LegalTechTalk 2026: The Rise of the Legal Tech Creator - Holly Cope - E04

0:00Holly Cope:What happens when the brightest minds in legal, technology and innovation come together to shape the future of our profession? Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast Legal Tech Talk 2026 miniseries. As the UK's number one legal podcast and show ranked in the top 1 % of podcasts globally, we're delighted to be returning as the official media partner for Legal Tech Talk for the third time. Having supported this event since the beginning, we've witnessed firsthand how it has become Europe's largest legal technology conference, bringing together the people, ideas and innovations transforming the legal industry.

0:37Holly Cope:Across this special series, we'll be speaking with some of the world's leading legal professionals, founders, technologists, change makers to explore what's next for law. Because our mission remains the same, inspiring legal minds, transforming legal futures. Let's get into it.

0:58Holly Cope:Hello everyone and welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio, recording live here at Legal Tech Talk 2026 in London. Joining me now is a dear friend and special guest, returning guest to the show. Please kindly introduce yourself, name, title, and organization and show. Woohoo, I'm very excited to be here. My name is Holly Cope. I have a podcast called More Than a Lawyer, which Rob has been also a special guest on. And his episode is absolutely epic. Just an okay there. And I also do AI training and audits for legal teams and law firms. In addition, I've literally started that business like a month ago.

1:44FYI. But yeah, that's basically what I do.

1:46Holly Cope:And you've just been doing such great educational work in the world of the legal tech community for so long now and ranked as number one. And just, yeah, just a great friend and great collaborator and doing amazing work in this space. This year's theme of Legal Tech Talk has been a lot around transformation. So in your view, what has been the biggest shift in the legal industry right now that legal leaders can no longer afford to ignore? Oh, my gosh. Rob, you kill me every year, man. and you you're at the forefront of this stuff having the conversations and seeing it so what what shift are you seeing that you think people really need to pay attention to before it escapes them i think the interesting conversations that i've been having this year which are different from the ones i was having last year so last year it was a lot about okay what tools can we use um What can we adopt?

2:40And this year it's about what is our AI strategy going to be? And the interesting thing is I moderated a private roundtable. So it was like heads of legal for like huge companies and innovation heads for large law firms. And it was absolutely fascinating listening to them because they were saying that basically they can't think like three or five years ahead. They can't even really think 12 months ahead because it's kind of tricky. The tools that they're using now are not necessarily the tools that they're going to be using in two years' time. So I think it's about strategy and thinking what is that strategy.

3:20And another thing that comes kind of under that is the return on investment. I think people are thinking more about what is the return on investment going to be in implementing that AI. Whereas last year it was like, what can we do? Let's do it now. Let's work as fast as possible. but now they're like sitting back thinking, right, what is our ROI going to be on this? And again, part of the conversation that I moderated, they were saying in actual fact, we cannot even quantify an ROI because I think the key thing is that monetarily, it's hard to come up with because things are happening so rapidly and fast and stuff.

4:01So their ROI, all they can just look at is how many people are adopting, how many team members are actually applying this AI. And that's our return on investment for now. But that's not even really a metric as such. But anyway, it's super interesting. This is what I'm hearing.

4:18Holly Cope:Yeah, like you said, there has been a real shift over the 12 months from what we were talking about then to where the focus is now. In terms of yourself, what's a problem or a challenge in the legal industry that you're most passionate about solving? And why should people care? Yeah, yeah. It's not even frustrating to me, to be honest. It's just more of an education factor is that people are like, oh, yeah, most people I speak to are still like, oh, yeah, AI isn't trustworthy. It hallucinates. It makes things up. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you have to ask it the right questions, you know.

4:54Holly Cope:Yeah. And also, I know we can't avoid these hallucinations and things, but not 100 % anyway. But it's about understanding the mindset of the AI. And I think that's what people are going to have to learn about now. How does the AI function and work? What is it programmed to be like? And then let's actually use it and take its strengths as opposed to being like, oh, it's no good. It's not doing this. So that's a challenge, I guess. And it's making that investment in time to learn it, to improve, to, like you say, putting the right inputs, understanding, and the whole mindset shift of rather than just being, oh, it hallucinates and looking at the problem.

5:32Holly Cope:It's actually like there could be loads of opportunities here if you really do invest that time and get the best out of it. We're talking a lot about tech. We're at Legal Tech Talk. You've obviously been a repurning media partner, done lots of great content, loads of great conversations. And that's human, right? That's human connection. So when we look at technology, automation, innovation, but if we get this right, what will be the real human impact? How is this going to improve the overall life of lawyers, legal clients, and ultimately society? Oh, my gosh. This is the million-dollar question, isn't it?

6:01Holly Cope:Yeah. Michael, it was going to happen. I think it's changing our lives massively in more of a way than people actually realize. The more that I learn about AI, the more conversations I have, the more I'm like, oh my goodness, I don't think people know what's coming. It's huge. And, I mean, how is it going to impact us? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I think the obvious answer is to say, oh, it's going to make us more efficient. It's going to make us work better and be more human. But I think, yeah, that will probably happen. But honestly, I really, really don't know. I think there's controversial.

6:43I think there's probably going to be less lawyers in the future. I think we need to start pivoting. Lawyers need to start thinking. Like, for example, I had a conversation with a GC today, and he's looking for a new role. and I said to him, have you thought about actually specialising in being a GC for a legal tech company? And he went, no, it's not occurred to me. And I'm like, people need to start thinking a little bit outside the box and think where is the market going? Let's specialise, let's pivot. So this is what I think people need to start doing.

7:17Holly Cope:Okay, action question now. Hold that thought. You've got the attention of every law firm leader, general counsel, legal professional, legal ops person, listening, watching this podcast right now. Now, what's one action they should take in the next 90 days to better prepare for the future? One action. Whoa. Okay. Right. I've got no doubts about this because it changed my life. And I'm not even a lawyer. But if you could take one thing that you do in your day-to-day work and think, I'm going to focus on that thing. It could be, I need to learn how to manage my emails. I need to learn how to write a LinkedIn post better.

8:00One thing and then learn how AI can solve that thing for you. And just focus on one thing and just play around with it. I think that could be the best thing to do because it snowballs from there. Then you start learning how to prompt. You start learning how to do loads of different things. You start learning how it might hallucinate. You start learning what to actually feed it. I think that's what I did. I thought, I'm going to solve one problem in my business using AI. I'm not going to overwhelm myself thinking I'm going to have to do X, Y, and Z and learn loads of different things. I'm going to solve one problem.

8:33And that's when it snowballed for me because I thought, wow, this is incredible. This is what it does. I've solved this one problem. Right, the next one. And you build up that curiosity and that excitement from doing that one thing. I say that's what would transform in 90 days somebody's life for sure.

8:50Holly Cope:And it compounds, doesn't it, that one thing over time. Okay, if listeners want to know more about you, we'll come to that in a moment, but I want to know one mindset, one behavior or skill you would encourage the leaders of tomorrow to double down on, what would it be and what's going to help them separate from the others? One skill, mindset or behavior? Okay, so like one of those things. Yeah, what would it be that's going to separate them as a leader of the future versus everyone else? Whoa, okay, right. I'm getting this from my panel conversation that I had yesterday, which was about a similar topic.

9:29What is going to separate the leaders from the laggards? That was the title. It was fantastic. And I think the mindset that you need to have is basically don't overwhelm yourself with are we behind? How do we catch up in terms of like AI and adoption and everything like this? think about what can we do to help our people in the next let's say six months how can we get them on board start with the humans first get them into ai get them curious get them experimenting and just go step by step i think that's that's the mindset as opposed to thinking oh my gosh what are we going to do in a year's time what are we going to do two years time just just look at look at today look at tomorrow look at the next six months and go step by step do not be overwhelmed that that's the mindset people need to have don't get this shiny what's it

10:23Holly Cope:shiny penny yeah shiny objects in trying to chase everything i think you're right i think you want to have um imperfect action over perfect inaction right actually start trying to to look at things and move forward and not get yeah in comparison of thief of joy all of that good stuff couldn't agree more um it's been a blast it's always fun having you on the league speaking podcast we love having you as a returning guest if folks have been living under a rock and don't know where to find you please tell them where they can find you shout out your show shout out the stuff you're working on any websites any social media handles we'll also show this episode for you too thanks rob you're absolutely hilarious and you know the funniest thing is you're more funny like off off camera off podcast you're even funnier i love it paid to say that bit so thank you so much for having me on as always honestly it's so such fun something i look forward to every year so thank you so much um people can find me the best place to find me is literally linkedin it's yeah as always it's where i hang out um i don't hang out anywhere else there we go so follow holly on linkedin there thanks so much for joining me from all of us here recording live at legal tech talk 2026 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.

11:46Holly Cope:Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There's a link to join our community there. Over and out.