2024 Year in Review, 2025 Predictions

Jane Oxley, the Chief Revenue Officer of Smokeball joins the Legal Ops Podcast. Highlights:- What is pizza anyway? - How well do you know legal trivia? (a.k.a. Do you recognize the name Smokeball?) - The early days of a startup can be hard, but that is harder if you don't have a good winter coat. - How important is it to stay focused? How critical are early adopters? (Spoiler: Very. Very very.) - Legal professionals may be more prone to use advanced technology when it is baked into things in a seamless way. - Are there differences in approach to when dealing with a small law firm v. a larger corporation? - Can this all be easy peezy?

In this Pulse episode, Daryl and Elliot discuss:DonglesWho first introduced the idea of LLMs "talking" to LLMs?LLMs actually "talking" to LLMsMaking AIMI a thing DeepseekResearch LLMs (specialization v. generalization)Using words with imperfect definitions, and rabbitholes"Probabilistic loops" and "thinking"

JP Biard, the Chief Global Strategy Officer at LegalOn Technologies joins the Legal Ops Podcast. Highlights:- How much has LegalOn grown?- Why do people go to law school? What does technology have to say about that?- Are lawyers reluctant to adopt new technology?- What has LegalOn's evolution been, and how is that different from other players in this space?- What is the real impact of contract lifecycle management systems? Or, who gets the most benefit?- Isn't the art of the possible just a flowery way to say "education"?- What is the power of playbooks?- What are the differences in lawyers across geographies?

After a long break, Elliot and Alex are back. Where did they go? What were they doing? And who is this other guy? This episode features... 1). Who is this other guy? Introducing Daryl Osuch. 2). 2024 Year in Review: a lookback that features highly critical and mostly arbitrary scores on a scale of 1 (Wrong, and you will laugh about this later) to 10 (Right, and I am scared of your apparent prescience). Alex spent Christmas building small language model apps, Daryl defends LLM mistakes, and Elliot determines we all did pretty poorly. 3). 2025 Predictions: Daryl holds a surprise spelling quiz, We make oblique references to 80's movies that you may or may not catch, and Elliot opines on the GenAI hype cycle. 4). What's next?

Dee Venello is a senior operations professional at Commvault. She has implemented contracting systems and other legal technology in multiple organizations, carefully managing diverse stakeholders with a variety of interests and workflows. She also has experience in general business operations, providing her with insight into the issues and concerns faced by teams that the legal department supports. A big thanks to LinkSquares for sponsoring this episode and for recommending Dee as a guest of the show. We discussed with Dee why LinkSquares was selected by two of her employers as the primary contracting solution for the organization. We also discussed a range of related issues, including: * The importance of CLM in general * Why change management is vital in any technology implementation * The value of cross-functional understanding and partnerships * How CLM liberates data, and what to do with it * Driving continuous improvement and "planning to plan" LINKS LinkSquares website: https://linksquares.com Dee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dee-venello-74090a40/

Alex and Elliot chat about: * how to craft an organizational AI policy * a recent tribunal decision requiring Air Canada to honor a refund policy invented by its online chatbot * recent articles on AI's impact on law firm billing and a potential shift towards value-based pricing * another recent article on the need to balance AI's precision with human insight in the practice of law A big thanks to LinkSquares for sponsoring this episode! Check out their website at: https://linksquares.com/ LINKS Air Canada decision: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-honor-refund-policy-invented-by-airlines-chatbot/ AI impact on billing - article 1: https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/ai-could-transform-law-firm-billing-beyond-recognition AI impact on billing - article 2: https://www.legaldive.com/news/ai-use-cases-legal-ops-deloitte-blickstein-group-report/702436/ Balancing AI and human strengths in legal practice: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/02/12/the-future-of-tech-enabled-law-practice-balancing-ais-precision-with-human-insight/

At the start of 2024 Jenn McCarron became President of the Board of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), succeeding Mike Haven. We invited Jenn back on to the show to discuss: * the process of becoming President * the factors she considered in weighing up the role * CLOC's role in the legal ops community, and how it has developed over time * what changes we can expect in the future under Jenn's leadership * the extent to which Jenn's background in entertainment will be relevant to her role We also continued our tradition of beginning the year with predictions, and we invited Jenn to join us in making some of her own and assessing ours. These are some of the topics we discussed: * legal ops as a partner to the business, not just the legal team * continued growth in the importance of data and analytics * focus on enterprise technology rather than legal point solutions * future use cases for artificial intelligence * the importance of managing AI risks LINKS Jenn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennmccarron Jenn’s phone screen (discussed at 30 minutes and 40 seconds into the recording): http://tinyurl.com/5hem49yp

Alex and Elliot discuss: * The recent leadership challenges at OpenAI and what, if anything, it means for the pace of AI development and adoption * A review of podcast episodes during 2023, their favourites and why * Musings on expectations for 2024 * Elliot's continuing work on the "AI for legal teams" training course, which will be published in early 2024 under the Legal Ops Institute brand This is our last episode for 2023. A big thanks for listening to the show - we'll be back in late January or early February 2024. LINKS Legal Ops Institute: https://www.legalops.fm/institute

Noah Waisberg is the co-founder and CEO of Zuva.ai and the former co-founder and CEO of Kira Systems. He has worked for more than a decade on artificial intelligence and its application in the legal industry, beginning his work long before anyone had heard of Transformers and GPT. He is also the author of two books on artificial intelligence: "AI for Lawyers" which, as the title suggests, is focused on AI and its use by lawyers; and "Robbie the Robot Learns to Read", likely the first children's book aiming to teach younger readers about machine learning concepts. Naturally, with Noah we discussed many issues related to artificial intelligence, including: * What it was like selling AI systems to lawyers in the early 2010s * How AI adds value in the legal industry * The ability of AI to capture, distribute and amplify legal expertise * Jevons paradox and how it relates to AI in the legal industry * The role of generative AI in contract review and other legal use cases * The extent to which generative AI levels the legal tech playing field LINKS Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahwaisberg Noah on X: https://twitter.com/nwaisb "AI for lawyers" book: https://tinyurl.com/mx4t5nh6 "Robbie the Robot Learns to Read" book: https://tinyurl.com/3c9pjf6r

Alex and Elliot discuss: * A recent article looking at the effects of AI on productivity and quality of work by consultants at the Boston Consulting Group * A study by an English law firm finding poor legal advice provided by various Large Language Models, including GPT and Bard * A recent article discussing whether or not generative AI will be a source of competitive advantage for law firms * Elliot's anguish, and enjoyment, producing material for the upcoming "AI for legal teams" training course, which will soon be the first course published by the Legal Ops Institute A big thanks to our friends at LinkSquares for sponsoring this episode. For more information, check out their website: https://linksquares.com/ LINKS Article on AI used by BCG consultants: https://www.mi-3.com.au/20-09-2023/harvard-business-school-study-bcg-finds-knowledge-workers-using-chat-gpt-outperform Law firm research paper on AI providing legal advice: https://lpscdn.linklaters.com/-/media/files/document-store/pdf/uk/2023/october/report_linksai-english-law-benchmark_october-2023.ashx?rev=fc8c65ae-00f6-408e-9aec-4bf7846f82db&extension=pdf Article on generative AI and law firm competitive advantage: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2023/10/30/for-law-firms-will-generative-ai-really-be-a-major-competitive-differentiator/ Legal Ops Institute sneak peak: https://www.legalops.fm/institute