associates really got out of it.
with, again, getting that feedback. So, not only am I practicing, but I’m figuring out where do I need to change? Where can I tweak? Where can I make better responses and make sure to get the answers that I’m actually looking for? Having those two things, I think, has been a huge help. And you’ve had associates, we’ve gotten sort of direct feedback.
Great feedback in terms of it’s a 10 out of 10. Associates saying like this is really true to life in terms of the witnesses and the opposing counsel that you are dealing with. And just having, you know, the experience I think has been really helpful to the attorneys that have had an opportunity to do this.
Marlene (18:05)
I’ve seen DepoSim and I can vouch for the realism of the simulator. There’s a number of different types of clients and counsel and you can kind of mix and match those things as you would in real life.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (18:22)
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. K&L Gates was also a part of that 160 hours. It was great to see the partners getting into it, even with opposing counsel, which you can do. And even the court reporter, just in case something, which, yeah, even the court reporter.
Marlene (18:39)
That’s right, I forgot about the court reporter.
Jeanine Conley Daves (18:41)
That’s right.
Greg Lambert (18:43)
All kinds of stuff.
Marlene (18:43)
Now, how are the evaluations used? So, like, I know that you get a feedback evaluation, but, you know, after that, so what do folks do with those, you know, after they get them? Do they sort of focus on certain parts? Do they do the whole thing over? Like, what have you found is best?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (19:03)
Yeah, it’s all up to the learner and where they are and what they’re using it for. But all of the experiences inside the simulator is just for the learner. So if they wanted to, they could share the transcript, the feedback report, even the audio with a mentor. And so talk about getting efficiency with mentorship time. Let’s say you’ve done this, and then at least a few times, and you got your best one. Now you want to go in and talk with a mentor about some of the things you’re working
on and they can now add on top of it more efficiently because you already got these other things out of the way. Let’s target where you can improve. So it can definitely be used in that way. If you get the report and it says, let’s say, your exhibit handling needs to improve.
You could say, all right, I’m going to go back in this time, and I’m just going to toggle and say, I’m going to just practice the exhibit handling. And I’m going to pick these exhibits. And I’m going to go in and do this for 30 minutes. So you can be able to do that. And that was part of the feedback we received from the first go-round, the ability to keep going back in and selecting what you actually want to practice. Jeanine mentioned evasiveness. One of the key things is following up when they’re being evasive, when the witness is being evasive.
or they say something and you should have asked more, right? And so that’s gonna show up on your feedback report saying, you know, they said this about their, I don’t know, education or their experience, but you could have followed up and gone deeper and you didn’t. It’s like, oh, okay. And so you can go back in and even just isolate that and practice and get feedback on it.
Greg Lambert (20:39)
You know, there’s one thing that I’ve been mentioning to almost anyone who will listen to me lately, and that’s I was listening to a podcast a few months ago and
Mark Andreessen had a quote that really kind of stuck with me and that was, he said, throughout history, the number one thing that moves people from the 50th percentile to the 99th percentile the fastest has been individual tutoring. And,
There’s not a lot I agree with Mark Andreessen on, but this was one of the things that I did agree with him on. And so I see a system like this and I see that individual tutoring. And one of the interesting things that I was noticing was this wasn’t just the first years that were using the tool, that, you know, the partners, as you mentioned, Abdi, were also, you know, using it for their pregame rep.
getting ready for real depositions. So why do you think that the seasoned litigators are seeking out these types of synthetic reps in order to help get them prepared, build past the stigma of being afraid to say that they may not be completely ready for it. How do I get better?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (21:41)
Yeah.
Marlene (21:53)
kicking the tires beforehand.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (22:04)
Yeah.
That was a cool discovery, because we went in thinking this is just for juniors, mid-levels, great. But when we got the feedback, the specific question was, will you use this again? 94% of all participants said they would use it again for deposition practice. We said, wait a minute, the seniors said they were using it. So we leaned and went back to them and asked, tell us a little bit more. I said, yeah, I need to warm up. And it kind of makes sense, right? An athlete, right? They’re a professional athlete.
But they’re going to have to warm up before they go in the arena. Right? And same with the musician. They’re going to have to practice the scales, practice the songs right before the recital. And it started to make sense. Some of them told us that they just don’t do it as often. It doesn’t happen often. And others said, sometimes I just want to target practice. I’m anticipating this witness to be polished. So this would be cool, because this is going to remind me, get me in the zone of following up, digging deeper, because the person is polished. So it started to make sense when it was, yeah, of course, even if you’ve practiced for 20 years, you’d like something like this to leverage to warm up. So as a result, the firms asked us to deploy it across all their litigators, including their partners and seniors, which was cool.
But we also saw other things come out of the pilot. A chair of one of the law firms said, I want to use this. I want to pull up DepoSim in front of all my associates during a training session. And I want to practice. I’m going to toggle for the hostile witness, toggle for the aggressive counsel. And I’m going to teach my techniques.
using the AI bots. And as I teach a technique, I’m gonna then say, watch me do it. And then I’m gonna, when the witness reacts, I’m gonna pause and say, you see what he did? Watch what I do in return. And so like they’re using it that way, which is cool. And then after their session, they’re saying, all right, you all go out and do this for an hour, get your feedback reports, let’s come back and let’s review it together. So that’s been cool because now the AI is, it’s not just, I’m in my room and no more human connection. This is actually bringing people together for in-person training. Some firms are saying, you associates pair up and divide the deposition amongst you and go practice against DepoSim afterwards, exchange your feedback notes, and then let’s come back. So it’s actually bringing people together, which is cool.
Yeah, so anyway, that partner’s reaction was a real positive in many ways just to see how they were using it.
Marlene (24:36)
I think the rise of tools like DepoSim are quite timely because as Greg was mentioning earlier, sort of the old ways of learning are going away. You’re not going to be able to go through production as much and sort of draft and understand what the arguments are and what the evidence is saying as you used to because you were sort of poring through that stuff before a deposition happened. So, Jeanine, what do you think about that? Is associate development, is this gonna sort of be the new way of doing that to consider them practice ready?
Jeanine Conley Daves (25:20)
I think so, Marlene. I think that we will be using…
simulators to help us train our associates going forward. And I’m just so ecstatic, you know, that Abdi had this vision and that we as a firm are utilizing DepoSim because I think it’s going to be so helpful for our attorneys in terms of how they learn, in terms of their trajectory. Particularly, I think about
first-year associates. And like you said Marlene, there were a lot of things that we used to do, that we used to focus on. You used to have to be the master of the documents. And now a lot of that, the document review and memos, like you said, all of that, a lot of firms will now move through AI. And so to your point, I think that this is a wonderful
way to ensure that our attorneys are getting the types of trainings that they need. As an office managing shareholder, I mean, this is one of my biggest focuses right now on how do we make sure in a law firm that is an apprenticeship model and how we used to learn looking over someone’s shoulders and things of that sort, how do we make sure that we are still having critical-thinking associates
and associates who are able to grow and develop just like we were able to as junior attorneys. So I think it is transformational and I think that you definitely are going to see law firms using simulators and these types of synthetic environments for training going forward.
Greg Lambert (27:10)
And Jeanine, I know one of the recurring themes that has followed you throughout your career has been this ability to ensure that sponsorship and assignments are handled equitably. But we know traditionally that we’ve kind of fallen a little short on that and it tends to be who do I go to that I know that I have the connection with.
So I’m wondering, can a standardized rubric-based AI feedback system like a Benchmark 360 or DepoSim act as almost a leveling type of agent in this to make sure that every associate gets kind of the same high-level coaching, you know, regardless of their background, regardless of who they know, but it’s part of the process?
Jeanine Conley Daves (28:08)
I think it’s one of the biggest benefits that…
we have here is the fact that you are going to get as many associates across the board at varying levels having this opportunity. And now again, as you heard Abdi talking about, you even have partners saying, I’m going to use it to warm up. And so I think it does create a more equitable playing ground in an environment that quite frequently it has been about sort of relationships and as Abdi talked
about it being part of the impetus of where he thought to really focus on training associates in this way is making sure that it’s not just about you’ve developed or gotten the eye of a partner who is now taking you under their umbrella, making sure you get great assignments. This type of training is going out across
the board and you can choose as an attorney how much you put into it to help develop your future.
Greg Lambert (29:16)
Yeah.
Let me pull on that just a little bit because there’s like in the software development world, especially in the age of AI, there’s this expectation that this sort of going and learning new things is kind of something you do outside the normal hours of
business, and one of the things that I’ve heard is a concern is that that’s going to hit kind of the non-traditional people. You know, people with families, maybe people that, you know, have outside obligations, that they just don’t have that extra time to do that and that those are the folks that are going to get kind of hammered.
you know, if this becomes part of the evaluation, is this something, Jeanine, at Littler, is it built into the process of training, or is this something that is expected that people will just kind of take on as extra work? How do you balance that?
Jeanine Conley Daves (30:24)
I think it’s a good question. I will say, Greg, that I think that part of the issue that a lot of people in those roles had is that quite frequently things are rigid. So unfortunately, they could only do it at certain times. I think having the opportunity to actually be able to work it into your own schedule is something that is going to be
more helpful than harmful. And so you give people the opportunity to really set their own schedule instead of saying, we’re going to this happy hour after work in terms of developing those networks and relationships when it can be difficult for those groups. So I think it’s going to end up being more helpful for that purpose.
Greg Lambert (31:18)
Do you have any?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (31:19)
Yeah, no, I want to add to that because it’s great to see firms like Littler giving attorneys this tool to be able to train, like Jeanine said, at any time you want. But they’re also creating the space for training for deliberate practice, which is great to see. And we see that in firms who are successful in getting their attorneys in this next era of building judgment.
And that is, for example, in our regular training programs, Littler Mendelson created Fridays and Mondays to do the AltaClaro program. Friday, they watch an hour of video, they do a two-hour assignment, and it’s blocked on their calendar, they turn it in. On Monday, it’s the live review session, and they get the report. So they’ve blocked it on their calendar so they can do it, and then they have other priorities the rest of the month. The next month, it’s repeated. Things like that, that we’re seeing at firms create the space to give
their attorneys and associates the space to engage in deliberate practice really becomes the pathway of differentiating the firms who are going to be ahead of the pack in terms of having associates with good judgment.
Greg Lambert (32:28)
Good to have that intention set forth, you know, upfront on that because there’s so many that I think just kind of tack it on and it’s like we’ll put this wherever it fits and it typically doesn’t fit in the eight to five and so yeah it’s good to see that.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (32:46)
Yeah, and then they try to sandwich it all in and then they say, well, you’re not up to snuff. I said, we didn’t give you the chance to even learn.
Greg Lambert (32:53)
Yeah.
Marlene (32:55)
So, Abdi, I’m gonna expand a little bit on your answer, because I know that you have shared advice that you’ve gotten was to lead with empathy and care. And while I, I’m not gonna go down the road of the stereotype of, it’s like the evil partner and all of that. But.
I think, because I do think a lot of partners and senior associates, you know, do care and they do try and help junior people. But I do think there’s always the issue of, I don’t want to look silly. I don’t want to look uncomfortable. You know, I don’t want to make a mistake in front of people who I work with and supervise. But, you know, DepoSim,
gives sort of a safe space, if you will. Like this is a simulation that they do themselves. They get their own report. And you know, it’s okay to fail and to practice until you get better. So do you feel that that has an impact on, you know, the cultural tone of a firm, you know, the way associates view their own careers?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (33:59)
Absolutely, yeah, I think for me, I learned this because I don’t think I had it in the early days. It was just like they threw you in and they expected that you knew this. And then you’re like, I just got here. What do you mean you don’t know? No, I don’t know. You shouldn’t know.
Marlene (34:11)
It’s true. Sink or swim, as we said.
Greg Lambert (34:17)
Go figure
it out.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (34:18)
So it was painful, it worked. Back in our day, we grinded it out. And I think when I caught myself as a senior lawyer doing the same thing to a junior lawyer, I realized this is not good. The junior lawyer said, well, yeah, your charter document, you can’t do this, can’t do that. And he’s like, it’s my first one I’ve ever seen in my life.
And so it was like, wow, okay, I’m doing this. I got to break this habit. And yeah, if you can have empathy, actually it will end up serving you better. If you actually accept, first of all, no one is going to be a star attorney for the first few years. The way to get them there is to invest. And now our time is limited. That’s the other thing I saw when I was a senior associate, because I had good intentions. I wanted to train, but I just never got to it.
right?
Marlene (35:07)
I think that’s the big crux of the issue.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (35:07)
Yeah, the best that I got to was a few slides, which is terrible. It’s like, here are a few slides on how to swim, now go out there and I’ll see you out there. That goes to the luck.
Greg Lambert (35:19)
Yeah,
read up on it, now go do it.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (35:20)
read up on it and
go swim. And so I was like, okay, so this is where firms are leading with empathy who are giving their associates the space and the tools to practice, to make mistakes, to get feedback so that they can be better prepared. It will serve them, they know it will serve them better. It has an ROI. This is the ROI. The ROI is, first of all, you’re not gonna spend $1,000-an-hour people, or more, to create slides and teach the foundations, right? You don’t ask Michael Phelps to teach you frontstroke, backstroke, or float on the water. It just doesn’t make any sense. And then, and you know that doesn’t work anyway, right, by showing slides. So then you see this work, you have to rework, right? So partner time, redoing the whole thing at 11 o’clock, at 12 o’clock at night, this thing is new, right? And you have to write that time off. You can’t charge the client.
Right? You start calculating all this, right? And then, OK, I’m going to actually be a good lawyer and mentor. I’m going to sit down with the associate and explain what they did wrong, if I get that chance. Again, 12 o’clock at night. So this is the cost of not doing it right. And then in this day and age, when you have buyers of legal services, they have options, right? They can see which firms are making this investment, and they can see it in the work product. They’re going to move away.
And they’re going to go to those firms who invest in their associates and are creating better work product at a more efficient rate, whether they’re giving them better tools or giving them better training. So leading with empathy has rewards. And it’s better for you as a person too. But I think that’s where you start. You have to realize it’s just not going to work the old way.
Greg Lambert (37:02)
Well, I know both of you are at the top of your game for what you both do and it takes a lot of energy just to kind of keep up with things today. So one of the questions we’ve been asking our guests are what kind of resources, whether it’s blogs or articles or authors, how do you kind of stay up?
and ahead of the curve when it comes to legal AI and education and what you do. So, Jeanine, do you want to kick us off?
Jeanine Conley Daves (37:40)
Well, I would say that in terms of publications,
We’ve already talked about Anders Ericsson and I think taking a look at his Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise that we quoted in the article, think are definitely is a good place to start as well as it’s hard to keep up with all the podcasts and the blogs that are going on today. But we also put out quite a bit of publications.
Greg Lambert (38:06)
I can’t even keep up with my own.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (38:09)
I’m
Jeanine Conley Daves (38:16)
here at Littler and are staying on top of AI, which is why we’re part of this project and recognize that the innovativeness of what Abdi has created is going to help our attorneys going forward. We continue to do a lot with AI, just hired a new chief AI officer, and I think it’s important that you stay abreast because times are changing.
Greg Lambert (38:42)
Sure. Abdi,
how about you?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (38:44)
I was gonna say, The Geek in Review, that’s the one I watch.
Greg Lambert (38:47)
Of course. Thank you. That’s really why we asked the question.
Marlene (38:51)
Like and subscribe
everybody.
Greg Lambert (38:52)
Hahaha
Jeanine Conley Daves (38:53)
Hahaha!
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (38:54)
Absolutely, but yeah, I’m a big fan obviously of Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, really good stuff in there. I mean, it talks about applying this in the professional world. That’s really his point. He does list examples of the medical profession. Radiologists, and I’ll just say this one example, because Jeanine’s example of Mozart was great, but this radiologist example is really cool.
They studied radiologists five years out versus 20, 30 years out in terms of their skills in predicting because the problem with radiology is that you see something and you’re supposed to predict if it’s cancer, tumor, and so forth, right? And they were trying to see who has better predictions, the five-year-out or a 30-year-out? Who do you think did better?
Greg Lambert (39:42)
Well, logic would say the 30-year-out.
Marlene (39:44)
This is a trick
question, right. Five-year-out.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (39:45)
There’s a question here.
Jeanine Conley Daves (39:45)
Just a quick question.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (39:47)
They were so experienced,
right? It was the five-year-out. And the reason was, the reason was was that in their residency, they were getting feedback on their, you know, did they predict it right or not? Was this an actual tumor or not? They were getting feedback on the simulated assignments as well as real assignments. And so they were able to produce better. And then they noticed that these folks in the 20-, 30-year-out, they just say, yeah, this is a tumor, hopefully it’s not, off you go. They don’t get the feedback.
And so this transformed the certification process for the radiology medicine, medical industry that they now have to every year go through case files and predict and get feedback on their prediction.
And now all radiologists have to go through this. Anyway, Ericsson argues to leverage this stuff for professionals. And that’s where I think there’s a lot we can do in the legal profession, especially in this day and age. So that’s why I love that book. I want to keep going back to it. But there is a new book that it’s on my reading list that Jeremy, our co-founder, chief innovation officer, has read and recommended, Brave New Words, How AI Will Revolutionize Education, and Why That’s a Good Thing. Salman Khan from the Khan Academy. And when you read it, and then you go back to our article, but basically Khan emphasizes that with customized and accessible learning tools that encourage creative problem-solving skills and prepare students for an increasingly digital world, AI can be leveraged to help build these judgment skills for them, right?
So that’s exactly what we’re trying, that’s what we’re doing here, is to leverage AI for that. And it’s not just us, it’s the rest of the education world that’s using it. So anyway, that’s on my list to read.
Greg Lambert (41:32)
Yeah, Khan Academy taught me statistics, so.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (41:35)
That’s great.
Marlene (41:37)
It’s like, well now it’s on my reading list too. So it is time for our crystal ball question where we ask our guests to look a little bit into the future. And, you know, will, you know, do you think like every legal task, you know, could be from a client interview to Supreme Court argument, you know, is that first going to be rehearsed in a simulator? You know, what’s the single biggest shift you see coming?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (41:39)
Yeah, it’s a good book.
Jeanine Conley Daves (41:39)
Yeah.
Marlene (42:03)
in that regard.
Jeanine Conley Daves (42:04)
I think that you will see individuals preparing for Supreme Court arguments to depositions in simulators. And you’re going to see that, I think, more and more and more. As Abdi with DepoSim has shown, you can get, and probably something you need to think about, Abdi, various Supreme Court justice personalities.
when you’re trying to prepare for those given obviously all the arguments and content we have there. And so how better to prepare than to have that realism again that helps you just get better, that of course will help attorneys be more efficient. I think so much about the junior associates who don’t get an opportunity to take a deposition until they’ve been out several years. For them to have this opportunity to do it from day one is incredible. And so I think it really is going to change how our attorneys are trained and really advance their skills at an even earlier age.
Marlene (43:11)
And I think…
Greg Lambert (43:11)
Are you going to package
the negotiation experience into a Supreme Court argument?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (43:15)
Yeah.
Jeanine Conley Daves (43:17)
Yeah.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (43:17)
Absolutely.
It’s all on the roadmap. It’s all in the roadmap. And we got this feedback from all the design partner participants of what else they can use this for. And that’s exactly what we’re looking towards. First of all, this deposition is just the beginning. We just launched the employment case. We have a commercial litigation case. But the next few months, we’re going to have an IP case, an antitrust case, securities, all the key areas. And then after that, we’re going to look at other simulation types in the trial process, oral advocacy, cross-examination.
to meet and confer, this technology can be used for all of that and even negotiating a deal. And eventually the technology is there, especially in our partnership with Verbit, where, by next year, we’ll be able to simulate real cases. Obviously they’ll have a security apparatus for that and we’re prepared to do that. So this is all on the roadmap. And yeah, we will be able to, by feeding in the right information to the AI bot,
be able to have these types of predictability. But just to your point, or Jeanine’s point about the impact of all of this is that I think one of the positive impacts is that we’re actually gonna have…
a better cost analysis of what things should cost. Because I think if you have associates doing these reps, doing these reps, being better prepared, and you’ve equalized these skills across the firm, you’re now going to optimize the time it takes to do something like this in the real world. And that’s going to be a great value-add for your clients. And this is kind of like the Intel inside, right? You know, you go back in time, that ad, that Intel, make sure your computer has an Intel inside.
It’s not that Intel was selling the computers, but they just wanted the world to know, make sure your computer has Intel inside. So it’s going to be the same thing, that make sure your law firm has these tools inside that they’re better preparing their associates for so that it’s going to be more efficient, it’s going to be better, it’s going to cost you less. And I think that’s going to differentiate. All those things, yeah.
Marlene (45:11)
better outcomes, better preparation, all those things.
Greg Lambert (45:16)
It’s exciting times, there’s more exciting times to come. So Abdi Shayesteh and Jeanine Conley Daves, thank you very, very much for joining us today and helping us rethink what it means to be a competent advocate.
Jeanine Conley Daves (45:30)
Thank you.
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (45:31)
Thank you.
Marlene (45:32)
And thanks to all of our listeners for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a colleague and we would love to hear from you on LinkedIn and Substack.
Greg Lambert (45:45)
And Abdi and Jeanine, where’s the best place for listeners to learn more about the DepoSim rollout? So Abdi, you want to take that one?
Abdi Shayesteh (AltaClaro) (45:55)
Sure, you can go to altaclaro.com and there’s a special page for DepoSim and you can click there to see and watch a video and even reach out to us by booking a call to learn more about it.
Greg Lambert (46:07)
Thank you.
Jeanine Conley Daves (46:07)
And we just put out a post on LinkedIn about our use of DepoSim.
Greg Lambert (46:12)
All right.
Marlene (46:13)
Thank you both. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca. Thank you, Jerry, and bye everybody.