Episode 193: Future 50 Series – Onit’s AI Center of Excellence

This podcast was recorded on 15 April 2024 as the second session in CLI’s Legal GenAI Around the World Series. In this session Terri Mottershead, Executive Director at the Centre for Legal Innovation facilitated a discussion with three amazing panellists from India, Hong Kong and Singapore: Komal Gupta, Chief Innovation Officer, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (India) Sebastian Ko, General Counsel, DFX Labs (Hong Kong) Rajesh Sreenivasan, Head, Technology Media and Telecoms Practice, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP; Co-Founder and Director, Rajah & Tann Technologies Pte Ltd and Rajah & Tann Cybersecurity Pte Ltd and CLI Advisory Board Member (Singapore) Topics covered included: How, where and why GenAI is being used in legal businesses and what’s driving/limiting adoption LLMs, the impact of RAGs, and the case for/against the decision to build or buy What capabilities are needed to deliver legal GenAI solutions today, tomorrow, and how to bridge the gaps What’s unique about the legal GenAI market in Hong Kong, India and Singapore If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here. Please join CLI’s free Legal GenAI Global Community for a lightly curated newsfeed on how legal GenAI is transforming the legal ecosystem.

This podcast was recorded on 12 March 2024 as the inaugural session in CLI’s Legal GenAI Around the World Series. In this session Terri Mottershead, Executive Director at the Centre for Legal Innovation facilitated a discussion with three amazing panellists from Australia + New Zealand: Matt Farrington, Senior Legal Counsel, Vice Chancellor’s Office, Victoria University of Wellington Caryn Sandler, Partner + Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer, Gilbert + Tobin and Co-Chair, CLI Advisory Board Dominic Woolrych, Co-founder & CEO, Lawpath Topics covered included: How, where and why GenAI is being used in legal businesses and what’s driving the uptake LLMs, RAGs, hallucination and whether to build or buy What capabilities are needed to deliver legal GenAI solutions and the impact on legal businesses What’s unique about the legal GenAI market in Australia and New Zealand How legal GenAI is likely to evolve in 2024 If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here. Please join CLI’s free Legal GenAI Global Community for a lightly curated newsfeed on how legal GenAI is transforming the legal ecosystem.

This session has become an annual event for us and, this was a BIG year to review the world of legaltech, AI and innovation. So much has happened since ChatGPT exploded onto the market in November 2022. Its impact has been pervasive, even in an industry like legal which would not, in the past, have been described as agile. So, what changed in 2023?  What stuck, what didn’t, and why? We welcomed back Caryn Sandler, Partner and Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer at Gilbert + Tobin and Co-chair of the CLI Advisory Board; Graeme Grovum, Head of Legal Technology and Client Services at Allens; and Tessa van Duyn, CEO and Practice Leader at Moores, to discuss this and, we wrapped with a little crystal ball gazing into 2024 too! We started this session with identifying why GenAI has captured our attention, dominated every conference, meeting, and the media so completely. Then we moved into the nitty gritty of it all, identifying use cases, interrogating how tech stacks have changed, and how that is impacting the law firm business model (client relationships, billing, risk and value). And we spent a little time on the huge question around capabilities too – do we have them, what do they look like, and how we can bridge the gaps? There’s a lot going on in legal businesses right now, in all these areas, so we also explored how these businesses are strategising and planning for/in a market that is changing so rapidly and dramatically. That discussion took us to the next, how leaders/leadership are/is being reinvented for a new legal world, and that for many, this will involve a steep learning curve. We wrapped with what will come next, in the first month of 2024. While plans differed, one thing was certain, we all have to find the space to reflect, consider next steps, and find the calm in this AI storm. Thank you sooooo much Caryn, Graeme and Tessa – this is a session we look forward to every year and we’re certain you will too – don’t miss this one!  If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here. About the Future 50 Series In the Future 50 Series we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world. If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

In this session, we spoke with Beth Patterson, the Founder and Director of legal industry-focused tech consultancy, ESPconnect and an Adjunct Professor (Industry) at UTS Faculty of Law. Beth’s career has the distinctive hallmark of being groundbreaking. The depth and breadth of her experience in tech and legaltech, in tech companies and law firms, as a consultant and educator, means she has a highly practical, global and unique perspective on where AI in the legal industry is going today. Our discussion began with context - placing generative AI in the broader AI continuum - and moved into its impact on the legal industry. We are all still experimenting (testing and investing) in every industry, legal included, and we should be because there are still major issues with the tech that need to be worked out. However, what was also clear from our chat is the need for us to engage with the tech NOW because it’s not going away, not ever! Senior management in law firms know this (as do our clients) and they’re driving the engagement with it, something that makes this tech journey different from others. What AI will we end up with at the end of this journey? Beth opines it will be a portfolio - a combination of enterprise-wide tech and point solutions, with commercial models driving the selection of what you use, for what and when. But, integration will also remain key; data governance critical; and capabilities to identify pain points, choose and use/apply fit-for-purpose tech increasingly part of every solution and BAU. The opportunities with AI in legal are plentiful for those who jump in – new roles, new responsibilities, new practice areas (or expanded), new revenue streams, increasingly refined LLMs that do more and do it better – it’s a brave old and new world which we will embrace with FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) or JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) – you’ll definitely want to listen to or watch this session to see where you fall on the continuum! If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here. Resources: Thomson Reuters Institute, Edge International, and ESPconnect: 2023 Australia: State of the Legal Market Report Thomson Reuters, Tech & the Law 2023 Report: Perceptions and Priorities The conference referred to it this session is CLI’s Legal Generative AI Summit 2023 (24 and 25 October) – you will find the video and podcast recordings here. About the Future 50 Series In the Future 50 Series, we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world. If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

In this session, we spoke with Jean Yang, the VP and Co-founder of Onit’s AI Center of Excellence. The Center is a note-worthy offering from a software vendor. Jean’s journey to Onit seems like it was a natural progression. A former practising lawyer from New Zealand, she has spent most of her career so far (there’s lots more still to come) at the leading edge of AI in legal and, that has now taken her to Onit in Austin, Texas. Our discussion focussed on the application of AI in legal - how much that has changed this past year; emerging trends in AI uptake; whether it’s realistic to expect definitive use cases right now; and the challenges, opportunities, needs, expectations and reality of the tech becoming pervasive/BAU in the legal world next year or maybe later - it’s hard to look too far ahead in this space right now but we did a little AI crystal ball gazing! If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here. About the Future 50 Series In the Future 50 Series, we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world. If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

In this session, we spoke with Michele DeStefano about how we can approach change, manage it and leverage it for the benefit of lawyer and allied legal professional wellbeing, for our clients, and legal businesses.  Michele knows a thing or two about this from her many roles as law professor, business founder, educator, consultant, and serial entrepreneur. Her work is visionary tempered with a strong dose of reality and, getting stuff done! Michele has been building the foundations, paving the road, and walking the talk of legal ecosystem transformation for many years and, helping others to do that successfully too. We discussed what it will take to change the legal industry, the BIG pieces of the change puzzle - lawyer mindset, human-centred design, multidisciplinary collaboration and culture. We also chatted about how to combine the pieces in a way that creates sustained agility in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, it can be found in her most recent book (one of many already published with more to come), The Leader Upheaval Handbook: Lead Teams on an Innovation & Collaboration Journey with the 3-4-5 Method. If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this podcast, you’ll find the video here. About the Future 50 Series In the Future 50 Series, we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world. If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: [email protected].

It’s easy to get all caught up in the shiny new tech. It’s exciting and even a little mesmerizing, but the change it brings, demands and expects has a very real and human face too. In this podcast, Isabel Parker, Legal innovator, author and LawTech UK panel member closed out the Summit with her timely, important and candid reminder of the need to keep an unwavering focus on our humanity in a human+ legal world. This podcast was on Day Two of the CLI Legal Generative AI Summit 2023 on 25 October. If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

So much has happened in tech/AI and the legal world in a year! Will 2024 see GenAI being more impactful, less impactful, the same? And where, what, how and when will it impact? In this podcast, Caryn Sandler, Partner + Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer at Gilbert + Tobin and CLI Advisory Board Co-Chair gazed into the crystal ball to help you get prepared, and discussed what’s next with these legal industry gurus: Stuart Fuller, Global Head of Legal Services and Asia-Pacific Regional Leader for Legal Services, KPMG Hilary Goodier, Partner and Co-Head, Ashurst Advance, Ashurst and CLI Advisory Board Member Uwais Iqbal, Founder, simplexico Rajesh Sreenivasan, Head, Technology Media and Telecoms Law Practice, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP, Director & Co-Founder of Rajah & Tann Technologies Pte Ltd and Rajah & Tann Cybersecurity Pte Ltd, Board Member, Mediacorp Pte Ltd and CLI Advisory Board Member This podcast was on Day Two of the CLI Legal Generative AI Summit 2023 on 25 October. If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

We don’t have the capabilities we need to deliver legal services/products or solutions in a digital world. So what are legal educators doing about this and how quickly can they individually/collectively bridge the gap? In this podcast, Courtney Blackman, Head of Partnerships at Lander & Rogers discussed how legal education is changing in the face of GenAI with these leading academics and pracademics in law:  Aaron Baer, Co-Founder and Corporate Law Instructor, 4L Academy Stephen Colbran, Head of the College of Law, Criminology and Justice, Dean of Law, CQUniversity Ann-Maree David, Executive Director, College of Law Queensland Tania Leiman, Professor & Dean of Law, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University This podcast was on Day Two of the CLI Legal Generative AI Summit 2023 on 25 October. If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.

Gen AI has reinvented the legal workforce. We’re seeing old roles expand, new roles emerge and some disappear too. So how is the legal industry preparing for this? What are the new talent strategies, capabilities, perspectives, retrospectives and yes, everything in between? In this podcast, Sam Burrett, Legal Optimisation Consulting at MinterEllison explored the new world of legal talent with these fabulous ‘people centred’ innovators: Jan Christie, Director, Capability + Organisational Development, Gilbert + Tobin Schellie-Jayne (SJ) Price, Partner, Stirling & Rose and CLI Advisory Board Member Nam Truong, Digital + Innovation, Law Squared Tessa van Duyn, CEO and Practice Leader, Moores This podcast was on Day Two of the CLI Legal Generative AI Summit 2023 on 25 October. If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here. Resources mentioned in this episode: Harvard computer science course for lawyers OpenAI prompt engineering course An easier way to experience to functionality of semantic search