Legal Tech: Doing More with Less

Watch this short video where Tim shares his perspective on the elements of legal work that can be enhanced by legal tech. Tune in to learn why he advocates for using technology to simplify processes.

Transcript

Question: What is your take on doing more with less with legal tech? What elements of legal work should legal tech look to enhance?

Answer: For me personally, particularly with how I spend my day when I'm working on legal stuff. It's really process-oriented. It's process-oriented in data collection and organization.

I'm much more of an advocate for using technology to simplify processes that are more simple than substantive legal work. It's more valuable for me to have something that simplifies a workflow than something that simplifies how I review an NDA or even a larger agreement or even automatically collecting extractions from contracts.

Maybe that's the wrong thing for me to say, but with where my role is right now, that's where my focus is. Now, if I were doing M&A all the time where I had to build disclosure schedules, and things like that, then yeah, things that can automatically extract this information and let me run reports. That's the most important thing that should be done.

Right? But, but largely for me, it's automation of processes that anybody could do so that lawyers could focus on the work that lawyers need to do.

Question: What advice do you have for GCs or CLOs? What do they need to understand before they invest in a solution?

Answer: You need to understand your problem. What are you trying to solve for? It's interesting because I think the profile of the buyer of legal technology is one of a more inquisitive nature.

And one that tries to basically find the ends of your technology. Right? So they'll they'll go through and and present the hardest use case that that they have. And be like, oh, solve this, solve that.

Can it do this? Can it do that? It's like, okay. Yeah, maybe. But, like, how much of the work the work you do on a day in a day out basis actually needs that. Right? So, you know, I like the eighty twenty rule. Right? So if you can get something that gets you eighty percent of the way there, but maybe doesn't get you that remaining twenty percent.

I'd love it if I had more automation and eighty percent of my day. That would be awesome. Even if it meant that that twenty percent of the day were still a bit of a pain in the butt. That's that's particularly okay by me. So, that's the way that I think about it. Identify the problem that you're truly trying to solve, not identify the problem that exposes the outer limits of the technology that's being sold to you.

Thank you for listening to Tim's Take. You can send your questions to cockpitcounsel@linksquares.com