How Is GenAI Changing Legal Workflows?

R.C.: What if we work in a world where the AI is so good that when we have transactional documents, we really are not getting caught up on if the Oxford comma was placed in the right place. The point is, if AI can supplement us in a way where we're not having these disputes over what the meaning of the contract was, that's going to be great for clients.

Zac: Hi, I'm Zac Padgett with Orrick, here with R.C. Rondero De Mosier.

R.C.: You did great, that's fantastic.

Zac: You're an operational consultant – a lawyer turned operational consultant for lawyers and law firms.

R.C.: Well, thanks for having me. I've been fortunate enough for the past couple of years to take the experience that I had working in startups, working in technology companies, and then applying the operational knowledge that I gained back with lawyers. Right around the same time I started consulting, we saw this wave, as you said, a couple of years ago with GenAI, right? And so what began as like using ChatGPT to troubleshoot my business value proposition became like, oh wow, this is a very useful tool. I wonder what other tools are out there. And so I've built a practice around that, a consulting practice around that.

When I speak to lawyers, law firms about what they're doing around AI, some of the lawyers in the firm are really excited, they're gung-ho, they want to try it out and some don't want to be bothered.

Zac: For me, when I see adoption really start to click is when you're actually making somebody's day easier, right? And AI has a lot of promise for that, you know? But getting it into the workflow, because it's not like a fundamental shift in how you do work in my experience. It's more of a subtle, you now, little wins along the day that pile up to an extra 15 or 20 minutes.

R.C.: You have to make sure the incentives are aligned, right? To get the adoption, right, from attorneys. And so, like you said, how valuable is that extra 15, 20 minutes a day to them, right. And if it's valuable and a tool is helping them out to get those 15 to 20 minutes back, or maybe an hour or two hours, then that might be a really powerful motivator for them. Just generally speaking, at South By we get so excited and enamored with the new technology that we don't really ask, like, what problem are we trying to solve, right? What products that we're creating that AI can be particularly useful for that are going to take some of the painful parts out of the practice of law, right. I love timekeeping and so AI-based timekeeping products I think are a really fantastic use case. Not that I love timekeeping, I dislike timekeeping. I love the AI products that help with timekeeping.

Zac: Yeah, I mean talk about a major pain point in a lawyer’s life is like the six-minute increment that you have to live your life by.

R.C.: Exactly. I don't know what it's like for you, but for me, going from blank page to first draft is one of the most painful things in my experience.

Zac: Piping that first sentence.

R.C.: Exactly. Where am I going to start?

Zac: I'm already using the passive voice. What do I do?

R.C.: But I think we've only scratched the surface on the potential for generative AI outside of just when you're working in Microsoft Word, drafting something or editing something. And I think that any fears that it will be the end of lawyers, I think, are probably exaggerated as well, right? Because, sure, I can have any kind of document created by AI, but I always like to tell people that's a good first draft. You still have to lay eyes on it, you have to think strategically.

Zac: You have to tie it to the underlying facts.

R.C.: Exactly, tie it to the underlying fact.

Zac: Today, none of these tools truly understand what's going on inside the client relationship, what you're trying to accomplish with this specific deliverable. There's that layer that maybe eventually, but for at least the next several years, if not a decade, I think it's going to be very difficult to just say, click the AI button and it's going to be solved.

R.C.: I tend to be on the…  I don't think that AI is going to think like humans, like critically, the same way, right? I think that there's something unique about humans, right, and so I think we're as attorneys, there's still going to be a need for us to, as you said, like applying the law to the facts, the strategy to the fact, understanding who's going to be in the room on the other side of the negotiation. These are things that people should be paying their attorneys for.

Zac: R.C., thank you so much for coming in. It was really great to talk to you about this.

R.C.: Oh man, thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun.