What do developers consider when building software for lawyers
Last week, we had a chat with Ryan McDonough (https://ryanmcdonough.co.uk/), the lead developer at Addleshaw Goddard (https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/). That’s right, the “lead developer”.
Developers are an exceedingly rare (and often silent) group of professionals working inside the legal system, so we were lucky to have had the opportunity to learn how Ryan works alongside legal technologists and lawyers in their team.
One of the topics that we discussed, which is also something we spend a lot of time thinking about at Syntheia, is how technology influences the relationship between complexity of legal work for lawyers and value of legal work for clients. Ryan’s role is focused very much on pushing innovation to deliver better value for money for their clients, and this type of change is fundamentally tied to the business model of law firms. The challenge is often found in the perception that there is conflict between improving efficiency and maximizing revenue.
“... it comes back to, you know, reevaluating how do we charge for this work. I am not charging for my time, but my output, and what my value is to you...”
Ryan shared a few stories, including an impressive story about how Addleshaw Goddard developed a custom due diligence reporting system that gives their clients an active portal to interact with legal data.
You can watch our 30 minute conversation in the video below, where we talked about a range of topics, like:
the role of a software developer inside a law firm
how Ryan and his team develop technologies for lawyers
who does he think about when developing new technologies? Lawyers at law firms? Or clients at law firms?
asking the “5 whys” in order to figure out what is “the want” and what is “the need”
what will clients want from their law firms in three year’s time?
how a new business and billing model can bring law firms into a new era of provide legal service
standardization of processes and data in legal
the possible efficiencies that smart contracts can introduce to commerce and society
the importance of no-code and low-code platforms
Transcript of conversation
(Note: transcript is automatically generated, and may contain misspellings and typographical errors)
00:00
so today we're having a really exciting
00:02
conversation with the lead developer at
00:03
addleshaw goddard
00:05
ryan mcdonough how are you today
00:08
I’m fantastic how are you
00:09
i'm doing very well so we're going to
00:11
dive straight in
00:13
now you have a really interesting
00:15
background and we've been chit chatting
00:16
about covert and life and philosophy
00:19
um which we might get to in a second
00:21
because i i want to
00:22
i like to tie conversations together
00:26
and one of the really interesting things
00:28
about you
00:30
among many other things is that you are
00:32
a software developer
00:33
inside of a law firm
00:36
which is i think an exceedingly rare
00:39
breed and even more so
00:41
an exceedingly silent breed how would
00:44
you describe
00:45
your role inside of a law firm
00:48
yeah so i mean i sort of work alongside
00:51
the innovation legal technology team so
00:52
it's full of a lot of legal
00:54
technologists
00:55
ranging from people who've literally
00:57
just started um in the legal industry
00:59
through to like senior
01:00
senior associates and obviously partners
01:02
as well um
01:04
and i feel like i'm very much like a
01:06
sounding board at times for ideas so
01:08
people may come to me go ryan our
01:10
clients wanting to build this sort of
01:12
site inside
01:13
iq which one of our major platforms that
01:15
we use and we go you know what what's
01:16
the best way we can do this and i'll be
01:18
very much going
01:19
well what what are they asking for but
01:21
realistically what they actually need
01:22
because that's
01:24
such a key thing i think nowadays you
01:26
know previously in law the partners or
01:28
whoever would
01:29
come to you and they go um i want this
01:31
and
01:32
you go okay see you and see you in a few
01:34
months and you bring it back and they go
01:36
that's rubbish doesn't do anything i
01:38
want it to do it doesn't do anything
01:39
that i asked it
01:40
to do you know well that's exactly what
01:42
you asked for this is what you wanted
01:43
but it wasn't what they needed
01:46
and so i feel like my role is very much
01:48
pushing
01:50
what do we actually need to be building
01:52
rather than what do we want to be
01:53
building
01:54
um that's why i sort of see my
01:56
enrollment i obviously do a lot of
01:57
hands-on development
01:59
i like to be there very much as like a
02:00
sounding board for ideas and
02:02
being almost that naive person in the
02:04
room you know i've
02:06
not got a huge experience in law i have
02:08
worked at a law firm
02:09
prior to working at aeg um i always like
02:12
to have a question
02:13
so why are we doing it this way you know
02:15
what is there a reason we're doing it
02:17
this way that i just i just don't
02:18
understand and
02:20
sometimes it's very much if there's a
02:21
great reason we're doing it this way and
02:22
sometimes it's just
02:23
this is how we've always done it and i'm
02:26
trying to push
02:26
you know the way we've always done
02:28
things sometimes isn't the best way to
02:30
be doing things anymore especially in
02:32
this sort of
02:33
new era where there's you know more and
02:35
more tech firms coming along
02:37
you've got the sort of big four tech uh
02:39
law firms in the uk
02:41
and there's even big tech firms who have
02:43
more lawyers than most law firms
02:44
nowadays
02:45
and they can come along and they can be
02:47
going like don't you know we can do that
02:50
they have the resources and they have
02:51
the ability to do that and
02:53
more traditional law firms really have
02:54
to change how they're working to be able
02:56
to
02:57
push themselves beyond these big massive
03:00
companies
03:02
a few really interesting threads there
03:04
first one
03:05
was um client focus um
03:08
second related to that is uh being
03:11
focused on the problem what are you
03:13
trying to actually solve for people
03:15
third is your role as this kind of
03:17
translator
03:18
um almost like a bridge between
03:22
between the lawyers and the solutions
03:25
and fourth is
03:26
the rise of kind of the competitive
03:29
landscape
03:30
changing there's
03:35
but i guess maybe before we go and
03:37
explore any of those threats
03:39
um there's a there's a few kind of
03:41
related questions on this
03:43
like i think lawyers understand the
03:46
problem very well but they don't really
03:47
understand the technology and how to
03:49
achieve the outcome they're looking for
03:51
and so from your perspective you almost
03:54
need to get into the shoes of
03:59
the lawyers and one of the interesting
04:02
kind of um bifurcations or dichotomies
04:06
is do you get into the shoes of the
04:08
lawyers who
04:09
provide work for clients or do you get
04:12
into the shoes of the clients who
04:13
receive the work from the lawyers
04:15
which one's a more beneficial
04:17
perspective it is almost 50 50 i feel
04:19
it's
04:20
there is more of a lean towards what the
04:22
actual the client's going to be needing
04:25
because that's that is really key to
04:27
what it is you know you know we used to
04:29
have a big sort of silo so you know
04:31
you'd have like your development teams
04:33
and you know you'd have the lawyers who
04:34
would chat to their client but there
04:35
would never be any conversations between
04:36
the clients and the developers
04:38
um you know you'd have your point of
04:40
contact in the law firm that's who you
04:42
talk to you know
04:44
they'd have to sue and they'll be like
04:45
yeah that's the profession i'm working
04:47
with i don't want to see the developers
04:49
but more and more of that is changing
04:50
because we're able to sort of ask those
04:52
questions that maybe the lawyers don't
04:54
tend to think about for the solution
04:56
because that's
04:57
that's not their background you know in
04:58
the same way that i wouldn't know
05:00
the correct things to be asking from a
05:01
legal perspective you know there's
05:03
there's very much reasons why we both
05:05
had to do our specific job
05:07
um but yeah being able to sort of go to
05:09
the client and go
05:10
okay so why do you need it to do this
05:13
you know
05:14
the better ways to be achieving this
05:15
because i mean i worked a digital agency
05:18
prior to working at aeg and
05:20
we had a client once and as a developer
05:22
working on a solution to take all their
05:24
contact lists from their forms online
05:26
and put them into one massive
05:27
spreadsheet and he spent about three
05:29
days working on it
05:30
and i said so what are you doing there
05:32
and oh well they need all these
05:33
spreadsheets went but why do they need
05:35
all these spreadsheets
05:37
no idea they just need all these
05:38
spreadsheets and i went back to i said
05:41
so what are you doing here oh we just
05:42
need to know how many new people have
05:43
signed up to the form
05:47
we can we can do that in like 30 minutes
05:50
of work we could just you know count how
05:51
many new people you've got and just show
05:53
it in the website for you
05:55
and but they came with their one rather
05:56
than their need
05:58
and it's not on the client all the
06:00
lawyers to really figure out what the
06:01
need is
06:02
they know what their want is but we're
06:04
here to provide the
06:06
translation of what that turns into a
06:07
need
06:10
there's this process and i'm sure you
06:12
know of it called a five
06:13
wise yes um and it sounds like what
06:16
you're doing
06:17
is a very practical version of that
06:20
um so what are the challenges that you
06:24
find
06:24
when you ask a client hey why do you
06:27
need this
06:28
why do you want this they've probably
06:30
never been asked that before
06:33
in a lot of circumstances um you know
06:36
previously in law firms yeah people just
06:37
go okay we'll do that for you because
06:39
they were very
06:41
they wanted to purposefully right
06:43
exactly yeah
06:44
it was you know it was i mean it's
06:46
always that thing is
06:47
steve jobs says you know we we don't
06:49
care what people want we care what
06:51
people
06:51
need i bought you know they're very much
06:54
wanted to please the clients because you
06:55
know
06:56
it was dog eat dog you know for a long
06:58
time you know the law firm's coming and
07:00
going and
07:01
you know they wanted to retain the
07:02
client but clients are now realizing
07:04
more and more especially as they're
07:05
getting these sort of legal solutions
07:07
you know
07:08
there are so many better options that we
07:10
can be looking at so if they're not
07:11
actually getting what they need
07:13
then they can just move somewhere else
07:16
but they've
07:16
never really been asked why they're
07:18
achieving what they're wanting to
07:19
achieve
07:20
and they've never had to deal with those
07:21
sort of questions before so it really
07:23
opens up some
07:25
really interesting meetings that we have
07:27
with them and you can
07:29
you can start and again it's one of the
07:30
things we've missed with
07:32
with kobit it's having those
07:34
face-to-face meetings because you can
07:35
just catch when someone's maybe a bit
07:37
confused or they they look a bit
07:39
like that's not a good idea and you can
07:41
go oh
07:42
i can see you don't think it's a
07:44
particularly great idea why don't you
07:45
think that's a great idea
07:46
so you have to you have to be a bit more
07:48
um on the ball looking at all the
07:50
different photos to see you know
07:52
who's confused who's you know a bit
07:53
angry about your proposal
07:55
um but really delving into that with
07:58
them you get such a
08:00
you know you get the initial idea and
08:02
then it just sprawls and sprawls and
08:03
sprawls and then obviously you have to
08:04
try and
08:05
cut that down into the mvp for them um
08:08
but yeah
08:08
having that client feedback is just on a
08:10
sort of a continual loop basis is just
08:12
so important
08:15
i think the flip side is true as well
08:17
where you can see that little light bulb
08:20
moment in their eyes and they just
08:22
get it and you know at that exact moment
08:25
that idea has legs yes and for me that's
08:29
super exciting
08:30
right like like when you when you see
08:32
that little glimmer in
08:33
in the customer's eyes you go oh
08:36
ooh pat yourself in the back that was a
08:39
good workout exactly yeah
08:42
and that's the thing that i think the
08:44
you know the clients have never had to
08:46
really been involved
08:47
in tech previously you know and i found
08:50
you know
08:50
early on in my career you know there was
08:53
people just there was
08:54
two levels of people there was you were
08:56
just amazed that you could build a
08:57
website
08:58
like first you have to go that's
08:59
fantastic that's the best thing i've
09:00
ever seen
09:01
amazing or they'd expect you to have
09:03
built facebook
09:05
right as it is now you know they've got
09:07
they've got no sort of
09:09
idea of how much work it takes to build
09:11
a platform over time
09:12
and i feel like now we're saying it's
09:14
more like middle ground where people are
09:15
expecting
09:16
certain levels of polish and they know
09:18
what is possible you know
09:19
they see that apps can do amazing things
09:21
nowadays and they're going
09:23
well why can't i hire that with my legal
09:24
tech you know why can't i see
09:27
um the progress of my case on a
09:29
day-to-day basis
09:30
why can't i see all my contracts and how
09:32
they're broken down
09:34
in a really easy to view format why why
09:36
are they still in some
09:37
you know filing cabinet and paper that
09:39
i've got no idea what's going on
09:41
so it's it's a really great sea change
09:44
of the
09:44
people are coming into it going i have
09:47
an appreciation for tech
09:48
i um what can be done
09:52
help me help me get that into my life
09:56
so the trend that you're seeing in the
09:58
marketplace so the movement towards
10:00
people
10:01
well one expectation management the kind
10:04
of changing
10:05
we no longer expect you to produce
10:07
facebook within the space of two weeks
10:11
like what what do you think has been
10:13
driving that trend and where do you
10:15
think that trend is
10:16
going what do you think ultimately let's
10:19
say three year horizon
10:21
um what do you think clients are going
10:24
to
10:24
want in three years time from their law
10:27
firms
10:29
so i think going forward i think clients
10:32
are going to be expecting a lot more
10:34
automation of processes um previously
10:37
you know if you
10:38
you send you know a law firm you know
10:40
we've got 10 000 documents and we need
10:41
you to
10:43
break down all the clauses and give them
10:45
back to us you know
10:47
please you just throw people that
10:48
problem you go okay let's
10:50
give five paralegals this job and they
10:52
can work for it for the next two weeks
10:54
and you know
10:55
not sleep right but i feel like now
10:58
they're going to be
10:59
clients are going to expect more and
11:00
more be able to self-serve
11:02
they're going to expect places where
11:03
they can you know put all their
11:05
documents and get their breakdowns
11:07
and again it's there's always been this
11:10
thing of
11:10
you know previously lawyers not
11:12
previously they still do they charge by
11:14
those six minute brackets
11:15
yes and so you know there's always that
11:18
balance that incentive going
11:20
well i can automate this but how am i
11:22
going to charge now
11:24
where's the money actually coming from
11:25
and then you have to sort of say
11:26
something well
11:27
we're not producing less value we're
11:29
just doing it quicker you can still
11:30
charge almost an equivalent because they
11:33
were willing to pay
11:35
someone to spend all that time going
11:36
through documents manually
11:38
there is a value to them for that and
11:40
that value has been very much
11:42
determined by how much they would
11:43
previously pay and obviously you could
11:44
lower that because you're automating it
11:46
but
11:46
we're not saying oh it's only a fiver
11:48
now to do ten thousand documents because
11:50
it takes
11:51
12 seconds in you know in some platform
11:53
on aws or is yours so
11:56
self-service is going to be one of those
11:58
key things for clients and
11:59
again it's almost that and being
12:02
proactive as well
12:03
so more and more we're seeing that you
12:06
know clients want to start
12:07
giving us more of their data you know
12:10
say from a
12:10
health and safety perspective of you
12:12
know logging off their compliance things
12:14
and
12:14
almost having the firms having the
12:16
visibility of that and not waiting for
12:18
the client to go
12:19
uh we've we've been inspected it's a
12:21
massive problem we've got all these red
12:23
flags it's
12:24
servicing that to the law firm day by
12:27
day
12:28
and the law firm started to notice
12:29
patterns and being proactive with the
12:31
clients so
12:32
yeah it's not such an emergency you can
12:34
start to nip things in the bud at that
12:35
point
12:36
so i expect clients are going to be
12:37
expecting the law offers to be more
12:39
proactive in their approach as well what
12:42
you're describing
12:43
is is this idea of move away from
12:46
traditional
12:47
hourly model a big billable hour model
12:50
which is going to be super challenging
12:52
every time someone talks about that law
12:54
firms
12:54
you can see the partners going look look
12:57
it's not going to let that happen
13:00
and and you're moving towards almost
13:02
like a
13:03
manageable consultant model um i've been
13:06
able to do project-based charging
13:09
now i think i think there are some
13:11
cultural barriers to that
13:13
um and i really like the direction
13:16
you're going i think this is where we
13:17
have to go
13:19
but i suspect it's not going to be an
13:21
overnight
13:22
thing what i'm seeing in the market is
13:26
there's kind of that that nibbling away
13:29
bottom edge
13:30
of the service spectrum
13:33
um where some of the things that can be
13:35
automated are being automated
13:37
um and the cost is what a benefit of
13:40
reduced cost is being shared
13:42
between the law firm and the clients now
13:46
that's gonna start creeping up as
13:48
technology improves
13:49
as as processes improve um
13:53
and as you were saying that i i can't
13:55
think about the spectrum of legal work
13:58
people think about legal work in terms
13:59
of complexity
14:01
and the value that's delivered so you
14:03
can kind of draw an x
14:04
y axis of um on the y axis it's
14:08
complexity on the x-axis system there's
14:10
a dollar value
14:11
and all the law firms try and well all
14:14
the major organs try and position
14:16
themselves in that top
14:17
right quadrant of highly complex highly
14:20
valuable work
14:22
and historically the way that technology
14:26
has been perceived
14:26
is that it's able to do the low value
14:29
low complexity work
14:31
but actually that's not true like like
14:33
technology these days with open apis
14:35
with
14:36
kind of like ordered interconnected
14:37
systems is starting to nibble away
14:40
at the complex work as well as the high
14:44
value work
14:46
um and when you think about it in these
14:49
two dimensions one of the things that
14:50
actually
14:51
people forget about is there's a third
14:53
dimension of time
14:55
how much time can a person spend
14:58
working on all of these different types
15:00
of work do you spread yourself really
15:02
thin on this on this whole plane or do
15:04
you focus all your time at the high
15:06
value complex
15:08
yeah and when you kind of think about
15:11
this
15:12
value matrix in a three-dimensional way
15:16
i think the perspective changes people
15:18
get more comfortable
15:20
with i'm happy adopting technology
15:22
because i know what that's doing
15:24
it's not just cutting away at money i
15:26
could be making
15:27
but it actually allows me to make money
15:29
from the top end of work
15:31
that i don't have time to do it yeah
15:34
exactly yeah it's um i mean so
15:36
recently um we launched internally a due
15:39
diligence platform
15:41
um and so the way that um we used to
15:44
work was
15:44
you know a an instruction will come
15:46
through from a client and the people who
15:48
would be involved in the deal internally
15:49
would get sent around an email with
15:50
some documents attached to it and then
15:53
they would just crack on they start
15:54
doing their reviews in word and they
15:56
go into a document management system and
15:59
then
15:59
it comes to writing the report and
16:00
people start copying and pasting chunks
16:02
out of all these word documents and just
16:04
going around robin format
16:06
and so i was approached by a couple of
16:10
the associates some of the partners
16:11
they went you know this is how we're
16:12
doing dd currently we'd like to look at
16:14
doing it
16:15
better you know because you know that
16:18
classic hit by a bus or won the water
16:20
you know someone
16:21
just doesn't turn up to work the next
16:22
day and they're the one with the latest
16:23
copy of the report
16:24
yes how do you get that latest copy of
16:26
the report you need to know where it is
16:28
and they have that thing if you pay some
16:30
content into word and the entire report
16:31
will just shift to the left
16:34
is in that classic word thing again i'm
16:35
just having one word in the entire
16:37
report it's just completely horrific now
16:39
so we we sort of we and aj are really
16:43
pushing innovation now they're going you
16:44
know how can we
16:45
really push the tools that we have yeah
16:48
to make
16:49
making it for the best and so we've
16:50
built a whole platform where you you
16:52
define your
16:53
um the deal overview everyone on the
16:55
team can see the deal overview on one
16:57
page
16:58
there's another tab where you can start
17:00
to define the scope of the
17:01
due diligence thing so again that was a
17:03
problem that we used to have is people
17:05
would start
17:05
looking into things they didn't need to
17:08
because they didn't they didn't really
17:09
understand what the scope was supposed
17:11
to be but now there's a
17:12
you know defined scope you can see
17:13
what's in an out of scope so people
17:15
aren't going down that rabbit hole and
17:16
doing the wrong thing
17:17
anymore then all the reviews are put
17:20
into the system
17:21
so everyone has the same visibility of
17:23
all the reviews of all the documents
17:24
they can say with the issues they're all
17:26
in there and you can see how they evolve
17:28
over time so
17:29
we can in the future start to go oh well
17:32
we've noticed that people are rewriting
17:34
the same issue in the same way each time
17:36
yeah so maybe why don't we do a bit more
17:38
training on how this issue should
17:40
probably be written in the first
17:42
instance and we can start to see
17:43
how the due diligence evolves over time
17:46
and again that the
17:47
final goal of this is what we've
17:48
achieved is that we then produce a pdf
17:50
output at the end of it
17:51
so it pulls all the data in and gives
17:54
you a standard looking report
17:56
that you can just then give to the
17:57
client you don't have to you know if
17:59
someone going or someone's like with
18:00
their information
18:01
put into the platform click create pdf
18:05
you've got that pdf and again the next
18:07
steps after that are going well
18:08
pdfs are great but you've got a 1 000
18:11
ipad
18:11
you know and you're just scrolling
18:13
you're giving people a pdf to review in
18:14
the scripture
18:16
why not invite them onto the platform
18:18
why not allow them to delve into the
18:20
information and
18:22
depending on your role in the firm you
18:24
can see different outputs you can sort
18:26
of see them all summarize view if you're
18:27
like the
18:28
cfo or the cto or the ceo and again if
18:30
you're the people actually implementing
18:32
it you see the full detail and the real
18:34
recommendations because it's really
18:36
pushing it's sort of
18:37
going it was an internal product but how
18:39
can we actually make this again
18:41
focus for the clients and again the
18:42
team's age you're really now focused on
18:46
pushing that innovation to really give
18:49
the clients the best bang for the money
18:51
at this point
18:52
that is so impressive because i remember
18:54
the days when i used to be
18:56
the one coordinating and pulling all
18:58
these different
18:59
uh expert reports together expert yeah
19:03
and and then every single part is
19:05
stylistically different
19:06
every single part just just it's
19:09
different enough that i would have to
19:11
spend maybe a week
19:12
rewriting everything yes
19:15
and and like at the end of it
19:19
the whole traditional model is here's a
19:21
300 page dd report with a two page
19:23
executive
19:24
summary at the front which you know
19:27
that nobody's reading the 298 pages at
19:30
the back apart from that one guy
19:32
at nearby who has to go and carry it out
19:35
for the next 12 months
19:36
exactly yeah making that into an
19:39
interactive
19:41
useful report is so smart and it's
19:44
like in hindsight like obvious why
19:47
haven't we done this already
19:49
exactly and that was i think i remember
19:50
when i heard how dd was being done
19:53
previous i was like
19:54
that makes no sense whatsoever i was
19:56
like but this is that's just how we've
19:59
done it and
19:59
you know and it's the same for
20:01
developers you know why are we doing
20:02
this way that's just how we've done it
20:03
all these years until you sort of
20:05
see a real benefit i mean i suppose the
20:07
biggest one we've had for developers was
20:09
source control and using that to deploy
20:12
the websites automatically
20:14
bbc would just copy the folder from our
20:16
desktop onto the server and if it broke
20:19
well hopefully you made a backup folder
20:21
on the server called you know website
20:23
underscore backup 72. but now having
20:26
that automatic processor if i
20:28
i commit my code it deploys to the
20:29
server automatically i don't have to
20:31
worry about that happening
20:33
it's it's fantastic and that's almost
20:35
what's up with the dd is that
20:37
at the start you don't go i don't really
20:38
see what the benefit of me putting into
20:40
this platform is
20:41
and getting this pdf i can do a word
20:43
document that's that's fine but
20:45
over time people going you know it is
20:47
saving me time and it's saving that
20:49
stress of trying to create all the
20:50
information from people you can see when
20:52
people lost updated records if they said
20:53
they were going to update it you go
20:55
click oh they last edited it yesterday
20:57
they haven't done it yet i can ping them
20:59
a message and find out where it is
21:01
having information there in a report
21:04
okay that's fine it's a report
21:08
but it's static it doesn't do anything
21:10
yeah you're actually making that
21:12
active and useful and i love that i
21:14
think that's so good
21:16
one of the things that engineers do a
21:18
lot better than lawyers is
21:19
standardization
21:22
so api standardizations
21:26
data standardization and i think for
21:30
for law firms i mean there's there's
21:32
sort of a movement now or in fact for
21:34
the last 20 years
21:35
it started with it is so i don't know if
21:37
you've seen those before it's for
21:40
international swaps so so where
21:43
banks effectively say hey hey um
21:46
you know one of the most common uses is
21:48
interest rate swaps i'll swap you a
21:50
fixed rate interest loan you give me a
21:51
variable so we hedge our risks
21:54
um and it had to be standardized because
21:56
it was traded all around the world and
21:58
so people came up with this
22:00
um standard form document
22:03
where to implement it all you have to do
22:06
is
22:07
open a two-page schedule and say
22:09
literally on
22:10
off on off on off for the different
22:13
variables
22:15
and and that was great but i think there
22:18
are
22:18
very very few documents that have had
22:21
the same
22:22
standardization in the legal sector
22:25
do you think from what you've seen there
22:28
is
22:29
a possibility for more standardized
22:33
contracts more standardized data inside
22:36
of legal
22:37
oh definitely so yeah i mean
22:41
you can you can always see so with the
22:43
legal scheme of projects that move into
22:45
this idea that
22:46
contracts are very well defined so i
22:49
mean for example
22:50
instead of just having um company name
22:53
brackets company number which
22:54
you've probably seen lots of you know
22:56
agreements between two companies
22:58
you know if then let's say regulation
23:01
comes along and goes
23:02
oh um i don't know let's say you get a
23:04
new risk manager
23:05
um at a bank and they're very
23:09
intent on risk and they go okay well
23:11
let's have a look at all of our
23:12
contracts which we've
23:14
we've gone into where the companies have
23:16
a turnover of say
23:17
500k or under because you know we've
23:20
covered
23:21
we're a bit concerned that maybe they
23:22
don't have the liquidity to be
23:23
continuing on day to day and you know it
23:25
could be tomorrow
23:26
five of the suppliers are gone you know
23:28
they just don't exist anymore
23:31
how would you go about doing that
23:32
currently with contracts you'd have to
23:33
have someone go through and get all the
23:34
company numbers from all the contracts
23:37
and
23:37
then do look up some companies house or
23:39
equivalent american find out you know
23:41
what is their liquidity and all those
23:43
bits and pieces
23:44
but with with the concept of my legal
23:46
schema you know you saw the company
23:49
but as part of that you in the database
23:50
and where you'd store all their
23:52
information
23:53
at a point in time and you install their
23:55
company number and so you don't have to
23:56
include the company number the report
23:58
back and query it
23:59
and i go okay well i've got all these
24:00
company numbers i can query companies
24:02
house i can get all the information down
24:04
and
24:05
you know in half a day i've got all the
24:07
information i need
24:08
um to present back to the person
24:10
interested in the risk of these smaller
24:11
companies
24:13
clearly there's no way to do that i mean
24:14
we've had client projects where they're
24:16
trying to standardize upon clauses
24:18
in their contracts and they have like
24:21
128 different versions of their
24:23
confidentiality clauses
24:25
and it can be from like you know the
24:26
position of a comma to the wording of a
24:29
sentence
24:30
or it could be flat out completely
24:31
different because people added their
24:33
little bits of flair
24:34
over time and so then when you actually
24:36
need to come and change that
24:37
confidentiality course
24:39
how do you do that if you've got 128
24:41
different versions
24:42
you just can't do it so you've got to
24:44
standardize upon that things
24:46
and again people sort of see it maybe
24:48
take it as a i don't know where is it a
24:49
front going well
24:50
i like to you know and pay to provide
24:54
better versions of these clauses but
24:56
again you you're almost getting tangled
24:58
up in
24:59
in the boring work there of you know
25:01
defining the best confidentiality calls
25:03
people
25:04
people can do that and you can spend
25:05
your time working on more interesting
25:07
things for the client
25:08
rather than getting bogged down in those
25:10
bits and pieces and again
25:12
this of having like legal schemes so
25:14
contracts are all very strongly typed
25:17
starts to move you into the concept of
25:19
smart contracts because once you start
25:21
to have your contract in that format
25:22
moving to smart contracts is a much
25:24
easier step
25:25
than if you've got all your contracts
25:27
currently in word with
25:28
400 different variations of clauses um
25:33
yeah and then once you have once you
25:34
have smart contracts it's it really does
25:36
open up to
25:38
how efficient how much more efficient
25:41
the world can be
25:42
you know we we waste so many resources
25:44
just
25:45
you know putting a piece of paper on
25:46
someone's desk for them to look at an
25:48
invoice to then
25:49
pay someone once a shipping container
25:51
comes in
25:52
you could put a tracking thing on the
25:54
shipping container the smart contracts
25:55
go
25:55
okay well that um gps
25:59
is now within the bounds of the port
26:00
therefore we can release the first
26:02
amount of money automatically
26:04
no one's involved in that anymore and
26:06
it's and again it's going to be a huge
26:08
change in how people work but it's
26:10
really freeing people to do
26:12
more valuable work for people and
26:15
reducing just that sheer waste because
26:17
even if you think oh well that's going
26:18
to do me out of the job
26:20
it could do but it's also not wasting a
26:22
piece of paper each time
26:24
and that's just going to stack up and
26:25
the energy savings especially given
26:27
the world we're living in now is is so
26:29
important right
26:31
right and and this kind of idea of
26:33
holding on to
26:34
today's jobs rather than trying to
26:36
create the jobs of the future
26:38
i think it's one of those feelings that
26:40
lawyers
26:41
lawyers get whenever you talk about ai
26:43
or technology advancements or
26:45
smart contracts that's an incredibly
26:48
that's
26:48
such a great way to positive that you
26:50
know trying to protect today's jobs
26:51
rather than looking at what tomorrow's
26:52
jobs are yeah that's
26:54
that's a really good way to put it and
26:55
it's i think that you know a lot of
26:57
developers start to see is that when
26:59
you know you know people can start to
27:01
put in um
27:02
open.aid and go oh create me a design
27:05
which is
27:06
does this and this and this and it gives
27:07
it them yeah and it's the same for the
27:09
lawyers as you know
27:10
you can probably automate a part of
27:12
their job but
27:13
the value they're bringing isn't looking
27:15
for a contract and extracting entities
27:17
is
27:18
interpreting what that actually means
27:19
and taking the law so i mean for example
27:21
we can
27:22
scan through contracts and we can
27:23
extract references to legislation
27:26
so i can say this is making a very
27:28
specific reference to this legislation
27:30
i don't really know what the impact is
27:32
but i can tell the lawyer that there
27:34
there's a reference to some decision and
27:35
he said then on to them to actually
27:37
interpret that impact because
27:39
i imagine it's be quite hard to
27:41
realistically have a trained ai to
27:42
know what the impact of legislation is
27:44
upon you know some fluffy worded
27:47
claws the the best outcome for
27:50
a lot of these kind of technology terms
27:52
is actually a marriage between
27:53
technology and
27:55
and people yes and and as you say right
27:58
like
27:58
if you through a reference to
28:02
law plus some floppy words to an nlp
28:05
engine
28:06
they're going to try their best to try
28:07
and make sense of that but
28:09
it's not going to be that useful
28:13
and instead why don't you turn the
28:15
engine
28:16
to find all the relevant information put
28:19
it in front of the lawyer so he doesn't
28:20
have to spend two hours searching
28:23
exactly and those two hours can be spent
28:25
thinking about
28:26
what's my client actually trying to do
28:28
what's
28:29
valuable to them yeah and it comes back
28:32
to that you know reevaluating
28:35
how do we charge for this work because
28:36
again i'm not
28:38
i'm not charging for my time in that
28:41
sense i'm charging you for the output or
28:43
how that value is
28:45
what that value is to you exactly
28:47
exactly and then i think that's a
28:48
fundamental shift
28:49
in the model now we've come full circle
28:52
um
28:52
so so i'm gonna i'm gonna say my final
28:55
question to you
28:56
is what are you most excited about in
28:59
the legal sector in the technology
29:01
sector in what you do
29:03
it's the movement to having more of
29:06
these sort of
29:07
low-code no code platforms and you know
29:09
as a developer you think that's
29:10
that's gonna do you out for job sort of
29:12
thing but
29:14
being able to you know my job will still
29:17
be there i can still be i'll be writing
29:18
api integrations
29:20
potentially for no code platforms but
29:23
you know it's sometimes hard for
29:24
developers to be perfectly in the mind
29:27
of the people who want to try and build
29:28
something
29:29
and having the legal technologist chat
29:31
to the lawyers and go
29:32
okay i know what you're trying to do
29:34
here let me try and build it in all
29:35
these new
29:36
no-code platforms and they can build
29:39
exactly what they need
29:40
they don't need me to be there just
29:42
moving a mouse around for them trying to
29:44
make sense of their requirements they're
29:45
doing it
29:46
directly there and they can start to
29:48
chain more and more of these services
29:49
together
29:51
i can still be there providing the the
29:53
input on going oh well
29:54
we can maybe switch to this data a bit
29:56
better so it's more reusable
29:58
um and we can we can start more
30:00
integrations
30:01
so i think it's almost like
30:03
democratization of
30:05
who can do the development work yeah
30:08
and opening up more to more and more
30:10
people and allowing lawyers you know
30:11
you'd like the lawyers to go
30:13
okay you can have access to this no code
30:15
platform you know
30:16
build what you think you want it to do
30:18
and then we can improve it we can make
30:19
it better we can take it and make it
30:21
even
30:22
more you know make it more complex and
30:24
you know do more integrations but
30:26
having them know that they can impl they
30:28
can be working on it as well is really
30:30
key and really empowering to how they
30:32
view
30:33
the tech that they're starting to have
30:35
to use every day you know it can be
30:37
quite scary this idea of going on
30:39
we're using this platform now deal with
30:41
it sort of thing
30:42
but then being empowered to use the
30:44
platform and
30:45
see the benefits and you know automate
30:47
part of their job that they don't like
30:48
doing
30:49
yeah it's going to be so empowering to
30:51
people beneath the surface
30:54
layer of like we want no code and local
30:57
platforms
30:58
is a recognition that there's a
31:01
resourcing problem
31:02
inside the legal sector there's there's
31:05
actually not
31:05
enough people doing the the sorts of
31:08
work
31:09
that makes a real impact that changes
31:12
um um how
31:15
legal services are consumed so the
31:17
underlying problem of not having enough
31:19
resources
31:20
can possibly be solved by having better
31:23
technology solutions and having people
31:25
like you
31:26
connect all of these things together to
31:30
chop away at the low end of of
31:32
complexity the low end of the value
31:35
and putting up more time for the high
31:37
end stuff
31:38
exactly yeah that's that's where i
31:40
really see
31:41
where i bring a lot of my benefits is
31:43
going you know we can we can automate
31:45
this we can
31:47
we can i mean previously with this one
31:49
of the systems you know they were
31:50
creating ice sheets inside iq and
31:51
someone would have to go through and
31:52
click
31:53
you know 14 times to create a field in a
31:56
night sheet
31:56
yeah i said oh well we can maybe you can
31:58
just define it in an excel sheet and
32:00
i'll figure out how to turn that excel
32:01
sheet into another sheet inside of high
32:02
queue
32:03
yeah so now they can design an ice sheet
32:05
in five to ten minutes
32:07
so to me it gets important it's done in
32:09
like one minute upload
32:11
whereas pvc that was like a half day job
32:13
of messing around trying to do things
32:14
that's just half a day that we no longer
32:17
worry about
32:18
people used to do it i have no idea what
32:20
they're spending their time on now
32:21
you know we always find replacements for
32:23
our time exactly
32:26
seeing your kids exactly and that's the
32:28
thing i've seen before we've we've seen
32:30
people describe
32:32
the savings in time instead of viewing
32:34
it as a saving the time of morning few
32:35
minutes at the same
32:36
time of you know how much time you see
32:38
your children how much more time can you
32:40
spend
32:41
uh exercising how much more time you
32:43
spend reading
32:44
as opposed to just going oh well you
32:46
know we saved you 500 pounds of billable
32:48
time
32:50
yeah yeah i think that's fantastic um
32:53
ryan
32:54
um i've taken up so much for your time
32:56
already and i'm so grateful that you
32:57
made time to chat today
32:59
and thank you very much it's been
33:00
fantastic to chat to you
