Storytelling for Lawyers: Why It Matters More in the Age of AI - André Noël Chaker - S10E36

0:00This is the gift we wanted to give everyone. Authenticity and perceived authenticity is a question of alignment. Do you talk the talk? When you speak, are all the elements of voice, appearance, and the words you use align in a way that is authentic? Meaning that you don't speak like this today and then act like that tomorrow. There's consistency in your communication. The inquisitive mind has never had an opportunity of being nourished at this level in the history of mankind. The openness and the humility of asking questions, you will get a rich array of answers back. And finding with your own human judgment and creativity will still be very important for our leaders.

0:45Finding new ways, new opportunities has never been more exciting than it is today.

0:51André Noël Chaker:On today's Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio, I'm delighted to be joined by André Noel-Shaka. André is an entrepreneur, internationally recognized keynote speaker and author. He is one of the leading voices on communication, leadership and artificial intelligence. Originally from Canada and now based in Finland, André has built a career spanning law, business, entrepreneurship, public speaking and technology. A former corporate lawyer and executive in the global legal professional services space, Andre has become one of the Nordic region's most sought-after keynote speakers. He is also the co-founder of MySpeaker, a leading speaker agency, and the creator of Rhetoric AI, helping professionals communicate more effectively through AI.

1:36André Noël Chaker:Andre is also the best-selling author of The Finish Miracle, exploring leadership, trust, and culture. Today, we're exploring what it takes to communicate with impacts in the age of AI. We will discuss leadership, entrepreneurship, public speaking, the future of communication, AI, and why authentic human connection is so significant in today's world. So, a very big warm welcome to the show, Angelique. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I've been waiting for this for weeks already. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure to finally get you on the show. Before we get into all the great stuff you're doing, a couple of icebreaker questions for you.

2:10André Noël Chaker:Firstly, what's your favorite beverage and what is your preferred footwear of choice on a typical workday? For the better or for the worse, my favorite beverage is black coffee. I'm slightly addicted to it. All the advice says that I should stop drinking this stuff. But for some reason, it reminds me of staying up all night at McGill Law School to pass my fourth exam. I hear you. I love this stuff. It works for me. And I don't it doesn't seem to hurt me too much. So yeah, I'm going to continue on drinking a beautiful black, beautiful black coffee every day. Good stuff. And on your footwear, typically on a workday?

2:55I have something that is a bit of a hybrid between a dress shoe and a sneaker shoe. I can show you if you like.

3:02André Noël Chaker:Yeah, show our listeners and watchers. So you see, it's various makers of these shoes, dressy sneakers, if I can call them that. Bugatti is one manufacturer that does this very, very well. I enjoy wearing these. I'm ready to run, but in style. Yeah, love it. Okay, and another quick fire question before we get rocking and rolling. What's one piece of legal tech or everyday technology you now rely on every day that would have seemed unthinkable earlier in your career? Oh my God, the Goro Harvey, these are amazing tools. They've inspired a lot of our work at Retherich. And my God, if we would have had this when I was a young lawyer, oh my God.

3:42I guess everybody says the same thing, but yeah.

3:45André Noël Chaker:Absolutely. Well, why don't we go back to when you were a young lawyer and perhaps give us a short version of your career journey from practicing law in Canada to obviously building a career as an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, leading a communication expert. Talk us through a bit of your journey? Yeah, well, as you are hinting towards, it's an eclectic career. So it's McGill Law School, the national program for French Canadians like myself. It was a great opportunity to immerse ourselves into British Canadian American law. And I became a lawyer in New York State. I'm still a member of the New York Bar.

4:22I wanted to become a lawyer. I wanted to go on Wall Street and then the phone rang and I ended up in Finland of all places. As a young attorney, the reason is this Finnish scientist, a sports science organization, was looking for an executive director and that executive director had to be, well, this was the criteria. Young lawyer, meaning cheap lawyer. This person had to be fluent in French and English and other languages. I spoke four and my native tongue is French and English was beaten into me as a child in Canada. So there I passed that test. And then this person and also needed, of course, be willing to move and immigrate to Finland.

5:18And they had hired a Belgian lawyer, and this Belgian lawyer came to Finland, and she left with her family six months later. And when asked, why did you leave? The answer was, it's too cold in Finland. Okay. So this person needed to be winter resistant. And I claim that the only place in the world you'll find perfectly bilingual young lawyers from a good law school who also is winter resistant. There's only one place in the world, and that is Montreal, Canada, where I come from.

5:52André Noël Chaker:Very well said. Very well said. Okay. So from there, you've gone on to speak to audiences across more than 30 countries. Unbelievable. From your expertise, what separates an average speaker from an individual who really, truly changes the way people think and has your own speaking style evolved over the years? Oh, my Lord, that is the question of my life. You've done your homework, Rob. Thank you. I've been a kid in my life to answer that question. And it starts with a father who is also a lawyer and then turned into a professor of language and literature at McGill, fascinated by the art of rhetoric.

6:35My father was somebody who, if you wanted to impress him, you had to speak well. You had to speak eloquently. In his case, it had to be French eloquence, l 'éloquence. Finding that his school of thought on what is truly impactful when we speak is not speaking perfectly. Perhaps the same fallacy as received pronunciation from your country and many other countries have something similar. And we now know from the evolution of AI and robotics and all the science that we have about speaking in the past 10 years, which is more than what we've had in the past thousand years, is that impact comes from different things.

7:17A lot, not perfection, but actually things like credibility, likability, the perception of authenticity, persuasion, human presence, storytelling. These are the things that drive impact, whether you're in the courtroom, or in the boardroom, or at home with your children. These are the things that make humans have a change of heart, a change of mind, and perhaps if you're lucky, a change of course of action.

7:49André Noël Chaker:And that's why we're so keen to have the conversation because going on from that, communication is such an important leadership skill. And it's often described as a soft skill, yet it underpins a lot of success of leaders. So why do you believe communication is one of the hardest and most valuable skills to master? I think that is such a misnomer to call this skill a soft skill, as you hinted toward that. I think that speaking will be the hard currency of the future. It'll be the hard currency of lawyers going forward. It'll actually be the only thing that differentiates us from AI, at least for the foreseeable future.

8:27And we need to take a hard look at this skill and how we can now develop this skill going forward, because it'll be at the core, at the epicenter of how we make a difference as lawyers going forward. Because a lot of our written work has now been automated, maybe not our thinking work completely, but definitely our written work. And we need to shift our energy towards becoming better humans, better spoken word professionals, because our written work has now been not taken away from us, but enhanced greatly. And we should be grateful for this. And we should be grateful for the opportunity of investing that time that we're saving into becoming better humans, better speakers, better communicators, because that's where we're going to add value into the society going forward.

9:17André Noël Chaker:Let's talk about speakers then, because you founded and built successful businesses, including my speaker. So what has entrepreneurship and business ownership taught you that no corporate career could have? One is that speaking is critical. It's crazy. But and still in our countries here in the Nordics, where I now move to, I could not believe that I have an LLB and a BC. I have all these law degrees and I'm a member of the New York bar. but I did my MBA. I wanted to deep dive into business. I did my MBA here in Finland, believe it or not, in finance at the time. And I was surprised that we had the token communication class.

10:01And now, believe it or not, they cut this class from the bachelor's program here. I cannot believe how we are disinvesting in a skill that will be critical for the future of our young students. I even went on a podcast, a colleague of yours at Legal Week. They asked me, shouldn't we give something like Rhetorich AI, which is a platform that helps young lawyers and lawyers in general become more impactful when they speak. Shouldn't we give this for free in law schools? And I said, I definitely will. And I made a public promise that the day Rhetorich AI hits a billion in valuation, we're going to give this for free into law schools.

10:41So how critical It is to take the written work, the written word and deliver it as something valuable in a verbal format is something that has been so underestimated in our in our education that still is. And we need to change course quite rapidly on that.

10:59André Noël Chaker:Yeah, because looking forward then with the future of public speaking, I talk very much about personal brand raising and getting on stages and going on podcasts and various other things. But one thing is happening, as we're seeing, is everything is changing, right? So the speaking industry has changed a lot over the last decade as well. With virtual events, hybrid conferences, AI-generated now content transforming expectations, how do you see that professional speaking evolving over the coming years? And particularly if you're in a leadership position or law firm partner or going out there and presenting, what do you see looking forward to given the world we live today?

11:35Well, I definitely see a boost in quality. I was speaking to our former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Her name is Beverly McLaughlin, and I'm probably not well known to your audience, but she's a legend in Canada. Canada. And believe it or not, she took a call from me on this question. And then she said, you know, Andre, I don't know much about AI, but I know that the oral advocacy of most colleagues has been so inferior to their written work over the years. I really hope that your little engine is going to help them get better, right? So I believe that AI injected into our speaking acumen will make us more impactful and better speakers across the board.

12:25I think our average speakers will become good, and our good speakers will become great at a faster rate, which will make it great for us. We're going to get a – we were training our speakers here at MySpeaker to become even better than what they are. But I think that the bar will just rise higher and higher and higher and higher. And therefore, audiences will be more inspired. They will get more insights. They will get what you want from a speaker is two things. So insight and inspiration, all the two eyes of the industry. So I want to get insights. I'm going to learn something I don't know and that you can open my eyes to something that is valuable coming into my life soon.

13:08And then you can inspire me, motivate me, play with the emotional threads inside of me that will make me want it more and have more energy and have maybe even the mindfulness to continue to pursue the objectives and dreams that I have.

13:27André Noël Chaker:And that's to your point about why being good at storytelling is so good at that. I remember when a mentor said to me very early on, Rob, yeah, the facts will tell, but it's the stories that will sell. They'll get people engaged, inspired and learn. The data on storytelling is so telling. Yeah, literally. We're talking five to 20x in terms of impact. And when I speak of impact, I say when a lawyer speaks in facts and theory or when a lawyer speaks in story and case examples. And from that perspective, British common law is fantastic from that perspective. Case law is a set of stories, isn't it?

14:06So when you are able to embrace this and use this to your advantage, it's fantastic. But we're talking in the science that measures impact. So impact defined by what people will understand, what they will on top of that remember, and on top of that believe. We're talking 5 to 20x more impact when you package your facts into a story format versus a list of facts and data right think about that it's not a minor issue it's not like a nice to have entertaining layer on communication it's whether people will actually believe you or not it depends on your ability of embedding those facts and figures into a story that is such a huge skill and we've developed the tools the algorithm of storytelling on rhetoric with tools that help people become better storytellers, help lawyers and associates especially who are quite timid in this regard to become more powerful in their storytelling.

15:08Yeah.

15:08André Noël Chaker:So let's go deeper then on Red Ridge AI because it's a wonderful platform. But for folks that might be new to it, I know you've been touching on it there, but just explain exactly what it is that you do, what inspired you to develop the platform and how can these professionals use AI to become better communicators without, very important point, losing that authenticity piece. That is so important. Look, for me, it's a life's work. My father was a passionate professor of language and rhetoric, and I became a lawyer because I wanted to be in court. I wanted to win cases. And I saw that the ability of speaking drove me to places that I never thought I could achieve and attain.

15:49I also saw that this gift of speaking was not equally distributed in the profession. So I wanted to help. It's in my nature. I wanted to help. But then I left the law to enter the world of technology as a CEO of a few technology companies using, of course, my legal background, but then going deep into the tech industry and led successful technology companies that were then bought by other companies. But I just fell in love with the tech. I fell in love with the law at one point and still am very much a lover of the law. And then I have this background in communications and rhetoric. So it all came full circle for me to bring technology to the world of verbal communication impact.

16:39And this is the gift we wanted to give everyone, that this will be the biggest gift that we can give to people in the age of AIs. How do we make them better humans, augmenting their ability to have an impact when they speak? And we started five years ago in a lab with a great company called Silo AI. They were bought by AMD, bought for$600 million a couple of years ago. Just a tremendous team of AI voice, AI audio. We had a great team of people that brought in the best possible knowledge on creating a platform that will make humans more impactful when they speak. And then we found that my old profession were the ones who were buying this the most from us.

17:27right wow uh they are already and they say hey we need this for all the associates in the firm we have like these these great law firms in the nordics that just kept on buying this and we saw that yeah well this is something that they can use immediately and actually why don't we create workflows work tools that will help them the same way lagora and harvey are helping you for your written work and your written use cases we have all these verbal use cases that we can use readily for professionals in the legal profession to make themselves better in the courtroom, better in negotiations, more effective in depositions, even more effective in consultations.

18:08And then you can do role play with our agents that will prepare you to be at your very best when that occurs. And of course, not speaking of things that are not legal specific, which are so critical nowadays, especially in the age of AI, when you're talking about an RFP and business development? How do you win these cases? How do you sell yourself as a lawyer? It's a handicap for us. Many of us don't know how to sell ourselves well enough. We believe that we are experts and selling doesn't feel that natural. But if you practice it and find your own way of doing it, AI and Rhetorich AI can help you become a better spokesperson for yourself and for your firm and a better salesperson, business development person for your firm.

18:53André Noël Chaker:Today's episode is brought to you by Clio. If you're spending more time managing your practice than practicing law, it's time for a change. Clio is the intelligent legal work platform built for modern solicitors, combining context-aware AI with trusted legal research to help you work smarter, not harder. Switching is easier than you might think. Clio's dedicated migration teams handle your client and case data every step of the way, so you can focus on what matters most, your clients. Plus, award-winning support 24-5 via live chat, phone, and email means help is always on hand when you need it.

19:34André Noël Chaker:Visit clio.com forward slash UK to find out why thousands of UK solicitors trust Clio. Now back to the show. Leadership in AI is going to be crucial. So leaders of today are facing constant disruption. So from your perspective, what qualities define exceptional leadership looking forwards? An open mind, definitely. The age of dogma is behind us. The inquisitive mind has never had an opportunity of being nourished at this level in the history of mankind. So if you have the openness and the humility of asking questions, you will get a rich array of answers back and finding with your own human judgment and creativity, which will still be very important for our leaders, finding new ways, new opportunities has never been more exciting, let's say, than it is today.

20:32I think these are the things that are going to distinguish our successful leaders from those who will just muddle through the AI age.

20:39André Noël Chaker:So let's bring the two together then. We've talked a little bit about these, but what does then authentic leadership and communication look like in practice? In practice, it doesn't look very authentic when you're reading a ready-made statement and you're publishing fairly sterile press releases about what you're doing. But when you are able to present yourself in a way that many people on this podcast have been, very transparent, also showing some vulnerability, also admitting things like, I don't know. And taking responsibility for that. That is, I think, key. And also a certain level of alignment.

21:25Authenticity and perceived authenticity is a question of alignment. Do you talk the talk? And then when you speak, are all the elements of voice, appearance, and the words you use align in a way that is authentic, meaning that you don't speak like this today and then act like that tomorrow and that there's consistency in your communication and in the way you behave. That's going to be important. That can also be rehearsed because sometimes we do it and we would like to be authentic, but we don't come across as authentic. by using this kind of language with this kind of nonverbal communication style might be more aligned with who you truly are.

22:13And you don't just realize it right now. So, oh, well, thank you. And then you can rehearse that.

22:18André Noël Chaker:And I think the other key point to sort of mention here as well is that the words are great, but they have to be matched by the actions, particularly with leadership as well. Because if you're saying all the right things and then the actions are different, then that trust will obviously go down. I want to move away now from the spoken word to the written word, because Your book, The Finnish Miracle, explores what makes Finland consistently perform so well internationally. I thought it was really interesting. So what leadership lessons do you think the rest of the world could learn from Finland?

22:47Wow, there are so many things. One is listening. Finns have a great word. It's called puhenvooro. It means that you have your turn to speak, which infers that it's the other's turn to listen. Could you say it again?

23:05André Noël Chaker:How do you pronounce that, sorry? The word? So it's a turn to speak. I want to practice that word. Everybody has a turn, and we have to respect the turn of others, which means we listen and we don't just try to talk aggressively against them or interrupt them. Finns will never interrupt each other when they speak. there's something sacred about the spoken word i mean we're talking about the written word but but this this spoken word i think is one beautiful part of of finnish culture is that it feels very silent and quiet but it's it's one where people are extremely well educated finish finish education is is one of the best in the world they're smart they they but they listen in in ways that i've never experienced anywhere else in the world.