Transcription
Welcome everybody to Legal Tech Week for another Friday the 13th. We've had a like string of Friday the 13th in recent months. Uh and uh probably most of what we'll be talking about today is our legal week post-mortem because none of us had time to do anything else all week or write about anything else all week.
Um but uh we've got we've got thoughts about that to share and uh we've got a little bit of a small panel today. Some people are still paneling p traveling paneling. Some people are still paddling away from New York uh in their canoes and others are uh here in there.
Uh I am Bob Ambrosia. I have a blog called Lost Sites and a podcast called Law Next. And uh Stephanie, you want to kick off your kick off the introductions this week?
>> Sure. Hi everyone. I'm Stephanie Wilkins, the What am I? Oh my gosh. The director of content at Legal Techub. I very tired from Legal Week, in case you can't tell.
>> All right, Nikki.
>> Um, I I want to remember my title. Uh, my name is Nikki Black. I'm the think I have to think about it. The principal legal insight strategist at 8 a.m. Um, and uh the team behind my case, LE Case Pier, and Docket Wise. and I write legal tech columns for the ABA Journal, Above the Law, and the Daily Record. And I think I'm my mind's just about as zapped as Stephanie's is. So, it's going to be a great
>> We're all in the same boat.
>> Yeah. It's gonna be a lively show.
>> Joe.
>> Oh, yeah. Joe Price from Above the Law and uh I have a podcast called Thinking Like a Lawyer in addition to doing this. And I am excited to be back. I have yet to write about the thing we're going to talk about, but I have several stories like halfwritten. So s, you know, soon enough they'll get up there.
>> Yeah, the mushy brain. I like the mushy brain uh mushy brain uh episode of Legal Tech Week. Yeah, my wife just texted me like she got some tickets for some show tonight. Like, oh great, I just want to go home and go to bed. Um but anyway, uh yeah, it was a long it was a I don't know. It was a busy week.
Um, this was uh for anybody in the audience who who doesn't know this or uh for people who were at the show but were completely brain dead all week. This was the first time Legal Week ever moved to first time it's moved to the uh Javitz Center from its longtime home in New York Hilton. I was trying to do some uh soouththing this morning online and the best I to the best I can figure out it was in the Hilton for 39 years.
>> Wow.
>> Uh and and it actually started a few years before that. Uh, I even found I actually found a couple of articles about it from like 1980 85 or something that on on the uh on the internet archive like like magazine articles covering like law not law office like some general like PC PC magazine or something covering legal week and covering legal tech as it was then called in like 1985. Uh but I was in the Sherin for the first couple of years and then moved over looks like it moved over to the Hilton around 86 and u then to the Javit Center.
>> that's like 20 years before half the founders were born.
>> Oh yeah.
>> I mean it's even I and I've been around a while have trouble trying to think of what the heck legal tech was back back at that point. Uh I mean Aderant I think aderant is like 40 years old or something. I I mean there obviously were public were uh were products around then but I'm hardressed to think of what some of them were
>> and unfortunately PC make yeah
>> bait stamp machines maybe uh
>> yeah well it was I mean those were appropriately the days of of booth babes as we will talk about later in the show uh because uh maybe maybe they're making a return maybe it's time for booth babes to come back um
>> I don't know if it's time for them they just might have done it without being invited.
>> Haven't been invited. Um anyway, I don't know what so like uh should just kind of start with general impressions of of how how did it go moving moving to the Javitz? What do people think?
>> The exhibit hall is very nice. Yes, that's what I said going in like because I knew I mean before I left ALM I knew this was coming before the masses knew and like I always said the exhibit hall would be nicer which you know it was I mean the other one was split among three floors and one of them was a cramped basement and you felt bad for whoever was down there and whatever. So the exhibit hall itself as I expected as we all expected I think was much much nicer. um and still not cavernous like we felt at ABA Tech show, you know, like it was still it felt like a good exhibit hall. Um it was always going to be an issue of location in New York. And I think people did their best and between now this year and next year they'll figure out a little bit more maybe where to have things or not have things or maybe don't expect people to go off site for a meeting when it's a 10-minute walk in each direction to the next street. So yeah, that's going to be the issue. But all in all, I mean, I thought it was I met some people who really loved it. So,
>> yeah, I mean, exhibit hall perfect. Uh, there's a lot more natural light, which is useful. Uh, makes it less unpleasant. Uh,
>> some people call house.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It also got hot, which was crazy. Um,
>> if you went up to the fifth floor, it was lovely.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And the garden area was very nice and everything. Uh the that said uh yeah they uh they nickel and dime you for everything. There was no food. There was uh just coupons to use at their in-house places that charged for everything. Uh you could uh the uh media lounge was too small. Seating was at a a kind of a premium. There were a lot of a lot of downsides, but you know and yeah, there's no central bar uh or anything like that because there's no central hotel because the hotels are all spread out. Uh so real real issues on that front, but uh exhibit hall was a big problem with the old one. So that's fixed.
>> Well, from a vendor perspective, uh the exhibit halls was better, but those meeting rooms were not rooms. They were weren't even meeting tents. They were so I think it made it hard for um from the exhibitor perspective to hold meetings where you had to discuss anything strategic. Plus, everybody could just look in and see who you were meeting with. Even those ones with the black curtains in the back, they were still just black curtains. So, I I you know, I think that that causes a lot of issues because there are a lot of meetings that go on there that are very productive for all the different companies involved. And if you can't have and you can't really have them offsite because you're talking about a 15-minute walk to a hotel suite somewhere.
>> Yeah. So, you know, it I it's great from a vendor hall perspective, but from all the other things the vendors do there, I think it made things a little bit more uh challenging. And I don't know, it sounds like that's going to not be a solved problem next year because they're moving everything onto two floors and it's going to be even more public. So, it'll be interesting to see if that just means that people stop using this as a show to conduct business and just more of one to showcase your brand and products and, you know, or maybe they just all stay off site and you'd almost have to have someone sponsor a place for everyone to, you know, meet up and everyone just stayed there. I don't know. It was I think it was definitely a downfall for the conference,
>> which was a bit of a pro. Oh, I was just going to say that's a bit of a problem because what one of its selling points is that it's New York so you can meet with your clients,
>> right? I was going to say I mean I thought you know Stephanie mentioned Ava Tech show and so that that was our last example of a legal tech conference moving from its longtime home to a bigger conference venue. And last year was kind of a disaster for ABA Tech show in a lot of ways. I mean it I you know I'm I do the start of ABA tech show. I love ABA Tech show. I love going there. But in terms of the way they managed the venue, uh it it just didn't go well. You had that just like that cavernous entrance area that nobody was ever in and and you had to the exhibit hall was way over on one side and had the booths all spread out so far. You it was just it just didn't it felt, you know, uh un it just you felt I had this feeling like nobody was there a lot of the time. It just felt empty and strange. and plus a long walk from the hotel. Not that the Javitz is any better at that, but I thought in terms of the of a venue in managing the venue, I thought um ALM or or whatever their current name is, I guess they're rebranding um was they I thought they did a good job with it actually overall. I mean, I thought the transition from the Hilton to the to the Javitz just for the conference itself was good. And if you talk to people who were who had never been to the Hilton, who were at this for the first time, they were all like, "Oh, this is great. I love it. It's wonderful. Um, no, you know, it's only those who had been ever been at the Hilton who had any kind of uh any kind of negative feelings I think about it. Um, I mean, other than the fact that you're in the middle of nowhere at the Javitz and there's nothing around there and it's kind of a hassle. You know, the la the third the last day it rained a little bit so having to kind of trudge back and forth in the rain from hotel. But for me, the the other the other thing I I you've probably all heard me say this 10 times if you were there at the conference because I kept saying that it just felt like there was sort of no center of gravity to the conference where, you know, at the Hilton there was always this like lobby lounge. Uh and if if nothing else, you know, at the end of the day, people would kind of gravitate to that lounge and hang out and there would be very vibrant place and everybody talking and chatting and you'd bump into people you hadn't seen. Um, nothing like that at the Javits. And, uh, you know, as the people on this call know, I mean, how many nights were we all like, you know, it's 9:00 and where do we go now? And what do we do? And we're all like texting other people to see where they are and they're all texting us back saying, "Where are you?" And, you know, so I mean, I my my my one suggestion to ALM is next year they have to designate an official bar and tell everybody to end up there at the end of the day.
>> I did I I like I did really like that. Exactly. Because like even if I wasn't going to stay out late, I would come back and be like, "Oh, I can pop in and I'll know a bunch of people there. I can have one drink and go to bed." Whereas this, I'm like, "Well, I'm just going to bed after lunch unless I really want to track and commit to a party, you know,
>> after lunch."
>> Oh, yeah. Well, there you go.
>> I could have taken I would have taken naps if there was a hotel on site. But no,
>> I I wanted to mention that that was my observation about um the vendor meeting areas. No one from my company ever actually complained. So that was really just more me thinking that from a vendor perspective having you know going to press meetings for example it just felt when I a couple of them were held in those black the rooms with the black curtains and it just felt like there was no privacy. Um and then uh the other thing uh Jesse asked what did I mean about the two floors as I understand it the fifth floor is not available next year right so they're compressing the third floor and on the vendor hall they're putting all the meeting rooms or something is what someone said. So that's
>> I didn't know that. I heard they're ex expanding the exhibit hall and they've already decided to do that next year because they've already got more more exhibitors. Apparent apparently they had more exhibitors than they had room for or more interest from exhibitors than they had room for this year.
>> I mean there's no shortage of room there.
>> Who knew?
>> Well, so long as we don't have to compete with the coffee conference again.
>> The beauty conference too. Um, no, but I did I usually at events will wander around and just sort of informally poll the exhibit hall people like how do you feel like foot traffic was or whatever? And only one person was at all negative about it. Like pretty much everyone I talked to was like it was it was fine or two it was really good. And even the one person who was like it wasn't great but literally if one but the people that came by were higher quality and if even one of them comes through it was worth being here. So, as opposed to a lot of recent shows, that was a Yeah, that that was a better response. It's funny, the the curtain areas were a little weird and they were piping some really loud smooth jazz over it. I don't know if that was supposed to help with the privacy aspect, but yeah,
>> I didn't even notice that. I only I actually never went to the c I I kept hearing about people talk about the curtain. never went there till the last day. Like the very last meeting I had was up there, but at that point there was like nobody up there except the one company that had waited until 11:30 at the last day to meet with me.
>> Yeah. I didn't get in the curtain area until uh Wednesday afternoon. So same.
>> Yeah. Um, I also, I don't know about you guys, but I, you know, the perennial issue at every conference is I always overchedu myself for briefings and then don't leave time to do all the other stuff like actually go to seminars or keynotes.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I didn't go to either of the keynotes. I didn't and I didn't I didn't go to a single seminar. I don't even know where they were. I never even figured out where they were.
>> So, I don't know. Did anybody else go to anything or
>> Well, I haven't gone in years. I went to so when I used to be at ALM they started doing the future state of the industry as like a followup to the big one in the morning and it was an all women panel and I used to be on it and I'm not on it anymore but I still make a point of going to it every year to like support the people I used to be on the panel with but that's literally the only one I made it to. I went to the first part of um Mindy uh what's her last name?
>> Keing went to part of that.
>> I did want to mention the wine was I the wine option this year was surprisingly good across the different things we went to. I was really happy with the wine this year. So that's a a plus. The wine for the I don't know if I had wine at the conference itself though. But anyway, I was super pleased about that. So, you know, that's an important lens on an event. It's funny you make that joke, Joe, because there wasn't
>> Well, wait. No one else No one else saw that joke.
>> Oh,
>> I I just wrote that to you so I can make it out loud, but I was I was going to wait until we had the
>> Well, then my comment was offense.
>> I was going to say
>> four of the women, four of the six women on the future state of the industry panel wore red and black. It wasn't even planned. It was just like and the two who didn't like what happened to the memo. But yeah, no, I always like that panel. So what what what we're talking about here is
>> Yes.
>> Yes. You should clarify quickly.
>> No, there was
>> I think Stephanie should clarify because she's the only one who fully has embraced the uh the LinkedIn thread around this. I think
>> yeah, there's a lot of there's if there's any controversy coming out of it. There was one stand. I'm actually I'm in the camp of people that you can figure it out for yourself. I'm not going to give them more clicks by saying their name and driving traffic to them, but there was one quite large booth, too. It wasn't just a tiny booth
>> that their entire backdrop was an AI generated like sexy blonde woman in a tight red dress with cleavage. And then they had a wall of text that was barely legible, but it starts with next to her being like, how what was it like,
>> who knows what she really wants?
>> Who knows what she wants? And then they were like selling like an allincclusive data buffet. It was so weird. And a lot of people commented just offhand to me about how it was just not reading the room. A lot of people like it was offensive and gross. It was like a throwback to the days of when people hired booth babes and things like that. And like it came up a lot and then there have been a few LinkedIn posts about it. And the CEO of the company has like done a two-page presser about defending their idea about it, which is always a good sign that it was a good idea, right? If you have to write that long of a presser defending it, one of their investors is like responding to every single negative comment being like, "How could you possibly be offended by this?" So, yeah, it's a lot. It was it very it was very out of place. And I did go up to it the first night to try to ask what they did. And nobody at the booth. They only had a handful of women at the booth and we would say, "Oh, what do you do?" They're like, "We're having a happy hour." And handed a card. And we were like, "No, but what do you do?" And they're like, "We're having a happy hour." And tried to hand us a card. And finally they're like, "We we have no idea something with data." And we're like, "Okay, good talk."
>> Yeah.
>> I missed all this too until you brought it up in our in our Slack. I I totally missed the whole controversy, but
>> I I saw it the like the first day I was in there and I clocked it then and and thought like, well, that's weird. And then I completely forgot about it, which was a sign to me of how how foreign the idea was in my head that I absolutely suppressed that memory that I had seen it until Stephanie brought it up today. But as soon as she did, I was like, "Yeah, that was there. I do remember that." Well, and our booth was close enough to it that I walked by it like 25 times. And certainly one of the people that posted that first LinkedIn thing was like across from it and stared at it for four straight days. So when you were close to it, you got to hear a lot of the comments of like, "What the hell is that about?" And
>> and it was an end cap too to use not facing forward. So you would have to be coming from the back of the hall to see it, but it was pretty central.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So if you're coming north. Yeah.
>> Did you say this? I mean their explanation is somehow that's supposed to be AI and nobody knows what AI really wants or something like that. It's like
>> there's other ways you could have done that graphically like they could have asked AI for a better option I think and come up with something.
>> And also the woman the image of the woman aside that wall of text is like not telling anyone any it's like it's like how not to do a backdrop for a product. It's like when you have a PowerPoint slide and you put paragraphs on it that no one's going to read. It's like headacheinducing. But yeah, it was um I don't know. They're defending it, but I'm going to call it a swing and a miss.
>> Had I known, I would have had us all wear red today, but too too late for that. Um, Jesse points out the date next year, which is March, what is it, March 1 through three or something, which is an interesting development because apparently ABA tech show next year is starting on March 3rd. So, we're going to have a very interesting week if I've got that right. That's what uh I think Brett Bernie told me that. So, it's got to be real.
>> Wait, what else? They over
>> tech show is going to start on the day and the last day of legal week.
>> Oh my gosh.
>> So they overlap.
>> All right. Well, they they do not have their calendar up anywhere. So we we just have the Yeah. Our inside intel. But yeah,
>> and I don't know by start that means that like the it probably means the third is like the day of the startup alley and stuff like that which is the main conference probably starts the fourth probably. So,
>> but then legal week is only three days next year.
>> Yeah.
>> Yes. I I did put that in the chat already. Yes. I was already told that they were compressing it to three days. They thought that there were there there were some weird points during Monday where things were too long and spread out and they just figured out a way to crunch it.
>> But they've been increasingly expanding it to four days over. It used to be that the only thing Monday night was the awards and then they started adding the AI workshops and then they did added morning workshops and they added a keynote and now they're doing the reverse. That's interesting.
>> Yeah, they thought it see and you felt it on Monday too cuz I came first thing Monday morning. There were there were long stretches of stuff where you were like we could we could tighten this up gang. Uh, so I guess they're going backwards, but yeah, the uh, ever since, and I know it was kind of co inspired originally, but ever since Legal Week chose to roll into ABA Tech Show's monopoly of March, uh, it these kind of scheduling screw-ups have happened a couple of times, if I recall, where they are real close to each other. Uh, they've never been on top of each other, but real close. Like there was once where we all had to fly back on the same week.
>> Yeah. The other weird thing on the schedule was that the keynote, the Eli Manning keynote was like Monday afternoon
>> and I I didn't like didn't even thought to look on the schedule to see if the keynote is Monday afternoon. I just assumed it was going to be Tuesday morning.
>> Well, I think that was because they also opened the exhibit hall on Monday evening for the and had that ex reception there. They didn't used to do that on Monday evening either. So, I think that was to draw people there. Like they really tried to make it a Monday conference.
>> Yeah.
>> Then I always feel sorry for the people on Thursday afternoon that have panels because everyone le they shut down the exhibit hall at noon and everyone starts trickling out and then there's actually decent panels in the afternoon that nobody goes to.
>> Wait, so somebody from Boston wasn't ready for Eli Manning? That I've seen that a couple of times before. Uh I had I even had I known I I wouldn't have I mean I probably would not have gone to that anyway. I know Steve went to Eli Manning and I think he also went to Mindy Kalin. Nikki went to Mini Kan but from what I've heard various reports from various people. In neither case was there any effort to make it tie it to legal tech in any way whatsoever. It was just just a straight out interview. I think both were were conducted by Gina at least the Eli Manning ones. I think just interviews conducted by uh Gina Pasarella Pasarella. Am I saying her name right? Yeah. Who's like the editor-inchief at law.com and ALM.
>> Yeah, she is a really good interviewer. She has like actual Grammys for that kind of stuff. But yeah,
>> so yeah, I don't mind the celebrity uh speaker thing, but yeah, I I did hear a lot of people complaining about the celebrity speaker concept just generally. And you know, this has been a drift that's come up over the last few years like uh because we all kind of decided we we'd already seen Richard Suskin so many times. Uh, but we we've started moving away from people who are talking about legal tech to these celebrities and I I did see some people complaining about it. I don't know. I I don't have a problem with it. But
>> yeah,
>> what else? Uh any any uh any parties worth talking about?
>> I asked you as if I weren't at all the same parties you all went to.
>> That's the thing. were so they were so spread out and like I would run into someone the next day and said, "Oh, were you at this party?" I'm like, "I never even heard of that one. I don't know." So,
>> a lot of Hudson I think I spent more time in Hudson Yards than I have and I live in New York. So,
>> well, that that's the problem, right? Like the the Javit Center, if you tried to do this in the Javit Center a decade ago, it would have been even more of a disaster. The only thing making it close to not a disaster is that Hudson Yards exists. And there's only so many things you can can get out of the way, you know, that you can do in there. And yeah, no, it's it it's not a great venue, uh, Javit Center for a lot of these things. But I guess that's I guess we're just going to have to get used to it.
>> Well, the press and PR corps found a great dive bar on Wednesday night that no one knew about, so that was a nice place. Yeah, someone's just snag that next year.
>> I see somebody's hand raised, but now I don't see tell if they want to.
>> Wait, which bar was that one?
>> The one was called.
>> Nobody's perfect.
>> Nobody's perfect. Right, try. Yes. Yep.
>> Uh, what else about Lego week? Anything else we want to
>> Look, people keep asking me and we have nothing else to talk.
>> Yeah, I know. Well, no, because I haven't really decided yet what my answer to this is, but everyone kept asking me like, "So, what's been your big takeaway?" Or like, "Did you see anything really exciting?" And I'm like, "I don't really know yet. Maybe I'm just too tired. I can't really figure out what my thoughts are." I I mean I had a takeaway that I think I kind of just made up. Um I don't think everyone else was saying it.
>> Will it into existence, Nikki?
>> She's gonna AI hallucinate her thoughts on AI. Let's do this.
>> Um I mean that I think the thing that you know that was surprising that what we were everybody was talking about was the Claude. It's not surprising that everyone's talking about that, but the fact that it only came out a few weeks ago and it was a big topic of discussion at this conference, the cloud legal Yeah. co-work legal um
>> skill or whatever they're calling it
>> plug in. Yeah.
>> Yeah. That you know that was brought up constantly. It was already integrated into some pe um some large platforms and I thought it was interesting to see how they were doing it. Some of them put it into their own platform, other was in other ones had it on top of it leading into their platform for lack of a better way to describe it. Um, the harness the I heard a lot a lot of talk about harnesses. Um, that which was a new word to me for me. Um, I don't know if it was for you guys, but uh
>> I bridled at that.
>> Oh, Bob.
>> Well, my theory coming out of this and I'll be interested to see what when ILticon rolls around how things are playing out. Um, but my theory is that what we may see in the within the next year or so or maybe two years is Claude or Open AI at the top one, you know, one of those two or both of those two, maybe Gemini, but at the top the harness, if you will, into a law firm's entire tech stack. So, you know, and both practice, you know, uh, the practice side and the business side. So because everyone's talking about how they want their platform to be the home base from which firms operate. Um and we you know some of the companies we all were uh that we talked to some of the group press things one of them even said and I won't say which one that that's what they envision um and they're on the practice side of things that people will run their firms within their software. Um but what I think is going to happen is that you're going to have I'm just going to say Claude because they're the ones with the legal tool out first. Claude
>> and they look ahead. Yeah. Yeah. As the conversational interface that then links into all of the trusted platforms that firms use that all have integrations into it and from that conversational interface you get the answer and then can deep dive into the platform if you need to to get the information that you need. I'm not I don't think that's necessarily what um any legal software tool would like to have would envision happening, but I think that that may be what it ends up looking like. Um and I'm and I still think you're going to have these trusted legal platforms that protect the information and have all the audit trails and have the HIPPA compliance or the trust account compliance that law firms need. you know, all those different regulatory compliance things that law firms need and the audit trails and certain kinds of information protected or ethics walls in place or whatever it may be depending on the software there. I think legal tools are the only ones going to be able to do all of that properly. But I I do think that there may be this top layer that is the general one of the general um purpose generative AI tools. Time will tell.
>> Yeah. No, I mean that that makes the most sense. uh we already saw that their and that that quick plug in like it it collapsed the market right like like everybody who's publicly traded went down 15 20%. Uh they have recovered since then because uh by the end of that day people were using that skill and finding out that it did its legal research on Wikipedia. though not really great but it it was a signal right that they are willing to and capable of swooping in and destroying the entire sector whenever they feel like it
>> but I don't they want to like what like they I mean they didn't come out in that my they didn't come out of the box to be like we're building legal tech like here they didn't enter the market with a legal tech product I think it's more like Nikki was saying like they want to be
>> interwoven in everything.
>> Yeah. No, and I Oh,
>> go ahead.
>> Oh, I was just I was just going to say the one theory I heard that I apparently came started circulating in October, but I had never heard it before, but that the more I read about it uh makes a ton of sense is what why do you right now I'm going to do my uh windhored uh why would they do that? Uh for those who follow sports memes, uh why would you give if you're an investor so much money to the Harveys and Lagoras of the world uh to the point where they have, you know, valuations rivaling the GDP of major nations? Uh why would you be giving that money uh to something when if they if Claude or OpenAI wanted to, they could just, you know, more or less steal all that business. And the theory that started circulating in October, uh, I was told about and I started digging into and makes a lot of sense is I think a lot of the investors in those companies see themselves as getting backdoor into the bigger companies and that what's get that that the open secret is Anthropic goes public and immediately buys one of the two of them and then good luck. You couldn't get into Anthropic, but you're in a high, you know, on a high on the ladder in the company. they just had to buy.
>> That makes some sense to me.
>> Yeah, I think that's a Nikki, I think your your kind of takeaway is was really perceptive in terms of that. Uh, and I I thought a couple of things about that were interesting. One is that the Claude plug-in thing is really not much more than a really sophisticated prompt. I mean, somebody somebody wrote a really good prompt.
>> Yeah. you know, and you see Lexus and you see others sort of integrating that into their platform. And so when you're like, why not just, why just write a better prompt yourself or write or write that prompt yourself or something? And and uh I I understand. I think I think Nikki, you're exactly right that they're they're seeing that that lawyers are going to want to come in that kind of the front door of Claude or whatever it is and then and then maybe work their way into the legal platforms. But I thought the other thing that made me think about and I think you kind of touched on this is just that so many of the vendors that I spoke to this week that really was a theme and it was like a defensive theme on their part. I mean maybe they listen to our show and they've heard us talk about this before but so so many of them were kind of in in their presentations and in their pitches talking about why legal tech still matters over general AI tech uh and why it's so important that you use legal products over general AI products. uh and then they show you their product and that damn they look just like Claude and it's so hard to figure it out. It really is interesting to me to see the different ways people are going about it because I mean some small portion of it was sort of like jumping on the Claude hype train now to be like we're gonna shove Claude in there, you know, but I mean some people are thoughtfully using the plugin, some people are putting their stuff into Claude and vice vers I mean it's very it's really interesting to see how it's going to play out because I mean we had a small event on Monday for vendors and like Anthropic came up a ton there too and then so there was a lot of discussion about this whole thing and I think it it settled on like a I was very pleased with a lack of panic about this like as opposed to what the markets did a month ago. Um I'm just really curious to see how it's all going to play out because I think we're we're I too, you've talked about legal tech more as a monolith here and how this impacts it and it's going to impact different companies very differently depending on what their strength is, what their product is, how deep it is, if they're a point solution etc. There are two other things. Sorry, did you see that?
>> Well, I just just before I move off that, just go quick on on Joe's point about, you know, they do the research and they realize they're using Wikipedia for research. I mean, the point of the claude plugin there, it's not a legal research. It's just a contract analysis plugin. So, I mean, this there isn't any research component to it. So, it's a pretty harmless uh application to use it. So,
>> there there are two things. One's a data point and one is an anecdotal thing that I heard that also supported I sort of sort of led me to that hypothesis if you will. Um, one was the report the data from the legal industry report and I've seen it uh similar data points from other reports that um are recent data you know so many more people using the g general purpose generative AI tools compared to the legal specific ones. Um, and you know, it's possible that it's just because the firms have not yet rolled it out and there's they still want to use it because it makes their work faster and they're using it off the books. But something that someone else told me was that they know somebody whose company uses one of the large um legal platforms. I won't say which one. One of the two um you know chat legal
>> and their company has approved that and they use that. But then when they want for example a summarization of a document, chat GPT does that better. So they'll summarize it in chat GPT because they don't get as good of output. So there's selecting certain things that just work better coming out of those general purpose tools because those general purpose tools don't have the guard rails on the back end are the more advanced, you know, release that hasn't yet been rolled out into I'm make, you know, I'm making some assumptions here, but they're just getting better output. And so I think those are two other data points that kind of support this idea that there's a user preference for that simple fast accurate response with the most up-to-date version of whatever the tool is. And so they're just kind of using it off the books sometimes across the board and other times just for certain purposes. And so that's partly what makes me think that and depending because some of the companies also have it set up that way where you start with claudia you go into their product. I think that's what it's going to start looking like, but it's going to be all the tools, practice and business that a firm subscribes to and they're all going to eventually link into Claude and possibly, you know, open AI, too. So, we'll see.
>> The other thing, um, not quite a trend. I mean, you know, we asked about what was what was the sort of the big takeaway from the show, and like Stephanie said, we we haven't all had a chance to process it yet. Uh but that's part of the problem is that uh so much gets dumped during that show that uh you almost never get a chance to process it. And I mean I continue to be surprised by how many vendors hold off their big announcements until the middle of legal week. Uh and you know in some cases when they do that they at least with the press they embargo it. So they'll send it to us the week before and say we're going to be announcing this at legal week. that at least gives us as reporters some time to process it and think about it and and and cover it if we choose to cover it. But uh this year it just was out of control I felt like in terms of the numbers of emails I was getting during the show.
>> Oh yeah.
>> Not that I read any of them because I was in the middle of the show, but I could just see this flood of, you know, subject lines coming through. Uh, you know, announcing at 9:00 a.m. or announcing tomorrow morning or we've just announced. Uh, and I don't know who pays attention to all of that because I know none of the reporters were cover, you know, I look at our story log for this week and none of us covered anything this week pretty much. Um, and I just I don't get it. I don't know why why they keep doing that except that I think that they a lot of them feel like they have to somehow for some reason. But I don't know.
>> That's why we all need agent swarms to read all of our emails and turn them all into stories for us because there's no, you know, to boost our productivity. Well, maybe by next year that's what we'll be doing because I
>> mean
>> I think a few of them like take for example the Lora huge fundraising announcement the 550 million like that came out on what was it Tuesday or Wednesday of Tuesday I think it was
>> Tuesday morning
>> a few of those now are getting picked up by more mainstream media too so I don't even know if they care but that is crazy I mean so I was I mean I've been tracking funding and so like as of Monday afternoon for a panel at our event like I of what I had personally tracked in legal field funding for 2026 so far was at $520 million. And so with that single announcement, it more than doubled in a day. And we've passed a billion dollars for 2026 alone.
>> And what I had tracked for last year, which I'm sure is missing a few things, but you know what I had tracked for last year came to something like 4.3 billion for the whole year. And that included the like what was it $900 million for Cleo or $850 million or something. So yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> I was just going to say that on the Lora thing the uh like h how that story was going was they walked up to me and Nikki sitting in the media lounge is like hey do you want to have do you want to go talk to the CEO right now? We just announced and I couldn't but Nikki you did right? Uh, no. They
>> Oh, no.
>> me up there, introduced me to the PR person, and sent me on my way. So, I think she changed her mind on the walk up there. I'm not sure.
>> Amazing.
>> Well, I Yeah, I got an email from them the night before
>> saying there like there's there's going to be an announcement tomorrow morning. Uh, stay tuned. Basically, I think they had like a little presentation or something on Tuesday morning or Monday morning, whatever. I don't even know what. But anyway, I I mean, yeah, sure. You know, it's true that the Lor and the Harvey, the mainstream press is going to pick up more of that and and there is was even uh well, you know, Business Insider now has a regular legal tech reporter who was at the conference. I don't know if there's any other kind of mainstream press there. I I didn't I didn't notice them if there were, but uh um you know, that that kind of stuff gets picked up, but it's all the other stuff from the smaller companies that are really of no of no interest to the to the mainstream press. And I mean you know again I had like one one release there was like somebody's like give you the exclusive on this. I'm like oh great except sorry I just don't have time to do it
>> and um I don't know.
>> I was too busy smashing a printer with a baseball bat.
>> Yeah. I never made it over to that.
>> Oh my gosh. Seriously, my favorite thing I've ever done at a legal tech conference and they already told me that they're bringing it to every conference now. anyone who missed Definely that had the rage cage where you could like literally rage out office space style on broken electronics with a baseball bat. It was awesome.
>> But also, I mean, this is not necessarily like relevant to anything, but even just the different setting of Javit Center over on the west side where there's so much more open space. Like the number of just like billboards of legal tech around
>> just felt like it felt surreal. The very first one I s drive I drove down and the very as I drove
Into Manhattan and tried to find my way to my parking garage. The very first one I saw was 8 am. Nikki, you'll be glad to know. All over the side of some building somewhere.
We had some in the subways, too. The subway station closest to there. So, yeah. Good. You'll get a a lot of interesting people subscribing to your product from that. I saw some on like bus stops up on 42nd Street and like it's just I mean it makes total sense. It was just surreal seeing that many like in one shot legal tech bill big billboards.
Yeah. Um, the other thing I was going to say, oh, the other I guess the other thing I don't think we it's another minor thing, but that that kind of bugged me was that uh one of the big disadvantages of the Hilton always was the lack of anywhere to sit down and you'd want to go have a little meeting with somebody and you could not find anywhere to just sit down and have an interview or a conversation. And I think somehow I was led to believe that that was going to be better. And uh there was nowhere to sit down at the Javits and this the darn press room they gave us was just this little cordoned off area that unfortunately all the all the vendor meetings were happening there. So, you know, you'd have one table with four seats, but it would be a reporter and three vendors filling it all the time. Uh and so there was just like never anywhere to sit in the in the press room except late in the day or early in the morning. And then beyond that, there were just so few places to sit. I was really surprised by that.
Well, because in the press area there were so few tables, some of the PR agencies smartly took a table in the morning, you know, because they had constant meetings coming through and so you just couldn't get those. And some people were doing podcasts from them and were set up to do podcast for half the day and they just took the whole table. So, not not counting the one that was part of the show, there were other people just running their own podcasts and it was hard to find somewhere to sit. I I was just happy that my company had one of those meeting rooms because it wasn't always being used and I could go sit in there and have a break. But you know that that's a most people don't have that option and so people were sitting on the floor sitting like over in the corner in the few areas where there were places sit right next to the bathrooms looking like weird little perves even though they were working hard you know working away they weren't it was a weird place to have to camp out by the bathrooms I feel like. So, it was a little strange.
Also, yeah, there was on the fifth floor there was that co-working space which is also just like a bunch of open tables. And I definitely knew a company that got there in the morning and camped out there and just like had people cycle through for meetings there. It was definitely a first come first- serve kind of deal. I never once sat in the press area because even wandering through it was I mean none of my meetings ended up being there and there was never one one or two there. Yeah, some people were a little hostile there too. I wanted to sit down and eat a muffin for five minutes before my meeting and I walked up to two tables. There were people I didn't know there, but I asked them and they're like, "No." Like one guy got really mad and yelled at me and the other person's like, "We're in the middle of a meeting." And I'm like, "I'm really sorry. I wasn't trying." And their PR person got in the way and tried to push me out of the way. Like I wasn't trying to listen. I don't know what you think's happening, but okay. But there some people were a little strange about their tables and even asking a quick question. But I learned somebody suggested, I think we talked about this, but somebody suggested next year just like bring your own set of those little stansions or whatever they call them and just go find an empty place on the on the floor and just cordon it off and set up a chair in there and that'll be your space for the week and nobody else can come in there and they'll probably nobody would notice if you did that.
Or Arian stools. He was I was gonna say we all be Ari and carry around our own seating. All right, that's true. Uh that worked pretty well. Uh, all right. Um, and the lack of water. That was a big one. Lack of water and coffee. I've heard a lot of people talking about.
Yeah. Food. It was like there was nowhere to get food other than that little, right? It was just there was like a little stand on the Was that fourth floor, third floor? I for whatever the wherever the press room was. Um, press. What were in the back of the exhibit hall? I never used it. And what were the tickets on the back of our thing? I never used it. What did those do? Oh, there was lunch. Yeah, that was the back of the expo hall. you could get lunch. Okay. Um but but there weren't a lot of choices.
Yeah, there was water upstairs and coffee if you thought knew to look for it on the fifth floor. I was I kept buying coffee and then I discovered that up there. I was like, "Oh, I didn't know it was free coffee up here." So, yeah, I have to give a shout out to Yops Ster for because I at some point I realized on Wednesday that I had booked myself so solidly that I never allowed time to eat lunch or go to the bathroom.
Same. and and and so I had a meeting uh with one of Yope's clients and I was saying, "Man, I'm really hungry. I didn't have I didn't have time to get lunch." Yep said, "Give me your ticket. I'll run down and get it for you while you're doing the meeting." So, thank you, Yolster, if you're in the audience today. And if not, I'll send him a thank you. That was my one time getting lunch out of the exhibit hall thing.
Yeah. All right. Should we talk about anything else or just go home and go to bed?
I did submit a story at the last minute. It was an article I wrote. It was actually kind of interesting. It was a New York ethics opinion, New York State Bar ethics opinion on ABS and uh a lawyer um asking a couple questions about uh the extent to which he could participate in um Arizona's Sandbox and how what that would look like. Um I mean it's worth I thought it was interesting. Um, yeah, tell us about it. I'll share a link to it. We're here. Um, I uh unfortunately wrote it before and submitted it before the conference and it now feels like I wrote it, you know, seven months ago. Yeah. Um but I'll put a link in here. Um, it was he was asking three very um pointed questions. I mean, they really did break this down into three different issues. It was an attorney whose father was retiring and um they let me think what is it that he won. Um, and New York has been very weird about, you know, very specific about non-awyer ownership and like a lot of other jurisdictions. Um, and in the opinion the lawyer wanted uh the lawyer was considering retirement and wanted to restructure his practice by forming an Arizona ABS law firm that would be owned by family trusts. The firm would be managed by his son, a lawyer licensed in New York and New Jersey who's seeking admission to Arizona. And um the Arizona firm would work with the lawyers existing New York firm and New Jersey firm as a contract and they would be contractor firms providing legal and administrative services that receive compensation including referral fees. The trust would hold ownership interest but would not participate in legal decision-making which would remain entirely with a licensed lawyer. So it's a pretty complex setup that they were seeking to put into place. And specifically, the lawyer wondered whether a lawyer admitted in New York could hold a financial interest in an ABS in a state where the ABS is permitted to practice law. Two, whether he could manage an ABS located in a state where such structures are permitted. and three um have a contractual relationship with an ABS located in a state where the structures are permitted whereby the New York lawyer shares fees with that ABS uh that are received for the legal work performed in New York. And so um the committee's rather lawyerly answer as I described it was it depends depends on whether the New York lawyer's practicing through the ABS, how the referral fees are handed out and which jurisdiction is impacted by the legal services. So basically they said that the son could participate in managing the ABS as long as there's no legal services provided through the ABS as long wait as long as the legal service provided not have a predominant effect in New York which means that um and the predominant effect of such practice has to be clearly in New York and in that case New York's rules would apply but it was a national practice and so with a I can't remember the exact practice area but that wasn't expected to have occurred. Um, they said it's ethical for a lawyer to hold a financial interest in an ABS in a state where they're not licensed as long as the lawyer is not practicing through the ABS and is merely a passive financial investor. And finally, regarding the fee sharing issue, they said that even though the fees are collected pursuant to Arizona law, they have to be divided in accordance with New York's rules um about um fee sharing. So, uh, you know, it was a the fact scenario was, as sometimes happens, pretty specific, and, uh, I'm not sure that it will necessarily be duplicated by many other lawyers possibly, but I think it was interesting to see New York address those issues, analyze them. Um, and, you know, they definitely provided some guidelines for other lawyers moving forward because it did consider three issues that arose from it, and they made findings on each of those issues. And so, um, I think it's interesting to see those conversations happening now as those types of setups become more common in other states in those sandboxes and approved. So, I thought that one was interesting.
Yeah, I'm going to go back and read it. I haven't had a chance to do that, but sounds interesting. Um, yeah, I had a story this week too actually that unrelated to legal week was the uh Cleo's launch of its Cleo Capital uh which we had heard about uh at back at CleoCoon. They announced that they were going to be uh launching this at some point. Um but as of it went live on February 26th. Uh I did an interview last week with or maybe it's earlier this week, last week I guess with AJ Axelrod who's their vice president of payments and financial services all about the program. Uh and this is basically a program sort of a streamlined program for law firms to get capital. Uh, and so far they they have what do you say something like uh they have they had already made loans ranging from $1,500 up to around $230,000 just in the like the first week of the program at the point that I talked to him. Um, and uh the average with an average loan amount of about $37,000. But what's what's really kind of interesting about the program is that it is pre-qualifying lawyers and law firms based on their Cleo pay cleo payments uh data. So, if if they're using Cleo payments to get paid by their clients, Cleo is kind of going in and analyzing that data to uh kind of uh you know, get get a sense of what a law firm's cash flow looks like and and what what they what they would be able to do in terms of a loan. and and they're not really going out and sort of doing traditional qualification per se, but really he heavily at least basing the pre-qualification on that on that data that's running through the Cleo system. So, they had already when they launched the program put out pre-qualified offers uh uh totaling $253 million uh in in potential loans to 11,000 Cleo customers or law firms anyway. Um and uh they it's uh you know they're they're hoping law firms will take advantage of this and uh uh use it to expand or operating capital or whatever else whatever else they need. Um and you know I think it's interesting because for smaller law firms it's not always easy to raise to get a loan like that or or to get capital like that. uh any small business has troubles but but uh uh so be interesting to to stay tuned and it's you know a further development in the sort of we keep talking about the the marriage of fintech and legal tech uh you know Nikki's company 8 am has also been kind of pioneering obviously pioneering that as they started with LE but um be interesting to see how that plays out I think and here's the link I was to put the link to that in All right, that's it.
Yeah, it's funny. Jesse asked in the comments like what was the most interesting thing we heard that was not related to AI. And I'm trying to think if I had any conversations or really saw any notable booths or anything that were not AI, honestly.
So, something by what I did actually. I'm trying to remember the one the one I thought was a company that I talked to that I thought was really interesting. I mean, there sort they have AI. It's not like they don't have AI but it's this company Sillow legal litigation platform. Um, they've been around a couple years now. They launched in 2023. Uh and I had actually kind of never really sat down and talked to them before. And I thought what was interesting about them is that they are uh sort of stretching out the endtoend litigation platform. I mean so many uh I mean they're starting right from the early stages of of collection and eiscocovery running through eiscocovery but then carrying it through into um uh you know the the actual sort of litigation prep workflow document review deposition review uh you know creating timelines. I mean I I've I've for years I often wondered why so many litigation comp I mean so many eiscocovery companies kind of stop at sort of the production you know you go through the eiscocovery go through the review and all that and you do make production and their platform stops and you go off to somewhere else uh and and other companies have been kind of stretching that everlaw stretches it relativity has been stretching it but I think this one does it the most and does it the most natively uh in terms of uh being able to handle your entire case. They're going after the big law big law litigation market uh you know uh corporate trans corporate litigation. But I thought it was really interesting.
Yeah. I met with them the first time I was still at ALM so that must have been 2024 legal week probably. Yeah. Um when they were like really first there and like sussing out the like who to talk to in the legal market and whatever. Um, yeah, it is interesting because like I do I agree there are a lot of eiscocovery tools that do a lot of beyond traditional eiscocovery but I mean when I first met with Sillow I had the impression that even though they did eiscocovery work they didn't really want to be lumped in with eiscocovery and I think now they seem to have embraced more the fact that they're doing the whole thing. Yeah. Yep. That's s y l o by the way. Yeah. Um, but that was what I saw.
Yeah. And of course, everything everything Jesse's clients showed me were really interesting. All right. Well, uh we will uh go back and rest up and get through maybe have uh more more insights on the on the red dress controversy next week.
Fair enough. Have a great week everybody. See you next week. Bye.