AI SaaS Is Dying What Law Firms Will Build Instead

speaker-0: I've been very passionate about AI for a while. I got into the AI journey just under 10 years ago when I did my PhD in artificial intelligence. When I got into the AI field in 2016, I thought I was very, very late that I missed the train. I'm looking now at 2026. I feel like okay, we're just getting started. Over the past six months, we've doubled the team. To more than fifty new coders, and really thanks to all our clients who've been very passionate about the technology and who wanna move away from prompt based AI systems to actually working on a gentec AI at production scale. They're not looking to use new code to save seconds or minutes or even single digit hours. We're looking into saving anything between several weeks to a month.

speaker-1: The earliest chief AI officer in legal has probably been in their role for like two years, right? These are all new. These positions didn't exist three years ago. I

speaker-0: Boldest prediction for next year is that law firms will go for AI as an infrastructure rather than AI as a SaaS.

speaker-2: Well, hello and ⁓ welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat Live, where Lee and I are back again to talk about all things data and AI and IG, of course. ⁓ this this show is focused on where data turns into your AI advantage. I'm your host, Jim Merrifield. It's great to be here. Of course, this is our pre-Iltacon live show. So we have tons of information to share with you. We have ⁓ an interview from Ilta. ⁓ Don Hodgins, CXO at ILTA. And ⁓ we also have two amazing interviews with ⁓ Mad Jed Helmy, CEO at New Code, and Tim Fox, who is the chief AI and data officer at Ogle Trig. So but before we get into all those details, Lee, it's great to have you back as a co-host of the show. How you doing today?

speaker-3: Great to be back. Thanks, Jim. I'm I'm doing great.

speaker-2: Yeah, good to see you again. ⁓ we're back after ⁓ a month later. So speaking of Ilticon, right? There's a lot of sessions at Ilticon. It's like four or five days. It seems like, you know, you can't fit everything into you know, it used to be that, ⁓ my gosh, this this show is so long, but I feel like it is so short because there's just too much to do. Which I guess is a is a good thing. But ⁓ I just wanted to ask you, what sessions are you looking forward to? They could be IG focused, but ⁓ they don't have to.

speaker-3: Yeah, I mean there's there's so many this year. And and to your point, I think it's definitely gonna go fast. As I've been putting my schedule together, you know, I'm I'm conflicted myself on which ones that I want to go to. Wish I could go to them all. I mean, Ilta has duh they always do an amazing job. This year in particular has done an exceptional job in incorporating a lot of the AI and the IG ⁓ sessions that are really top of mind. I mean, I think, you know, depending upon the angle that you wanna look at, I I'm really interested in kind of looking at some of the the operational guided sessions. So there's the beyond the charter AI governance frameworks that actually work. So kind of taking some of these things that we've been talking about, putting them into practice. A similar one is a team IG operationalizing AI governance from principles to practice in law firms. And then one that I'm curious about too is when AI meets IG, secure AI integration with knowledge systems. So again, it just to me re-emphasizes what I'm experiencing myself is that, you know, there's just so many angles that this touches and so many things that we need to consider. Lots of conversations happening, but then how do we actually move forward with it? And I think a lot of those sessions will touch on some of those things.

speaker-2: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's in addition to those sessions that you mentioned, I know your teammate there, Kathleen Jimenez, she ⁓ posted on LinkedIn recently, probably about six days ago, all the sessions that she was looking forward to participating on. And a lot of them were, I mean, I'm just looking at the LinkedIn post now. I mean, it's you know, AI is already in your organization. Is your privacy program ready? That session's on Monday. That'll be pretty interesting. Tuesday, there's, you know, people are still talking about copilot, even with all the the different AI tools out there. I think all of us are using Copilot to some degree. So there's a session called Copilot and Privilege using Purview to assure compliance and data security. That is on, I believe, Tuesday. So that'll be an interesting one, especially around around purview. And then Wednesday, the one that jumps out to me, we talk a lot about matter mobility, right? There's that ⁓ round table group on mobility that, you know, we we spend what, at least an hour a month talking about matter mobility topic. So there's a session on Wednesday called Matter Mobility ⁓ Managing Risk Access and Accountability. So that that should be that should be an interesting one. And also on Wednesday, actually no Thursday, sorry, on Thursday, this is an interesting title. It's entitled Secret Agentic Man. When AI starts acting on its own. So that that'll be an interesting title. That's intriguing. Right? On Thursday. I guess it's right after the the keynote there. So You know, if you're looking for those sessions that Kathleen is is is attending or interested in, obviously follow her on on LinkedIn, Kathleen Jimenez. A nice shout out to her for you know have ⁓ posting that on LinkedIn and sharing her thoughts as well with ⁓ with our audience. I'm sure she's listening, so might as well just give her a call out.

speaker-3: is you know what we're also mapping and I think the other thing that I'm looking forward to well to back up I will give a little bit of a shameless plug for a ⁓ session that Kathleen has helped coordinate that I'm actually speaking on with Rich Hale at Active Nab, Glenn Fisher, Mayor Brown, and Karen Allen at Wiley. It's on Thursday of Is It Time for IG ops. So again, another more kind of operational type session of ⁓ kind of how you can transition or work to transition your program from being less reactionary, more strategic and and deliberate. So looking forward to that one. But the other thing too is that I'm seeing so many different vendors, business partners coming with a variety of different solutions that I'm really curious to get out and learn more about. So it's another thing Kathleen and I are working on is kind of sharing notes of ⁓ kind of how we how we want to ⁓ navigate some of those discussions as well.

speaker-2: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm looking forward to those sessions. The two keynotes, we'll get to that a little bit later, but one of the keynotes I'm really interested in, obviously being a baseball fan, Jim Abbott giving the opening keynote on Monday morning. So that should be be awesome to hear his story and all that. So before we kind of get into our first guest and and bring Majed out, just wanted to thank, you know, our founding five sponsors. You can see them on the slides there, you know, for supporting the podcast, ⁓ new code, net docs. I manage Lostronautslash Filers Keepers, two separate companies, but under the same brand, and also Future and Tech. And of course, ⁓ being an affiliate sponsor or affiliate partner, I should say ITA. Obviously, we're doing this pre-show. And ⁓ you know, thank obviously all these these organizations for for their support of the podcast. So before we bring Majet out, just wanted to give a shout out to New Code, obviously. Each one of our founding ⁓ supporters that will be at n at ⁓ Iltacon have a short ⁓ one minute video just to tell you what they have planned for the conference. So ⁓ listen to this commercial brick by New Code.

speaker-3: Hi everyone, my name is Marlene Manikke. I'm product lead and PhD candidate at Newcode AI. I have a background in law. I'm a lawyer by training and education, and I focus mainly on tech and AI-related law. At Newcode, I work to ensure that our customers get the most value out of the many functionalities and aspects of our platform. Since this will be my first Iltacon, I'm most excited to meet everyone in the community. customers, our existing customers, our prospecting ones and learning a lot from the market and the community present at Iltec. For this year's event, we have a full plan and a full schedule and we're super excited to showcase the new capabilities of the platform, how our customers can configure their own AI harness with a new code, as well as several dinners with industry leaders and members of the legal tech community. Attendees at Iltacon can find us at booth seven seven eight at Iltacon and we look forward to meeting many members of the legal tech ⁓ community. So see you there.

speaker-2: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm looking forward to those sessions. The two keynotes, we'll get to that a little bit later, but one of the keynotes I'm really interested in, obviously being a baseball fan, Jim Abbott giving the opening keynote on Monday morning. So that should be be awesome to hear his his story and all that. So ⁓ before we kind of get into our first guest and and bring Majet out, just wanted to thank, you know, our founding five sponsors. You can see them on the slides there. ⁓ you know, for supporting the podcast, ⁓ new code, net docs. I manage Lostronautslash Filers Keepers, ⁓ two separate companies, but under the same brand, and also future and tech. And of course, ⁓ being an affiliate sponsor or affiliate partner, I should say ILTA. Obviously, we're doing this pre-show. And ⁓ you know, thank obviously all these these organizations for for their support. of the podcast. So I feel like that sets the stage perfectly for our first guest, Mad Ed Helmie CEO at New Code. So we're gonna let's bring Majed out. All right, Majed, how are ya?

speaker-0: Fine, thank you. How are you?

speaker-2: Great. It's great to see ya. You're probably in Nashville already or you're somewhere in the US, right? So

speaker-0: Yes, yes. I'm on my way there at least and I ⁓ really look forward ⁓ to all the conversations and ⁓ to all ⁓ the attendees that will be there who are very curious on what's new, what's all this agentic AI skills and all the exciting new things that are happening ⁓ in in the world of legal tech.

speaker-2: Yeah, as are we. So again, I I know I introduced you, Majid Helmy, CEO at New Code, but ⁓ Majet, anything else you wanted to share about your background?

speaker-0: I've been very passionate about AI for a while. ⁓ I got into the AI journey just under ten years ago when I did my PhD in ⁓ artificial intelligence from the University of Oslo. And ⁓ I was very passionate about teaching actually and and educating about how this technology will shape how we work and interact with software moving forward. So I continued a bit and became an associate professor of AI, teaching system architecture and ⁓ and and programming. So ⁓ it has never been ⁓ it has never been so exciting ⁓ to be in this field. And actually you know what, Jim, I thought of a fun fact.

speaker-2: Did you? See, I held back to ask that question.

speaker-0: You know, fun fact about me is when I got into the AI field in twenty sixteen, I thought I was very, very late that I missed the train. ⁓ looking now at twenty twenty six, I feel like, okay, we're just getting started. So ten years later, I'm not late anyways. So, you know, if you're pursuing something and you think you're starting late or you missed the train or it is too crowded, ⁓ look at me.

speaker-2: Yeah, that's I love it. I love it. Finally got you to share a fun fact. You know, about yourself. That's awesome. So Machad, looking at ⁓ at new code, you know, how would you describe the progress you've made recently? I know you've made tons of progress, but what's the vision for the next ph phase of growth ⁓ for your organization?

speaker-0: No, absolutely. So over the past six months we've doubled the team to more than fifty new coders and really thanks to all our clients who've been ⁓ very passionate about the technology and who wanna move away from prompt based AI systems to actually working on a gentic AI at ⁓ at production scale. To that end, we've onboarded and signed major law firms in the US, which has served as a very, very strong validation to what we are bringing to the table and to the unique value proposition that we're introducing to the market ⁓ in the US here. And we're so excited to continue scaling in the US with me being very much involved and hands-on ⁓ with our clients. More and more firms are now committing and looking for an intelligent player. rather than interacting with your everyday AI chat boat or interact or interacting with with a black box where the vendor is actually doing all the work for you and actually saying, hey, you know, you just it's two clicks and here you got your answer. Our unique value proposition is no hold on a second. You can actually own, govern, configure and scale the AI across ⁓ multiple practice groups and areas within the law firm. So we're very much focused on this intelligent layer where law firms are in the are in the driver's seat rather than relying on the vendor learning everything, understanding everything, and then you know, accidentally delivering it to the clients. So ⁓ for us, we're pretty much ⁓ focused on that. And ⁓ we really ⁓ go deeper into the large and complex environments when people come to new code, they're not looking to use new code to save seconds or minutes or even you know single digit hours. We're looking into saving anything between several weeks to a month. So this is where ⁓ we actually come in onto this very ⁓ large and and complex and ⁓ environments. And of course we do have the standard chatbot that everyone would have and the likes, but this sort of off-the-shelf capabilities now is stable stakes and ⁓ we're focused on this ⁓ complex world where it can handle legal tasks and work end to end. So what's our next phase ⁓ to your question is we're doubling down. on what client chose us for and actually scaling that. So we know why they choose us and why they love us. So we're going pretty much large on that, expanding on our existing products, strengthening ⁓ search, keyword search, and most importantly connecting across all the fragmented systems and softwares ⁓ where data is being stored, whether that's you know local document repositories, DMS on the cloud, DMS on prem, and everything else between that. So to that end We are really looking into compounding the assets and new code is the platform where we strongly believe that this can live, evolve and and grow with the law firm.

speaker-2: ⁓ that's great. Thanks for sharing that. I know we you know, obviously, you know, it's no Seeger Robinson Nicole, right? We've been using new code for a while, you know, and and we got some insights into the new bells and whistles and things, especially on the agentic side. And that's really, really awesome to see being able to play with those tools early, I guess you could say. But let's talk a little bit about you you s you mentioned US presence, right? 'Cause obviously the company started out in the in the UK, right, in the Norway. area and everybody was waiting for you to expand in the US, right? So can you talk a little bit about that? Like what does that team look like today?

speaker-0: Absolutely. We're a Norwegian, ⁓ we're a Norwegian born company coming out of ⁓ coming out of Scandinavia. And look, we've seen how the US loves Norway in the World Cup. So he said, you know what? It's time to move to the US. So ⁓ we ⁓ the the market in the US has been very ⁓ exciting to several ends. ⁓ the first thing is that the clients and our users have experimented and used many AI tools, and there is a hunger for something That is ⁓ more sophisticated, something where they can reflect how they work and actually control that. So we've been pretty much focused on the ⁓ firms. ⁓ they're looking into connecting an AI system across all their fragmented ⁓ softwares that they use today, and then having a contextualization layer that is able to understand what is all this data that they have across these multiple repositories, and then looking into creating workflows, matrix analysis. large document reviews, client facing bespoke workflows and then controlling it within ⁓ their environment talking, whether they want to run it on their cloud, whether they want to run it on prem, whether they want a hybrid approach, whether mixing and matching. But the main thing here is they have a bespoke competitive advantage that takes in the many, many years of how they've been delivering a certain a certain legal task and making this operational and and and on large scale. I like to say, you know, putting it Putting it in in a single sentence, ⁓ new code makes law firms AI native. So for us, expanding to the US means more ⁓ legal engineers and more AI engineers. And we've been very pretty much ⁓ very focused on that. New code is soon to be five years, and the composition of the team is usually ninety percent AI engineers and then ten percent lo lawyers with a background ⁓ of ⁓ of legal tech. So that model will continue. ⁓ will be pretty much focused on hiring the best in class AI engineers, whether they they've spent multiple years ⁓ in the AI field or have been exceptional lawyers who really endeavored into the legal tech world and have built AI workflows or similar. The team composition will continue. More experts and more ⁓ experience with those who've interacted with similar tools.

speaker-2: I appreciate you sharing that. You know, and Lee, feel free to feel free to jump in. But I do have, since this is the hot seat, right? There's like unscripted questions here, right? So we actually have a question for you, Mad Jed, ⁓ from the audience right here. So here it is. It says, Are new code logs auditable? And our agent, I guess going deeper, are agent actions logged as well as chatbot prompts.

speaker-0: Just yeah, no, this is a very good question. And moving forward and and and actually this question, I would split it to twofolds. ⁓ so the short answer is absolutely you are in control. And we will give you the recommendation on what and why and where you should be doing these things. So the answer so my first part is you are in control is because our whole new code system runs privately and exclusively on your, for example, on your Microsoft Azure Cloud. You get a full transparent view from when the user enters a query to the system to when a response arrives. All the different components that it touches, all the different resources that it goes on, and you can actually see those logs. You can then actually decide if you want the logs to be way more frequent with certain details, or if you want to abstract it, or you actually want it to be very, very, very minimal. So to that end, we give our clients the choice on the level of details that they wish to have on the logs, how long they would like to restore this. You know, some of our clients would like it for 30 days and some others want it for 15 years. It's not a one size fit all. So think of us like a menu where you can choose and select all the things that you would like to configure in the system and actually deploy it within the frame of the ISO tools 27001, the ISO 9001, and the SOC two that we have. So we have bounded parameters on the number of things that you can control. And based on that, you can do this. So that's the first part of my answer. The second part of my answer is before we release any new features to our client, they always have a staging and a production environment. So they always have two different environments. On the staging environment, they can actually test. It's more of like a sandbox where they can test the new features, get a feel of how things are running, see the agents with some sample or mock data that we provide out of the box. And then they can actually experiment and see it. And once they're confident, once they're happy, they actually can click a button and then give it to the users who are out there in production. So this gives them the power to understand the features before deploying it out there. And one thing we've noticed is that not all law firms, for example, would have like 50, 50 people on the innovation team. Some of them have only two, some of them have 10, some of them outsource them, some of them say, Hey, can we just rely on new code to do it? And some of them has a third party, right? So the the environment is actually quite dynamic and complex. So to that end, we must cater to all of that while remaining as a scalable company. And to do that, we have a very powerful admin panel that gives the user the power to decide, you know, that their destiny in AI. And we make sure it's a successful destiny. It's not like, ⁓ you want to do this. All right, good luck. It's not our fault. But it's more like, okay, here's our recommendation. But at the end of the day, our mission here. is to give law firms the power to control their AI destination.

speaker-2: Perfect. Thanks for for answering that question. I know Lee's got a question though.

speaker-3: brings up one that I that that I had. ⁓ and I think you probably answered it for the most part, but it's more of kind of a a practical curiosity question. So, you know, when when firms are kind of approaching you, I'm assuming that they're coming with some sort of business problem. This is this is, you know, something that we that we want to accomplish, we want to fix. Do those discussions frequently turn into kind of those larger consultative, you know, this is what you're coming to us for. But Let's talk about the bigger strategy.

speaker-0: Thank you for that question. We have, we believe that one size doesn't ⁓ fit all. So to that end, with new code, we have two products. We have Nova, and that's basically your standard ⁓ UI chatbot interface that the users are used to, but with way more features and way more tweaks. And you can actually use that in the browser, you can use that on your mobile phone, you can use it on Microsoft Word, you can use it in Outlook. So the interface, the UI interface can be used across ⁓ these applications meeting meeting where the users ⁓ work. And then we have Aurora. And Aurora is our drag and drop ⁓ agentic AI interface that consists of multiple components where the users or us can actually configure. And I and I and I always say like customization. I was just like, you know what, let's let's stay away from customization because it sounds like a consultancy project. And a consultancy project means like many, many months to years and many, many millions of dollars. So and we want to help them, we wanna the time to value for new code is very important. So we focus on configuring flows on our drag and drop interface, where the goal here is users can iterate pretty much very fast on a concept to get to the point to see if actually one Can AI solve this? Number two, if it's at scale, how much will it cost us, especially in tokens? That's all the talk now. How much are we paying for the tokens? And number three, how fast can we take this workflow and apply it to multiple practice groups? So usually would start with the first workflow in a certain practice group, fixing a certain problem and that, and I'm just throwing out a number there. Maybe that takes one month. But usually when it goes to the second, third, and fourth practice groups, the time to value goes from one month. to one week and in some instances to two days because you're configuring something, what what we like to call you're configuring a skeleton ⁓ that can actually be templatized and used ⁓ across

speaker-2: the firm. Yeah, those are great ⁓ it's all about the data there, man. I mean, giving us access, especially the the folks that are on this call, you know, you got A AI data governance people, being able to to access those reports and tokens is is amazing. So so here's a question for you, Jed, before we send you backstage, you know, to to rest up a bit. Ilticon, right? ⁓ Malin gave us a ⁓ kind of a sneak preview of your plans at Ilticon. But with with Ilticon on the horizon, ⁓ what are your plans for the conference and and most of all what what are you looking forward to most? Well

speaker-0: Are again very much very excited about all the folks and people that we will meet during Eltacon and reflecting on what has changed from Eltacon from last year ⁓ to this year is primarily we've seen that the pace of models have been changing very fast. We went there's almost a new model now, ⁓ every ⁓ every couple of weeks. And we strongly believe that the strategic advantage here wouldn't be a single model. I think Then every other week there will be a better model than the one that there is today. We also believe that the main ⁓ competitive advantage that law firms will have in delivering service to these clients will become in the AI architecture. One, the AI architecture that can basically observe every model change without disruption, because you don't want to train your users on platform A, then platform B has a better model, you move them, and then platform A is nice again. So then you move back. It's too much disruption right now and we need stability. And the second part is the AI literacy course where the users actually have the foundational understanding of how ⁓ these models actually work and they become experts in using these systems so they can maximize the usage ⁓ of this. So we're pretty much very excited to talk about all these new changes and all these ⁓ updates and architect that can make a law firm resilient to this continuously moving ground. ⁓ of changes in the AI and make sure that they can stay at the top ⁓ of their AI game when it comes ⁓ to these ⁓ updates.

speaker-2: ⁓ perfect. And of course, we we look forward to seeing you in a in a few days in in Nashville, right? We'll spend some time having some conversations, looking forward to seeing you in person again. so thanks for this segment, right? We're gonna send you backstage and bring ⁓ bring Tim out, but we'll see you in a few minutes. All right, Majed. Thanks so much. See you. All right. So before we bring Tim, we have a special commercial break. This time it's brought to you by Net Documents.

speaker-3: Thanks.

speaker-2: ⁓ Brandel Nelson, who is the director this is an interesting title. ⁓ Director of Legal AI Solutions. He's gonna tell us what NetDocs is up to at Ilticon. So let's let's watch. Hello.

speaker-1: I'm Brandle Nelson, Director of Legal AI Solutions in NetDocuments. I've spent more than a decade in international practice across London, Madrid, Hong Kong, and the United States. My focus is on how AI can fundamentally reshape legal work, particularly through intelligent context and workflow. At NetDocuments, I help lead our strategy around the legal context graph, a technology that's moving beyond keyword search and into semantic understanding of legal relationships, risks, and precedent. I'm passionate about practical, deployable AI that lawyers can actually trust and use today. You can find Net documents at booth six zero three. That's our primary hub. We'll have team members there throughout the conference for live demos, questions, and conversations about how the legal context graph can fit into your firm's workflow. Beyond the booth, watch for our company update on Tuesday at eleven AM in Tennessee Ballroom C. And if you're around Monday evening, our team will be at the Ilticon opening reception. Come by, grab some swag and see the first legal context graph in action. If breakfast is what's on your mind, register for breakfast with us Monday through Wednesday, where we will all share fresh insights and high value discussions featuring legal tech experts, product leaders, and all of our peers.

speaker-2: Right. So thank you so much. ⁓ Net Documents, of course, and a a founding supporter of the ⁓ the InfoGov Hot Seat. ⁓ so our next guest is Tim Fox. Now, Majed Lee, we saw that he set the bar pretty high, right, for AI enabled what what AI enabled really looks like, especially from the product side. But as we know, the strategy ⁓ behind is ⁓ it's only half the battle, right? And Tim Fox, he's been spending a lot of time on AI strategy and building his team at ⁓ at Ogletree. So we're gonna bring ⁓ we'll bring Tim out here, ask him a couple of questions, put him on the hot seat. ⁓ very interesting Yeah, Tim, how are ya?

speaker-3: To hear what he's been up to.

speaker-1: Good. Thank you ⁓ both for having me here. Excited to ⁓ chat about this.

speaker-2: Yeah, welcome to the hot seat officially.

speaker-1: Doesn't feel that hot yet, but we'll we'll see.

speaker-2: There you go. There you go. So Tim, I I know we That's right. That's right. So Tim, introduce yourself. What ⁓ you know, title, role, maybe even a fun fact. Yeah.

speaker-3: Yeah, there's the challenge.

speaker-1: No. Yeah, sure. So Chief Data and AI officer at Ogletree Deacons. ⁓ I'm also a adjunct faculty, USC Gold School of Law, where I teach ⁓ AI and the law to law students. ⁓ also a member of the California Judicial Council on Information Technology Advisory Committee where advise courts ⁓ in California on technology. My background, just quick blurb about it. So before I joined Ogletree, ⁓ I helped found LegalMation, which was one of the first litigation focused AI companies back in the bad old days of AI, pre-gen AI back in like 2016, 2017. For that I was a practicing attorney for seven plus years. Before all of that, I was in tech for about five years at a Fortune 500. So I've been in legal for almost 20 years now, which is crazy to think about. And I've been in in legal AI for 10 years, which is also crazy to think about. There are not a lot of us who were in legal AI back in in those days. ⁓ so excited to talk about all that stuff. My fun fact Which is especially ⁓ relevant for today is ⁓ I've got a two year old toddler and today he decided to wake up at five AM. So ⁓ if you see me take a sip of anything or or nod off a bit, that is that is why. ⁓ and I promise I'm only drinking just for the the caffeine here.

speaker-2: Totally understood. Totally understood. Thanks for the background, you know, and obviously ⁓ you know, kids will be kids, right? You know? Hey, at least you got you got an early start today.

speaker-1: That is right. I was doing emails. Everybody was very ⁓ confused about where they're getting emails from me at five AM. So very productive.

speaker-2: Yeah, very productive. Very productive. So Tim, I know ⁓ obviously, you know, chief data AI officer at ⁓ at Ogletree. ⁓ can you share a little bit more about your role and specifically like what's your your team's makeup?

speaker-1: Yeah. Happy to talk about that. So, you know, I've been in this role for going on nine months now. ⁓ so things are still evolving. You know, I think in general, the earliest chief AI officer in in legal has probably been in their role for like two years, right? This is all these are all new. ⁓ these positions didn't exist three years ago. And so, you know, my role it it is changing ⁓ as things develop and we'll or develop and we'll probably talk about some of that, but really ⁓ it focuses on ⁓ kind of two different things. I mean, the main one being driving AI adoption at the firm. And so that encompasses everything from you know locating vendors that we might want to purchase or pilot all the way through to deployment and driving adoption, reporting. And one of the big focuses is is on governance and the importance of governance when it comes to deploying AI at scale. So, you know, that's really my main focus is is on that, but also there's the data side to things and how do we make data more available? Right. AI has kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the room. But before we were talking about AI, we're talking about data. You know, all of Ulticon and all the legal conferences and back in 2022 were about APIs and how do you get data in there? And then generative ad came and everybody kind of forgot about that. But it hasn't gone anywhere. And firms are still dealing with the challenges of data silos. How do we make data available? And so way less sexy, but just as important, ⁓ especially when you start seeing how you can do that. So we've started pulling our data. into Cloud and other platforms via MCP and other ways. And it's just it's, you know, like a force multiplier to have that data be accessible directly to them. And so but you can't do that if your data isn't good and you can't do that if ⁓ you don't know where your data is or if it's it's not there. So talking about all that, but you You know, getting down to my team, how that's all set up for me. So, you know, this was a organic promotion for me into this this ⁓ chief data and AI officer role. ⁓ I've been with Ogletree for almost six years. Before that, I was ⁓ firm senior director at Practice Innovation. So I've kept that same team, my innovation team, under me. That's what led to me being able to take on this this role. So I've got about ⁓ you know, the last count around 40 people ⁓ reporting into me ⁓ across various groups. Not all of them are dedicated towards AI and innovation. ⁓ a big chunk is my practice innovation team. So that's attorneys who support our our AI work. That's developers, that's data scientists, that's analysts, that's people who drive all of the internal development that we do, but also, you know, how do we ⁓ we're in the midst of a couple pilots right now and who, you know, they're running those pilots, they're locating these solutions, they're getting our attorneys to use these tools, they're doing all of that. ⁓ and then I've got another team dedicated to reporting, and then I have another team that's dedicated to some of the more traditional KM functions. around maintaining our intranet. We have multiple extranets at the firm. So keeping those ⁓ you know up to date, that's a that's a big part of it ⁓ as well. The other thing I I'll say about all this and then I'll I'll stop talking because I feel like I'm I'm going on a monologue here is ⁓ you know one of the other big parts of my job are just reporting in to various leaders at the firm, but also establishing oversight. ⁓ you know I think I'm on seven plus different committees now and you know every month ⁓ every week I've got one or two meetings for one of those committees, you know, to talk about, you know, we have an AI working group, we have an AI impact group, we have an innovation council, we have a data strategy working group, we have product specific groups. We just formed a an AI legal compliance group. And so ⁓ it's really important to be part of those groups and provide that insight and overview of what we're doing. But it also ⁓ you know, that's what I spend a lot of my time doing now is creating PowerPoints. ⁓ and presenting back to folks. So I for one am super ⁓ grateful for Claude having the PowerPoint functionality ⁓ 'cause it's made my life a lot easier.

speaker-2: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I got a follow up question for you about all those committees. Is it I I assume it's both administrative and lawyers, like there's a mix.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's cross-functional. ⁓ and you know, I I have become a believer in the power of like bureaucracy in any large organization. You know, most people are like, no, it just slows things down. But there's really no other way to get buy in from the senior people you need other than to have a standing meeting with them and report into them and and do that. And so, you know, for any large organization, if you want to move things forward, you know, the biggest lesson learned I have in my six years here is like, you know, form a working group. People are happy to be part of it. It makes them feel responsible, it makes them feel like they have something there and they'll show up and and you'd be surprised at what that does. And then it's not just you trying to drive change. It's, you know, firm leadership or it's these influential ⁓ attorneys or it's, you know, the executives over on this side of the house. And so, you know, I don't I joke about it, but I am actually happy to be part of all those committees 'cause it gives me insight. It moves things forward. And yeah, I have to do a ton of power points and all that. But you know, we get so much insight out of it that, you know, that's ⁓ one thing I I highly recommend to folks is is think about if you don't have these set up, if you don't have that structure and governance there, you're gonna have a much harder time trying to drive change at your organization.

speaker-2: Yeah, that's that's great advice. Go ahead, Lee.

speaker-3: Well, I was just gonna say I I agree with that, but I think, you know, I I'm I think the the balance is is kind of ⁓ taking advantage of the bureaucracy, as you say, to make sure that you get all voices and and all the buy-in, but doing it in such a way that you're not getting bogged down, right? So kind of having that ⁓ having the goals in sight and making sure that you're getting the input that you need without taking a whole lot of detours along the way. So getting what you need but still not slowing things down too much.

speaker-1: Yeah. And I'm probably biased because, you know, I lead all of these groups and so I get what I need out of them. But the other people on them might like, Man, nothing nothing gets done. But ⁓ from my perspective, you know, we're we're doing great in those groups.

speaker-2: ⁓ that makes sense. I I got a question for you. So I cause there's a lot of there's several CIOs on this that that attend this podcast and listen. So but again, hot seat question. What's your how's your relationship with with IT, with your CIO?

speaker-1: That's I that is a hot seat question, but no, it's it's good. I mean, I think Ogle Tree does a really good job of communicating. Like the expectation of the firm is that people get along here. ⁓ you know, this is and so if it if it weren't, we would be if we didn't get along, we would be in trouble. And so we have regular meetings. I I think this gets back to and you know, this is just my limited perspective on it, but I think when you start having those issues, it it boils down to communication. And so we have standing meetings every week with IT where we talk about what we're doing. We don't want them ever to be surprised. And so I we've gone into it with the mindset of they're a partner and we want to work with them. We don't ever want to go around them. You know, it's whenever we surprise them and they're like, why didn't we hear about this? You know, then we're like, that's that's our bad. You know, that fell to us to make sure that we were keeping you in the loop on that. So I think as long as you go into that with a relation that relationship understanding it's a partnership and it's not just with you know CIO, right? There's finance, there's all sorts of different groups that we I don't want to say that we probably annoy, you know, 'cause we come in, we're like, Hey, we want to do this tool or we need your data or we want to do this, right? And we don't own any of it. So if we don't work with them, you know, I'm gonna be out of a job because they're the ones who control the keys. And so we have to make sure that relationship works. Yeah.

speaker-2: Yeah, you gotta work together. I mean, ⁓ I I totally agree with you. I think the CIO, our our CIO, we get along really well. You know, he's probably the person that I talk to the most, you know, every day. ⁓ I think we sit like two doors down from each other. So great. So let's talk a little bit ⁓ Iltacon because this is a pre-Ilticon ⁓ podcast. What's your plans for the conference? What are you looking forward to most?

speaker-1: So my plans are Tuesday at 2 p.m. to be at my panel on managing ⁓ AI tool overload. So quick plug ⁓ for that. If folks aren't tired of hearing me speak after this podcast, ⁓ stop on by to hear me talk a little bit more. ⁓ but other than that, you know, Iltacon is it's great, but it's kind of like a double edged sword, I feel like every time I go, because it's a great way to meet the vendors and people you chat with all the time and you're working with and seeing them, but You know, last year I think I had, I don't know, twenty plus meetings, ⁓ and things there. And so I did I made like three sessions and I was like, Well, what was it's great to get everybody there and do all of that. So this year I'm trying to take a more f you know, dedicated approach to actually make sessions. ⁓ because, you know, I can talk to vendors all you know all the time and, you know, we can meet up at other places. So, you know, I'm prioritizing making sessions as opposed to making meetings. ⁓ we'll see how well ⁓ how well that works out for me. But that's my goal. And so I 'cause I want to hear what other folks are are doing in the space. You know, in particular, you know, ROI is I think one of the hot things right now that everybody's talking about. But, you know, this was kind of like AI generative AI back in twenty twenty three. Everybody was talking about but nobody was doing it. And now I think it's the same with ROI. Everybody's talking about it, but very few people are doing it. And so trying to sift through that to find the true nuggets on where people have found ways to measure it and what they're doing with that information and data and You know, I think the whole thing, I won't get too much into it, but I I think there's been a change in just the overall conversation from like efficiency and driving down billable hours ⁓ to you know, we're actually seeing more work being generated. You know, there was just that ⁓ Forrester co-council study that came out last week that was like, you 400x ROI and obviously sponsored by, you know, a vendor. So there's there's questions there. But I think the nugget there is that a lot of people in my conversations with other firms is that people are seeing more work. come out of it, not less work come out of AI. And so if that's the case, that undercuts the whole argument that this is the death of the billable hour. And this undercuts all of the how do we show the efficiencies, how do we do all of these types of things there. And so I really want to hear what other people's takes are on that because I think that that is, you know, something that we internally are having conversations around. I think every firm is talking about that. ⁓ and then the other thing, you know, get out of that is just find new vendors. We, we try to stay on top of everything in the market, but ⁓ we don't There's not everything out there. And so finding new companies, walking the the floor there, also maybe getting some good swag for my toddler. If there's anybody who's got good stuffed animals, ⁓ let me know. ⁓ so I mean those are those are kind of my hopes for and also just, you connecting with people that I haven't seen in a while and and meeting up.

speaker-2: Yeah, look, it's all about the swag these days, you know. It's all about you you gotta you can't for

speaker-1: It's a tough game though, you know. It's ⁓ I just I feel like somebody maybe somebody has done a chart of the evolution. You know, when I started going to conferences, it was like USB thumb drives, right? And they were like sixteen megabyte thumb drives back then and then they got, you know, bigger and bigger. And then I think the most recent trend was like, you know, the the the water tumblers, the water bottles, and now it's moved on and now I think everybody's going different directions. There's no constant theme on what the swag is gonna be. So I'm excited to see what people are are are pulling out.

speaker-2: So am I. Well, I got your session marked down. I'm sure we'll we'll cross paths. ⁓ you know, since you're now a celebrity, right? You're on the hot seat. So you're you're a celebrity. There we go. So we'll see you down there. So so again, ⁓ you know, thanks, Tim, obviously for this segment. ⁓ before we bring Majed out, we just got a quick ⁓ quick break. This time it's ⁓ actually from from IMANage, right? They're gonna tell us what they're doing at ⁓ at Iltacon. So ⁓ let's watch ⁓ I manage a little their little commercial.

speaker-0: Hi, my name is Ivy Grahe. I'm a legal solutions advisor at iManage, and I practiced corporate bankruptcy law for 10 years before moving into legal technology 10 years ago. I also did an intensive innovation and KN project for the Department of Commerce as part of the transition team. I apply what I've learned through an ethics, AI, and value stream lens. We'll be talking a lot about the next generation of the iManage platform and how organizations can better connect, understand, and activate their knowledge. That includes everything from enrichment and metadata. To the broader role context plays in creating more intuitive experiences. Of course, we'll also be discussing governance and security because as organizations adopt new technologies, trust, control, and defensibility become even more important. So at iManage, we believe that the future belongs to the organizations that can combine rich context with strong governance. The governance part is what gives you a true strategic asset. Find iManage at booth four thirty one or come see me at my session on taxonomies for the modern DMS at four PM on Monday.

speaker-2: Pretty cool. Pretty cool there. ⁓ you know, Ivy Gray, she has a pretty interesting title, ⁓ similar to ⁓ to Brandle at Net Docs. So it's ⁓ Legal Solutions Advisor. I'm seeing a lot of those titles around the ⁓ the ⁓ the vendor or the business partner community. Again, thank you, you know, IMANS for being ⁓ a founding supporter as well. So let's bring ⁓ let's bring Majeb back, you know, see if he's still away.

speaker-3: Bring my dead back. I just want to say I'm gonna have to ⁓ unfortunately make my exit that this has been a great conversation. I I hope the audience asks some really, really good questions. ⁓ I'm sure they will. And I look forward to seeing everybody at Ilta. So thanks again for inviting me to chat with you all.

speaker-2: You got it, Lee. Safe travels. See ya Delta. Majd, how you doing?

speaker-0: Doing great. Really enjoyed listening to Tim.

speaker-2: Yeah, you had time to to study up a little bit.

speaker-0: Yes.

speaker-2: Yeah, yeah. We got we got a bunch of questions in the chat, you know, so I think our audio session's gonna be ⁓ pretty full. ⁓ but before we start asking you guys some questions, we actually have something special for the for the audience. ⁓ since we are talking about about Iltacon, there's actually ⁓ Dawn, ⁓ CXO from Ilta wanted to send a special ⁓ message to all those ⁓ Iltons and ⁓ those who are listening to ⁓ this ⁓ Ilta pre I guess live ⁓ pre show. So just ⁓ watch this. ⁓ it's about five minutes, this video. So we're gonna play it.

speaker-3: Hi, my name is Dawn Hudgens and I am the CXO at Ilta. And basically my responsibilities include Iltacon, all of our events, our press relationships, our brand, and our marketing. But the biggest thing I think this week we'll be talking about is Ulticon. What am I most looking forward to at Iltacon this year? That is a great question. There's a lot of things I'm looking forward to. It's not just one thing. So I I definitely would say I'm looking forward to the keynote both Monday and Wednesday. We have Jim Abbott on Monday and Kevin Fong on Wednesday. They're both amazing speakers. And so I think they're going to bring us some things that we can chat about all week. We have a lot of great education that's going on. On Thursday, Joey Heath Rush, Adam Wheeler, and myself will be doing a session on resilience and mindfulness. So I'm excited about that. I like the fact that this year we're doing a lot of wellness and mental health activities and activations. We have an entire wellness bar. sponsored by Harvey this year. You guys, there's a there's an oxygen bar. We'll be doing sound baths in the tranquility room. We have hydration stations ⁓ with electrolytes. There'll be some specialty coffee opportunities throughout the day, ⁓ protein cocktails and mocktails available. So looking out more for you from a feeding you instead of feeling you standpoint. In other words, our our food is a lot healthier this year than it's been in the past. We want you to leave EltaCon, not feeling as if you have to detox after you leave here. So we're really looking out for your health. And that's also going to fuel your brain in order to listen and retain more when you go to those education sessions. So those are things that I'm looking forward to. But out of all of that, my most favorite thing about the entire week is just the people that I get to see that I haven't seen in a while. Advice for our first-time attendees. There's a lot. The first thing I think you should really focus on is taking care of your feet. And I'm not kidding. This property is huge. I just counted the number of shoes that I brought for this event and I have ten pairs of shoes and four pair of those are trainers. So that I I have very comfortable shoes on the whole time. So my feet thank me for that. I think you should also bring a sweater. Hotels tend to be a lot colder and it's a drier kind of cold. So it kind of sticks with you a little bit longer. So dress in layers, bring a light jacket or a light sweater to wear while you're here. I think it's important When you first get here, someone told me this when I first came to my first Iltacon eleven years ago. They said, when you first get there, you're gonna run into someone that you didn't know before. Take note of that because you're probably gonna run into them a hundred times between the first of the conference and the end of the conference. So go ahead and take time to get to know them. Iltons are very friendly people. They're all about relationships. So if you go up to someone and you want to introduce yourself to them, they're very welcoming for that. So just know that as a first timer. People welcome you to say, hey, I'm a first-timer. What do I need to do? Where do I need to go? They're going to help you out with that. Don't be afraid to ask. We also have a My Buddy program where you can get connected with someone who, you know, has been here a few times and they can kind of show you the ropes. It's a great program and a great way to get to know people. And just participate in as much stuff as you possibly can. There are so many activities going on all throughout the day. Make sure you stay hydrated. Make sure you moisturize. We will have electrolytes. And some protein drinks available for you throughout the day and of course, lots of coffee. And so that would be my top advice for first time attendees. What legal tech trend has made me most excited? That's a great question. I I know most of us are probably tired of hearing about AI. However, it it is something that I still enjoy hearing about. I love learning from other people about ways that they're utilizing it that I may not have found yet. And as a tool, it has totally changed how I How I work. And it it's very valuable. So I do love learning more about how I can utilize that better. Then I would say the next piece would have to be the new focus that we have on resilience and mindfulness. This is such an important thing. And I'm glad that we're finally talking about it. ILTA has a new wellness survey that we're hoping that everybody will take. ⁓ it we've we found in doing some research, Joy and I are working on a book, and we found in that research that there are a lot of surveys that survey the wellness and the resilience of lawyers, but they don't talk about the resilience and the wellness of those people who support lawyers. And so we want to dive into that a little more deeply. So if you see that QR code, whether it's in your education session or on a sign, please take about 10 minutes and take that survey. We really want to know what you think. And so I'm I'm really excited about about that part. We have a session on Thursday where we'll be talking about wellness and resilience. And you'll even be able to walk away with ⁓ some exercises that you can implement in your day right then that can start you on your way to having a a greater resilience or a res resilient attitude toward your everyday experiences, especially when you when you meet some conflict along the way. I'm looking forward to the week. I really hope to see you at Iltacon. If you see me walking by in the hallways, stop me. I I want to meet you. I want to know why you're here and and how I can help make the event better for you. That's why we do this and we have surveys that we also ask your opinions. Please tell us what what is something that you've seen somewhere else that you would like to see us try? What is something that we can do better? What is something you don't want to see go away? Those are the things that we look for. So looking forward to a great Iltacon twenty twenty six and I hope to see you there.

speaker-2: All right. Thank you, Don and and Ilta team for sharing that ⁓ little segment there. And we look forward to seeing the, you know, we know that team is is working hard right now to to put on the conference that we'll enjoy ⁓ next week. So so thanks so much for doing that. So we got our our audience ⁓ warming up a little bit. There's there's plenty of ⁓ you know, there there's plenty of questions in the chat and that have come through. But ⁓ you know, while while our audience is getting warmed up, ⁓ Majed Tim, have a question for you. ⁓ if you could solve one AI governance problem ⁓ for the audience t today, what would it be? Maybe Tim, you could take that one.

speaker-1: Wow, that is that is a good one. I think mine would be on the reporting and auditing front, you know, when we're looking at hundreds of thousands of prompts per month, just staying on top of what people are using it for and figuring out, you know, is there like token maxing going on or these actual prompts? You know, we it's really tough to do and it's also tough to do while respecting ⁓ you know, privacy. of our users. So if somebody, you know, has a and I know there are probably solutions out there that do that, but to do it at scale without having to integrate a whole bunch of other platforms in there and ⁓ give me the reporting that I need on what it's used for, that's what comes to mind first. I change change my answer in five minutes, but that's my initial answer.

speaker-2: Okay. That's right, you can answer again. Majen, how about you? How about you, Majen?

speaker-0: I would say, ⁓ especially for the data governance part, is to come up and agree with a standardized way on how client matters ⁓ are solved, ⁓ sorry, are stored and and ⁓ made track of, especially if there are new documents coming in, updates to the matter, etcetera. Because in the world in the world of agentic AI, which we are in right now, having ⁓ a well documented framework of how the doc documents ⁓ and the matters for the clients are stored and index will be a big competitive advantage for law firms that want to become ⁓ AI native moving forward. So for me a framework so the governance folks if they can create a framework on how we store index and and retrieve documents as a human and then let the agents ⁓ take over from there. So they have I think it's gonna be split to two tasks. It's like, okay, we have all these legacy documents. Do we how much do we have to go through and index? And as we're indexing all these, you know, hundreds of terabytes of data, we have all these many terabytes coming in. And how do we make sure that the new does not get mixed with the old? So it's there's gonna be a lot of transition to make the best out of the ageemtic AI and frameworks that are slowly going to be part of any AI native buffer. Moving forward.

speaker-2: ⁓ makes makes a lot of sense. I'm I'm sure people are are thinking, you know, it's it's always about I've heard I think Tim, you were talking about it ⁓ as well. The data issue that, you know, most organizations have is, you know, they buy these tools and then they connect the data sources and it's all over the place and it's all messy. But then there's also other companies that just don't care. I mean they care, but they don't care. They just point the tool at everything and they just put search you know, kinda over it. So it's interesting how there's there's companies kind of taking there's kind of two roads, I guess, to the same path. You can but I guess a follow up question, Tim. do you think that you can still I guess utilize these these platforms if you still do have a data, like a data hygiene issue, or is that really not not the case anymore?

speaker-1: I mean AI d has done a great job of making it less of an issue ⁓ in that. I think law firms in particular though we have other challenges. I mean, the biggest one being like ethical walls, you know, so it would be great to just be able to take, you know, Claude or ChatGPT right and point it at your finance data, but that's gonna create issues. Same goes with like your DMS. And so, you know, that's I think one of the things that slows us down ⁓ i in a good way. I mean, talking about governance, none of this is like negative in the way it slows us down because it makes us think The other challenge is like client guidelines. How do we respond to those? How do we respect those? ⁓ and the third piece that's really coming into play more and more now is just regulatory requirements. And we've got you know laws potentially on the books in California about how attorneys can use AI. The EU AI Act is taking effect. I think everybody saw that Claude Watermarking announcement last week. And so does that impact us? Like what do we do with that? Yeah, right. So ⁓ you know, this gets a little bit further astray from your you know, your your straight data question there. But there's a you know, just a ton of things that come into play when we're trying to figure out how do we get our hands around governance when it comes to to AI.

speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah, I'll I'll ask Majed a follow-up question because there was a question in the chat about ⁓ specific features for search. So let's just say a law firm has a data issue and they call you, Majed, and they say, Hey, look, what should we do? Do you have a a solution for that? Like do you have a like maybe a feature that can help them? Is there some kind of would you recommend them clean up their data first? Or do you have like a enterprise search feature? That the firm or company could use.

speaker-0: I'll ⁓ I'll I'll do I'll do I'll do like most lawyers say, it depends. There are I mean the the fundamentally it's going to be split into two. The more the newer models, like GPT five point six high, ⁓ extra high, and ⁓ clawed max are very forgiving. ⁓ when it comes to the sloppiness of the data and the mistakes to an extent and at a at at a at a certain cost. Number one, they're more expensive. So if your data is messy, you can start adding all these rules like okay, if you find a client matter that is in the wrong folder, you know, first move it and then do this. If you find a client matter, you know, that mentions not to use this, then do that. So you can add all these guardrails, but they're very expensive and they're very slow, which makes them ⁓ practically infeasible ⁓ to be used at scale, especially enterprise search, right? When you talk enterprise search, we're talking hundreds of millions of documents, we're talking double to double to triple digits and terabytes. So you're gonna hit you're gonna hit other technological limitations, even though the expensive ones are more ⁓ forgiving. On the other hand, the cheaper ones will not pick up these nuances, but they're cheaper, they're much faster and can do things at bulk. So to go back to why I said it depends is because do you want to do this ⁓ efficiently? Like do or or do you you you ha you will spend money. Do you wanna give you wanna spend the money on plot figuring things out for you? Or do you wanna spend the money creating a governance ⁓ framework and structure that will actually scale and serve other purposes ⁓ in in in the law firm? So my recommendation actually will be a hybrid approach and you don't have to start at you know 50 terabytes or 100 terabytes. You know, you can start as small as a single terabyte. Let's start with one terabyte. You know, let's get this one terabyte ⁓ pretty ⁓ pretty good and then let's templatize it and and scale it through your hundred and eighty terabytes or two hundred terabytes. So ⁓ so that will be my answer because the costs of tokens really matter ⁓ once we start discussing ⁓ enterprise search.

speaker-2: Yeah, I love I love that answer. Very fair, a fair answer there. So I do have one more question for each of you, but we're gonna hang on for one minute, right? Because I gotta invite Tony Ford to tell us where he's him and the Fit team are gonna be at Iltacon, our last ⁓ founding supporter that's gonna be at Iltacon. So take a brief minute. ⁓ the last question we're gonna heal your hear your bold prediction for the rest of the of twenty twenty six. So think about that question as we watch ⁓ this commercial break. with Tony Ford at ⁓ Future in Tech.

speaker-1: Tony Ford. I'm the co-founder and chief revenue officer for Future in Tech. I've spent the last 30 years in the legal tech world working both for law firms and for companies supporting law firms from everything from the managed services side of the business through several legal technologies. Glad to be with you today and I look forward to ⁓ pumping up the in InfoGov Hotseat. The 2026 Iltacon event brings some interesting things this year. I mean, we've really moved from the despair technology world into really how are we going to leverage AI. And it comes from a lot of different ways. We have lots of different things to share. Watching all the flow companies jump in, watching all, you know, the big infrastructure companies jump in and then seeing how we can do it all together. It's going to be pretty exciting. We encourage you to stop by. Please join us. We're in booth seven one five. And if you happen to be booking a demo, we have a Magnolia twenty three on the Mezzany level. We'll be operating for both all day. So we'll have two teams going. We ⁓ have a lot to share with you, a lot to show you and ⁓ we hope you get a chance to stop.

speaker-2: All right. Thank you, Tony and team. So here's the question. So here's the final question for both of you. ⁓ Tim, we'll ask you first. ⁓ give me your boldest prediction for where we'll be with AI at this time next year.

speaker-1: Yeah, my boldest prediction, I mean my realistic prediction is we're gonna be in a very similar place. But I'll I'll be optimistic and my boldest prediction, ⁓ you know, I you know, we've seen the the flip flop I think in the frontier models between Gemini, Claude and Chat G PT, you know, going back and forth. Like if we looked at where we were last year, who was in front. So ⁓ I think we're gonna see another player break in, ⁓ coming from outside, especially in legal, who we're all gonna be talking about ⁓ a year from now.

speaker-2: Nice. I love the bold prediction. So Majed, give me your boldest p prediction for where we'll be with AI this time next year.

speaker-0: think ⁓ and I believe that firms ⁓ will continue to cycle through all the new LLMs ⁓ that will that will come out. ⁓ OpenAI has mentioned that they're at a pace of releasing a new LLM every three months. ⁓ there will be ⁓ agentic ⁓ frameworks that will come out. We currently lack a concrete ⁓ agentic framework ⁓ in the legal industries that's why we are fully sponsoring a PhD. And that's Marlon that actually did the intro video here on defining how law firms ⁓ can use a framework to build ⁓ their agents. And there will be new interfaces at a pace ⁓ that we haven't seen before. ⁓ so Cloud has their own interface, open AI, et cetera, et cetera. I believe ⁓ the only thing that will re remain relevant ⁓ across all of this is the AI infrastructure. That houses all of these interfaces, agemtic frameworks, and LLMs, ⁓ and the layer ⁓ that will connect across ⁓ these systems and contextualize it. So my boldest prediction for next year is that law firms ⁓ will go for AI as an infrastructure rather than AI as a SaaS. ⁓ that's my boldest prediction.

speaker-2: I like it. Very bold. Very bold. Well, listen, thank you both ⁓ today very much. I know this is a this is a weekend for or a week that ⁓ you're preparing for Iltica next year. So Tim, you know, thanks for your time. Majed, thank you and your team obviously for your time and and also new code being a founding supporter of this podcast. You know, really appreciate obviously your support. ⁓ to our audience, you know, thank you so much for joining the conversation around AI governance. and data. ⁓ it's very clear that there it's an exciting time to to be in our industry. And ⁓ for those of you who will be at ILTA con ⁓ next year, look forward to seeing you. And thank you obviously for Ilta with giving us a sneak peek on ⁓ on what we can expect for next week and all the hard work ⁓ the staff is is ⁓ pushing through at this time so we can enjoy the event. ⁓ so once again thanks for for listening ⁓ to the to the InfoGup Hot Seat Live and ⁓ we'll see you next time. Thanks so much. Enjoy the rest of your day.