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.

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