Content – the forgotten treasure on the legaltech treasure map
In this conversation, we chat with Tim Perry, Director of Practical Law for Asia and Emerging Markets at Thomson Reuters.
Tim and I have known each other for more than a decade, having both started our careers at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in universe far away a long time ago. Tim is a fountain of knowledge on all manners of things, but on legal content in particular. Legal content is a subject that does not receive a lot of attention in the legal technology landscape, and this lack of attention is something which Tim and his team address at Practical Law Australia.
In this video, we chatted about:
the continuing decline of Facebook (admittedly, this is not a subject we know deeply, but we found the topic had interesting parallels to legaltech)
where are point solutions more appropriate and where are platforms more appropriate
an example of legal content – Thomson Reuters’ Cleardocs precedents, and what sort of people are using this product (https://www.cleardocs.com/)
how do you distinguish “good content” from “bad content”
what is the value of content to lawyers, and how do you explain the value of content as a vendor
how defining the “value” to customers is the heart of any product offering
process innovation compared to content innovation
what lawyers have to do for their clients, and the roles of process tools and content products
“… it all comes down to how you are able to explain the value of your product. Cause once there is an understanding of value, then it’s not about “here’s the number; I like it; I don’t like it”. [It is about] this is the value I am going to get. How do I get that value? What am I giving up to secure that?”
You would love for you to watch our chat in the video below:
Transcript of conversation
(Note: transcript is automatically generated, and may contain misspellings and typographical errors)
00:00
so welcome to another casual
00:02
conversation today we're talking to tim
00:04
perry
00:04
the director of practical law for asia
00:07
and emerging markets at thomson reuters
00:09
tim welcome to a very casual
00:11
conversation
00:12
thank you horace lovely to be here i'd
00:14
love to chat to you it's good to chat to
00:16
you as well
00:17
so just before we started recording we
00:19
were talking about
00:20
the the dying state of facebook what's
00:23
your hypothesis
00:24
and i know it's not your you know bread
00:26
and butter but what's your hypothesis
00:28
for why
00:28
facebook is dying i think it's it's
00:31
become
00:33
too many things in one place and the
00:36
parts of facebook that
00:37
work and that are still needed and
00:39
necessary are almost sort of
00:41
sniffing off and becoming their own
00:42
thing you know you've got and facebook's
00:44
been acquiring companies so this is
00:46
you know may actually a bit faster but
00:47
you've got those who really want to be
00:49
using
00:49
some sort of technology to share images
00:51
of their life and show what they're
00:52
doing we always use facebook you know
00:53
this is my status this is where i am
00:55
now you can do that on instagram or you
00:58
can use twitter
01:00
and have political arguments there if
01:01
that's what you want to want to do you
01:02
want to get into your rants twitter is
01:04
the place for that not not facebook
01:05
posts
01:06
if you want to communicate with your
01:10
older parents or your grandparents
01:11
facebook still kind of does that for you
01:13
there are parts of facebook that work
01:15
like a really effective marketplace and
01:16
if you're doing you know
01:18
you're buying and selling of stuff you
01:19
can do it on ebay you can do it in the
01:20
facebook marketplace marketplace is
01:22
probably going to continue to live on
01:23
and become its own thing
01:24
but facebook is a large sort of
01:26
autoconnect platform where you go and do
01:28
all your digital stuff
01:30
is no longer where people want to be
01:31
you've got discreet apps for discreet
01:33
things that you want to do in your life
01:34
and that's where people will continue to
01:36
go
01:36
unless you're older older than us and
01:39
you kind of just want to go one
01:40
place and do just all there and then
01:41
it's just simple because you can you can
01:43
post your photos and you can message
01:44
your children and realize that they're
01:45
not getting back to you because they all
01:46
use the application
01:48
that is a hilarious description of what
01:50
is happening at the moment
01:52
and you kind of led us to a really
01:54
interesting point
01:55
and i didn't know we're going to go here
01:58
and it's the idea of
02:00
platformization versus point solutions
02:04
um and in legal tech something that's
02:07
been happening over the last couple of
02:08
years
02:09
is this debate over do we
02:12
provide a kind of a one-stop shop or do
02:15
we
02:16
provide point solutions that solve
02:19
specific tasks really well
02:22
what's your take what do you think is
02:24
the future of the market
02:26
there's such a tension there isn't there
02:27
there is such attention because
02:30
on the one hand you can have a whole
02:33
bunch of
02:34
things that kind of
02:38
encapsulate a lawyer's work day and they
02:41
can all be there in one
02:42
one place but if they're not really good
02:45
at
02:45
solving the pain point then
02:48
even though the lawyers got them they
02:50
won't use them and and you're going to
02:52
be
02:52
producing inefficiency by providing a
02:55
technological solution which
02:56
doesn't tickle the boxes enough to
02:59
actually have people engage with it even
03:00
if it would get them
03:01
sort of 75 there is within
03:04
i think the user market because people
03:06
are not experts in technology they're
03:08
experts in their job
03:09
right technology needs to be kind of
03:11
invisible to them they're not going to
03:12
be looking for well if i go to the
03:14
the platform and because these things
03:15
within uh then i'll use it and
03:17
maybe it's not the perfect answer let's
03:18
go forget it i'll go and find a point
03:20
solution online via google
03:22
that will give me the thing that i want
03:23
now right whether it's content whether
03:25
it's a process
03:26
people looking for a thing i'll go and
03:28
find it i'll just use that
03:30
i mean i'll give you an example i'm
03:33
not trying to shield for my company but
03:34
i'm just giving you an example there's a
03:36
there's a product that we have
03:37
um called clear docs right which is a
03:40
it's not my product i don't work on
03:41
clean docs
03:42
it's an australian product um what it is
03:44
effectively
03:45
is precedence for non-lawyers right
03:48
it's it's a product that effectively was
03:51
designed for accountants because
03:52
accountants can't give legal advice
03:53
right accounts can't give legal advice
03:54
but they often want to be able to
03:55
provide the client with a with a simple
03:57
legal document so this product you know
04:00
it's been signed off by maddox they're
04:01
the lawyers sitting behind it
04:03
you answer a questionnaire it spits out
04:04
a precedent you know that's what you use
04:06
and you can then go and give that to
04:08
your client that's what it was designed
04:09
for
04:10
really interestingly over the last 12 to
04:12
18 months
04:13
because people google i thought i i need
04:15
a precedent for
04:16
you know a self-managed superannuation
04:19
fund trust
04:20
yeah google pop it up we get we're
04:23
seeing
04:24
from our data analytics a whole bunch of
04:25
small law firms that are accessing these
04:28
documents
04:29
like they don't need them because
04:30
they're lawyers they can draft them
04:30
themselves right and many of them
04:32
subscribe to products either from us or
04:34
from other companies that provide them
04:35
with precedence
04:37
this is a really easy one to use you
04:39
know it's not part of the platform it's
04:41
just a discrete
04:42
you know point solution you you get the
04:45
press and you ask the question it gives
04:46
you the
04:46
the precedent and you can send it off
04:48
it's very simple
04:50
um and there are lawyers out there who
04:52
are using that
04:53
because they google for it rather than
04:55
the solutions that are
04:56
baked into the platforms they subscribe
04:58
for and spend lots of money on
05:01
so i think wow actually the question um
05:05
there needs to be a platform environment
05:08
because lawyers don't have to work
05:10
somewhere
05:11
but that platform would be better placed
05:13
to do
05:14
some things well and integrate with
05:17
other point solutions
05:18
that do other things well rather than i
05:21
think trying to be
05:21
all things to all people because if you
05:23
try to be all things to all people you
05:24
become facebook and no one will use you
05:26
right the province of your parents
05:29
you become nothing to everybody exactly
05:32
exactly
05:33
it's it's such a fascinating thing that
05:35
you've just described because
05:36
integration has become
05:38
one of those hot topics and one thing we
05:40
didn't quite talk about when we started
05:41
this conversation is
05:43
this video blog is focused on two things
05:46
one is how do lawyers become better
05:50
lawyers
05:50
and the other is what can technology do
05:54
so this idea of a platform
05:58
that does a few things really well and
06:00
then integrating
06:01
with point solutions that can do other
06:03
things even
06:04
better i think it's a it's a topic that
06:07
probably deserves its own conversation
06:09
but i'm going to take us back to the
06:11
clear docs
06:13
example that you gave because i want to
06:15
ask you
06:16
what your view is on on that platform
06:19
and maybe
06:20
scratch a little bit deeper um
06:23
do people find it because they are
06:26
looking for
06:27
the right content or are they finding it
06:30
because they're looking for
06:33
something else what's driving um
06:36
the search results it really is content
06:39
based people are looking for a person
06:41
and the number of people who will go oh
06:42
i need to to draft a
06:45
the self-managed super fund trusted is a
06:47
good example you know i need to draft
06:48
this type of date
06:49
if i haven't got experience in that
06:51
myself you know
06:53
where am i going to find an example i've
06:54
got a trustee that i use because i can
06:55
do the job for
06:57
yeah for software super i'm not sure do
06:59
you want to do lots of research into it
07:01
and figure out whether it's going to
07:02
work
07:02
that's going to take a lot of my time
07:04
maybe i'll just google and see what
07:05
comes up
07:06
oh look here's a here's a here's a
07:09
an online place where i can just buy
07:12
for a one-off payment the document that
07:14
i want
07:16
and it's signed off by another law firm
07:18
it's probably going to be fine
07:19
right it just needs a point of of need
07:22
and i think it's because they they kind
07:23
of target those
07:24
those precedents that are the ones that
07:26
you know accountants
07:27
traditionally wanted to use they're the
07:29
ones that may be a little bit off the
07:30
beaten track for your general commercial
07:32
lawyer and so
07:33
it can just be easier to kind of just
07:34
google and find something i mean if you
07:36
google for precedence it's amazing what
07:37
you can find i don't know if you've
07:38
spent a lot of time coming just to see
07:41
what's out there
07:42
there's a lot of things that people put
07:43
out there and some are great and some
07:44
are not so good and some are
07:45
endorsed by professional associations
07:47
and some are not you know you've got
07:49
um great suites of corporate documents
07:51
that have been put together by
07:53
venture capital associations um and
07:56
they're awesome and they're freely
07:57
available for people who are in the
07:58
industry and want to use them
07:59
um and if you're looking for stuff
08:01
people might not look at that and
08:03
if that's not going to meet your need
08:04
then where else do you go
08:06
so so interesting point there how do you
08:09
tell
08:10
good content from bad content
08:13
yeah it's a it's a difficult one isn't
08:16
it it is
08:17
because you you either need to be
08:19
getting it from a source that you trust
08:22
or spending your own time to verify
08:26
that it is right i mean it's like i've
08:29
got kids right and they're at school and
08:31
back when we were at school horus and
08:33
going back to the old the old days you
08:35
know
08:36
1930s and earlier
08:40
well i mean speaking of my own
08:42
experience if i was doing research for a
08:44
school project back in back in
08:46
early years of high school you know i
08:47
would i'd go to the school library and i
08:49
would find books on
08:50
say nazi germany whatever i'm
08:52
researching right encyclopedia
08:53
britannica
08:54
and then there was encarta on cd exactly
08:58
and you had to get them the cd rom and
08:59
you put it into the machine and you you
09:00
know you look it up
09:01
and there's a little music when it
09:03
starts right a little chime
09:05
exactly but that was sort of trusted
09:07
sources of knowledge you resp
09:09
you you relied on the fact that you know
09:12
not only did the the text have detailed
09:15
footnoting and annotations
09:16
but it was published by a reputable
09:17
company that republican company would be
09:19
stacking its reputation and putting this
09:21
document out
09:22
and spending a lot of money in producing
09:23
the book or the encyclopedia so
09:26
you would trust that they would
09:27
eliminate errors nowadays
09:31
of course you've got all sorts of stuff
09:32
online and you know wikipedia is is one
09:35
source and there's other sources that
09:36
you can go to and
09:38
i'm trying to understand what's
09:41
motivating my
09:41
my son's research habits has been really
09:44
quite illuminating because
09:45
you know initially it was a case of i
09:47
just google and i find a thing and it's
09:48
the first thing in the list and so
09:49
therefore it must be right
09:51
but you know and wikipedia can be quite
09:54
good but you've got to go through and
09:55
you've got to go like well what are the
09:56
source documents where are they getting
09:58
this information from is it correlated
09:59
by other
10:00
results that i can find online are they
10:02
coming from the press are they coming
10:03
from
10:04
some random blog by some person that i
10:06
cannot verify their identity of well
10:08
maybe that's not quite so reliable
10:09
um and it's the same process that you
10:11
have to bring to to legal research and
10:13
you're doing your you're googling you're
10:14
trying to find you know answers to legal
10:16
questions
10:17
do you have trust in the source of that
10:20
information
10:22
or are you going to be having to spend
10:24
time
10:25
i think i i may have said this in
10:27
another forum as well but
10:29
there's a cost to relying on information
10:31
that you you can't
10:32
um that you don't know the source of it
10:34
you can't verify the source of it
10:35
quickly because you either
10:37
make a call and assume the risk that
10:39
maybe maybe it's not right
10:41
um and that that risk can be you know
10:43
quite expensive for you or for the
10:44
person who's relying on the legal
10:46
services you're providing
10:47
or you uh you spend the time and incur
10:50
the cost of
10:51
verifying the resource doing the double
10:53
checking comparing it to other available
10:55
information and that you know either way
10:58
you'll
10:59
your spending resource whether it be
11:01
your time or
11:02
the assumption of risk there are so many
11:05
threats there
11:06
i mean sorry no it's it's fantastic
11:11
like the uprising of wikipedia the
11:13
critical thinking that people
11:15
need when they're faced with um
11:17
information
11:19
the ability to verify and and what is
11:22
considered
11:22
credible is it content is it authorship
11:25
is it something else
11:26
and then this idea of reducing
11:30
the equation down to cost
11:33
right that is neat i i haven't heard you
11:37
say that before i haven't heard anyone
11:39
say that before but it makes sense
11:42
especially from a business perspective
11:45
and i think you know when we think about
11:47
you know solutions like
11:48
obviously with practical law it's a it's
11:50
a content solution we solve a
11:51
subscription model
11:52
you kind of have to articulate these
11:54
these costs because when you
11:56
front up to someone and you say you know
11:59
you can subscribe to practical law you
12:00
get this content you have
12:02
access to the brains of the writing team
12:05
who are creating this content keeping it
12:06
up to date
12:07
and here's the price tag and they go
12:08
well that's money right you want me to
12:10
put my hand in my wallet and
12:11
spend money now and you kind of have to
12:13
say well yes
12:15
um because if you don't well how are you
12:18
getting your
12:19
content where are you getting it from
12:20
and what are the hidden costs that
12:22
you're not
12:22
taking into account because it's not a
12:24
case of these dollars or nothing
12:26
it's these dollars or the cost of your
12:29
time
12:30
the cost of the risk you assume the you
12:32
know at the other costs that are
12:34
there as part of your efficiency or
12:36
inefficiency in doing your job so
12:38
it's that broader sort of what is the
12:40
investment you're making and
12:41
how do you how do you calculate the
12:45
return you're going to get
12:46
and what are you comparing it to that's
12:47
that sort of mental journey you kind of
12:49
got to go on in order to make an
12:51
appropriate decision about whether you
12:52
want to buy you know
12:53
our product or another product that
12:54
provides a solution to
12:57
a content need or a process need right
13:00
what is the most challenging part about
13:02
trying to
13:03
bring someone along this story this
13:06
journey of explaining
13:08
hear your costs today hear your costs
13:10
tomorrow
13:11
why don't we talk about it and settle on
13:13
an amount you're comfortable with what
13:15
what's your take on these pricing
13:17
conversations with customers yeah
13:20
it's it's difficult i think it all comes
13:23
down to
13:25
how you're able to explain the value of
13:28
your product because once there's an
13:31
understanding of value
13:33
then then it's not about
13:36
um here's the number and i like it i
13:39
don't like it
13:40
it's for what's this the value i'm going
13:41
to get how do i get that value
13:44
and then what am i giving up to secure
13:47
that i mean
13:48
i had a um a conversation with a
13:49
customer a little while ago
13:51
and it was really interesting um talking
13:53
to them because
13:55
they had you know everyone's got a
13:58
limited budget they were in house
13:59
team they had a limited budget of what
14:01
they could spend on on solutions
14:03
and they had decided to invest in
14:06
process
14:06
innovations so they had spent money on
14:08
process innovations because they've been
14:10
able to see the value
14:12
in what these innovations going to do
14:14
for the way in which they got
14:16
instructions from their
14:17
business the way in which they managed
14:20
the work
14:20
within their legal team so there was a
14:23
lot of a lot of that kind of stuff right
14:25
um though in which they were able to
14:27
keep their
14:28
documents and their own internal
14:30
internally generated know-how
14:31
ordered so that's what they kind of
14:33
spent money on what they were wanting to
14:34
spend money on in this particular case
14:36
was additional content solutions
14:39
and in a way although they'd created a
14:42
lot of
14:43
value by taking on those process
14:46
innovations
14:47
that value in terms of their ability to
14:49
use their time effectively was eroded
14:52
by their not taking on an equivalent
14:55
content solution
14:56
because whenever they needed to think
14:58
about stuff which was not within the
14:59
narrow confines of their own
15:01
deep expertise their process of getting
15:04
that information was very inefficient
15:06
so they were almost saving themselves
15:07
time to be inefficient in their research
15:10
getting to the value part and gay couple
15:13
yeah
15:13
were all those solutions the right ones
15:15
for you to to purchase i mean
15:16
individually that makes sense to the
15:18
process
15:19
but when you look at your business unit
15:22
as a whole and the tasks that you do
15:23
as a whole actually maybe the saving of
15:27
time or money you're getting out of that
15:28
particular application is not worth what
15:30
you're giving up
15:32
in not being smart about your your
15:34
research solutions
15:35
and trying to have those conversations
15:37
to calibrate can be
15:39
quite tricky i know um there are some
15:41
consultants out there who work with
15:43
with in-house teams in particular and
15:44
they're really good at
15:46
kind of coming in alongside the business
15:48
and taking a little bit of the pain out
15:49
of it because they
15:50
they kind of bring an independent
15:51
perspective and they're not not selling
15:53
for any particular
15:54
vendor they're just there to kind of
15:56
provide a consulting service okay well
15:57
we've seen what departments like yours
15:59
do this might be good this might be good
16:01
because they've already got that kind of
16:03
position of trust and not coming in as a
16:04
vendor
16:05
even though often they will get a you
16:07
know kind of any subscription or there's
16:08
some sort of
16:09
you know there's some sort of financial
16:10
incentive for them to sell stuff that's
16:12
not the
16:13
the mindset with which they come and
16:15
it's not the mindset which they heard so
16:16
i think there's an openness to
16:18
to listening to what they have to say
16:19
that may not be there when a customer is
16:21
speaking directly to a provider of a
16:23
solution that's kind of a hurdle that
16:24
we have to overcome through value
16:27
yeah i think i think it's um it's an
16:30
interesting point
16:31
um the the kind of trustedness of the
16:33
voice
16:34
plays a role when they kind of the the
16:36
idea that maybe
16:37
there's a vested that there's the vested
16:39
interest or there's an ulterior motive
16:41
um but something else you said was quite
16:44
interesting and i'm going to link it
16:45
back to
16:47
what we're talking about earlier with
16:48
platforms versus point solutions versus
16:51
integration
16:52
and that is in the legal tech space
16:55
mostly what people are talking about are
16:58
process-based
16:59
technologies the technological solution
17:03
that people are providing
17:05
leads to in improved efficiency
17:09
usually by changing the way people work
17:12
very rarely
17:13
do people talk about content as a part
17:15
of that equation
17:17
yeah i think that's a big missing piece
17:20
of the jigsaw puzzle
17:22
if the assumption is true that people
17:24
are not thinking enough about content
17:26
today
17:28
what do we do to help the legal sector
17:32
or the legal profession
17:35
yeah i mean this is kind of the core of
17:37
my of my role away because obviously my
17:39
solution is a
17:40
content solution um and it really is
17:43
about trying to explain
17:45
the value and efficiency that we bring
17:47
and and the value of that
17:49
to a customer i think looking over my
17:51
legal career you know i started at uh at
17:54
keyword malice as as did you before it
17:56
was king of bells it was back in the day
17:57
there's males and stephen jackson we've
17:58
both moved through different firms we've
18:00
been at internationals we've been at
18:02
large domestics
18:04
we've seen different things come and go
18:06
timekeeping is one which was really
18:08
interesting you know there have been
18:09
various solutions for tracking time
18:12
spent during the day so you can
18:14
effectively get your time sheets in and
18:16
build the right clients the right
18:17
amounts
18:19
that's always that's always been one of
18:20
those solutions which is interesting and
18:22
they've changed over time right there's
18:23
there's been the start stop clock that
18:25
you do yourself there's been the smart
18:26
solution that sits in the background and
18:28
kind of keeps
18:28
track of well you're on you know google
18:32
chrome for this long you are on you know
18:34
your email for this long and you're
18:35
emailing these people it can kind of
18:36
spit data at you that you can then
18:38
refine without actually having to do the
18:39
start stop clock thing um
18:43
back when i started we were using pen
18:45
and paper you know
18:46
to to track your day you know what am i
18:49
doing time starting
18:50
the end of the day okay i've manually
18:51
entered my time sheets for the day
18:53
so different things have changed over
18:55
time but ultimately what you've needed
18:56
to do
18:56
is account for your time so you can
18:58
build your client right yep
19:00
from a professional services point of
19:03
view for all the process innovations you
19:04
want to bring
19:05
to bear at the end of the day
19:08
you have to be providing legal services
19:10
to your client and those legal services
19:12
are based on your expertise as a lawyer
19:15
and your
19:15
ability as an expert lawyer to take
19:19
raw information about your client's
19:21
situation
19:22
the applicable law market practice
19:25
regulator guidelines and turn that into
19:28
an answer to their question
19:31
now you can bring to bear lots of
19:32
different process tools
19:35
in in that process but ultimately
19:39
you're going to have to provide an
19:40
answer and to provide an answer you need
19:41
to be able to
19:42
understand those different categories of
19:44
information
19:46
filter them and apply critical thinking
19:48
to how they interrelate
19:49
in the given situation and to do that
19:52
yes you'll need to use your expertise
19:54
but you've got to get that stuff quickly
19:56
right
19:58
and you have to get on top of those
19:59
different areas of information quickly
20:00
in order to be able to to do that
20:02
high-level thinking
20:03
so do you want to waste your time going
20:06
through free websites
20:07
or instructing a junior to do three
20:09
hours of research which you then have to
20:10
review and
20:11
send them back to redo or do you want to
20:13
go to a content solution
20:15
that has you know enough credibility and
20:18
trust behind it that you know you don't
20:20
have to do deep interrogation
20:21
of whether it's right you can use it to
20:24
give you a quick
20:26
guide to the law or the guidelines from
20:28
the regulators or whatever it is in the
20:30
situation that you're in
20:31
you can use it to signpost the key cases
20:33
and ledge that you need to go look at
20:35
for more detail given the bespoke
20:37
scenario that your client has got
20:40
content is always going to be so
20:43
crucial to being able to do your job
20:45
right as a lawyer
20:47
and i think it's making sure people
20:49
understand that that
20:50
journey that they go through intuitively
20:53
um
20:54
just being able to get them to step back
20:55
and go okay this is actually what i'm
20:56
doing each day okay no i do
20:58
i do need that content so how do i get
21:00
it where am i getting it now you know
21:01
what am i doing to
21:02
to get this stuff you know am i getting
21:04
cases from
21:05
a trusted database which you know treats
21:08
the cases and updates them and makes
21:10
sure that you know there's a digest
21:11
behind it and
21:12
i can see flags if things are being
21:14
overturned or not or am i going through
21:15
a free resource in front of the case and
21:16
then going okay well
21:17
now how do i check this case is still
21:20
current it hasn't been overturned or
21:21
overruled from the point that i care
21:23
about
21:23
and there's a lot of research that goes
21:25
into that unless you're using a solution
21:26
which you can trust which already has
21:28
done that work it's the legwork right
21:30
lawyers are so busy you're constantly
21:32
you know getting calls from clients
21:33
you're trying to run matters you're
21:35
trying to do deals
21:36
who's got time to stay up to date on the
21:38
minutiae
21:39
of what's coming out of the courts
21:41
legislatures the regulator every day
21:43
only lawyers whose job is to do that and
21:46
nothing else
21:46
and that's what my team has um and
21:49
that's what you know i think
21:50
the best content solutions do whether it
21:52
be on a sort of know-how basis like ours
21:55
or
21:55
you know whether it's like a like a case
21:58
and legislation
21:59
database or if it's a you know a clause
22:02
bank you know you have to have the right
22:03
stuff it has to be
22:05
accessible at the point of need and you
22:07
have to be able to get it quickly and
22:09
know that it's right
22:10
that that's what's going to be helping
22:11
you to generate value for your client
22:15
it sounds a little bit um like adam
22:18
smith's specialization
22:20
right like like you you want to you want
22:22
to kind of if you think about law like a
22:24
production line
22:26
um your everyday lawyers
22:29
the ones who you know everyday people
22:31
think about are the ones at the end
22:33
that assemble and put together the
22:35
advice but all the raw materials
22:38
everything that goes into that final
22:41
production assembly process has to be
22:44
done by someone else
22:46
like who's farming the wheat who's
22:48
pulling the iron from the ground
22:50
yeah that's a really good analogy yeah i
22:53
think that's absolutely right
22:55
so i'm going to make a little flipping
22:57
comment here and i don't know how
22:59
i don't know how true this is going to
23:00
be is facebook dying because the content
23:04
on there is no longer interesting or is
23:08
it dying because
23:09
there is such a flood of content that it
23:12
is not
23:13
possible to efficiently winnow out the
23:16
stuff that you don't care about from the
23:17
stuff that you do
23:18
because it's so hard to win about the
23:20
things that you care about
23:22
you ignore it entirely and you follow
23:24
people on twitter
23:25
or insta or whenever you use whatsapp to
23:29
do your messaging
23:31
it's two sides of the same coin right
23:33
like
23:35
on if there's too much content
23:38
well that's bad content if there's not
23:41
enough content
23:42
that's also bad content and it's kind of
23:45
this
23:46
zone of this goldilocks zone of just
23:48
right
23:49
yeah exactly that is that's really cool
23:52
now you're you're gonna be
23:53
um you or one of your colleagues will be
23:55
speaking at
23:56
uh ultacon um very soon and so i'm very
23:59
excited
24:00
yes i don't want to steal too much
24:02
thunder but
24:04
let's round off this video by just
24:06
quickly talking about
24:07
what you will be discussing at ultacon
24:10
this year
24:11
sure i think it's it's going to be very
24:14
much
24:15
a content solutions perspective on
24:18
legal tech and the role that content
24:21
still has to play in this world of
24:22
information
24:23
democratization i mean i've been saying
24:25
earlier wrong in this chat
24:27
yeah there's just so much information
24:28
now and it's so accessible it's not like
24:30
the old days where
24:32
i keep talking about the old days when i
24:33
worked in a law library as a summer
24:35
clerk and
24:36
you know i had to do loosely filing and
24:38
you know every every couple of months we
24:40
get a new cd-rom
24:41
of of digest to put in the cd tower at
24:44
the computer stack in the library would
24:45
come and you know look at
24:46
the needed cases the good old days i
24:49
know
24:50
but now it's just there's so much out
24:52
there so so
24:54
what is what is it that that we can do
24:56
to to better serve our clients and get
24:58
the right information
24:59
and just stepping back from that what
25:00
are the trends in the way in which
25:02
lawyers have been spending their money
25:03
and adopting
25:05
new technologies be it you know those
25:08
day-to-day technologies well not
25:09
dissimilar to this i mean
25:11
a couple of years ago when you had
25:14
conference calls
25:15
on international deals you were using
25:18
those style phones in the middle of the
25:19
table right i remember those star phones
25:21
yeah yeah everyone sounds like they're
25:23
about a million miles away
25:25
exactly and then someone's got the wrong
25:26
dial in and you're waiting on the call
25:28
and they're on a different call entirely
25:29
and that was that was
25:30
par for the course i remember sitting
25:32
around tables at you know a dla piper
25:34
trying to get counterparties on
25:36
on the line you know from overseas at
25:37
you know one in the morning and
25:40
yeah they were on the wrong conference
25:41
school we're emailing each other saying
25:42
which concerts will have you dialed into
25:44
now this is the one you have to use
25:46
over the last 12 months because the
25:48
pandemic everyone is on zoom or teams or
25:50
you know
25:51
or this google platform there's some
25:52
sort of online technology that they've
25:55
all adopted and that's been
25:56
that's been an innovation full of firms
25:59
very quickly and they're taking that on
26:00
so that's one style of spend people have
26:02
been undertaking there's the
26:04
the digital process efficiency products
26:06
people are buying and then there's
26:07
content so
26:07
the ways in which that that spend breaks
26:09
down has been really interesting you can
26:11
kind of see some trends
26:12
to who was ready who got really quickly
26:16
who's cutting their spend and where
26:17
they're coming to spend that sort of
26:19
data uh it can be quite insightful i
26:21
think i'm going to share some more
26:23
things around that
26:24
and then we'll go into uh my
26:27
subject of legal content and and and how
26:30
it can really empower lawyers you know
26:32
if you buy them the right way and
26:34
interact with them the right way
26:35
um through technology to do the job so
26:37
much better and more efficiently
26:40
wow tim that that is amazing i mean i i
26:44
can't wait to see it i think the data
26:45
that you're going to present is going to
26:46
be so telling
26:47
um and i don't know how many people in
26:50
the market would have access to data
26:52
like that so
26:53
for you to share it is is so kind
26:56
um so i'm i'm looking forward to it and
26:59
tim thank you for your time today
27:01
uh it's been such a fun conversation um
27:03
i do i do miss our coffee conversations
27:05
so
27:06
hopefully soon we'll be in the same
27:08
place at the same time to have a coffee
27:10
together
27:11
look forward to it it'll be on me
