2229 - Innovative Approach to Affordable Legal Support for Entrepreneurs with Paralex's Stephen Candelmo

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1:05with us right now it's stefan candelmo stefan you are the founder and ceo of parallax you're found on the web at parallax.ai to our friend that's listening we've got a direct link you can just click in the show notes just click around in your podcast app so you can follow along and trust me i think you are going to want to follow along based on what we're talking about But before we get into that, Stefan, listen, I always love finding out what our guests are into. Maybe that's not business related. I don't know if you're into any hobbies, music, movies, shows, games, anything like that lately.

1:40Yeah, that's a great question. Josh, thanks for having me today. I really appreciate showing up. Yeah, one of the things that I've always been interested in that most people don't really have known about me is I love cooking. At one point, I was thinking of going to culinary school and so forth. And a few turns and lefts and rights, I end up being a lawyer. However, I just, I love, maybe from my mother, just love cooking. And I have recently, maybe I'm a little late to the game, but I've recently got into sourdough bread making. So I've got my sourdough starter on the counter. You and me both.

2:20Oh my gosh. Okay, so I don't know what we were planning on talking about. we're going to talk about sourdough for the next 20 minutes. I love it. I love it. Yeah. So I'm going to be activating that starter. I think it's about over a hundred years old, which is pretty cool when you think about that. And I'll be, you know, making some bread later tonight and bake it tomorrow morning. That is incredible. Yeah. So, so very similar journey, although my cooking, like I used to just casually cook, you know, my mom was really good. Yeah. Typical working class, middle west you know middle um uh midwest mom you know she'd just throw anything into a castor right right right right so that was kind of like you know what i learned and i'd say i did about 50 of the cooking in our marriage up until i think covid yeah and i said you know what i need more hobbies the kids were getting older uh you know i had some more free time said i really want to learn how to cook we started with just getting those meal delivery boxes i hello fresh or whatever it was.

3:19And that really kind of got me on a good trajectory, right? I can do this. And then, you know, you, you, you outgrow the box eventually like, no, no, no, no, no. We got, I want to use the full palette here. And so, you know, now I, you know, I do probably about 98 % of the cooking for the family and I absolutely love it. I love finding new discoveries. It is for me, it's meditative. It just brings me such joy, especially if you ever can invite friends over and cook for them and have a well-designed meal with the different courses and signature cocktail perhaps or something like that to go along with it or pay a wine pairing or whatever.

4:03It's just such a joy. But sourdough, that's a new one for me. My daughter got it. My adult daughter got into it and then she got me hooked um i just got a new enamel uh cast iron and man i'll tell you just that change alone has i've had four bad bakes in a row and it's every component like every change can it's a new variable and can really adjust it's very cool right yeah it's it's part chemistry. It's, it's part artistry. It's part instinct. It's, it just, it's, it's really, and of course it's delicious. So, oh my gosh, it's always about the outcomes, right? So, a fresh sourdough with some butter on that.

4:48Wow. Yeah. That's my, that's where I'm going to be tomorrow morning. So I'll be enjoying it. Yeah. Well, tell me a bit about what Parallax is. I I'm on your website right now. I like it already. Yeah, I really appreciate it. So just a little bit of background about myself. So I've been a corporate attorney for more than 29 years. And I've been representing companies from formation to already all the way to IPO. But the one thing that I've really always noticed is that, you know, seeing a lawyer is like going to the dentist, right? You really don't want to do it unless you have to because it's very expensive and very difficult to find something you trust.

5:27And traditional lawyers can be really slow. So what Parallax is, it's really solving the problem for small business owners that either have legal support needs and they just don't have a lawyer or they're just hesitant because attorneys are just too expensive. So what we've built is this AI-powered platform that provides legal support to these founders and these small business owners that's AI-assisted but verified by real attorneys built right into the workflows, reducing cost and time by 80%. So it's a real value add to provide legal support where traditionally people are just not opting in and sometimes it can just result in costly mistakes.

6:07Yeah. Do you mind explaining a little bit about, because I likely believe that a lot of folks that are listening to us right now may be using AI, ChatGPT or whatever, far more often, I know we do, for those typical legal things, right? Right. Reviewing agreements, writing up terms. Can you share? And I'm sure you have a really great TED talk on that. Like why you should not rely on AI alone. I'm going to give you the floor and I'll let you mic drop at the end. Yeah. No, I think that I've had a lot of clients come to me. They're either drafting things on ChatGPT or they're giving me some analysis of that they've gotten off of the web via ChatGPT.

6:55And unfortunately, words matter, right? And for purposes of contracts of what I do, you know, representing business owners and so forth, a 90-10 solution just doesn't work, particularly in the eyes of the law, right? Every single word matters because that is what we're looking to, to be able to evidence and confirm what do the parties mean. So I'm often getting people who are sending things to me. It's like, yeah, maybe you're using ChatGPT to write a blog article, right? But there's no real world consequence to it. You know, a 90-10 solution on the contract is, you know, it should have said shall not, but actually says shall, right?

7:38Or it doesn't necessarily have the necessary, I like to call it magic language to ensure that, for example, like a startup founder, that the intellectual property rights are going to actually be owned by the company versus the contractor or the software developer or the individual or the graphic artist or so forth. So the thing is, to me, is important is that every single thing matters. You need precision. And while ChatGPT can get you there, the misses can be big, right? And we at Parallax understand that. And very consequential. Yeah, absolutely. And also, you know, from a purpose, from a perspective as a lawyer, you're not just going to see a lawyer because of making sure that there's no typos, but you're also going to a lawyer based off of that person's experience as to what is standard, what is typical, what's the associated risks here that they've seen through their own experience, which then can be shared.

8:39And then number three is that there's no accountability, right? Like if ChatGPT actually writes you a contract and it turns out to be just completely defective, you know, you're not going to go and make a claim at OpenAI. Yeah, you got no recourse. Yeah, there's no one's on the hook for doing the job the right way. That's right. So as a result, those all those things matter, right? Every single word matters in legal, particularly in business and contracts. Two, it doesn't necessarily have the experience and nuance and judgment that is so important in terms of providing business advisory legal services.

9:18And number three, there's really no one accountable that you can turn to. And I think that's the, you know, if I would sum it up, those are the things that really make the big difference. But the value of AI, as everyone knows, is that it creates these incredible efficiencies and incredible repositories of knowledge. But if you just rely that alone, you're just really just getting only half the loaf. And at Parallax, what we believe is that the real solution is a hybrid solution, right? The best of what AI can offer with the expertise and judgment of a real attorney, you know, really tapped into the process to give that business owner the peace of mind, you know, but not spending thousands of dollars for that peace of mind, but spending a tremendously amount less.

10:06So. Yeah. And then, of course, yeah, Stephanie, would you mind maybe talking a little bit more about why what you've developed significantly improves? Obviously, there's a cost savings component here, but maybe just kind of share with it for someone that hasn't engaged an attorney much. Do you mind maybe sharing what the typical not just cost, but the typical experience is? Yeah. And I think that's what we're trying to address in terms of trying to use technology to create this hyper-efficiencies, which then can produce these savings. So Josh, say you're working with me as your attorney. There's a typical way that either hopefully you find me and through a referral and so forth.

10:49And you're either emailing me, asking me, like telling me what you need. And then we're getting on a call. and then I am spending time to understand your background, what you're trying to achieve with your current contract or legal support issue. Then we come up with a deliverable in terms of a contract. I give you my rate. I'm going to charge you by the amount of time I spend on it, which is no visibility or accountability to that. And then I'm going to email you back and you're going to review this contract. You're going to give me some comments via email. Then I'm going to digest those comments.

11:26I'm going to revise the agreement separately outside of your purview, send it back to you. We're going to do that about two or three times. And what does that do? That just burns up a lot of your time, burns up a lot of the attorney's time, which is more time equals more money. So it's all of this friction of this communication to try to understand what you're really looking for. And what AI can actually do is that instead of you meeting with me, Josh, or you engaging with me over email or messaging or something to that effect, what we believe at Parallax is that there's this really the software interface between you and I now.

12:07and the AI, our AI system is going to have that conversation with you. The AI is going to determine to make recommendations as to what you need. The AI is going to be able to help do that intake. The AI is going to help you customize or help me customize that agreement very quickly. So as a result, you know, we're taking out all of this wasted time and inefficiency and really trying to streamline it through technology, which compared to what it traditionally has done is why legal is so expensive. Legal is so expensive is because, you know, lawyers spend a lot of time doing things and they charge by, you know, some every six minutes, some by every 15 minutes.

12:53And the average rate of a lawyer, as most people know, probably is about$400 an hour. Here in United States, there's lawyers that are charging$1 ,000,$1 ,200,$1 ,300,$1 ,400. It just becomes unattainable. And it really, I don't believe, can be sustained given the advances of technology. So I think the market's going to demand it. Yeah. And that's where we're placing our bets at Parallax. I love it. I think you hit that sweet spot. Do you mind maybe sharing what the experience is of using Parallax? Do you mind just kind of like a user journey just quick, just so folks can kind of connect the dots?

13:31You did this a little bit already, but I just want to make sure someone's like, now we really have their attention. You know, they're like, okay, well, how does it work? Well, first off, you'd go to parallax.ai. You kind of follow along. Absolutely. So, you know, so parallax is this web-based platform where you can provide, where you're given end-to-end support to do three core services. It's drafting agreements, reviewing an agreement that you've received from someone else, or scheduling and having an advisory session with an attorney to talk about particular issues of concern to you and your business.

14:04For example, the use case of drafting is that you select the service of drafting. You first start doing an intake where there's a natural conversation as to what you need and what are the essential terms of your contract. What's the purpose of the contract? What's the name of the other party? what's the expectations of your role? What's the expectations of the other person's role? And as a result of that conversation, we then summarize that conversation. And we ask you, is this correct? Is there anything else you'd like to share with us? Is there anything else you possibly are concerned about?

14:37They said, no. Fantastic. So as a result, we then make a recommendation as to this is the type of contract that you need. You're then presented with this contract in terms of the type of contract and a fixed price, right? The fixed price can range from $150 to$850, depending on the subject matter and complexity of the agreement. Typically, if you're doing a big commercial lease of 80 pages, it's going to be on the higher end. If it's a smaller consulting agreement, it's on the lower end. Once you do that, you're presented with the price. So it's no surprises. And that includes working with an attorney to revise it, have questions answered and so forth.

15:15You accept the price. And at that point, the system then takes it, assigns an attorney to you. And then the next, and before you know it, we're going to let you know when your agreement's ready. You get an email. The email then says, hey, you can go into the project portal. Your contract is ready for you. And there you can then do dedicated messaging with that attorney regarding that project, get it done, download it to Word, and then you're off and running. And that's it. well listen you can use my quote if you like on the front page your website it's the future of law i mean really and i don't think you don't need me to say it i i i would be shocked to to think that there would be anyone who would argue against that absurd and anyone who does i just don't think is living in reality people are the toothpaste is already out of the tube people are using ai tools.

16:07Let's just help those folks use AI tools responsibly so that, again, we can mitigate those risks that are associated with just completely having a commonly hallucinating but fantastic tool do a lot of that very, very, very critical work. Stefan, so Parallax.ai, what does somebody do next? I mean, what do they do? Like, how do they get started? How do they engage? What would you recommend they go from this podcast? Yeah, so they can just go to the site, parallax.ai. They can sign up for access. We'll then get in contact with them if they want to watch us, see a demo. We'll walk them through it.

16:52Right now, Parallax is just pay as you go. There's no subscription. There's no monthly membership fee. It just pays you from a consumption standpoint. It just pay as per project. And at that point, you have a ready project. You submit the project and we'll get it done for you. And we're utilizing technology to do that. So pretty basic, pretty simple. A lot of people have just said, this is a no-brainer. Why would I not use it? And I think that's hopefully your audience will agree. I love it. It's Stephan Candelmo, founder, CEO of Parallax, the website parallax.ai. Stephan, thank you so much for joining us.

17:29Thanks, Josh. I really appreciate it. Have fun.

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