An Offer She Could Not Turn Down — Bridget McCormack on Joining Clio to Transform Technology for Judges

0:02Today on Law Next, the legal tech company Clio has long said that its mission is to transform the legal experience for all. Until now, that all has largely focused on law firms and their clients. Recently, Clio announced a major initiative to develop technology for the judiciary. As part of that initiative, it hired Pablo Arredondo, the former co-founder of Case Text and developer of CoCouncil, one of the first AI legal assistants to lead product development. Irredondo was on this show on September 1st to discuss his new role. Now, Clio has made another major hire to help lead this project. Bridget Mary McCormick, the innovative former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and current President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association, will join Clio in October as General Manager Judiciary to lead the market and commercial strategy for the judiciary business.

0:58On the day her hiring was announced, McCormick sat down with me to discuss why she considered this an offer she could not turn down and how she believes she, Arredondo, and Cleo can transform the legal experience for the judiciary. I'm Bob Ambroji and this is Law Next, a podcast that features the innovators and entrepreneurs who are driving what's next in law. If I get to my interview with Bridget, please stay tuned to hear from the sponsors who so generously support this podcast.

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2:40Visit PracticePanther.com today to start your free trial and discover why leading firms choose Practice Panther. Now let's get today's show. Bridget McCormick, welcome back to Law Next.

2:54Bridget McCormack: It's great to be back, Bob. Good to see you. It's great to see you. I say welcome back because you've been on a couple of times talking about your work at the American Arbitration Association, where you've been doing some very interesting stuff over the last few years, but we're here today to talk about your new job, I guess. You, on the day that we are recording this, has just been officially announced that you are going to Clio. You had announced that you're leaving AAA a week ago and kind of left everybody wondering where you were headed and the news dropped today. And you said when you announced a week ago that, well, first of all, congratulations.

3:37I think it's really exciting that you're doing this.

3:39Bridget McCormack: Yeah, thank you. It's a great opportunity, really important mission. I know we'll talk more about it. Yeah. But I did want to turn to your announcement last week where you said that an opportunity came up that you could not turn down. So why is this an opportunity that you could not turn down? Yeah, I mean, it's not one reason. That's part of why it's an opportunity I could not turn down. But the decision by Clio, by Jack Newton, you know, a pretty visionary CEO to build a dedicated set of products and tools for judges, because if you are serious about transforming the legal system for everyone, you can't leave courts out.

4:20Which happens to be Clio's motto.

4:21Bridget McCormack: It happens to be Clio's ambitious and bold mission, which I adore. But you can't leave the courts out. And as you and I both know, the change that we're seeing across the business of law and the practice of law over the last few years as a result of technology, largely AI, has been pretty tremendous. The investment is tremendous. It's mostly aimed at the top of the market, which is understandable. I get that. But if courts aren't given the tools and the support to keep pace, the mission fails. And so, you know, I really have so much deep respect for Jack Newton for saying we're going to work on that part of the equation, like that part of the frontier that needs to kind of come along for the ride.

5:00Bridget McCormack: So, you know, Jack is a big part of the answer. The mission is a big part of the answer. The particular decision to just invest in this new team to build, you know, specifically new tools and products for, I think, a market that needs different tools and products than lawyers do. And then, as you know, because I think you broke this news too, hiring Pablo Arandondo and getting to work with Pablo is sort of, you know, kind of like a dream. It's like somebody said I could, somebody recruited me for like a neighborhood mixed doubles tournament and Rafa Nadal was my doubles partner, you know. So I think my job is to basically just like get the ball to Pablo and like stay out of his way, like don't trip him.

5:42Bridget McCormack: You know, I think Pablo's, you know, just a dream to work with. When you see a team come together that you think really can achieve big things, it's very hard not to want to be part of it. But then perhaps the most important reason of all is because, you know, you've heard me talk about this a lot. I mean, part of why I think the AAA is such an important institution is because ADR is really an impactful and important partner to the public justice system. Because the public justice system can't manage the volume even long before AI, right? Right. Long before I needed it needed other ways to resolve certain disputes that made more sense in other in other processes.

6:17Bridget McCormack: But the public justice system needs help, too. Right. The public justice system needs its needs tools and processes and support to keep pace with with what they're seeing. And, you know, at the end of the day, I have worked on that issue for, you know, throughout, you know, four or five chapters across a long career. and it's one I care deeply about. And I think I've come at it lots of different ways. And this feels like an incredible opportunity to, you know, I don't know, put a stake in its heart. Like, let's get it done. Two, as you mentioned, two weeks ago, Cleo kind of announced this push in the judiciary, the hiring of Pablo.

6:52And you're right, that if you're going to be on a mixed doubles team, you want Pablo on your team. What will your role be versus what Pablo's role will be? How will that play out in terms of going forward?

7:03Bridget McCormack: I think our roles are, you know, Pablo's my new work husband. I mean, I think we will just work together every day for as long as we both shall work. And, you know, Pablo obviously is the genius behind the product and the strategy and the engineering. and I think I bring different skills to the relationship, I hope, I believe. And I have been running a large business now for a few years and actually running the Michigan Supreme Court was also, you know, running a sprawling large business in a way. So I think we have complementary skills to bring to the table, but we're true partners. Pablo has overtaken my husband as the person I text with the most.

7:46Bridget McCormack: So don't tell my husband. He doesn't listen to podcasts. Okay, good, good, good. You know, it's when I think about what you're doing, it's funny because my wife, my wife met Pablo, I know his Pablo and has met Pablo. And we were talking recently about his going to Clio and we were kind of trying, I mean, her, and she's a lawyer. And her question was just, where do you start? I mean, when you're kind of starting to think about tackling the issues facing the judiciary, and I mean, the judiciary is not a monolith. The justice system is not a monolith. You know, courts vary widely. You know, the needs of judges are different than the needs of clerks from the needs of litigants.

8:33So, I mean, as you think about stepping into this role, which you'll be starting at the end of this month, what are you thinking about that? I mean, where do you want to start?

8:43Bridget McCormack: Yeah, so we feel pretty committed to not answering that question from our end, but answering it, you know, co-designing what the answer to that question is with the bench, with the judges who are already, you know, thinking. As you know, there are judges across the country that are experimenting with AI technology and have strong points of view about where it can impact their workflows, how it could do some of the work that takes up time and takes away space from the work that judges uniquely must do. And so we don't want to design tools that we think are cool for judges because the technology allows us to do it.

9:25Bridget McCormack: We want to design with judges. I will say, I do think AI technology does allow much, as you know, much faster building of new product. And so what might have been impossible to think about the different kinds of judges and courts and what their workflow needs are five years ago, 10 years ago, certainly, is kind of no longer impossible, right? I imagine there are going to be some universal needs in products. Like, believe it or not, lots of courts don't have hyperlinking, right? Lots of courts don't have a hallucination detector. There are going to be, you know, certain use cases that cross basically every kind of court.

10:07Bridget McCormack: There are going to be other use cases that are really different from court to court. An appellate judge has really different needs than a busy trial court judge. And a trial court judge running a business court docket has really different needs than a trial court judge running a family docket. it. And what's exciting about the technology is, you know, you're not limited by your imagination, right? Obviously, we're going to have to make some decisions about what not to do because we, believe me, we want to do everything. And we need to make sure we build a sustaining business. But I don't think we're going to make those decisions in a lab on our side of the fence.

10:40Bridget McCormack: We're going to make those decisions with judges. We'll be spending a lot of time listening to them. Yeah. Is there a different equation when it comes to building tech for judges versus building tech for law firms. I mean, Clio, you know, started out building tech for solo and small firms, and it's evolved to the point where it now spans the law firm market from small to large. But when you're building tech for the judiciary, there's kind of another party in the equation, which is the public or the people that the courts serve. And so how does that change the equation? Yeah, I feel very strongly that you can't take the tools you've built for lawyers and just add some functionality and say they now work for judges.

11:20Bridget McCormack: It's a completely different set of workflows. It's a completely different set of concerns. And, you know, the courts are in the business of public trust, right? Lawyers are helping their clients with specific objectives, and certain tools are really good for getting that done. It's distinct needs, distinct workflows, responsibilities, and institutional obligations. And so I don't think technology built for lawyers can be like modified around the edges and made to work for judges. That's why Jack's putting together a dedicated team, a brand new dedicated team to build specifically for judges and their staffs, for courts, with products that can be co-designed by them and can really center the values that make a difference for courts, like transparency and auditability and accountability and public trust.

12:09Bridget McCormack: Those all have to be foundational to what we build. So I'm thrilled that that's part of Jack's vision because I don't think it works if you just take the tools you built for lawyers and say, we're going to just add a little button over here and it'll work just fine for you, Judge. Yeah. For you to join Clio is a big move for you personally, I'm sure, but I think it's also a statement in a sense about Clio or at least about your trust in Clio to pursue this mission. And I wonder if there's anything in particular about Clio that you think makes it the right company to be tackling this problem. Yes, the answer is absolutely yes.

12:46Bridget McCormack: So, you know, first of all, it just has all the ingredients, right? It has the talented teams that have shown that they can build products that people like. That's really important. It has the legal information in terms of cases and other legal authority. And then just from the docket alarm, I guess, the Clio docket, all of the legal information that I don't think there is anywhere else to be found, which is a tremendous resource when you're trying to think about how to build incredibly useful and helpful products for courts and judges. But more than that, it's the Clio mission and vision that to me is what's compelling.

13:24Bridget McCormack: I don't, you know, Jack Newton has built a lot of successful business lines and products for lawyers, but his commitment has always been to change the, improve the legal experience for all, for everyone. And that, you know, only works if you also bring the institution at the center of how that profession functions along with you. And so I think it's like a mission-driven move on his part. And that to me is pretty foundational to why this is the right place. And then putting together a dream team matters to me. I don't, I mean, you know, if Pablo had gone somewhere else, I would have been like, oh, Jack, can you figure out how to get Pablo over to Cleo?

14:04Bridget McCormack: So I do think, I just think the right people makes a difference. Yeah, yeah. And probably worth noting, I mean, Pablo is, beyond having been co-founder of K-Stacks and having developed Co-Counsel and other innovative products there, he was beginning to focus on the problems of the judiciary even before he joined Clio. And that's been a, I know that's been a passion for him over the last few years. And he's been on the podcast a couple of times talking about it. He has. And it's always fun to listen to him. I mean, yeah, he's been he's been thinking about this and working on it for a while now.

14:40Bridget McCormack: And it's it's kind of spectacular. Right. Because Pablo doesn't really mean Pablo can do whatever he wants. You know, Pablo can like choose to do everyone. So when Pablo decided like this is what I want to put my energy and time and creativity into like this important, in my view, like critical segment of our profession. that in a way is also a, you know, a mission driven choice, right? He could have done whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted. And so that's exciting too, and kind of resonates with me. So, yeah. I mean, you, you obviously were on the Michigan Supreme Court for, I think, almost a decade.

15:16You were the chief justice for four years, I believe, of that court. And I imagine you learned a lot about the problems and the challenges facing the courts during that time. To what extent are those problems ones that can be addressed through technology, and to what extent are they beyond the reach of technology?

15:34Bridget McCormack: Yeah, it's such a good question. You know, we thought at the Michigan Supreme Court long before I understood what a large language model was, that technology was definitely going to have to be an important part of a solution to what is, you know, a fairly massive market failure. the civil justice system's inability to give legal help to most people who need it in this country. And those people show up at state courts. That's largely where they show up. You know, that's where family cases are heard. That's where eviction cases are heard. That's where consumer debt cases are heard. And so those people show up at state courts.

16:08Bridget McCormack: And for a long time, long before AI, you know, state courts were really struggling with what that looks like. Three out of four people in state courts have no lawyer. So state court judges have been trying to manage capacity issues for a long time with one arm tied behind their back often because, you know, public funding is complicated. Another branch of government has to approve it. So technology seems like a clear answer to some parts of that problem. And we learned, you know, as you know, quickly during the pandemic that, in fact, we were right about that. You know, Michigan actually was the first state to have everybody up on in Zoom courtrooms, not because we were prescient, but But because we had gotten all of our judges in the state Zoom licenses in December of 2019, get that, not because I thought, you know, there's going to be a pandemic and we're going to need it.

16:57Bridget McCormack: Obviously, I didn't. Who knew? But I thought this is a way we can, you know, we can help people who can't make it to court, right? There are people who have transportation issues, who have child care issues, who have health issues. There are lawyers who have a case in, you know, Detroit in the morning and Traverse City in the afternoon and can't be both places. And so it made sense, you know, to us that technology was going to be a part of managing what was a significant capacity issue, which in my view turns into a significant public trust issue. And so we learned during the pandemic that, in fact, you know, that was true.

17:31Bridget McCormack: People were significantly more likely to make their court appearances if they had a remote option. You know, we ended up collecting data, not because we were trying to, but we had, you know, Zoom gave us data to work with. And so we learned that technology was going to make a difference. We stood up statewide online dispute resolution options for people in Michigan because a lot of people can't make it to court during work hours. And this way they could actually manage their disputes after hours or on weekends whenever it's convenient from their smartphones. So technology absolutely is an answer to some of the burdens that courts are struggling with.

18:09Bridget McCormack: And the set of technology solutions has obviously only grown in the last few years. Now that legal information is becoming abundant instead of scarce, the solutions to some of the problems courts face are also becoming more abundant. And also the problems are, right? More and more cases are coming into courts. I don't think that's a problem in itself. I actually think that's a good thing. I think letting the public have information about their legal rights and obligations is good for the rule of law. I don't think it should be a secret. I don't think the rule of law should be behind closed doors somewhere.

18:44Bridget McCormack: But courts need even more tools and help to deal with that. But your question was, can it solve all of the problems? The answer is absolutely not. There are certain things that people must do in public justice systems, probably in most private justice systems as well, although there I believe the parties have a lot more flexibility to make choices. But cases, for example, brought by the government or against the government or, you know, cases where public trust is kind of at the center of the issue. Some of those things need need a person with a face who looks somebody else in the eyes and takes responsibility for decisions that are made.

19:23And that's just one example of many.

19:24Bridget McCormack: Problem solving courts have been a tremendous innovation in the last three decades in courts, state courts in particular. I'm not sure if federal courts have them, but drug courts, mental health courts are tremendously successful. You see extremely reduced rates of recidivism in problem-solving courts. Those are human-to-human court processes. The judges in problem-solving courts are always off their bench. They're down in the middle of the courtroom. They're sitting across the table from the people they are working with and talking to and holding accountable. I'm not saying that there aren't some technology functions that those judges can use as well.

19:58Bridget McCormack: I'm sure there are around the edges. Those are human-to-human processes. What the technology can do now is free up the time and space so judges and the other, like, you know, tremendous public servants who work for them in courts can do more of that, right, and can put their entire heart into that kind of human-to-human work that really is always going to be critical to a public justice system, in my view. Yeah. One of my senses from here in Massachusetts where I am or even just in those I talk to in other jurisdictions is that one of the greatest bottlenecks in the courts isn't judges, but it's the clerk's offices.

20:43It's handling the filings and the paperwork and the pro se filers coming in with lots of questions about what do I do or how do I file this or where do I go? So, you know, so when you talk about developing technology for the judiciary, is that part of the target that you're looking at when you're thinking about this?

21:03Bridget McCormack: Yeah, honestly, I mean, I expect it will be. Again, I go back to like I want to I want to I want to hear from the judges and, you know, the judges, especially the administrative judges running a running a particular court. You know, what what do they need most? Because I predict that's right. I predict a lot of what they will say is we really need help just like rooting all of the incoming. And the person at the window can't spend 40 minutes with, you know, when the line is, you know, 20 deep. So what can we do to make sure that people coming to the court still get the information they need and can move their problem, you know, through a court process that gets them some kind of result?

21:46Bridget McCormack: And that might not be, you know, sexy at all. That might be pretty, you know, pretty boring, but really effective technology that can help the people courts serve. I mean, you know this like literature on procedural justice, procedural fairness, like this like robust academic literature on, you know, that when a party to a court process feels like they were heard and understood, whether it's by the clerk that they dealt with, the judge they dealt with, and they understand what's happening next. and even understand why they lost, right? They will grow trust in that process and system even when they lose.

22:23Bridget McCormack: And that's like, it's a robust finding and a really, really important finding because today's parties are tomorrow's witnesses and tomorrow's jurors. And that's, you know, the whole ball game. So if growing trust, the place where you can have the most impact is at the place where the litigants are walking into the, you know, walking up to the window, then that's what we want to help. You know, that's where we want to serve. So, yeah.

22:54Needless to say, courts already use technology and companies such as Tyler Technologies already have a large footprint in the court market. So what's lacking in what's already out there and how can Clio improve upon that? I'll put those questions to McCormick in just a moment. But first, please take this opportunity to learn about the sponsors who so generously support Law Next.

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24:03Welcome back to Law Next, where I'm speaking with Bridget McCormick, the former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and outgoing CEO of the American Arbitration Association, who has just announced that she will be joining CLEO as General Manager Judiciary. Before the break, she described the clerk's window as the place where courts can build or lose public trust. And we want to know how Clio's plans fit alongside the court technology that already exists. Let's get back to that conversation.

24:38It would certainly be inaccurate to suggest that courts aren't already using technology, and there are companies out there that have a wide user base in the courts. I mean, Tyler Technologies is probably a leading company in the country in terms of technology for court systems. What's wrong, if that's the right question, with what's already out there? Why do we need something different?

24:57Bridget McCormack: Yeah, I mean, Tyler, I mean, you tell me, but I think they have a lot of the case management contracts. I don't believe they're in the market of building sort of, you know, judicial bench tools or the kinds of tools that can, frankly, tie right in with their case management systems and improve the workflows and the day-to-day processes of the judges and their staff that have to use those case management systems. I don't expect Clio's looking to build case management systems. We want to build what we think will be technology that will sit alongside, wrap around, however, the, I don't know, talk to Pablo on the product part, but that will integrate with the technology courts are already using.

25:42Bridget McCormack: We're not going in trying to replace that. We want to do what the technology now allows us to do and build like intelligent workflows that sit atop of it, sit next to it and make the job of the public servants better. Yeah. So that, I mean, I know when I did talk to Pablo, we talked about, actually Pablo introduced me to a guy named Shlomo Clapper, who is a company called Learned Hand, which is developing. I know Shlomo well. I love Shlomo. Yeah. And that's more along the lines of what you're talking about in terms of helping judges do what they do better, assemble facts, understand matters, you know, digest the legal issues, digest briefs, that sort of thing, and work their way to a decision.

26:22So that's more what you're talking about.

26:25Bridget McCormack: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, Shlomo's doing exactly the work that I think needs to be scaled to courts all around the country. He's great. I think his team is great. He's a brother in arms, as Pablo said. He's a fellow traveler. So is Cleo acquiring him somewhere down the road? We'll have to wait and see on that. I expect to have a great working relationship with Shlomo. Good, good. You know, you've talked several times, you've talked about AI. How much is AI going to be the focus of where you're going to be building and developing and thinking? I mean, is that 100 % of it or just a part of it?

27:07Or, you know, where does that fit in in terms of what you want to do here?

27:11Bridget McCormack: Yeah, again, we'll see what judges want most and what they need first. My guess is some of the things that will make a tremendous difference for what we do on Monday, I like to think of like, what are we doing on Monday, might not be AI based at all. I'm obviously, you know, thrilled to have, I think, you know, the most important legal AI builder on the team so that we have that functionality when that is what we need. But I, you know, there are many courts that don't have hyperlinking and they're trying to, you know, work through motions with tons of exhibits. And so there are some there's some functionality that has nothing to do with AI that I think will bring tremendous value to courts.

27:55Bridget McCormack: And if that's what they want to do on Monday, then that's what we're going to do on Monday. So AI will definitely be in the roadmap is my view, but I don't know that it'll be the first set of things that we build and build with judges. What about the sort of the flip side of that? Are there kind of hard limits in your mind about how far AI should go in the courts? I mean, at the AAA, you helped develop this AI arbitrator that a lot of people were, you know, responded to that by saying, wait, you know, we don't want AI deciding our cases. What are the limits, perhaps, of using AI in the courts?

28:32Where does AI end and the human have to be essential?

28:36Bridget McCormack: Yeah, I think it's a question we're all going to be talking about for a long time. I mean, even in the, again, in an ADR system where the parties opt in, I think they have a lot more flexibility to choose the system they want. And the AAA's AI arbitrator has a human in the loop. A human arbitrator oversees the final decision. Um, but, but I do think in the public justice system, when a court is issuing, um, a judgment, um, or a decision that's, you know, then has the force of law that the state stands behind it, um, a human being is the one that, that has to make the important decision. That doesn't mean that there isn't like a lot of, a lot of workflow that wouldn't help the human so that they can really, the human judge, you know, so that they can focus on that, that work that they uniquely have to do.

29:24Bridget McCormack: I think there's a tremendous amount of work. I can remember like, you know, preparing for a case for oral argument and knowing I read a fact somewhere, right? I know I saw it somewhere and I know it was important. I didn't realize it till later, but I was like, God, I'm 100 % confident I read, you know, this fact somewhere. And then going and trying to find it was just a, you know, a hot mess. Like AI would have helped me so much with, you know, thinking, looking back after I had read everything I had to read across a case and then pulling it together and finding where it was. And so I think there's an awful lot I will probably be able to do to help different workloads in different courts with different needs.

30:03Bridget McCormack: But at the end of the day, a public justice system has a person who issues a judgment. And I do think it's important that a person looks another person in the face. Now, whether courts want to give parties options to off-ramp to other ways of resolving disputes, that is very reasonable. And I suspect there'll be, you know, better and better options for that. The AAA and its team at ODR.com are working on a lot of the sort of 2.0 versions of online dispute resolution that I think courts might want to offer. But again, parties have to choose it. I think if you've chosen to come to a court and you want a court to issue a decision, then a judge should probably look you in the face and tell you what that decision is and why.

30:44You needed clear brief back when you were on the bench.

30:47Bridget McCormack: I did need clear brief so badly. Yes, absolutely. Would you help bring to the AAA? That's why we got it for the arbitrator. I'm joking about that. Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's why I'm joking about it because I am a AAA arbitrator and I appreciate the fact that I have access to delivery. Yeah, it's good, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, kind of going back to that question of self-represented litigants and, you know, as you said, three out of four litigants in the state courts are not represented by a lawyer. And the predictions are that AI is going to make that number only go up as it gets easier for litigants to kind of understand, learn about legal issues and actually use these tools to generate filings and pleadings and represent themselves in court.

31:41So do you see part of CLIO's mission or your mission personally as addressing that side of the equation, as building tools for self-represented litigants?

31:53Bridget McCormack: So, again, my answer is yes, if that's what courts believe will help them do their job better. And my guess is many of them will say it is a way that will help them do their job better. You know, and courts have been doing that for a long time. You know, at the Michigan Supreme Court, we had a tremendous self-help set of tools that we funded together with the state bar because we thought it was really important to give parties as much information as we could to try and navigate a process that, you know, it's in a language no one ever taught them. And it can be sort of user hostile if you're there without a lawyer.

32:30Bridget McCormack: Right. Right. So my guess is that a lot of what courts will be interested in having us build will be tools that clearly help the courts and the court staff. But maybe they help the courts and the court staff by helping the litigants who have to have to manage their court processes without lawyers. I mean, I want to be clear. I think that the switch flipping from scarcity to abundance and legal information is fundamentally absolutely 100 percent positive. I don't know why the public shouldn't have access to legal information about their obligations and their rights. Like, it doesn't make any sense that they shouldn't.

33:09Bridget McCormack: It will create, you know, and has created already, you know, new capacity issues for courts, not just from self-represented litigants, Bob, but also from lawyers. They're just filing more pages. They're filing more motions, right? It's easier for lawyers to file more stuff, too. And more complex cases. We're going to see, like, more complexity. So more volume, more complexity will be, already is, an issue for courts. And that's probably one that technology can help with. So it'll be kind of fun to help them think about what that might look like. Yeah. It's sort of an interesting dilemma in my mind, because if you're saying kind of your market constituency is primarily judges and courts and you'll listen to them and, you know, if they're saying it's important for us to address self-represented litigants, then we'll do that.

33:55I also know that there are some courts out there that are probably more conservative in their thinking about how courts should be responding to self-represented litigants. And they may not be as forward thinking about that problem or even agree with your perspective that this is a good thing overall. So I guess that's where I'm wondering whether there's at some point a balance between recognizing what's happening and what needs to be done versus listening to some jurors, at least, who may be a little bit more embedded in the way things used to be done and therefore maybe not as open to change or evolving systems.

34:36So I don't know. Is that a balance you think you might have to walk at all?

34:40Bridget McCormack: I'm not. I mean, I know a lot of judges. Some of my best friends are judges. And I, you know, I mean, throughout the pandemic that I was the co-chair of the basically the technology and innovation committee of the Conference of Chief Justices and the states that were, you know, leading in building processes that really served the public and the public was largely unrepresented in every state across the country. Nobody's special here. It just didn't divide around like liberal conservative conservative. It just didn't work that way. I don't mean politically, but I mean conservative in terms of attitude.

35:16Bridget McCormack: Policy conservative. The role of the courts. Yeah. The courts that have taken some pretty big swings at how do we make the courts work better for the people who are navigating their problems without lawyers are in places like Arizona and Texas and Indiana and Utah. You know, so they're not, it just, it usually just lines up with whether there's a court administrator or a chief, you know, who's, you know, thinking expansively about how a court in the year of our Lord 2026 can serve the people who need it. You know, even though it was, our processes were set up at a time where everyone had a lawyer, right?

35:57Bridget McCormack: Like we've built this like public justice system that works really well if everybody has a lawyer. And that was true when it was, you know, when we when we wrote all the rules. It's just not the way it works anymore. And so I think that the Conference of Chief Justices has been not small c conservative on thinking about how modern courts approach that issue. And for good reason, you know, it's like the rule of law at the end of the day is just a set of ideas. I've said this a million times. It's only a set of ideas. And those ideas are only as valuable as the public's confidence in them. That's it.

36:30Bridget McCormack: That's all that holds it together. Like either the public believes in those ideas or they don't. And if they don't, if they stop believing in that, you know, in those ideas, the rule of law doesn't really hold. Right. So figuring out how to serve the vast majority of our neighbors who have civil legal problems and have to navigate them without the help of a lawyer is something every judge I know is thinking about. So I think they all kind of care about it, to be honest. Yeah. When I think about the problems of the courts, one of the other ones I think about is, I said earlier, the courts aren't a monolith.

37:06But if you kind of think about the court system in the large sense, one of the problems is it is a sort of a tower of babble in that they all speak different systems. They all have different languages. They all have different systems. They all have different ways of tracking cases and tagging cases. and just from a data point of view, from an AI point of view, from thinking about things like Clio Docket and tools like that, obviously it would be a good thing if courts could be moving toward a more common language. So again, is that something that you see as an issue? And if so, is it something that you think you might wanna try and address at some point?

37:47Not you personally, but you as a group might wanna tackle at some point.

37:51Bridget McCormack: Yeah, I got to get Pablo on the line. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do think that the mismatch between I mean, I used to say I was always like MacGyvering everything when I was when we were trying to do something like innovative at the Michigan Square. I'm like, like, does anybody have duct tape? Does somebody else have wire? Like, how are we going to like make this work? And when you have to MacGyver solutions, that's like not ideal. I actually think AI is pretty effective at working through some of those historical barriers between technology systems, right? It's easier to figure out how to move across or on top of legacy systems and make particular workflows effective faster than you might have been able to five years ago or 10 years ago.

38:35Bridget McCormack: So while, you know, I think AI might prefer perfect data, I actually think AI is also a solution to imperfect data. So that's in a way one of the reasons why this is kind of an exciting time to think in big and ambitious ways about what we might do. You said earlier you always like to talk about what are we going to do on Monday. So what are you going to do on your first Monday as you step into the office and get going on this job? My first Monday is October 5th, and Pablo and I will be in Los Angeles at the court meeting with judges. I was told I have to do a bunch of - The LA Superior Court there?

39:13Bridget McCormack: Yeah. I was told I have to do a bunch of - A good place to start. Yeah, right. It's the biggest court in the country. And the court administrator there, David Slayton, you should have him on today, is the most innovative court administrator in the country. And he was my co-chair of the Innovation and Technology Committee during the pandemic. So he was the state administrator, state court administrator in Texas, and now he's the court administrator in L.A. County, and he's a tremendous innovator. So it's a great place to start. I think I'm supposed to do a bunch of like online courses and I don't know, figure out HR stuff.

39:40Bridget McCormack: But I just had a bunch of meetings. I'm going to meetings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But so, I mean, the takeaway from that is that the starting point is perhaps more of a listening tour than an acting tour before you, as you get going in this? Yeah, you bet. But I mean, I mean, and the listing tour is really the probably the most important, like foundational part of what we do next. So that's that's where we'll be on Monday. Yeah. And the looking ahead question, I mean, five years from now, what do you want to be able to how are you going to determine how are you going to evaluate for yourself whether this endeavor has been a success?

40:16Bridget McCormack: Yeah, I think that if individual judges or chief judges or courts in five years are managing a significantly increased caseload, which they will be, whether it's managed well or less well, and the public that uses those courts is extremely satisfied. satisfied. The Michigan Supreme Court, we used to make our trial courts do basically user surveys. They'd have to respond to surveys about how they were treated and whether they understood what was happening next. If the public feels like they're getting excellent service and the confidence in those courts is rising, it's something that the courts can measure.

41:02Bridget McCormack: And maybe time to resolution is cut rather than dragging on and getting longer and longer. And judges, smart people continue to want to go, smart public servants want to go to the bench. So we continue to get talented people to sign up for what is probably the most important job in government, in my view. And Clio has been part of that solution. I'm going to feel really good about it. I mean, when you look at law firms, you know, efficiency is a good thing. Is efficiency always a good thing in the courts where you're having to balance doing things faster, but also doing things right, achieving justice?

41:41Bridget McCormack: Yeah, no, it's never more important than getting it right, right? Getting it fast is not as important as getting it right. But if you can get it right and take fewer hours out of any, you know, parties like life or employment or time away from their kids, and you don't make them come back 10 times to finally get it right, that would be a much better process. I don't think they have to be in conflict, but if they are in conflict, getting it right is more important. Anything else that you want to say about this? I've been asking you a bunch of questions, but anything else that you wanted to add?

42:15Bridget McCormack: No, I'm just really thrilled to be able to talk to you. Have us back in a few months and let us show you what we're up to. Yeah, it'll be fun. Gladly. Yeah. Anytime. Yeah. Anytime. Bridget, thanks so much. And again, congratulations. And I look forward to following what you and Pablo and rest of team do. Thank you. Thanks, Bob. Great to see you.

42:38Thanks for joining us for today's show. If you would like to share your own thoughts or comments, please do so by messaging us on LinkedIn or any other social media, or just email me directly. It's ambrogi, A-M-B-R-O-G-I at gmail.com. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a review. Law Next is a production of Law Next Media. I'm your host, Bob Ambroji. I hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of Law Next.