Clio Con Clips 2025 - Denise Farmer - E12

0:00Denise Farmer:Welcome to ClioCon Clips 2025, recorded live from Boston and proudly sponsored by Clio, the world's leading legal technology company transforming the legal experience for all. I'm your host, Rob Hanna, and over this special Legally Speaking podcast series, we'll be bringing you exclusive conversations with the brilliant minds behind Clio, the innovators, strategists, visionaries driving one of the most transformative companies in legal tech. Across these interviews, we'll explore how Clio is uniting brilliance across teams, technology, and communities worldwide. From AI and data to leadership, culture, and the future of client experience, you'll hear from people shaping what's next for law and redefining what's possible for legal professionals everywhere.

0:45Denise Farmer:So whether you're a lawyer, technologist, or leader passionate about innovation, you're in the right place. This ClioCon Clips 2025 is where brilliance meets purpose and the future of law takes shape. Let's get into it.

1:03Denise Farmer:Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, recording live here from Boston for ClioCon Clips 2025 series, sponsored by Clio, and I'm joined by name, title and organisation. Hi, I am Denise Farmer and I am Clio's general manager for APAC. You sure are. And before we get into some exciting conversation today, please give us a fun fact that people here at CleoCon may not know about yourself. About myself? The only fun fact that is jumping into my head right now is that my niece can recite Pi to 1 ,151 places, which makes her the top recorded British female ever, I believe. Is that a fun fact? That's an incredible fact.

1:46And well done, her. That is an incredible achievement. I don't know why that was the one thing that popped into my head on the spot, but there you go.

1:52Denise Farmer:No, I'm here for it, and we appreciate that. We appreciate diversity of facts. We had a whole raft. But let's talk about all things Clio then, because you've spent years transforming legal tech in the APAC region specifically. What's unique about how firms there are embracing innovation? I think there's a few different things that are unique to the APAC region. The first that springs to mind is it's just a very rich and diverse region. So you've got what I would call economies or countries that are further along on the tech journey and in terms of tech adoption. And others that are maybe at the beginning of digitization journeys.

2:31So that richness and that diversity is probably one of the most exciting and interesting things about the region.

2:38Denise Farmer:Yeah. And what's been exciting about ClioCon this year is the theme, Uniting Brilliance. and I've seen it throughout, but how does, from your perspective, how does uniting brilliance apply when you're building connections across such a diverse region? I think it's just finding like-minded people that have the same ambition in mind, which is, you know, whether that's, you know, helping law firms become more efficient, whether it's improving access to justice. You know, there's just a bunch of like-minded people working across the different jurisdictions in the region who have similar goals in mind.

3:11So that would be my interpretation of uniting brilliance in the APAC region.

3:15Denise Farmer:Yeah, and you're clearly doing it. And it's been so successful seeing what you've been doing out there from a Clio perspective, sort of looking from the outside in. OK, what are the biggest opportunities you see for AI and cloud adoption in APAC for law firms specifically? Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways that I look at that. There's a Goldman Sachs stat that I always come back to, which states something like 44 % of legal tasks have the potential to be automated. So there's just an incredible individual productivity gain at the individual lawyer level. And then when I think about that collectively across the legal services industry, that's a huge sort of collective productivity gain.

3:54So I think that's the first game-changing aspect to the potential for the adoption of artificial intelligence in the region. And then I think the second factor is just let's make happier lawyers. Like, who doesn't want to get rid of some of the drudge work out of their day? And whether that means growing your firm or whether that just means more time to, you know, kick back with the kids or whatever is your vibe. That's what I think about when I think about the potential for cloud and, you know, generative AI in the region.

4:23Denise Farmer:Yeah, and I spoke to your colleagues previously as part of this series about tech for good and how actually it's great for the productivity gains. But the overall well-being of individuals, like you say, that precious family time where people have maybe missed bath time if they've got a young family or that special occasion because they've had a closing or something. And I think actually this is revolutionary and ties into everything that Clio is about with the mission of transforming the legal experience for all. And I think it's just fantastic everything Clio is building and the way you're doubling down on that.

4:47Denise Farmer:All sounds great, but what are some of the challenges still holding firms back from getting on the digital transformation bus and how can leaders potentially overcome them? I think a couple of things. Change management just is sometimes scary. Yes. But that's where organizations such as Clio, we have, you know, incredible talent across our team in terms of onboarding and support that can help firms through that process. We do it hundreds of thousands of times across law firms across the year. So change management is a concern. I think just helping people through the change management piece is probably the most important thing.

5:23Good planning. I think the other part that's been a little bit unhelpful as well, unhelpful headlines. You know, I think clickbaity, unhelpful headlines don't help. So just providing real-world advice and guidance. And I think some of the law societies and people like that in our region are doing a really good job of establishing guardrails and guidance notes and things like that that lawyers in the region can turn to as well that will also help to calm some of those concerns and give a more realistic framework for firms to work to.

5:54Denise Farmer:Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely more substance underneath the headline. Yeah, absolutely. And read the whole thing before taking a view as well. Talking of societies then, how do partnerships with law societies and universities help drive change in the region specifically? Yeah, in a couple of different ways. So we work very closely with law societies such as the Law Society of New South Wales. And we also have community programs as well with universities. We've got a few universities in Australia as well that we work with. And I think that just lends an enormous amount of credibility to what we're doing and gives reassurance to practitioners as well.

6:29Denise Farmer:Yeah, no, absolutely. And something else I know Cleo is exceptionally passionate about, and Jack really talked about this in his keynote, is access to justice. Yes. And so, you know, how do you see technology improving access to justice, particularly across the APAC region? Yeah, I think it is about that collective productivity gain. It frees lawyers up to do a few different things. And I can think about some specific examples in my region where law firms that we work with and partners that we work with, you know, they can get through cases faster. So it frees up time to do pro bono work, for example.

6:59One of the partners we work with really closely in Australia is Flayner. There's a lady there called Amanda Little. And one of the things that she spoke to at the Legal Innovate Summit that we held in Sydney last year when Jack was last in Australia, she talked about how the adoption of AI and the implementation of AI in her firm has allowed her to take on much more pro bono work. So if you imagine that's one person in one firm doing that, if that were able to be replicated collectively across the sector, you know and we talk about that latent you know yes part of the you know the latent demand that isn't being serviced by lawyers right now there's huge huge potential to democratize democratize access to justice and legal remedy uh in apac and in particularly in particular in some jurisdictions where you know there are bigger issues with those sorts of issues as well yeah no absolutely and i

7:47Denise Farmer:think you know we fully support that on the show as well and i think it's great that organizations like Clio are recognising that and really leaning in with solutions to improve it. Okay, what excites you most then about Clio's next phase of its journey, particularly in the APAC region? I think it's exciting just for the team personally. My team is nearly three years old in APAC and growing from five to 23 or 24 now. We'll grow again next year. So it's just a privilege to be working on innovation that's coming at such a fast pace. So that's really exciting on a personal level. For law firms in the region, especially firms in countries where they're at that tipping point of starting that digitization journey, I think they will be able to leapfrog and adopt much more quickly than firms in the past.

8:43So when you're at the start of that journey, being able to really accelerate with these new technologies and the new products that we're bringing to the market is a really massive opportunity.

8:53Denise Farmer:Yeah, and we're excited by it. And that kind of leans into where I was going next. As sort of legal tech accelerates across APAC, how do you see technology empowering smaller or regional firms to compete more on a global scale? That's been really critical in many of my markets because many of my markets, Australia and New Zealand, for example, they are small law markets, right? So cloud, first of all, and now generative AI are really leveling the playing field in terms of small firms having the same access to tools that used to only really be the purview of much more and better resourced firms.

9:28so it's it's been really fantastic that the technology has never been more accessible the technology has never been more affordable and so small firms are really able to do a great deal

9:41Denise Farmer:that they would not have had access to in the past yeah and that is hugely exciting and my late grandfather actually ran a regional law firm in the uk so it's great to see you know how that could potentially support that okay let's zoom out then before we close clio con 2025 it's first time I've ever been in Boston but what's been a highlight moment for you thus far for ClioCon 2025? It's my first ClioCon as well so I think a couple of things there's a there's an APAC contingent here small I think it's going to grow year on year so it's been really fantastic to meet with APAC based partners and customers that are here in Boston soaking in all of the energy and insight that is that is teeming around this place and then the standout moment for me though was jack's keynote yeah this morning i mean wow the new era the innovations that are coming the energy from people that i was sat near from customers who were like whooping and one person i was just talking to an australian-based um uh firm that is here in boston and he said uh when jack was talking about some of these new innovations the guy next daughter him just went oh shit this is great that was just hearing that anecdote from one of the APAC contingents that's here on the ground in Boston was just amazing but like just the scale of it just the energy of it is just it's just you have to be amazing you have to be here and it's been incredible doing this with you Denise it's been a real pleasure congratulations on everything you've been doing particularly in building out on the APAC region and it just leads me to say from all of us here on the League of Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio over and out thank you for listening to this week's episode.

11:18Denise Farmer: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.