From Hollywood to Big Law: 8-Figure Founder Nick Abrahams on AI and the Future of Law - S10E14

25:09Nick Abrahams:And then I, you know, went into the law, you know, went to Warner's and then went back into the law for, you know, I wanted a more stable career to raise a family in Australia and so forth. But that, you know, the kids have now effectively all left home And so I'd been building on a career as a professional speaker. I'm also an adjunct professor at Bond University, and I've been researching there the impact of AI on businesses and how businesses can effectively roll out AI. And so that's been four years in the making there at Bond. And so I've got four courses that I teach through that. and lots of information.

25:51Nick Abrahams:So I really was building up as I knew I was going to leave Norton Rose because I really wanted to be a professional speaker. That was going to be my career. And so Norton Rose Fulbright was incredibly kind to allow me to do that. I mean, I put all the billings through Norton Rose Fulbright, but they allowed me to effectively work as a professional speaker. So I was, you know, I was speaking on, still am, I speak on AI as it will impact effectively every industry. And so, you know, literally in the last two months, it's been, you know, AI in healthcare, AI in food, AI in insurance, in banking, accounting, engineering, AI in charcuterie actually, Rob, which you wouldn't have thought, but I've spoken at the Australian charcuterie conference on AI in charcuterie.

26:39Nick Abrahams:So I built that up and I just love, I mean, I love that live event experience. And then I did also want to get back to the comedy stuff. So I've been doing some more comedy and then have built a show, which is called The Accidental Lawyer, which as you mentioned, has been accepted into the Sydney and Melbourne Comedy Festivals. And in fact, we just released tickets for Sydney for two shows in Sydney yesterday, and it's sold out in a day. So it's really exciting. I'm so you know that and all I'm trying to do with that is I mean just you know I feel like the world doesn't laugh a lot right at the moment there's a lot going on and so maybe I could help people have a bit of a laugh so that's that's the aim of that that show yeah and just incredible breadth

27:29Gregory S. D. Smith:variety to to the things that you you get up to and I think that's important you know I I like that with people who've got so many different tangents and things about them we'll talk about the accidental law a little bit more later on because I think it's fascinating what you're doing there. You have spent years advising, as I mentioned on the outset, on technology and now AI strategy. So in what ways are law firms and in-house teams implementing AI correctly?

27:53Nick Abrahams:So the correct AI stuff is, first and foremost, is that problem-led, not product-led. So I think that's really, really important. I do feel for people within, particularly law firms and in-house teams, particularly if they're in legal ops, because there's a lot of pressure on, we've never seen this with technology before, where the pressure to roll out the technology comes from the top. Normally with technology, it's driven by the technologies like cloud, for example. Cloud came about because the IT team said, you know what, we could save a whole bunch of money and be much quicker to spin up servers if we were in the cloud.

28:29Nick Abrahams:It wasn't like the board was going, we totally need cloud. Whereas now you're getting the senior leadership are all saying, what's our AI story? So they are, it's this pull, and that's very difficult because AI, particularly in a legal context, it's very hard to make it work at scale. So I think you can get some pilots going on. I think the legal world has more pilots and quantists right at the moment, because there's just a lot of piloting going on. But if I was to say the key steps to successful implementation. I mean, I have the benefit now. I'm up to my... So on Friday, I'll speak at my 14th Law Firm Partners Conference on AI.

29:15Nick Abrahams:And then next week, I'm at my 15th Law Firm Partners Conference on AI. So I get to go into these firms and look at what they're doing. And the ones that do it well, I think very much problem-led, very much leadership. Like it's very interesting. If the managing partner wants to talk to me before they approve me for the partners conference, that is a real indicator that this is really important, their AI strategy. Whereas if it's not the managing partner, if it's, you know, someone, you know, in marketing or something, you know, that's not bad, but it just means that, you know, it's not a critical path issue for the managing partner.

29:55Nick Abrahams:I think it should be. I think leadership is critical. And then not only leadership, you know, the very senior leadership, but leadership at the partner level. So I think it's about leadership. And then it's about, so Boston Consulting Group has this stat, which I totally agree with, which is when you think about an AI project, think about 30 % of the budget being the tools and the data preparation. and 70 % of the budget being on change management and training. Because I think that's really where this stuff falls apart. We cannot expect time-poor lawyers, whether they're in-house or in private practice, we cannot expect that they've got time to just go in and noodle about with an unbelievable piece of technology, which might have an enormous amount of capability, but they don't have the time to just go and spend a couple of hours a day on that.

30:52Nick Abrahams:So we've got to give them a pathway to success. And that's where it gets back to, you know, having this specific idea. So I think, you know, it's about having that training, being able to show them this is why it works. I mean, Rob, one of the problems that we have with AI is it's very different to old pre-AI technology. If you rolled out a new content management system, you would guarantee that was going to be successful because you would turn off the old content management system. So the choices were not there. You know, if you're going to do a new time recording system, you turn off the old one, so they had to use the new one.

31:30Nick Abrahams:That doesn't happen with AI. It's like it's just all this additional functionality. You should, you know, try this, see what you can do with it. So we don't turn anything off. So it's an odd situation, and that's why I think we need to have a really clear proposition for all lawyers in-house and improv practice say, you know, you should use it for X, Y, and Z. I think there's a couple of key areas where it's working well, but I've spoken a lot, so I'll throw back to you.

31:57Gregory S. D. Smith:No, I think it's great. You know, like anything, and I really like that you doubled down on the change management and training piece because it's so important. You know, you need the people who are going to be using this technology to almost have that aha moment, and they see it because everyone's favorite radio station is WIFTFM, right? What's in it for me? I think if they can see that, if they can see that, you know, rather than just all these buzzwords, efficiency, gains, drafting, speed improvement, let's maybe start small. Let's start with an incremental one thing and see, and they see the value, how that directly impacts their life.

32:33Gregory S. D. Smith:Maybe they get that hour back through using this technology that allows them to do bath time if they're at midlife and maybe raising an impact. Maybe that means they don't have to do those Saturdays that they've blocked out for the last six months of their lives because they've been heavy lifting on something. And once you start doing that as part of the change management training and genuine benefits to them, I think adoption levels go high. And you have to really double down on that. And the issue is at the moment is we're so much being chucked out of people. And you say these people are time poor.

32:57Gregory S. D. Smith:They've got billable hour targets. They've got pressures within their law firms. And they're saying, got to use this. And there's a disconnect there. And all the people that get it, like yourself and others, doubling down on the change management and the training side, because you can go and buy the best piece of technology out there. But without that piece, you're basically wasting dollars, wasting pounds, wasting whatever currency you're in. because your adoption levels are not where you need them to be. So I really like you highlighting that point. Kind of a flip question. You've probably answered it already, but if you wanted to share any more thoughts around pitfalls that the in-house teams and law firms go into when adopting AI.

33:31Gregory S. D. Smith:I know you've talked about sort of really focusing on the problem specifically, but are there any other common or less obvious pitfalls that you've seen that's worth highlighting to our audience?

33:39Nick Abrahams:Yeah. So look, I think, look, this might not play terribly well to some folks out there. But I'm always a little suspect when people say they're rolling out, particularly a really serious tool, to 100 % of lawyers. You know, the reality is, I mean, I've worked with so many law firms now, you know, you don't get 100 % of uptake very quickly. And so, you know, what we see is sort of 15 % to 20%, those sort of early adopters and your super user. If you look at, I mean, the way the numbers skew, and there's some great research out on this, you know, your super users can really skew your average numbers fantastically because, you know, we can see there was one piece of research that came out very recently which showed the super users of, and it was actually just Copile, frankly.

34:38Nick Abrahams:I don't mean that in a bad way. Copile is, you know, a fine tool. But so the super users were saving, you know, let's say something like 15 or 17 hours a week. And, you know, then you had the medium users who were like saving three or four hours a week. And then, you know, the poor user was saving an hour a week. So, you know, if you think about that, how do you create, you know, a good path within your firm when you're rolling out a tool to make sure you're getting value for money? because I think, you know, these tools are expensive and you've got to do a lot of training, I think, to get value out of them.

35:15Nick Abrahams:And so I'm much, I feel much more comfortable that people say, you know what, we've rolled out, you know, whatever, you know, whatever tool it is to 20%, 30 % or 40 % or something. And here's where we got to and here's, you know, here's what we learned. And now we're going to double down and we're going to, you know, roll it out to 100%. But I think I do wonder with, you know, organizations say we're rolling this to 100%, you know, just is there a lot of money that's being left on the table by doing that? That would be sort of one of my big concerns. Yeah.

35:51Gregory S. D. Smith:And again, another great valid point. And thanks for sharing that. I know we're sort of doubling down on this here, but just given your expertise and you talk so much about AI, I just want to get your view. And I know you don't sort of hold back because there is huge excitement surrounding AI at the moment. But from your perspective, Nick, where is the biggest gap between AI hype and the operating of it in reality? I know you've touched on a bit about still the need for human lawyering, but really want to give you a chance to just sort of hit us between the eyes in terms of the hype versus operating reality.

36:24Nick Abrahams:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Look, and don't get me wrong. Like, I think it's capable of incredible things. And, you know, particularly, obviously, Claude is super exciting right now. and some of the capabilities of Claude is really impressive. And this whole SaaS apocalypse idea that as we see the foundation models, like Anthropic, say, actually, we want to be in the legal game. I think that is cause for concern because they are so good. But there's actually a great piece of research that came out, which it's Anthropic's own report. And it shows the number of, or it shows the, basically, the percentage of calls for their agentic solution.

37:13Nick Abrahams:Oh, my God, agentic. Everyone loves talking about agentic. I mean, that is really, you know, look, I could be wrong. I've seen one agentic solution work in the legal space, and that was Accenture's in-house agentic solution. And that's pretty good, but they're good at that because they have invested an awful lot of money in understanding what their negotiation parameters are and so forth. And the agentic solution just sort of was a nice fit on top of that. But I think agentic, if you look at, this is Anthropik's own data. And so I think the percentage of calls on their agentic solution for legal, it's like 0.7 of a percent or something.

38:00Nick Abrahams:The percentage of the calls for their agentic solution for software is 50%. So basically, I mean, Agentec works incredibly well. If you're a software developer, like, you know, if this was, you know, if I was a software developer and I was talking as a senior software developer to junior software developers, I'd be like, I'm not sure the future is super rosy. I don't know what happens, but, you know, that is a job that is going to change very significantly and the AI can do a lot of what we thought, you know, what we needed programs for. Now, presumably, everyone levels up, so that's good. But I think Agentic is overhyped right at the moment.

38:45Nick Abrahams:And, you know, I do think this idea of, you know, that somehow lawyers become less relevant. I see AI as making the world a more complicated place. and lawyers have always thrived on complexity. And so, you know, I mentioned this idea of complaints and disputes. I think that's going to be a great area. I've got a client of mine, big food company. So before ChatGPT, so before November 2022, they would get a couple of dozen complaints a week, all of them a couple of paragraphs long, all of them said, you know, your product was bad because of XYZ reason. all of them solved with a 75 % off voucher for your next purchase.

39:32Nick Abrahams:Literally just a process, just send the voucher, everyone's fine. Since ChatGPT, number of complaints have stayed the same, a couple of dozen a week, but the length has gone from two paragraphs to two pages. And the claims are now breaches of consumer law, asking for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. And they're not getting solved by a 75 % off voucher. There's a lot of expectation that they're going to get something significant. And so now the poor in-house legal team has to get involved and try to solve this issue. So, yeah, I do think, you know, if particularly to the junior lawyers out there and law students and so forth, don't buy that, you know, there's no jobs for lawyers in the future.

40:20Nick Abrahams:because I think this world is going to get pretty weird and lawyers have a way of finding great opportunities. I think we all need to be on top of the idea of DQ, so your digital intelligence is critical now more than ever. Every lawyer should understand how to use the AI and we can use it to enhance what we do and make us great at the services that we provide to our clients. but I don't think that the robo lawyer is coming anytime soon.

40:51Gregory S. D. Smith:I think it's such great advice. You know, I always say CCL, be curious and continuously be learning. I think we all need to be alive to all of that in the current world we live. I mean, going back to if you were back in a law firm today,

41:04Nick Abrahams:you're around your board members, you're around other law firm leaders.

41:07Gregory S. D. Smith:What are you thinking about looking at 2026 and beyond? What strategic decisions do you think they should be making?

41:13Nick Abrahams:Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. something I work with a lot with law firms, you know, at the strategy level. So what I like to do is, so what everyone wants to talk to me about right at the moment, I've written some stuff on this and I'm researching it quite heavily now, is what is the impact on pricing from law firms as a result of that? Everyone is super excited. Actually, if you want to generate some pretty spicy numbers on LinkedIn, you just put out a post, you know, and take one side of it. You know, I think that, you know, law firm fries are going to go down, or I think they're not going to go down.

41:54Nick Abrahams:And you will get, you'll get a lot of traffic on that because everyone's got a view. And so I think that, well, firstly, we need to address that issue with clients immediately. because clients, and there's some stats out there that are saying, you know, 80 % of clients think that law firms are making, you know, win, well, maybe not win for profits, but they're making great efficiency gains and productivity gains by using AI. So to basically the client whom you are the trusted advisor for thinks that you are using technology to make bank off them. So that's not great so every firm needs to have a really solid communication strategy with clients around ai i don't think every partner certainly not every person within the firm should be talking about the firm's ai strategy because it's a very nuanced discussion because what happens is you know people who don't necessarily understand the full game will go yes the firm is using ai we you know we love ai and we're using it we're making great great advances with it so that's what they'll lead because they think that's what the client wants to hear.

43:05Nick Abrahams:So the client hears that, but all I hear is, well, that means that my fee should go down. And in fact, one of the big four had a real problem because they were boasting a lot about how great they were with AI. And then their clients got pretty antsy. And so they then had to go and say they were reducing their audit fees because they were so good at AI. But that was because they'd gone out and trumpeted, you know, So be very careful with, I think, that messaging. You want to show that you are using it responsibly and you are aware of what's going on. But the reality is I don't think anyone's making win for profits of using AI.

43:50Nick Abrahams:For most law firms, it's basically still an investment proposition. So I think you need to communicate that to clients. And then the next thing that clients hear is, well, does that mean you're training your AI on my data? Because I don't want you to do that. And you would be surprised at the number of law firms that haven't got their heads around that idea that, hang on, you can't point an LLM at a large unstructured database like a CMS and let it learn off that. I mean, you don't own that data. You don't have the rights guaranteed. You won't have in your previous versions of letters of engagement.

44:27Nick Abrahams:You will not have maintained the right to train an LLM. So that's really important to make it clear to the client that you're not using their data to train your AI. It's a problem for law firms because it really reduces your data set that you can train on. But that's really important. So that's my first thing, which is let's get the relationship. And then what we must say to the clients is, and this is where I've been doing a lot of work, is where we find opportunities, we will share them with you from a financial point of view. So lots of interest in that. So that's sort of the discussion with clients.

45:08Nick Abrahams:That's first and foremost. Then if we're looking strategically, so I think I call it just the professional transformation model, professional services transformation model. And so what we can do, so luckily we're not the first to have experienced what's just about to happen to us because we've seen, you know, the big four used to be known for accounting and tax advice, right? And now they're not. They're largely, you know, technology implementers. And so, you know, effectively you've seen the big four have, you know, because technology has come in and made the provision of the services that they traditionally used to do, so generally audit and tax-related services and, you know, accounting, they've seen technology, you know, really decrease the value proposition there.

46:05Nick Abrahams:And so, you know, it's almost gone from that 70 % of their revenue or even more was that sort of services revenue is now down for most of the big four to 30 % or less. And so the bulk of their revenue now comes from, you know, things like, you know, higher level consulting and technology implementation. So you've got that, we can look to that and platform type sales. So they've got solutions that sit on top of platforms. So we can look to that as an example. We can also look to what happened to the big higher-end consulting firms, so the McKinsey's, the BCG's. So they very much used to be about hourly rate consulting.

46:46Nick Abrahams:Now they're about outcomes. So you can't get McKinsey to do a gig for you on an hourly rate. Now, they effectively only turn, you know, turn the engine on if they get a piece of the action. So, you know, if they can get, you know, they'll run your digital strategy team for, you know, a couple of years, but they get, you know, X percentage of the upside that they create in the revenue model. So, so I think that's what we've got to look to. We need to look at how, how the revenue models change as you move from pure services to more platform and more outcome-based solutions. And then I think we also need to recognise that we're moving from a pyramid-type model, so partners at the top and more leverage as we come down through into the junior lawyer ranks.

47:39Nick Abrahams:So I think we're moving from that into a cylinder. And so the cylinder will be very much, we've got partners, as I said, I think it's still great gigs ahead for lawyers, but you've got partners, you've got senior lawyers, they are going to still be necessary and you'll have junior lawyers. And then, you know, as well in the cylinder, we'll have, you know, more people who are technology-capable folks who are helping us out and perhaps more specific domain experts as well. So, yeah, they're the sorts of things that I talk to law firms about when I do strategy work.

48:14Gregory S. D. Smith:And when I put my talent and recruiting hat on, And I think that's exciting because new career opportunities within the profession come about. And if nothing changes, nothing changes. But actually, this is exciting change. And career paths that perhaps weren't available will now be available. And I think that is hugely, hugely exciting. I want to talk about mindset now because I think it's very important in all of business careers. Given everything that's going on, the AI revolution, all of the headlines, et cetera, et cetera, what's the mind shift you think lawyers of the future and now need to have to ensure that they

48:54Nick Abrahams:are commercially aware in this ai evolving world yeah yeah so um so my with my research this has been you know a lot of the subject of my research at bond university so i interviewed over 200 sort of senior business leaders and senior legal leaders so global general counsels and you know founders and CEOs of businesses to try to understand what was it that made for successful lawyers because my thesis was that you know what if we can figure that out then we can sort of then see what what it takes to be a successful lawyer in the future and what is fascinating is that across those 200 users of lawyers, very few of them talked about knowing the law.

49:44Nick Abrahams:That was just table stakes, right? That didn't differentiate anyone. It wasn't like, oh, gee, he really, or she knew a lot more law than the other people. It wasn't even discussed as what set people apart. What set lawyers apart was communication. Communication was just this critical skill. I'd say it edged on disturbing how many people said, well, this person's just a great communicator. They're not condescending. They do stuff when they say they're going to do it. If it's late, they'll tell me about it. You don't have to go to law school for four or five years to learn that right that's a that's a great skill that we can all do and we can all be great at and i think too this is this a big opportunity for particularly younger generations so my belief is that um the way we communicate has changed significantly across age demographics so you know there are people uh you know the classic example is if you want to terrify someone under the age of 30, ask them to answer a ringing phone.

51:04Nick Abrahams:They're not going to do it. No, you know, in my day, we would answer a phone even when we didn't know who was on the other side of it. We're very brave. But happy someone's calling. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that's not the way younger generations think. So, you know, there's some research that came out that said if you call someone under the age of 30, their immediate response is anger because they think that you think they've got nothing better to do than to listen to your call. Now, for many people, including me, I've always thought, well, you know, a call is good because your, you know, email is sort of, you know, you get a bit caught up.

51:42Nick Abrahams:Why don't we just have a quick call to chat about that? So that is a particular way of communicating that I think, you know, is a good idea. But that doesn't work necessarily for people under the age of 30. So I think with communication, I think it's really critical that we need to have our communication style match the person who we are communicating with. And we need to take ownership of that. We can't expect them to want to, you know, come up to what or do what we like doing. We have to recognise, okay, they like communicating. Maybe they, you know, they love communicating online. There's a great piece of research where 45 % of people under the age of 40 said they felt more themselves online than offline because they're so comfortable in that online environment.

52:32Nick Abrahams:So I think that's going to be a challenge, but it's a huge opportunity because you think, you know, the older people in the law, they won't necessarily be super alive to this. And so great opportunities there for younger folks to go, you know what, I understand how to communicate in ways that people like. So communication is a critical thing. I think the other thing that came out was adaptability. So what stood people apart, so what stood successful lawyers apart was the ability to adapt to different environments and different sets of people and in different technologies and so forth. And so there's a wonderful, it's a lawyer who I've had the privilege of coaching for a while and she was a senior associate at one of the big immigration law firms here during COVID.

53:35Nick Abrahams:And so she's 28, it's COVID, immigration law falls off a cliff because we close our borders. So there's no work, so she gets laid off. And when you're 28 and a lawyer, that's a disaster. But she decides to start her own law firm. And that's a pretty bold move, but that's the sort of person she is. She starts her own law firm. And then she realises that, you know, she needs a point of difference. And so she decides to go on TikTok and do immigration law TikTok content. So we roll forward four years after that, and she has 3 million followers on TikTok, and she has 62 people working in that law firm.

54:20Nick Abrahams:So I'm not saying everyone needs to get on TikTok, but that's the sort of opportunity. You adapt and you recognise what are your core skills and what is it about you that makes you you? because that's the only actual real advantage that you have, that you are you. So figure out what you can do and then you bring that to bear. So I think that ability to communicate and to be adaptable. And then I do think that this mindset around embracing digital intelligence. I'm a huge believer in this idea that you need to be able to understand, and relate to and collaborate with almost human level AI. And I think, cause that's sort of where it's at right at the moment.

55:09Nick Abrahams:I mean, it's incredible what it can do. And so I encourage all lawyers, you know, whatever level they are to embrace that idea of digital intelligence.

55:18Gregory S. D. Smith:Such an important point. And generally all the points that you mentioned there, particularly about the lady that went on and set up her own TikTok. I talk a lot about COI. Cause a lot of people focus on ROI, the return on investment. I always talk about the cost of inaction. You know, there's a huge cost of inaction there to not going where the puck is and meeting people and TikTok as a platform and the opportunities that go with that. And then I also talk about having a WAV strategy, which is either, you know, you like writing, double down on W. You like audio, double down on podcasting. You like video, double down on your video.

55:49Gregory S. D. Smith:And clearly they've got a video, double down it, three million, grown a law firm, used the benefit of a COI and implement it. Loved it. And collaboration is domination. So couldn't agree more. fascinating insights talking my language i want to stick on the communication piece briefly yeah because you know you talked about the accidental lawyer and you know it's wonderful what you've been doing but how have you found actually communicating with humor can that sometimes be a more powerful way to communicate during your keynote presentations talk us a little

56:16Nick Abrahams:bit about that yeah yeah i mean yeah it's i mean it's just it's just always been what i do frankly I just, and so I, look, I don't take myself very seriously. And so that's been very helpful. You know, over time, if I look back on my career in the early years, it was not great because I was, you know, more goofy than perhaps was appropriate. And, you know, not in a, you know, out and out stupid way. But, you know, I just, you know, it wasn't ideal. I think I had a, you know, I've had several people say to me, you know, you really need to learn how to read a room. And so that's, you know, and that, you know, sort of fair enough, I guess.

57:02Nick Abrahams:But I feel like I can, you know, it's something that I've been able to do and that is to be able to get a message across using humour. But that's not the way everyone has to do it. I mean, that just happens to be the way that I do it. And in my case, it's usually sort of self-deprecating and so forth. but that's just me and we don't, you know, the last thing the world needs is any more of me. But I think if you figure out, you know, I've been lucky with all of the things that I've done. It hasn't happened because I've done them. I've managed to convince other people that this would be a jolly quest, that if we should all get together and we should start, you know, an alternative law firm.

57:51Nick Abrahams:Now, you know, how I managed to convince, you know, my partners at Norton Rose that they should allow me to do this as a side hustle, but also my co-founders, you know, and I've been super lucky with my co-founders at Warpup. They are incredible. Similarly with Parker, you know, I found a terrific person to collaborate with there with the bond work that I've done. So I think, you know, that ability, maybe it's just, you know, there's a bit of storytelling in there. and lawyers aren't necessarily great at storytelling and trying to pitch a vision because we work in facts. And so, you know, and the lawyer and the salesperson generally don't get along terribly well because the lawyer thinks the salesperson is, you know, plays too fast to lose.

58:41Nick Abrahams:But the reality is, you know, we would have no companies if the sales process was run by lawyers. So I think, you know, having that, one of the courses that I run at Bond University, it's called Future Ready Leadership. And there's a whole range of really great videos that I've done interviews. One of them is with one of my old film schoolmates, a guy called Rawson Thurber. And Rawson is incredible. So he wrote and directed Dodgeball and Where the Millers and many of the Rocks films. And he's a lovely, lovely human being. But I interview him to get a sense of how to pitch and how lawyers can pitch.

59:27Nick Abrahams:And it's just remarkable because he talks about, you know, this idea of how when you're pitching, you are just telling a story. It's just a story. And that story should have a beginning, middle and an end. And, you know, you should have a catch. you know it's sort of he reduces it to to some very simple tactics and you know he his most recent film is 200 million dollars the budget and he won that on a pitch you know on a one-hour pitch so yeah i think that um you know they're the sorts of things to really focus on i love that

1:00:01Gregory S. D. Smith:so many great lessons and wisdom shared again i love that you talked about the importance of team with all of the things that you're involved with i always say we is greater than me and i think if You can go out and find these people. You can go so much further together. And yeah, you're right. The facts tell, but it's those stories that ultimately are going to sell and get people convinced. And it may sound jovial, but there's a reason why, you know, I'm a dad. I've got a five-year-old. There's a reason bedtime books start with once upon a time. You know, it's those first three words, you know, and in business sense, I remember someone said, you're going to start your presentations.

1:00:33Gregory S. D. Smith:Remember three words. When I was, no one cares that it's Rob Hanna, I'm this, that, and the other. Get to the story. Get them hooked within three words. And I think having that hook particularly or whatever you want to use is so compelling. So, yeah, I love that you talked about that. And we talked about off air, just before I let you go, a couple of final questions about your LinkedIn learning courses. Because, you know, you're full of knowledge, sharing your knowledge, which I think is one of the best things you can do. Again, I say very openly, one of my mentors said to me, before we retired, Rob, I want to empty my head before I'm dead.

1:01:00Gregory S. D. Smith:And I thought it was such a great legacy and way to look at life. But tell folks about your LinkedIn learning courses and the stuff you're getting up to.

1:01:08Nick Abrahams:Thank you. can I say your mentor is incredibly wise it's great it's a great saying empty my head before I'm dead it's it you know it is yeah it gets unusual once you get to a certain level of stuff that you've done and you're just like you sit in meetings or you're sitting with people like oh my gosh you could just do that and this and it's just you know there's just some ideas that you have and so the LinkedIn learning course was really so one of the one of the concerns I have is that But lawyers particularly are fearful of AI. And, you know, and it's very easy to be sceptical. And, you know, obviously we've had, you know, some, well, a lot.

1:01:50Nick Abrahams:There's now 300 cases around the world of incorrect citations being submitted to courts. You know, we've got the, you know, the court of the lost city of Atlantis being cited. And, you know, that's so people are like, oh, so we shouldn't use it because it gets stuff wrong. And I worry about that. I do worry that lawyers are sort of tut-tutting about it. And so I decided to work with LinkedIn to make a course that would be super easy and you don't need to be technical and it's all just screen sharing so you don't have to look at me, so that's helpful. And it's just taking people through a very, very easy onboarding process just so people can see how great this stuff is.

1:02:33Nick Abrahams:And so here's a story. So the LinkedIn Learning Course. So how it honestly came about, Rob, was so I use ChatGPT. I mean, I started with ChatGPT a long time ago. I know people say you should use Claw, you should use Gemini, you should use whatever. Anyway, I use ChatGPT just because that's what I use and now knows so much about me because it's got, you know, thousands and thousands of prompts in there. So it's very helpful. And so I use it for each of my different businesses. And so in projects, so in these solutions, you have what's called projects. And so I have like 10 or 12 projects within ChatGPT for each of my different businesses.

1:03:17Nick Abrahams:And I use it to coach me because I think what is weird is, so we all recognize that to be a great sports person, you have a coach. It doesn't matter how great you get, you still have a coach. and yet in business or law you don't have a coach you just sort of still you know you just sort of go around yourself and so one of the great advantages of AI is it's the most inexpensive coach in the world and so I will get it to coach me in my various businesses and literally I said to it this is in my Bond University visit I have a joint venture with Bond and we have these four courses and I said to ChatGPT I said so so we've had good traction with these courses in Australia and how could I get more traction overseas with this same content and ChatGPT gave me ten ideas number nine was you could do a LinkedIn learning course and I'm like that's not a bad idea I hadn't really thought about that before and so I then went down the rabbit hole took me about four months to So, you know, I got in touch with the LinkedIn people.

1:04:25Nick Abrahams:They're awesome to deal with. And then we got it live. And, yeah, so it's done. It's got like 3 ,000 learners have done it. And it's all very quick. You know, it just takes an hour. And it's really just about taking people from not – I mean, if you can already use ChatGPD, then don't bother about it. But if you're scared of it, then, you know, it's super simple and just get on. And within an hour, you'll be, you know, you'll be rampaging.

1:04:50Gregory S. D. Smith:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that you make a good point about, you know, I always say, you know, AI is basically putting a coach in everyone's pocket. You know, we have that, you know, hopefully more accessible and it's, you know, it's, it's great, isn't it? Because, you know, no good, no matter how good we think we may or may not be having someone to bounce off ideas or just to pick out 10 ideas like that. And even if just one or two of them just spark something, that's given you one or two in such a quick way that enables you to push forward in your business in whatever endeavors you've got.

1:05:17Gregory S. D. Smith:Love it. Okay. This has been an absolute masterclass, as I knew it was going to be. So before I let you go, as a final question, what is the most valuable leadership lesson you've learned from inside a global law firm pushing for innovation?

1:05:32Nick Abrahams:I think it's the relationships and the communication. So, you know, business, whether it's a law firm, whether it's, you know, a startup, whatever it is, is about trust. and so you need to be able to convince people that you are worthy of their trust and you need to make them look good as a result of it. So I think within a law firm, they're just making sure you build those relationships and you sort of, you know, relationships don't get built by cups of coffee. relationships get built by adding value to people so how can you just continue to add value to people's lives and whether that's you know helping them out with whatever it is you know we're all busy we would all prefer to not have to help out other people but and that was actually one of the great things we learned at film school which was if you can help someone you should help someone and that's maybe that if i was to reduce probably my learning for everything in business It probably comes down to that, which is if at any stage you can help someone, then you should help them.

1:06:50Nick Abrahams:And you just never know how that might return to you. But if I look at my legal practice, I was lucky with that. I had some wonderful clients. And that just happened because I just gave a lot of free advice over decades. And that created a sea of goodwill around me. and, you know, so people would refer other people to me. So, yeah, maybe just get simple and say, you know, if you can help someone, you know, then do because you never know where it might land.

1:07:25Gregory S. D. Smith:Yeah, send the elevator back down. You know, once you reach, go on and teach. And it's so true. I talk a lot about the importance of relationship capital throughout your career. You know, I always say contacts are good, but actually it's the relationships that pay. You know, you can know all these great people, but how are you nurturing and fostering these relationships and sprinkling value on them and being a good human and all of this goodwill, like you say, the relationship after you build up, then it sort of comes pouring in. Maybe not in a year's time, maybe in 10 years' time, but whatever.

1:07:52Gregory S. D. Smith:Good things happen to good people doing good things. And this has been a good, actually good's not the right word, great conversation there. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about your career, your background, and all the work that you have and currently have been doing. So I'm sure you've inspired a lot of our listeners and watchers today. If they want to know more or indeed get in touch, Feel free to share any websites or any social media handles linked to what you're getting up to. We'll also share them with this special episode for you too.

1:08:18Nick Abrahams:Oh, fantastic. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean, just, you know, anyone just, you know, contact me on LinkedIn. I'm more than happy to chat to people and try to, you know, give them a steer on things if I can. So, yeah, LinkedIn is sort of my thing. But I'm not, you know, I'm not fighting with people all the time on LinkedIn, just from time.

1:08:36Gregory S. D. Smith:Just some of the time.

1:08:37Nick Abrahams:Normally, I'm humbled and honored to be talking about something.

1:08:43Gregory S. D. Smith:Yeah, well, thank you for going easy on me over the mics today, Nick. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure finally having you on the Legally Speaking Podcast, sponsored by Clio. Wishing you lots of continued success with all of your future pursuits. But from 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.