Special Minisode: Mitch Jackson's 7-Step Roadmap to Law Firm Revolution with Centaur Lawyers & AI

0:00On today's Legally Speaking podcast, I'm joined by someone who truly needs no introduction in the world of law, technology, and thought leadership. Mitch Jackson is an award-winning trial lawyer, private mediator, legal tech advocate, author, and keynote speaker with more than three decades of experience in high-stakes cases. He's been recognized as California Litigation Lawyer of the Year and Orange County Trial Lawyer of the Year. He's appeared on stages around the world, from Tony Robbins' Business Mastery to shows with Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper, and many more. Mitch has also written 10 books, including Artificial Intelligence and Law, The Web 3 Metaverse and AI Handbook, Mastering the Art of Negotiation, and The Metaverse Business Blueprint.

0:42Mitch is returning to the show today to unpack the hard truth that most AI projects in law are stumbling. But Mitch is back to share seven proven steps to make it actually work in your law firm. This conversation is all about the practical, the tactical, and actionable steps you can take starting today. So a very big warm welcome back to the show, Mitch.

1:02Mitch Jackson:Rob, it's so good to see you. Listen, gorgeous Monday morning here in Southern California. Just got back from a paddle around the island. Sorry about being so casual, but you know how I roll. It's just good to be here. And we love keeping it human and absolutely joyous to see a smile on your face and all the great stuff that you've been doing. But we're getting into something that I think is so important today, and you're right at the front of it. So to start with, Mitch, could you give us a general overview from your own perspective on what makes this period in technology so important for law firms that are thinking about AI?

1:39Mitch Jackson:It's changing everything, right? And the challenge that we're seeing, Rob, and what we're going to be talking about today isn't necessarily the tools. The tools work. The tools are out there. But as you know, I gave a keynote a couple of weeks ago in Key West, Florida, and it was to C-suite executives. And, you know, I'm a lawyer by trade, 30 plus years. Everything I do has to do with the law. But I'm speaking to a non-legal audience about how they can bring AI into their companies. And we're talking about companies with 2 ,000 employees to over 120, 130 ,000 employees, big companies. And they're struggling with how to leverage and bring it in the right way.

2:17Mitch Jackson:So that's why they asked me to come out and deliver this keynote. Looking at the keynote and getting ready for it, I came across that MIT report that came out a couple of weeks prior to my presentation. So we're about a month ago, right? And this MIT report surveyed 150 different leadership thoughts and opinions, surveying 350 employees during 300 public AI rollouts within these companies, enterprise level rollouts, and found that 95 % of AI in these companies wasn't working the way they wanted it to, or wasn't generating income or profits the way they were hoping AI would, they also found that this 95 % factor took into consideration the lack of adoption, whether it's by management, by leadership, by employees or team members.

3:14Mitch Jackson:And so my thoughts were, Rob, if large, well-financed companies are facing a 95 % failure rate with implementing AI, what about all the law firms out there that don't have the resource, that don't have the finances, that don't have the technical background, the multiple managers and leaders to bring AI into their firms? What about them? And so it kind of, in my mind, created this new seven-step approach with what's the real problem moving forward? How can we solve it? And what are the seven steps we can take to help law firms, to help lawyers, small, medium, and large firms properly create a new mindset, a new leadership approach, and a new adoption method to bring AI into their firms.

4:00Mitch Jackson:So that's why we're here today. And that's why I'm so excited about this topic, because I think it's going to change everything for all the lawyers in our lives. I couldn't agree more. And I'm really excited to dive into those seven steps. So let's just do that and use the word there, leadership. So when a law firm decides it's time to explore AI, what mind step or first step should leadership focus on before actually creating a plan? They need to understand, Rob, that this is a wake up moment. This is a moment in time that is happening, whether you want it to be happening or not. And statistically, what we're seeing is a majority of leaders.

4:40Mitch Jackson:And when I say leaders, when it applies to law firms, we're talking about managing decision making partners, for example, right? People in charge of making things happen in the firm. We're seeing the majority of leaders in law firms not properly implementing AI into their workflow, into their research efforts, into their marketing and development, into everything that they're doing. And what we noticed, Rob, and I asked this question of the audience in Key West, is that how many of you in the last 90 days participated in an AI meeting? You're going to be bringing AI into your companies and you left that meeting feeling like you had a clear and concise pathway to achieving the goals that you set, nobody's hands went up.

5:28Mitch Jackson:In other words, we're all talking about it and we're all interested in bringing AI in. And some of us have tried without success, but it's because of the new mindset that's required. It's because of the new leadership skills. And so, you know, I'm going to ask everyone listening today, hey, how many of you have had meetings in the past couple of months? How many of you have actually done an internal memo? How many of you have instructed your team to move forward? And where are you right now? Are you taking those steps? And if not, why not? So that's kind of the first step is understanding the need, understanding what needs to happen next to implement AI into your firms.

6:07I love that. And it's so true. And I remember a mentor said to me very early on to my career, rob one foot step after another you keep moving forward you don't stop at this inaction this inaction right because these ideas are wonderful and seeing all these shiny upright objects is wonderful but unless you stop taking these footsteps to actually implement and do things then nothing actually changes okay so you write that down everybody write that down yeah baby steps that's what we're talking about yeah but they compound over time as well and that's the thing right that's what people need to understand that you may not see the sort of huge thing straight the way.

6:41But if you keep taking this momentum, and it's like the flywheel effect, good, great, people should go and read that book by Jim Collins, fantastic, in terms of building that momentum. But Mitch, coming to you then with regards to the steps then, because you often compare AI to something entirely new, which to a lot of lawyers and law firms, this is right. And to a lot of us as well, in terms of when this technology is breaking through, there's lots of new things out there all the time. So how should firms actually begin approaching a landscape that feels unknown, uncharted? What would you say to that?

7:12Mitch Jackson:Well, step one is, you know, having the right mindset, understanding this is a wake up moment and we need to make things happen. But the second step, Rob, is appreciating the fact that I want people to think of a new continent rising from the ocean. Okay. Once again, in Key West, we're on the ocean. I ask everyone to look out the window and imagine this new piece of this new island rising from the beautiful Pacific Ocean. And on this new island are literally billions of AI agents, AI servants that we can put to work, we can put to use in our law firms. There's a new asset out there that's obviously, because it's new, it's undervalued, it's not being leveraged correctly, but just appreciate the fact that this new continent is there.

7:58Mitch Jackson:Also understand that if you're not taking action right now, you're not alone. According to statistics and studies, less than 40 % of large companies are actually aggressively implementing AI into their workflows. And frankly, Rob, 95 % of those companies are doing it the wrong way. So you're not really behind if you haven't been jumping all over this. But people need to understand that you want to be a pacesetter with bringing AI into your firm. Why is that important? It's important because of exponential growth, which is the third step, Rob. This is happening so fast. AI is changing so quickly that every three and a half months, it's doubling.

8:39Mitch Jackson:It's doubling in power. It's doubling in ability. It's doubling in what it can bring to your law firm. So while we're going through these steps, you want to keep in mind that, you know, time matters. and being a leader, being a pace setter in today's world is something that you have to give yourself permission to do. And that leads us into the third step, if you don't mind me just kind of rolling into it. I think it's really important. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think I would just comment that the ship has left the harbor when it comes to this. We've had all sorts of people feature on the show over the years and I remember very vividly Piers Linney, Dragon's Den investor, short-time investor, and said, we're in the AI revolution.

9:18It's not a once-in-a-lifetime. It's once a species time opportunity. And the ship has left the harbor. It's going to exponentially get faster and faster and faster. And it's your responsibility as a service provider. It doesn't matter what you do, doctor, lawyer, consultant, you need to get on board with this and find a way to, like you're talking about in terms of coming to the next stage, you know, of understanding the pace of change and how to be sort of fit for purpose with that in the new world of doing business. So, yes, please do dive into step three, because there's a lot of people are sort of overwhelmed and people are unsure.

9:49will also tell us how to sort of move forward.

9:52Mitch Jackson:Absolutely. And you talk about companies bringing these products, these services into their workflow, right? An example I gave had to do with a company that has 10 ,000 different service manuals that they brought into AI. And what they're able to do by implementing AI with customer support is reduce answer or response times by 50%. And with respect to the times that they were reducing, 75 % of the AI assistants was completely AI with a higher customer satisfaction. So you weren't just typing into or dialing into a phone tree and waiting for 20 minutes for an answer. You're getting instance-specific answers to your questions based upon these 10 ,000 manuals that were imported into the company's LLM.

10:43Mitch Jackson:When we're picking a jury, Rob, instead of me now spending months to try to figure out who are the right people I want to have sitting in this jury, we have AI prompts and AI system where we run the recent news in the community, the socioeconomic background of the jury pool. What types of things, what types of buttons can I push to really connect and resonate and empower my jury to make the right decisions that they need to make? We're doing this within minutes or hours now, depending on my schedule, as opposed to weeks and months. And so these processes work well, but also they're improving at an exponential rate.

11:22Mitch Jackson:And we talk about exponential speed. We're talking about compounding, compound interest, compound results. For example, if you fold a cocktail napkin 43 times, it'll take you to from the Earth to the moon, 103 times from the Earth to the sun. People don't realize the power of compounding. And with AI, that's what we're seeing. We're seeing the speed of light, the speed and power of compounding being brought into companies and creating change. 81 % of the companies out there, according to recent statistics, show that large enterprise companies understand this concept, but they don't know how to implement the tools, the leadership, the mindset, the training tools into their teams and aren't doing it the right way.

12:11Mitch Jackson:And once again, if these big companies with unlimited resource, unlimited brainpower are having these challenges, I'm going to, at least the lawyers I know, are experiencing the same problems. So it's really challenging right now to understand these first three elements, wrap your head around the power of compounding and exponential speed, but to give everybody the opportunity to take a deep breath and say, okay, this is what we want to do. how can we do this in a way that's, you know, not going to interfere with the quality of my life and actually make it an enjoyable experience so that the clients and customers really enjoy what we're doing for them.

12:48Mitch Jackson:You want to maintain in your mind, always focus on the things that you have control over. Those are things like trust, speed, value, and safety. As a lawyer, we're always, you know, following our state bar rules, at least here in the United States. That's what we call them. what you do have control over are those four variables and i think what management and leadership needs to do is as you're rolling these these tools out paying attention to those four things trust speed value and safety you're going to be creating a foundation to bring ai into your firm in the ways that we're specifically going to be talking about in a few minutes i don't want to leave everybody hanging here specific ideas but you know once you do that it kind of allows you to just kind of settle down.

13:35Mitch Jackson:It allows your team to get comfortable with moving forward with the next couple of steps. And I think communication is important. Putting my legal recruiting hat on because Mitch, when I first started, truth be told over a decade ago in legal recruiting, the number one thing lawyers would talk to me about would be comp, right? Comp was at the top of the table in terms of, look, I'm looking for a move. Nowadays, of course, comp is important, but the technology and AI and what are the law firms actually doing that's going to improve the overall workflow so I'm not having to do the drudgery that I'm currently doing in my current place that I could potentially get relieved in a new place that could give me higher job satisfaction because my current firm is lagging behind.

14:10Or you can take the glass hall hall approach where sometimes I'll consult these lawyers and say, how about thinking about this, this and this and trying to feed that up internally so this could improve your overall well-being. So this is an important conversation for so many aspects in terms of getting more client-centric, as you mentioned, in terms of giving a higher quality service, hitting all those points that are truly valued in terms of being a lawyer, but it'll also help your retention and attraction of getting the best quality talent to your firm. So let's talk about then the fourth step of this process, which I absolutely love, by the way.

14:39So a healthy balance between human expertise, because we still want to keep that and the AI tools. What does that look in time in terms of like a modern law firm practice?

14:48Mitch Jackson:You know, I love that you brought that up. And it's about being a centaur, embracing the speed and accuracy of AI with the human side of us with respect to our empathy, with respect to our ability to build rapport with our clients, with respect to us standing up in court, arguing a case. AI is not doing that for us right now. And it's so blending the power of AI with the human side of lawyers and the things that we're doing for our clients. That's the secret. And a lot of lawyers, Robert, are worried about being replaced by AI. And frankly, I think that's a real concern. I'm not going to, I'm going, not going to minimize how big AI is and how it's going to impact all of us, okay?

15:35Mitch Jackson:It is. Having said that, it's not going to replace empathy. It's not going to replace having a conversation with someone and just listening to a client's problems. It's not going to replace the ability for us to use our intuition and to read the room like we do in trial and to really get a feel based upon body language, based upon what people are wearing, how we need to present an argument. So by encouraging leadership to pass down to their teams, the concept of becoming a centaur, I think what's going to happen is it's going to be much more acceptable to teams and it's going to resonate. Okay, now I understand I can use AI to do the research, but then I can pick up the phone or send a text or jump on WhatsApp and communicate the research findings using my voice, using a live video with the client.

16:27Mitch Jackson:You don't need to use the AI to do some detailed text message to a client. It's not going to be personal. It's not going to build rapport. It's not going to connect. So we have new performance indicators, key performance indicators, KPIs that I think management needs to look at when rolling out this Centaur approach. And that is, yes, profits are important. Productivity is important. How you manage your cases is important. But I think with the new key KPIs, bringing AI into your firms, look at how efficient are you with introducing AI into your law firm? How efficient are you with embracing your team the opportunity to learn AI, to learn it the right way, and then to use AI in your firm in a way where they're not afraid of making mistakes.

17:17Mitch Jackson:mistakes they're encouraged to test to try to improve using ai and you're keeping track of those performance indicators and i think new leadership new management new mindset approaches are going to be implementing these new kpis into integrating ai with the law firm so what are those kpis what is mitch and rob talking about right ask ai i want to bring ai into my law firm this is the think we might want to use it for. What are some key performance indicators for me to look at that I can share with my management team that have to do more with performance and implementation,

18:02Mitch Jackson:adoptability, as opposed to profits, income, bringing in new cases. That's all really still important, but we need to expand the KPIs for the AI integration. And I think everyone will be surprised just by asking that simple prompt in your favorite AI, you're going to get some tangible things that you can talk to your leadership team about when rolling AI into your law firm. It's going to allow you to track it, adjust when it doesn't work, when it does work, or when somebody doesn't understand what you're saying, and really bring it in in a comfortable way that's going to have a positive impact on the bottom line of your firm and on the relationships that you have with your clients.

18:42And that's the win-win, isn't it, ultimately? And I love that you suggest that prompt because sometimes, you know, if you're struggling with AI, asking the AI what the goal is. And then like you say, you can adjust, you can fine tune, you can take it from there because it's there to be used as a tool. And you're trying to always sort of sharpen your act, get smarter and smarter and smarter. And again, a mentor said to me very early on before starting my business is, Rob, what gets measured gets done. So if you have things that are being measured, that are being tracked, you've got data, you can make informed decisions, not necessarily overly emotional decisions.

19:10You can be far more effective in terms of whatever strategies and things you're trying to implement. Okay, we've already done four steps. Can you believe it, Mitch? So we're on to coming on to step five. So let's say, right, law firms, everyone's buying into it. So they've taken those first steps with AI. So we're there. We're on the boat. We're going with the first steps with AI. What practical moves now will actually help them to create some early wins and actually keep steady progress?

19:34Mitch Jackson:So my team and I, we broke this down into three easy to follow steps, right? And the first thing you want is you want to start small. What you want to do is ask yourself, what's a repetitive act that I do each week or my team does each week or my company does each day, whatever it may be, that maybe we can use AI to automate that or to make it faster or to get a more accurate result. So give some thought to, you know, what is that repetitive action that we could probably use AI in our company and our firm? And then what I want you to do is don't think too much further than that. Don't overdo it.

20:11Mitch Jackson:Let's just focus on that for the next 30 days. Get a small team of people who you trust. Maybe it's just you if you're a sole practitioner, right? And just kind of focus on that one thing. And what you want to do is play around with the different AI services, get an idea for what they can and can't do. There are a lot of great services that are already out there that work really, really well. and start with that one small step, okay? Give yourself a 30-day timeline to implement that one small step into your law firm. The next thing you wanna do, especially for firms, for companies that are a little bit larger, is you wanna create what I call the AI sandbox.

20:51Mitch Jackson:And what I mean by that is maybe every Friday afternoon or Friday morning at 11 in the morning, what you wanna do is have the company, have your firm put an hour aside. And during that one hour, whether you're in person with your team, whether you're on Slack, whether you're doing live videos, you're going to have conversations, open conversations about what AI platforms are you using? Are you playing around with? Are you kicking the tires on? What do you like? What are you having challenges with? You want to encourage an hour of conversation, an hour of sharing about what both leadership and team members, employees, how they're using AI, what they want to see, what they want to do, and just open up this mindset of everyone being able to comfortably discuss, use, share, and exchange ideas when it comes to AI.

21:42Mitch Jackson:I think one hour a week, if you can pull this off, you're going to see measurable results over a six-month period of time. Last thing you want to do is you want to scale the impact of what you're learning, of what you're doing with what we've talked about with steps one and two. First of all, you want to scale that privately. You want to do that, you know, under the hood and see whether or not your clients notice the difference. Maybe it's, you know, has to do with service questions. Maybe it has to do with calendaring questions. Using AI to create better client experiences, especially when it comes to those repetitive tasks that we talked about.

22:19Mitch Jackson:You don't have to announce to the world that you're using AI to do these things. Obviously, follow state-by-rules, don't mislead anybody, but internally to be more efficient, internally to be more effective. If you're using Clio as your CRM, for example, AI is built into Clio to allow you to be faster, more accurate, and do exciting things. You don't need to tell your clients this, right? You can start learning it on your own, deliver the experience to the client, and over time what you're going to be finding is you'll be expanding the number of repetitive tasks that you're using AI for to create better client experiences.

22:55Mitch Jackson:And as you fine tune and get better, your team becomes more comfortable with using AI, then you can turn around and publicly let your clients know this is what we're doing. This is, you know, why we were able to get the results of this new case law out to you almost immediately. And by the way, Rob, that's a great example. What used to take weeks to analyze a new Supreme Court case here in the United States, or maybe trending issues when it comes to intellectual property law, how's it going to affect our particular client? With the right AI prompts, with the right approach, you can now almost instantly, on the same day that this new law, this new decision, this new policy is being talked about, you can share with your clients personalized memos explaining how this might affect this particular client in this particular industry based upon their particular personality or risk index because every client's different.

23:54Mitch Jackson:They're all going to respond differently to potential change. And you can do this literally within minutes or hours to not just one client, but to 50 or 100 clients using AI. It's got the ability to do all of this almost automatically. So by following these three steps, start small, build trust, and then start implementing it out first privately, internally, and then you can start exchanging or sharing the information with your clients, maybe via a memo. I think that's the best three-step process that most lawyers are going to understand and appreciate. And frankly, anybody can do. And so that would be the next step.

24:33And that's what I was going to say. This is very achievable for everybody to do. And I love that point that you make around time, blocking out that one hour, getting people comfortable because where the attention goes, that's where the energy will flow. You'll be flowing energy into those conversations for that hour. And like you say, that's going to build and build and build. And just again, from putting my people hat on and recruiting teams, keeping people in roles, helping people secure new ones, when you build that trust and people feel comfortable with the technology or the culture or whatever it is, they're going to bring out even more innovative ideas themselves.

25:04So actually, you're going to start really kind of grinding and getting exponential success through the utilization of this because people are going to feel safe. There's a space to have these conversations and they will bring new ideas, creativity, and it's a win-win. Okay, Mitch, we've still got two more steps to go. So we're going to go to step number six. So as AI adoption expands, as you know, what guidance do you give to leaders for steering through the regulatory, ethical, and operational challenges? Because that's not an easy one.