Q: What do you believe in-house counsels are not getting from their law firms?
A: “I think what they do need to get is transparency and collaboration. Those are the two words. Law firms, and I think some of them are starting to do this, but they really just need to engage with their clients and the clients need to engage with the firms and jump in and start experimenting, piloting, doing some use cases and working together and learn together. We always talk about the billable hour and all this kind of thing, but how are we going to start working together as clients and law firms going forward? It has a lot of different manifestations depending on the type of work you’re doing. So it’s a little bit complex. I think it’s going to take some time to figure out and the technology has to develop more as well. So that’s what I would say is, again, not so much blaming law firms at this point because it’s so early, but to be transparent and collaborative and do some things together. That’s how we’re all going to learn.”
Q: What do you dream of for the legal industry altogether?
A: “I’m really an optimist about this, and really passionate about it and enthusiastic. I really do know it’s going to completely change the industry, whether that’s in private practice or in-house counsel or also for the providers of legal services in general. It’s a question of when and we’re all looking at a crystal ball trying. No one really knows how quickly it’s going to take for people to adapt. But I picked five years as kind of a safe prediction to say within five years, we won’t really recognize the way we’re practicing law today. I think that just has some really interesting ramifications for law students and for new lawyers who are just starting to learn how to practice. It’s just going to be really different, and I think better. I think the quality is going to be so much better, not to mention you’re going to lose a lot of the drudgery that has gone along with having to do things so manually in the past. So I’m really enthused about it. I think it’s going to be really, really interesting. And I think for new lawyers starting out that have like a 40-year path ahead of them, they can’t even imagine what all the changes are going to be.”
