Transcription
Victor Li: All right, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Legal Talk Week. I have completed my hostile takeover of this program.
Victor Li: You know, nowadays we just… Declared victory over… things, even if we don't accomplish anything, so I'm gonna do that, and plant my flag here. Anyway, my name is Victor Lee, I'm subbing for Bob Ambrosie this week, and I guess, yeah, let's… oh, so I'm Assistant Managing Editor for the ABA Journal, and let's… let's go around the horn. Let's, let's start with you, Carolyn.
Caroline Hill: Hi! Thank you, Victor. Great to see you as our chair. Hi, Bob. Caroline Hill, Editor-in-Chief of Legal IT Insider, based over in the UK. Great to be here, thanks.
Victor Li: And, Steve, you're next on my Hollywood Squares.
Stephen Embry: Okay, hi, I'm Steve Embry. I have the blog Tech Law Crossroads. I also write for Above the Law from time to time, and Law Technology Today, which is ABA publication.
Victor Li: And then, next I have is Reese.
Joe Patrice: Muted.
Victor Li: immutrisk.
Rhys Dipshan: Sorry, Zoom. Hi, I'm Reece, I'm, the editor-in-chief of Legal Tech News. Just a heads up, we're gonna change Legal Tech News to, AI and stuff, it's gonna be our new name, You know, just, trying to keep on top of the changing industry.
Victor Li: Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, you know, that's pretty much all we talk about now.
Victor Li: Next, let's go with Joe.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, Joe Patrice, if you've listened to the show for a while, you know me from above the law of legal journalism, but I actually… I guess this isn't as good a place as any to announce, some big news for me, a change. I am going to pivot from legal journalism to being a GPU as a service provider. I'm doing, all… if shoe companies… if shoe companies can give up their business to do it, I figure I can, so…
Victor Li: All right, well, we'll miss you, Joe. And then, next is Nikki. Nikki Black.
Niki Black: Actually, I've changed my name to AI Block, so I just want to announce that. I'm the Principal Legal Insights Strategist at 8AM, the team behind My Case Law Pay Case Peer, and DocketWise. I write legal technology columns for ABA Journal, Above the Law, and the Daily Record, and I also write ADM's Legal Industry Report, which just came out last month, and I do expect everyone to start calling me. You can just call me I. like, AI will pull it together, and we'll be good. I'm good with that, so…
Victor Li: Yeah, that's fair. And then finally, Legora's new spokeswoman, Stephanie Wilkins.
Stephanie Wilkins: Oh, I'm like, what am I doing now? Yes, no, I can… yes, you can get me to shill for your company for far less than Jude Law, I'm guessing, but I am Stephanie Wilkins, Director of Content at Legal Tech Hub, and currently shilling for nobody but Legal Tech Hub.
Victor Li: And so, that… gives us the perfect segue to this week's big news, you know, the one that we all are dying to talk about here. So, LaGoro signed… Jude announced that Jude Law would be their… the face of law, which I… I thought was clever. A little… a little obvious, but I think it works in this case, but basically, he's gonna be the face of the company, and looks like they're making a pretty big expansion to other parts of the world and whatnot. But I want to get your take on this, Caroline, because look, obviously, he's big over here, but I get the impression that in the UK, he's basically like George Clooney and Brad Pitt over there, so I imagine this must be huge news over there.
Caroline Hill: It's huge. And yeah, he… so he… every year we watch The Holiday, which I… I wrote… when I wrote about this still with Lagora, I said, I'm never going to be able to watch The Holiday again in the same light. It's… it's huge, and it's… it's… it's fascinating, because, you know. On one level, kudos to Legora. I shared with you all in advance of this panel, a photo. I was walking through London Bridge, which is at one of our biggest stations, and sure enough. prime real estate, there it is, Legora, a Jude Law video, and it… it really blew me away. You know, this is, this is major. And speaking to somebody in marketing. He said that what their, what Legora… so I wrote about it within the context of Legora and Harvey, because as you've all written about or know about, they've also been paying big bucks, so they've gone with Harvey Spector, they've gone with, you know, they've had… everyone's paying a lot of money to big reps. They've Fulham Football Club, they've done… I think they've got some deal with Arsenal, people have seen their branding at Arsenal. And what they're trying to do is the VC Playbook, which is, that they… sorry, I've got Charles trying to distract me. They, they, they want to be THE brand, right? So they want to be in everyone's conscience, because I… I don't know, I mean, I can't wait to hear your take on this, but, they want to be THE brand, right? So they want to be in, not just, obviously, law firm's consciousness, but in the corporates, the FTSE 100 and beyond, as, like, they, oh yeah, they're the ones that we use, right? So it's a big play on becoming sort of synonymous, almost like someone described it as they want to become, like, the verb, like, they want to become, like, the Hoover, you know, when it comes to this sort of platform, which… and that it takes a lot of doing and a lot of money. I'd be fascinated to hear your views on it, as to whether you think it makes sense, or anything, really.
Joe Patrice: You lose your trademark protection if you do that. You don't want to be the generic, yeah.
Caroline Hill: So.
Victor Li: Kleenex, right here.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, Kleenex fights that. Velcro fights that. Yeah, they don't want to be known as that.
Caroline Hill: Interesting. Good point.
Joe Patrice: I thought that, you know, it's interesting, the holidays, framing, like, I gather the internal code name for this was Alfie, or I think? Was that something that I read somewhere?
Victor Li: I was.
Stephanie Wilkins: Appreciate it.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. I mean, at least it wasn't a series of unfortunate events, so…
Victor Li: Yeah, well, hopefully it's not unfortunate for them, but… I mean, I guess… I mean, we don't… I mean, I don't think we've spoken about Legora too much on this show. I mean, you know, we've… maybe a little bit, but not as much as some of the other big players. I mean, you know, they were valued at $5.5 billion their last round, so I mean, they're not… they're not, like, nobody, obviously, and they could afford this guy. They also made a deal with the New York Yankees and Aaron Judge. I don't know if this is deliberate on their part, Bob actually wrote a post, I should probably link to that one. Bob wrote a post, about how, you know, potentially other… other… legal-themed, people with legal-themed names that they could sign up after this. But, yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, we've seen the power of celebrity endorsements, and we've seen how it can, yeah, obviously boost a company's profile and whatnot, but it also makes you wonder, sort of, like, I mean. Do people really look at it and be like, oh, well, if Jude Law wants, you know, says LaGoro's great, then maybe I should get it from my firm.
Victor Li: I mean, I don't know.
Stephen Embry: I would sort of doubt that, I mean, although, you know, it could just raise name recognition generally.
Caroline Hill: Damn.
Stephen Embry: So that if you were… if you were a managing partner thinking about Agora, You, you might not. care so much about Jude Law. You might hear, though, that they have the stature and resources to get Jude Law. That… that might be more important. It would be to me. You know, I wouldn't.
Joe Patrice: And that's true of a lot of advertising. I don't really care, that, you know, some celebrity drinks whatever, but, like, it does signal something. You know, oh, oh, his last name is Law. See, I assumed that they were doing this because he was in the movie AI as a prostitute.
Caroline Hill: I thought it was.
Niki Black: because he was handsome, because that's all they seemed to talk about, was that he was handsome. I thought that's…
Victor Li: People's Sexiest Man Alive back in, I think, 2000-something, or…
Caroline Hill: He's so handsome. So it's… it's not…
Joe Patrice: I was the runner-up that year, by the way.
Caroline Hill: Something that… I bet you are.
Stephen Embry: Forget the cope!
Caroline Hill: in the corporates, like, it's about that. So they're not just going for the legal, are they? With their shared spaces, they want the business, and I'm not suggesting that the business don't care about… you know, whether it's any good, but it's about… I think it makes their… the brand recognition makes their life much easier in terms of adoption. Like, oh, can we get Legora? You know, like, they know the name, you know, or whatever it might be, or Harvey, if they happen to have seen Harvey Spector or whatever. I think… it's that… it doesn't mean that the thing's any good, or that they understand how it works even, but it's just that recognition of, oh, yeah, we can get that, and somehow that makes the adoption easier, which… advertising makes no sense on any level, does it? Like, we know it doesn't, but it just gets into your psyche.
Stephanie Wilkins: Like, I get that, but I guess I do question… it's not like, you know, I could still tell you Grant Hill drinks Sprite, but I'm as a regular consumer, like, their target audience are, like, is a really sophisticated law firm or in-house department going to… buy Legora over Harvey over any other company. I mean, pick any of them because of a celebrity, like, I would hope that Legal enterprise decisions are banking on things that are not that.
Rhys Dipshan: We seem to have just a ton of cash to spend, too. You know, it's strange, like, I spoke to them, and I spoke to Harvey, too. And I always ask, like, you know. you, like, have a ton of cash, how do you hope to spend the cash? And they keep telling us, like, we don't actually need all the cash that we raise, and I'm like, okay, then why, you know, like, why do you have it? And I suppose it's just to… you know, interact with Jude Law and celebrities. I mean, you know, like, they just have cash to kind of throw around. And they seem to just be really in ju… buoying themselves, too. To get people to, like, talk about them, too. So, like, they have way more cash than they know what to do with. And if, like, you know, like, I had that cash too, I would hire Jude Law for something as well, I have to say.
Joe Patrice: I mean, it goes to the big issue with the whole industry, and I think the legal tech side of the industry is better than the frontier Provider side of it, but they're all selling more and more of their company for more and more cash with not the corresponding revenue stream to justify this valuation. And that's what… that's what worries me. It's like, at a certain point, the bill comes due, and you're really banking a lot on, and I think this might be another story we talk about in a bit, but you're banking a lot on the valuation catching up, and Ugh, it's gotta be a risky time, if that's what you're banking on.
Victor Li: Yeah, I agree. I mean, yeah, I definitely, I definitely agree with what Steve said, sort of, like, this idea of, like, well, you know, you can look successful if you can reel someone in, like, like a Jude Law, or someone, like, you know, or like a team like the New York Yankees, or even with other, other companies, like, you know, Clio and the Canucks, and then, oh, well, Nikki, Nikki, Nikki's, Nikki's, Nikki's Tampa Bay Bucs. So, so there's all kinds of, there are all kinds of, you know, these tie-ups happening, and we talked about it on the show. Yeah, it definitely kind of shows, That is one way of showing success, I guess, and so I get… I get that part of it.
Stephen Embry: Like, it's way too… Although, I was just sitting here… I was just sitting here thinking, though, it could actually backfire, because there… there's some… Some lawyers and legal professionals who would say. these guys, they don't even understand our business. I mean, they… they're not hiring these celebrities has nothing to do with their product and what we do. Why would we go with them when they're, you know, throwing money away for nothing pertaining to what we do? So, I don't… I'm not of that… necessarily of that school, but I could… I could see People jump into that conclusion in the legal space.
Niki Black: Oh, that's what I meant.
Caroline Hill: Sorry.
Niki Black: I did forget to announce I bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, so, you know, I had some money laying around. And it was not me, my company part… AATAM partnered with them. I did want to say the one thing that I… one of my favorite things to come up, the Jude Law thing, and I don't know if y'all saw this. Some company I'd never heard of very quickly posted a video in response, Clarin Law. Which made me laugh, I don't know if I can put it
Stephanie Wilkins: Find that. I could never find it again. That's the one I was referring to, yeah.
Niki Black: Yeah, I thought that was such a great response, and I was, they seemed to be lucky that they had a co-founder who was equally on par with Ju Law. I thought, I don't know how they manage that, but… It was, they did a great job getting that video up. I thought that was super… not only really fast, it was high quality, and it was… They did a really good job with it.
Victor Li: Native AI now, right?
Niki Black: Sorry?
Victor Li: That's the beauty of AI now, you can make these videos fast.
Stephanie Wilkins: Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead, Caroline.
Caroline Hill: Sorry, going back to Steve's… point about people… people thinking, you know, are they spending… should they be spending this money? I said… I spoke to a customer about… about, some of this marketing, and you know, it was actually a while ago when… when we had the Harvey Spectre. They weren't really aware of it, and so I was like, well, I don't know if that's a sign of anything. But, with this newest… newest announcement with Jude Law, I spoke to this guy in marketing, Simon Marshall, TBD Marketing, and he was saying, you know, what people really want to be reassured of is that it's secure, that they've got the… they're investing in the governance, that it works, and it's quite funny, because you guys sometimes take the mickey out of my British expressions, and I included… he said. they need to make sure that they can pat their heads and rub their tummies at the same time. I don't know if that translates, but…
Stephanie Wilkins: It does, it does. That's an American thing, too, yes, yeah.
Caroline Hill: So, you know, they get… They're gonna.
Victor Li: Not as easy as it sounds, it's not as easy as it sounds.
Stephen Embry: I was gonna say, I'm not sure I can do it, but I understand the concept.
Caroline Hill: Bob's not here, I think we should all just spend the rest of the time giving it a go, but .
Joe Patrice: So long as you start one before the other, it's actually easy. If I were a company, I will say of, like, the Suits thing, and I said this about the Suits thing, Suits apparently was a deal for people who are into law, but, like, not my generation, and I've reached a point, sadly, where I might be the generation of people making decisions in law firms. So… Jude Law, not anything really legal-related other than his name. If I were one of these companies, not to give free legal advice… legal marketing advice, but if you're gonna go this route, I don't understand why a dump truck full of money hasn't gone to Joe Pesci yet. Like, if you're trying to talk to people who are my age, who are decision makers in law firms, like, that is absolutely where I would be sending that money. I don't know.
Stephen Embry: You didn't hear Joe? The reason Bob's not here is he's negotiating.
Stephen Embry: But today is sponsored for our…
Joe Patrice: This show? Okay.
Stephen Embry: Hey!
Stephanie Wilkins: Oh, well.
Victor Li: I'll take a…
Stephanie Wilkins: offer ourselves as sponsors to anybody, like…
Stephen Embry: Did I write them?
Stephanie Wilkins: of money?
Victor Li: Yeah, they'll send me my $2 royalty check any day now.
Victor Li: But then I wanna… pivot, I guess, to Stephanie's story, talking about just legal tech funding in general. I wanted to talk about this, and just sort of, like, you know, just, like, it kind of piggybacks off this, just all the money that's flowing in.
Stephanie Wilkins: Yeah, I kind of figured I would be up next. Yeah, so I did… this is my own official tracking, so I mean, there might be a few things that missed… I missed, but I sat down, I started tracking funding announcements, beginning… the very beginning of 2025. And I've kept it going, so I did this article that compared what we saw for 2025 as a full year, compared to Q1 2026, to see where we're on track, and again. very, fairly thorough, but, you know, this is not my full-time job to track funding, so there might be a few rounds missing here and there. But yeah, so given the math, the way the math is mathing, we are out… we're set to outpace 2025, which was a crazy year for funding. You know, we were about $2.3 billion, or sorry, 4.3 billion in 2025. And we have 1.4 at the end of Q1, there's been more that have come in since then. And so, you know, if you do that math, it's 5.6, is it, or something like that, for what we're on pace for for this year, assuming it holds, and… I mean, I know we've had huge rounds in both years that are somewhat outliers, but it's still an outlier if you have outliers every year. And then, Yeah, I don't really know why, I mean, we'll see if it holds, but it's… you know, we're… it's just getting bigger, and it's growing, and it's, there were… but 4 companies, if you take out of that 15-month period, there were 4 companies that got over half that funding, and it was Harvey, Legora, Clio, and Filevine. Yeah. Yeah, so it's, you know, it's pretty significant. I started crunching numbers, and this will be, a different article. But I will give you guys a very depressing preview of this, that of that, 15-month period, about 4% of this total went to companies with at least one female founder. So, yeah, it was something… it's coming out to something like 19% of the rounds, but 4% of the funding. That's just my very initial. I have to do more, meaning the rounds they're getting are smaller. That's the way that works. But yeah, which is, like, what we've seen in past years, and again, that's just my very initial. I have to dig in more. to make sure those numbers are right, but so yeah, that'll be a depressing article I'll write after this, but still holding true. But yeah, tons and tons of funding, and ramping up as it… as we go.
Victor Li: I'm not surprised by that.
Victor Li: You know, I hate to… I hate to sound like that, but I'm not surprised by that.
Stephanie Wilkins: Oh, no, I'm not surprised either. Like, it's… I mean, I expected to be depressed when I started doing the math, yes.
Niki Black: I'd be interested in seeing… do you have data that… you don't have data that predates AI, do you? Like, generative AI?
Stephanie Wilkins: No, I haven't… no, this is all stuff that I started doing just on my own after I got here, so no, but I might do. I mean, as I get into that as an article, I might do more. like, digging and research. I don't know how deep my article will go, or how easy it is to find that data, but I'll look into that.
Niki Black: Well, I'm curious if that almost… if it's with AI, it's become even more… I mean, we've always known women historically, in tech and in the legal tech space, have gotten less… women-owned companies have gotten less funding, but I wonder if it's even worse comparatively with generative AI, because it seems like AI has just been, has amplified that problem even more, but I may not… don't really have data to back it up, it's just my gut.
Stephanie Wilkins: Do you have access.
Stephen Embry: The other end.
Stephanie Wilkins: Sorry, Reese, I know, like, a couple years ago, a few years ago, Cassandra did a similar, you know.
Rhys Dipshan: Damn.
Stephanie Wilkins: on her own calculation, and I think it was equally pretty low, I don't know, it was about the gender divide, or it was something about, like, an old boys club in the title or something, I don't know if you can find it, but yeah.
Rhys Dipshan: Oh yeah, I can probably find it.
Stephen Embry: I would be… I would also be interested, and I… I mean, it would be a good thing to know, as you guys suggest, but I wonder if the advent of the AI tools have dramatically increased the funding overall from what it was before. That might be an interesting statistic as well.
Stephanie Wilkins: Yeah.
Stephen Embry: whether this balloon in funding is in part due to the somehow connected with AI development.
Joe Patrice: The only silver lining I could…
Rhys Dipshan: like… oh, I'm so sorry.
Joe Patrice: Oh, no, go for it.
Rhys Dipshan: Okay, s… I would actually, like, you know, like, seems like, you know, there's only… like, Harvey, Clio, Filevine, and, like, Gora 2, and they are just blowing people out in terms of the funding. I mean, like, Harvey Almost had a… in 2025, and that is unheard of. Like, I recall when, like, you know, the CLM space Became, like, huge, you know, like, around 2021, 2022, when we all… you know, saw that, like, I recall it was, like, ironclad, had, like, raised 150 mil, and we were all like, that is insane. And they're just, you know, raising 200 mil rounds, like, every, you know, 3, 4… Mmm… Months, whatever. So, like, you know, like, it's changed where, like, there's, like, 4 pl… layers at the top. And then a tiny, you know, like, a tiny, like, sprinkle of cash to, you know, like, every one else. Who, you know, have to come be… Compete… Eat for all that cash. There's also an explosion of startups on the scene, too. So it's interesting, like, while the Funding overall has, you know, like, explo… exploded. You know, like, it's probably harder to, you know, like, if you're a startup, to, like, have, you know, that type of, like, funding too. Just due to, like, everyone else in the industry, and, you know, the focus on, like, the four, like, five huge, big players at the top.
Victor Li: Yeah, well, I was gonna ask you, Stephanie, is that… because, like, I'm looking at the… looking at the graphic, and it's like, you know, you have this huge line for 2025 full year for practice management, and then this year, there's nothing, so far. Is this because… is this because, like, you have those giants in practice management that are kind of established, and there's really no room for anybody else?
Stephanie Wilkins: Yeah, well, yeah, and I mean, I made that comment in there, and that, I mean, so practice management was such a huge category last year, and that is because, you know, I mean, Clio alone, with, you know, the $850 million, and then Filevine, so it'll be interesting to see, and I had to make some calls about how to categorize things, because, like, I firmly categorize Clio as practice management, but going forward, will we? I don't know, they could arguably be in AI legal assistant category now, they have all the things, but I made that call, right? Yeah, so I think that's gonna be… I don't… I mean, I think that's gonna be a huge outlier for last year because of that, but… But also then, like, this year, you're seeing ramp up in places, like, I've started including, AI law firms in there, and that there was a couple raises last year, and then they're getting… I think they're gonna be the funding darling of this year. So, it's interesting to see. On the women founders thing, though, even within that, I want to say, I mean, I haven't done the math, but it's probably at least, like, a third of that, of all of the funding going to women founders, probably, I think, went to GCAI. They had to really big… or they had one really big round, but they had two significant funding rounds with, you know, Chichilia Zaniti is the founder of that, and she's one of the only female founding companies that are making, you know, the $70,000 raises or things like that. So, yeah, it's… More. Yeah.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, even more. Yeah, the.
Stephanie Wilkins: I mean, like, in a single raise.
Joe Patrice: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, alright. Yeah. I was just gonna say the… just… well, I was gonna say one thing, which was one of the potential, not silver linings, but not… things to make it feel a little bit better is that there are a lot of… when I… when I, like, tour tech shows, a lot of the tech companies that are women-founded, tend to be… you know, it's a carryover from legal, tend to be somebody who is a lawyer who has a practice area that they're porting over, like, a really focused product for, that theoretically doesn't need as much money as a huge gobbler, like a Harvey or whatever, so that… that might help a little bit, I… I was thinking, because, like, I'm thinking about, you know, like, the hello divorces and stuff like that. Like, they… they don't need, like, that kind of amount, but it's because they're, like, practitioners in an area, a space, and they just, like, they got a thing, they can do it real quick, and whatever, was my one, yeah.
Stephanie Wilkins: Yeah, and you see a lot more female founders in the B2C space and A to J space, which I've included in here, but obviously they're just a fraction of the total funding going on out there. Of course. When you survey that space, there's so many more female founders in those areas, yeah.
Caroline Hill: I, I've.
Joe Patrice: But the one other thing I was just gonna say, real quick, and this will set up the next thing, probably, which is, you know what wasn't in any of the, you know, about the big financial news? Ipos. Didn't see much of those. Saw lots of people collecting more money, not a lot of people paying off more money.
Stephanie Wilkins: Yeah, well, and interesting, just on the Relativity note, too, because that's the most recent IPO we heard, like, I chose not… we… I did not include Relativity's debt refinancing as funding. I put a note in there, because I included… some people have… I included Clio's debt facility, but not Relativity's debt financing, because one is actual new capital coming in that can be put towards things, whereas one is not adding any new capital whatsoever. So that's why I did not include the relativity number in there, just in case anyone's wondering.
Niki Black: Another thing I just want to mention when it comes to looking at the investment into the industry is that there is a significant portion of investment that's relatively invisible and can't be tracked, which is the PE investment. P.E. companies don't announce their investment, it's quiet, they get multiple backers, you know, and They, you know, and they get new investment, and oftentimes it rivals the venture capital loud announcements, but there's no way to track it, because PE companies and venture capital companies approach their PR and their, the way that they manage things very differently. So, there's no way to track it, but there's actually a lot more money coming in than is even reflected there.
Victor Li: And then, So you… so this segue might need some work, and this is why I'm not the usual host. So you did… you did talk about AI law firms in there, so let's… let's go to Reese's story about the AI native law firm.
Stephanie Wilkins: Don't.
Victor Li: Apologies.
Stephanie Wilkins: If Bob makes it up as he goes on.
Stephen Embry: But you didn't give the classic Bob kind of smirk when you did that.
Victor Li: Hey, I'm still working on it, alright?
Caroline Hill: So…
Rhys Dipshan: Before I hop into this story, I was just hoping to add one more thing on the prior conversation. The advertisement from, like, Gora could be tailored to VCs and private equity firms as opposed to, like, attorneys. You know, they just want people to know that they're huge, and, like, they want investors to feel like, oh, we should you know, You know, throw cash at this company, because we don't want Homo, and they're so large, they got chewed lol. Let's actually spend some time to understand who they are and stuff. So, like, it could be You know, like, if you have cash, you can get… Or cash, too, and you know, like, it just is a… All type of effect. Anyway, on to the AI law firm. So… Folks from case techs and TR, and also, like, a few big law firms such as Fenwick and Cooley. Have started a, like, AI… law firm? Where they essentially, you know, like, tend to automate a ton of the operations that a firm has with, like, Agentic and G… J… an AI. And they essentially hope to, you know, start off by focusing on contracting service for clients in the West Coast, in a… Silicon Valley. And like, you know. You know, these, you know, like, new types of, like. AI first and, like, hybrid, you know. firms, too, are actually, you know, kind of growing in the industry. And it really comes down to people saying, like, okay, like, you know, terms. You know, have access to the tech, except they're slow to really change their operations, they're slow to change their pricing, and they're really, like, you know, like… slow to, you know, like, give clients the kind of cost savings that clients are asking for, too, and it really comes down to, you know, folks who say that, like, law firms are just incapable Of changing at a pace which the industry requires, because they're so tied to the old way and the billable hour. You know, you know, it's actually, like, you know, like, helps people to say. That it's time to build something new from scratch. I've actually spoken to a few of these firms, and a few startups, too, in the legal research space, too. And the stuff that I hear is always this… Hey, Meth, like, you know, like, these… You know, established players in the industry, you know, don't have, you know, the approach to really… eat them… moment. And all they're trying to do is take AI and place it on top Of a old approach that is completely income… Compe… completely like income… edible. It's like, you know, the stuff that the industry is asking And so, like, we should start from scratch and build new firms, build new tech startups from scratch around Gentic and… an AI. And that seems to be, like, happening in the law firm space, where we're seeing, like, hybrid firms, too. Like… Norm Law, and… It would be, Council, and a few others, too, who are like, you know, we can do the stuff that, like, law firms do. Except we can sue it way… Better, and actually, you know, like, aider to clients' needs. And it seems to be a growing trend. The question I have is, like, how… large… how tiny, potentially, you know, like, of a thro… turn on that. Do these new firms pose to the established heirs in the industry?
Victor Li: I was wondering… Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead.
Stephanie Wilkins: Oh, I was gonna say, it's a really interesting question, because, you know, I started looking at some of these, too, and, I mean, obviously, the big firms are going to say it's not, and obviously the law firms are going to say it is, but I really do think, I mean, it's just, to me, it's a step even further, you know, we've had this billable hour conversation, and I'm always the negative Nelly on it that's like, no one's gonna ever give that up, it's gonna take longer than we want it to, but things like this are really going to push the conversation even further and faster. I think. So, I mean, yeah, you're not… I mean… A lot of them are starting with contracts, like. because it's easy, right? So, I mean, I don't think we're at risk of them upsetting a, you know, DLA Piper tomorrow. But, yeah, it's gonna be… it's gonna really push the question of value, I think.
Caroline Hill: They're really optimistic. I was chatting with Stella Legal, who many of you will know, with Tyson Ballard, who… and they've… they acquired an ALSP, and… and he's… and he said to me, just this week, he said, he thinks that the next Magic Circle firm will be, like, an AI-first, or a new firm, and we were all on the record, so I'm not being, you know, I'm gonna write about it, hopefully soon. He's like, he's like, I'm coming for their lunch, you know, like, they're I think the new players, I mean, it's easier said than done, right, to get to that sort of size, when you're sort of talking about a magic circle, but I feel like there's this sense of, you know, the constraints, the culture, the difficulties around really, really pushing change in an institution. That has existed based on… you know, it's not been transformative in the way that it operates. I think that… I think they are… they are transforming. Some of the firms that we work with are… are transforming you know, they're trying, but, you know, it's a massive challenge, culturally, you know? And I…
Stephen Embry: insurmountable. I mean, it's… when you consider, I mean, the law firms, not only it's a business model, but it's the entire culture, from how you advance to how you get compensated, and making that shift I mean, it… If you want… you want to have associates that work on matters that are billed in an alternative fashion. they're gonna say, well, why would I do that? Because my advancement hinges on my hours, and you want me to work less hours to make more profit on the alternative fee structure. I mean, the whole thing becomes… you know, pretty… pretty hard to… to push over the line. I do think this is a little bit akin and related to the rise of remote Remote-only law firms, where everybody… almost all the lawyers work remotely, and there are so central office. some of the similar concepts, and you take those two together, and it… it may… may end up with firms that challenge the traditional law firms that are… these firms are now AI-only and totally remote, because they don't have the cultural constraints that the… all the big firms do.
Victor Li: I had a question. Did they, did they talk… I mean, I might have missed it just, reading it, but, like, did they talk at all about, like, what kind of savings that they were able to get, and whether they did… whether that did reflect their fees and their, their, their, their, yeah, their fee structures and things like that?
Rhys Dipshan: They haven't, they're actually fairly new, they just launched in December. So we'll probably, like, you know, like, have a conversation with them, like, you know, at the end of 2026, just to see, like, how it's all panned out. I mean, like, it's… it's strange, because all these, like, hybrid and, like, you know, these, like, AI firms have just really started to come out, like, in 2025 and 2026. And it's interesting because, like, people were kind of scared off of, like, the hybrid firm due to, Atrium? You know, and I believe it was 2017, and then they closed in 2020, if I remember right? And people are like, yeah, like, the hybrid firm thing is just, you know, like, not going to be something we could do. You know, like, I think with all the changes in tech, you know, there's a whole new… You know… Ush, probably, to, like, you know, come up with new law firms draw… lectures. And the crazy thing with, you know, like, the… it also, like, struck… He was like, you know, Folks were pretty convinced that, like, huge… Firms cannot change. Like, you know, like, it was a whole entire, let's… Tear stuff down and start from scratch type of approach. And you know, like, the large firms I've talked to are like, we can change, and we are changing. You know, like, and we're doing stuff like locksteps so people don't feel so tied to the old way, too, and people have the time to, you know, like, to try out these tools, you know. So, like, it really comes down to the question of, like, you know, do we have to tear everything down and start from scratch? Or can the industry really adapt? And it's hard for, like, you know, firms that have, you know, like that, are just old as hell. to change, and they, like, haven't had to change for so long, too. I mean, it's crazy how much change firms have had just since 2020, although, like, compared to other industries, like, it's, you know, a tiny ble… And by fail.
Caroline Hill: I think what's helping them… so that… in order to really change, they have to understand value, and they have to move to, sort of, value-based billing, and all of this kind of stuff. And… and I think that they've had lack of vis… full visibility over even the bigger firms, of… of how their time is being spent, and what value really means. And I do think that there's improvements in technology that are enabling them to have greater visibility across the entire firm, to start to really understand where value comes from, and just… and maybe just briefly on that point, so I think it's important to remember, I know we all know Radiant Law, so we've, you know, there have been firms, you know, back in the day that… so Radiant was founded by Alex Hamilton, ex-Latham & Watkins, And they never had the billable hour, and they've always practical… they've always operated on a value-based billing model, and they've… he's… it's always… it's really, really cool seeing some of the stuff he's doing, and they've automated the hell out of absolutely everything, worked with some really big corporates, just, you know. obviously they're rewarded by efficiency, so I think it's kind of, you know, some of the stuff that these new firms are doing isn't brand new. I think sometimes we think everything is new, but obviously there are firms that are doing this and have done it really successfully.
Stephen Embry: The… I can't… we also can't forget, too, that… You know, there are… there always will be a place for the billable hour type work. The bet-the-company kind of case, where the value of the case is so high that who cares whether you're efficient or not? And in fact, if I were an in-house counsel. I'm not sure I would want you to be efficient. I would want you to… to work… leave no stone unturned, do everything that needs to be done. And how do I incentivize that? Well, if I pay you by the hour, of course. So, yeah, there's always gonna be that, and some of the larger sperms, that's their bread and butter in many ways. That's what they do. So expecting them to change. With that kind of, client and matter mix is maybe unrealistic to some extent.
Niki Black: That's a good point. I had never thought about this, but, you know, the clients that would sometimes be the most challenging to deal with, where the… it's the principle of the matter, and you're like, alright, fine, the principle of the matter? Like, you don't… you know, why would you take that on value-based billing? They're gonna want you to, you know… and I'm thinking more traditional litigation clients, but they're… it's the same thing. They want you to just make the other person's life incredibly difficult, and punish them for whatever it is that they… the perceived wrong that has happened, and you're like, fine, then, if you want to do that. you know, as long as it's ethical for me to do this, yeah, you can pay me all you want, I'll bill you by the hour. Like, why would you want to take that on a value-based billing? Because their goal is to, as things go along, make things more difficult for the other side, not easier, or not to get it done with quickly. Their goal is to cause pain. And again, those are the cases you have to decide, is this ethical to even be bringing it? But… You know, that's.
Stephen Embry: So it's… we always…
Victor Li: We always had a…
Stephen Embry: But I had to sing about those kind of people. It's a matter of principle until they get the first bill.
Victor Li: Well, that's when you see… that's when you see, like, the truck backing up with, like, all those boxes and boxes of discovery. It's like, alright, you want everything? Here you go. But yeah, let's… because actually, there's a lot of stuff on the sheet this week, a lot of things, I don't know if we're going to get to all of them. But let's, a tool that lawyers can use if they want to, if they want to integrate AI into their practice is Claude, legal, and it is here now, and, Nikki, you want to talk about it?
Niki Black: Yeah, I… I wrote this article because, one of the things that… what I did is it was sort of a… a little bit of a pretty broad overview of a how-to for, Claude Legal. I like to sort of let my readers know what's happening that are not necessarily in the legal tech loop, and also just sort of give them a quick roadmap on how to get there. So that was what half of this was, but then the other half was, I… one of the things I'm particularly interested… in, to see what happens this year, is what does the end structure end up looking like? Like, who wins? Legal tech or big tech? And, you know, how does this kind of funnel into our industry? And My experience with Claude Legal was really interesting. So I, had a mid-page account, because I met with them at, Mid-Page AI. AI legal research tool. And I had met with them at, Legal Week, and they gave me, free access to their account, and I'd also recently switched from ChatGPT to Claude, and so I had a Claude account, so I added the Claude Legal in, skill, I think it's a skill, And then connected it with Midpage. And what I found was, I did some research using one of the large… so there's a particular search I always run, and it's… I describe it in the article, but it had to do with a case years ago when I was a young associate
that I had the hardest time finding a comparable case because the language that was used to describe the accident Niki Black: that led to the injuries was so generic. So, basically, our client was driving down the highway, there was a microburst of wind, kind of like a… not a tornado, but a major sudden burst of wind that, took a road sign that was presumably loose because it just flew into the air, like one of those Exit 54, and decapitated the person driving in the seat. The dog was in the front seat, for some reason, the family was in the back seat.
Niki Black: And only the husband was killed. And so, and, you know, it was presumably a state-owned sign, we hadn't done discovery, but my job initially was just to kind of assess liability, and also, Niki Black: statutory filing deadlines, and that type of thing. And, it was so hard, it took me 5 or 6 hours using natural language to locate similar cases, because, you know, road sign, street, automobile, projectile, like, they're all such generic words, and so there are cases where, like, signs Niki Black: flew over and landed on somebody that were, like, weighted with cement, or just all these other types of cases that were kind of similar, but not really. And it took me so long to find a few comparable cases.
Niki Black: At the time. And so I always come back to this case when I try to test legal research tools, especially as they advance, because… to see how quickly can they identify it. So when I use one of the big two research tools, AI functionality, Niki Black: recently, and I conducted that research, and it… Niki Black: did eventually, you know, took, very quickly found some cases, and then I used MidPage on its own, with its own LLM, versus Claude acting as the, you know, the researcher. And it, it came up with some similar, Niki Black: responses to the… one of the big two. They gave me the case, I found some similar cases very quickly, far more quickly, you know, 10 minutes rather than a couple of hours.
Niki Black: But then when I did the same thing with Claude as the, as the researcher, if you will, as I understand it, it's kind of akin to a different person using this, you know, similar databases to conduct the research. And what Claude did, as it conducted the research using Midpages database. Niki Black: was not only did it find the best cases really fast, it also provided me with a bunch of information I didn't ask for. It… Niki Black: alerted me to the deadline, you know, the drop-dead statutory deadlines for a Court of Claims case when you're filing a case against New York. And then it also offered up… and something when I went and delivered this research to the partner who had 30 years litigation experience, whereas I had, like, 6 at that point, the partner said, you know, we're going to need to identify this witness, that witness, this other, you know, an expert for this, you know, someone who is familiar with state inspection requirements for signs, and this other, you know.
Niki Black: And… Niki Black: Claude said, you're gonna have to find these witnesses, by the way, to prove your case, assuming that it is, you have to determine it's owned by the state, and then you're gonna have to… and so Claude… and I didn't have that, as a 6-year associate. I litigated a lot, you know, I'd done many trials and hearings, hundreds at that point, as a public defender, and then I'd been in this civil litigation firm for a while, but I had never handled a court of claims case. Niki Black: Just because I hadn't. And I'd never dealt with road signs, and… Niki Black: the need to inspect them, but this partner, who had practiced for 30 years, had encountered these things and knew that they were hurdles that you would have to cross. And Claude was able to provide all that information in 10 minutes, and it was a far superior result. So I was incredibly impressed with the output, of Claude.
Niki Black: Against a database, and so it was, to me, an example of how Niki Black: that clawed as the harness may be, you know, against any kind of legal database, or the conduit into the business, because the, Niki Black: I think that… Niki Black: you know, practice management is still going to be a thing. I think legal research is going to be a thing. I think document management, because each of those companies knows how to specifically handle the data, address compliance issues, understands the workflows, but I think that you may end up having this Claude as the top that is the conduit into the tools that… whatever the tools the firm is using, and Claude may sometimes provide… be able to take those and combine them and provide the exact answer you're looking for across your firm's Niki Black: database, across the other, you know. Niki Black: practice resources, so I think it was just sort of an interesting example of how Niki Black: Well, how effective that might potentially be. Niki Black: So that was my article.
Rhys Dipshan: That's interesting, I, I… Poke to the… Ed… Rhys Dipshan: Aged people, last week, and they… Rhys Dipshan: Essentially told me that, like, you know, their whole, Rhys Dipshan: you know, approaches to just, like, you know, have it on Claude, because they think that Claude will be the platform that attorneys Rhys Dipshan: go to proposed, and that's how they, you know. Rhys Dipshan: stand out against, like, you know, the TRs and the excesses, too, and I… Rhys Dipshan: you know, like, it was such a curious statement, too, because I… had… all expertise. Rhys Dipshan: And, like, you know, like, I was completely, like, you know, like, unsure too, like, you know, on, you know, claw pod. Rhys Dipshan: And I will say, like, you know, like, like, the experience that he… Rhys Dipshan: who had, like, tends to… Really drive their, you know, Lisa's home? Rhys Dipshan: And Claude, you know, seems to… Power everything anyway. Rhys Dipshan: No, like, it seems to… to be, like, you know, like, the one… Rhys Dipshan: Bing. Rhys Dipshan: I'd always… tends to, like, you know, P everywhere. Rhys Dipshan: So, like, you know, like. Rhys Dipshan: potentially we could see, you know, folks just going to a chat GPT and Claude Rhys Dipshan: And having it as the first, you know, contact. Rhys Dipshan: And if we do, it could entirely reshape the entire tech industry and be an extremely… Rhys Dipshan: Scary prospect, too, for a ton of people who spent a long time trying to construct these, you know, platforms and design these platforms. Rhys Dipshan: For the industry just to have a, you know, chat tool take it over. I mean, it's… Rhys Dipshan: a crazy prospect, although it is a prospect that I feel is… Rhys Dipshan: potentially going to happen, to an extent. Rhys Dipshan: And it could start a, you know, a whole transformation in the industry. I mean, it is… Rhys Dipshan: quite scary if I was at a… legal tech prov… provider, I guess.
Stephen Embry: Thought the same thing for a while as well. Absolutely.
Niki Black: The other thing I wanted to mention is on the… Niki Black: I've used Claude's legal skill for compliance work on the winery side of things, because my husband and I are starting a winery, and it's been incredibly helpful for that, in terms of understanding the compliance requirements, and understanding deadlines, and Niki Black: And that's what it's designed for, so I've also used it in that context, and it's been really valuable, and saved me a ton of time.
Victor Li: How would you compare it to, like, a ChatGPT or something? Because, I mean, so many people, I mean, we've seen the stats, so many people use… just use ChatGPT as sort of the default now. How would you compare it to something like that?
Niki Black: Well, I used ChatGPT up until I switched, and I think that Claude on its own, without the legal skill. Niki Black: is comparable to ChatGPT. I would not use it for the compliance stuff, for example, on the winery side of things, but when you add that legal skill in there, it already has some of that guardrailing and, you know, a lot of the stuff done on the back end that makes it particularly useful for that. So it's the legal skill, I think, that is what makes it stand out in that respect. And again. Niki Black: did I… did I double-check what it was telling me, even in that context? Of course I did. Did I 100% rely on it? No. But it saved me a ton of initial research and framed the issues in terms of the compliance stuff that I needed to know for the winery, so that I could sort through that a little easier, because I have no familiar… I definitely… Niki Black: Have never handled that type of thing as an attorney.
Victor Li: Gotcha. Victor Li: Alright, well, we still have, we still have a couple stories we gotta talk about, so I'm just gonna zoom through. So, Victor Li: Let's go to you, Steve. Let's talk about, Victor Li: let's talk about lawsuits, because, you know, I guess I've got some… I was trying to come up with something, I was like, let's just do it.
Stephen Embry: Well, this story wasn't… wasn't really legal tech, necessarily, but it is… I think it's some… Stephen Embry: fascinating developing issues. So, we all probably heard about the verdict against Meta for Stephen Embry: Negligently designing a system that would Stephen Embry: lead to addiction of social media, or use of the social media, and they're pretty substantial. And then I read this story about the Stephen Embry: some lawyers in Florida who are claiming that they're going to file a suit against OpenAI. Stephen Embry: they represent the victim of a shooter, and their claim is that the shooter… that OpenAI ChatGPT gave the shooter the Stephen Embry: know how, to do the crime. And their claim, in part, is that, Stephen Embry: ChatGPT is a product that is a product that's effectively designed Stephen Embry: And, creates an unreasonable risk of danger, so product liability concepts apply, which is now strict… would be strict liability. Would not have to prove negligence. And, you know, as an old product liability lawyer, I'd sort of wonder about that, because Stephen Embry: I mean, is it a product, or is it providing a service, to its users? So, typically, products are products, like, you know. Stephen Embry: a car, or a lawnmower, or what have you. And that would be sort of extending it a bit in my mind, to something that's not typically been considered a product, but maybe that's not Stephen Embry: you know, that unreasonable. Of course, there's all sorts of intervening and superseding cause issues that'll be in the case, so I'm not really sure how valid it'll be. I mean, it's… Stephen Embry: are just… are typically intervening, superseding cause, and I've had cases that dealt with that issue. Stephen Embry: Crimes are typically considered intervening superseding cause because they're… they're not considered foreseeable. Stephen Embry: But I think we're going to see a whole lot of these cases as plaintiffs, lawyers, sort of Stephen Embry: You know, see an opportunity here to bring these kinds of claims, and the verdict potential is Stephen Embry: Obviously, maybe not what it is, and… Stephen Embry: You know, some of the other well-known. Stephen Embry: product cases, but it is substantial, and it's just beginning. And so, you know, it could be a burgeoning legal area that we see, you know, more class actions, we start to see some multi-district litigation, and Stephen Embry: A lot of interesting kind of stuff here, so it'll be interesting to see how it develops.
Rhys Dipshan: That's a, a, quick thing, Rhys Dipshan: It's insane in the article, and I believe it's the right article I have. It's, Rhys Dipshan: They said that ChatGPT gave the… Rhys Dipshan: Unmanned advice on how to carry out Hey, attack. Rhys Dipshan: You know, I… Rhys Dipshan: cannot even ask ChatGPT to create a, you know, a photo that has a cartoon character due to, like, you know, content restru… Rhys Dipshan: Dude.
Victor Li: Yeah, that is true, yeah.
Rhys Dipshan: I'm not even sure, like, how people, you know, like.
Stephen Embry: Yeah.
Rhys Dipshan: doing this on Twitter. Stephen Embry: It is interesting. Rhys Dipshan: content, you know, is completely out of whack with the restrictions.
Stephen Embry: Their claim seems to be that the chatbot ought to be able to figure out where you're going when you ask it certain things, and when it sees that, provide a warning. Stephen Embry: To prevent you from going any further. Stephen Embry: But you're right, I mean, I can't… I don't get very far with… I mean, I don't… haven't asked it how to go shoot somebody. Granted, I've put that right up front, but there's… there are things that I ask it. But as we all know, there… Stephen Embry: if you… there are workarounds for a lot of that stuff, if you're crafty enough. It'd be interesting… So…
Caroline Hill: I don't know this case, but it'd be interesting to know whether there's an element of… whether it was encouraging, because obviously, you know, you can get information Caroline Hill: on this sort of stuff, anywhere on the internet, right? Like, there's the internet despit of… of… it's not just ChatGPT, you can get this kind of advice or information anywhere, you know, you could go to the dark web and… Caroline Hill: get someone killed. I feel like… Caroline Hill: you know, but I feel like maybe the active nature, perhaps, you know, you've heard of ChatGPT encouraging people to do something, and I think that maybe would be a different thing. You know, you've heard awful examples of ChatGPT encouraging people to commit suicide and things like that. You know, I wonder if that may be a slight differentiator in the active nature of the advice.
Stephen Embry: Yeah, there used to be some of these, some of these cases, they were terrorist bombing cases where, you know, the claim would be that you could Stephen Embry: You could go online and learn how to make a bomb pretty easily, and Stephen Embry: the makers of the material should have known that and provided some sort of warning or done something differently. But that's different. I mean, that was a physical product, as opposed to claiming that Stephen Embry: Google would give you clues on how to blow up a building, and therefore Google is a product manufacturer subject to product liability law. That… that seems a bit of a stretch.
Stephanie Wilkins: That's exactly my initial gut reaction, too. I also am not being fully familiar with either of the cases, but, like, the encouragement factor, like, we've read the Google cases where the chatbot was actively saying, like, yeah, maybe you should take your own life. Stephanie Wilkins: As opposed to, here is, like, the Anarchist Cookbook has been out there forever, and as far as I know, this writer has not been put in jail for this, you know? To me, it's a little bit… it's different, but I don't know. Somewhere, the line does have to be drawn, and I'm not suggesting where that is, but I feel it's different, too.
Joe Patrice: I think it goes to a lot of the… Joe Patrice: conversation more broadly that we're having of these, now lawmakers trying to dismantle Section 230, too. Like, a lot of what the internet is based on is the idea that, no, you are not liable for what idiots do with what you put up there. And… Joe Patrice: you know, even though this is, you know, this product liability argument is different, it's a broader theme. We've got politicians trying to score quick points on maybe we should dismantle this architecture that we built the internet upon, and it's a worrying time on that front. Joe Patrice: As somebody who works on the internet.
Victor Li: Alright, let's, we only have a few minutes left, so take us home, Joe. Let's talk about, hallucinations, this time not AI-related.
Joe Patrice: Yeah, okay, so this is real quick, so this is good. Yeah, so there was a case in New Jersey, a classic AI hallucination case. There were a bunch of sites that weren't, you know, quotes that weren't matching up, and cases that were bad law, and, you know, there was a big investigation of, how did your Gen AI get out of hand, and why didn't you… and it wasn't. It was apparently that they told the paralegal to do some stuff, and the paralegal didn't know any better and screwed it up. Joe Patrice: Which drove home for me that, yet again, it's actually kind of a funny one, it was… I actually really enjoyed the real rationale, because it was that the original draft had a series of good quotes, and the associate told the paralegal, yeah, but these quotes need to be from the Third Circuit. And the paralegal, rather than saying, let me go find law from the Third Circuit that says the same thing, was like, great. Joe Patrice: I'll just change the sights on all of them to Third Circuit sights. So that was the error. Anyway, the point, though, was it was just yet another reminder of a thing that we've all talked about many times on this show and agree with, which is the problem is Joe Patrice: not the technology it is that aren't editing. And this was another instance. The voyeurs did not look to make sure that all of these… all of these sites were real. And this is the sort of thing that, you know, flew under the radar when people Joe Patrice: poorly managed their teams for years, but thankfully, because everybody is hyped up about generative AI and all scared about what it can do, we're finally starting to get some transparency on which lawyers are bad at editing.
Niki Black: Well, I think it's funny, because that was a syncophanticus paralegal, is what it really was. Same mindset as the AIs. Oh, you want this? I'll just… I'll make it exactly what you want.
Joe Patrice: What a great idea! Joe Patrice: Oh, you're right, those weren't good quotes. I'm sorry, let me try again.
Victor Li: Well, that is the easiest thing. When I was like, alright, you want it for a second? Here you go.
Joe Patrice: Yeah. Joe Patrice: Yeah, that was apparently when it went down. Joe Patrice: And it was complicated, because the associate who gave the initial instruction apparently left the firm at that point, so there was a breakdown where, like, the part… like, where that person probably would have looked at it and been, no, no, no, no, no, I don't think you'd get it, but they were no longer there, so yeah.
Caroline Hill: Ouch.
Victor Li: Alright, well, looks like we're out of time. Sorry if I shortchanged anybody this week, you can blame Bob when he gets back. Hopefully next week. Send your complaints to Bob Ambrosie, not to me. Victor Li: But anyway, yeah, join us next week with, hopefully we'll have, Judge Reinhold as our, as our, as our face, as our sponsor, and then, you know, we'll take it from there. Stephen Embry: Amazing. Hello, everybody. Caroline Hill: Thanks. Victor Li: Gotcha. Caroline Hill: Bye. Victor Li: Okay, so I stopped recording? Yes.