LegalTechTalk Uncovered 2025 - Shennind Awat-Ranai & Maria Madara - E20

0:00Maria Madara:Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast Legal Tech Talk Uncovered Mini Series 2025 sponsored by Clio. We're back with our red mic for a behind-the-scenes series all about legal innovation at Europe's largest legal tech event. So we're granted access to meet some of the greatest speakers, sponsors, brands in the whole legal tech world. We've got 300 speakers with over 70 sessions with over 4 ,000 attendees from all across the globe hitting us here over the next two days at Legal Tech Talk live in London. From AI to access to justice to smart compliance, you name it, we're covering it all. This isn't just another conversation or another conference.

0:41Maria Madara:It's a blueprint for community and transformation. So buckle up. We're speaking with some incredible people about policy change, change makers, legal innovation and so much more. Over and out. Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast live here at Legal Tech Talk. I am joined by Shen from Core Maxwell.

1:03Shennind Awat-Ranai:And Maria from Core Maxwell as well.

1:05Maria Madara:Absolutely. And we're big fans of Core Maxwell and indeed Mandeep, the founder, who's a dear friend of mine as well. Let's get into it then. What's one thing you would describe You've most enjoyed about Legal Tech Talk? I think it's just seeing a lot of the law firms Come to terms with the fact that They're going to need to change, you know And I think a lot of them are realizing it now And it's better late than never So yeah

1:31Shennind Awat-Ranai:Yeah, and I think just to go off the back of what Shen said I think it's the acceptance That this is the way forward And the notion that I think everyone is starting to feel that if you don't if you don't keep up with the tech and the software that you're going to get left behind so um i think especially for us at core maxwell like we you know mandy very well she's so forward thinking in terms of tech and so that's we're really on the front foot on that so it's nice to see that like everyone is kind of adopting that willingness to change and to take on new tech.

2:09Maria Madara:And that's right, because you're a modern firm. You are tech forward. To maybe to inspire other law firms, what would you say you would tell other people to come to conferences like this? Because, you know, what are you learning? What are you seeing? Give us a bit of a flavor.

2:23Shennind Awat-Ranai:I would say, I think for law firms, especially, you know, larger firms, I think it's the being open to change. I think with, so for us at Core Maxwell, we're a small team, we're very agile. so it's easy for us to adopt and implement new software there's not a lot of red tape whereas with larger firms you know there's a lot of processes that need to be approved so I think it's just being open and willing to change and to adapt to the new tech I think is one of the

2:54Maria Madara:biggest hurdles I think yeah how about you Shane because obviously we've met in web three circles and you know on discord you're very kind of forward thinking what would you say so I think it's good because for smaller size firms because um we're a team of 16 17 as she said it's very easy to adapt and be nimble but it's also good to kind of see what what's available for us to use out here and if you don't come to these kind of conferences you're never going to know what's out there and there's so many booths here that actually solve different problems in the legal industry like timekeeping or document review or dd for mna deal and if you're not going to understand what's out there, you're going to be stuck in the old ways and your billable hours going to still be there.

3:37Maria Madara:But the value other people can provide to clients will be way above what you can provide without AI. So I think you should definitely, that's why you should definitely attend these conferences. And as two people, obviously working in the world of law, in a modern law firm, around a lot of legal tech, what's one assumption you think lawyers have that they still get wrong when it comes to legal tech? I think the wrong way to see it as legal tech is something that would replace you okay um it's more of something that will aid you and work beside you as a personal assistant for example like another person so it they mentioned a lot about the human in the loo and i think that's where you actually have to be there and know what you're doing before using ai or before bouncing it with another person yeah because if you don't know what you don't know then you're just going to copy it wholesale and that's not that's that's the wrong thing to do i'd How about yourself?

4:26Shennind Awat-Ranai:I would say I think it's a misunderstanding of how, for example, generative AI works. I think a lot of people have the misconception that it'll just spit out the answer that you need. But actually, it's so much more than that. It's about understanding how to produce and draft good prompts for the AI. Because with AI, the output is only as good as the input. So, you know, I think it's also having that education piece of teaching lawyers how to draft prompts for AI because it's, you know, it's not the same as drafting a legal document for a human. So, yeah, I would say that's probably one of the things that I think people just think like, oh, you could just type it in and it'll spit out exactly what you want.

5:09Shennind Awat-Ranai:But that's that's not the case.

5:10Maria Madara:Yeah. OK, let's fast forward to 2030, a long time, particularly given the world we live in. But what do you think people will expect from legal services that they're not getting at the moment? I think it depends on what they're asking for, right? So for example, if you're coming to a law firm to do M &A and stuff like that, a deal right now could take six months, a year, right? And with Legal Tech and with some of the solutions I've seen down there, you could easily reduce that period by half easily. And if that's in six months, what about the technology that comes forward in the next six years you know yeah and i always say success loves speed um okay so sort of still continuing to be around that period five years on from now what do you think is going to be something that will be gone from law that's perhaps here today you can say the billable hour in five years yeah yeah i would love to say timekeeping but that's not

6:08Shennind Awat-Ranai:well i mean well that's true i mean it will be there but you don't have to manually do it maybe true I mean well yeah but I think the the whole concept of timekeeping I think I think we're probably still far away from that especially in like the contentious space um but I think in five years we'll probably have less touch points with admin admin stuff so I think a lot of processes will and they are already are now automated in terms of onboarding and things like that. But I think that will extend much more to, you know, cut out a lot of the back and forth between clients. So automating more systems and less touch points for the fee earner to kind of have to step in and, you know, send an email or put together an email.

6:53Shennind Awat-Ranai:It's all just kind of in that automated space.

6:55Maria Madara:Yeah. Okay, great. What's been your biggest aha moment from being here over the last sort of day or so? My aha moment is more of a, right, this is good, but we can, we can get better yeah and in that sense it's this is a good start in terms of the solutions being provided but in my opinion there are a lot of solutions that identify individual problems and lawyers don't want 10 more softwares to use no lawyers want one with everything in it and i think that's the next step in terms of combining all these solutions into one big ecosystem and providing that to lawyers to use and that will change the industry i think yeah how about yourself What's been your aha moment being here?

7:35Shennind Awat-Ranai:I mean, I think definitely it's the amount of service providers and software providers that are now coming to market. A lot of them which are, you know, come from the States and America. I think the more players and the more options that are there on the market for these tech advances are obviously great for the industry. But as Shen said, you know, there has to be more integration. It has to be a more cohesive solution where a service provider is providing a solution to multiple different issues rather than, like Shan said, you know, each service provider just solving one issue. Yeah.

8:17Maria Madara:OK. And before I let you both go, where can people go to find out more about Core Maxwell and some of the services that you offer?

8:24Shennind Awat-Ranai:so they can go to our website coremaxwell.com um we are also um on linkedin on socials instagram uh x or twitter um but yeah uh do reach out you can speak to any one of us we're a small team so that means you'll most likely be speaking to myself or shan or anyone else in the team but

8:44Maria Madara:yeah we are online absolutely and i would encourage folks to also listen to mandeep story who was on the podcast a good few years ago now. Very inspiring how she's gone on to build, call Maxwell and bring on great people like yourself. And it's been an absolute pleasure doing this with you both today, live at Legal Tech Talk in London. It's been a real energy. 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 hub, The Legally Speaking Club, over on Discord. go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join our community there over and out