Brilliant Thinking: Why Lawyers Must See AI as an Opportunity, Not a Threat - Felix Riley - S10E18

0:00What's going to be the most powerful thing we can do commercially and for our clients? I started doing my talks because I thought, right, I need to tell a story, take people on a journey where they're not the problem, as it were, in vertical numbers, that they can see over here is a thing that happens to people. And then for them to go, oh, that's me. And then there's no conflict. And then they find it easy. It's an easier way in. I think for Ray, when the hyperbole comes down, when everyone sees it for what it really is, I think it'd be a brilliant milestone in the progress of the workplace. I think that's lovely.

0:28One of the things I love to do is to go into companies and say, look, it's your friend, not your enemy. It's only taking away grunt work. Actually, if anything, it means that that human talent that you sweated so hard to hire now gets a chance to shine. On today's Legally Speaking podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Felix Riley. Felix is a business moonshot strategist passionate about helping organizations take a creative approach to problem solving and growth. He has a wealth of experience as a comedy writer, global executive at a New York Stock Exchange listed brokerage and the author of two bestselling Penguin novels, The Setup and The Inside Job.

1:04Felix is committed to equipping teams with practical frameworks for thinking differently and driving meaningful change in their organization. So a very big warm welcome to the show, Felix. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Oh, an absolute pleasure and excited to get into today's discussion and think differently. But before we do that, we have a couple of icebreaker questions. what is your favorite beverage and what is your preferred choice of footwear on a typical work day okay uh the whiskey i i can't drink a lot of it it's my it's also my demon drink it's a funny one there's been a few episodes of my life when i was younger and it was crazy and all these things it made me think all right never go too far with this but actually i think i think it's a it's funny i've been talking to my friends recently i'll go around and they'll say do you want a glass of wine i'll say not really because it doesn't it's not nice it's not a nice unless you're spending so much money it's not typically a nice thing to drink actually you just drink it to get a bit drunk uh and so i've actually found myself not drinking much and now i just want every you know glass of vodka or whiskey or wine whatever to matter be nice so i've got very uh fussy in the old age and uh so whiskey but whiskey i i tried norwegian whiskey recently uh my work associate um is in norway and when i go to see her i drink norwegian whiskey and it is unbelievable very expensive as is most things in Norway but it's very very nice uh preferred uh work wear on a uh on a work day oh slippers all day oh yeah oh yeah yeah it's not even a debate slippers just and then I um no slippers and then if I'm going out I've got these one pair trainers that are just my they're slip-ons I just don't I don't want to have laces ever again in my life I just you know it's I know you have to formal wear and all that but it's so nice I slip them on I go out I mean people damn crocs I think yeah but they slip on you know they're slippery that's the problem but they are slip on uh so yes there you go so a whiskey in my slippers what a wonderful life convenient and cozy and with that we'll move swiftly on to talk more about you so to begin with felix would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey i grew up on a charming council estate in essex really one of the best um and uh they used to check you for knives on the way in and if you didn't have one they'd give you one to make it a fair fight that's what place and um the and i went uh and then i uh i went to edmund university i studied mental philosophy and i say that because i use my philosophy education every day i love it i love it it's a really interesting um education and actually funnily enough we may get onto it later when we're talking about ai about the fact that humanities are now back in focus they are now in the in the ascendance anyway so i did that and i went straight from there to the bbc to write comedy and i had a great time doing that and i you know and i wrote for lots of shows i was Zoe Balls breakfast show writer for a year met loads of celebrities and I don't get excited about celebrities so unfortunately that was wasted on me but they were very nice for the most part a lot of them quite troubled and then I went from there my after a number of years of doing this my then wife sat me down and said you've had a few laughs sadly none of them professional why don't you get a job that pays money so I went to the city and I went to the city and I found that considerably easier than writing jokes I'm sorry I'm sorry I've no offense to anyone who's in the city but honestly we'll go and write a joke if you think if that's hyperbole uh and then i i left there to start my own company and i sold that back to a city institution um and i found myself sitting on the global executive of a new york stock exchange listed company um and that was peak imposter syndrome at the time i've had other imposter syndrome since then i don't trust people who haven't got imposter syndrome in a funny sort of way i think we all should have a bit of that and then from there i went to do the next i left there to do the next natural thing which was copper mining in Zambia and that was wonderful and fun and I negotiated with President Bandra a few times and he was such a nice guy so intelligent so humane so dedicated to his people and no one was more surprised than me than when he was banged up for embezzlement a few years later because that's my character judgment in a spoonful and then I went from there and then I wrote a couple of thrillers for Penguin because I wanted to explain the credit crunch and I've got lots of very smart friends and they said we don't understand the credit crunch what happened you know because it was so oblique and so obscure you know so i wrote two thrillers with the sole intention really of explaining the credit crunch in the most entertaining way possible so uh the big short gave me a run for my money i will tell you that just to be clear that's exactly what it came to my mind he's a very good writer yes i'll give him that uh and uh and then what and then the chap i knew he said look my my it company's in trouble and would you turn it around so i turned it around and as i was handing back they said will you stay on as an advisor and that was about gosh 14 years for 13 years ago and that's how i became a business strategist but then latterly i've reframed myself as a moonshot strategist and it's very deliberate to i want people to realize look you know if you work with me we're gonna we're going big we're gonna really try and do something big here because i incrementalism kind of breaks my heart to be honest because you only live once you know it'll be dead and i don't know what people are being so cautious for but what happened was it's really interesting is that i was working with this it company for a long time and then lots of other companies would just stop dropping into my you know word of mouth and stuff dropping into my lap and i found a universal problem at companies because they were all run by smart people smart men and women uh really you know ambitious hard working all of them to some degree some very much so thinking small not thinking they were thinking small but thinking small i mean don't get me wrong somebody starts a new company a startup thinking big big dreams big dreams big goals you know but life batters us down and what happens is people get more and more cautious and i and what i found was first of all i didn't know what was going on why do you think it's small yeah why why can you why are you being so risk averse and then i realized then i actually went off and studied it and thought oh it's cognitive biases oh you're oh we're all gripped by cognitive biases loss aversion risk of a sunk cost fallacy groupthink all these they affect us all um in fact interestingly the more intelligent we are the more likely we are to suffer from so you're you're very safe but your list i mean in a loving way you know exactly yeah no i'll take that all day so ironically your listeners are more prone than the average person you know um and and that's really important and that's i that's why i do so much work with law firms because they're really lovely about having a wake-up one day going oh something's wrong here felix you know come in come in have a chat and so i started to say to people i used to call it on meetings and saying look that's risk aversion what's happening here is this and what i found was because they're human they would push back and go because it's almost like you said you're wrong and if you tell someone they're wrong they just dig the hills in and so i am uh i realized i can't communicate this this way can i and that's why i started doing my talks because i thought right i need to tell a story and take people on a journey where they're not the problem as it were inverted commas that they can see over here look this is a thing that happens to people and then for them to go oh that's me and then there's no conflict and then they they find it easy it's an easier way in so i started giving my talk the flea jar uh which is my obsession uh and it just seemed to resonate and i have had such i've had the privilege of working with so many law firms where the managing partners especially have seen me and just said come and give that talk because you yeah you because the crux of the talk is we have limiting beliefs but there's a way through it there's a system that gets us out of it and so i my privilege is to go into law firms especially and to help them stop playing small and it's all because of this crazy journey of mine and it's brilliant hence brilliant thinking as well and you know i remember once someone said to me when i was starting business you know if your dreams don't scare you they're not big enough you know you've got to really go for it and shoot for the stars to you know only live once and i fully fully believe that and you know almost to the extent that most people in the normal world think you're insane yeah i think you know right Right.

8:51Yeah. And so in my journey, I look back on that and think of some of the things that I've done, even this podcast when, you know, it was quite risque back in the time to do something like this. You know, I'm grateful that I have and I pushed out of that comfort zone. Yeah, brilliant. The naysayers and got on with it. You touched on AI. Just want to kind of get into that because you've been at the forefront of translating AI challenges into practical thinking tools. Yeah. So what first convinced you that lawyers needed to implement AI in their practice? Well, it's very interesting. When I did my degree, and as I say, I use it every day, my favorite subject was personal identity and consciousness.

9:29And you can't have that conversation without getting into AI. Not really, because you get into what is it, you know, and then you start saying, can machines ever be conscious? And a lot of people say, no, never. Some people say, maybe one day, blah, blah, whatever. And so it was always on my mind. So my entire life, I've tracked AI. and to quote uh yan lacun the amazing uh former head of metas ai program he said you know every 10 years someone announces we've discovered ai and proper ai and proper agi you know and he says they just haven't you know and i've tracked it for like you know gosh you know almost 40 years and watch people claim ais come along and this is a watershed moment really because of the processing power i'm afraid i don't get i'm afraid i don't get and i and then by the way i think this is a good thing i you know we haven't got agi what we have got is incredibly useful tools incredibly powerful uh grunt load work you know load lifters brilliant i mean just in and that's you know and i think the i think the ai industry uh not the applications but the foundation ai models have had a catastrophically bad approach to pr because they're running around saying oh there'll be no jobs in the future well what did that do to the mortal man you know with the woman and the man on the street going well so my future's over is it yeah i think they've been catastrophically bad because the applications are really good the applications i know you know this is your sponsor by cleo and there are so many good applications out there um which are taking away the heavy lifting you know and the and the comparison i like to use is excel you know when excel came along people don't remember i do when excel came along people said well that's the end of accountants well that's that that's that who needs them i've got this spreadsheet thing and it was amazing before excel you had two people in an accountancy office one saying the number the other one ticking off stagger now it's like that's almost hard to imagine that sounds dickensian you know uh and but and then it came along and it was the end of accountancy and as you know we've never seen an accountant since that was the end of accounting no there was a boom there was a boom because it allowed them to it was it was the heavy lifting was helped with and they could suddenly they go oh i can start using my brains my intelligence so all the functional work is done brilliant now i just now i can be much more creative much more you know much more helpful to my clients it's a brilliant moment brilliant and that's how i feel about ai i think with ai when the when the hyperbole comes down when everyone sees it for what it really is i think it'd be a brilliant milestone in you know in in the progress of the workplace i think that's lovely um and so one of the things i love to do is go into companies and say look it's it's your friend not your enemy it's it's only taking away grunt work you know and that's the thing you know it's not it's not taking away anything interesting um and actually if anything it means that that human talent that you sweated so hard to hire now gets a chance to shine now because that's going to differentiate you because i you know as i say to clark you know there's an unintended consequence with ai which i think is kind of it's kind of scary but then you realize know it's very exciting is that it's actually it's raised the floor for everybody it's raised the floor so you look around you go oh we've got much better marketing that people down the road and much better comms and we do much better document drafting and much better research you go do you do you because they've literally got an ai system and they're on it you know and on the one hand that's obviously a jolt to major law firms going crikey well i've got my game and i and I go it's all opportunity because all the work's done now your people can shine now what would distinguish you from the competition will be how good your people are and I think it's I would feel more secure actually as a lawyer now once the you know the hyperbole calms down I think they're going to realize oh we're superstars we are because we're not I'm not you know drudging away in a bloody dark office grinding out documents and everything and and also I'm happy to say my third-year associates aren't either you know we're doing much more interesting work and we're really it frees up the brain to think of really interesting solutions and really you know you know now i've got time to help navigate my clients with the ambiguity of the law instead of going right what have i got off the shelf what can we do what have we done before right let's do that you know so i think it's all exciting and and that's the way to look at it isn't it is looking forwards opportunity opportunity of course yes there are you know certain concerns and ethical considerations etc etc but actually with this new wave of technology there's so much excitement out there I was just thinking back to my late grandfather who ran his own law firm.

13:57He used to sit me down on Sundays and talk about, you know, this is in the 1950s, how they would take phone calls. I think someone would unplug something. There wasn't a dial line and they would put someone through. And then you think about, you know, then landlines, then mobiles. Everything just evolves. It gets quicker, faster, more opportunities, more calls, you know, more business, all that good stuff. And on that, your keynote, Lawyer versus the Machine, you touched on some parts there, but I just want to explore it a little bit more. because it explores how artificial intelligence is basically reshaping the legal profession, as we probably, you know, my late grandfather wouldn't probably recognise it in five, ten years moving forward.

14:29So why do you believe the best lawyers will not compete with AI but will lead it? Because AI is very limited. You know, what it does, it does terrifically. As a data retrieval, it's amazing. Is it great that I can, you know, put a few bullet points in and have a long email written? Yeah, you know, although I think emails will get shorter. I don't know, who knows? uh but the um but i love all that the fact it can take grunt work off me i love but it means all i want to do is to be me as much as possible you know when i sit down and i think i've got to send all these linkedin messages got to post on linkedin got to do all these things if someone said is that something that will automate all of that you go oh yeah because that's not me that's that's the grunt work i want to be with humans all i want to be with humans you know i want to give talks i want to be on podcasts i want to be meeting people in offices i don't want to do the grunt work and but the thing as well is is you know when i'm with someone if i'm with it you know and obviously i've interacted with lawyers all my life i've never been struck by the quality of their legal drafting you know the opposing side i'm not you know and i'm not i'm not struck by the quality of their comms or their market i'm in the room with you know jane watson or whoever it is and she's blown my mind with how you know the her clarity her ability to make me feel safe her ability to to give me alternatives but then also to advise i'd go that way you know that's why i want i want the human i don't want any of the automated stuff and so to have that taken away so that you know jane can walk out from around a desk and say right i've got plenty of time what you want to talk about you know let's get into this it's just gold and so but the and the thing is there's a lovely analogy um well not analogy there's a lovely parallel where steve jobs the late great steve jobs um we won't talk about his character but as an achievement as a man of achievement um he um he gave great great talk once where he said look there was a big bit of research done about um what was the uh most uh economic energy and economical animal in the world you know what who who did the most with the least and they were they ranked all the animals uh from you know birds all the way down to lions and whales and everything we were in there and what they found was that the most efficient traveler was the condor.

16:39Incredibly efficient, you know, kilojoules or whatever the measure is. Humans were about a third of the way down. Hordes of animals ahead of us. And everyone said, well, that's it. We're not the most efficient animal. We were not very efficient. But then someone very clever in the research team said, what if we've got a human on a bicycle? Then what? And we were streets ahead. We were suddenly number one. And to me, AI is that bicycle. It's that ability to say, you know, we're riding it so we can get so much further, so much quicker. And I find that thrillingly exciting. And I think I lead perfectly to where I want to go next, because it's context and positioning.

17:14Because I want to talk about some AI and concerns, you know, sticking with that school of thought, you know, your perspective, what concerns you most about the way AI is actually being marketed currently to law firms? Well, I think they're over promising. I mean, there was a really interesting, in the last couple of weeks, there's been a big bit of research released about coding, software coding. So can I just take a small foray into that? Please do. So one of my best muckers is an investor in Harvey. So I know, you know, I'm not behind the scenes necessarily. He needs to be behind the scenes.

17:45But if he's listening, he hasn't told me a word. But let's just say I know a lot about it. And their arc is the same arc as everybody else. But what has happened is AI needs to make money, and it needs to make it urgently because, as we know, there's a lot of talk of open AI running out of money. It doesn't mean it will, but there's a lot of talk. There just is. There's lots of podcasts and interviews where people are saying it's going to run out of money because the math doesn't add up, and it doesn't add up. And it doesn't add up for a lot of them. I mean, Google's got the money. Apple's got the money.

18:17But a lot of them haven't got the money. And so what they're doing is they are desperate to find ways to monetize their engines, their foundational models. Now, the most obvious way was coding, software coding, because software coding is code-based and law-based, rule-based, thanks very much, made for AI. Brilliant. AI goes out there and is smashing it. Over half of all code written today is AI. And they are very confident that within two years-ish, 90 % of all code will be written by AI. Devastating for coders, revolution for that industry. Coders hopefully will find other homes, et cetera, et cetera.

18:55Okay, park that. Then AI, again, right, well, what else is code-based? What else is rule-based that we can go after? Well, that's the law. That's the law. And the thing is, the law is, is it what, two and a half trillion global business? Well, they want that. They just want a slice of it, and they are living the dream. So that's why they're like, we can nail this. We can find a framework where we can actually control the thinking and have sensible outcomes with the law. Great. That's exciting. And if that was all it was, they would get better and better. And I think the law would very much be in their sights.

19:33The two things, well, at least two things, but there's many, many things against it. But one thing is that AI can't think. AI can't think. You know, I don't like the term AI. I don't actually use it. When I'm giving my talk, the term AI gets dumped very quickly. it's machine learning it's machine learning and i say that because jan lakoon the former head of meta up until about a few months ago he's the first to say it's mimicking intelligence it's mimicking smartness it's not smart it doesn't know a thing it doesn't know what a strawberry is it doesn't know what the color red is you know you do with that t-shirt but that's between you and your conscience but the but the uh but no you know what i mean it doesn't know anything it doesn't know anything and lawyers do and so they have an edge but also and this is really really important there has been i think a reckless not by all of them but actually i think there's for the most part been a reckless race to be the most advanced ai foundational foundational model and we know they have thrown cautions to the wind there's been some terrible episodes obviously you know the the grok that's you know allowing uh the manipulation of images and all these sorts of things and they've been investigated for that sort of stuff there has been a terrible rush and and standards gone out the window but one thing that has happened and this is now evidence-based is that a lot of the code in fact up to 45 percent of code they're finding written by ai is insecure is allowing um people to hack it quite easily and they're realizing hang on a second unless humans are all over this it's making mistakes left right and center and they really are having a wake up reports came out in the last few weeks and they were one from Stanford one uh I can't remember the other one but actually I posted about it on LinkedIn but the um and it really undermines the idea that AI has safely taken coding and run with it and what people are realizing now they haven't to go back and fix it you know big time and actually a lot of people who you know smart people in the industry are saying it's going to take us more to fix it than we ever saved using AI to do coding.

21:31Now, there's lots of ways to unpack that for law. But let me just go for one obvious one. If you do a massive M &A case, and you use AI to crunch all the documents and crunch all the concerns and write what are the points we need to raise with the other parties, yada, yada, yada. And three years, five years down the road, someone just says, I'm just gonna look at those documentation. I'm just gonna take another look. Did we miss anything? Oh, yeah, we did. Well, you can that's a lawsuit that's that's a lot of liability and now you know to be fair you know i know that apps like um harvey are trying very very hard to to go way beyond the uh the you know the recklessness of some of the sort of more rushed coding models but that's a liability and as a as a managing partner of a firm do i really want to sign off on a on you know on ai's work you know too glibly but on this by the way this is a good thing it means that ai can do the heavy lifting the grunt work but humans should still be involved they should still say look let's not just sign it off lazily let's not just go oh we've done it right let's let's what would i do with a third year associate i check the work i check and i go through this i'd have measures and i think so so i'm not so i'm not this is not a council of doom this is a council of caution that we should be that these amazing tools it's very easy to over depend on them because of the hype because the silly Sam Altman-esque comments that are out there.

22:54But actually, if you take it in a measured way and go, well, this is a really good part of the workflow. This is fantastic. Then happy bloody days. And then we're on to a new age. Hopefully, as going back to my original, then human-focused law, which is why we get into it. Today's Legally Speaking podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Clio. If your legal management software feels more frustrating than helpful, you're not alone. Many solicitors across the UK delay switching because moving client and case data sounds like a headache. Clio makes it simple. As the intelligent legal work platform, Clio combines context-aware AI with trusted legal research to power your practice.

23:35And when you switch, their dedicated migrations team supports you every step of the way, ensuring a smooth transfer of your data. You'll also get award-winning support 24-5 via live chat, phone, and email. So help is always there when you need it. Ready to leave frustration behind? Visit clio.com forward slash UK to learn more and discover why so many UK solicitors choose Clio. Now back to the show. We're just all craving that H2H human to human connection, even more so in this AI revolution. Again, to maybe law firm buyers out there that are exploring legal tech or just technology generally you've stated law firms need to flip the script when dealing with tech providers so how should law firms define their needs and challenges to ensure that tech providers help them in delivering real solutions well i think the there's nvidia the world's biggest chip well i don't know the biggest most of the most successful chip maker they have this wonderful approach that is one of my one of my brainstorming techniques that i bang on about um is called blank page the blank page approach approach so what they do is we they have the best chips in the world we know this china wants them everybody wants them um the uae bought them for 500 million dollars off of donald trump wonderful thing and um the and so they want them um and what nvidia does when it goes to make the next generation uh jensen gets everyone in the room and they don't come in with any schematics of these of the existing best uh computer chip he's everyone has blank paper and he goes right Right.

25:11Starting from scratch. If we're starting today, what would we do? And everybody uses their best knowledge, their latest wisdom to create a new chip, because he knows if he takes the existing schematic and says, right, what can we fix here? You'll fix that and you'll fix that and you'll never see a really revolutionary solution because you're just bending this and improving that. And so it's a blank page approach to brainstorming. And there's a reason they are the most advanced computer chips in the world, you know, because they're not. confined by cognitive biases my obsession, they're confined by limited beliefs from before, they're not anchored in the old design, and I would say to law firms, you need a blank page, you need a blank page where you say, and it's not scary because it's just a piece of paper in there you don't have to do it, but because I have a lot of brainstorms where people say, literally a man will clutch his pearls and just say but we can't do that, and you go, we're just talking about it, we're just talking, should we have the conversation, and so I would say that people are right, you have a workflow, you have a structure that's shaped to your company.

26:13AI, to really benefit from AI, I would be prepared to throw all the pieces up in the air and say, let's have that offsite, one, two, three day offsite where we go, if we were starting from scratch with the talent we've got, not the structure, not the flow, the talent, how would we do this? And this is what AI can do. And we like this. We like the Harveys of this world. They're the safest. And these are the bits we can feel assured work, uh crucial word um what would we do and you have to do that that's what i you know i really urge people to do is to go just reimagine it from the ground up and if and actually you know you haven't committed you've just had the thought but i think you'll be people will be shocked and excited by how they would structure a company today and then they're thinking like entrepreneurs and startups you know that edge yeah it's it's so good isn't it it's it's really getting them to think creatively and completely reimagined.

27:08It's, you know, similar linked, you know, it goes back to the old Henry Ford quote, doesn't it? If I'd asked my assisting customers what they wanted, you know, they said faster horses, which of course it was the, you know, the automobile that was the breakthrough technology. So they probably went back and sat on that piece of paper and thought, right, let's move away from four legs. Let's think to something that can maybe rotate and move faster and get people from A to B. And it's similar in, you know, other industries. So yeah, thanks for sharing that. You have talked very openly about opportunities for AI.

27:32And I see one of the biggest issues is actually implementation. because ai can eliminate as you've said grunt work but how does it empower lawyers to actually shift from the repetitive tasks that we kind of know it can do to actually that more meaningful client engagement and strategic work that you've been alluding to well i mean effortlessly i believe and and it could do it could do i mean again i think they i think we should be looking at software coding as a as a warning to a lot of people who rushed out and implemented too quickly and implemented too glibly and too overconfidently. And I think the – and actually back to your point about, okay, if you were going to implement AI, how would you be talking to the partners and how would you be talking to the AI companies about this?

28:19I think the onboarding is everything. It's everything because what they're finding at software companies now is that they sacked a load of staff, got a bunch of AI. They're now hiring the staff back, getting rid of the AI because they didn't understand it completely. They believed the promises and said, great, we're going to be fine. And they got scared, risk aversion, lovely cognitive advice. They got scared of the composition out competing. So they rushed headlong. And I think lawyers are obviously a more measured beast anyway, which is a lovely thing. And they should put the onus on the AI companies to say, right, show us how this implements effortlessly.

28:59I want a pilot program. I'm not going all out. I want to you know I would pick a department I pick a team or some willing punters within the law firm and I would and I would want to see and I would actually there's no rush there's no panic it's gonna be okay you know and I would actually have I personally if there was the luxury of uh scale to be able to test test out I would test it in one area one you felt was maybe M &A which of course is how Harvey started to take that as an example um and then I would say right that's the pilot and then and then really have a very very serious all hands on deck discussion of what happened feedback what was good what was bad a proper 360 on it and then only implement it when everyone is super happy that they genuinely know no no no leaps of faith i think that's you know that's where software coding has been bitten in the backside they took a lot of leaps of faith they were greedy and scared at the same time both bad emotions you know uh and i think lawyers are more measured and i think uh and i and i would yeah and i would absolutely i would be on do it on stages where when they did it they knew that what they were going to get and i really mean that they knew what they're going to get because they knew what people had gone through they knew implementation i am working with so many law firms who go yeah we're using some stuff and some people like it some don't and you know and we're thinking of making it mandatory we don't know you know it's agonizing because it is hard it is hard but i think the i think i wouldn't want to fumble my way towards it i would want one team uh and i would want to then say right lovely microcosm let's have the 360 of such confidence we could roll the whole thing out you know uh but but equally you know see what's interesting is llms because it's machine learning not ai but never mind um llms uh against quote yan lacun who's got a dog in the fight you know he you know he you know he's he's he was meant to get llms to agi and he couldn't do it he said it can't be done You know, he said they've kind of peaked.

30:52And in fact, they're all admitting this. Sam Altman, everyone is admitting LLMs have kind of peaked and maybe they've permanently peaked. We don't know, which doesn't take away from them. I think remarkable, you know. But but what we've got, we're going to see now for definite is we're going to see, I reckon, the next three years ish is going to be the application stage where the applications are going to get better and better. And there's a funny thing. I'm old enough to remember the ZX spectrum now. I'm sure I'm my age here. But, and I remember Clive Sinclair, that very eccentric fellow, who was more famous for going to String Fellows than he was to building a revolutionary computer.

31:28But Clive Sinclair being interviewed, I think it was in the 90s. And someone said to him, did you know the games that were coming on the spectrum? Did you realize? You would revolutionize, you know, with that tiny memory computer, how people played games and that. And Clive Sinclair said, I thought they would be playing tic-tac-toe. I never thought in a million years they would be playing the games that I'm watching on my own machine. And AI, everyone's off drinking the Kool-Aid and say it'll cure cancer and all these things, you know, which I hope it does. But come on. But what but what is going to happen now, I guarantee it is calmer eyes, smart eyes will look at the foundation models and go, oh, I know how to do a really good application.

32:10Oh, I really now I can see they've all got to an amazing level. and i actually i don't just want chat i don't just want open ai i don't just want anthropic i'm going to link them up and all that and i think we're going to see i honestly i happily predict this we're going to see a real advancement in the application because the rules will get better uh the you know the you know there's there's time to learn from mistakes but also other new applications go oh that's what i was waiting for i can now plug that into mine and i think we're going to see a real acceleration so actually no thanks to the ai companies per se which i don't i didn't mean that in a bad way i think the application startups will do some amazing things yeah and i think it's very exciting and let's stick with the future then because you know law firms are going to continuously get inundated with ai sales pitches minutes hours every day because people want a slice of this legal tech market you said this huge two and a half trillion whatever it might be market there you know tech companies are waking up to the opportunity so what criteria should leaders of these firms be setting to cut through the loud noise?

33:12I think I would be telling the firms, I would want two almost isolated conversations in a perfect world where, okay, before you tell me what your product does, let's be careful, cognitive biases, tell me what your product does. Fine, okay, listen to it and be very calm about it and very clear-eyed about it. And obviously go and speak to anybody who's implemented it. I would absolutely want to hear other customers' experiences. if they would be willing to because they're all in competition um but then i would say i would want another conversation which is this is what we want this is what we want and go out and find the company that does that rather than because the problem is you know to a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail and you're getting a lot of people just saying oh yeah just use us crunch shove that's the fit you know um as opposed to saying no we've done the away days we know how uh you know automated work could sit which could fit into our flow and this is what we want you to do and if you can't do that i'll try another company and i think it's you know so but i do think it's it's a moment in time when we don't know what we don't know and and if you're so i don't want to sort of preachers or being clever clever and sort of say oh this is what we want and we went ahead with it without consulting anyone because someone might come along and say oh we do this and go oh we didn't even imagine that was possible that's amazing so i would actually uh if i was there's no question for me if i had a an ai firm with a capacity a law firm sorry with a capacity i would be having a task force that said go out and tell us what's out there so that lawyers understood it i'm not interested in the sales people telling me you know what they know per se i'd want a task force inside the company that could then report back and present very intelligent through their eyes not with it we're not with the sales people nothing against salespeople they've just done the job but but they've got they've got way too much of a dog in the butt you know uh and uh and i think and because and then i think you'd have a clear-eyed conversation you know and i don't and i don't think it's it's um i don't think it's too tricky to get into that you know to achieve that but you have got you're going to see churn you're going to see you know do you really want to adopt some uh technology that goes bust in six months do you you know uh you've got some things like that going on so there isn't a panic there isn't a rush because i don't think people are going to see the benefits too quickly i think and unfortunately again this is where people if the more you know the more you can talk to your clients as well because i uh was talking to a leading barrister recently head of chambers and he said that in a case where typically it'd be him and three juniors the client said oh can we just have one junior and use ai for the rest and the barrister was it's not how it works he said well no that's what we're going to pay for you know and found himself in a very odd conversation where what you know and so because they half understand and actually the more we know the more the more we can say absolutely that isn't how it works because you know and so good luck you know go somewhere else and find that company that does that uh the changes so yeah a task force i would have a task force because it's it's it's too it's too big it's too exciting but it's too risky i think to go in half cocked i think so i think we don't know what we don't know and i would make it my job to know, know in the truest sense of the word, how we move forward.

36:25Yeah. Great advice. And, you know, really, really enjoying the discussion generally and your views on AI, law, the future. Let's talk about empowering the everyday lawyer now. Yeah. You know, what would be your top three tips for legal professionals to feel empowered, to ask the right questions, to advocate for their needs and still capture the benefits of technology? um i would write down the piece of paper what i like doing you know i really would and i'd write down what i don't like doing and i would say can ai do that yeah that'd be it you know that was you know and then and then i would you know and i and i would once that was addressed and it probably could be because they're very smart lawyers and they will they're not they're not you know they're not going to say speaking to clients something i don't want to do because they'll realize that's the human thing you know and what they'll do is they'll list lots of grunt work good done and i think that would be a great way to again you know in this ai task force if everyone wrote that you'd get so much overlap everyone would there that's our wish list done um but then i would but again you see i would not just as lawyers but as a law firm i'd be sitting back and saying you know now that the grunt work's gone you know now the grunt work's been assisted um what's what's gonna be the most powerful thing we can do commercially and for our clients and what have you and and have a proper a brainstorm where they reimagine what they do because at the moment you they're anchored in the mindsets they have to be that because we're humans and this is how we function they're anchored in the mindset of i get clients i do all this work and then we get to the solution there'll be some negotiations well now hopefully they're thinking it's the human stuff i'm doing and i'm i don't have to do it which means you know now with more time and more energy what would i really do because i'm you know i i can now say to them look for the same money i can spend a lot more time with you I can do a lot more.

38:13I've had – I once treated myself to a very good lawyer for property, for a property deal, and it was stunning. It was stunning. I mean, I phoned him. He picked up the phone, and I said, can we find out this? He said, yeah, fine, we'll get back to you. None of this solicitor stuff where they get back to you a week later once you've chased them five times. It was wow. I mean, once you've had the luxury and the privilege of having a really high-powered lawyer to do something to work for you, it's really hard to go back you know it's first class back to economy territory you know and and so i would i would want them to you know go down the road of being a human lawyer the reason they became a law in the first place you know you'll get a few bookish types you actually just love the technical stuff good stay stay there stay there because they're gonna we're gonna need people to curate all this stuff but the and i think but i i would be reimagining i would be saying i think the really smart law firms are going to say right we have you know the the functional stuff is now not that valuable you know the valuable stuff is uh us being personable honestly us being able to sell into the clients there's no other better way to say it but then also for be able to take them on the journey safely from where they are to where they want to be and i would be putting so much energy into that and i i would be that's where i'd be upskilling my teams i would be saying uh honest hand on heart i'd be saying right we need to teach people to be more personable because it's going to be much more human from now on uh and uh and just having a reputation for being amazing at this type of law won't necessarily be enough you know uh and then also you know how to close deals and because every conversation is an opportunity to close deal i'm afraid you know let's be honest and however nuanced and subtle and sometimes just making people feel safe is enough you know uh and then also really really sit back and say what's the journey now you know it's before my brain would have been fizzy with all the work i had to do actually can we elevate their experience the client's experience because now you know one thing i would do in a heartbeat is you know lawyers and i get this a lot from lawyers and bless them you know for this is they get called in the crisis you know my husband's leaving me my you know my my partner's run off with the cash in the company whatever you're doing a takeover whatever events forced someone's hand and they phone a lawyer i think lawyers should be one two five steps ahead i think they should be going to their clients and saying look what's coming up the next three to five years because we could probably save you a lot of money because help you you know not make bum steers help you make decisions that you wouldn't have ever thought because we weren't involved in the conversation you know and i would be looking to be partners i would be looking to be come on let's you know don't don't just call us in a crisis that we're not 999 i mean we always will be there for you but you're not you're not scratching the surface i mean you know we know that in an ideal world we'd all go see the doctor accordingly and be very honest about our lifestyle and they would say right cut back the mind i want to do it you know i want 10 000 more steps out of you a day don't do that and you know you'd live longer well why wouldn't you want to do that with your lawyer you know if you could go and have that chat with your lawyer but that's not how it operates at the moment but that's what i would do and it's being proactive isn't it and i love that you're focusing in on being client-centered and it's me putting my legal recruiting hat on yes we can be transactional and just service the law firms when they have a need but actually that most of the clients say to us look tell us what's out there where are the trends like what are the talents emerging where we could have growth opportunities here you know what are you seeing from our competition where they're investing in this talent pool at the moment and who have you got and how can you kind of predict for us where we should be going in terms of our growth and people development and people acquisition etc etc and then you become that trusted advisor and become very client-centered rather than that transactional delivery focused individual okay um before we close we have to go back to the flea jar your story driven keynote on innovative thinking yeah the flea jar you share how the smartest leaders and teams limit themselves you touched on this earlier how can individuals embrace failure and fresh perspectives to unlock their true full potential i love failure you know i mean i think it's a funny thing um it's really weird the way we frame failure like it's a bad thing as opposed to absolutely normal you know if i've got a guitar here i don't even see it but i've got a guitar here you pick a guitar up you fail for months and then suddenly you succeed and then someone plays stairway to heaven you go i won't play that now and you fail your way to that you know and life is a series of failures until you have a recognizable success and i don't like the word failure which we can find another failure just lessons learns you know and i you know learnings rather and i so i think you know be excited get excited by failing because no one sets out to fail i don't go out and you know do a bit of work and go well that didn't work i didn't an hour before think this will fail but i'll do it anyway you know so what do you learn from it and i you're that's how you get ahead i love the feedback loop of failure i really genuinely do and i think and then different perspectives well it's a game changer i mean if you you know to take an extreme example if you had someone sitting in a room by themselves for five decades with no information coming in how much would they learn you know very very little they might think a lot but they wouldn't learn much but if you have somebody goes to the library all the time and goes to the coffee shops and has debates with people and goes and goes out their friends and debates and listens their ideas and shares their ideas here's what's wrong with their ideas well wow that's that it's an accelerant like nothing else in the world so different perspectives are just the most amazing thing i I mean, Warren Buffett said, you know, the best investment you'll ever make is yourself.

43:43You know, and he said the fastest way to do it is to read books. But what does he know? Yeah, it's true. I'm quite proud of the acronym I came up with when I was going through failure, which is lose. Because you never lose. It's just life offering some experience. I think if you kind of really digest that every time you've had these, you know, failures, quote unquote, setbacks, you've acquired some experience, haven't you? and you know next time okay maybe i could do it slightly differently or actually i'm richer for it and we just keep keep moving okay um legal geek you've got a busy year this year on the legal podcast and we're also talking at legal geek so what are you most excited about that and being on stage there um i love sharing ideas i love sharing ideas i love showing my perspective uh and i get a chance to talk on the main stage uh and to share my you know the headlines it takes so long to get into these conversations like this really these conversation really but he but to share ideas and to and to i i know i have a very different perspective on ai i'm not haven't swallowed the kool-aid you know and i've been equally i'm not a doom monger and i find that people like the middle ground i walk you know and i and so i get very excited about giving a more measured if you like uh meta picture to the whole thing macro picture the whole thing and it always seems to go down well so i get very excited and i'm gonna i'm going to meet very interesting people And I always do never go to a conference and don't come away with, you know, either new friends or new clients.

45:10So what's not to like? Absolutely. And then the final question, future of I should probably say machine learning, giving your view on AI. But finally, what impact do you think AI slash machine learning, however you want to take it, will have on the next generation of legal professionals and law firm leaders? And what trends are you going to be watching very closely? I think it depends how it rolls out. I mean, in software coding, they've got this junior dev death spiral, they're calling it, where they've lost an entire layer of people, and now no one is qualified to become a senior dev. And I think, so for me, I hope that Harvey and the like come out and say, look, this is the equivalent of a third-year associate.

45:56Hire this person, this AI software, and you won't need to hire someone. And, of course, he says, well, it's available very well, but now what? Now, for me, I and I know, by the way, I should say every law firm I've spoken to has been very humane about this and said, well, you know, we want the next generation. We don't. It's not cute to do this. So. So I hope that they people fight. And I wish they'd find a calmer, more measured way to sell in their services and say this isn't instead of it's the help to go alongside your associates. So we can they can they too don't have to do as much. So I think I think there'll be a big shakeout of law.

46:33And I think by a country mile, it will be the best thinkers who stand out because the machines can do anything that's functional can be done by machines. So you've got to do better than the machines. And so if you're just offering, you know, frankly, commoditized work, that's a bit of a race to the bottom. Good luck. And I think you'll get lots of companies that will be out there doing cheaper conveyancing and cheaper this and cheaper that. fine uh but i think the high-end work just in that counterintuitive way that happened when excel came along will actually be more valuable because of the experts because of the people and i would right now would be looking around at my stars and just saying right let's upskill all of you you know like i said be more personable better closing deals better holding the hand of the client and i think i think that and i really think the big change will be people uh as to use your word go be proactive go into companies and say come on don't don't call us when the house is on fire call me early you know so i think that's i think i think it's me i think it's gonna be a great phase for lawyers because i think it'd be much more about the people and they'll do the work they want to do much more and they'll be interacting with people which is really a lot of the reason they went into it and and let's keep it optimistic and you know exciting and you know positive that's certainly the energy i like to bring to the world and and with that felix i'm sure you'd have inspired a lot of our listeners today you probably want to know more so if they want to know more about you or indeed brilliant thinking where can they go to find out more feel free to share any websites or any social media handles that you're on and we'll also include them this episode for you too thank you very much well i'm felixrelly.com is the easy the fastest way uh tap me up on linkedin always lovely to connect always lovely to chat i i say yes to every coffee and video chat because you never know you never you know charlie munger used to do it charlie munger warren buffett's old partner used to he said i used to take about 10 uh random meetings a week and he said nine would be okay well basically one would be amazing and he said so i don't think people do enough of that i don't think people connect enough so call me old school in this age of ai but you know connection seems to work so yeah felixrelly.com um it's all there and uh and linkedin and i'm there there we go keeping it human loved it thank you so so much uh felix for today it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show from all of us here on the league has been podcast sponsored by clear wishing you lots of continued success with brilliant thinking and all the great stuff you get up to and indeed your talks and hopefully we'll collaborate again in the future but for now from all of us over and out thank you for listening to this week's episode if you like the content here why not check out our world leading content and collaboration of the legally speaking club over on discord go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com there's a link to join our community there over and out