Reimagining Justice: How Legal Tech is Transforming Dispute Resolution - Collin Williams

0:00Rob Hanna:Okay, welcome everybody to today's Legally Speaking podcast live. I'm proudly sponsored by Clio and today we're diving into one of the most important shifts in the legal industry, the transformation of dispute resolution. For decades, many of you know litigation has been synonymous with very long timelines, super high costs and unnecessary complexity. But what if technology could make it faster, fairer, and dare I say it, more human? My guest today has dedicated his career to answering that very question. So I'm joined by the brilliant Colin Williams, who's the founder and chairman of the New Era ADR, a groundbreaking platform using technology to make litigation and dispute resolution less painful, less expensive and more accessible.

0:47Rob Hanna:Colin is an experienced attorney himself and has a wealth of experience in this space and also an advocate for mental health and innovation in the law. So a very warm welcome to the show, Colin. Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it. That's way too nice of an intro for me, but I really appreciate it. It makes me sound way more important than I am. Well, it's all verifiable because we're in the legal spaces. It's all factually true. And it's just a real pleasure. I know we've spoken offline before putting today's discussion together, but I'm really keen to dive into this because it's a really important point.

1:19Rob Hanna:So let's go straight to the breaking point, actually rethinking the litigation model. What was the pivotal moment that made you realize that traditional litigation models were broken? And how did it shape your journey into legal tech? Yeah, it's actually a pretty simple one. So I was at a large law firm for the better part of 10 years, Greenberg Traurig, so one of the largest law firms in the world, really good law firm. I just started to develop my own clients, you know, about halfway through my career. I had one who came to me and basically said, Hey, I've been in this business with a partner.

1:51We've been together for about 10 years. And one day we've just decided we hate each other and don't want to continue to do this. But of course, when you have that dynamic, neither of them could agree on an amicable way to get out of the business. So you said, I think we're going to have to go to litigation. Would you help out? I said, sure. But I don't think this is the way you want to go. Right. I was very transparent with this is probably going to cost a lot of money, take a lot of time. To make a very long story short, took on the case. The case lasted three years with me. And then I left Greenberg to go to Oracle.

2:24The case lasted an additional three years with my former boss after I left. It settled the morning of trial, right? So literally they're walking into the courtroom, stepped into a conference room on the side and ended up settling the case for what I would say is, you know, mid five figures. So not a substantial amount of money. And my former client called me. I wasn't his attorney anymore, but he just said, it can't be like this. This cannot be how the system works. And I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, well, in six years, I've been going to court. Every single time they tell me to go to court, I show up, which had to be over 50 times over six years, right?

2:59He said, at no point did anybody ask me what happened. What's the story? What's the deal between you and your ex-partner? Why did this go south? Who did what? What's the deal? How should this thing be resolved? He goes, how is that possible that in six years, it just gets to the point where it's so brutal. He had spent$1.5 million in legal fees to settle a case for, think about it,$20 ,000,$30 ,000. And said, you know, I spent$1.5 million in legal fees, showed up to every court hearing. Nobody ever asked me what my story was, what the deal was. And for me, that was the aha moment, right? Which I said, he's right.

3:35It isn't justice supposed to be about the story. Isn't it supposed to be about the litigants? why isn't it? And why don't people get to tell their story? Why is this process just pushing paper back and forth for years and years and years? So that was my moment of like, this has to change. There's got to be a better way to do this.

3:52Rob Hanna:I love that. And thank you for sharing that story. And what I love about this even more is you haven't just sort of focused on the problem and done nothing. You focused on the problem and really tried to do something and brought that entrepreneurial flair out. So I guess moving into sort of new era ADR then, how is it different from established players in this space specifically and why are you so passionate about it? Yeah. So if you look at the US litigation market, there's really two options. There's going to court, pretty standard thing to do. And then there's alternative dispute resolution, arbitration and mediation.

4:28There are two 600 pound gorillas. And I say that if they're listening in a positive way in the United States in alternative dispute resolution, which is the American Arbitration Association and JAMS. They've both been around for a very long time. They own a vast percentage of the market and they do what they do well. Right. But for me, I just looked at it a very different way, which was there's this world of technology. Right. And the thing that really, really inspired me was telehealth. Right. So everybody said, look, if you can do medical proceedings online, why can't you do legal proceedings online?

5:02It seems like the stakes are a little bit lower in legal proceedings, even if it's money. So I really thought, well, why can't we, let's think about this in a number of ways. Let's try to model something after telehealth. Let's do it virtually. Let's do it with flat fees, which incentivizes everybody to do things as quickly as humanly possible. And let's see if we can get this stuff done more efficiently and in a much faster way. So I really come back to telehealth. People, I think, get sick of this analogy, but it really is what inspired me because there was this big backlash against telehealth when it started and And people said, you can't do this.

5:34It just doesn't work. And I just thought, well, if they've gotten over that hurdle, then we can get over this hurdle. And so that's really been the goal is to use technology to facilitate the process, make it fully virtual and make it efficient and fast.

5:46Rob Hanna:Well, that leads to exactly what I was going to go to next in terms of, you know, you have blended innovation with access to justice, which is something we're very passionate about here on the Legally Speaking podcast in terms of tech for good. And so you have then gone out and as you sort of touched on then built sort of new era ADR around and with that in mind, fairness, efficiency, transparency and cost. So how have users responded to this reimagined process? I think it's been great. Right. I mean, if you think about I think we always have to look at things, whether you're an individual, whether you're a business, whether you're an individual involved in a business.

6:21The chances are that you're not making money off of litigating cases. It's a distraction from whether you have to do personally. If you're a single mom and have three kids, do you have time to go to court? Do you have time to go to an arbitration? And if you're a business, chances are you're making widgets, you're providing services, whatever you're doing, it's not litigation. So what we can do is say, look, we're going to take up the most minimal time possible, which means you can log on from your computer, your phone, whatever it may be. And you can do whatever actually makes you money or whatever you have in your personal life going on.

6:55And you can participate in this litigation process without it pulling lots of time and resources out of you. So I think that the reception of that has been extraordinarily positive. I think we now live in a world that's obviously very virtual. We're talking to each other across the pond. And people have embraced that, right? You don't want to get in the car. You don't want to get in a plane. You don't want to travel places you don't need to travel for things you don't want to do. So the reception has been really, really positive and said, hey, you're giving me all this time back. and you're actually, you know, you're giving me bandwidth back that I need to actually build the business in the way I want to build it.

7:29Rob Hanna:And it's all of our greatest commodity, isn't it, Time? So I think if you can blend that with tech and as a really positive solution, which you obviously have, it's fantastic. Okay, there will be certain people watching this, and I say it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, where their wage is their cage. They want to get out, but for whatever reason, they're scared to make that journey. Maybe they are in big law, maybe the hours of just, you know, getting too much, not getting much of family time or whatever it is it may be. But what lessons did you learn from transitioning out of big law? And what advice would you give to lawyers that might be thinking about taking that similar leap into entrepreneurship or indeed sort of innovation?

8:03Yeah, I mean, I think it's there is a certain level of comfort, right? Let me address one thing first. There's I think there's been a lot of people who have said in this ties in what you're saying that have said, well, if you make things more efficient, aren't you killing the billable hour? And doesn't that limit the amount that people make? I actually look at it in a very different way, which is right now you have a certain threshold, dollar threshold of cases that you simply can't litigate because it doesn't make economic sense. Right. And that can be five hundred thousand dollars. It's not like this isn't like five grand.

8:33Right. It can be a very significant number. And the reality is, if you could do those things more efficiently, then big law firms and attorneys and stuff could handle those cases. And all of a sudden you have more cases and you might be making more money. And lo and behold, it's efficiency that's done that. So I always like to say, we're not killing the billable hour. We're actually opening up the market for there to be additional litigation. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. What is a bad thing is the fact that those cases are getting thrown to the side and relationships are being ruined and things like that.

9:01So I wanted to say that because there is always this idea of like big law and billable hours and things like that. And are we antagonistic to it? We're not. But when you think about the lifestyle thing, I think you really just have to decide. There's a lot of comfort in working at a big law firm. There's a lot of comfort, I'm sure, working at smaller law firms, whatever it may be. You get a paycheck. You have your benefits. And the question I think you need to decide is, does that outweigh stepping off the cliff? Right? Because the one thing I will tell anybody who's entrepreneurial and has that feeling, this is incredibly difficult.

9:37Incredibly difficult. So no matter how many times you hear it's hard, it is 10 times harder than even what you hear. So I think what you just have to decide is, do I have the gumption? Do I have the stick-to-it-ness, whatever you want to call it, to fight through those times? And if you do, then I would encourage you to do it. If you're really afraid of what that looks like and you're afraid of putting in the hours and the effort and all the pain and misery that comes with it, then that's cool. You're probably better off just staying with what you do. And neither way is the right path, right? It's not.

10:11So I think you just have to decide, really, do I have the guts to step? It's leaping off a cliff. And you don't know what's going to happen. And if you're comfortable with that, I say go for it.

10:21Rob Hanna:Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm a very much sort of go for it person if you can get yourself into that headspace. Okay, so on the flip side of that, then in your experience, what are the biggest obstacles to innovation and change within the legal industry? And how can lawyers think about overcoming them? Yeah, I think, I mean, look, this is the most entrenched industry I think you can possibly find. And I don't say that as a negative or a positive. I just say, you know, when you think about how long the law has existed, just ponder that for a second. So I think people get into their, you know, their practices, their procedures, their methods, whatever it may be, and they're comfortable.

10:58Right. And once again, I'm always going to come back to that word comfort, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think you also have, and I think that's going to be probably the biggest thing that's always going to be difficult in the legal industry to change, right? You're always going to have people who are just comfortable making large salaries and whoever it may be and not thinking about what's the best way to actually do this. So what I would say to people who look that way, who pays the bills? Clients pay the bills. And we have now entered a world where clients are looking for solutions and not invoices.

11:34So it used to be when you had, you know, under a thousand dollar billing rates that you would have a case and pass it on your attorney and say, look, I know they're going to bill me for this. And it's going to be it is what it is. And you guys handle it and let me know when you need stuff for me. Now you're hitting a realm where that first invoice could be an astronomical sum. So you're starting to go to your attorneys and say, and I know this because I was a client, right? You're starting to go to those attorneys and say, look, I need solutions. I don't just need billable hours. So I think everybody has to look at it from that magnifying glass at this point, which is people are no longer just looking to say, I'm going to pass off my stuff to an attorney and say, let me know when it's over.

12:13Instead, they're saying, how do you get me out of this? Like, that's what I'm looking for out of you. How do you get me out of this? How do you get me to an end game? And so I think that can be what transforms sort of that entrenched position is that the clients are the ones who are going to say, enough, I can't do this anymore.

12:29Rob Hanna:Yeah. Now when, you know, the more client-centered you can be, the more successful you are ultimately. Okay. So let's build from there then in terms of this balancing of tradition versus transformation, because we're still quite early into this AI revolution world, this next tech generation revolution that's going on. And many legal professionals struggle with actually balancing the traditional and the demand for tech advancement. As you say, they're not just looking for invoices, they're looking for solutions. So I guess coming with that, then how do lawyers both kind of think about that, but do it in terms of not losing trust and credibility?

13:04Rob Hanna:Two very big pieces when it comes to lawyering. Yeah, I think if you look at it from our perspective, people have asked us, why don't you just make an AI judge? Right. You've got the platform. Why don't you just feed all the information in an algorithm? the algorithm spits out a decision and lo and behold, genius. It's perfect. You finished the case and it happened like that. There's a problem with that, which is that there's no human element, right? So I think when you look at what AI and all these different technology brings to the table, I think it creates great efficiency in the process. And that's fantastic.

13:42That makes everything move quicker. It makes everybody's life easier. But at the end of the day, we still give you a human to talk to. You have a hearing and you actually talk to that person and say, here's, remember my original story? Here's what happened to me. This is what happened. And that human listens and makes a decision based on what they're told. Now they may have taken everything and had it summarized by AI up to that point. So they have a good idea what's going on. And that may have saved them a ton of hours in getting to that point. But at that hearing point, they're actually sitting and listening to you.

14:13So I think when you think of this concept of technology is good. I believe technology is good and it's going to continue to facilitate things. But when you mash it with a human element, you really get a great outcome because then that person can say, I don't really care what made all this efficient. I care that somebody listened to me. And if they ruled against me, I can ask them why. And I can't just point to an algorithm and say, well, the algorithm said you were wrong. That's not a good outcome, right? It's not a good outcome to be able to tell somebody, I don't know why you lost. The algorithm said you lost.

14:44we still live in a world where I think people want that human element. So I think combining the two things is really the best of both worlds.

14:50Rob Hanna:Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, you want cohesion, don't you? You want fusion rather than confusion and you want credibility. And if you can collaborate well and tech used well with human inputs, you know, it's brilliant to see. Let's talk about then diversity, because how important is diversity both in people and thought when actually building a legal tech company or assembling a panel of arbitrators or mediators? I mean, I think, I strongly believe you get the best decisions, you get the best products when you have a population, whether or not it's within your company, whether or not it's arbitrators and mediators, that looks like the population in general.

15:28I think when you have something, when you have a demographic that's very unified, that's not the right word, uniform, when you have a demographic that's very uniform, you're going to get very uniform decisions, right? And I think we live in a world where everything is moving so quickly that you need diversity of thought. You need people who have experienced the world the way that it is today and aren't necessarily, and I hate to say this, but as you get into a demographic that's older, that doesn't necessarily use all the technology that's involved, you're probably going to get decisions that are a little bit skewed because they don't necessarily understand what the technology does or why it did it one way or not.

16:09And that's what concerns me is I think you can get great decisions when you say, look, my population of either employees or arbitrators looks like the population in general. I think that's incredibly important that people understand the way the world works and see it from different views. Because once again, if you get one uniform demographic, I think you're gonna have a lot of problems.

16:30Rob Hanna:Yeah, no, couldn't agree more. And I think you articulated that very, very well. And thanks for sharing with that. And let's look in the future, then. Let's look at the future of legal tech and ADR, and what that might might might look like. How do you see the relationship between law firms and legal tech companies evolving over the coming years? Really good question. I mean, I think law firms have now really opened their eyes to what this can do. And let's go, let's go to the idea that, you know, AI and technology is going to replace humans. I don't believe that as long as you have an integral piece of the party, right?

17:04As long as you're bringing value, you're not going to get replaced. Here's the other thing about AI. AI doesn't think. It collates information. The biggest misconception about AI is that it is off pondering all the stuff that you put into it. No, it's really, really good at taking all the inputs and then spitting out some sort of decision. And that's also the reality is if you put in bad inputs, you get bad decisions. So this isn't the concept of AI and like taking jobs and stuff. This is not some omnipotent thing that's thinking for you. You still need humans. And so I think when you look at law firms, the ability to take technology and make everything more efficient and give better outcomes to clients while still maintaining whatever your biller grades are, that is right there.

17:50It's right there for everybody to have. And here's the reality. You may spend way less time on one case, but if that client thinks that you gave them a solution and were efficient, they're probably going to give you 20 more cases that you wouldn't have gotten. Right. And what's more exciting, handling one case or handling 20 more interesting cases? So I think law firms are now realizing this. I think people are becoming a little bit less fearful that, you know, all this technology is going to take their jobs and realizing it's enhancing your job and it's making better outcomes for your clients.

18:19and I think that's going to be a really good symbiotic relationship going into the future, I hope. And I think law firms that don't adopt that will probably disappear. And that's just sort of, I guess, economic Darwinism.

18:32Rob Hanna:Yeah, no. And I think sometimes we have to be a little bit to the point with where the puck is going and where the trends are going. And so what key trends or signals should lawyers be paying attention to right now to stay ahead of the curve? Yeah, I mean, I think you need to go to conferences. You need to be involved in legal tech. You need to read. You need to figure this stuff out. You can't bury your head in the sand. I think there probably is a population that says, I've done it this way for this long, and I'm good. I don't need to learn. That's great. Dinosaurs died out too, right? So if you want to take that position, that's probably what's going to happen to you.

19:10So I think it really is. Everything is moving so quickly that you need to get yourself educated. You need to go to conferences. You need to listen to CLEs. You need to listen to podcasts where people are talking about this stuff. So you have an idea of what's going on. Because if you're not doing that, you're going to get left behind. And if you say, I don't need to do that because I'm comfortable, you're going to get extincted. I don't know. You're going to go the way of the dinosaur. So I think it really is you have to be self-motivated and educate yourself and make sure that you know what's going on in the world.

19:40I couldn't agree more.

19:42Rob Hanna:And I've attended a lot of conferences recently, particularly Clio's cloud conference in Boston just earlier in October. Fantastic. And the amount of knowledge you pick up on wisdom and not just obviously from being on stages, but when you actually network and meet with people on the ground that are running businesses, that are talking about challenges, problems they're trying to solve, you pick up so many little nuggets of wisdom. For you then as an entrepreneur, can you share where taking risk or maybe making a bold career move actually paid off and what lessons others can learn from that experience?